Steven my boy,

We coasted into a medieval pub in the middle of nowhere in wildest Devon to encounter the place in uproarious bedlam. A dozen country madams had been imbibing in the pre wedding wine and were in great form roaring with laughter and bursting out of their lacy cotton frocks. Bunting adorned the pub, Union Jack was aflutter everywhere and a full size cut out of HM the Queen welcomed visitors into the front door. Cucumber sandwiches and a heady fruit punch were available to all and sundry and the din was absolutely riotous……THE ROYAL WEDDING WAS UNDERWAY ON THE GIANT TV ON THE BAR WALL….and we were joining in the mood of things by sinking a bevy of Bushmills Irish whiskies neat!

Now…. this is a major event in the UK.

Everybody loves Prince Harry, he is the terrible tearaway of the Royal family, he has been caught ******* sheila’s in all sorts of weird circumstance. Now the dear boy is to be married to a beauty from the USA….besotted he is with her, fair dripping with love and adoration…..and the whole country loves little Megan Markle for making him so.

The British are famous for their pageantry and pomp….everything is timed to the second and must be absolutely….just so. Well….Nobody told the most Reverend Michael Curry this…. and he launched into the most wonderful full spirited Halleluiah sermon about the joyous “Wonder of Love”. He went on and on for a full 14 minutes, and as he proceeded on, the British stiff upper lips became more and more rigidly uncomfortable with this radical departure from protocol. Her Majesty the Queen stood aghast and locked her beady blue eyes in a riveting, steely glare, directed furiously at the good Reverend….to no avail, on he went with his magic sermon to a beautiful rousing ******….and an absolute stony silence in the cavernous interior of that vaulting, magnificent cathedral. Prince Harry and his lovely bride, (whose wedding the day was all about), were delighted with Curry’s performance….as was Prince William, heir to the Throne, who wore a fascinating **** eating grin all over his face for the entire performance.

Says a lot, my friend, about the refreshing values of tomorrows Royalty.

We rolled out of that country pub three parts cut to the wind, dunno how we made it to our next destination, but we had one hellava good time at that Royal Wedding!

The weft and the weave of our appreciation fluctuated wildly with each day of travel through this magnificent and ancient land, Great Britain.

There was soft brilliant summer air which hovered over the undulating green patchwork of the Cotswolds whilst we dined on delicious roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, from an elevated position in a medieval country inn..... So magnificent as to make you want to weep with the beauty of it all….and the quaint thatched farmhouse with the second story multi paned windows, which I understood, had been there, in that spot, since the twelfth century. Our accommodation, sleeping beneath oaken beams within thick stone walls, once a pen for swine, now a domiciled overnight bed and pillow of luxury with white cotton sheets for weary Kiwi travellers.

The sadness of the Cornish west coast, which bore testimony to tragedy for the hard working tin miners of the 1800s. A sharp decrease in the international tin price in 1911 destituted whole populations who walked away from their life’s work and fled to the New World in search of the promise of a future. Forlorn brick ruins adorned stark rocky outcrops right along the coastline and inland for miles. Lonely brick chimneys silhouetted against sharp vertical cliffs and the ever crashing crescendo of the pounding waves of the cold Atlantic ocean.

No parking in Padstow….absolutely NIL! You parked your car miles away in the designated carpark at an overnight cost….and with your bags in tow, you walked to your digs. Now known as Padstein, this beautiful place is now populated with eight Rick Stein restaurants and shops dotted here and there.

We had a huge feed of piping hot fish and chips together with handles of cold ale down at his harbour side fish and chip restaurant near the wharfs…place was packed with people, you had to queue at the door for a table, no reservations accepted….Just great!

Clovelly was different, almost precipitous. This ancient fishing village plummeted down impossibly steep cliffs….a very rough, winding cobbled stone walkway, which must have taken years to build by hand, the only way down to the huge rock breakwater which harboured the fishing boats Against the Atlantic storms. And in a quaint little cottagey place, perched on the edge of a cliff, we had yet another beautiful Devonshire tea in delicate, white China cups...with tasty hot scones, piles of strawberry jam and a huge *** of thick clotted cream…Yum! Too ****** steep to struggle back up the hill so we spent ten quid and rode all the way up the switch back beneath the olive canvass canopy of an old Land Rover…..money well spent!

Creaking floorboards and near vertical, winding staircases and massive rock walls seemed to be common characteristics of all the lovely old lodging houses we were accommodated in. Sarah, our lovely daughter in law, arranged an excellent itinerary for us to travel around the SW coast staying in the most picturesque of places which seeped with antiquity and character. We zooped around the narrow lanes, between the hedgerows in our sharp little VW golf hire car And, with Sarah at the helm, we never got lost or missed a beat…..Fantastic effort, thank you so much Sarah and Solomon on behalf of your grateful In laws, Janet and Marshal, who loved every single moment of it all!

Memories of a lifetime.

Wanted to tell the world about your excitement, Janet, on visiting Stoke on Trent.

This town is famous the world over for it’s pottery. The pottery industry has flourished here since the middle ages and this is evidenced by the antiquity of the kilns and huge brick chimneys littered around the ancient factories. Stoke on Trent is an industrial town and it’s narrow, winding streets and congested run down buildings bear testimony to past good times and bad.

We visited “Burleigh”.

Darling Janet has collected Burleigh pottery for as long as I have known her, that is almost 40 years. She loves Burleigh and uses it as a showcase for the décor of our home.

When Janet first walked into the ancient wooden portals of the Burleigh show room she floated around on a cloud of wonder, she made darting little runs to each new discovery, making ooh’s and aah’s, eyes shining brightly….. I trailed quietly some distance behind, being very aware that I must not in any way imperil this particular precious bubble.

We amassed a beautiful collection of plates, dishes, bowls and jugs for purchase and retired to the pottery’s canal side bistro,( to come back to earth), and enjoy a ploughman’s lunch and a *** of hot English breakfast tea.

We returned to Stoke on Trent later in the trip for another bash at Burleigh and some other beautiful pottery makers wares…..Our suit cases were well filled with fragile treasures for the trip home to NZ…..and darling Janet had realised one of her dearest life’s ambitions fulfilled.

One of the great things about Britain was the British people, we found them willing to go out of their way to be helpful to a fault…… and, with the exception of BMW people, we found them all to be great drivers. The little hedgerow, single lane, winding roads that connect all rural areas, would be a perpetual source of carnage were it not for the fact that British drivers are largely courteous and reserved in their driving.

We hired a spacious ,powerful Nissan in Dover and acquired a friend, an invaluable friend actually, her name was “Tripsy” at least that’s what we called her. Tripsy guided us around all the byways and highways of Britain, we couldn’t have done without her. I had a few heated discussions with her, I admit….much to Janet’s great hilarity…but Tripsy won out every time and I quickly learned to keep my big mouth shut.

By pure accident we ended up in Cumbria, up north of the Roman city of York….at a little place in the dales called “Middleton on Teesdale”….an absolutely beautiful place snuggled deep in the valleys beneath the huge, heather clad uplands. Here we scored the last available bed in town at a gem of a hotel called the “Brunswick”. Being a Bank Holiday weekend everything, everywhere was booked out. The Brunswick surpassed ordinary comfort…it was superlative, so much so that, in an itinerary pushed for time….we stayed TWO nights and took the opportunity to scout around the surrounding, beautiful countryside. In fact we skirted right out to the western coastline and as far north as the Scottish border. Middleton on Teesdale provided us with that late holiday siesta break that we so desperately needed at that time…an exhausting business on a couple of old Kiwis, this holiday stuff!

One of the great priorities on getting back to London was to shop at “Liberty”. Great joy was had selecting some ornate upholstering material from the huge range of superb cloth available in Liberty’s speciality range.

The whole organisation of Liberty’s huge store and the magnificent quality of goods offered was quite daunting. Janet & I spent quite some time in that magnificent place…..and Janet has a plan to select a stylish period chair when we get back to NZ and create a masterpiece by covering it with the ***** bought from Liberty.

In York, beautiful ancient, York. A garrison town for the Romans, walled and once defended against the marauding Picts and Scots…is now preserved as a delightful and functional, modern city whilst retaining the grandeur, majesty and presence of its magnificent past.

Whilst exploring in York, Janet and I found ourselves mixing with the multitude in the narrow medieval streets paved with ancient rock cobbles and lined with beautifully preserved Tudor structures resplendent in whitewash panel and weathered, black timber brace. With dusk falling, we were drawn to wild violins and the sound of stamping feet….an emanation from within the doors of an old, burgundy coloured pub…. “The Three Legged Mare”.

Fortified, with a glass of Bushmills in hand, we joined the multitude of stomping, singing people. Rousing to the percussion of the Irish drum, the wild violin and the deep resonance of the cello, guitars and accordion…..The beautiful sound of tenor voices harmonising to the magic of a lilting Irish lament.

We stayed there for an hour or two, enchanted by the spontaneity of it all, the sheer native talent of the expatriates celebrating their heritage and their culture in what was really, a beautiful evening of colour, music and Ireland.

Onward, across the moors, we revelled in the great outcrops of metamorphic rock, the expanses of flat heather covering the tops which would, in the chill of Autumn, become a spectacular swath of vivid mauve floral carpet. On these lonely tracts of narrow road, winding through the washes and the escarpments, the motorbike boys wheeled by us in screaming pursuit of each other, beautiful machines heeling over at impossible angles on the corners, seemingly suicidal yet careening on at breakneck pace, laughing the danger off with the utter abandon of the creed of the road warrior. Descending in to the rolling hills of the cultivated land, the latticework of, old as Methuselah, massive dry built stone fences patterning the contours in a checker board of ancient pastoral order. The glorious soft greens of early summer deciduous forest, the yellow fields of mustard flower moving in the breeze and above, the bluest of skies with contrails of ever present high flung jets winging to distant places.

Britain has a flavour. Antiquity is evidenced everywhere, there is a sense of old, restrained pride. A richness of spirit and a depth of character right throughout the populace. Britain has confidence in itself, its future, its continuity. The people are pleasant, resilient and thoroughly likeable. They laugh a lot and are very easy to admire.

With its culture, its wonderful history, its great Monarchy and its haunting, ever present beauty, everywhere you care to look….The Britain of today is, indeed, a class act.

We both loved it here Steven…and we will return.

M.

Hamilton, New Zealand

21 June 2018

We attempt rescue, unable to bear
the stardust-coated dragonfly
beat, beat, beating
frantic on the glass.

We entice him to perch
on our extended lifeline-broom
nurse him in a box, where he flutters
quivers, lies quietly blue.

My son cries bitterly
as we place a minute cross
upon the dragonfly grave
while intoning our final goodbyes:

We honor those who have fallen victim
to this fatal architectural trap, lured
by skylights of enticing white-light death
and the paned illusion of freedom.

In admiration of winged determination
and perseverance in the face of futility
we carefully tend the fragile, curved bodies
lay them here to rest under the mock orange.

years of gauze-weighted detritus
swept beneath these ponderous shrubs
a reminder - what seems like freedom
                                                         ­           often isn’t.

The cloud settles over the moor.
Scottish peaks and thistle
darkened to shadow;
voids within voids.

A sheet, a film
of papyrus copper
plays reality.
It approaches the single paned window,
the abandoned outhouse.

It is deserted here;
one-and-a-half living souls
‘cross the entire landscape.

The story is in the air,
the tension toiling my innards,
scaling my arms to gooseflesh
and my mind to trepidation.

She’s here.

She is here and at the window.

Please, I hope, please
let it be a billowing of plastic
caught in the wind, movements
stifled by a telegraph pole
or some other cursed sign of company.

Occluding mass, she hesitates
by the window, I daren’t look,
but she is there all the same,
wailing achingly silent for reprieve.

I know why she is here.
I see it:

Thick rope. Crude, unrelenting knots,
I feel them press, cut with friction
into my wrists, twine like snakes,
devoiding me of life

one eternal day after another.
He prowls the door from time to time,
I fear it but it’s all that I have
save for the songs of the Tree Sparrows
that warm the winter.

He comes in to shed light to the room,
brings bread and milk, sometimes fruit.
More often than not he brings just himself,
presses me to the cold floor,

tries to make me feel something real,
demands my artificial praise.
He climaxes quickly, fills me with life, he says,
clutches my ***** hair, wracked with lice
and pregnant with the renewed hope

of his mercy.

None coming, I’m returned to my holster,
a stool upon an opened barrel,
I leave my messes behind,
the stench rising between my legs

and surrounding my senses,
until all of my life is nothing more
than excrement. Recycled, lived once
and then forevermore.

I live in my mind. Only the single-paned
window in this outhouse
offering an alternative;
most usually slate grey skies
and a barrage of hail upon the tin roof.

Outside of the window, I know
that life is something else. No books,
no words, no love, no music;
yet the weak Scottish light still
pierces the glass,

light always finds a way.

And then one day or one passage of time,
it matters not,
my hero, my villain, my father,
came to me no more.

I rejoiced. I rejoiced in my starvation,
the waste of my muscle,
the overflow of the toilet bowl,
skin reddened and bruised and eaten.

No one would come, if indeed there was anyone at all,
I knew that.

So I waited for death,
as death had waited for me.
We greeted each other as friends,
archaic pen-pals, acquainted at last,

I embraced his touch,
felt more life in death than life
had ever cared to bestow.

I kissed death on the lips,
told him of my long-sought desire for him.
He turned, a glint of silver,

and I found myself
on the other side of the single paned window.

Looking in, I saw only my regret.
The stool, the barrel, the waste
that had strewn the floor,
had surmised my life.

It was a sight unfit to un-see,
and so I stood in my perfect sanctuary,
never turned to look and face the light,
and instead stayed only to lament.

And so now I look into the old outhouse,
decades of decay improve its sight.
Old moss gathers over the fingernail marks
that I had carved so desperately
into the flooring.

Forevermore I stare upon my regrets,
forevermore I opaque myself
in half-existent smoke,
tapping on the window.

Upon this I look, a deep plunge of horror;
my heart freezes in frame,
upon a young woman’s face,
no more than fourteen years.

It is locked in a scream, a sense of despair,
eternal and rite, forever in shame.
A life lived in terror, naught but a tirade
of brutish **** and desperate privation.

We lock eyes for a moment,
enough proof thus,
that there is life beyond misery,
if one cares to look.

and
       just like that
I am falling
unfolding in your eyes
layers of shadows unraveling
in polar-laced
              spirals of hunger
deep freeze melting upon tongue
an icy build-up
thawed in seconds
for my very cells burn
          beneath your gaze
as you take in the fullness
                 of my presence
     despite the smoky,
glass-paned haze
My presence-
     suffused with
          the darkness of silk-
          I want it to graze your skin
the most gentle feather
  stroking emotion
       coaxing out the
        delicately-wrapped
          firestones in you
           spinning them into    
a frenzied lava-slaked ocean
     and then those unexplained,
flurried lattice flakes
that somehow soothe and cool
within this inferno
of just-missed proximity

My essence
             is cast like a net
over you
as we dive into
         the volumes
as I pull the
heated visions out of your mind
             feel your heart's closest
  most tiny reverberations
           little beats barely heard
yet in some unlikely way
pump blood into mine
Undo me
as my wet blue pools
dissolve into yours
my trussed-up implosions
flowing out in air-spun tempest
Unwrap my defenses
          a soldered-up dam breaking
                 a glass tubular bell
                   hairline fracture quaking
Strip me bare
no need to even touch me
for the vapors of
your voice
remove the layers
of debris
like the steam of earth
irons out
the blackened quilt of sky
to reveal
the altar
           of our
stars

The back up with
A crooked neck bent
   Towards Hell
While his lips tightened sternly
   as a Victorian urn.

His face barely recognizeable
   ever since the penny-doppler showered
A wandering click
   that skipped
      no birds on his fence.

In a glass paned massacre, forever fossilized
between childhood bullies and prom-night feel-ups,
there was a consciousness that feigned
once a week, cockled in creationism and the Eucharist.

His passions -- clam shells flanked by the ripping tide.
His intellect -- a solitary warble amid ***** blue notes.

A dream tree, Polly's tree:
a thicket of sticks,
  each speckled twig

ending in a thin-paned
leaf unlike any
  other on it

or in a ghost flower
flat as paper and
  of a color

vaporish as frost-breath,
more finical than
  any silk fan

the Chinese ladies use
to stir robin's egg
  air. The silver-

haired seed of the milkweed
comes to roost there, frail
  as the halo

rayed round a candle flame,
a will-o'-the-wisp
  nimbus, or puff

of cloud-stuff, tipping her
queer candelabrum.
  Palely lit by

*****-ruffed dandelions,
white daisy wheels and
  a tiger faced

*****, it glows. O it's
no family tree,
  Polly's tree, nor

a tree of heaven, though
it marry quartz-flake,
  feather and rose.

It sprang from her pillow
whole as a cobweb
  ribbed like a hand,

a dream tree. Polly's tree
wears a valentine
  arc of tear-pearled

bleeding hearts on its sleeve
and, crowning it, one
  blue larkspur star.

Storm winds from the west
Send us scurrying down the plank
Steps into the dank basement
Sounds become deafening as the
Skies darken

Whatever is happening
Is only visible through a four-paned
Window no larger than a newspaper

At age seven this is all new
Thunder, lightening, storms
Have come and gone
Usually starting in the west
Among growing and billowing clouds
This time the darkness is heavy
Winds blow straight yet swirl simultaneously

A look of fear unlike any he has seen before
Covers his mother’s face

His father, a man of few words and a placid personality
Forces new wrinkles upon his worried forehead

The hay barn slides across the yard
Walking as though each wall has legs
Slowly collapsing, it crumbles into the granary
Once it lands the storm begins to abate
They will survive
Slowly, step by step his father, then his mother
And finally he ascend to view what damage
Has occurred.  One view and he knows the answer
The devastation is real and substantial

Touched by the winds, the dull candle flickers
The shadow, she whispers upon the feline's whiskers
"What be out there?", I thought in my mind
Craved insecurities, but all in good time

I will not let it be, whispers and wonder
Tears do not fall, as I talk the words blunder
"Hath be I'm crazy?", spoke of myself
Closed eyes it seemed, as I only felt

Dressed in the nights, alone in my chair
Penning my life, ink smears and scared
I folded the paper, for it is all wrong
Scream the impossible, weakened not strong

It rapped on the walls, creaked bones inside
Given an ear, listen thy night
"What be out there?", I thought in my mind
Craved insecurities, but all in good time

I withered away, fear not my scenes
For I had taken it back by madness and dreams
Scraping the pane, gust open door
One step, two step, three step, four

Alone as I sit by shivering thought
Inside of my mind, restless and caught
It ruptured me cold, stiff and bit torn
Crashed through the pane, no longer born

The floorboards were bent by nothing but silence
Crime the mistaken, one second in violence
"What be out there?", I thought in my mind
Craved insecurities, but all in good time

Lead paned windows
beam shafts of coloured light
dust motes floating
spiral upwards
released from
captive carpets
flee

Katherine writes songs about wheat fields and her father’s blisters
From the four-by-six closet beneath the staircase.
Aaron doesn’t write anymore.

Katherine draws music notes to record
The tune of footsteps and creaking oak,
While Aaron feels the rough grain of maple window frames
And avoids his reflection in the double-paned glass.

Katherine holds tight to her pen
Like a man who’s lived a good life holds on to his final breath.
Aaron, he never found it that hard to exhale.

Katherine knows love like she knows the Sun,
While Aaron, who once flew wax-winged,
Stopped studying mythology
And found trust in extinguished light bulbs.

Katherine draws stick figures in the collected dust
Of cracked-cloth book covers
And embraces every particle that kisses her fingerprint.
Aaron wears black leather gloves
Like a desensitizing second-skin.
But they both close their eyes
When the wind brushes their cheeks.

When Katherine cries it’s wet and sloppy
And when it’s over she usually giggles
At the feeling of being human.
Aaron’s eyes are desert moons;
If he believed in a god he’d pray for rainstorms,
But instead he picks tumble weeds from his teeth
With the ribcage he found when the vultures were through.

Katherine webs outlines with plot twists and foreshadows
While Aaron knows some stories
Are made up as they’re written.

Katherine collects crushed asphalt from both sides of divided highways
And mixes it with ****** wax to varnish her innocence.
Aaron drives the back-roads and keeps one eye on the rearview mirror.
He finds solace in sharp turns.

Tonight, Katherine curls her toes as she writes a song about
loving up until your very last breath
And caresses her lips.
Aaron chews on his and slides open the window.
They both recall the taste of someone else’s skin from the salt in the air.
Katherine’s candle flickers and pops when she moves
Her hand through the light to cast stories on the wall.
Aaron crawls down the shadowed side of hallways
And feels the grey grow in his hair as he starts up the staircase.

Step by step by step by
each breath is
step by step
loved a little bit less
An all but silent cacophony of creaking oak.

Katherine etches a treble clef but her pupils dilate
When she senses the unfamiliar feeling of a second heartbeat.
With stitched silk stockings
she tip-toes up the same song.
Aaron hears music for the first time in so long
And turns to see where goose bumps come from.

Katherine crescendos at the top of the stairs and
Stares into two full, bright desert moons.
Aaron finds it hard to let go of the breath it takes to say,
“Don’t be afraid.”
Katherine tumbles like fingers down piano keys,
But for a split-second in the moment their eyes met
They both forgot the weight of loneliness.

no count-downs for birthday parties
no arm wrestles, no jump shots
no go-cart donuts
not even a snowball

where did we go?

blond hair
up to my shoulders
surrounded by jewels
some empty-paned picture frame
couple sprouts beneath a pine
saying "monkeys" for Grammy's kodak
red clay on your feet
pink frosting in your teeth
me, sheathed in my favorite shirt
"I'm the big sister!"
with a butterfly depicting
what I've yet to become

how wrong have we gone?

well, I'll be twenty
once spring rolls around
and brother
you're not far behind
I can't tell time
to change its mind
but I promise you
it won't be changing mine
from the photographs, scrapbooks
I'll forever feel your laughter
just like goosebumps
the brail I'm reading into
let's gaze past glares
straight through white sunbeams
spiking your brown eyes
twice as deep as mine
the truest shades
on the face of the earth
to this very
foggy day
this mirror, this moment snagged
before shutters snap
and capture us, splatter us
on matte paper, or cell screens
with brown hair
up to your shoulders

way to go, little brother
but I'm still keeping that tee
because the only thing
I've always been proud to be
is your big sister

It's the conspiracy to conspire,
Think of how the fist or flies feel,
The most enticing truth,
Astonishingly mouthwatering,
Turns out smoke and mirror,
You see, because behind the window paned,
skeleton of steel and wire,
Underneath there is commerce,
In the webbing of marrow, worldwide underhandedness,
Something is always being sold,
What better way to take power away,
Then having scheduled rebellions,
The greatest put on,
Our system only works under thumbs,
from the backdrop works the crippled puppeteer,
behind his blank, vagrant, expressionless lenses,
Behind the grey skin and swilled organs,
Attached to the oil drum veins,
Beats the very same heart of Moloch!

The clock struck a peculiar time
Reverberating on the window pains
When I looked up from the old wooden desk
To the stark white face of that piece  
My eyes were caught in a haze
The hands of the clock eluded me
The chair scratched against the floor
As I moved backwards and rubbed my eyes
My ears popped ever so slightly
Light headedness came on to me
I found it and remained conscious
Aware of what would occur should I fall,
Succumbing to that mechanism
I mustered myself to remove the clock
Lifting it from a single nail in the wall
I placed in in the top drawer of the desk
It's ticking was no longer audible
Yet I still felt the reverberation
It bounced and rattled within my bones
A pulsing echo within my mind
Never louder yet with each throb
It grew more and more distinct

Then it stopped altogether
And the shadows grew long in the room
I paned out the old attic space
For the breifest moment
Before the shadows evaporated
Blending and mixing with the darkness

Sitting alone at my party
I think of my coworker
With the gubmint 24 years and counting
For 35 hours per week
He preaches personal responsibility
While surfing his favorite political blog
I watch my dog bark at passersby
From behind the safety
Of the double paned window
To be alive is to be separate
To realize it consciousness

It is the 23rd century,
The other rebels are showcased in the penitentiary
In the city’s center street
To gratify the remnants of the sensory.

They’re beheld through double-paned hybrid walls of palladium, aluminum oxide and diamond;
In each cell their own reflection’s seen

Endlessly.

There is no blue sky, no scent of trees;
The cells’ sounds rebound and resound

To promote censoring.

It all began in the 21st century;
Now, ancient relics are kept in a technological cemetery,
Guarded by a sophisticated sentry.

Unbound knowledge damaged our brains,
Progress became our shackle and chains.
We—humanity—became dependent like a candle and flame
And gradually, drastically, society managed to change.
All who resisted were banished in shame,
Then our history was lost; I’m lucky to even know my family name.

I am the last rebel.
I know of tambourines, timbre and treble.
I know of beauty that once made men tremble.
I know of the past gods;

Before we made the last devil.

Now we are the drones.
We mass-produced their bodies, now we are the clones.
Now they think, speak and feel for us—we are just bones.
We built our father’s house upon these rocks:

We are the stones.

If any should read this before the ripples of time dwindle,
I’ll be plain: we surrendered human expression to digital signals and symbols.
We once made music from thimbles and cymbals,
Praised the Lord on the timbrels,
Shouted aloud atop the shingles.
It was all so profound, because it was so simple.
Eventually what the experts, geniuses and pros found
Was a way to hose down

A waterfall.

Now, propriety is: No psaltry, poetry or piety.
The cemetery holds the devices which ushered the end of society.
But I have seen them;
I devised a scheme to sneak in silently
And study the history privately.

I was stunned. Stricken, as with fear,
And for the first time in years
My eyes leaked with tears.

If I could talk to them,
If I could ask a question,
If I could somehow call,
I’d ask why—just why did you allow it all?!
How could you not foresee the downfall?!
Why did not some societal siren sound off?

Speaking of sirens...
Oh, no...
They’ve found my lair...
See, this is why I’ve found fault!

Now I am a rebel—a renegade—forced to live like a groundhog

Simply because I seek to enlighten and warn all,
Like one who foresaw
The siege of Warsaw.

If this is ever found, preserve my last words:
LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTION

Signed,

The Last Outlaw

Reed Jobs X

Elope me in your thoughts and all this mental pain.
Like a rope you seem to choke me and cut me off from my brain.
I can't make sense of it, nor can I explain it.
I tried to paint the picture from the window I was "paned" in.
Sprained mind thought I still want to reach you,
Teach me to love you, don't preach that I bug you.
Release my anxiety, I "Leach" on to propriety.
Sobriety is getting harder by the day...
Society is watching me, I'm not sure what to say...
I'm sitting in my rocking chair, typing away a blurred array,
I still write about you everyday,
you haven’t read a word I've saved.
I still think about you every night,
Your closeness is what I crave.
When I talk to you I cave, man I don't know what to say..
I feel less intelligent, but hell your smile, I relish it...
It shines so bright no need for embellishment.
I want to see it all the time, so much I feel so selfish..
It's pure happiness in it's prime,
but the crime is that it's for a lie.
You hurt inside, I seem to help.
I'm on your mind, and you're on mine.
That's fine with me, you're divine.

I always loved your hands.
Not in any kind of lustful way, just the look of them.
I still love your hands, henna-ed and smooth
And so soft- startlingly soft-
If my fingers accidentally brush yours.
I used to marvel when you'd lace your fingers through mine-so casual- as we walked,
At how they felt like moonlight looked.
I love to watch you work, the careful way you do everything
Like it's all art, like it's all important.
Hell, you make a sandwich like you're carving a sculpture
And I find myself watching you, fascinated like always,
And I want to laugh, and I want to tell you you're beautiful.
And my smile turns wry
And I say nothing
Because who thinks of things like that?

I have a favorite photograph from long ago
Of your hands as you were drawing.
They've not changed.
That's why I always ask "Is that ring new?"
Because I catch myself noticing them
The way you might catch yourself absently holding a smooth stone you left in your pocket and forgot was there.
I used to secretly wish that someday you'd draw on me in henna
And I'd have the daring to ask you
To leave a handprint on my shoulder
Like a promise.

I've told you you look like a sculpture, too perfect not to be planned
And
I remember long hours in the museums as a child
Walking through a maze of white porcelain and marble women
Wondering how rock could look softer than my own skin.
I wanted to reach out and touch
See if they would be cold and hard like they should be
Or warm and velvety.
And their hands... So graceful and light-
The sculptors of old strove for perfection
Believing that they had not found it in humanity
Always imagining something smoother, something lovelier, something more delicate and more exquisite.
(You weren't around yet.)

Your hands always reminded me of something from that soaring hall
With all its silky looking statues and its ceiling of cross-paned windows.

So when I sit here, watching Art
Make ham sandwiches
It feels so incongruous.
Something here just doesn't belong.
And I can't tell if it is me or you
But honestly
How many people can say
They have watched Artemis sit down at the counter beside them
As if she has no idea she's divine?

"Where is my Monet?", I say
As I look through the blurred vision of an impressionist day.
A double paned view of reality
Swaying beauty through eyes once knew.

Where is my Monet  or be it Van Gough?
All beauty's vision framed newly printed Picasso.
Shadow me done, and once never knew
What others should have seen as they counted me too.

So now, I say no
Not of Van Gough nor Monet,
I see beauty no Rembrandt nor Picasso to sway.
I see a simple little girl with all she will need
To see the world lovely and in the midst of all, succeed.

1** Iron-bodied, you stand giant;
a thousand feet into the air, rigid
metal swaying in the wind.
2 Neck-breaking,

3 Sears Tower -- world-reflecting, glass-paned --
eclipses you, yet pales in your shadow.
4 Your ironwork: murky, camouflage brown
in the daylight, beautiful only by the twinkling dusk.

5 Prostrated, the multitudes hope to ascend,
flashes melding with the hourly light show --
6 Capture the splendor across the city!
7 L'Arc de Triomphe, Champs-Elysee, Notre Dame, ...

8 Euros squandered in trite gift shops,
9 -- Attention les pickpockets! --
10 Key chains, pens, 4 by 6 postcards...
Miss you loads. Wish you were here.

11 I climbed you. And now? 12 I watch
from Trocadero; fountains alive, illusions in place
but observed from afar, removed; 13 Apart
from the greedy, flocking masses.

14 One day, you will fall, and with you
the congregations that kneel before you
to wait in the line of impatient,
shoving, babbling, 15 Hallelujah tourists.

16 And when your feral echoes
fade to rubble on the crucified pelouse,
17 We at the grand marble square
will blink and miss it and wonder:

18 Were you ever there at all?

The sun was still rising.
He stood at the bottom
of the driveway,
a shovel in his hands.
His cheeks were ruddy, wind-chapped.

Inside, their baby lay swaddled
in her arms. His pudgy body
was wrapped in a cream onesie.

Legs tucked under her,
she rocked gently in the wooden rocking chair
set in the corner of the nursery.
There were crinkles around her eyes
as she unconsciously hummed
a tuneless sort of noise.

Heavy-lidded, his eyes closed under
her watchful gaze. His breathing deepened
in sleep, while hers deepened in relief.
She leaned her head back against the padded chair.

The sun peeked out behind the brick chimney
when he finally hung his shovel on the peg in the garage.
Stomping the snow off of his boots, he stepped into the warmth
of the kitchen. Leaving his boots on the mat, he paused, listening.

All was quiet.

His woolen socks on the hardwood were silent
as he walked down the hall to the nursery.
Standing in the doorway, he rested
his head on the wooded frame. The chair
was still, their heads tilted toward the other,
his wife and child asleep in the slanting light
spilling through the paned window.

The view from my window
is static as stone. Four
high rises mechanically probe the
grey skyline, their scale-like, cemented  
girth obscuring the world within
eyeshot. Sickly city trees weep
and mourn, but cannot be
heard through double paned glass
and eggshell white prison walls,
which house by solitary confinement.

Lives are lived hermetically sealed.
Humans reside in spaces better
suited for use as fishbowls.
                                                                ­                                                                     Who longs for the ocean?
We hide away, smothering
our vibrant-hued colors we
once let each other see.
                                                            ­                                                               Go and make rainbows, please.

years of a life
encased in concrete
and double-paned bulletproof glass
climate controlled
to a nice 72 degrees
nothing to fear
no place to fall
nowhere to go
home sweet Hell

Through the eight-paned stained glass window,
I sit and stare and ponder the snow as though
I am a single solitary flake falling slow with no
Worry of leaving the sky.

I float on air carried and ferried by wind flow
As I gently come to lie on the blank covered ground low
Below the sky stretching grey over white as a plateau
Of heavy clouds on high.

I am the tiny wine glass
underneath a crisp white cloth
crushed under the wide, leathered
foot of groom under chuppah in a tall
synagogue in colored leaf autumn
in a wedding I'll never have
on a street I'll never see.

I am the dinner plate
being thrown from the edge
of a blue, chipped paint dumpster
on the side of a sparkling parking lot
slick after persistent winter drizzle
that spits angrily from the sky
in a stack of other kitchen
items to be smashed
against pavement.

I am wrist bones of
the minuscule, important variety
in the moment a twig is caught in spokes
and thrown from the bicycle, you make impact
with the brick wall adjacent to the alley
and hear some small cracks
and are unable to lift your
fingers or right hand,
or twist to pull
yourself up.

I am the double-paned
window of a basement apartment
in the summer when hoodlums and homeless
kick glass for fun and seek to scare
innocent movie-watchers as
fireworks pierce and light
the third of July sky.

I am a sad little girl
with sad little eyes that look
out to the future and see something
moving in the distance, a pair of two young
people holding hands, walking on an
Oregon beach in foggy mist,
that blink and realize that
mirages are cruel, and
have no remorse.

I don't remember the strength I earned
though I hear in time, it's relearned.

I look up through burning gleams
at an opened window.
The rippling curtains
wave to me,
begging my attention.

I hear stifled screams.

A woman closes the window.
The hazy curtains stand still and
separated.
The woman stands still and
separated.

A man passes
in and out of the newly paned frame
And then a child.
And then a fist.

Looking out this double-paned plate glass window into the gray frigidity and red-leaved bitterness of October in one of the last wild and still-untamed bastions of freedom in the west at the mountains thinking about how even they are moving, my darling, and how the spaces in between them are growing just like the space in between the sun and the earth and the space between all the galaxies all at once and the space between the spaces between the world and I and soon I’ll just be floating all by my lonesome in some swirling pool of- not air, no, not even air, just nothingness and watching everything float away like disappearing city limits from the tailgate of a truck on cruise control zipping across the badlands and maybe you’ll be there but going the opposite way and there’ll be nothing to do but watch it all go, go, go, til it’s
gone, gone, gone

I will never remove you from my brain's synapses altogether,
Particles, dust-speckles, piceous ashes of you, broken half of
Where the crowning splinter lies.
Heffalump-bray, Big-bird whistle, and feverish laughter
Sink from your tiny lips.
It's worse than preschool television programming.

Maybe you consider yourself a god.
Mouth-rush, crooked sickle-spine, of the cranes' dead oath,
Or like some hindered devil at the reeds on your tongue.
Seven years I have worked with the crutch, and worried

Like arc-lightning, thickly-paned, frail as a frostbow,
Palely lit uvula at the glowing alter.
I am none closer now. To amend the acres where my feet wallow blindly.
The shivering, baroque, tumuli where my splinters clear my steel-hide.

An orchestral bow of crimson blight,
I had dredged supinely through the pithy Latin vowels.
Like the month of a flower, hitched to the acanthine wings of a moth.
The moon clung to your shivers and sickness.

No longer can I keep my hair to frosty old anarchies.
Nights, heaped on the bowels of a smoky weir.
The blank stones that struck my hands of warning.
Beside the clogged, rancorous doom I had reflected

Like Morse code on dampened glass,
raindrops form a weathered phrase
interpreting this broken heart now
dripping in endless sorrow
of un-breathing days wasted
on paned emotions

Even the midday sun
briefly pushing away clustered clouds
can not erase the stains
streaked of weeping moments,
salted in so many fears
and wonderings…

Shattered, lying in pieces,
transparent mosaics of jagged will
cut deep and wide on this tired skin,
bleeding out in pools of disgrace
as I translate the moistened dots and dashes
to find that they merely ask…why?

My heart is like the broken glass
               there lying on the floor
        It shattered a few thousand times
           behind quick slamming doors

                 The ****** shards
                   that lay unbroken
       are all of that's left of love unspoken
          To you I give this simple token
               a piece of me in ****** ink

      This piece of glass I entrust to thee
        This little glass it holds the key
       Beachy glass washed from a sea
         from my waiting ...wanting tears

              I've tried to love though
                       it's been vain
                   My heart is fragile...
                       single paned
          I'll try to love...again with you
          liquid sand from praying pew

        I know my heart's a fragile mess
          my love for you I must confess
         the edges sharp my hands caress
             to make us whole again

          An hourglass I'll shape in time
         and strip away the ****** grime
       My heart is here to love once more
     A green glass piece lost on your Shores

        I am here...if you decide to try
   rebuild this heart from tears it cries
        I wonder in its silence sighs
             In you I feel at home

      you know I'll hold your heart safe too
        curing resin my hands will glue
        repairs rebuilding love anew
      a fracture fixed by love that's true

       build a bond that won't be broken
                  a smooth soft heart
                       your loving token.

Cherie Nolan © 2016

Out the ***** double-paned window one would first notice that it's unbearably hot.
The metal box in my window is humming a metallic symphony as it blows
cold, electric salvation into my greenish-brownish, moldy, moth-eaten room.
A white van drives down the street. I know this guy, I've seen him before.
Well, maybe not him but the van.
He's peddling poison, not the prescription ****,
but the **** that makes you need to self-medicate
with more.
Upon close inspection one may see the used ******
and two ***** needles
lying in the gutter.
Across the street, in the "yard" in front of the projects
there's kids playing tag.
At the end of the street there's a corner store where the toothless
and their pimps shout at passers by
a guy storms out the door, ticked off that he didn't win enough
quarters on the "arcade game" inside for a tall boy.
One of the pimps shouts at a girl across the street
as a coke (crack?) dealer slowly cruises by on a bike,
his flag hanging out of his back pocket so there's no
confusion
about how he affiliates himself.
The kids are running through the stream of a hose and
laughing and
laughing.
The have no idea where they are.

I get up to open the window,
trying to create some kind of breeze,
any kind of breeze.
I raise my beer to the neighbor, waving from his lawn.
As I sit back down a procession of sirens passes our street.
as they pass I hear the children laugh and somebody at the corner store shouting.
Hustling.
everybody but the kids is hustling and the sirens are wailing and it is
so
****
hot.

knuckled extensions on the fingers of trees
rattle like rain sticks,
their crinkled counterparts scurry across the grass
disguising themselves as field mice
fleeing from the grey clouds.
warbling from the sparrows in the hall
distract me from the television of paned glass.
and meanwhile, back where focus should be solid,
language is used, and wasted, and lost.
understanding sits on a fine, fragile line
where you'd rather be sipping on the freedom of understanding
than feasting on that which is wisdom.
the trees understand that reaching is their only goal
and the dried leaves of yesterday know their role in reincarnation,
but each is also aware of the demise of the other.
and all the people in all the houses,
sheltered by the scabbed and scarred hands of their ancestors,
remain focused towards the scattered, schizophrenic bright light
of the screens in their living rooms
and are completely blinded.
be aware that your senses are the most holy of gifts.
while outside, the planet continues to breathe
and the trees keep reaching.

I stare out the double-paned window
of seat 9F, overlooking this
dollhouse world.

Some things below us are only
noticeable through a ginger-ale-laced
dream perspective.

My eyes trace the geometry of the boulevards
and buildings and baseball diamonds
that appear to have been drawn from above.

The motherboard cities, with ports and control
panels that never dim, cast orders
to faceless men.

Parks and forests speckle the firework sprawl
with inky patches of greenery where electricity dies
and minds and feet can wander.

I see squid-armed lakes and coral trees,
schools of cars in an asphalt sea, full of people
who forget that anyone else exists.

The world seems so beautiful and movable,
like blocks waiting to be knocked down,
rearranged, rebuilt.

But then: rooftop angles,
sidewalk divisions. Buildings rise
and the tarmac appears.

Wings shudder and wheels strike asphalt–
a collision you can never fully brace yourself for–
jarring me back inside my own head.

And I look over to the woman beside me,
only to find her still sleep-drooling
on a half-read SkyMall.

splayed
with a deathmask as gaunt
as in life

metacarpals and phalanges,
liberated (in vain) of rubbery
connective tissues

ribs and spine,
so surprisingly human,
sunbleached

bones that may as well have been mine
but weren’t for whatever reason
(or no reason at all)

what karmic debt
could this poor specimen have possibly incurred
to be pinned, naked and fleshless, in a glass-paned box for all to see for all foreseeable eternity?

mayhap beauty is, itself
criminal
when it goes without a price tag.

He loved me like he loved the rain.
Reveled in the
idea of me,
ran from my reality.
Begged for my monsoons
to replenish barren lands -
starving for affection.
So I gathered myself up -
pulled intimacy from the
depths of my seas.
Let it billow in my chest until,
too heavy for me to bear,
I poured myself empty.

But he ran.
Hid behind double-paned, shatterproof
glassy eyes.
I poured and raged and begged
for him to let me in.
But he stayed
safe in his silence until
my storm had passed
and I was left dripping -
pleading hands and
tear stained kisses beaded up
and rolled off his facade -
collecting in puddles at his feet.

you are the moon
cold and distant
i cannot touch you
i cannot get close
but you shine in the darkness
illuminating these streets for me
and when i look up to you
and i do
i can see your shaded face looking back
aesthetic in asymmetry
through this two-paned glass
you are so beautiful
how i wish i could hold you
keep you safe in the palms of my hands
reach through the window and pluck you from the sky
lo, i watch you from down here
from afar
and i feel your gravity
i feel you pull me in
the waves crash over me
i feel the tide as it swells in my chest
and you steal away my breath

you are the moon
i watch you
your many phases
and i fear i am but one of them