i - Introduction:
ii - Lismore Park
iii - The Road to Maidenhead
iv - Town Square
v - Contradiction, contraband
vi - Saturday Afternoon
vii - The Circus Comes to Town (Sunday)
viii - The Show
ix - The ringmaster
x - The Fracas
xi - An incident at Upton Park
xii - No ball games
xiii - New found…
xiv - Nearly done
xv - Another time…

i - Introduction:

Come friendly bombs you’ve still to hit
The place whose name means quagmire
The town, the place that’s left bereft
Of soul, of spiritual fire.
But hurry, hurry, please be fast
For the crack dealer plies his trade
With slight of hand and cunning
A ghetto he’ll have made

The peroxide perms have now all grown
And muster outside shops
To wait for the be-suited sales rep
With his rocks and his alco-pops
They’ve all spawned offspring of their own
Fifteen-year-old cradle pushers
Who sold their souls in return for hope
To thirty year old cradle snatchers

Come friendly bombs it’s plain to see
The vacant, empty faces
The lifeless eyes, the pallid skin
The love that leaves no traces
The love that lasts a knee trembling minute
Outside Harry’s and Sluffs
A love that smells of emptiness
O they cannot get enough

Come with me, look over there
To the sculpture in the mall
The stainless tree with it’s stainless birds
And stainless birdsong call
A bird sings and the town all stops
To see from where this sound will show
A bitter disappointment when learned
It was played on the radio

Community service on the airwaves
To draw the crowd together
A song played, a one hit wonder
Reminds us nothing is forever
The sterile radio station plays on
Opiates to which we should yield
And bare our souls and be grateful for
The song of Bedingfield

ii - Lismore Park

The sight of a child playing in the street
Is one of day’s gone bye
But Lismore Park sees them out in droves
Stealing cars and getting high
The twelve year old sent out to play
Whilst mother takes a knap
But really she’s having it away
For a fiver and a brown wrap

The party at the house next door
That never seems to stop
The men all come and go and paw
Girls in this knocking shop
But halt weary traveller, stop!
Come sit and rest your back
The bench awaits you on the green
And the deluded maniac

The man who knows what’s wrong with you
And how to make it better
As long as he keeps his soul filled up
With cheap White Lightening cider
Six large cans for a five-pound note
From the corner shop near the school
An offer really not to be missed
And to make the drunkards drool

A songbird sits on the climbing frame
And sings his cheerful tales
A tune too much for our dear lush
The maniac exhales
The songbird sings and fills the air
With a loving string of notes
That reminds the sitters on the bench
There may still be a hope

A radio plays ‘that’ song again
Should you dare to forget the rhythm
The bird has flown away now
Fed up with this hypnotism
The airwaves are now filled with dross
Thanks to the flat opposite the green
The weary traveller moves on
“Better days has this place seen”

iii - The Road to Maidenhead

O friendly bombs do try to miss
The sweet blossom, the fragrant smell
The flowers, the green grass of the parks
The havens in this hell
Be careful around the Jubilee River
With it’s wildlife and sculpted hills
For a walk in this very man-made place
Will surely heal your ills

But spare no mercy for the superstores
That pollute and destroy our thoughts
“If it’s not on the shelf, we haven’t got it…”
The familiar assistants’ retort
Take no prisoners with the office blocks
That lay empty year after year
For they clutter up the atmosphere
And have no value here

O friendly bombs, o friendly bombs
The cabbages are all grown
They read the Sun and sing along
To the radio’s dreaded drone
Whilst in their vans they speed on by
Jumping all the lights
To price a job – a small brick wall
Based on a thousand nights

The car showrooms… the car dealers
Stack ‘em high and sell them cheap
Chop-chop salesman, soften ‘em up
The rewards are there to reap
Finance, part exchange or cash
Anyhow you like
“No sir, not me sir…
…I’d prefer to use my bike”

The bustle of the weekend crowds
The steamy traffic queues
Stare too hard at that red car
And suffer the abuse
Overtake the blue one now
And make him toot his horn
See him raise his voice in anger
To satisfy his scorn

iv - Town Square

Saturday morning, seven o’clock
The town begins to wake
A pair of sleeping winos
Dream about their fate
They plan their morning sermon
But who will really care
For what they say means nothing
Less than their icy stare

The busker and the balloon man
Wait to take their turns
To entertain and irritate
And suffer being spurned
By a thousand shady shoppers
Who’ve heard it all before
And probably given hard earned cash
To make them play some more

The trickster and the barra’ boys
Set up all their stalls
Selling mobile phone covers
And fake branded hold-alls
Adorn your phone with logos
Hankies for a pound
“Yes sir, we’re here on Sundays…
…(Providing there’s no police around)”

Grab a baked potato and sit
And watch the folk go by
Some will have you in hysterics
Some will make you cry
The man on his double-glazing stand
In his suit and in his tie
The perspiration on his head
Watch him wilt and fry

The songbird settles on the wall
And sings to our delight
A merry sonnet that will inspire
Dreams we’ll have that night
The wino shouts his sermon now
The bird has paused his song
This post-war sprawling Hooverville
Muddles slowly along

v - Contradiction, contraband

On the steps of the library he screams aloud
Through a mist of smuggled gin
“You’re all fools, the lot of you is ****
I’ve not committed sin…”
“It’s not my fault I’m a lush… a drunk
I don’t choose to live this life”
“You’re all wrong in carrying on
It’s you what’s caused my strife”

In his wretched form he abuses the world
Pooh-poohing this and that
A skunk telling the world it stinks
The polemic polecat
“Society has robbed me of everything
And left me less than whole”
“The only day that’s good is Thursday
When the postman brings me dole”

On Friday he meets his dealer
To fuel his pickled mind
The man with the van on Saturday
With the spirit and the wine
By Monday, he’s all skint and broke
The weekend has passed him by
He takes his place on the library steps
We shake our heads and sigh…

Every week the same routine
The same routine again
Like clockwork his life ticks on by
The suffering and the pain
But he tells us it’s all our fault
We’re the ones not right
But it’s very easy for him to say
The man who’s so contrite

The children watch him puzzled
It’s more than they can bear
“It’s very rude…” their mothers say
“To stand like that and stare”
But what, do they expect their young
To ignore this fool a mumbling?
For they will see it for what it is
A stormy weather warning

vi - Saturday Afternoon

I sit on a wall in Slough with friends
Sharing the Dutch export
Watching and laughing at the world
And it’s variety of sorts
A happy bond that we all share
The joy of simple things
Come friendly bombs and gather round
Watch us while we sing

The friendly bombs you call upon
Are they straight off the shelf?
It’s my belief, my firm belief
The bomb is in yourself
Ticking slowly by and by
Just waiting for the code
To trigger you and trip the switch
To make the bomb explode

We watch the people from where we sit
The hellholes they’ve all made
They don’t live they just exist on
The edge of a razor blade
Stop! Step back and take a look
It’s not too late to change
And become what you really want to be
An icon of your age

Over now to Langley Park
To sit and bathe in the sun
O friendly bombs please wait a while
Until this day is done
But what will tomorrow bring my friends?
And will it come too late?
Something that may save us all
The bombs may have to wait

A sedate sleepy Saturday
Away from all the crowds
Share a joke, a ****, a smoke
And laugh together loud
The sun warms our sombre souls
As on our backs we lie
Staring as the clouds roll by
United under the sky

vii - The Circus Comes to Town (Sunday)

Halt now, wait awhile please
Stop the counting down
Today the air is charged with joy
The circus comes to town
Must have arrived last night we think
Under cover of dark
And settled down and pitched it’s tents
In the grounds of Upton Park

The queue to purchase tickets
Trails far along the road
No. 53 offers cups of tea
From outside her abode
The crowds are mum, they say not a word
As they wait their turns to go
Inside the circus big-top tent
And sit and watch the show

We settle down and take our seats
With an ice-cream and a coke
But wait, where are the circus clowns?
Is this some kind of joke?
A wall of mirrors fades into view
And puts us in a spin
Reflecting all the bright lights
The colours and the din

The ringmaster enters, cracks his whip
And hands out little slips
“Everyone’s a winner” was
On every body’s lips
The clowns they all appear now
With a modicum of fuss
Hold on just a minute now!
The clowns we see are us

A spotlight points up to the gods
At the top of the trapeze
A giant money spider glides
Down with greatest ease
He touches each and everyone
All paralysed with fear
And hands out ten pound notes to all
Then promptly disappears

viii – The show

A strongman strolls out slowly with
A length of iron bar
A leopard spotted leotard and
Moustache sealed with tar
He looks around the big top with
A menace and a sneer
Surveying all the audience
He seeks a volunteer

The white van man he raised his hand
The tattoo on his arm
Said this man must not be crossed
To do so would mean harm
The strongman bent the iron bar
Across the van man’s back
Then invited him to strike him down
An unprovoked attack

The van man clenched his hand and hit
And hurt his mighty fist
A statue of the strong man shattered
Turning into mist
The van man stood and stared in fear
The mist it gathered round
And carried out our hero driver
He hardly made a sound

No-one clapped we all just stared
Our faces ghostly white
The strongman re-appeared and looked for
A second stooge that night
No-one raised a hand in fact
No-one said a thing
The strongman shrugged and vanished…
Empty was the ring

A knife thrower was the next to appear
And seek the help of one
With nerves of solid steel and courage
Secondly to none
Down came a fallen woman
Who said she had no fear
A knife was thrown and pierced her skin
Her right large ear-ringed ear

ix – The ringmaster

A second knife it struck her chest
She didn’t seem to weep
She didn’t seem to be in pain
Although the knife was deep
A third knife struck her arm and then
A fourth it struck her head
The knives that should be missing her
Were hitting her instead

Horrified the crowd looked on
Without a fuss or row
The woman now all full of blades
Politely took her bow
She then went back and took her seat
And never said a word
Not another word she said
And not a word she heard

A magician was the next to charm
And thrill us with his tricks
He pulled a rabbit from his hat
Then sat it on some bricks
He then threw watches at this beast
That grew to a great size
The rabbit caught them all and juggled
Them to our surprise

But here’s the rub when we all looked
At places on our wrists
No watches were there to be seen
A cunning little twist
The magician cracked a whip and put
The rabbit in a stew
Which vanished there before our eyes
Vanished out of view

The magician he announced that he
Alone did have this plan
To mystify and amaze us all
With his clever hand
Indeed he was the ringmaster
That owned this circus troupe
That terrified and petrified
Our frightened little group

x – The Fracas

A swarm of bees engulf us now
And cover us with honey
The ringmaster cracks his whip again
The bees all turn to money
Then suddenly the fight begins
As we grab this flying stash
Filling up our purses now
With the hard-grabbed cash

The ringmaster, a clever man
Calms us with his sigh
“There’s plenty here for everyone
…And more than meets the eye”
Suddenly a flock of doves fly
Sweetly through the air
They then attack the baying crowds
Pulling at their hair

Then with a deafening bang, a crack
A flash of burning light
We all cascade towards the floor
The circus out of sight
Confused we all stare around
Thinking it absurd
This bizarre spectacle should vanish
Gone without a word

I look from face to face to face
Whatever could this mean?
We all are laughing nervously
How stupid have we been?
We talk about the day’s events
We talk and talk some more
A voice booms from out the sky
“I’ve opened up the door”

“I’ve brought you all together now
To pander to your greed
To watch you take from fellow man
Deny him what he needs”
I reach in to my pocket
For the money I did place
It reads “Admission: 1 adult
To The Human Race”

xi – An incident at Upton Park

That week the local paper ran
An exclusive full-page ad
“Faland’s Travelling Circus Troupe”
“The most fun ever had”
But no review was there to read
To tell of our event
The strange encounter with this circus
To which we all went

The following Sunday we meet up
In groups of three or four
Since that incident in Upton Park
The spectacle we can’t ignore
No-one knows quite what it means
I don’t think that we’ll ever
Understand all that happened here
That brought us all together

Perhaps there is a deeper message
Given on that day
Faland may be telling us
That we have lost our way
He simply used us all as tools
To illustrate our folly
That had now become too serious
A risk to things so jolly

Every week now we all gather on
This hallowed piece of land
And this is very odd because
Nobody makes the plan
The idea comes to all of us
A self-ignited spark
And draws each of us in turn
To meet in Upton Park

We picnicked then we all played games
Then talked about the rain
We toasted our new friendships
And vowed to meet again
The bombs, the bombs they’ve all slowed down
Compassion saved the day
This newfound love we now all have
Must surely pave the way

xii - No ball games

The joy did not take long to spread
Across our grimy frowns
And bring a little sunshine
To lighten up this town
Happiness is upon us now
The whole of Slough-kind
Depending on how you look at it
And on your state of mind

The lush upon the library steps
The wino on the bench
The Publican and Landlord
The ***** serving *****
They all wear smiles and laugh a lot
And speak of wondrous things
A songbird perches on the fence
And merrily she sings

The children, o the children
How they sing and dance
Always being friendly
In any circumstance
They have no care for politics
You’ll see it in their face
They want to play with everyone
Who’s in the human race

Meanwhile back in Upton Park
The townsfolk meet again
But there’s no talk of horror
Or suffering and pain
Instead though how a monument
Should be erected in our names
And pulling down the signs
That read ‘No Ball Games’

The bombs have all stopped ticking now
And line up by the wall
And every now and then they clang
Just to remind us all
If we get too complacent
And don’t respect our friends
We’re marking down the seconds
To our bitter end

xiii – New found…

We shared our food and shared our tales
Life stories we all told
They made us laugh they made us cry
Left us warm and cold
The suffering we did speak of
Helped us understand
How fellowman and woman kind
Dwelt in other lands

We laughed at tales of folly
And stories of the past
Stories that we are in awe of
Stories that will last
For another thousand years or more
And travel on the wind
A gentle breeze that talks to us
Thrilling to the end

Gathering momentum
Our stories travel far
Picked up and told by new folk
Under glowing stars
They bring warmth and humanity
Softened by the rain
They travel back to each of us
To be re-told again

Who’d have thought this loving joy
This beacon in the dark
Would begin upon the grass
Of hallowed Upton Park
The greed has gone or mostly so
Now happiness is here
We’ve seen the light and now must spread
Our messages of cheer

Looking back it hardly seems
We could have been that way
Not caring if each other lived
To see another day
This new found near Utopia
Must spread across the land
And we must stand to offer all
Our warm and guiding hand

xiv – Nearly done

The story is now almost told
Of how a strange event
Saved us from our selfish selves
A message heaven sent
With cunning tricks and sleight of hand
The error of our ways
Was written up in greasepaint
Shining through the haze

A strange di

I seen beneath my eyelids
I was a black silhouette
of an entity outlined in
platinum aura eclipse
and the visions fell
far & fell hard
from a teardrop chandelier
hanging from the ceiling
in my skull &
shattered
the crude
jewel encrusted
crescent floor

then thunder roared
in the distance &
erupted the crown,
unleashing a copious
explosion of white
gold light
& my skeleton
sheds the snakeskin
& escapes
thru the hole in my head;

just crawls right out,

bubbles up & becomes
a pink heart shaped balloon
& it floats

up. out. away.

creeps thru one of
the holes in the ozone,
straight into the sun
& burns up.

star burst.

&  that's soul.

Ear studs.
Leather gloves.
Silver nose ring.
Too much clothing.
You think you like records?
You should see his collection.
You think that you're flawless?
You should see his complexion.
He rocks Houndstooth better than any chick you ever seen,
And even more fiercely than a 2009 *McQueen.
The boy with peroxide hair is one to watch out for.
When he enters the room there's applause; he's to die for!
"Don't dream it, just be it*" that's what he always said
He's a bad killer queen, he's the one, the only, *Ed.

Peroxide halo,
with heaven's noble ladder
propped up lazily
against nylon stockings,
(stretching to God knows where...)
doubt sanctuary lies
'neath her frou frou
scarlet skirts,
bleached remnants
(urgent disguises for many a walk
down red carpet's alley)
unashamedly worn
like badges of honour
polished for this
make-believe
beautician's début!

Zeus is ****** tonight.

Maybe he was having conflict with Hera. Maybe Apollo or Athena or Artemis accidentally attempted to rain art or astuteness or animals down upon Earth, respectively.

Maybe he drank too much wine.

Whatever the reason is, it's quite a light show.

There are no stars, only the
chemiluminescence
on my shirt and my shorts
that were poured upon me by
intoxicated partiers who thought it would be entertaining
to shower the combination of peroxide and phenyl oxalate ester
upon the party guests.

A map of the universe
is splattered across my hands.

It's as if Zeus
threw away the sky,
in an inebriated gesture,
and it landed around me.

Cronus should have swallowed the father of gods and of men whole.

What is the versatile autobiography
of this bountiful of rice
boiling in my American kitchen?

This crop of microscopic slabs of grain
that was the one edible source
of preventing my ancestors' emaciation

One of such few things
connecting me
to my roots,
those things I can't help but bleach
in whitewashed and rebellious peroxide.

I will valiantly hang my head down low in shame
at the examples of my flesh and earth,
"those National Geographic cavemen,"
all the time being the zoo animal,
being blindfolded and caged by
these "secular, American liberals."

I love this food
that I consume like a vacuum,
this merengue and bachata
that I so happily shake my *** to;
but nowhere did I sign up
for these commandments
that I was appointed
based on the location
that I popped out onto.

Rachel bleached her hair to
Mark the end of something silver -

To counteract the epitaph

An eternal "I was here, and I didn't want to leave"

It all washed up on shore, dead
The same summer most of us
Gave up on God and gave into one another
Or those saints found below the belt

Death is not the color black
It's water growing gradually stagnant, yellow
A slow crawl on all fours to the finish line or a sunset swallow
The faded leather found sourrounding your veracious belt loop

And then there's Elizabeth
Storming down the church aisle to call the whole order off
She'd return to the dive bars in red lipstick
And break hearts through notes written in checkbooks

Cosmic chaos comforts
The living in regard to the dead
We have faith in stardust and song lyrics
A road map, phone number sent through the telescope at a camp sight

But caskets close and
Bodies burn
They scatter on hilltops and
Scream out in stereo

Sleepless slumbers remain
For Rachel and this is her
Peroxide obituary
For a mother gone too soon

“Everybody has won, and all must have prizes.”- Alice in Wonderland

“Everyone knows it’s a race, but no one’s sure of the finish line.”
        -Dean Young, “Whale Watch”

1a
Children rarely listen to any armchair advice from their immediate family, relatives they commonly have contact with or anyone they haven’t known for more than a couple years because in kindergarten or day care they often got gold stars just for showing up… Little glittering prizes plastered on poster boards in elementary school classrooms regardless of grades or mistakes…


1b
On the windy day when you lower the green jet-ski instead of the good one, race it to the north end, out of the safety of the bay, into the choppy waters, you’ll get bullied by the wave’s splash like the cattails of a whip. The lake will overwhelm you; you’ll inhale some of the water,  a sharp pain will course through your body as you try to breathe those short shallow breaths, which you will force yourself to do as seldom as possible. You will cough and keel over on the craft; It’s not uncommon to spit up blood; you will have to return to the dock and raise the jet-ski back onto the boatlift.  You will stub your toe on the cracks in the planking, stumble and get a splinter in the ball of your foot heading towards the deck but won’t notice. All feeling numbs against water trapped inside your lungs.


1c
Jackie Paper’s mother made him a hotdog with potato chips and served it to him on a plastic plate outside so he could enjoy it on the newly refinished deck while he watched the schooners and speedboats, stingray’s and ski-nautique’s jet in and out of the bay. He didn’t wait five minutes after he finished to fly from the deck onto the dock into the water where he free styled too far and got a cramp. His mother almost lost a son that day.



2a
If wet some recommend running around the shore of the lake until the air has thoroughly dried you off. Listening to the gulls dive and racing through the varying levels of grass on the neighbors’ unkempt lawns, in between the oaks and elms, keeping ever mindful the sticks and stones and acorns that litter the ground in lieu of stubbed toes or splinters. You will most likely fail, but you will get dry.


2b
When you **** your big toe on the zebra mussels while wading in the shallows, near the seawall beside the dock, trying to catch crayfish and minnows darting between the stones underneath the water, and the blood doesn’t stop flowing for 10 minutes and the H2O2 bubbles burgundy on the decks maple woodwork, instead of that off white color it usually bubbles, and stings something awful, don’t be a little ***** about it.  It’s your own fault for leaving your aqua-socks on the green marbled tiles in the foyer closet next to the bathroom; where you changed into your bathing suit and got the bottle of peroxide.


2c
Last winter Christopher Robbins drove his red pickup on the ice (near the island, towards the North end, where even when it’s been freezing for weeks the frozen water seldom exceeds six inches in thickness) at night and fell through.  He felt the cold water enter his lungs.  Although it was snowing and no one had noticed he survived; it took him the whole of an hour to reach the nearest house and call home; he lost his truck and suffered from severe hypothermia and acute pneumonia. At the hospital it was determined that while there was ample evidence of the early onset of frostbite in his extremities, amputation would not be necessary.


3a
While sitting Indian style on the dock next to your friends, settled on the plastic furniture, sipping whiskey and beer, comparing scars assume, no matter whose company you’re in, that yours are the smallest. Those cigarette burns running down the length of your right forearm are self-inflicted and old- reminders that you haven’t had to force yourself to breathe in quite some time.

3b
When you jump off the end of the dock you’ll forget to keep your knees loose because you were running on the wooden planks trying to avoid the white weather worn and dirtied dock chairs and worrying about getting a splinter. The water is inviting but during the summer the depth is only three feet four inches. You will roll your ankle at the very least and probably sprain it because, Like an *******, you locked your knees and jumped without looking.


3c
Two summers ago Alice was tubing behind a blue Crown Royal when she hit the wake at an awkward angle and flew head first into the water in the bay a few hundred feet off the dock at dusk. The spotter and driver simply weren’t watching and the wave-runner didn’t see her due to the advancing darkness.  She cracked her head open on the bottom of its hull; swallowed water.  She needed 70 stitches and several staples but Alice made a full recovery.


4
Mothers often tell their children to should chew their food 40 times before swallowing to aid digestion and to wait a full half hour after eating before engaging in physical activity. Especially swimming.


5
When you’re at the lake house this summer skipping stones swimming and running on the dock remember not to listen to any advice.  

If this were a race to get dry you’d be much closer to first than last.

The internal bleeding eventually stops.  The splinters all get pulled out, staples and stitches are removed, lacerations heal and the feeling returns to the fingers and toes.

The water eventually drains from the lungs and only the scars remain:

Gold stars on poster boards;

because everybody has won, and all must have prizes.

man who wears a hat sits still near the back unmoved by the world or the exposed breast of a statue (brain waves do not discharge through a fedora)

tag attached: bald is sanitary

oranges have more delicacy raw smelly and afterward singing allons enfants de patrie ding dang **** like that, all frog-ese so we don’t understand chanteused stiff basso profundo to excite to let us see with the clarity of a dream curled with hate set firm, firmer in the arms of a sleeveless girl then slung to sea level white as a leopard’s eye

remember its peroxide bathed, bleached inclined on the pillow just at the angle of expectancy without a hat sideward glance and the crippled heels of angels sparking down the hall

bulletin: young man willing to wear false beard to ease the pain for all

or trumpet blues broken played horizontal touched by seaweed hands in the light of boats (unfurled)

slowly

and the memory dies slowly half-forgotten, half-remembered

halved again

slowly

only
to begin
again

grim molecules of love

i memorized
the sight of her
dressed in grey
smelling of peroxide
and sea wind
waking up
and telling me
to crawl back into bed

she would tell me
about oceans
and her love for them

and i love
the sound of her saying
"it fills the depressions
of the earth
and i love you
and you are
my ocean."

there were nights
were she cried
and she never let me in
and she told me not to care

next morning
she'd be smiling
but the circles around her eyes
the lines on her wrist
the redness of her lips
told me that she wasn't okay

she never wanted to talk
about oceans
or her beautiful
smile lines
anymore

and i felt the void
in my chest
when she asked me
"do you still love me?"
with unheeding eyes
and an airy voice

and even when i knew
that the girl i admired
and loved
was drowning
in her own sadness

i told her
"always"
because i did
and i still do

The clippers on my wrist
The crevasses in my skin
Only few flooded blood
(I was careful, I made sure)

The burning of peroxide is
No substitute for your kind words
(Saved for them, I,
Jealousy)

Six a.m. and the morning leans
To kiss the night;
The streets are full of stars
And sleepwalking business suits

The citrus woman
With peroxide blonde hair
And peroxide blonde fingers
If she spoke I imagine it would sound
Like lemon trees and smoke
Her cigarette burns holes in the sky
But when she passes me by
She smells like the Boots Cosmetics Isle
She paints the yellowed-ivory
Of her finger-claws
With crystallised orange
To cover the nicotine stains
And maybe I think I recognise
My lemonade shampoo
And tangerine hand wash
Like a setting sun over Sicily

The beer can boy
With stuffed up hair
And a stuffed up liver
He’s grey like a November playground
Once all the children have grown
And he’s hole-punched right through
I might think he was heart-broken
And trying to see how many other lost souls
The bottoms of bottles hold
If he wasn’t here every morning
Lolling down the pavement
Like a spring stretched too far
Asking for a paper
That I’m not allowed to give
And trying to drown himself
In the pooled rain under the streetlights

The coat-and-cardie bundle
With wind-swept hair
And wind-swept grimace
Like a tornado tore up
The geography of her personality
And left it with just a bike and a death wish
And those features heaped together
Between chimney-tops and table tops
For consolation
Her feet on the pedals while her hair throttles
Because she’s unlit
Unseen, unprotected
And she rides like this morning is the last
As if she knows that skulls
Crack like eggshells sometimes
And handlebars are sometimes not in front of you.

If my Dad was here he’d see
A smoker
A drunk
A dangerous cyclist
But I see lemon zest and love hearts and black liquorish
After all I’m at home
Among these mistakes
That the morning hours make

There was something about that memory of that sunset from like 10 years ago
With the summer cold closing in on my parent’s old bones
and the summer bliss embracing my naive young kiss
I just want to go back sometimes,
Sometimes, I miss the lights, sights, frights,
The bruises, blood, and peroxide,
Young minds sanctified by pure fun outside.
I remember playing roller hockey in the street
But I got grounded for throwing the puck at some teeth
Nobody got hurt, and the next day
We were back at it, finding random exotic leaves.
It was fun.
I remember playing video games when it was raining outside
And fighting over who got to be player one
Now I remember when there were perfect clouds in the sky
and we were playing video games until the stories were done
that was yesterday.

(to be continued)

my mother used to say,
“if it hurts, it’s working.”
whenever i got a cut,
she would dab peroxide
on the cut, healing me.

i knew he loved me deep inside,
he never told me but i know it
every time he hits me, it hurts.
but my mother was never wrong.
if it hurts, it must be working.
right? -

All poured out and dry
Peroxide drips in bare splits
Blood means nothing good

It would behoove my grade school bible teacher to know, that I have finally found Jesus. He sits alone at my neighborhood bar and in a fashion that is not unlike the line at a New York City Jewish deli shop, he takes questions. Ticket number 347, “What kind of man will I marry?” ticket number 7623,”When will the end of days come?” My bible study class oh, how they would shake inside their buttoned blouses with envy that I was the one to find Jesus, between drink, between cigarettes, with beer and peanut excrements on bottoms of his sandals. Handing out answers like pork cutlets to mouths that haven’t eaten in years because they have filled up on the appetizer that is stomach churning worry. The gutless and gutful sin of having problems without the hope of solutions that shakes believers so hard in the night they fall off their beds and land conveniently on their knees. They wake up in the morning with bruises and scratches, another problem but this time the solution is simple. A mixture of peroxide and cotton-blend Band-Aids, hugging tight stinging cuts until the next day when the Band-Aid is loose and falls off into meat grinders making sausage links you don’t even have the appetite for. I found Jesus in a bar. When I see him I remember Sunday school and how I stood up on the sweaty palm pulpit and yelled, “He is not real!” and now confronted with my falseness I wonder if I was wrong to try to cool off the fire in my belly that was unanswered questions by answering them myself. I took a ticket. I stood in line. I waited as the knot my grade school teach tied with my intestines tightened itself and pulsated with the influx of another beer and growing bowel movements that only made me more unsure of the source of pain in my belly. I watched as Jesus nodded politely in between admissions of sins and proposals of betterment like his neck was the waist of a Hawaiian ******* the dashboard of a Colorado trucker, or like aged fast-food wrappers that tilt forward with the inertia caused by strategically placed speed bumps.  Each nod, a mini-bow that seemed to contradict his devotion to his divinity and his authority over the bleeding kneed and hungry stomached servants. I am the last ticket before the last call and I take advantage of both. Being this close I can see sweat stains under his arms, my mother would say they are extra halos. “And your question, my child?” he says, and I think I should have been more prepared or at least not stuttered like the elementary school student stuck playing Pluto in the graduation play. “Was I wrong that day on the pulpit?” It was rudely put. I was embarrassed. He said, “Did it ease the hunger pain of uncertainty?” It did. “Then no, you answered your own question.” He seemed drunk at that point when he said that, so I trusted it as a sober man’s thoughts. Then I walked away full and knees unscathed.

They found her sprawled back there in the alley.
Dead.  Asleep in the Lily of the Valley.
She was obscene and cold, flat on her back,
All for a **** hit of five dollar crack.

Beneath the grime and the blood and the gore,
The innocence, before she was a *****,
Could not be seen for she met her maker,
A one hundred percent street-wise faker.

Dead blue eyes, peroxide hair, a wild vine,
Earrings in her nose, tongue; defiant sign
To the world that she is a wild child,
Who many years ago learned not to smile.

There was one thing which stood out about her,
Where everything thing else was an ******* blur.
A gold cross on a chain under her throat.
It looked out of place, as a sable coat.

A gold cross, from her unknown, murky past?
A present from someone she held onto fast?
A detective, hardened to scenes such as this,
He shuddered, covered her with a low hiss.

Blue strobe lights lit up the night near the dump,
Police milled around the unmoving lump,
Keeping the official face was a test,
Sheet covered her body, outlined her breast.

Each man, woman, working the dreadful scene,
Spoke terse, if at all, about the *** queen.
Many times they'd been called out in the night
To look at and ponder similar sights.

How much can one take before giving in
To the horror and suppress it with gin?
The one, lying still, sculptured by a fiend,
Wicked hand carving out her end, not clean.

She came to this end living the life she did,
But she was much than a ***** on the skids.
God, a detective screamed at the slaughter
Please don't let this happen to my daughter.

©August 4, 2003 / Jerry Pat Bolton

I draw on lilac cigars
through my mask
so her journey in neon stays
safely as a highlight
in gas filtered clouds

the faulty starter judders the light
flora scented
and in the flickering clouds
an attempt at landing
reveals her girdle red
in a flash of steely eyes
and suddenly mine were blinded
just as she rubbed against the dark

combing her strands wildly apart
she shook blonde roots and brunettes alike
I'm a sucker for hair turned hydrogen
peroxide mixed with air to make stars
startling amidst malefactory dye

metal booms swung away at each other
in the distance
building her model oxygen tanks
for pin up flower cuttings
and garlands on picket fences

she kissed the ground
and I gas peddled
a stomp on the glowing end
to the stub

only to drop like a skeleton
with lead hands
to follow any seeds
******* burnt rain

the sky over i-95 is violet, the color of the deepest bruise
like the one you actually remember getting, that eclipsed
all the little gray-green ones from
tripping over belgian blocks, and mismeasuring the distance
to the doorframe.
the sky over i-95 cannot hold water very long
and soon it doesn’t.

you look out the new-car window
silent windshield wipers and you remember
the other times it’s rained on your occasion
(with stinging peroxide sometimes, and
sometimes gasoline, when you had a match
in the glovebox,
but mostly water).

you never stopped liking the way the big trees swayed
in the not-quite-hurricane
or the deafening of the drops on the car’s aluminum backbone.
you used to trust they’d never fall, they’d never flood
the crashes you passed rubbernecking were never fatal
traffic would always clear
you’d never be late.

as you watch the oversized leaves support the waterweight today
you think how every bit of that is gone from you now
siphoned slowly and quietly but
unmistakably gone from you now
you think in matter-of-fact sentences because you are a grown-up:
“I do not trust the trees. I do not trust the raindrops.”

quieter you think
“I do not trust the future. I do not trust an empty building.
I do not trust the movie theater. I do not trust the ocean,
or the river. I do not trust water
when I can’t see the bottom.”

you get a little philosophical as you get hungry and the exit numbers get high
“I do not trust the highway. I do not trust me. I do not trust the curtains
to keep me safe when I sleep, and I do not trust waking to bring me morning.”

you think in matter-of-fact sentences because you are a grown-up,
but also because that’s how the thoughts come.
there’s something that you do trust
that’s enough to warm you as this unseasonable may
comes to a close.
you never stopped liking the way the big trees swayed
and you think how they might fall
but they haven’t yet.
you think how it’s kind of okay not to trust them:
you trust something else.

                                                   (pain is lucrative.
                                                   so is smiling.)

                 a female cardinal perches outside the window of
                 the room, just as you arrive to leave again
                 and you think how she's just as pretty as the
                 candy-apple-red male, though she's dark against the tree trunk

and when you’re back to celebrate the years since leaving
you might even trust that tree trunk
and the girlcardinal you have to squint to see

                                                   you might also trust morning, then,
                                                   and night.

meantime, the sky lightens:
sundrops while the rain comes loudly still.

Hadn’t changed numbers.
A voice bristled in my ear,
said why not then, it’s been years.
Months passed.
An amalgam of frail strained hearts,
smells on pillows we tried to lose.
Chose the boulevard in the end,
gaudy nostalgia blazing
like a forest fire in my eyes.
I waited.
Ran a finger over rails
those skaters we knew marked,
back when something called lust
fizzled between you them and me,
through the airwaves;
the lyrics can still trickle
on my tongue if you ask nicely.
Peroxide-blondes, men with muscles
the size of marrows,
a summer pick ‘n’ mix
lacking in looks, in fine taste.
Went to read a book in the sea
for a while,
slurped up half a pint in chapters
then lost the plot again.
That’s when you came
in polka dots,
a pack of colourful taffy
swinging idly from a wrist,
peanut-butter cups
like lily-pads on your palm.
As if you’d never left,
same number, name, face.
Forgot what goodbye was,
tripped over a lost hello.

Smeared myself
in a foul smelling home bleach kit.
It's nerve wracking, but now
I'm blonde again. A bombshell.
Ready to hit the town, smoke
cigarettes balanced between
my index and middle fingers,
and blaze spliffs by the beach
as a storm howls around us.
I'm ready to have
the boys eating out of my palm,
texting me, intoxicated,
wanting to hold my hand and
smell me. Wanting me to be
their blonde baby. Kiss me, honey.
Drive me out to no where
I can be everything you dreamed for.
I can be your water in the desert,
your shelter on the mountain.
We can watch the sun go down, and you will wonder if I'll
stay the whole night.
Will I move on tomorrow?

It would behoove my grade school bible teacher to know that I have finally found Jesus.
He sits alone at my neighborhood bar,
and in a fashion that is not unlike the line
at a New York City Jewish deli shop,
he takes questions.
Ticket number 347. “What kind of man will I marry?”
Ticket number 7623. ”When will the end of days come?”
My bible study class, oh,
how they would shake inside their buttoned blouses with envy
that I was the one to find Jesus,
between drinks, between cigarettes,
with beer and peanut excrements on bottoms of his sandals.
Handing out answers like pork cutlets
to mouths that haven’t eaten in years
because they have filled up on the empty appetizer
that is stomach-churning worry:
the gutless and gut-full sin,
of having problems without the hope of solutions
of having questions with silent answers
that it shakes believers so hard in the night they fall off their beds
and they land conveniently on their knees.
They wake up in the morning with bruises and scratches,
external hurts treated with
a mixture of peroxide and stuck-on-you band-aids
that hug tight their stinging cuts until the next day
when the Band-Aid losses its glue and falls off
when they land in meat grinders turning out sausage links
that no one even has an appetite for.

I found Jesus in a bar.

When I see him
I remember Sunday school
and how I stood up on the sweaty palmed stained pulpit and yelled,
“He is not real!”
and now that I am confronted with my falseness
I wonder was I wrong to try to cool the fire of questions unanswered
by answering them myself.

I took a ticket.
I stood in line.
I waited.
The knot my Sunday school teacher tied with my intestines
years ago tightened itself and pulsated
with the influx of another beer
and growing bowel movements that only made me more unsure
of the source of pain in my belly.

I watched
as Jesus nodded politely in between
admissions of sins and proposals of betterment
a gentle, deliberate nod
like his neck was the waist of a Hawaiian girl
on the dashboard of a Colorado trucker,
or maybe like aged fast-food wrappers that tilt forward with the inertia
caused by strategically placed speed bumps.
Each nod, a mini-bow that seemed to contradict
his devotion to his divinity and his authority
over the bleeding-kneed and hungry-stomached servants.

I am the last ticket before the last call and
being this close I can see sweat stains under his arms;
my mother would say they are extra halos.
“And your question, my child?” he says, and
I think I should have been more prepared
or at least not have stuttered like the elementary school student
one stuck playing the under appreciated Pluto in the graduation play.

“Was I wrong that day on the pulpit?”
It was rudely put. I was embarrassed.
He said, “Did it ease the hunger pain of uncertainty?”
He knew it did. So did I.
“Then no, you answered your own question.”
He seemed drunk when he said that,
so I trusted it as a sober man’s thoughts.
Then I walked away full
with knees unscathed.

the fist-shaped hole in the wall
the apologies that followed
the bruised and bleeding knuckles
the bathroom littered with plaster wrappers
the sink sizzling with hydrogen peroxide
the empty box of painkillers
the wedding ring thrown to the floor
the little girl who watched through the keyhole


s.h.

Mommom pours peroxide
on the shirt covered in
kisses from the grass
at my cousin's football game

she says
"this is how you remove stains
from clothes"

Grandma puts the last clean dish
on the drying rack
opens a fourth can of beer
from a fridge dressed in magnets

she says
"this is how you remove stains
from your memory"

Mommom shows me how
I should paint my nails
tells me men like girls
with soft hands

Grandma shows me how
to knit
tells me to make sure
I keep myself warm

Mommom is hanging picture frames on the wall
Grandma is watering her herbs
miles apart
they both sigh
and brush their hands on their skirts

I will dye my beloved brown hair blonde for you
Stand at the mirror -
I pour down the peroxide.
Knives grate my eyes and yet
they've never felt this alive
With my wild smile and
yellow hair. No longer a cub,
but a Lioness.

I will slit my wrists in the bath for you
In any case
these full veins will only take up space.
Fumes of pink against the ceramic varnish
I smile at the sight of your blood leaving me
and this bath has never felt so like home.

Your heart is the same shape and size
as a fist
But don’t use it like one
because hearts
they aren’t metaphors like a fist
they cannot be healed with stitches and a band-aid
The ability to touch does not mean the ability to feel
and waiting for your heart to heal
it’s a hell of a lot more than antiseptic
My fury for you
I threw some punches
I tried to break open that prison that holds your heart captive
but I guess my voice just wasn’t the right frequency because it’s still in tact
and yes,
when the world went quiet for a moment
I could hear the gears of the universe turning inside of you and I loved the sound of it
but that’s my fault
You told me I was too young and I don’t see the way that the real world works
and that’s because I view the world in metaphors but life
is not poetry
I knew the woman at the beauty supply store had never had her heart broken
when she kicked me out of the hair isle for slathering shampoo on my chest
because I was hoping the suds would seep in through my skin and
find their way to my heart
The label on the bottle read anti-breakage
I just couldn’t resist to try
The librarian was confused when I returned the dictionary that smelled like peroxide and was covered in band-aids
Maybe she had never been hurt by words or maybe
life is not poetry
I told you that kissing you was like waking up right before seeing the sun rise
after the apocalypse
You didn’t understand
I told you that I wanted to string the stars from your bedroom ceiling so you would always have something to count on and again you didn’t understand
I told you my heart was a quilt of mixed-matched fabric with flaws and failures crudely sewn together with good intentions
You still didn’t understand even though our internal wounds are stitched up using the same thread
Because life is not poetry
Life is real and I am so **** good at letting people love me
it scared me to see my joy sitting in your hands
slipping through the creases of your fingers like sand
I stopped saying your name when it started sounding real to me
So I guess this is how it ends
With the realization that I could shatter and leave my broken pieces under your pillow
and you still would not dream of me
So don’t
use your heart like a fist
because life is not poetry
I am not a metaphor
I’m not a phrase
an expression or an exclamation
I’m not a simile and I’m certainly not a hyperbole
But I’d rather have ink on my hands than blood

I said "don't forget me",
and you smiled,
hollowed out my eyes,
with matches for fingernails,
placed them like ice cubes,
in your glass of peroxide,
won't you swallow it?
as if it does not burn,
your crooked throat,
because I know you have wounds,
stitched in your esophagus,
from spitting fire.

latin can not describe the electricityof blue veins suspended in cala lily skin. they fan out,protazoic, dormant beneath a sea of iced flesh.i grip the sink, peroxide strands of kelp washing upon the banks of my shoulders likethe white-gold sunshinethat would prism behind your chinook archwith all the beauty of a nuclear winter.for the transplant of my frontal lobeto the heaven above his stratus comforter, instructionshave been written. next time he is carried in on a foen wind i am toone, stand very stilltwo, present my brain to the skyand three,wait for the apricotsof sunrise to settleinto the overcast of his eyes.i practise a little and wish i had a veinous hum, skepticalthat an electrocardiogram could detect a beat.

G'day from prison!*
(before I knew he lives on):

I see you there, My Maple.

Your little skirts; your peroxide hair.  Sweet, quiet Maple... I see your fishnet, maroon, little sweater. How I loved that thrift-store garment; it gave purpose to us both. For you, an excuse to see, without being seen. A voyeuristic excuse, for myself, to see without being seen.

If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be here. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t know this.

I picture your starkness. Dark, ten year old Maple. Listening with wide eyes - as I validated you.

As no one else had before.

I nurtured that Goth infatuation that no one wanted, fed you music: your Evanescence covet. Your black fingernails... Even then, I understood what no one else could.

Yummy, tasty, Maple.

How good you smelled; how fresh you smelled. Clean, and sad. Searching for reassurance. Searching eye's, searching for me.

Searching for someone. Anyone. A real person; content to SEE you, and love you anyways. Not like the rest; all of them - who'd only ever cast you aside - pick you last - call you names, spit in your face, lock you out and alienate you; who’d kick and shove you.
The *someones behind why you, at age ten, began to wish you were dead.
I was there, and I was your best friend.

Me.

I was the best friend you'll  ever have. Someone who loved an anomaly, and understood, and loved you best; over your mother - your sister - I told you I had a crush; a crush for only you.

10 years have lived and died between us.

10 years without me.

And the weight of time has yet to alleviate.

You still wish you were dead.

I still feel your warmth; the little bundle of you.

You.

You in your cozy, blue bed, with your
curious eyes and porcelain face. I would slip five dollar bills under your pillow; tell you, “I’ve hidden something secret.”  

I adorned you with money, pampered you with special trinkets, allowed rare privileges disproved by your mother... A mother who hadn’t a clue you’d worshipped angry rap since the age of eight. She didn’t know. You idolized Eminem. She’d yet to learn his name. You wanted to see 8 Mile; your mother said no – Rated R – so it was our little secret.

But you betrayed our secrets, didn't you?

We have no secrets anymore.



I see you there.

The soft, supple skin of your back . . . of your stomach . . . and of what lay below.

“What’s down there?” I’d inquired.

So enamored, exploring the secrets of your little body.

My demure, sad Maple.

I was your one and only true companion.

I was your one, and only friend.

Yet, here, in this cell, you will never see your best friend again.

You will never have a best friend again.

For in this cell, I have nothing left, but to remember.

I have nothing left but to write.

All my love, my presents, my company. All to end up here.

Here, behind bars.

And the weight of time has yet to alleviate.

You still wish you were dead.

But you and I - we've become synonymous.

Together, forever.

Just as I said, ten years ago. For, no matter what, my existence will always define you; and yours - you will define mine.

Forever.

You'll never be rid of me, and you can never leave me.

For I'll never leave you.

Our bond is solidified.

Perpetually.

Together forever.

Ten years. Eleven, twelve. The calendars change, but you and I? We’re right where we left each other.

So you'll never be anything. Anything at all. Anything else but mine.

The weight of time won't ever alleviate.

And you STILL wish you were dead.

- Thomas Gregory Brown, G'day from prison

I’ve been around long enough
to know these wounds don’t heal.
I will wake up tomorrow
and put down half a bottle
of hydrogen peroxide,
hoping the void inside
my chest won’t get infected.
This ribcage is missing
more than just bones.
The black hole I met
in my living room
decided to stay for dinner.
He said you’re doing great.
I poured another glass
of regret and told him
that’s ironic.
I’ve realized this is just what
“okay” has become;
fists embedded in sheetrock promises,
sitting alone in the rooms where
everyone told me they would stay.

the fist-shaped hole in the wall
the apologies that followed
the bruised and bleeding knuckles
the bathroom littered with plaster wrappers
the sink sizzling with hydrogen peroxide
the empty box of painkillers
the wedding ring thrown to the floor
the little girl who watched through the keyhole


s.h.

Why do the drops of blood
Stain the pristine paper
That is my soul?
I did not wish to bleed
Yet my wounds persist to flow
I tell my heart to heed me
Go slow

Why do the drops of tears
Stain the cheeks so dull?
Sighing into forever
Hopelessness immortalized
Yet my silent cries
Go unheard
As emotions vie
For supremity

Why do the drops of water
Promise a redemption
A vibrant baptism?
The peroxide eating into my sin
Stains fading into oblivion
Behind curtains of memory
Under fountains of love

(c) Anavah 2018

My mother,
small thick and
sixty-two this year.

I know her advice on daily measures
resonates much deeper than I admit;
always seeming to pry at that
lone heart-string.

Sometimes, when I am home alone,
I go through her things;
her old photographs,
her high school yearbooks,
her letters;

and I read them.

I imagine her this way:
young, like me,
and in love,
married,
driving a babyblue
Volkswagen Beetle,

telling of how it was the
best car
she ever drove;
the American Dream.

I like to think
my mother
was a pin-up girl instead;
her peroxide hair
glowing in the sun;
the summer of 1971.

I now see why people call it
"falling in love",
because you don't just trip,
you can't stand up after
and dust the dirt and blood off of your knees
like nothing ever happened
if the one you are falling for you
doesn't catch you
you can't patch it up with band-aids
and hydrogen peroxide
it's not a little trip
it's an enormous, mountain high fall
and if you don't land just right
you wind up with a broken heart
instead of broken bones