(1)

This is the sea, then, this great abeyance.
How the sun's poultice draws on my inflammation.

Electrifyingly-colored sherbets, scooped from the freeze
By pale girls, travel the air in scorched hands.

Why is it so quiet, what are they hiding?
I have two legs, and I move smilingly..

A sandy damper kills the vibrations;
It stretches for miles, the shrunk voices

Waving and crutchless, half their old size.
The lines of the eye, scalded by these bald surfaces,

Boomerang like anchored elastics, hurting the owner.
Is it any wonder he puts on dark glasses?

Is it any wonder he affects a black cassock?
Here he comes now, among the mackerel gatherers

Who wall up their backs against him.
They are handling the black and green lozenges like the parts of a body.

The sea, that crystallized these,
Creeps away, many-snaked, with a long hiss of distress.

                (2)

This black boot has no mercy for anybody.
Why should it, it is the hearse of a dad foot,

The high, dead, toeless foot of this priest
Who plumbs the well of his book,

The bent print bulging before him like scenery.
Obscene bikinis hid in the dunes,

******* and hips a confectioner's sugar
Of little crystals, titillating the light,

While a green pool opens its eye,
Sick with what it has swallowed----

Limbs, images, shrieks.  Behind the concrete bunkers
Two lovers unstick themselves.

O white sea-crockery,
What cupped sighs, what salt in the throat....

And the onlooker, trembling,
Drawn like a long material

Through a still virulence,
And a ****, hairy as privates.

                (3)

On the balconies of the hotel, things are glittering.
Things, things----

Tubular steel wheelchairs, aluminum crutches.
Such salt-sweetness.  Why should I walk

Beyond the breakwater, spotty with barnacles?
I am not a nurse, white and attendant,

I am not a smile.
These children are after something, with hooks and cries,

And my heart too small to bandage their terrible faults.
This is the side of a man:  his red ribs,

The nerves bursting like trees, and this is the surgeon:
One mirrory eye----

A facet of knowledge.
On a striped mattress in one room

An old man is vanishing.
There is no help in his weeping wife.

Where are the eye-stones, yellow and valuable,
And the tongue, sapphire of ash.

                (4)

A wedding-cake face in a paper frill.
How superior he is now.

It is like possessing a saint.
The nurses in their wing-caps are no longer so beautiful;

They are browning, like touched gardenias.
The bed is rolled from the wall.

This is what it is to be complete.  It is horrible.
Is he wearing pajamas or an evening suit

Under the glued sheet from which his powdery beak
Rises so whitely unbuffeted?

They propped his jaw with a book until it stiffened
And folded his hands, that were shaking:  goodbye, goodbye.

Now the washed sheets fly in the sun,
The pillow cases are sweetening.

It is a blessing, it is a blessing:
The long coffin of soap-colored oak,

The curious bearers and the raw date
Engraving itself in silver with marvelous calm.

                (5)

The gray sky lowers, the hills like a green sea
Run fold upon fold far off, concealing their hollows,

The hollows in which rock the thoughts of the wife----
Blunt, practical boats

Full of dresses and hats and china and married daughters.
In the parlor of the stone house

One curtain is flickering from the open window,
Flickering and pouring, a pitiful candle.

This is the tongue of the dead man:  remember, remember.
How far he is now, his actions

Around him like living room furniture, like a décor.
As the pallors gather----

The pallors of hands and neighborly faces,
The elate pallors of flying iris.

They are flying off into nothing:  remember us.
The empty benches of memory look over stones,

Marble facades with blue veins, and jelly-glassfuls of daffodils.
It is so beautiful up here:  it is a stopping place.

                (6)

The natural fatness of these lime leaves!----
Pollarded green *****, the trees march to church.

The voice of the priest, in thin air,
Meets the corpse at the gate,

Addressing it, while the hills roll the notes of the dead bell;
A glittler of wheat and crude earth.

What is the name of that color?----
Old blood of caked walls the sun heals,

Old blood of limb stumps, burnt hearts.
The widow with her black pocketbook and three daughters,

Necessary among the flowers,
Enfolds her lace like fine linen,

Not to be spread again.
While a sky, wormy with put-by smiles,

Passes cloud after cloud.
And the bride flowers expend a freshness,

And the soul is a bride
In a still place, and the groom is red and forgetful, he is featureless.

                (7)

Behind the glass of this car
The world purrs, shut-off and gentle.

And I am dark-suited and still, a member of the party,
Gliding up in low gear behind the cart.

And the priest is a vessel,
A tarred fabric, sorry and dull,

Following the coffin on its flowery cart like a beautiful woman,
A crest of *******, eyelids and lips

Storming the hilltop.
Then, from the barred yard, the children

Smell the melt of shoe-blacking,
Their faces turning, wordless and slow,

Their eyes opening
On a wonderful thing----

Six round black hats in the grass and a lozenge of wood,
And a naked mouth, red and awkward.

For a minute the sky pours into the hole like plasma.
There is no hope, it is given up.

given the history, all our predecessors held dear,
given the history,

well... i'm starting to think that utilising
italics meant an enumeration,
meaning that utilising italics
gave us non-differentiated stresses everywhere
and on each letter

by that i mean: people italicised entire words to
leave the stresses of individual letters to a continued monopoly,
italicised words meant not adding the acuteness of
stressed correspondance (post-code) to a letter, like é added to e...
it's running out, the monopoly of literacy - but the last
Bastille is on diacritical marks - è, or i ate it / cut it short,
walked from the movie theatre before it ended,
when i collage - ah! ****! found the erzett! ʒ -
the ß of minding a borrowing of ř! in that poem of mine...
woodland bořki - to replace the rz sound akin to ż -
i was looking in the wrong place, looking to stitch
in a plagiarism from Czech - but there it is, the equivalent
of schafres S (ß), the schafres R (ʒ); ha!
to simply change the aesthetic, and i have:
woodland boʒki.

see Communism rising its ugly head with the intelligentsia
once again? ***** pepper shaker shaker, prep talk moan shake
once more... never believe socialist utilitarianism,
the English are the masters of that... never believe it though...
the English, by definition? the utilitarianism bit is correct,
but they also follow the carrot bit of the stick... the carrot
is evidently the capitalistic motto: a Caribbean cruise.

but what this poem really means?
i really feel like punching someone in the face,
preferences like with Middle Eastern
appearances, while Sodomising
western values of politically coerced into
democratic robots... it really feels like that...
wanting to punch someone in the face,
and oddly enough it feels good just thinking
about it rather than actually doing it -

the universality of the Cartesian phrase -
non-factual, never factual, never to be factual,
the Iranian volleyball team taunting
the Polish volleyball team,
if a terrorist attack happens in Poland,
i'd be surprised if piglets fly further than plumbs,
and we get French braids on beards rather than
the hair plantation - of the lowest caste
i obviously emigrated -
i had some intelligence to shine through,
to a degree agreeable more or less,
remember i'm working on fame from
the basis of myth (a marathon) as in endurance,
rather than on the basis of being photogenic
(which i'm not) and the short-lived held breath
100 metres... the Olympics is really a barometer
of life otherwise... the Iranians are really fond
of getting braided beard from Poland...
i guess the English are too impolitely politely nice...
Thesaurus Rex would solve a all rhyming clues
with its catalogue of synonyms -
also... i'm a poet, critics of poetry in English
know jack-**** from Jack the Ripper...
i did't steal the language, i merely epitomised it
differently, you merely wrote an analogous epitaph
that was so ******* boring everyone applauded
when you spoke it the sake at a funeral
as you spoke it on a Bar Mitzvah... oddly enough
western society is lactose intolerant the year round,
but when someone dies the fondue set is out,
everything orange including the Essex
suntan is out and oiled to a greasy joke
that only gets a pig's grunting worth of encore.
it's odd, but the best way to write poetry without
English teachers telling you left is left
is by imagining someone being punched in the face,
bleeding nose squished cherry -
it's the violence that we're not allowed that we're told
about about our ancestors who freely exercised,
it's harsh... you're tingling with the anticipated wait for
expressing it, in the end you're turned into an atom
bomb of passive aggressiveness;
a bleeding nose squished cherry - even so, you want more,
more, more, you want the actual ferocity of the act,
not some cinema ****** of passiveness...
there are thieves around us, ghosts, not real thieves
wanting your belongings of handbags,
i mean the real sinister thieves... in one generation
the people of Empire and colonialism were turned
into the people of Globalisation and brothels...
well the brothels bit is currently debated whether
slaves ought to experience paid pleasure,
or whether slaves should just serve warm macaroons
for bourgeoisie opinions to be debated a Tartar stakes,
i.e. never really leaving the saloons of Gucci skirts
and the cancan dance of indivisible politics.

Christmass is come and every hearth
Makes room to give him welcome now
Een want will dry its tears in mirth
And crown him wi a holly bough
Tho tramping neath a winters sky
Oer snow track paths and ryhmey stiles
The huswife sets her spining bye
And bids him welcome wi her smiles
Each house is swept the day before
And windows stuck wi evergreens
The snow is beesomd from the door
And comfort crowns the cottage scenes
Gilt holly wi its thorny ******
And yew and box wi berrys small
These deck the unusd candlesticks
And pictures hanging by the wall

Neighbours resume their anual cheer
Wishing wi smiles and spirits high
Clad christmass and a happy year
To every morning passer bye
Milk maids their christmass journeys go
Accompanyd wi favourd swain
And childern pace the crumping snow
To taste their grannys cake again

Hung wi the ivys veining bough
The ash trees round the cottage farm
Are often stript of branches now
The cotters christmass hearth to warm
He swings and twists his hazel band
And lops them off wi sharpend hook
And oft brings ivy in his hand
To decorate the chimney nook

Old winter whipes his ides bye
And warms his fingers till he smiles
Where cottage hearths are blazing high
And labour resteth from his toils
Wi merry mirth beguiling care
Old customs keeping wi the day
Friends meet their christmass cheer to share
And pass it in a harmless way

Old customs O I love the sound
However simple they may be
What ere wi time has sanction found
Is welcome and is dear to me
Pride grows above simplicity
And spurns it from her haughty mind
And soon the poets song will be
The only refuge they can find

The shepherd now no more afraid
Since custom doth the chance bestow
Starts up to kiss the giggling maid
Beneath the branch of mizzletoe
That neath each cottage beam is seen
Wi pearl-like-berrys shining gay
The shadow still of what hath been
Which fashion yearly fades away

And singers too a merry throng
At early morn wi simple skill
Yet imitate the angels song
And chant their christmass ditty still
And mid the storm that dies and swells
By fits-in humings softly steals
The music of the village bells
Ringing round their merry peals

And when its past a merry crew
Bedeckt in masks and ribbons gay
The ‘Morrice danse’ their sports renew
And act their winter evening play
The clown-turnd-kings for penny praise
Storm wi the actors strut and swell
And harlequin a laugh to raise
Wears his **** back and tinkling bell

And oft for pence and spicy ale
Wi winter nosgays pind before
The wassail singer tells her tale
And drawls her christmass carrols oer
The prentice boy wi ruddy face
And ryhme bepowderd dancing locks
From door to door wi happy pace
Runs round to claim his ‘christmass box’

The block behind the fire is put
To sanction customs old desires
And many a ******* bands are cut
For the old farmers christmass fires
Where loud tongd gladness joins the throng
And winter meets the warmth of may
Feeling by times the heat too strong
And rubs his shins and draws away

While snows the window panes bedim
The fire curls up a sunny charm
Where creaming oer the pitchers rim
The flowering ale is set to warm
Mirth full of joy as summer bees
Sits there its pleasures to impart
While childern tween their parents knees
Sing scraps of carrols oer by heart

And some to view the winter weathers
Climb up the window seat wi glee
Likening the snow to falling feathers
In fancys infant ******
Laughing wi superstitious love
Oer visions wild that youth supplyes
Of people pulling geese above
And keeping christmass in the skyes

As tho the homstead trees were drest
In lieu of snow wi dancing leaves
As. tho the sundryd martins nest
Instead of ides hung the eaves
The childern hail the happy day
As if the snow was april grass
And pleasd as neath the warmth of may
Sport oer the water froze to glass

Thou day of happy sound and mirth
That long wi childish memory stays
How blest around the cottage hearth
I met thee in my boyish days
Harping wi raptures dreaming joys
On presents that thy coming found
The welcome sight of little toys
The christmass gifts of comers round

‘The wooden horse wi arching head
Drawn upon wheels around the room
The gilded coach of ginger bread
And many colord sugar plumb
Gilt coverd books for pictures sought
Or storys childhood loves to tell
Wi many a urgent promise bought
To get tomorrows lesson well

And many a thing a minutes sport
Left broken on the sanded floor
When we woud leave our play and court
Our parents promises for more
Tho manhood bids such raptures dye
And throws such toys away as vain
Yet memory loves to turn her eye
And talk such pleasures oer again

Around the glowing hearth at night
The harmless laugh and winter tale
Goes round-while parting friends delight
To toast each other oer their ale
The cotter oft wi quiet zeal
Will musing oer his bible lean
While in the dark the lovers steal
To kiss and toy behind the screen

The yule cake dotted thick wi plumbs
Is on each supper table found
And cats look up for falling crumbs
Which greedy childern litter round
And huswifes sage stuffd seasond chine
Long hung in chimney nook to drye
And boiling eldern berry wine
To drink the christmass eves ‘good bye’

Summer pleasures they are gone like to visions every one
And the cloudy days of autumn and of winter cometh on
I tried to call them back but unbidden they are gone
Far away from heart and eye and for ever far away
Dear heart and can it be that such raptures meet decay
I thought them all eternal when by Langley Bush I lay
I thought them joys eternal when I used to shout and play
On its bank at ‘clink and bandy’ ‘chock’ and ‘taw’ and
    ducking stone
Where silence sitteth now on the wild heath as her own
Like a ruin of the past all alone

When I used to lie and sing by old eastwells boiling spring
When I used to tie the willow boughs together for a ’swing’
And fish with crooked pins and thread and never catch a
    thing
With heart just like a feather—now as heavy as a stone
When beneath old lea close oak I the bottom branches broke
To make our harvest cart like so many working folk
And then to cut a straw at the brook to have a soak
O I never dreamed of parting or that trouble had a sting
Or that pleasures like a flock of birds would ever take to
    wing
Leaving nothing but a little naked spring

When jumping time away on old cross berry way
And eating awes like sugar plumbs ere they had lost the may
And skipping like a leveret before the peep of day
On the rolly polly up and downs of pleasant swordy well
When in round oaks narrow lane as the south got black again
We sought the hollow ash that was shelter from the rain
With our pockets full of peas we had stolen from the grain
How delicious was the dinner time on such a showry day
O words are poor receipts for what time hath stole away
The ancient pulpit trees and the play

When for school oer ‘little field’ with its brook and wooden
    brig
Where I swaggered like a man though I was not half so big
While I held my little plough though twas but a willow twig
And drove my team along made of nothing but a name
‘Gee hep’ and ‘hoit’ and ‘woi’—O I never call to mind
These pleasant names of places but I leave a sigh behind
While I see the little mouldywharps hang sweeing to the wind
On the only aged willow that in all the field remains
And nature hides her face where theyre sweeing in their
    chains
And in a silent murmuring complains

Here was commons for the hills where they seek for
    freedom still
Though every commons gone and though traps are set to ****
The little homeless miners—O it turns my ***** chill
When I think of old ’sneap green’ puddocks nook and hilly
    snow
Where bramble bushes grew and the daisy gemmed in dew
And the hills of silken grass like to cushions to the view
When we threw the pissmire crumbs when we’s nothing
    else to do
All leveled like a desert by the never weary plough
All vanished like the sun where that cloud is passing now
All settled here for ever on its brow

I never thought that joys would run away from boys
Or that boys would change their minds and forsake such
    summer joys
But alack I never dreamed that the world had other toys
To petrify first feelings like the fable into stone
Till I found the pleasure past and a winter come at last
Then the fields were sudden bare and the sky got overcast
And boyhoods pleasing haunts like a blossom in the blast
Was shrivelled to a withered **** and trampled down and
    done
Till vanished was the morning spring and set that summer
    sun
And winter fought her battle strife and won

By Langley bush I roam but the bush hath left its hill
On cowper green I stray tis a desert strange and chill
And spreading lea close oak ere decay had penned its will
To the axe of the spoiler and self interest fell a prey
And cross berry way and old round oaks narrow lane
With its hollow trees like pulpits I shall never see again
Inclosure like a Buonaparte let not a thing remain
It levelled every bush and tree and levelled every hill
And hung the moles for traitors—though the brook is
    running still
It runs a naked brook cold and chill

O had I known as then joy had left the paths of men
I had watched her night and day besure and never slept agen
And when she turned to go O I’d caught her mantle then
And wooed her like a lover by my lonely side to stay
Aye knelt and worshipped on as love in beautys bower
And clung upon her smiles as a bee upon her flower
And gave her heart my poesys all cropt in a sunny hour
As keepsakes and pledges to fade away
But love never heeded to treasure up the may
So it went the comon road with decay

Intolerant feet of clay
shout out “Not Him!“
echoing, ignored

Life’s cathartic poetry
now mediates extrovert ideas
and introvert intuitions

Past’s flicker of persona masks
solicit with anima driven darker roles
remote and mysterious - not nice

Real now, not reflecting her animus
all becomes stilled and naked, to seek
that physical and spiritual soul mate

Jung’s bucket plumbs the black well
awash from hidden depths of creativity
and kindred ghost’s of spirituality

Change is loss then change - feeds
thy growth’s capacity for understanding
socket of creativity and enlightenment

Life’s tutored process of intelligence
responds elegantly to image and symbol
as a morality conducts the minds music

Babbling on to sip from the well
gains tested may then help others

Ghost glimpsed not genius or mad
spirituality and love held close**


.

1.
My mother hates me!
My father hates me!
Oedipus screams to the
stealthily silent Sphinx.

He scatters riddles like laurel leaves
waiting to be braided into
a playwright's crown. It is too
grandiose to fit his cracked. cramped cranium.

His unconscious mind flies open
like the Sphinx rocketing to the sky.
Sacred haunches soar. Wings beat
steadily to reach titanic heights.

Blind to his murderous fate, Oedipus
cannot know himself. Before the
Delphic Oracle, his life shrivels,  
unexamined by his bleeding eyes.

2.
Freud exults in triumph.
Maternal love births eternal love:
endless comfort and affection
for the newly bloomed beloved.

Soon, comfort metamorphoses
into feral eros, unspeakable, unthinkable,
beyond the bounds of catastrophic evil.
Submerged desire sullies the chastest kiss.

Jacosta embraces her son
as her new living king, her husband's
royal blood bubbling brazenly
on the bitter road to Thebes.

His hands stained, Oedipus strives
to transmute his trauma as our own.
We become him when Freud deigns
to interpret our darkest, direst dreams.

Blindly, we mimic him: carnal union
with the mother, lethal rage against
the father. Mourning Becomes Electra
beckons to the wary second ***.

3.
The Sphinx belies its own riddle:
How can prophecy spring from
the sculpted, smooth stone
of these perfect *******?

Only blind Teiresias plumbs the depths
of Oedipus' fate: Judgement lies blinded,
action lies blinded by the ventricles of
violence, the twisted telos of the mind.

Humans sin against the world, against
nature, siphoned of joy. They sin without
a sacred perch to rise from. Blood and *****,
mud and blindness fashion their Oedipal souls.

The last fruit and vegetable shop closed today ,
part of Ashford has gone away ,
next door to the church for fifty years ,
Dave and Jim and Brian will never get old .
Vegetables with no cling film ,
or selefane wrapping ,
Mushrooms as large as you’re hand ,
Kale in bundles not sold in plastic bags ,
Plumbs prunes and potatoes.
Peaches apples and pears ,
purple brocole all tied in a bundle ,
all sold in brown paper bags .

The fish man arrived once a week ,
Where from Grimsbys shores we bought . .

The bells rang out on Sundays,
Where at Christmas,
Trees would be bought ,
Lined one by one  .

So tomorrow the supermarket s will becon ,
with their plastic wrapping and plastic bags ,
So spare a thought for the fruit and veg ,
With no plastic wrapping and celefane veg ,
the old shop where the community shed a tear ,
for Ashford’s last fruit and veg ,
has been and left here .

Last night I saw a picture ,
from 1910 ,
yes  I guess they were still there way back then .

soft ruins play through the hands of your silky palms
whats here now has now gone
nobody can come up with a definition to explain to me how exactly this could be wrong
even though I have actually seen it all along
from time to time I remember the bitter notion,
how you let me dip myself in that bitter potion
and theyre the ones left to deal with all the mingled distoration
poor they for they are the ones who helped antagonize the poor mice
how you let them roll their own dice , and never once did it
land on anything more than 4
left them there all ****** up and high
although they fed them all the plumbs they wanted
never the less they were daunted
mingling monstrosities venture into this cannabis along with the other creeps
and that too isnt even good anymore
audotioning to be the perfect everything we all fail every single time
until it comes to that one audition when that person says she is perfect she is the one
but I'm sorry audtionors judgers and the court but for now I'm done
done for I have weaved my own little special web
I make my own fiery bread
and I dance naked in public in the vast imagination in my head
your words and their cares are the last of the last of my concerns the ones that are meant not to exsist
folding into peice by peice slowly streaming myself down the walls of this euphoric abyss
I met this boy one time who had this little lisp
he sat close to me and explained a lot of things I didnt know
years years and more years later they in a way helped me grow
you might not be able to tell me happy birthday next year

Christmas Day is finally here
“Time for laughter, Time for cheer”
To quote Dr Suisse as I often do
The master of rhyme
And poetry too
But enough about him
His mean angry Grinch  
Scaring all little children
Like Newt Gingrich
It’s time to waked up
I’ve got coffee to drink
Santa’s been to mom and dads
With a nod and a wink
I stayed up real late
And slept in until eight
I can’t sleep any later
It’s a terrible fate
But Christmas here
It has finally come
I am glad we do not
Have to eat sugar plumbs
I wrap m self up in my snuggie
So tight
“Merry Christmas to all
And to all a good night”

voice is breath dressed in sound
with rusted waves of heaviness
denser than a fiction
an indefinite amount of suspense
my fingers bled and i am led back to you
home is in my head
i always knew that you were truthful
you are numinous, that is duly noted
i was promoted for fortitude and temperance
i am deliverance sending tolerance back to you

droopy eyes remind the skies of fire
give me sunlight and i’ll show you desire
for love is a burning flame
and dreams are escapades
i see the name written in your flesh
bless this existence with governing harmony
those drill sergeants aren’t bothering you
so part the waters from east to west
lest we fester forever in the morning’s seances

you dance like blossoms upon hundreds of leaves
red eyes cast fingerprints upon these trees
i see you dancing amongst the flowers
i hear you chanting every single hour
invoking plumbs and apricots
the shiny parts that we disassociate
we hesitate to ready our shadows
then we go and wear them to bed
but first we must brush our teeth
while deep asleep i feel your feet rubbing mine
and lions in the dawn dream our longing into song

Black is the seed, and black, the fruit.

The blossom of light an affront:  wrought of nothing,
illuminating nothing, reverting to nothing, the blossom is—
Everything.
And a man contends, endures,
knowing, in his moment, that all that matters
matters not; that in the crowd
he is alone, that in the cosmos
he is lost, that in his writing
he is written. He is a coal, shot hot between voids.
Intense to evanescent,
each pass of a life has a spectrum.

Red is the womb.

Here, at riot’s eye, all bellows howl,
all fires bend to the harlot wind of becoming.
And the nub is a lump, and the lump accrues,
marbles dreamless, in liquor weightless, defining:
Liquid ruby, clinging vine, tallow flower in wine—
the little ogre, caught on a briar, kicks.
Comes a marvelous trophy, squirming and gory,
naked and pendent, blind and grotesque—
wound about the hollows and seams,
spat in a maelstrom:
one more shape in the window,
one more shadow exposed,
in the ****** triumph of light.

Out of the whirl, the faces gather round.
The boy has opened his eyes,
but the infant makes no sound.
Shapes loom to the sides, to the front and rear:
The faces grin, closing in…grow enormous fingers
to point, to pinch—to peel back the veil
and make his eyes scream.
In the dimness a nimbus, a prism, a pearl.
The faces part. The prism paints an image in the whirl.
The figure is a woman, whose seeming lips recite:
“Come sunder the night. Little ember, ignite.
I am mother, I am mother. I am life, I am light.”
But like oil on a rainy day,
the colors blend and wend their way
into the whirl, and there,
subdued, the voice is slurred,
the light, obscured,
and night
renewed.

Here on the lattice,
morning embroiders the tatters of night.
While tall beaded glasses
squeeze melody from melting ice,
the diced and slanting shafts of sun
checker the shadows with tangerine light.
On the sidewalks April’s children run,
but the eyes in the faces see
nephew on the august perch
of uncle’s wicker knee.
Graven in air, the faces shift,
their eyes a flickering stream.
Loosed features drift, expressions run
in subtle strokes of shade and sun.
The stream ***** him in:  swirls of abhorrence,
pools of disdain. Succumbing, drawn under,
he swallows his eyes. But the eyes in the faces remain
watching.

So scrawny it grieves, he eats too ****** much;
ever absent, he is always in the way.
Sickly, quiet, submissive, shy,
he hides when the faces quarrel,
cries when they crack his lie.
Craving love, he learns early to fast;
contriving a limp, he is weaned at last.
What hold wanders here—there are no bridges,
only walls. Every scribe is a master of cant.
The learned are jaundiced, the ignorant smug.
And those who would name his demons,
when maintaining “this will pass,”
fashion their webs of pap and straw.
This animal man is a thief.

Mother,
My world is a stranger.
My eyes are wounds on a mind that will not heal.
I saw more range, more warmth, more mother,
in the dance of sun on heather,
in a single kiss of dew.
Now your urn, blessed bowel, fouls the cedar
of father’s mantel, while he grows blacker,
blending bile with grief and gin.
Those lips that never tendered,
that heart I never knew—mother,
who were you?

Ubiquitous, the emerald **** lies splayed, exploding:
from her pores an eruption, on her belly a rank,
stinking moss. She bleeds life, vomits it,
into bud, into blade; sharing with a passing star
the silent scream of spring.
But here she dreams, perfumed,
a picture of grace, her verdure in groom.
Secluded, seduced, sedated. Churls put on her face
while zephyrs attend to the scent of her loom.
Time purls. The zephyrs flit sweetly,
chasing motes in fibers of light.
Playing tag in the sun, currents weave into one,
near a still-life of mourners and fatherless son.
The figures seem rooted, unreal.
As the gust musses trees, light leaps between leaves.
The greenery breathes. As if shaken,
the scene comes to life:  huddling in sync,
the faces incline, their eyes like slinking thieves.
The young man implodes. He reels.
The tension relents and he straightens. He wheels.
He limps off alone, wind hounding his heels,
the moment too eerie to bear. Sedans trickle by.
A raw widow grieves. But the faces continue to stare.
And the wind pirouettes, finds a wing,
has a plunge, brakes low on a rest,
makes a guarded descent. The breeze buffets markers,
losing vigor and bent, then slips thru the stones
toward the beckoning trees.
The draft riffles leaves, where its whisper is spent
and lost a sigh.

A stipend, a shack, a lessor in wait.
Such are the fruits of his father’s estate.
He breaks no bread, seeks no sweet;
strange dynamics govern his blood,
preclude his seed from the common fire.
Music of amity, refinement’s caress,
are brute concerns; abrasive, obscene.
In his quiet aching way he is whole.
Seasons burst and smolder, surrender and brood.
Their pageant revolves about him.
The years breathe, driving the crowd,
steeping its fevers in jasmine and sun.
Humanity brawls, exalting the flame.
But without him.
And he grays, sinking, certain his pain cannot,
could not possibly, be borne by another.
The silence condenses, sets.
At last even pain deserts him.
But near the brink he hears the nervous hum
of impermanence, feels the white pang of being’s wing
as day succumbs to the fist of night.
Dawn burns deeper, duller,
each beam towing a filament of dusk,
each round of the wheel a salvo
in the stunning of his eyes.

Now the years are mired in sameness.
The day wears on. Guests come unbidden:
Conscience, the despot. Sentiment, the leech.
Misgivings sojourn, transmigrate, return,
as Lonesomeness plumbs his moribund vein,
metastasizing.
Still he rooms with the wind, dies waking,
dreams sleepless. And it haunts him:
All this teeming while an instant, an irrelevancy,
a rube’s view of the pulse careening downstream,
working its rhyme into a billion like irrelevancies.
Here must be real, Now must be sound, and yet—
no sooner are the moments cast
than shape is shadow, and present, past.
Only the day wears on.
Blue is the evening begotten, the twilight of our lives.
Dark gathers, mooring its stain
where a dreamer weighs the deep,
his eyes in ruin, his color in vain.
Only ballast and mind, merely ego and rind,
growing blind as the day wears on.

Down this grim promenade,
a musty wind hustles gaunt silhouettes.
They are loth to be borne;
they are patiently measuring stones.
Eyes leap in their caverns, looks light and remain
on a smudge in the gloaming, a scarecrow with cane,
tapping out his tenure in a cold feeble rain.
And now the purple veins of near-night
thud sluggishly, almost grudgingly.
The black earth splits wetly, obscenely.
There:  something impatient stirs, exposed—
Limbless, sightless, the lamprey rises;
her breath unbearable, her length immeasurable,
her age—
impossible!
Preening *****, hypnotic.
In one vile kiss she is sieve and abyss.
Her bruised lips are splayed, her violet mouth, made,
and her churning, insatiable craw is
pitch.

Out of the whirl, the faces gather round.
Was he hurt? Can you hear me?
But the old man makes no sound.
Shapes loom to the sides, to the front and rear:
the faces glare, stealing air…grow enormous fingers
to ****, to pin—to pull down the veil
and make his eyes seize.
In the dimness a nimbus, a prism, a pearl.
The faces part. The prism paints an image in the whirl.
The figure is a woman, whose seeming lips recite:
“Come sunder the night. Waning fire, grow bright.
I am mother, I am mother. I am life, I am light.”
But like spectra from a dying sun,
the colors flare, are torn, are spun
into the whirl, and there,
subdued, the voice is hushed,
the blossom, crushed,
and night
renewed.

Thanks for reading Faces. NOW PLEASE CLICK ON THE LINK BELOW TO READ HERO, A SPRAWLING, GROUNDBREAKING FANTASY FOR GROWNUPS IN TWO PARTS, ABOUT THE FIRST HUMAN TO CIRCUMNAVIGATE THE PLANET. (BUT YOU MUST CLICK ON THE PROVIDED LINK AT THE CONCLUSION OF PART ONE TO ACCESS PART TWO! THAT’S WHERE THIS TALE’S AMAZING RESOLUTION LIES. But please...intelligent, readers only!)
NOW HERE’S THAT LINK:

https://allpoetry.com/poem/14922744-Hero---Part-One-by-Ron-Sanders


Copyright 2020 by Ron Sanders.

contact:
ronsandersartofprose@yahoo.com

A late afternoon drive
through the countryside.

A lot of rolling hills
dotted with fields and farms.

Haying time, first of the season.
Old roads potted with holes,

asphalt turning to dirt...
we lay plumbs of dust.

The suddenness of a summer shower,
then thunder rumbles, the rain begins.

When the water hits the dirt
it almost looks like little atomic bombs.

We stop the car, not being able to see
through the windshield.

The farming community called Old Barns,
with a Lady Slipper Lane and the whole bit.

Silos breaking the sky, drizzle equals puddles,
puddles to drive home through.

A lick and a promise, the sweat of the gods,
nothing  comes close to a tour by the bay.

I long for the cry of a lyric in simplicity, profound, catching
my throat unexpectedly, knowing with immediacy
the feel of real honesty. Perfunctory has no mind space,
straight as a die, absent of side-lines that trip you up,

take you off balance into a whirl of wondering, when
meaning is lost in translation to the untrained eye.
Solidarity has no invitation to understand, we cannot share
freely, the highbrow world punctures their interest, the pages

gummed…..no longer turn; this high minded plethora stunts us.
Hangs off shoulders like last year’s fashion, trailing the
ground, grabbing misunderstandings so deep that it is lost to
those who are crying out for peace of mind, souls who are in

need of plain and simple food with true meaning.  Wanting
with all their might to be drawn in. Speak to them, straight tongues
without forks jammed beneath pallets, plumbs released from
mechanical jaws blocking breath to breathe and sighs to form,

not from boredom, but knee deep in wonder; at last offering
a tear, a depth, identifying with amusement, laughter. It could be
felt, this sense of clarity, like a mountain stream washed clean over
time.  Find them, find a way to burrow in to meet eyes asking for more

There's a storm in my mind
And fire in my heart

Dear God,
The road ahead is paved with uncertainty
And I'm in danger of being uncertain

I left words for someone
A bread-crumb trail of emotion
To which I ended up re-following

Bleed my heart dry
Fresh dried meat
Jerky
Fruits of my loom
Plumbs

I'm confused
I'm worried
I'm excited
I'm on fire

Don't put me out
I want to go down
In a blaze of glory

This sadness in your eyes, eyes, eyes
plumbs abysmal depths
irretrievable dreams in debt

Here as viewing province, hesitant to pry
as  meddlesome, these subterranean wounds
in howling incubus despair

upon a sea of pregnant cries
aware, that we are life marooned
to test what we can bear

Transform, yield burdened truths
pull wool from heady visions
reveal your hearts, release regrets
reclaim joy's favor, and heal incisions

-cec

I didn’t know it at the time
The bench seemed more a subject
A reminder to sit and look

Ease one’s load
Reflect upon the day
Reach for plumbs unexplored

Years later the memories were revived
The day we saw the bench

She and they
Strolled leisurely
Quaint small exhibits of musty furniture
The rickety interior of the old stone manor

Please, can you take our picture?
Here.  Use my phone.

We were on our way home
Through the garden path
Unflowered in the early winter’s dusk
Brisk but not too chilly.  The cold would come later.

Waiting, alone, I chanced a shot
The composition was
Just OK.  My fans said “good”.  I, “no not”.

I now recall the view
From behind the porch
Looking upward at the stained
Glass dormer
Halfway between the house and the bench

I remember that day
When I saw her.
When I was able to see her.

Everyone in the world today,
has a place, has a role to play.
In this turning world of ours,
everything's in its place proper.

Everyone has got a role to fill,
everyone and everything, in
every possible way has a part,
in the great act called Life.

From the humble farmer,
to the noble doctor,
they all do their job
to make our world turn.

The teacher who teaches,
the judge who judges,
the butcher who butchers,
the plumber who plumbs.

From the sweat of their brow,
our orb is able to function,
From the toil of their labor,
our earth runs like a machine.

If just one person
couldn't find their way,
then all around us,
would soon fall into disarray.

Everything in its place proper
makes for a world stable.
Just one thing out of place,
and the whole thing is ruined.

Like a stack of playing cards
or a tall, towering stack of blocks,
it requires perfect, precise placement
for premium optimization.

Consider the burning sun,
and the frozen moon.
Just inches difference apart
could not support us at all.

Or the very force of gravity,
that keeps our feet grounded.
Were it too strong or too weak,
our world would be flattened.

From the atoms that make us,
to the planets that hold us,
to the people that shape us,
to the decisions that change us.

So when you begin to wonder
if you'll ever find your place,
just remember this one fact
Everything is in its place proper

I Remember
I remember being small and the hospital big with long hallways and tall open windows
I remember prayer circle and how it didn’t work
I remember the color yellow and a funeral where I tried going to the candy jar but the door was locked and the ceremony had started
I remember it was okay because
I was only 7 and was now half orphaned                 no one stays angry at a 7 year old half orphan
You are too young to understand, don’t worry sweetie

I remember new people in the house   people who didn’t always smell good
and hair from dogs, cats, hamsters                     water on the floor from goldfish bowls

I remember we chose not to move
I remember being angry, confused, cold, tired and afraid of jack rabbits but missing visits to the desert

I remember seeing you as a stranger
awkwardly shaped moving through a swimming pool
you thought I was obnoxious,                       I remember because your friends told me
I remember forcibly inserting myself into your life
I remember flowers, fragrances, grass, scabby knees, ***** palms, the orchard, the creek, the bikes, the plumbs, the poetry the fields and the sun

I remember everything drenched in chlorine        sweat on your upper lip

I remember walking through your yard finding broken glass like diamonds.
you showed me where your dog Diego was buried
underneath your mother’s roses beside her St. Jude sculpture

I remember your yellow kitchen table
clam chowder, rice, pico, tamales, carrots, onions, steak, salmon burgers, potatoes, cheesecake
an increasing heartbeat every time we sat down for dinner with your parents.
I wish I didn’t have to eat this food

I remember new furniture, finances, fighting, moving trucks, paperwork, boxes, compartmentalizing and roommates with strange piercings

I remember replacing trees with concrete and bicycles with buses
on my first day at a new job in a new place
I found a syringe in the bathroom toilet.
I remember trains, cigarettes, crows, crosswalks, garbage, people, street art, highways that all scared the **** out of me

I remember the sting of alcohol leaving my throat and nostrils into stained porcelain while high knee socks itched my skin and strange piercings held back my hair

I remember short visits
Your sweetness and the comfort of your familiarity

I remember baking pie with my face down in the bowl
avoiding questioning eyes and tightly pressed lips of relatives
“Are you seeing someone new?”
“How is school?”
“Will you visit Texas?”
                                                         ­                                    ******* and never ask me anything again
I remember imagining myself running out the door, through the yard, down the street, over the bridge, around the river and into a quiet bed

I remember the scent of chlorine sending me into frenzy
I remember how you resented me                                          I resented the hell out of you
I remember you calling me complacent                       I remember wanting you to disappear

I remember new lips, new tastes, new palms, new faces, new smells, new picnics
and a neighbor’s dog

I remember no longer feeling angry, confused, cold, tired, or afraid of jack rabbits, but still missing visits to the desert

I remember the time we were laying in bed with the sun shining through the window, tall and open.

the new boyfriend
now the gone boyfriend

such fun we did have
that first morning

what is your name?
I can't remember yours either

how much fun is that
after a crazy night

barking dog
wandering paws

such delight

hotels, bars, roads
in common

lives lived in parallel
at the same time

movies, songs
memories

laughter, yoking
such great fun

chasms of differences
matriarchy patriarchy

making someone into
what you like

i've been there too
how funny to have you

do that to me too

endless days
and nights

of talking
dancing

voraciously consuming
one another's forms

ah the adventure
ah the divine touch

seeing yourself in
the other

duality at its
very very best

duality at its
very very worst

you can't save another
nor fix them

the road
is a solitary one

the work is hard
and it plumbs the depth of your soul

of who you are

don't waste your time
in this life

recognize who
and what you are

we are ALL
the ONE

see yourself in
each and every creature

each and every being
every tree

every star
every celestial object

each and every drop of rain
and every body of water

laugh like a child
cry like a child

love like there is no tomorrow

nothing is ever lost
only changing form


om mani padme hung

One thin linen layer
separates my spicy palms
from the vast unscoopable harvest
of the crystal-scattered light.

Sunbeams brace the icy sky.
Early bursts of starlight score the dappled shade
whilst snowcrush of silence
interrips our invitation-emptied poem page.

So strange how soft it is.
The insulation stationed
on the streetcorner of the universe
intersection: stars sky & stone below.

I'm stepping in and leaving shocks of shade
just above the blades of grass
with tangled roots that sink into the icy loam
and stone-stacked-stone,

the earthy bone that plumbs deeply
to the heart & hearth of Earth -
a hidden molten core, the nethers
of a depthless tunnel filled from core to feet,

my feet, and then my torso-mind-and-eyes
that see. How strange it is, how softly sets my gaze
upon this world, a fleshy inglenook in space
that sees itself and steps into the snow.

CHEVAL À BASCULE EN FEU

She keeps the room
just as it was.

As if
Death had never entered it.

Still
turns the eiderdown down.

Still
straightens sheet.

Still
plumbs pillows.

Brings breakfast every morning
just like before.

But there is no before
anymore.

Even the future
has vanished.

One day it hurts her
this haunting.

The room has become
a shrine.

And she
its priestess.

So. She decides
to burn the past.

The wind turns the pages
as the books flame.

Dolls melt
in the witch hunt..

A rocking horse
is on fire.

"Go now!" she commands.
"These are only things!"

She hides her daughter
in her heart

where nothing
can touch her.

The fire reflected
in her tears.

you sway like the cherry blossoms
in between hundreds of leaves
red eyes cast fingerprints upon these trees
i see you dancing among the flowers
i hear you chanting every single hour
invoking plumbs and apricots
the shiny parts that we disassociate
we hesitate to ready our shadows
then we go and wear them to bed
but first we must brush our teeth
while deep asleep i feel your feet
rubbing up against mine
as lions in the dawn
dream our longings into song

the mystery of where our thoughts come from
       the intimate alien sometimes plumbs
                          whispers!