who lit the candles
placed so eloquently
behind purple rock?
that sculpted radiance,
chapel grace
wound in a chosen
defined way
down the spiral
stone stairs

street cars dawdle
alongside
the packer slew
biding merchants
shuffle their wares
as the front man
and pock face
sing their
holy blues

cut jazz echoes
over the accompanying
gabble and drone
incense and haze
pour from
a lower trap door
sack fish, truffles
and splendid crafts shine
inside the stained glass fronts

a wide mouth snapper
with a bloated tongue
greets the
morning tide
(not camera shy
in the least!)
the fish traps
and beaneries
bring life
to the flourishing causeway

hula hoops
and circle ballers
join the
cobaine stage
favoured rogues
and mac jacks
speak easy
of the big daddy

beth’s triple by pass
taking firm hold on
tricky ****
and the nutcracker
maze ways,
taggers and
lost tunnels
of cu chi
strike a
nerving blow

a poised finger man
belts out his tune
(with a sniff sock
and iterating glare)
his nosey neighbors
cut artisan bread
(with a white wine
and jelly spread)
midwives push forward
for an afternoon
toddle and stroll

.   .   .   .   .   .   .   .  .
~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  

what about the gull
                          with a wayward splash
or the balanced blend
of cirrus and ash

foghorns throw
the pock wave
sewell stragglers
and bonny boats
earn their keep

It is snowing and death bugs me
as stubborn as insomnia.
The fierce bubbles of chalk,
the little white lesions
settle on the street outside.
It is snowing and the ninety
year old woman who was combing
out her long white wraith hair
is gone, embalmed even now,
even tonight her arms are smooth
muskets at her side and nothing
issues from her but her last word - "Oh." Surprised by death.

It is snowing. Paper spots
are falling from the punch.
Hello? Mrs. Death is here!
She suffers according to the digits
of my hate. I hear the filaments
of alabaster. I would lie down
with them and lift my madness
off like a wig. I would lie
outside in a room of wool
and let the snow cover me.
Paris white or flake white
or argentine, all in the washbasin
of my mouth, calling, "Oh."
I am empty. I am witless.
Death is here. There is no
other settlement. Snow!
See the mark, the pock, the pock!

Meanwhile you pour tea
with your handsome gentle hands.
Then you deliberately take your
forefinger and point it at my temple,
saying, "You suicide *****!
I'd like to take a corkscrew
and ***** out all your brains
and you'd never be back ever."
And I close my eyes over the steaming
tea and see God opening His teeth.
"Oh." He says.
I see the child in me writing, "Oh."
Oh, my dear, not why.

My face breaks the sea
                  wash, wash over me.

An army stands guard
                   led by lotions and creams

What, is my beauty?

Pock-marks scar my moon tonight,
the emotions on my pock face fight.

But my faults dissolve with the sea.
                              Wash, wash over me.

There's something tragic about Brisbane; the city speaks of an older more Romantic time, though the people speak of a newer, modern; more disposable age. It seemingly looks at you with a lost lovers eyes.

Though the city still retains some of its antique glamour; take a stroll down any street in the center and around you will be found the remnants of that age.
Victorian Red-bricks dot the city like proud sentinels, keeping watch over the ever expanding invasion of its contemporary neighbours.
What tales would these monolithic madmen tell is if only we had the ears to listen, who's feet did once trample up the now year-stained wooden stairs, who lived and died and loved and uttered curses and birthed within those walls...and what tales would they have to tell if we only listened?

Ah, gentle reader, you see how your mind wanders at the mention of these thoughts?
The City certainly has its landmarks: the Clock tower of Town Hall, over looking the new modern space of "The Deck" in King George Square, the facade of Grand central station still retaining its grandeur and majesty; now turned into theme bars and a nightclub strip. The old houses littering West End and the strip of red bricks running like a sepia toned river up Elizabeth Street. And of course the dotted remnants of Old City Life being ever encroached upon in the center of the City's smoke filled heart.

The most curious of these is the impression wrought in plaster and cement, white over red, of a window in the city center, with a set of stairs leading up to a place that no longer exists; 50 feet in the air.
Whenever I gaze up at that window, that reminder of the past, I cannot help but wondre who would be staring down at us, on this date in the last century.

"Suffer them not" I wish to say, "for these people are of a different age, with different Gods and values than you."

Suffer them not, ignore their slings, suffer them not.

I love Brisbane.

It's mish-mash of centuries, its people, the tales of its unwritten past, it seems as if the city exudes both a sense of joy and one of unutterable melancholy.

I'm on the train, homebound now to my modern house in the ultra-modern Gold Coast. This is quite depressing. The freedom, the movement, the chance, the ebb and flow of the people soaked tide of the city is leaving fast behind me as this electric trap with seats barrels under facades and tunnels, with enormous neon snakes glittering down from the peaks of modern and ancient towers and we find them reflected in the winding river like innumerable fireflies...dying and twisting and being reborn in the soft moonlight.

South Brisbane Station.
An immortal Victorian construct, still surviving to this day. The same architecture, the same route...different paint though. This Industrial Relic is overlooked by the shining modern whirlpool of THE EYE, a gigantic Ferris wheel giving you the chance to see the city by air, to one side; and a multicoloured, four story glowing monument to the hairdresser franchise god Stefan on the other...which I dub "Stefan's Pintle".

It's garish as hell.

Passing through the night the train goes ever on, powered incessantly by the ticket payers seemingly endless dollar supply.

There's a strange transition from City to Coast, the outerlying towns left in the dust and wake of one and unsure whether they belong to the other. Places such as Kuraby, Banoon, Runcorn, Altandi, Logan and Eden's Landing.

Yet the train ponders on into the night, as it's denizens relinquish themselves to its discretion and desires.
Yes; the train ponders on into the night...

We slowly pass through Woodridge, one of those last bastions of civilisation, neither here nor there. A glittering town trying desperately to be a city. They have a McDonalds. Yay. These places always scare me, and confuse me.
What are they like? Their people? I guess I'll never know, i've never stayed in one long enough to realize.

Welcome to Loganlea, this is a strange place...the funniest thing about it is the fact that it IS a hole. Yet the sign into it shows a shining beach with palm trees and boldly proclaims "WELCOME TO LOGANLEA".
As you draw closer you realize it's pock marked with bullet holes and rust stains.

A train whizzes past, and we find ourselves reflected in its windows, our reality traveling one way; our ghosts another.
Into the long, pale night, coloured by the stars of a thousand distant streetlights. Like a million tiny man made suns; created to fend of the darkness and keep our fears at bay. We truely live in the age of endless day.

The melancholy of the city is far behind now, it's streets, its smells, its people all gone. As we are lost in the brightness of the endless day and the night grows ever long, touching those distant, far between places with its natural, velvet splendour, running its hand down the cheek of time. For there will always be a night, even when we create days, and the city will always be melancholy, and the coast will always be a glittering sequin on the dress of a cheap, soulless *****.

I love Brisbane.

A bag of potatoes and a baseball bat.
Is merely a sack of starchy vegetables and a sculpted metal stick.
But on this blustering evening a bag of potatoes and a baseball bat meant an infinity more than that.
In this fleeting moment, I felt solidarity with the fact that life doesn't make sense.
I looked at you in your adjacent flesh ridden essence and smiled at this opportunity to connect.
The bat clashing with the pock eyed potato skin.
Our existences colliding with ebb and flow of a maniac pulsation.
This is not merely a hackneyed show of baseball bat on a bag of potatoes.
This is a boy and a girl realizing that this ever sacred moment holds more gravity than merely a bag of potatoes and a baseball bat.
It's just that we can't conjure what makes it so rich and ever splendid... so thus it must be
rich and ever splendid as the potato is launched into flight igniting the curiously enraptured mind of boy and girl witnessing baseball bat on potato

If thine eye offends thee
pluck it out....

War offends
my eye.

All my
senses
defiled
*****
disemboweled
by the
abomination
of war.

My mind
disregards
denigrates
reneges
warps time
destroys values
alters psyches
lays waste
to my
conscience
of hope.

Mine eye offends me
the complicit witness
complacently
ambivalent
turning deaf ears
to groans
of the wounded
wails of the aggrieved
silence of the dead;
shutting doors
to sanctuaries
where refugees
seek safe houses,
locking factories
where men seek work,
level homes
where women nurture,
strafe playgrounds
where children laugh,
raise cities
where people
learn to be human,
immolate mosques
where
God's Children
cry out to the
Beneficent One.

Mine eye offends me,
my gut sickens,
to witness
the slaughter
of innocents
droning on
no angels to save
the million Issac's
savagely smashed to bits
by a Tomahawk's blow.

God's vengeance
escalates
the celestial ledgers
dripping red ink
from excessive
collateral damage,
people reduced
as objects used
to secure a loan
indeed an ARM
on a real time
American nightmare
whose reset rate
is mounting body counts
and massive budget allocations
protecting undisturbed flows
of corporate profits
valued in barrels
of imported blood.

Mine eye offends me
an innocence lost
Veritas vanquished
life is devalued
humanity debased
compassion defunct
empathy a twisted satire
an indelible weakness
incidental hostage
to the torridness
of the lurid play
of savage nations
projecting will,
a devastation
of action.

Mine eye offends me
the message of
sweet Jesus
a way of light
transformed into
biblical justification
agitprop verse
stoking blood lust zeal
for apostate infidels
sons of Abraham's
unworthy spawn,
of Hagar the *****
******* child Ishmael
turned out again
from tribal tents
of an absentee father
from an unfriendly
paternity.

This black *******
an abomination
in the sight of Allah
celebrates
a zeal to ****
unholy disciples
yearning to fill
banana crates
with body parts
draped in
drab Hijabs
decorated with
satanic verses
from a
Holy Quran
carved with
bayonets
of self righteous
Crusaders
armed with rifles
inscribed with
Gospel verses
on deadly gun
barrel stocks
to ramp the passion
of the righteous Crusade
against Godless apostates.

Mine eye offends me
as I witness
the **** of
corporate mercenaries
churning bereaved
Blackwaters
beholden only
to shareholders
gobbling spoils of war
to safely exit
to private vomitoriums
to expunge the excess
of gluttony
only to
quickly return
to engorge themselves
at the public troughs
again.

No constitutional
restraints
save the
strict guidelines
of holy
corporate governance scriptures
ruthlessly enforced with
golden carrots
of multi-million dollar
stock options
and the brutal stick
of shareholders divine right
to quarterly dividends
and above average
equity returns.

Corporate warriors
anointed by
holy oil
proffered
by capitalist shamans
and US Senators
conferring
jurisprudential deferment
on civil law
recusing them from
any behavior
to recognize the humanity
of captive insurgents.

Mine eye offends me,
as the flag
draped coffins
of returning
servicemen
and women
continue to pile
on the boiling tarmac
of Dover Air Force Base.

Tearful salutes,
folded flags
and mournful dirges
of prerecorded Taps
are small compensation for
shattered families,
and a wasted life,
unnecessarily spent,
criminally sacrificed
in a pointless conflict
in service to a lie.

Mine eye offends me
as I watch
my country's soft parade
of growing militarization
xenophobic fear
compelled patriotism
salute and goose step
to the flash of sword
and the sound of guns
and the glittering
medals of valor
adorning the chests
of a nations warriors.

How barbaric
are we?
allocating
overstuffed
apportionment
of weapons
and armories
while
people are
foreclosed
forcing armies
of unemployed
Joads
to ride
en masse on
an Acela Express
to a crowded
poor house
a listless journey
on pock marked
highways
arriving at
dreaded
destinations
to defunct
townships
offering
empty factories
and closed schools.

Screaming in silence
I scratch at my eyes
with numbed fingers.

Matthew 18:9

Music Selection:
The Doors, The Soft Parade

Oakland
3/17/10
jbm

How far would you travel from where you were born?

She spends more on her dogs in one week,
Than the government provides for those in trouble.

She’s a naturally happy person.

The mottled concrete walls of the council block she’s moved in to,
Complement her pock-marked, pink skin.

For a rich person,
She’s ugly.

The doors to buildings are painted bright colours,
-blues and greens-
And stand out against the brown stone that is everywhere.

Kevin is a mousey young man with stringy brown hair,
Recovering from drugs,
And she thinks he looks like a very nice man.

They are playing football on cement outside,
-plants are expensive-
Now talking over vegetables, around a table,

About the young mothers who will be coming in to learn,
How to grow turnips -
Like growing confidence, they’ll be told.

Did you know that people move to Dundee from Warsaw?

Makes you wonder what Warsaw is like-
-who’s fault it is that people can’t eat alcohol-

She’s hanging knickers out to dry and telling me that she’s discovered,
She doesn’t need all the shoes that she has,

And would it do if she were to donate,
A hundred and fifty thousand pounds?

They smile when they receive their checks.

Their blue doors fly open,
And when they say thank you, they mean it,
The money is enough.

Round the back,
The husband is in tears.

Maryam
turned,
moving
away
from the
caravans of
bulldozers
entering
Homs.

She
could
not bear
to look
upon the
the teeth
of steel
tracks
sloshing
through
puddles
of blood,
plowing
the rubble,
burying the
mush,
coolly
covering the
fingerprints of
criminals.

Maryam
beheld the
conquering
soldiers
standing
atop piles
of shrapnel
marked and
launched by
Syria’s finest
artillery officers.

She
remained
within ear shot
to hear the
victor’s
orator,
recite the
history of
the conquest,
carefully
spinning
suspicion,
and casting
blame
for the
devastation
onto the
vanquished.

The speaker
lauded the
efforts of
esteemed
comrades
commanding
black regiments
chasing the
last rats still
lapping at
the edges
of the red
pools;
hieing to
the dead
catacombs
as sanctuaries
of salvation.

The barker
goads other gangs
to commence a
surgical search
of hospitals to
root out wounded
insurgents. He
suggests they be
removed from
their recovery
beds and thrown
atop the piles of refuse
where the busy tractors
will push the rubble
into the far corners
of the mind where
obfuscation and
forgetfulness
blissfully anoints
unsettled memory.

Alarmed,
Maryam breaks
for the hospital,
to nurse the
injured.

She moves with
tealth through
the broken city’s
debris strewn streets.

Maryam eyes the
inert concrete,
blasted into
ghastly shapes,
burying secrets,
concealing terrible
stories of what
transpired
during the
pacification of
Baba Amr.

These
grotesque
gargoyles,
sculpted by the
mangled hand
of a deranged
sociopath
will hold their
silence for
only so long.

Dark secrets
never live
forever.

The distended heaps
of jangled rebar
pokes through
broken chunks
of concrete
like rib cages
picked clean by
the jackals
of war.

The pulverized
concrete forms
telling Mandalas
giving voice to
the stained
stones crying
the secrets of
terrible truths that
unmarked graves
never keep
silent.

Maryam
is desperate
to find the
lost children.

She knows
the ungodly
conquerors
eagerly
hunt them.

The subjugators
are drunk from the
draughts of blood
they profanely quaff.

They thirst
for more and
have set
their sight on
the children.

The crucifiers
kiss the sword
to cleanse
the insurgent
city of its
youngest
citizens.

Bashar has
condemned
a generation
to death.

He desires
to purge Syria
of a heinous
memory stored in
the ripening minds
of Homs’ children.

They stand in  
witness to
the ******
of their
childhood.

Righteous
indignation
breeds a
long  memory
nursed by the
vanquished as
a cherished gift;
bestowed to
successive
generations
like a valuable
family heirloom;
but
resentment
makes for
a monstrous
coat of arms
vanquishers
bequeath to
the defeated.

Maryam
crosses over
the scattered
stones
incapable
of bleeding
one more
drop of blood.

She hears
the howling
spirits calling
from the broken
ruins.

She glimpses
the dark silhouettes
of fleeting apparitions
moving through
the upper floors
of flame stained
buildings.

The ghostly
shadows of
lost children
wander, seeking
the rest of an
expired future
sired by their
state sanctioned
execution.

Maryam
grows anxious
as she
approaches
the hospital.

She arranges
her silk scarf.
She examines
her calloused
hands. The lines
of her palms
are soiled,
cakes of dirt
have settled
under her
fingernails;
yet sufficient
strength remains
in her arms
to roll away
the large stones
entombing
revelations
of love and
miracles of
deliverance.

The pock
marked
hospital now
in sight,
Maryam
enters the gate
of a ancient
graveyard;
clambering
over burial
mounds
of her dead
ancestors.

She remembered
a placard hanging
in the hospital’s
waiting room.

“Art is long; life is short;
opportunity is fleeting;
judgment is difficult;
experience is deceitful.”
Hippocrates.

As Maryam
neared the
graveyard exit
she was
overtaken by
Syrian soldiers
brandishing AK’s.

One stuck a
dusty barrel
into Maryam’s
face while
the other tapped
the back of her
head from behind.

A weeping
Maryam
knelt before
her captors.

She
washed
the dust
from their
boots with
flowing tears
and wiped
them clean
with her hair;
praying for
the power
of love
to once
again
overcome
the stalk
of death.

Prostrate
and prone
Maryam
waited to
accept the
shaft of
recrimination
through her
bleating gums.

If recollection is long
in the living,
memory is eternal
in the dead generations.

The only known cure
for the disease of acrimony
is the strong balm of love.

Maryam would
never again nurse
the wounded
children of
Homs.

Music Selection:
Chanticleer & Yvette Flunder
There is a Balm in Gilead

Oakland
3/12/12
jbm

(stopping here to tell you about my first
******* because it was terrible &
the one thing I remember most vividly,
a pock under her left eye
marking my shame & confusion &
this portion of the poem is a lie)

Rapid Eye Movements
cruise down the Autobahn,
driving dreams of soldiers
slaying the Beast in the East:
seeds hidden in the cuff links
that return home for the victory parade.

The victory parade of the new millennium
is a mirage: desert sand creeps
through the streets of Basra;
spray painted slogans of “Aryan Nation”
are left behind on pock-marked walls.

High level terror alerts
scroll across the Fear o' Dome,
breeding paranoid glances
from commercial-class passengers
while they fly above fenced camps
where centralized secret service agents
watch the unloading of another train.

"Son, do you forget the sacrifices?
Have you lost all your respect?
Okay, it’s possible that the Feds
were influenced by the Purebreds—
a minor repercussion
of maintaining our national security.

It isn’t even about racial purity—
you are all mixed now, anyway.
Whether female, black, jew, or gay,
we must unite together as a nation;
raise its flag with pride,
and fight against a common enemy!
This enemy is trying to disintegrate
the cornerstone of our free society!

Son, can you not see! Not see-notsee-notsea-notsi-notzi-natzi-****-natzi-notzi-notsi-notsea­-notsee-not see!"
_


—cold sweat.

I awaken to remnants of nightmarish images
sifting through my mind:
flocks of carnivorous sheep
with invisible shepherds.

The dream had felt real—
solid, like flesh-out reality.

I rush out of bed,
just to make sure.
From my bedroom window,
I see the neighbour’s Iron Eagle weathervane
goose-stepping towards the west.
A lawnmower growls in the background.

Everything appears normal here
on the corner of 4th Reichstag Blvd.



2016 Neu Berlin Remix, July 13th, 2016
(original version was written on March 29th, 2010)

The bicycles were a forged parent-permission slip
But well-forged.
I lifted myself over the tear in the truck's seat cover, not sliding
Not perforating further for today.

The road was short, short enough to have ridden the bicycles from first start to real start.
But that would not have been exotic
Connection is exotic, and channels must be followed through an antfarm
Proper etiquette must be observed with touch-me-nots

The bicycles were easier to lift from the bed with two
I gave him that, passing a front end, and jammed the wheelspokes with a jabbed finger
So that the damp spinning would not flick his face with groundwater
I expected it to hurt. My expectation tapped lightly.

That narrow pock-marked blacktop was my windtunnel
The air stroked its thumbs over my eyelids and I ached to push, breathe, push further
He held me back with his slow handlebars,
His slow kickstand clicking.

Pedaling slowly is more difficult than flying.
One finds gladness in choosing leaves to crunch with an inch-wide tire
And high-fiving low-hanging branches is socially satisfying.
He smiles behind the white mustache, and I don't mind.

So come everybody throw ya hands
In the air for me
If y'all feelin this jubilee


O yea so lets get back to the actions
Satisfaction
Of celebrities got ya main attraction
No actin I'm packing
Gats to baseball bats and who dat?
Call me poetry wack splat
Goes through ya back bullet hole
Filljn those
Empty spots ya can't touc what's hot
I got reps like birdie
Above the rim lace blunt with traces
Of v slims
Who can stop me if my potency
Is near infinite
I'm embedded in ya melon eternally
Too cool for y'all to see I be
With this jubilee a juvenile
Born in the wild never smiled as child
All I wanted was a few toys from micky ds
Could barely afford cheese
Make tracks sneeze when I breath
Got thick chicks from here all the way to Belize
Please don't be ignorant
Just throw ya hands up to this anthem
Ya can't phantom
The jubilee is slammin-
Come on



Not that the time is right
Refocused my sight the black knight
Knocking outsights now ya braille as **** for trynA **** with
The m o b s t e r ghetto star
All hands on the r
Ruger luger quick to shoot ya scoop ya
Out of the scene like ice cream
One man team
Don't need a **** near friend in need
Please believe
I got backups like traffic
Hit the skins is automatic cuz static
To radio station they hate me
Cuz I don't participate in *******
I'm concerned with
These ***** *** punks running politics
Donald Trump I gotta automatic thAt loves to dump
Throw his *** in the trunk
Puff skunks I'm slammin on the gas
Like an alley oopp dunk full of *****
Dikes to lesbians all want a piece of me
I ain't cocky but stocky like Rocky
Picket pock me ill find thee
Restin peace to my enemies
That couldn't get to me
I'm hater proof so y'all just throw ya hands in the air for me
And represent this jubilee ahh. Come on

On the 9th, I was driving in a hurry from Jerusalem to Jerico, laden with kisses for you.  A cop waved me down at the Bank junction at Aluva. Unnerved, the car hit something. All your kisses scattered on the road. My hands, legs, face and ***** blushed with gashes. My kisses for you lay around in the middle of the road. The orphan kids from Janaseva were picking them up. They packed them in their sling bags. A beggar woman who was passing by picked up one to smell it. College going kids make fun of my kisses for you. A cop tramples one of them with his boot.  A pock marked tipper truck crushes it under its wheels. A procession agitating for drinking water marches past it. My kisses for you are strewn in the middle of the road and holler for the moistness of your lips. Covered in a sheet woven with wounds, I lie on a hospital bed. Lamenting 'my kisses, my kisses’, you catch a flight and land in Nedumbassery.  You come to see me. In haste, you forget to buy me oranges.

I kept looking at you.
It was raining outside.

I looked at your lips.
Then, all the flowers in the front yard roll in laughter.

I look at your throat.
Then, a white dove takes off from a mango tree.

I look at your ears.
Then, a thrush flies off seeking its mother.

I look at your strands of hair.
Then, the plumeria leaves pick lice from each other.

I look at your eyes.
Then, the well in the court yard gives a missed call to the sea.

I look at your nose.
Then, the glare outside sketches the spring.

I look at your arm pits.
Outside, yellow woods sing a song.

I look at your *******.
Outside, bird’s eye chilies stand sharply *****.

I look at your cleavage.
A mother who bore six squats outside and coughs.

I at your navel.
Outside, a thousand bats.

I at your feet.
Then, a sweet gooseberry falls on the yard.


At knees.
At tender thighs...

Always
Always then
Outside, the drum beats of a road show grow in crescendo.

I trace pictures of our kids on your lips.

Then, in the middle of the road, the souls of kids crushed under wheels queue up with oranges to meet us.

When you and I wail without a sound, a slice from it falls on the ground. I make up a simile that tears are the slices of oranges that drop from the hands of those who have not had enough of loving. You give me one more kiss. I stash it away doubting whether you will be near when I die.  Our kisses attack us asking us whether we will abandon them again. We lie on the hospital bed covered in wounds from the kisses. A bunch of angels come with syringes and bitter pills. We run away without paying the bill. Our kisses follow us like a procession of bare bodies with running noses. Unable to bear the sorrow, you hug them right on the highway. I buy a cigarette from the petty shop nearby and, puffing on it, watch you.



Translation : Ra Sha

Tall, slender
Silhouetted against the sky
Rustled by a light breeze
Green fronds wave
At Mina birds swooping by.
Mina bird, Mina bird
What do you see,
Perched up on top of
That tall palm tree?

Slender, strong
Swaying in the breeze
Little songbirds find food
In the pock-marked, gray trunk
Of the tall palm trees.
Oh, what made those marks
So many, and deep
Into which tasty bugs
Like to creep?

Strong, flexible
With a heavy top
From which coconuts
With smiling faces
Like to drop.
Plop! Plop! Plop!
Watch your head!
Sir Isaac Newton
Would be dead.

The army had revolted and the Republic was at risk,
But we were just a small town- what had we to do with this?
My father, Manuel Robles, was a labor Union man.
Some called him a Communist; only now I understand.

The army had a list of men whose loyalty was suspect
And when the civil war broke out they came for them direct.
They took him, and some others, and lined them up against a wall.
It was then I heard the volley and I watched my Father fall.

They checked upon their handiwork, I cannot forget the face
Of the officer who used his pistol to give  the coup de grace.
The piled the corpses on their truck and, laughing, drove away.
All were  buried in a common grave to wait the Judgement day.

I stared in speechless horror at the blood soaked, thirsty ground
and at the pock marks in that wall caused by some misspent rounds.
There was no judge, no jury, no verdict, nor decree.
They killed a dozen unarmed men ; that was their victory

They slaughtered my dear padre without a second thought.
I would not go so easily; there are others, too, who fought.
Now Franco has my country and I’ve had to flee from Spain.
My heart is with my Father’s bones. I carry on his name.

a girl found a crown on the street
clink, clank, and rolling to her feet
cold gold touched her pinkish toes-
during inspection the jewels bit her nose

she wore it all day long, in strength
found her chores list lessen in length
people blinded by it's brilliant glint
it gleamed eyes away, replaced the print

each precious stone reworked memories
envious green glass once enemies
now pink, mirrored, singular, hers
to match the crown, she wore silver furs

her cloak dragged upon the ground
other children picked it up, and found
themselves wrapped inside and gone
the village became smaller, the cloak became long

the elders dug deep at the edge of their home
while the girl was away, living alone
they discovered bones, gnawed to stumps
bugs and beetles, full, in mounds and humps

they fit the girl's old clothes perfectly
renewed dead flesh, but hurtfully
her eyes were gone, the crown's centrepiece
the flesh left again, puddled their knees

the girl had died and was eaten, long ago
it took some time, they cried, but now we know
the metal melted her fat and skin and sinew
pock-marked her bones, rotted right through

replaced a monster with her spirit, living dead
used her soul as the cloak's first thread
vacuumed others, knitted them close and thick
a pretty trinket turned poisonous trick

the elders chased the monster away
along with their children, that day
they cried and created new children, then
never let them wander again.

we sit here
wandering, pondering,
       quandring
away the life.
awaiting the flood of
the Universal Ocean
to fill lungs of carbon
with sodium -
salinity in the tissue rising.
we sit here
awaiting Lot's wife,
to be pillar'd in a sense -
to be brined from the soul out.
we sit here
awaiting to be marbled and
pock'd with time,
to rest upon the Ocean's bed
and dream in lucidity -

and dream of the Shores.
and awaken of the Shores.
and feast of the Shores.

we sit here
awaiting in waste, in haste,
in repetition that our feet draw us upon.
we sit here awaiting,
healing of wounds thru time -
and the brambles wrapped tight
and tore of the flesh,
poxing.
limping, hobbling, waltzing on
and a blooded foot drew us home -
drew us onward.

All the world's a *******,
And all the lads and ladettes mere defecators,
Gratifying oozing exits and entrances;
And one man perforce enacts too many roles,
His acts being seven deaths. D'abord, the baby,
******* and ******* on his mummy's frock.
Then, the errant truant with his rucksack
And pock-marked ******'s face, creeping like death
Foul-trouser'dly to school. Next a teenager,
Panting like mad dog, with an oozing pustule
Dripping oe'r his girlfriend's pubics. Then a hoodie,
Full of strange oaths, and dressed up like a freak,
Lacking in honour, decency, and up for aggro,
Seeking the respect of loathsome peers
Even on the street corner. And then the adult
With bulging beer belly, and ample burgers stuff'd,
With eyes dulled by unfulfilled promises,
Mortgaged to the hilt, and indebted to Visa,
And so he wastes his life. The sixth age dawns
Before he knows it, bald futility,
With ****** in pocket, five quid a pill,
His youthful hopes well ****'d, the world too much
For his ignorance, and his vain butch rantings
Reverting soon to teenage curses, coughs
And tobacco'd wheezings. Last we see him,
Ending a pointless and useless existence,
Clutching to his ****-stained Zimmer frame,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans pension fund.

A Father for a Nation

A lot of knots now show in our discord but in our great beginning the great living God went into the
****** pristine forest and plucked out one of uncommon character and dignity from this choicest

Material a people would be brought forth that would be the admiration of the world so George
Washington with the common materials of only a quill and parchment set in motion a new course

That abridged history and chartered a course for this unique land a trek was begun across a vast frontier
Many obstacles and difficulties lay ahead the king and tyrant’s angry words would blast you into action

They would come sweeping across the Potomac whipping and lashing until men of devotion and devout
Faith could no longer ignore their substance or their intent a struggle began its clamor would reach and

Deafen the English crown that tried in vain to squelch freedom’s infant cry in places like Yorktown White
Plains and Long Island musket ***** would run up the tally the individual cost in human souls for a

Required season agony were paid their demanded sum into the chasm of ugly death marched the
Gentle souls of our fore fathers paying a price so that we could be free not free to do as we please

But to carry on this proud heritage that was given to us by their great sacrifice oh mortal soul on self
I did not bestow to another one day I will be careful to behold his face trace it well make sure it shows

Peace for with him you are to dwell I have not been a man of war it was the responsibility of others to
Defend my rights on the field of battle they knew unspeakable horrors walked the thin line between

Sanity and madness sacred honor held them from going over the edge to them in everything I owe them
Profound thanks we use to say the pledge of allegiance George but now lip service is even too much

Our national monuments were made of marble the idea was to build them from an enduring material
We go and gawk and gush and say how marvelous all the while our actions have eroded these precious

Symbols of freedom the true picture is marble that is in a state of decay pock marked chipped bits and
Pieces piled at the foot of what was once a great edifice for freedom the statutes of bronze who

Symbolize our national heroes take on the guise of doddering foolish old men that don’t know where
They are or what they are doing this our reality not theirs in each generation it falls to individuals to

Arise To the occasion and meet the need that reality prescribes I believe the God who gave us George
Washington will lift up a leader with the power to pull us from the quagmire that we find ourselves in

It will only be by His mercy in every other time He has never failed all is needed is humility and prayer
As the portrait shows George kneeling in the snow in his generals uniform he knew where his victory

Would come from as well as Abe who said we don’t count on our bristling battlements but on the
Righteous God who loves freedom and is the true source of it endurance we in true humility say thank

You Heavenly Father and thank you father of our indebted and grateful nation with grateful hearts
Thanks and happy birthday to you remembering you gives us a connection to the past and to each other
That is Profound

This is being posted late in the day as a tribute for the father of our country but it isn’t late this was
Written in ninety six I picked up a car and a old royal typewriter here in Illinois on the way back home I

Held up in a Motel in Flagstaff Arizona for two days watched hours of the history channel and wrote this
And other Pieces those old royal type writers were what the soldiers hiding behind enemy lines used to
Send their Communiqués back to the front I’m very proud of it I try to do honor by it when I write

Before a Creole love call, and a curdled Cajun moon
the bay water laps about pierrot, bay grass, and wading egret knuckle

Treading through his mucky labyrinthine mistress, and wind-knitted mire
beak prods pock, and inundate in the same instant
silt gilds his bill as he finally snaps about scaly sustenance

Sated
Wings boom and beckon in the darkness
Lift
Scooped in pearl beam, he commands the aeriform

An ether opus bellows about his form
Drying silt disintegrates from aerodynamic bill
Dribbling about in a forgotten slant in the darkness

Face like a road map. Pock marks like valleys and the little blue vein by your nose like a river rampantly running down through the mountain of your defined cheek bone. Face like a night sky. Freckles like one million diamonds flecked across a porcelain night sky. Two crystal clear blue eyes like full moons reflecting on an untouched lake in the middle of July. Face like a razor blade. The edges of your jaw line so straight and sharp and defined they cut through the flesh with the pointed tip of your chin. Cutting the pads of women's fingers as they trace the delicate lines leaving faint pink traces of their D-N-A. Face like a Brillo pad.  Face like a baby bear cub. Fuzzy and innocent in its nature to be nurtured in the way of the world. Like the framed moment of a woolly caterpillar being cradled by a toddler in the backyard on a fall afternoon in a pile of leaves freshly raked. Face like an anatomically correct hear. That ruptures and burst with each glance at beauty only to reanimate itself for the very idea of said beauty being some sort of purity. Some sort of saving grace. Re-iginiting in crater of eye sockets like coals that become diamonds under the pressure to cry. Face. Face like hands that hold mine firmly. Face. Like. F-A-C-E. Face like my person.


*Prompt from poem by Dorianne Laux

My memories are alphebetized and filed in steel cabinets
But at least I've never paid taxes.
These tracks rack my heavy head,
And with consistancy of lose lead I find I make my bed
Eastward and upward and moving forward feels back asswards
And not only have my once-loved-ones forgot their own adivce...
They let street rats dine, dash and flash feces like crack rocks.
School of the soft-knox they bare qualities close to the itch of a chicken pock.
Rockin' failure in the lines on their faces, I've placed this between I and U,
These steel tracks rack, my, how the time does fly when
You've never paid taxes.
And I'm dusting off files close forgotten,
Tucking rotten ones behind other cold cases
Using laughter to mock roofed and mute traces of
Never more and here we go again.
But if only! If only the woodpecker croaked!
Jokes pried from pedestals marked "short lived" -
Six suicides long and my hometowns *** is wound so tight
It actually drops diamonds. of course in spite of this
The majority spit is ****.
Misery takes to masses, foul stench latched, snatched,
Roofed and mute and at least I've never paid taxes.

(Written 3/12)

I am pretty sure I should have been born a bug
These eyes have never been good for believing
But these hands
Stretch out like antennae
And will hold heartbeats till people make sense

I have never met a lap that didn’t look comfy
Or shoulders too bony to rest my head on
I have never met a bear
That I didn’t want to hug me

I am so much one man sized
Invasion of privacy
That I hand out **** whistles on first dates
Not that I’d **** anybody
I just need a painful reminder
Of appropriate distance
Even though
Distance is painful

I mean
I get lonely sometimes
And if you invite me to bed
And don’t ask me for ***
I will skip straight to the cuddles
Till we sweat salty *** puddles

I mean
Goosebumps is the human kinda Braille
For hold me
I know that
Because
I can read your skin with my fingertips
Every chill
Every pock mark
And scar
Has a translation

And If I were a louse
Or a flea
Or a lone cricket
Chirping cuddle-bug morse code
In the silence of your naptime
I’d take the time
To translate the language of your body

All you have to do
Is hold me

the first thing I notice is the jetty
the waves littered with little feet and bouncing foam and
bobbing buoys of women, two of which
call me to remove my boots
and let water lick clean
old clammy toes

but I walk out on the jetty
past the rock where scuttling children fear their mothers will forget them
past the crop of young fishermen, smiling between tides of beer and
counting the fish they have yet to catch by the worms they have
in their new tackle boxes

past an empty can of Budweiser

past an old bucket of bait that even the gulls wont touch

deeper into the bird **** that paints this rock thumb
pock marked with bowls of orange soup-
carapace and minnow bones

denying a smoke in favor of the ocean’s oyster breath

trading the cooling molten gold of a California beach
for something I was sure would only be found
where this putrid jetty purged into the sea

and I was close

even as you drove me home
I couldn’t forgive you for following me there

I contemplate my choices - up into the soft, pillowy dunes covered in seagrass, into the rough brush beyond, down to the slippery water rocks. I walk along it all, past the rocks pock-marked like skulls, that I place precariously on the spindly end of a gnarled, whitewashed log that I foot. I pass pieces of wood petrified in the sand like emerging snakes, spiny, drowning spiders. The sand is chalked clay, clumps creating mini Stone Henges where deer prints have broken it. In the distance are fragile lines of birds that sound like howling wolves. I look out over the water, the sea that wiggles between my toes and spans the horizon all at once. The water laps at my thoughts and in between breathes I hear my cousin calling me. I turn towards her hungover dreamless nap, but still I hear the sea, refreshing my mind and the sun cleansing and lifting me up into the very sky. My feet break the salt-cracked sand back. The path I took before breaks out and unfolds before me like a red carpet on tracing paper and I avoid every step like it would break my mother's back.

In Neverland - never to grow old
never to marry that sweetheart
never to have children and grandchildren
nor watch hair thin and grey.

Full of derring-do - more dash than discipline
lanky and loose-limbed they swank and saunter
not like soldiers at all
no doff the cap humility
to the old rules and distant monarchies.

From a newly stolen world
hardly secured or steady with itself
lodged on the edge of a vast continent
clinging to a rim of turquoise blue.

Now cramped
in the pock-holed sores of ancient lands
richly bone-dusted from time to time.

Waiting for the fight to end
to go ‘back home’ ‘over there’
to farms and factories; schools and stations.

Still there - left behind
in the archipelago of cemeteries
as far as Fromelles, Pozieres,
to Bullencourt and Paschendaele
in fields of beetroot and corn,
fields bleeding red with poppies
beside the Menin Road at Ypres
in bluebelled woods of Verdun
in the silt of the Somme
on the plains of Flanders
in the victory graves at Amiens


Monash’s boys - the lost boys
cried for their mothers
begged for water
screamed to die
hung like khaki bundles on the wire.

Commanded by Field Marshalls
who never went to the fields,
who played the numbers game
in a war of bluff and bluster,
who never touched the dirt and slime,
nor waded through the ****** slush
of broken men and boys,
never waist-deep in mud and sinking,
wounded and drowning in that shambles of a war

Wearing dead men’s boots
and shrapnel-holed helmets
tunics and leggings splattered and rotting
with dead men’s blood and brains

Some haunted boys came home
knapsacks full of secret pictures,
old rusty tins crammed with suffering
breast pockets held their grief
wrapped in shroud-shreds.

They brought their duckboard demons
to the world of peace
Gas-choked fretful lungs still brought
the caustic fumes with every breath exhaled
and from every pore the death-sweat of decay.

But most boys were lost boys
lost forever in that no-man’s land
that Neverland of lives unlived.


© M.L.Emmett

Where are we, Kaya?  
                               

Landscapes pock like amanita muscaria, fly agaria
the long-legged mushrooms, scarlet
and foot-cloven
and languages rage and quicken like seeds

Seated at the empty table
bloated from unrequited intentions
we refrain from embrasures

Your Garingau voice &  throaty laugh
ripple over our eyes
Ha liya youn dabib?
You ask: Where
are we
going?

from here, with Lighthouse Caye in sight
on this sea of blighted corals beyond Seine Bight

where you were born as a footling--
inked though it became-- sole dark, Soul bright
emerging from the long dive
talismans training in your toothless mouth
foretelling the deeper plunges

off Billy Hawk Caye at Solstice
soulfully spearing our Sole--food without strife

And there is richer fare
where
we
are
going
into the night Kaya.

~ Lin Ostler
December 23. 2011
all rights reserved

At harbour’s entrance, a mile or more away
beyond high water, hunkered down
the old Quarantine station
on a flat patch of land
etched from the tangles of coastal heath.

The Barrack buildings besieged
by brooding sky and sea
and choking landscape – bush
thickets clambering the steep isthmus
backdrop of granite tor.

Chaotic angled peaks everywhere
indecisive stony sentinels
offering no certainty in the grey cloud
chiffonade of morning.
Slow, lingering clouds
wandering in confused circles
or passing over, casually
bringing squalls and showers.

Washing the pock-picked stone
to glistening newness of a palette
of fresh browns – tan, taupe, fox-brown
chestnut to black murky sludge
as if recently erupted
from earth’s muddy tender skin.

A cluster of cottages
a settlement of sorts with cannon ports
and flagpole and a fenced graveyard
still telling stories of pathos
pity and waste filling this place
with a strange, pressing silence
an atmospheric numbness felt
in dread and gravity.

© M.L.Emmett

I am dead,
but do not weep for me.

Save your false tears and shallow platitudes for these:

the dispossessed that walk your streets
homeless and lost
hands held out for some morsel of change
or maybe just a kindly word
or a glance of recognition.

Save your false tears and shallow platitudes for these:

emaciated waifs
clinging to the tattered robes
of their mother
flies buzzing round the fetid sores
that pock their melancholy faces

Save your false tears and shallow platitudes for these:

pathetic souls that huddle
in the rubble of their homes
scratching at the ruins in vain hope
of finding those lost in the onslaught of
Nature's wrath

Save your false tears and shallow platitudes for these:

the lost children
who will search in vain
for those nurturing hands
and soothing words
gone in a hail of lead
scattered in a blast of revenge
to splatter the faces of these innocent ones

Save your false tears and shallow platitudes for these:

your regrets
your mistakes
your knowledge
that you stood by and allowed
these assaults on humanity to continue
day upon day
life upon life

I am dead
so will you be
and ask yourself now
who will weep for you?

Not these.

She is blue raspberry slushee tongue
Meets feminist rant.

She is Moon Pie wrapper personified.
She is purple lipstick stains on wine glasses
Filled to the brim with cranberry juice.
She is three cats, one bed.

She is a scratch in your favorite record during your favorite song.
She is bubblegum bubble pop,
She is the definition of hypochondriac.

Curiosity didn’t **** her,
She killed curiosity.

She is dry heaving into the toilet bowl,
Claw marks on the inside of her stomach.
She is naproxen sodium
Swirling down throat,
Gagging up bullet sized pills.

She is the other side of unrequited.

She is no ones favorite poem.
She is her own favorite poem.

She is perpetual headache.
She is screaming for justice.
She is the jersey devil episode of the X-Files,
In other words,
She is a hot mess.

She is nature walks cut short due to laziness.
She is laziness.
She is lay in bed all day,
Drown in the sheets.
She is too many books, not enough time.

She is funeral song at a wedding.
She is dethorned rose, declawed cat.
She is waking the dead.

She is a renaissance painting come to life.
Botticelli would cry if he saw her,
His Venus,
Splashing in the water.

She is Jezebel mourning Ahab.
She is Jezebel being eaten alive.

She is ankle deep dimple.
She is never could quite get the words out.
She is lip bite, blood drip.
She is covered in bruises and she likes it.

She is listerine flavored whiskey,
She is a shot glass of formaldehyde.

She is an oak tree,
Thats what her sister tells her.

She is the x on the back of an 18 year olds hand.
She is conspiracy theory.
She is playing possum.

She is change the subject.
She is cry when being yelled at,
Cry when no one is looking,
Cry when everyone is looking,
Cry because theres nothing else to do.

She is leather jacket in july.
She is crop top and mini skirt.
She is lullaby.
She is dancing to the Law and Order theme song.
She is 8,000 tweets.

She is see how long she can go without talking.
She is goes so long without talking
That now she can’t talk.
She is novocaine needle pock mark.

She is her own mythology,
Her own god.
She is fire breathing dragon.
She is knocking on god’s door
Until blood erupts from her knuckles.
She is asking why.
She is Persephone feasting on pomegranate seeds.

She is two siblings in the hospital.
She is “call if you don’t feel right”.
She is disassociative personality disorder,
At least thats what she’s convinced she is.

She is anxious laughter,
Anxious smile.
She is sewing her lips shut.

She is only 11 Instagram likes.
She is learning to love herself with the lights on.
She is sleep to much,
Sleep too little.
She is curl on cheekbone.
She is protruding rib bone.
She is hip bones cutting glass.

She is Lilith saying no.
She is leading the serpent to the garden.

She is vegetarian on moral grounds.
She is not telling her doctor she is a vegetarian
Because what if its bad for her?

She is fate and destiny making out under the bleachers.
She is making nooses out of ****** strings.
She is choke on your own saliva.
She is burnt tongue tip.
She is puking in the parking lot of her dentist’s office.
She is a 1997 themed mixtape.

She is a stanza curving like a lovers back.
She is chapped lips.
She is brick through the window.
She is suffocating on suburban ideals.

She is Anne Sextons ***** bottle.
She is Maya Angelou’s silence.
She is Lucien Carr’s ****** knife.
She is Sylvia Plath’s last manuscript before
She stuck her head in the oven.

She is three am,
Get out of bed.
She is snow in september.

She is poetry.
She is poet.
She is music in fingertips,
Songs molded from simile.
She is metaphor flavored kisses
And a witchcraft tongue.

She is a girl crafted of stories.
A collection of make believe.
She is breathing passion.
She is daughter of nothing,
Lover of everything.
She is afraid of scorpions.
She is the venom.

She is a violin heart screeching out its last note.