My sister once told me
There was an immortal jellyfish
Turritopsis dohrnii,
Its Latin name if I recall it correctly.
They revert back to their polyp stage.
Their lives beginning all over
I often think to myself
Wouldn’t that be nice
To have the power of the jellyfish

A new life from beginning to end

To have learned from my past
To make it all last
To start anew
To let go grudges, and try something new
To jump off a plane
To go to the show
To date a boy, I barely know
To a spontaneous trip to the coast
To  say goodbye to who I loved most
To make mistakes I never did
Knowing that I could start again.

Preforations percolated
by heavy waves in the salty sea
Hard exterior coral wins,
protects the lives inside of me
Friends with dorsal fins
and my polyp soul

There are sketches on the walls of men and women and ducks,
and outside a large green bus swerves through traffic like
insanity sprung from a waving line; Turgenev, Turgenev,
says the radio, and Jane Austin, Jane Austin, too.
"I am going to do her portrait on the 28th, while you are
at work."
He is just this edge of fat and he walks constantly, he
fritters; they have him; they are eating him hollow like
a webbed fly, and his eyes are red-suckled with anger-fear.
He feels hatred and discard of the world, sharper than
his razor, and his gut-feel hangs like a wet polyp; and he
self-decisions himself defeated trying to shake his
hung beard from razor in water (like life), not warm enough.
Daumier. Rue Transonian, le 15 Avril, 1843. (lithograph.)
Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale.
"She has a face unlike that of any woman I have ever known."
"What is it? A love affair?"
"Silly. I can't love a woman. Besides, she's pregnant."
I can paint- a flower eaten by a snake; that sunlight is a
lie; and that markets smell of shoes and naked boys clothed,
and that under everything some river, some beat, some twist that
clambers along the edge of my temple and bites nip-dizzy. . .
men drive cars and paint their houses,
but they are mad; men sit in barber chairs; buy hats.
Corot. Recollection of Mortefontaine.
Paris, Louvre.
"I must write Kaiser, though I think he's a homosexual."
"Are you still reading Freud?"
"Page 299."
She made a little hat and he fastened two snaps under one
arm, reaching up from the bed like a long feeler from the
snail, and she went to church, and he thought now I h've
time and the dog.
About church: the trouble with a mask is it
never changes.
So rude the flowers that grow and do not grow beautiful.
So magic the chair on the patio that does not hold legs
and belly and arm and neck and mouth that bites into the
wind like the ned of a tunnel.
He turned in bed and thought: I am searching for some
segment in the air. It floats about the peoples heads.
When it rains on the trees it sits between the branches
warmer and more blood-real than the dove.
Orozco. Christ Destroying the Cross.
Hanover, Dartmouth College, Baker Library.
He burned away in his sleep.

I

The city is in decay -
Has been since it sprouted from the earth like a sapling,
Will be for as long as it still stands.
The only permanence is entropy.
Nature makes its bed
To unmake it.
We are eternal and mortal.
The jellyfish unbecomes itself into the polyp.

II

A millennium ago,
The ocean fell from the sky, drop by drop,
And dragons were a myth.
Dinosaurs came around
And dragons were a myth.
Humans came around
And dragons are still a myth.

If time is linear, time travel is impossible.
If it is cyclical, I have met my descendants.
If it does not exist, then I am still two and twelve and seventeen,
Young and old, a child of Schrodinger,
And eternal.

III

A cup of tea sits hot and cold.
It should one day be ice,
But not today.
Today it is full of salt.
Moses parts the Red Sea
And a motley crew of revolutionaries
Wait for tea leaves to steep in the harbor.
It is somehow simultaneous and distant all at once,
Another child of Schrodinger.
The sea rushes closed on an ocean floor
That is still made of sand.
Dragons are still a myth,
But the fish neither know nor care.

The tea goes down the drain,
And I replace the salt in the shaker with sugar,
As it should have been,
And for now, All is Well.
I walk into the adjacent room and
Immediately forget why I am there.
All is no longer Well.
The world forgot where it came from,
Mammals forgot the dinosaurs,
****** forgot he was Jewish,
And I forgot what I wanted here.
I want more tea,
But I don’t want to remember the salt.

IV

Time is short,
Born, spent, and dead in an instant,
But born and born and born again after that.
The city is in decay.
Teotihuacan was once New York.
Machu Picchu decays into the mountain again,
Venice and San Francisco will one day be underwater.
Kings held slaves when the monarchy thrived,
Nazis rose to power in their wake..
The people revolted against the crown
As their descendants march for peace, pay, and freedom.
There is no originality,
Time has proven this.
It unbecomes itself into the polyp as its feathers turn to ash
And pyramids are born in Egypt, the Americas,
In the courtyard at the Louvre.
Only time remembers when dragons were more than a myth,
And quarks became friends with each other.
One day, humans will be the myth,
And no city will stand, so no city will decay.
Tea will come in only salted flavors,
And dragons in none.
The only permanent is entropy.

clean in the filth where the spectre yelps and bleeds
my wrists; bound to betray my hand -
i gather gods, too weak to be
unloved completely -
without vanishing
into blue
what?

spotless in the hell of my blot
in the chambers of my open wound...
i glue glaciers to the sun's heel
and mark time
with shadows -
i cast into other moons  
for lack of a reason
to do otherwise.

in a world
so otherworldly

to love me less
than snails
in clarified
butter

is to play god.

but

you have to be
God's Fool
or the Devil's
yes-man

saying no.

you remark and i flinch in the breeze fantastic.
i blast past it, and return; not unscathed
but ungathered
in the Harvest of our
Misadventures.

I'm an indentured surgeon
cleaving the cancer
from the polyp
of our necessary
illusion.

in this Ocean
I'm not waving...
only drowning
in the wishful.

i barricade tsunamis
to tide-pool
the fathoms of our
fumes.

I live a breath's away from the oldest river in the world.
While I don't take much of nature in it is awe inspiring,
to be sure.
I live within the crook of the oldest mountains in our history.
Not the tallest,
nor the proudest,
but for now these ranges are growing senile within their misery.

The riverrun through it and exposes rock perhaps a billion years old.
Our oral histories, passed on legends,
scary stories and mountaineer folklore accounts for
such a small passage of time.
We built a bridge once.
It was at one time the longest single-span arch in the world.
Now it's the fourth.
Top five, and that's something for which I am proud.
The oldest river, in the world.
The oldest mountains, in the world.
The highest fatal overdose rate, in the States.

There is a beauty to be had here. Somewhat backwards, but
growing up our water was clear.
It's now choked from coal slurry.
The brain drain of young adults leaving, in much hurry,
hurts us as the ones that remain become grey and blurry.
We are living in a permanent winter and we have high roads,
that wind and curve. Dangerous when icy. veins filled with
heavy loads and nodding verve.
I live a breath's away from the oldest river in the entire world.
I can't touch Roman ruins with my hands, or
sift through the Dead Sea and float on salt above sand.
I can't touch the hill where Jesus may have died,
I don't know what it feels like to hold history as pride.
But our trees even when green have a dusty coal darkened sheen.
Summer is overgrowth from the Springtime rains.
The highest fatal overdose rate in the entire United States.

Where once we built bridges to close in the gap of travel.
We unzip black bags with rigs and object with obvious cavil.
Our industry is old, the world is moving on from coal.
For better, to be sure, but in the meantime we grow cold.
Not from lack of heat, we can boil our spoons just fine.
But we need a replacement from shaft or the mountaintop mine.
Let us worry about beauty again,
let us treat addiction with correction instead of levying it as sin.
Remove the pantomiming politician speak
of addicts or the sick as being weak.

Let's find ourselves again, West Virginia. You're the only home I've known.
Childhood summertimes sat beneath canopies of caterpillar home,
the happy baby butterflies eating leaves so more sun could shone.
Walking sticks used to play with me in my yard,
and at nighttime I'd still be outside mouth agape at the stars.
Evening meant lightning bugs and I'd capture a few in the cup of my hands.
There was a whimsy to how nature responded to us,
how bees would bumble and land,
on the dandelions whose seeds I'd spread as I blew on their white
polyp heads.
Maybe it's nostalgia and my memories are tinted rosy.
The smell of wood stoves burning in winter,
the crispness of autumn breezes felt cozy.
There was a trust held in communities, or maybe I was naïve.
Some of my friends made a choice and moved.
Others among us took a more permanent leave.
My brother, too. He himself got in a lot of trouble.
Over the cotton swab boiled to a bubble.
He died when I was young so maybe everybody is right.
It's all sentimentality and a lot of lonely nights.
But does the past being ****** up make the worsening now fine?

I live a breath's away from the oldest river and mountain range.
I live with the highest fatal overdose rate in the United States.

I went to the surgical center on Monday February 29th, 2016. A Polyp was found and removed by the surgeon from my lower esophagus. I am waiting for my voice to return and the for the doctor's report. I am planning on seeing my regular doctor tomorrow hopefully I will know more after then. I am working on perfecting listening skills while I am not able to talk and being patient while waiting for my voice to return.  
I am doing my best to be in good spirits throughout this whole situation. This too shall pass. Hope you All are doing Well and Healthy wishes to Everyone.

My brain is a nuisance serpent, a Penelope polyp that recoils, recedes when it is most needed, hides behind itself, shoots into the cavities that have become cannabinoid landmines. I am not sure which parts are mine or whether there has been growth along with the debilitation, and would those ever balance as equalization? Can I discredit myself, credit myself—or I am I one big excuse? I excuse myself as I down one more glass, the neurons glaze, my myelins quieting the electricity; chemically, can I be held responsible for any change in chemistry? Can I qualify the distance between me and who I used to be?—and I’m tired of the Zen critics denying the difference; I try to focus presently, and, oh, I find myself in eternal flowered fields, transitory serenity—servant only to my misery; and so I beg to know: why can’t I stay there? They say we’re shared in suffering, but I’m not asking for consolation! I’m asking for hope—for possibility, that one day I—we—will be consciousness, and not some drifting broken barge atop her ever-swelling sea.

A.


  drone this    day empirical
  from where we were once  the we
  rained from,    a high excursion
   which savvy the drop, weighing in, a fault

  trying to convince   the day when Sun
  embellished from the   ravine  of your hand,
  a catacomb   secured   by the  rolling
     of your  body like   a boulder   keeping
  a minute   sacred, christened an evinced noon

   that    was  your  repetitive finding.   onto
  
    a netted    frame   caught,  dripping out of
   a felt   space in    need   for graphs  to measure
        from,   a well unnamed  which  presence
          resembling  your body,  resounding
   the     fluency of    what  the  physical  ascribes    
        an   iamb    of    a crowd  inverted,  diminishing
                 and inflected in   a day's livid sigh

     housed        in  a  jar that   is  a mouth
        words   assemble    an  ikebana willing
    a     delayed     color  that  was   a   lack.
                  held   a  device  that   was    a  sky
        or   a  gleaming  face with   a high price
    claiming       a  solstitial  --  when    I  went
                   to your   home  it was   Saturday all
   week   inside  my   ribcage  chiming  worship.

   plastered   to   a  sheen all is  equal  underneath
           equatorial   tracing    a   sphere    when
     I    found  stroking   the   innards   of   a calendar
               it   is   November.     it  is   Saturday.

B.

   he   comes  from
   low  wattage this  night's  post
   a wonderful polyp
   to   begin  a
   blight
   apparently  so from a cut blackest gutter
         carrying an ample   water  virulent
             when  taken  in  and   again   in

    a  savingslight  of     metamorphosis
       climbs   vertical   so  the winged moon
              
              is    a  black  bird   in   the   blackest
       cage /  baltic  a different  fraternity
       of    land    with   the    same   pictorial

     this   lovely  stillness   calling   it  work
   a  flood   could  mean pernicious   is  blood
              brewed   from  this climate
          it   is   here  past Mandaue hillsides   dreaming
                 if place were  rumored  as  same-silent.

Isn't it crazy how one decision can change everything forever?
Like having that extra test at the doctor.
Who knew an endoscopy could be the difference between life and death?
No one was expecting anything to happen.
Just routine checkup.
This would be everything but routine.

A tiny little cancerous polyp cost half an esophagus plus part of a stomach and spleen.
Years of recovery, sleepless nights.
Feeding tubes, coughing fits, at home nurses.
Building up strength just to walk into his own home for the first time in weeks.

That tiny cancer would've spread.
On this day, we could've been mourning instead of celebrating.
Cancer took a hell of a lot from us, but look what it gave us.
My dad turned 48 today.
Without surgery, I wouldn't get the privilege of spending this birthday and many more with my dad.

Halting in the frenetic thalamus of a Monday
I recoil into my finery and fluff my mittens
just to be sure.

Outside
the wind is a yowling glamour
of crystalline shuriken.
searing into naked pink
at a typhoons pace
but with all the stalwart
nostalgia-
of a White
Christmas
you Slept
through.

I open the Door
and the air is Spring
on Laughing Gas
Like a Windmill in Don Quixote's
Fan Fiction

and all’s Well that Ends.

a kidney bean
once became lodged
deep inside
my ear canal
and i don’t think
i need to remind you
how a sweet polyp
like that
will sprout roots
among the white axons
grow throughout the squid
and drink in salvation
from the brainpan

god knows
i’ve tried what i can
even
turned to the
purgative artillery
strong medicine for sure
but
my throat muscles
only strained and expelled
a bulky stool
so gassy

and when
the shaman
sat atop me
with his covey of broken clam shells
scraped the flesh from back of
my neck

wouldn’t you know it
the beast only sneered
from the hole and spat

so i guess
i’m resigned now
to co-exist with my friend
and no
as you’ve gathered
it’s not a symbiosis

but i’ll get by

as the **** of A.C./D.C. have degenerated eclectical currents ******
I stuff my both nostrils with onion skins to obliterate feeling sneezy
My bleeding heart has been knotted, contorted & tangled dead after
finding that Frederique van der Wal works as a bouncer called Fred
My old heart's been knotted, mangled & tangled dead after learning
that Frederique van der Wal knocks heads as a bouncer named Fred
I wanna be your lesbian play-thing in ways digestively pancreatical
until I am gynecologically unfit to be your **** purely diagnostical
as from within our vulvae sprout puffy cysts fleshed pseudocystical
that swing on the periphery of benignant wens gone neoplasmatical
in Chicago slaughter houses where each & every delicious pig *****
on old concrete floors that are made no less **** by porcine *******
that pop unpropped as popped polyp polypus polypusi possibly pop
in fashion with cryptical fashion that sits slower than soles at a stop

My relationship with God is like an ulcer.
I play with it with my tongue.
At times
I bite it just to feel something
Just to feel like I’m not imagining things

One day
         It burst
A polyp
         Inside me


The salt rushed around my mouth
A piece of skin. A tag. That’s what’s left of this
Misgrowth
A bullet wound left in my cheek
And I hear god whisper tongue is cheek
“I’ll come around again”

I keep my neck below my head so that my head rests not dislocated
above Bruce Jenner's extreme estrogenetical ******* unabated
as the **** of A.C./D.C. have degenerated eclectical currents ******
I stuff my both nostrils with onion skins to obliterate feeling sneezy
My bleeding heart has been knotted, contorted & tangled dead after
finding that Frederique van der Wal works as a bouncer called Fred
My old heart's been knotted, mangled & tangled dead after learning
that Frederique van der Wal knocks heads as a bouncer named Fred
I wanna be your lesbian play-thing in ways digestively pancreatical
until I am gynecologically unfit to be your **** purely diagnostical
as from within our vulvae sprout puffy cysts fleshed pseudocystical
that swing on the periphery of benignant wens gone neoplasmatical
in Chicago slaughter houses where each & every delicious pig *****
on old concrete floors that are made no less **** by porcine *******
that pop unpropped as popped polyp polypus polypusi possibly pop
in fashion with cryptical fashion that sits slower than soles at a stop

Nothing matters now
after decimating dreams.
Will not surrender.

Polyp goes medusa.
Free swimming in my
wet eyes at dawn.

And you standing
alone will stop the worship
of rising black sun.

You're a stone like the moon
Mottled with fated freckles
Nestled in her hand, feeling the vibrations of an alien language

We're talking about what an idiot you are.
Foggy mornings, lost in thought
Pizza and ranch dressing for breakfast.
Pajama pants, dewy grass
The cream and sugar coffee palette bath,
And...
Sink.

The wide plane of stratus drifting overhead
Like the biggest, silliest hat in the universe.

You're an ape wearing fuzzy socks.
And you're best friends with a dog.
You're a polyp lost in a storm of thoughts.
You're a garden full of moss.

You're a dreamer with a purpose.
You're a singer in a band.
You're a trekker on a journey,
You're a stone inside my hand.

I keep my neck below my head so that my head rests not dislocated
above Bruce Jenner's extreme estrogenetical ******* unabated
as the **** of A.C./D.C. have degenerated eclectical currents ******
I stuff my both nostrils with onion skins to obliterate feeling sneezy
My bleeding heart has been knotted, contorted & tangled dead after
finding that Frederique van der Wal works as a bouncer called Fred
My old heart's been knotted, mangled & tangled dead after learning
that Frederique van der Wal knocks heads as a bouncer named Fred
I wanna be your lesbian play-thing in ways digestively pancreatical
until I am gynecologically unfit to be your **** purely diagnostical
as from within our vulvae sprout puffy cysts fleshed pseudocystical
that swing on the periphery of benignant wens gone neoplasmatical
in Chicago slaughter houses where each & every delicious pig *****
on old concrete floors that are made no less **** by porcine *******
that pop unpropped as popped polyp polypus polypusi possibly pop
in fashion with cryptical fashion that sits slower than soles at a stop