June 29th, 2017
It’s been 1 year, 4 months and 19 days.
For 1 year, 4 months and 19 days.
Count the acidic tree rings
Nearly 504;
Bright
A.m. eyes
On East Ferry,
in contrast of noir
I say, man;
June 29th, 2017.

It’s time to get a new calendar,
Cause I count 5,000 dollars later
and not a sense of a cent
was fined for my remorse.

I’ve been fine and fined.
Holes in my pockets
dropping seeds of change
planting fines

Into puddles
and potholes
showing deep interest
into the alignment of my car
stalling my engine with debts.

19,000 dollars and growing later;
I learned what trigger warnings cost
and ironically
I wrote a paper on it.

Don’t get me, wrong I am grateful
But, I had to rip holes
into all my jean pockets.
I mean, **** it,
I never had much going in
And I should quit smoking
My lighter is dead
Only blue and red
Sparks lived well in my mirrors
On, June 29th, 2017.


From the wall I was chained to,
I enrolled into college
My mom drove me home from my first class.
My lawyer wasn’t much of a lecturer,
He spoke math for 1,400 dollars

250 and 9 weeks.
106 a month for 52.

That’s enough math for this semester.

I drank with my night instructor on Mondays after 9,
He wanted to hear my music
We drank whiskey salted potholes on Allen
I counted his tree rings to 4/4 measure in regret;
20 years steady.

I graduated on a Tuesday morning,
I didn’t call him back to thank him for the irony.

I acknowledged our acidic rings
With glass cheered laughter
Swallowing thanks for each other’s company.
9 weeks and I don’t recall ever leaving the room.
43 went after,

And today life is that,
Paid for in lessons,
No need for pockets

I am those potholes
bumping coffee all over me
20 mins late to my first class.
I can repave them
but they won’t stay filled
It’s OK to want smoother roads to school.
I’m late but I’m here

I’m a mess.
******* would see art.
People have his eyes on me.
I want to be framed and splattered
on the walls of your home
A household mess .
It’s OK to have a passion.

Look into my tree rings
How old am I?
Its restorative to count
27 rings of rebirth
Look at me still growing
I believe I can grow in Paradise-lost fire
Or in Buffalo salt

I am my flaws
I counted them

My alcohol abuse,
One beat of 2,653 in 2017
I don’t know how to put an apology
On a music sheet.


The Jazz fills my potholes in the morning
before these hallways

My grey area is stained glass in Villas library,
Each step is eclectic
From shoe up and over is stand still art

Lighters flash cigarettes burning
But prints pictures of thankful new memories

With all of you in it.
Thank you for helping me with today’s date.

Bouazizi’s heavy eyelids parted as the Muezzin recited the final call for the first Adhan of the day.

“As-salatu Khayrun Minan-nawm”
Prayer is better than sleep

Rising from the torment of another restless night, Bouazizi wiped the sleep from his droopy eyes as his feet touched the cold stone floor.

Throughout the frigid night, the devilish jinn did their work, eagerly jabbing away at Bouazizi with pointed sticks, tormenting his troubled conscience with the worry of his nagging indebtedness. All night the face of the man Bouazizi owed money to haunted him. Bouazizi could see the man’s greasy lips and brown teeth jawing away, inches from his face. He imagined chubby caffeine stained fingers reaching toward him to grab some dinars from Bouazizi’s money box.

Bouazizi turned all night like he was sleeping on a board of spikes. His prayers for a restful night again went unanswered. The pall of a blue fatigue would shadow Bouazizi for most of the day.

Bouazizi’s weariness was compounded by a gnawing hunger. By force of habit, he grudgingly opened the food cupboard with the foreknowledge that it was almost bare. Bouazizi’s premonition proved correct as he surveyed a meager handful of chickpeas, some eggs and a few sparse loaves. It was just enough to feed his dependant family; younger brothers and sisters, cousins and a terminally disabled uncle. That left nothing for Bouazizi but a quick jab to his empty gut. He would start this day without breakfast.

Bouazizi made a living as a street vendor. He hustles to survive. Bouazizi’s father died in a construction accident in Libya when he was three. Since the age of 10, Bouazizi had pushed a cart through the streets of Sidi Bouzid; selling fruit at the public market just a few blocks from the home that he has lived in for almost his entire life.

At 27 years of age, Bouazizi has wrestled the beast of deprivation since his birth. To date, he has bravely fought it to a standstill; but day after day the multi-headed hydra of life has snapped at him. He has squarely met the eyes of the beast with fortitude and resolve; but the sharp fangs of a hardscrabble life has sunken deep into Bouazizi’s spleen. The unjust rules of society are powerful claws that slash away at his flesh, bleeding him dry: while the spiked tendrils of poverty wrap Bouazizi’s neck, seeking to strangle him.

Bouazizi is a workingman hero; a skilled warrior in the fight for daily bread. He is accustomed to living a life of scarcity. His daily deliverance is the grace of another day of labor and the blessed wages of subsistence.

Though Allah has blessed this man with fortitude the acuteness of terminal want and the constant struggle to survive has its limits for any man; even for strong champions like Bouazizi.

This morning as Bouazizi washed he peered into a mirror, closely examining new wrinkles on his stubble strewn face. He fingered his deep black curls dashed with growing streaks of gray. He studied them through the gaze of heavy bloodshot eyes. He looked upward as if to implore Allah to salve the bruises of daily life.

Bouazizi braced himself with the splash of a cold water slap to his face. He wiped his cheeks clean with the tail of his shirt. He dipped his toothbrush into a box of baking powder and scoured an aching back molar in need of a root canal. Bouazizi should see a dentist but it is a luxury he cannot afford so he packed an aspirin on top of the infected tooth. The dissolving aspirin invaded his mouth coating his tongue with a bitter effervescence.

Bouazizi liked the taste and was grateful for the expectation of a dulled pain. He smiled into the mirror to check his chipped front tooth while pinching a cigarette **** from an ashtray. The roach had one hit left in it. He lit it with a long hard drag that consumed a good part of the filter. Bouazizi’s first smoke of the day was more filter then tobacco but it shocked his lungs into the coughing flow of another day.

Bouazizi put on his jacket, slipped into his knockoff NB sneakers and reached for a green apple on a nearby table. He took a big bite and began to chew away the pain of his toothache.

Bouazizi stepped into the street to catch the sun rising over the rooftops. He believed that seeing the sunrise was a good omen that augured well for that day’s business. A sunbeam braking over a far distant wall bathed Bouazizi in a golden light and illumined the alley where he parked his cart holding his remaining stock of week old apples. He lifted the handles and backed his cart out into the street being extra mindful of the cracks in the cobblestone road. Bouazizi sprained his ankle a week ago and it was still tender. Bouazizi had to be careful not to aggravate it with a careless step. Having successfully navigated his cart into the road, Bouazizi made a skillful U Turn and headed up the street limping toward the market.

A winter chill gripped Bouazizi prompting him to zip his jacket up to his neck. The zipper pinched his Adam’s Apple and a few droplets of blood stained his green corduroy jacket. Though it was cold, Bouazizi sensed that spring would arrive early this year triggering a replay of a recurring daydream. Bouazizi imagined himself behind the wheel of a new van on his way to the market. Fresh air and sunshine pouring through the open windows with the cargo space overflowing with fresh vegetables and fruits.

It was a lifelong ambition of Bouazizi to own a van. He dreamed of buying a six cylinder Dodge Caravan. It would be painted red and he would call it The Red Flame. The Red Flame would be fast and powerful and sport chrome spinners. The Red Flame would be filled with music from a Blaupunkt sound system with kick *** speakers. Power windows, air conditioning, leather seats, a moonroof and plenty of space in the back for his produce would complete Bouazizi’s ride.

The Red Flame would be the vehicle Bouazizi required to expand his business beyond the market square. Bouazizi would sell his produce out of the back of the van, moving from neighborhood to neighborhood. No longer would he have to wait for customers to come to his stand in the market. Bouazizi would go to his customers. Bouazizi and the Red Flame would be known in all the neighborhoods throughout the district. Bouazizi shook his head and smiled thinking about all the girls who would like to take rides in the Red Flame. Bouazizi and his Red Flame would be a sight to be noticed and a force to be reckoned with.

“EEEEEYOWWW” a Mercedes horn angrily honked; jarring Bouazizi from the reverie of his daydream. A guy whipping around the corner like a silver streak stuck his head out the window blasting with music yelling, “Hey Mnayek, watch where you push that *******.”

The music faded as the Mercedes roared away. “Barra nikk okhtek” Bouazizi yelled, raising his ******* in the direction of the vanished car. “The big guys in the fancy cars think the road belongs to them”, Bouazizi mumbled to himself.

The insult ****** Bouazizi off, but he was accustomed to them and as he limped along pushing his cart he distracted himself with the amusement of the ascending sun chasing the fleeting shadows of the night, sending them scurrying down narrow alleyways.

Bouazizi imaged himself a character from his favorite movie. He was a giant Transformer, chasing the black shadows of evil away from the city into the desert. After battling evil and conquering the bad guys, he would transform himself back into the regular Bouazizi; selling his produce to the people as he patrolled the highways of Tunisia in the Red Flame, the music blasting out the windows, the chrome spinners flashing in the sunlight. Bouazizi would remain vigilant, always ready to transform the Red Flame to fight the evil doers.

The bumps and potholes in the road jostled Bouazizi’s load of apples. A few fell out of the wooden baskets and were rolling around in the open spaces of the cart. Bouazizi didn’t want to risk bruising them. Damaged merchandise can’t be sold so he was careful to secure his goods and arrange his cart to appeal to women customers. He made sure to display his prized electronic scale in the corner of the cart for all to see.

Bouazizi had a reputation as a fair and generous dealer who always gave good value to his customers. Bouazizi was also known for his kindness. He would give apples to hungry children and families who could not pay. Bouazizi knew the pain of hunger and it brought him great satisfaction to be able to alleviate it in others.

As a man who valued fairness, Bouazizi was particularly proud of his electronic scale. Bouazizi was certain the new measuring device assured all customers that Bouazizi sold just and correct portions. The electronic scale was Bouazizi’s shining lamp. He trusted it. He hung it from the corner post of his cart like it was the beacon of a lighthouse guiding shoppers through the treachery of an unscrupulous market. It would attract all customers who valued fairness to the safe harbor of Bouazizi’s cart.

The electronic scale is Bouazizi’s assurance to his customers that the weights and measures of electronic calculation layed beyond any cloud of doubt. It is a fair, impartial and objective arbiter for any dispute.

Bouazizi believed that the fairness of his scale would distinguish his stand from other produce vendors. Though its purchase put Bouazizi into deep debt, the scale was a source of pride for Bouazizi who believed that it would help his profits to increase and help him to achieve his goal of buying the Red Flame.

As Bouazizi pushed his cart toward the market, he mulled his plan over in his mind for the millionth time. He wasn't great in math but he was able to calculate his financial situation with a degree of precision. His estimations triggered worries that his growing debt to money lenders may be difficult to payoff.

Indebtedness pressed down on Bouazizi’s chest like a mounting pile of stones. It was the source of an ever present fear coercing Bouazizi to live in a constant state of anxiety. His business needed to grow for Bouazizi to get a measure of relief and ultimately prosper from all his hard work. Bouazizi was driven by urgency.

The morning roil of the street was coming alive. Bouazizi quickened his step to secure a good location for his cart at the market. Car horns, the spewing diesel from clunking trucks, the flatulent roar of accelerating buses mixed with the laughs and shrieks of children heading to school composed the rising crescendo of the city square.

As he pushed through the market, Bouazizi inhaled the aromatic eddies of roasting coffee floating on the air. It was a pleasantry Bouazizi looked forward to each morning. The delicious wafts of coffee mingling with the crisp aroma of baking bread instigated a growl from Bouazizi’s empty stomach. He needed to get something to eat. After he got money from his first sale he would by a coffee and some fried dough.

Activity in the market was vigorous, punctuated by the usual arguments of petty territorial disputes between vendors. The disagreements were always amicably resolved, burned away in rising billows of roasting meats and vegetables, the exchange of cigarettes and the plumes of tobacco smoke rising as emanations of peace.

Bouazizi skillfully maneuvered his cart through the market commotion. He slid into his usual space between Aaban and Aameen. His good friend Aaban sold candles, incense, oils and sometimes his wife would make cakes to sell. Aameen was the markets most notorious jokester. He sold hardware and just about anything else he could get his hands on.

Aaban was already burning a few sticks of jasmine incense. It helped to attract customers. The aroma defined the immediate space with the pleasant bouquet of a spring garden. Bouazizi liked the smell and appreciated the increased traffic it brought to his apple cart.

“Hey Basboosa#, do you have any cigarettes?“, Aameen asked as he pulled out a lighter. Bouazizi shook the tip of a Kent from an almost empty pack. Aameen grabbed the cigarette with his lips.

“That's three cartons of Kents you owe me, you cheap *******.” Bouazizi answered half jokingly. Aameen mumbled a laugh through a grin tightly gripping the **** as he exhaled smoke from his nose like a fire breathing dragon. Bouazizi also took out a cigarette for himself.

“Aameem, give me a light”, Bouazizi asked.

Aameen tossed him the lighter.

“Keep it Basboosa. I got others.” Aameen smiled as he showed off a newly opened box of disposable lighters to sell on his stand.

“Made in China, Basboosa. They make everything cheap and colorful. I can make some money with these.”

Bouazizi lit his next to last cigarette. He inhaled deeply. The smoke chased away the cool air in Bouazizi’s lungs with a shot of a hot nicotine rush.

“Merci Aameen” Bouazizi answered. He put the lighter into the almost empty cigarette pack and put it into his hip pocket. The lighter would protect his last cigarette from being crushed.

The laughter and shouts of the bazaar, the harangue of radio voices shouting anxious verses of Imam’s exhorting the masses to submit and the piecing ramble of nondescript AM music flinging piercing unintelligible static surrounded Bouazizi and his cart as he waited for his first customers of the day.

Bouazizi sensed a nervous commotion rise along the line of vendors. A crowd of tourists and locals milling about parted as if to avoid a slithering asp making its way through their midst. The hoots of vendors and the cackle of the crowd made its way to Bouazizi’s knowing ear. He knew what was coming. It was nothing more then another shakedown by city officials acting as bagmen for petty municipal bureaucrats. They claim to be checking vendor licences but they’re just making the rounds collecting protection money from the vendors. Pocketing bribes and payoffs is the municipal authorities idea of good government. They are skilled at using the power of their office to extort tribute from the working poor.

Bouazizi made the mistake of making eye contact with Madame Hamdi. As the municipal authority in charge of vendors and taxis Madame Hamdi held sway over the lives of the street vendors. She relished the power she had over the men who make a meager living selling goods in the square; and this morning she was moving through the market like a bloodhound hot on the trail of an escaped convict. Two burly henchmen lead the way before her. Bouazizi knew Madame Hamdi’s hounds were coming for him.

Bouazizi knew he was ******. Having just made a payment to his money lender, Bouazizi had no extra dinars to grease the palm of Madame Hamdi. He grabbed the handle bars of his cart to make an escape; but Madame Hamdi cut him off and got right into into Bouazizi’s face.

“Ah little Basboosa where are you going? she asked with the tone of playful contempt.

“I suppose you still have no license to sell, ah Basboosa?” Madame Hamdi questioned with the air of a soulless inquisitor.

“You know Madame Hamdi, cart vendors do not need a license.” Bouazizi feebly protested, not daring to look into her eyes.

“Basboosa, you know we can overlook your violations with a small fine for your laxity” a dismissive Madame Hamdi offered.

Bouazizi’s sense of guilt would not permit him to lift his eyes. His head remained bowed. Bouazizi stood convicted of being one of the impoverished.

“I have no spare dinars to offer Madame Hamdi, My pockets are empty, full of holes. My money falls into everyone’s palm but my own. I’m sorry Madame Hamdi. I’ll take my cart home”. He lifted the handlebars in an attempt to escape. One of Madame Hamdi’s henchmen stepped in front of his cart while the other pushed Bouazizi away from it.

“Either you pay me a vendor tax for a license or I will confiscate your goods Basboosa”, Madame Hamdi warned as she lifted Bouazizi’s scale off its hook.

“This will be the first to go”, she said grinning as she examined the scale. “We’ll just keep this.”
Like a mother lion protecting a defenseless cub from the snapping jaws of a pack of ravenous hyenas, Bouazizi lunged to retrieve his prized scale from the clutches of Madame Hamdi. Reaching for it, he touched the scale with his fingertips just as Madame Hamdi delivered a vicious slap to Bouazizi’s cheek. It halted him like a thunderbolt from Zeus.

A henchman overturned Bouazizi’s cart, scatter

Janie pushes the metal book cart back into its parking space in the Document Delivery Department of the St. Louis Public Library and hangs the last sticky note for October 30, 2012 on the wall by the head of the department’s closed door. She retightens her brown scarf under her chin, tucking the wispy hairs above her ears back into hiding. Having your hair begin to prematurely gray as a teenager has dramatic effects on a person. Her mother wore scarves around her wrists when Janie was growing up and when Janie begin to wear scarves to conceal her salt-and-pepper hair, her mother just smiled. The clock hanging on the wall above the children’s section reads 11:28pm.
Two more minutes.
She reorganized the pens and books on her desk and set the box reading NOTES onto the right corner or her desk with three blue pens and a stack of note cards. Her coworkers learned fast that Janie does not like to talk. She does not like eye contact. She loves the silence, and never ever to ask her about her hair. Her manager gave her the NOTES box after about a month of horrible miscommunication and everyday it fills with requests for books or tasks that Janie has to complete. She completes the tasks one by one, alone, in her back office in the Reference Department and hangs the completed sticky notes on the wall by her manager’s door. She works the night shift and locks the library up every night. When she’s alone she can talk out loud to herself and those are the only voices she cares to hear.
“Goodnight, books. Good night, rooms.” Janie shut the heavy wooden door to the library, placed the color-coded keys in the front right pocket of her jacket, and began her walk to the bus stop one corner away. She avoids the main road, taking her first right onto a side street that she knows would spit her out right beside the bus stop.
“Goodnight Taco Bell Sign. Goodnight Rite-Aide. Goodnight Westside Apartments. Goodnight Jack-o-Lantern smile.” She stopped in the middle of the alley and peered up at the Jack-o-Lantern grinning down at her from the third story window above. “Mother wouldn’t’ve liked your smirk, Jack. She would’ve slapped that **** right off your face.” Janie, satisfied the pumpkin was put in its rightful place, smiled as she trotted on.
“Mother carved smiles into her arms and that’s why Daddy left, it is, it is.” She kicked at a crushed Mountain Dew can as she remembered that night from years ago.

“Mommy?” Janie pushed opened the door to her mother’s bedroom and saw the moving-boxes torn open and all their contents scattered across the floor. She tiptoed through piles of scarves and silverware and corkscrews until she reached the bathroom in her mom’s room.
“Come to us like rain, oh lord, come and stay and sting a while more, oh lord…” her mother’s voice was slipping off the tiled bathroom walls. Janie pushed open the door and saw the blood for the first time pouring from her mother’s wrist. Her mother was naked and perched on the bathroom sink, singing to a red razor blade.
“Mommy?”
“GET OUT!” Her mother jumped from the counter and perched on all fours on the floor. She began to growl and speak in a voice too deep to be coming from her own throat.
“Mommy! It’s Janie!” She began to cry as her mother, still naked and bleeding, twisted and writhed onto her back and began to crawl towards the door that Janie hid behind.


“Thirty-Three percent, dear. Just a thirty-three percent chance.” She shivered trying to clear the last memory of her mother with the words that all the shrinks had echoed to her over the years. “Schizophrenia is directly related to genetics, little is known about the type of Schizophrenia mother was diagnosed with except that it is definitely passed on genetically. But, there is only a thirty-three percent chance you could have it, dear. Thirty-three percent.” The sound of the bus stop ahead reminds her it is time to be silent again.
“Disorganized Schizophrenia.” She mouthed to herself as she stepped back out onto the busy street from her alleyway. She tightened her scarf and saw the bus pull into the pickup spot. She walked forward to the bus, again immersed in her self-imposed silence.
Stepping out of the February cold, Janie removes her wool scarf as the bus doors close behind her.
“Where to baby?” The driver smiles a sticky smile. Her nametag reads, “Shannon” and has a decaying Hello-Kitty sticker in the bottom left corner.
“The Clinton Street drop.” She hands the driver her $2.50 fare and avoids the woman’s questioning eyes. The night drivers are always more talkative, curious.
“Your ticket hon.” She tears Janie a ticket stub. “Everything is pretty dead this late, I’ll have you there in ten minutes top.”
Janie begins to shuffle towards the seats, ignoring the woman.
“You mind if I crank up the music?” The bus driver asks, purple fingernails scratching in her thick blonde hair. “I need to keep my eyes open and blood flowing and music is my fire of choice you know?”
“Sure.” Janie shrugs her bag onto her shoulder and walks on before the woman can say anything else.
“Route E-2, homebound.” Shannon’s voice crackles over the loudspeaker.
She shuffles down the bus towards her usual seat; second from the back right side.  Shannon starts the bus rolling before she reaches her seat and Janie can hear her singing along to “Summertime” by Janis Joplin. The bus floor, today, is sticky because of the morning rain. Two years of riding public transportation has taught Janie that staring at the floor as she walks to her seat is better than the risk of making eye contact. The bus is usually empty this late but if there ever happens to be anyone else on, it’s better not to converse. Safer that way.
She plops into her seat filling the indention that ghosts of past passengers left. The seat is still warm and Janie squirms around until the stranger heat is forgotten. She tightens her scarf and sighs. The brown pleather seatback in front of her is peeling towards the top. Janie leans forward and idly picks at the scab-like dangles of brown as she watches the sodden city canvas roll past her out the foggy window. As she picks, the hole grows. She twists and digs her unpainted nails into the seat until her hands feel wet, warm. Looking down, they are covered in blood and mud.
“What. The. Actual. ****.” she whispers, wiping her hands on her pants leg. She cautiously picks off another piece of pleather and a trickle of deep red begins to run from the seat back, clumps of mud now falling onto her knees. A puddle of blood and mire splatter down her legs and pool around her feet as she picks at the seat. Her white tights are definitely beyond saving now, so she digs faster until her thumbnail catches on something, bends back, and cracks. She gasps and withdraws her shaking hand, watching her own blood mix with the clotting muck in the seat, half of her thumbnail completely stripped off.
Looking around, all else seems normal. The driver is now muttering along to some banter by Kanye West, completely unaware of Janie’s predicament. She closes her eyes.
This is a dream, this is a dream, wake the **** up.
She opens her eyes to see the pool of filth around her feet trickling towards the front of the bus. Panic sets in with a whisper, They’re going to think it was you, your fault, you’ll be thrown in jail.
“But I didn’t do this.” She lashes out to herself. “I didn’t hurt anyone.”
Next stop, E-2. Shannon blares on the intercom.
“It’s just a dream, get your **** together, Janie.” She laughs at herself, manic.
Prove it! Her subconscious screams.
Convinced to end this moment she has to continue; Janie plunges her hand into the pleather grave one more time. Frantic and confused she laughs as she digs, spittle of muck splashing on her bus window.
Faster, faster, faster.
Deeper, deeper, deeper.
Realer, realer, real.
Wake up, now!
Then, as the bus slows, one last chuck of mud splatters to the floor and Janie sees a pink piece of her thumbnail stabbed into the white of a bone in the bottom of the seatback pit. Her white Ked’s were becoming so red they were almost black. She pulls her knees up to her chest and begins to rock back and forth. Clenching shut her eyes she begins to hum. Janie’s sweet soprano harmonizes with the buses deep droning purr, their wet melody interweaving with the driver’s alto and Lil Wayne’s screech made her feel dizzy as the bus turned right.
She take my money when I'm in need
Yeah she's a trifling friend indeed
Oh she's a gold digger way over town
That dig's on me
The bus slows to a stop and the bass is shaking. Janie is cold. She slowly peeks out of her right eye, expecting to be instantly immersed into the same dismal scene. The seatback is whole again. Releasing her knees, her feet fall back to the floor and her shaking fingers stroke the solid pleather.

“Ma’am? We’re at the Clinton Drop.”
Janie hurriedly picks up her bag and flees down the aisle to the bus doors.
“Everything alright, dear?” The bus driver asks, smiling.
“Fine, just fine.”
“You be safe out there tonight. The night is dark and only ghouls stroll the streets this late.”  Shannon laughed as Janie’s jaw dropped. “Happy Halloween, dear. It’s midnight, today is October 31st.”
The bus doors opened and a cold wind ****** the warm bot-air surrounding Janie into the streets. She begrudgingly followed, her mind spinning as she stepped onto the pavement. The doors slammed behind her and she turned to see Shannon pull out a tube of lipstick and smear it, red, across her cracked lips. Shannon made a duck-face in the mirror and reached down to crank up the music as loud as it would go. The bus exhaled and rolled forward, leaving Janie behind as it splashed through the potholes.
She surveys the surrounding midnight gloom and the street is quiet and dark. Even the stars are hidden behind swirling clouds. She begins to hum, hands in her pocket, and shuffle towards her apartment.
“Goodnight, stars. Goodnight, street.”
As she approaches her single-bedroom apartment, digging through her coat pocket for her keys, her thumb pulsates. She grasps the keys and pulls them out as she steps up to the apartment. Sticking the cold, silver key in the lock she looks down at her thumb and in the shadows of the porch sees half of the nail completely missing. She laughs as she pushes the door open to her bare apartment, light flooding out. Without any hesitation she closes the door behind her, sheds her clothes, and slips onto the mattress in the corner of the room gripping her thumb tight. She reaches out for the glass of milk on the floor beside her bed from the morning and it’s still cold. Nursing the milk, surrounded by blankets and solitude, she reminds herself,  “Only a thirty-three percent chance. A nice, small, round number. Small.”  
She sets down the empty glass and curls into the fetal position under the heavy blankets, pointer finger tracing circles on her thumb. Only when she has heated her blanket cocoon enough to feel safe does she remove her scarf and allow her thick white hair to fall around her face.
“Goodnight, room. Goodnight, mother,”

We didn’t bloom together the way we should have. We never eyed each other across neat soil; both self-conscious and self-righteous as we sipped the sun and, in quiet bursts, raced to touch the sky.  

We weren't planted by gentle hands in soft plots with room to stretch our limbs and shield our eyes, nor to bud in peace and thrive and find identity in both our own bold blossoms and as a pulsing piece of the whole lavish garden.

We didn't bloom because we erupted.
We running-start-swan-dived into stale dirt and were too close from the very beginning.
We didn’t sprout up straight; we snaked and lurked and left no bit of earth untouched by our vibrant, stencil **** fingers declaring ourselves alive.

By harvest we were tangled beyond repair.
By harvest I didn't know me from you and I liked it.

To be so entwined is lovely but depends on a balance
we could only begin to grasp.
To expand but not uproot requires perfect synchronicity maybe not beyond our years but certainly beyond our maturity. We spread out our emotions like tarot cards on a towel in the grass and reflected in your sunglasses I met the silent pieces of me.
In colorful, grim drawings those quiet, ugly bits floated up veins and settled under ribs.
They stayed silent. Until they began to scream.

And you and I- we didn't have the words;
not our own words that we earned and burned while stumbling across months and plains,
tripping over potholes and finding our feet quicker each time.
We had place-holders words we sang back and forth and splashed around and bathed in.
The words we spoke were profound and cardboard.
We were just reading lines, sharing identical scripts and an ache to be seen
so deep and desperate it was sinful.

We maybe shared the humid cling of regret; which hung heavy in stuck-air auditoriums,
it beaded sweat echoed, rolling down spines and turning blood to sticky wax as we whispered in the corner about the things we could say aloud while our minds never left the things we wouldn't dare.

We were mostly ill-equipped.
We joked about hurricanes
We didn't survive the first storm.

I want you to know you really hurt my feelings.
I want you to know you're the first guy I've given my feelings to hurt.
I want you to know I was terrible towards the end.
And I know that. But you gave up on me

You gave up on me at the exact moment I was giving up on myself.
Even as my tongue stung metallic and veins pulsed so hot and loud
through my eardrum that I felt I would explode- it was clean.
It was all remarkably clean.
and sterile.
There were no explosions.
No shattered plates, ****** knuckles or blown out voices
that scratched and rose in time with the sun.

Just a quick slash of rope-
an anchor cut loose and left to sink;
our secrets were set free to
rust over and collect algae.
We were suddenly off the hook
for any vulnerability we might have spilled
on each other in our fits of laughter
and hours of sleep.
A deep sigh of relief.
A deeper sigh of desolation.

The moment exists in sad yellow lighting that must have been added in restrospect.
I tweaked the floor of my memory too:
at that moment I was not wearing flipflops on linoleum- but sinking, slowly and barefoot, into chilly riverbed mud as it turned to ice.

I opened the door and there you stood.
You knew I had been crying and I didn’t try to hide it
it was too exhausting- running on fumes.

And I did expect something from you,
anything from you, that might dull the singed-dagger plunging
stab to my chest with each breath I gulped and spat .
I wanted anything that might reel me in from the cliffs edge
where my thoughts had carried me on horseback.

But you had nothing.
I watched your eyes swallow my swollen lips and pinched, glassy eyes
like a quick, sharp shot of warm whiskey.
Careful to avoid eye contact you slipped ‘**** this,’
under your breath and started to reach for my hand.

You started to, but then after a second suspended
you let your arm fall back to your body.
Head lowered, jaw clenched and you turned and fled with a new heaviness pushing down on your posture.
It looked painful and adult.
It looked like you finally felt the weight of our season.
And watching you go I shrank in lighter and thicker because I felt it too.

We are not going to get a happy ending-
not with each other and not right now.
Maybe not ever.
And that will have to do.
(Though I will miss your hand in mine.
I hope one day you'll remember being tangled with me and it will make you laugh before you cringe because I didn't like to be alone.)

If I wanted to be alone I would just go home.

When the snow melted
it took chunks of the road in its thaw.
Potholes sunk
where the water slurpped
away the under-soil.
Silence left with the white
now more venture outside
overstocking supplies
"we'll n'er run out again,"
one swore.
And cats are back spraying,
and dogs barking in confusion.
And the crocus buds to remind me
nothing has really changed
in all this change

There are lessons that school doesn't teach you
Some things can't be learned by sitting in an uncomfortable chair for several hours a day, tapping your pencil against a desk with your head in your hand staring blankly into space...and if you're like me you have headphones in your ears, thoughts in the clouds, feet off the ground with the touch screen of my phone at my finger tips.
One of those things you can't learn trapped in the four walls of a classroom is that life hits you, hard, in the face, like that first heartbreak...causing an unbearable ache in your chest that feels like you may be entering cardiac arrest.
Your body goes into shock and it's almost like you're in la la land for a moment with a hangover infecting your heart that no type of Advil can fix, until you realize that the person you've thought you were in love with for the past while is no longer that person...they reveal themselves by ripping off their mask of a handsome face to expose a terrifying appearance of sharp teeth and beady eyes, a monster, a liar, a cheater...a heart breaker...
Life waits for you to stand back up only to kick you back down and although you've already fallen seven times and your hearts a little bruised and tattered you stand up eight with a stubborn refusal like the ocean waves always coming back to kiss the shore line no matter how many times it's sent away.
When I was thirteen years old, my older brother taught me something that no teacher could ever have written down in their lesson plan, he said that the number one rule to being cool is to remain unphased, never admitting anything can hurt you, excite you or impress you.
I figure it's like walking through life with your arms as a shield, to protect yourself from all the unexpected miseries or hurt like heartbreak or getting fired or not getting hired. I try to walk through life with my arms and hands wide open...and yes that means catching every heartbreak and each last drop of pain life can squeeze out for me but it also means that when beautiful...amazing things just fall out of the sky...like love...I'm ready to catch them.
I may get an F on one of life's tests but that doesn't mean I can't study for the exam, the bigger picture, because failure is success when you allow yourself to learn from it and that's what I'll do, I will be as open as a book and make sure to write down all of my journeys with no details left out, highlighting the good parts but never forgetting the bad
But I'll be sure to tread carefully because life is as fragile as a bubble but I have to remember that I can't be afraid to stick my finger out and pop it if I don't like the direction it's going in and if popping that bubble means a down pour of miseries, bring it on because my hands are as strong as the suns love for the moon, so stack up my problems like books in a library and I'll read them again and again
And for each new lesson I'll show up with a backpack full of everywhere else I've been, eager to collect another souvenir like the laugh lines framing my mouth or the worry wrinkle etched into my forehead and my heart will come along for the ride, strapped in tight, prepared for all the potholes and sharp turns but there's no air bags aloud so every time we crash there's nothing coming between me and the beginning of a new lesson

You fell asleep on our way home
and left me in the company
  of Adele crooning about
   making you feel my love.
But that's all right -
You look so peaceful and lovely:

I'll just swerve to avoid the holes
         just so I didn't wake you.

Sometimes I feel nothing but love
for my country
   other times,
utter disgust.

Tonight it was the latter
and as I drove I couldn't help
but curse
my government
  for not using my tax money
    to fill the potholes with more cement.

If we are supposed to take the road least traveled, then, why does mine have so many **** potholes?

This isn't him,
This can't be the face he's left here,
This isn't the face he's used to seeing,
Solidified in the mirror.
It can't be the current one,
Or even close,
It's not at all how he recalls from the ponds he's known.
Not the one admired,
On crystal clear days,
Or the one sang with,
Through some humming nights.
Maybe his memory is just fogged up,
Maybe this reflection is just blurry from the showers,
They'd have burned others skin.
Still this can't be the face.
Not with the potholes for eyes,
Waning moons for lips,
And cliches for brains.
Or maybe things,
Maybe they do just change,
Maybe sometimes somethings sink in the earthquakes,
And are never swam in again.
Maybe sometimes there's no hope for reversal, redemption,
Or some rectifying light to right what's left,
Only hope in surviving the new.
I guess that's all there ever was.
If only he had it sooner,
He would have thrived in the old world,
Found melodies in the days and more mirror-less memories for the nights.
Only then could things be better off,
Different.

There once was a Fairy
Who lived in a magical world
Her sweet name was Mary
And she loved to be held

She loved to watch the stars
Twinkle brightly at night
Even though afar
They were a great sight

She watched the dusky sun
Rise early every morning
Whilst the birds would have fun
And humans were yawning

She skipped over lakes
Making the lake waters laugh
And fishes would wake
And give Mary a jacuzzi bath

She flew with Butterflies
And Dragonflies too
They ate custard pies
And egg foo foo

She made her own dress
From red autumn leaves
She was nicknamed The Best'
By all the lovely trees

She wore spaghetti hoops
In her long golden hair
And jumped through potholes loops
To explore natures flair

She'd slide down mountains
Rainbows as well
She brewed coffee in fountains
And rang a lunch time forest bell **

The new day still saw the man
Whose livelihood was rubber.
He had worked really hard; earning his darkened tan,
He was the plantation's tapper.

The evening sun had long set
Leaving the plantation in a shroud of darkness.
Relying on what little light the moon would let.
He treaded carefully; sidestepping potholes and jutting buttress.

His sack slung over one shoulder,
He found his way to his trusty ride.
Nightly routine he would execute over and over
Mounted his bicycle and rode off with the moon as guide.

All day long, he had been thinking of the night before.
He had then learnt that he was the target of a ghostly trick.
As he cycled, he got worked up, more and more...
He cursed the spirit who had made him the fool so quick!

As he looked ahead, straining his eyes to discern the sandy track.
His eyes caught something that came within sight.
Standing by the side against a background of black.
There she was again...all garbed in white...

The inaugural bang swiveled with the vacant expressions of a muted feral crowd indignant about ethnic identity and swift in the recourse of tyrannical thugs pandering withered abuse

I solemnly abided in a chirpy itinerant glower against the exclusive system for stranding the disintegration of lyrical integrity for the Potemkin cheers of the culmination of too many jeers

Withered words for the abeyance of silence I incurred with wistful pleas for resurgent clarity beyond   sheepish fears

So I loitered in the evanescence of words..

Watching with alacrity as the strident ignorance of grafted wretchedness writhed its last mustered exsibilation at the sound of windbags bloviating beyond prodigal extravagance without a visible tweeted word

I measured my pause…..as I considered the heft of poignant exposures to a dismal serenade of miscegenated politics and garbled breaths of wheezy mendicants seeking participation in the trophy of smothered compliance

But I marveled simultaneously at the extinction of the shriveled crowds as they sized up the minutiae of wastrels glamorously inviting a frozen recapitulation of sorrows borrowed and wasted on minced platitudes that swindle still the votive confidence of regimented sympathy pretending empathy for soured hearts professedly defiant at their bereaved will

My pulse I clocked at 120 as I wondered where on earth the 140s and 150s have frittered their patience on with such brazen alacrity for the garish snarl of a sojourn into the ineffable effrontery of aureate mutiny against the tyrant of deaf spoon-fed indignation without the luxury of shared ignominy of memorable cadence for frippery in sparse blurbs registered in braille rather than brawn

Then I remembered my vociferous persnickety temperament and the curdled hatred of procrustean swan songs to an etiolating standard of ethical entanglement in aloof issues delivered with a decisive swoon too swift in earnestness to outfox with a quipped rebuff or a calculus of classical spoof

Then I wondered with a problematic but inherent prolixity…..
I too could adorn the adoring moon with a lyrical lampoon geared for a clockwork punchline or a winsome rebarbative tune….OR…. enchant with an incisive acerbic rant about how pasquinades outstay their welcome because of the clambered insistence of happenstance years ago in a blinkered mirror but never rehashed too soon

But where would affection heap its laurels if I dared to swindle the spotlight away from frisky poetasters who proved a renegade inspiration for fluttered triumph in a seaside tragedy only the crestfallen waves of pestilent Idiocracy could steal from my outstretched tenacity in verse and verve

Boom went a fulmination of hatred at my labored words! And then I swerved to avoid potholes of tenuous gainsay…. and other miscreants littering the world with misappropriated labels for laments belabored with publicity for displaced enmity distilled from a cauldron of mismatched ignorance….tethered to the vagrancy of gripe plucked at the ripe time for a twenty-dollar prize give or take a dime

But that dime separating 1990 from 2010 meant more than anything to a life littered with hallowed word crimes…. against the sanctimony of syncopation with cheap bleats too arrogant to be sheepish at the lavish indulgence of the marginalized wines…. brewed in a castle flickering on fiat worth rather than the simplicities of minutes of warbled time

So I currently warp minds with the proctor of a gamble too garish to finesse the quicksand of attrition but jaunty enough to bypass the limitations of a linear self-referential memorial about the circular nature of irony espoused by divorced rhymes

Now I stand ascendant….waiting for the retinues of retinas to absorb the wavy rigmarole of the serpentine pathways carved beneath the buzzwords of race and division and towards soldered unity with a human race beyond racism…. and a class divorced from socioeconomic crass division

Just then I arrived at serenity…. as I realized that the BAR exams that encage so many aspirant hearts are counterfeit in the court of the highest judiciary art that believes that insidious artifice is an embezzled venture of frolicsome guttersnipes wallowing in division can never revive a lifeless heart…. even if quick-witted credentialism rattles the slaves to vapid artforms that any humanism would never deem smart

Ditch the agitprop as a human frailty indentured to endure the curated disease without a cure to make the snollygosters in Washington ever so cocksure with their cockalorum disregard of the palatable consensus to make news real again….Finally for the fraternity of an enlightened human race in a benighted world of trendy fatuousness that infests the planet with the debauchery of glorified urchins jerking the levers with severed brevity to promote infectious foofaraw with cultural indemnity

I leave you with this

What is ornate complexity without the luxury of concerted beatific bliss that the parsecs that flummox your minds throb vehemently with cohesiveness in my internal design are not remiss

And remember the benighted standards of kitsch for the kitchens of penury bewitched don’t stand a chance against the overriding itch to vanquish mountains one after another to cross them off the list

every time you come into town
you toss things around
making a giant mess.
i've always missed you so much
and you are always gone
so long...

you come home
for a week or two
and we're kids again
walking home in the rain
laughing and swimming through the
downpour.

every time you come home I
drown
in memories
and I love you all over again.
the bad blood never stains,
it's the good memories i can never
wash out.

every time you come home
we drown in each other
till
sooner or
later
memory lane dead ends and
it's time for you to go
again.

i'm always so surprised when
you pack up and keep on truckin without
batting an eye
see ya
so long
see you around thanksgiving
like it's a day away.
and the pain in my chest is worse
then it was the first
second
or third time.

i'll never learn
and
i'll fall for it
every time.
how unfair of you
being the one that gets away
again
and again
and again
and....

Independence has a nice ring to it-
The cash register when I pay for myself,
The ding of the doors I open on my own.

I don't need anyone to be whole anymore-
I filled my potholes with my own hands,
In my own ways.

I found a way to be alone and be okay-
Though the nights can get long
And I miss trailing kisses trailing to the bedroom.

I can open my own doors and pay my own tabs,
Though I miss opening up to someone else
And independence has a price to pay;

The cold nights can't be filled by anyone
Because one night stands, friends with benefits
Won't fulfill the small void not even my own self could achieve.

I surely don't need anyone to survive,
But that doesn't mean I don't want someone,
Or yearn for a hand to hold other than my own.

I don't know what happens next I've been down this road before there was a pothole I didn't see coming and in i fell head over heels again.
I must walk alone cold tired but fighting to find my own, to be myself but those potholes..

Temptation creeps trying to wrap its warm embrace around me what a ploy daring me to look the other way one misstep and I'll fall again you'll hold me for years and that warmth will rise till it is a smouldering burn smothering me.
In flood the memories I can't breathe a harsh reminder to withstand the cold a step each day I have to make my own way two steps forward one step back and I'm slipping stumbling crying for help and there it is another pothole perfectly foot shaped.
Dare I ever allow myself to fall again.

I -- A Pleasant Afternoon

                for Michael Brownstein and **** Gallup

One day 3 poets and 60 ears sat under a green-striped Chau-
        tauqua tent in Aurora
listening to Black spirituals, tapping their feet, appreciating
        words singing by in mountain winds
on a pleasant sunny day of rest -- the wild wind blew thru
        blue Heavens
filled with fluffy clouds stretched from Central City to Rocky
        Flats, Plutonium sizzled in its secret bed,
hot dogs sizzled in the Lion's Club lunchwagon microwave
        mouth, orangeade bubbled over in waxen cups
Traffic moved along Colefax, meditators silent in the Diamond
        Castle shrine-room at Boulder followed the breath going
        out of their nostrils,
Nobody could remember anything, spirits flew out of mouths
        & noses, out of the sky, across Colorado plains & the
        tent flapped happily open spacious & didn't fall down.
        

                                                        June 18, 1978

II -- Peace Protest

Cumulus clouds float across blue sky
        over the white-walled Rockwell Corporation factory
                                        -- am I going to stop that?

                                

Rocky Mountains rising behind us
        Denver shining in morning light
-- Led away from the crowd by police and photographers

                                

Middleaged Ginsberg and Ellsberg taken down the road
        to the greyhaired Sheriff's van --
But what about Einstein? What about Einstein? Hey, Einstein
                                Come back!

III -- Golden Courthouse

Waiting for the Judge, breathing silent
        Prisoners, witnesses, Police --
the stenographer yawns into her palms.

                                        August 9, 1978

IV -- Everybody's Fantasy

I walked outside & the bomb'd
        dropped lots of plutonium
        all over the Lower East Side
There weren't any buildings left just
        iron skeletons
groceries burned, potholes open to
        stinking sewer waters

There were people starving and crawling
        across the desert
the Martian UFOs with blue
        Light destroyer rays
passed over and dried up all the
        waters

Charred Amazon palmtrees for
        hundreds of miles on both sides
        of the river

                                August 10, 1978

V -- Waiting Room at the Rocky Flats Plutonium Plant

"Give us the weapons we need to protect ourselves!"
        the bareheaded guard lifts his flyswatter above the desk
                                                -- whap!

                                *

A green-letter'd shield on the pressboard wall!
        "Life is fragile.  Handle with care" --
My Goodness! here's where they make the nuclear bomb
                                  triggers.

                                        August 17, 1978

VI -- Numbers in Red Notebook

2,000,000 killed in Vietnam
13,000,000 refugees in Indochina 1972
200,000,000 years for the Galaxy to revolve on its core
24,000 the Babylonian Great Year
24,000 half life of plutonium
2,000 the most I ever got for a poetry reading
80,000 dolphins killed in the dragnet
4,000,000,000 years earth been born

                                                Summer 1978

Diaspora
From the Greek

When I heard the word I felt it
And I looked it up
In my old red dictionary

I could have used the Internet,
I suppose

But I like to run my forefinger down pages
Of words

I read the definition
And I felt it
Oh

Oh
We are diaspora.

Am I using it correctly?

We are a diaspora.

Diaspora
From the Greek

From the green valley of Ottawa
From Scotland
From Ireland on wooden boats

From the French village thirteen children
From the mines in the North
From Poland and from Germany

From the churches and
From the Blueberry patches
From the Island Manitoulin

From the dark lake Kagawong
From Kinburn and Arnprior
From Markstay and from Sudbury

From Waterloo
From Kitchener, Michener
From the Suburbs

Oh

From the Suburbs
From the red bricks, red currants
And geraniums
From green island cabins

From the desert

Oh

From the desert
From the potholes and pipes
From the salty wind
Cracked Caspian Sea
From the middle of the east of nowhere.

From the mountains

Oh

From the mountains
From the crystal water fountains
From the tram bells
On the cobblestone streets
From the torrents of the Rhein

From the white cross

Oh

From the white cross
On the green hill
From the river Laurence
From the French and from the English
Plains of Abraham

We are diaspora
We are a diaspora

Diaspora
From the Greek

How did it end up here on my tongue?

It is diaspora.
It is a diaspora
Diaspora is a diaspora

And I wonder if it misses its other pieces
The way that I miss mine

Ours

There is no
Roping us back together now

There is no
Home to go back to

There is no
Point of meeting
Of reunion

No
White steeple in our old town

No
Yellow slide in our backyard

No
Old folks on an old farm

No
Walled house on a hill

No
Luzernerring 93

No
Familiar riverwater

There is no
Ancient Greek anymore
Diaspora

Only fragments of fragments
Of roots of stems of words
In different dialects

There is no
Place for you to belong,
Diaspora

You’ve been sliced to pieces
And scattered
Into the wind

But
When people ask you
Where you are from

You say simply
From the Greek

Oh

From the Greek

And
When people ask me
Where I am from

I say simply
From the diaspora.

Those **** things
lurch around each turn
as if they are lost children
who's mother is also lost
in some isle at Costco.

I know those arching
towers of rows
that hold cardboard boxes
reaching to skylights--
where each passing cloud
blinks for me
as I wander wide eye
for Costco brand cat food
hidden somewhere in the back.

*** holes are not the best at digging
but it's impossible for
my town to fill them,
as each one is a reminder
to our people
that we are irreplaceable.

That when time comes
and the clouds find their resting place
we will no longer crowd the isles
of Costco nor will clouds keep
blinking for us.

Instead our personality
will have dug it's trench
a minor engravement
into the cements and asphalt
of which we called our home.

For us they will leave
our history, appraisal
to the life that has thrived
a marker
that there was beauty
before us
and beauty with us.

Reading through my archives
Of life
On little pieces of paper, napkins and fast food wrappings.

I came upon a note to self and proceeded to read it.
It was dated a year ago and the time was "way past closing time"
So I figured it must be good.
It said "dear self your work ***** and is to short lengthen it!"

At first I was taken back at how angry I was at myself, but then remembered how my readership had been slowly decreasing.

I decided to listen to this old drunken "wisdom" of mine and lengthened many of my works.

I actually didn't think they were to bad either, until I posted them and only got few comments with no likes.
The comments read "your poetry is to long and boring" "what happened to your short blunt to the point fluency? "

That's what a get for listening to the drunken me and taking advice from a fool.

Critics are fine, but bad comments can hurt a guy.
Guess I'll go back to my usual writes with my slowly dying off fan base for a few praises to brighten my ego for however long this three line poet has left in this field of potholes and hand grenades.

I almost took a blade to my skin again
Can't quite remember when exactly
I was too hyped up on over the counter medicine
My memory kind of fogged after the first one
I think I did it a few nights ago
But I can't be sure
I apologize though
I know I disappoint you
I am so very sorry

Thomas creek keeps moving
This water gives way to childhood play.
I think this place remembers me.
Old gravel road,
potholes lined in Oregon ferns
The same ones that tickled my knees
when I was as young as three
I think they remember me

Lazy light filters down to green
Earth, mud and skipping rocks
Serve as old novelties and
Time ticking clocks.
The only place left
That remembers me.

vast enough to hold my past.
The only green enough that last
Fountain of youth that makes me sprite
Jump into a past with such delight
Thanks for holding on.

Stagnate nostalgia
Remembering skinned knees
Deep breaths, cold water that calmed dread
youth to living all grown up
some things remain the same...
Do you remember my name?
Do you remember me?

I guess I’m okay… What more can I say?
Forget it—never mind,
You wouldn’t understand anyway,
Would you even know what it's like?
Inside a scattered disconnected mind,
Employed to go on strike?
Where indirect misdirect
The sincerity at play,
When sinusoidal chaos spikes
And past meets the future present day?
As paranoid points outlandishly connect
At intervals of broken lines,
Memory lost in recollect,
An array of misshaped bells
Internally infect the eternal confines
Of infinite distributional decay,
Parallels with no intersect,
Streetwise cells with empty signs,
Burned out lights, potholes, and landmines,
Littered all the way.
How am I to convey that all those times
You let your mind wander away
That I was reading, thinking, dreaming,
Teeming, never idle, never strayed,
Seeing, being, so far and away,
Even the brightest intellect beaming,
Could not grasp the feeling
In the slightest of highest orders reeling,
Wound unbound, or as it would be seeming,
Imperfect, even to the disarray
Of the tamest prefect, whose verdict
Could not predict the reflect,
For in this world, seeing is deceiving,
As the lamest reject, defect,
Increasingly decreasing,
In simplistic bliss obey
Crowned unsound fallacies
That contradict all meaning,
Hiding behind reality, the actualities
Lest, protect the thoughtlessness perceiving,
Let me stop you if I may...
I must interject for I digress,
What nonsense was I weaving?
Forget it—I've lost my mind,
I best be leaving,
What more can I say?
It's periodic I must confess,
You probably don't care anyway,
Yeah, yeah, I'll be okay,
Until next time I guess,
I wouldn't want to be misleading.

I'm twenty seven years old
Not, old by any standard
But, in my world...I'm seven
Seven years removed from an IED
Seven years away from the day that changed me
Seven years into my new life
We were on a routine mission
If you can call anything in Khandahar
routine
Convoy escort, some press folks
A country singer and his band
And us....always us
We were Military Police
Bringing 'em in, taking 'em home
there we were,
Same trip, same road
same barren landscape
same potholes
same, same, same
Until November 4th, 2005
Nothing has been the same since then
I'm a Sargeant, Military Police
William Blankenship
Fort Hood, Texas...just a kid...until
We were on Operation Squire
routine....all routine
The first humvee hit an IED
flipped right in front of us
the bus of civilians, stopped
radio chatter like mad
Rocket fire took out the Stryker LAV
Blew it to bits
No survivors
We were pinned down
We didn't return fire
Couldn't....didn't know where to
And had to get the civilians to safety
We were only 2 miles from base
LAVs were on the road immediately
I don't remember much about it
Just, that it was routine
Started with the headaches
took about a month
Then, the nightmares
Sent me back home to get over it
To a Veterans Hospital in Texas
Still saw the humvee flip
Heard the screams
Saw the fire, and watched the explosion behind
And I wasn't sleeping anymore
Couldn't handle bright lights for a time
Still can't, but not as bad
Doctors said it was PTSD
I said, "you think?"
What else could it be
Two years they kept me in there
Two years I saw them die
Then...they hooked me up with a service dog
New program they said
He'd keep me relaxed
I couldn't take care of myself
And now, they want me to have a dog
I said, I'd try it...but no guarantees
Said his name was Squire
funny....I knew that name from somewhere
But, couldn't remember where
Big, oafish, Newf he was
Like a small fridge with hair
And big, brown eyes
Squire....
First day he just sat and looked at me
Waited until I started to move
And he moved with me
Came over, and pushed his head under my hand
It's been that way ever since
I move, he moves
I eat, he eats three times as much
We bonded pretty quick
I still get the dreams,
but, Squire knows and he's there
Under my hand, calming me down
That's all he does, calms me down
He doesn't take away the dreams
But, he helps
I don't know how
But, he helps
They still die, and I still scream
But, not as often
Just routine....

There's a sharp frosty switchback that never sees the sun in winter
  skies of blue. The frost heave cut-bank rocks tumble down to the
side of the road,  in the ice shard mottled ditch lay frozen stiff

Tall Sitka spruce marbled gray shadows mat the sparsely traveled
  corridor, paved with potholes, where the roads have no names
Sometimes listening quietly to the bare stillness, there are
  rhetorical questions heard in the silent reverie's say:

                        "Have you ever been afraid?"

The tree-line gaps above the jagged gray stone ravine, disappearing
  down the rugged mountain shade, falling into the pillow-top fog bank blanketing the canyon's murmurs below — headed towards the ocean

Crystalline spring waters gurgle up roadside — out of nowhere,
  where tired boots stand in reverent contemplation as it all sings out  harmoniously to the trees in the key of silence;   it was there
  in a gust of restless forbearance heard the frozen peacefulness  say:

                         "Have you ever felt alone?"

Gathering a deep breath of marbled gray shadows, silence bears
  a loud holler's scorn — echoing back and forth down canyon walls,
with the spirit of a voice a multitude strong,  evanescent
                             as winter's outgoing tide.


                      January 2019 — Jesse Stillwater

The children are all crying in their pens
and the surf carries their cries away.
They are old men who have seen too much,
their mouths are full of ***** clothes,
the tongues poverty, tears like ****.
The surf pushes their cries back.
Listen.
They are bewitched.
They are writing down their life
on the wings of an elf
who then dissolves.
They are writing down their life
on a century fallen to ruin.
They are writing down their life
on the bomb of an alien God.
I am too.
We must get help.
The children are dying in their pens.
Their bodies are crumbling.
Their tongues are twisting backwards.
There is a certain ritual to it.
There is a dance they do in their pens.
Their mouths are immense.
They are swallowing monster hearts.
So is my mouth.

Listen.
We must all stop dying in the little ways,
in the craters of hate,
in the potholes of indifference--
a ****** in the temple.
The place I live in
is a maze
and I keep seeking
the exit or the home.
Yet if I could listen
to the bulldog courage of those children
and turn inward into the plague of my soul
with more eyes than the stars
I could melt the darkness--
as suddenly as that time
when an awful headache goes away
or someone puts out the fire--
and stop the darkness and its amputations
and find the real McCoy
in the private holiness
of my hands.

Ghost Relics**

Downtown,
where Main intersects Main
you'll see the last living tissue
of a breathing bazaar.
They weighed down her chest with bricks and girders.
It's a wonder she breathes at all.
-
Wander too far in any direction
and you're sure to see the husks
of once proud and bustling businesses.
Abandoned sanctums of mortar and majesty.
Scars of the Midwest etched as constants in our mind.
Dusty and silent since the cradle.
-
The theaters are bedeviled with dolled up haunts
who just wandered over from Greenwood to catch the matinee.
Management still leaves the lights on for kicks after hours
to throw off their sleep schedules while they wait for the feature to start.
Up all night, sleep all day; they read by neon and slumber under Sol.
Here I am, left lounging in The Devil's Chair. Crickets keep quavering.
-
Underneath the Franklin Street overpass sleeps a family bound by naught.
They watch in dawn's light as the few pedestrian that traverse Cerro Gordo
advert their eyes as some sort of silent symbol of respect for their situation.
It's as if the very stare of a privileged man could drain 'til depleted.
They never ask for anything, they just wade it out and listen to
the cars overhead, the train-clock's trumpet, and the heartbeats in between.
-
Leaks are patched, potholes filled, and yet
we're still loosing blood; becoming beguiled.
So many stray cats in the civilian savanna,
aimlessly seeking names and second chances.
"This premises is under police video surveillance" -
hanging like ornaments from streetlamp poles.
-
Guarding the gates
of a dwindling dominion,
as the armies of Union and Grand
wait in their camps
for the rust to take hold
of her iron veins.

There are actual people
half woman half man
running mornings and
dream people in movies
half language half light.
Tomorrow is John’s funeral.

* * *

This is my minute
my moment
Oops, gone!

Anything can happen
if you don’t resist
Resist!

* * *

But who am I? You think bullets won’t
****? I’m the guy they put before a
wall and shoot then eat lunch.

* * *

Long as yr livin
yr havin that dream in
which yr killin the villains
w/o even needin a weapon.

* * *

If it was fun, they wouldn't call it work,
but it is fun. It's what we do, a bird
sings, dogs bark. We work. Sing bark work.
Honey, put on your shorts, it's gonna be 90 today.

* * *

How right is the rabbi!
"What a good and bright world this is if we do not lose our hearts to it,
But what a dark world if we do!"

* * *

We saw a barred owl
camouflaged in winter branches.
Bird of death (in myth), hunts down the dark,
floats to a farther tree, turns its back, and naps.

* * *

The sadness of summer, the silence of winter
you can’t sum it up in one more metaphor.
So don’t complain about the epoch you live in.
Go to Big Hidden Lake and jump in!

* * *

Down to negative calories, in deep snow
we find soft wintering rose hips, gobble them down.
First time for me a wild edible made a difference,
not just a delicacy. Then we snowshoe out.

* * *

Spring morning
flycatchers, jays, thrushes, a woodpecker’s loony cry.
A toilet flushes.

* * *

Zach
awoke from a scary dream
I kissed him back to bed

He asked
are all the doors locked?
I said yes knowing they would not hold

* * *

The republic may expire
but birds go on traveling, singing
in their best attire.

* * *

My plump cashier
has a new love.
Her skin is clear
and her line moves.

* * *

Desafinado means slightly out of tune which is not a problem.
It’s a fortunate condition. Zach just called from school sounding clear
and happy to say there’s floor hockey this afternoon. For me, another       cold,
slow Spring. How lucky!

* * *

At basketball I was reminded
the better players in their private moments
think on the ultimate reward. Perfect rest.

* * *

You come in our backyard, we go in yours.
That about sums it up. Assuming there are definable, accepted backyards.
Suppose it’s all one backyard and time is all one sheet of ice?

* * *

My son Zach said as a toddler he liked the old house
and he’s having a good time now at the new house.
We were lying together in the window seat passing the early morning       time,
late September and happy as I was I thought what’s running out is time.

* * *

The young women’s bodies were awesome. I appreciated
the couple of Muslim women who kept their bodies
covered. That was easier on an old man’s eyes.

Not that I wanted to change the American girls’ ways.
They seemed comfortable wearing underwear outdoors
and unaware, more or less, of the longing it provoked.

* * *

To invade a clean house
searching for weapons or insurgents, I agree
with the enemy, that is a sacrilege.
Not that I accept their god, and there could be,
hiding, a mouse.

* * *

I tell my sons
If some man tries to pull you into his car, fight
kick bite yell run punch curse scratch knife
make him **** you right there in the street
use your feet your fear your hate.

* * *

If everything seems under control, you’re not going fast enough.
—Mario Andretti

* * *

The river in its muddy symmetry
high water mark in Spring
is a god to me
in a way that I can be to a dog while thinking
or the sky is to the hanging apple.

* * *

A day, a new day, starts at 5:00.
Earlier than that it’s still yesterday,
the rags and dreams, the sweat and worry, the *** and laughter
of that day. The alcohol and aspirin, the sunset and machinery, the dinner       and toothache
of that day. The germs and friends, the sports and editorial, the gleam and
      dullness
of that day.

* * *

The key to success is cross out, delete, compress,
rub out, expunge, black out scratch out blot out,
censor, crop, shorten and silence.
Clip, cut, erase and eradicate.
Hate everything you write.

* * *

I will be saved
and spanked too.

* * *

Phil is on a movie diet. Bad movies in which the logic switch is turned off. Jumps from scene to scene like a cat.
Most ******* is hilariously obscene. Genitals like little animals. Snowplows hit potholes sending up sparks.

* * *

Make way for a future that’s irresistible!
Dust. Rest. Mist. Rust.
One day follows another until the last day.
And on that day, there will be weather.

* * *

Driving in traffic
80 mph, 80 y/o.
Turkey vultures shrug shoulders.

* * *

When an archangel
flies into your windshield
sing cuckoo!