evidence of my passing through
each room litters every surface
time worn skin points to decades
living contact with the elements
tongue and lips pronouncing
thousand thousand words each
requiring breath ****** in lungs
clotted breathlessness spent health
eyes worn out of looking so much
seen before and counting once more
the tiredness haunting my very essence

PROLOGUE:

“’We must stop this brain working for twenty years.’” So said Mussolini’s Grand Inquisitor, his official Fascist prosecutor addressing the judge in Antonio Gramsci’s 1928 trial; so said the Il Duce’s Torquemada, ending his peroration with this infamous demand.’”  Gramsci, Antonio: Selections from the Prison Notebooks, Introduction, translation from Italian and publishing by Quintin ***** & Geoffrey Nowell Smith, International Publishers, New York, 1971.

BE IT RESOLVED: Whereas, I introduce this book with a nod of deep respect to Antonio Gramsci--an obscure but increasingly pertinent political scientist it would behoove us all to read and study today, I dedicate the book itself to my great grandfather and key family patriarch, Pietro Buonaiuto (1865-1940) of Moschiano, in the province of Avellino, in the region of Campania, southern Italy.

Let it be recognized that Pete Buonaiuto may not have had Tony Gramsci’s brain, but he certainly exhibited an extreme case of what his son--my paternal grandfather, Francesco Buonaiuto--termed: Testaduro. Literally, it means Hardhead, but connotes something far beyond the merely stubborn. We’re talking way out there in the unknown, beyond that inexplicable void where hotheaded hardheads regurgitate their next move, more a function of indigestion than thought. Given any situation, a Testaduro would rather bring acid reflux and bile to the mix than exercise even a skosh of gray muscle matter.  But there’s more. It gets worse.

To truly comprehend the densely-packed granite that is the Testaduro mind, we must now sub-focus our attention on the truly obdurate, extreme examples of what my paternal grandmother—Vicenza di Maria Buonaiuto—they called her Jennie--would describe as reflexive cutta-dey-noze-a-offa-to-spite-a-dey-face-a types. I reference the truly defiant, or T.D.—obviously short for both truly defiant and Testaduro. T.D.’s—a breed apart--smiling and sneering, laughing and, finally, begging their regime-appointed torture apparatchik (a career-choice getting a great deal of attention from the certificate mills--the junior colleges and vocational specialty institutes) mocking their Guantanamo-trained torturer: “Is that what you call punishment?  Is that all you ******* got?”

If, to assist comprehension, you require a literary frame of context, might I suggest you compare the Buonaiuto mind to Paul Lazzaro, Vonnegut’s superbly drawn Italian-American WWII soldier-lunatic with a passion for revenge, who kept a list of people who ****** with him, people he would have killed someday for a thousand dollars.

Go with me, Reader, go back with me to Vonnegut’s Slaughter-House-Five: “Billy Pilgrim has become unstuck in time . . .”
It is long past the Tralfamadorian abduction and his friendship with Stony Stevenson. Billy is back in Germany, one of three dingbat American G.I.s roaming around beyond enemy lines.  Another of the three is Private Lazzaro, a former car thief and undeniable psychopath from Cicero, Illinois.

Paul Lazzaro:  “Anybody touches me, he better **** me, or I’m gonna have him killed. Revenge is the sweetest thing there is. People **** with me, and Jesus Christ are they ever ******* sorry. I laugh like hell. I don’t care if it’s a guy or a dame. If the President of the United States ****** around with me, I’d fix him good. Revenge is the sweetest thing in life. And nobody ever got it from Lazzaro who didn’t have it coming.  Anybody who ***** with me? I’m gonna have him shot after the war, after he gets home, a big ******* hero with dames climbing all over him. He’ll settle down. A couple of years ‘ll go by, and then one day a knock at the door. He’ll answer the door and there’ll be a stranger out there. The stranger’ll ask him if he’s so and so. When he says he is, the stranger’ll say, ‘Paul Lazzaro sent me.’ And then he’ll pull out a gun and shoot his pecker off. The stranger’ll let him think a couple seconds about who Paul Lazzaro is and what life’s gonna be like without a pecker. Then he’ll shoot him once in the gut and walk away. Nobody ***** with Paul Lazzaro!”

(ENTER AUTHOR. HE SPEAKS: “Hey, Numb-nuts! Yes, you, my Reader. Do you want to get ****** into reading that Vonnegut blurb over and over again for the rest of the afternoon, or can I get you back into my manuscript?  That Paul Lazzaro thing was just my way of trying to give you a frame of reference, not to have you ******* drift off, walking away from me, your hand held tightly in nicotine-stained fingers. So it goes, you Ja-Bone. It was for comparison purposes.  Get it?  But, if you insist, go ahead and compare a Buonaiuto—any Buonaiuto--with the character, Paul Lazzaro. No comparison, but if you want a need a number—you quantitative ****--multiply the seating capacity of the Roman Coliseum by the gross tonnage of sheet pane glass that crystalized into small fixed puddles of glazed smoke, falling with the steel, toppling down into rubble on 9/11/2001. That’s right: multiply the number of Coliseum seats times a big, double mound of rubble, that double-smoking pile of concrete and rebar and human cadavers, formerly known as “The Twin Towers, World Trade Center, Lower Manhattan, NYC.  It’s a big number, Numb-nuts! And it illustrates the adamantine resistance demonstrated by the Buonaiuto strain of the Testaduro virus. Shall we return to my book?)

The truth is Italian-Americans were never overzealous about WWII in the first place. Italians in America, and other places like Argentina, Canada, and Australia were never quite sure whom they were supposed to be rooting for. But that’s another story. It was during that war in 1944, however, that my father--John Felix Buonaiuto, a U.S. Army sergeant and recent Anzio combat vet decided to visit Moschiano, courtesy of a weekend pass from 5th Army Command, Naples.  In a rough-hewn, one-room hut, my father sat before a lukewarm stone fireplace with the white-haired Carmine Buonaiuto, listening to that ancient one, spouting straight **** about his grandfather—Pietro Buonaiuto--my great-grandfather’s past. Ironically, I myself, thirty yeas later, while also serving in the United States Army, found out in the same way, in the same rough-hewn, one-room hut, in front of the same lukewarm fireplace, listening to the same Carmine Buonaiuto, by now the old man and the sea all by himself. That’s how I discovered the family secret in Moschiano. It was 1972 and I was assigned to a NATO Cold War stay-behind operation. The operation, code-named GLADIO—had a really cool shield with a sword, the fasces and other symbols of its legacy and purpose. GLADIO was a clandestine anti-communist agency in Italy in the 1970s, with one specific target:  Il Brigate Rosso, the Red Brigades.  This was in my early 20s. I was back from Vietnam, and after a short stint as an FBI confidential informant targeting campus radicals at the University of Miami, I was back in uniform again. By the way, my FBI gig had a really cool codename also: COINTELPRO, which I thought at the time had something to do with tapping coin operated telephones. Years later, I found out COINTELPRO stood for counter-intelligence program.  I must have had a weakness for insignias, shields and codenames, because there I was, back in uniform, assigned to Army Intelligence, NATO, Italy, “OPERATION GLADIO.“

By the way, Buonaiuto is pronounced:

Bwone-eye-you-toe . . . you ignorant ****!

Oh yes, prepare yourself for insult, Kemosabe! I refuse to soft soap what ensues.  After all, you’re the one on trial here this time, not Gramsci and certainly not me. Capeesh?

Let’s also take a moment, to pay linguistic reverence to the language of Seneca, Ovid & Virgil. I refer, of course, to Latin. Latin is called: THE MOTHER TONGUE. Which is also what we used to call both Mary Delvecchio--kneeling down in the weeds off Atlantic Avenue--& Esther Talayumptewa --another budding, Hopi Corn Maiden like my mother—pulling trains behind the creosote bush up on Black Mesa.  But those are other stories.

LATIN: Attention must be paid!

Take the English word obdurate, for example—used in my opening paragraph, the phrase truly obdurate: {obdurate, ME, fr. L. obduratus, pp. of obdurare to harden, fr. Ob-against + durus hard –More at DURING}.

Getting hard? Of course you are. Our favorite characters are the intransigent: those who refuse to bend. Who, therefore, must be broken: Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke comes to mind. Or Paul Newman again as Fast Eddie, that cocky kid who needed his wings clipped and his thumbs broken. Or Paul Newman once more, playing Eddie Felson again; Fast Eddie now slower, a shark grown old, deliberative now, no longer cute, dimples replaced with an insidious sneer, still fighting and hustling but in shrewder, more subtle ways. (Credit: Scorsese’s brilliant homage The Color of Money.)

The Color of Money (1986) - IMDb www.imdb.com/title/tt0090863 Internet MovieDatabase Rating: 7/10 - ‎47,702 votes. Paul Newman and Helen Shaver; still photo: Tom Cruise in The Color of Money (1986) Still of Paul Newman in The Color of Money (1986). Full Cast & Crew - ‎Awards - ‎Trivia - ‎Plot Summary

Perhaps it was the Roman Catholic Church I rebelled against.  The Catholic Church: certainly a key factor for any Italian-American, a stinger, a real burr under the saddle, biting, setting off insurrection again and again. No. Worse: prompting Revolt! And who could blame us? Catholicism had that spooky Latin & Incense going for it, but who wouldn’t rise up and face that Kraken? The Pope and his College of Cardinals? A Vatican freak show—a red shoe, twinkle-toe, institutional anachronism; the Curia, ferreting out the good, targeting anything that felt even half-way good, classifying, pronouncing verboten, even what by any stretch of the imagination, would be deemed to be merely kind of pleasant, slamming down that peccadillo rubber-stamp. Sin: was there ever a better drug? Sin? Revolution, **** yeah!  Anyone with an ounce of self-respect would have gone to the barricades.

But I digress.

It’s true. There are things I always rethink over.
I want to talk about this life, and the numbered corners
We back into, as each one before becomes a blur
I need to find those escaped outlawed words
Those thoughts that are dreams that are life I never said
Or ever read
In the newspapers full of despair & odes to the dead

Here I am, again. Scratching my head..
Solitary confinement in the tip of my pen
I hope I can hear the rain on a tin roof again.
I want to rescue each petal of this tired rose
Been told they hate getting wet, maybe they should close
Perhaps that’s a tangent better left to the prose..

I want to discuss the melody the earth plays as it spins
One day the clocks will melt, and time then will win
I want to pick these roses, struck by a thorn or two
I’ll rescue the weakest and give them all to you

I want to speak for every part of me.
Pronouncing the syllables of my arms through my neck
Feeling that same stutter I can’t ever forget
Or enunciating the words of America
It sounds like the inflection of grief
She’ll lead you to where hearts now lay limp
As all of her feels the pain in her feet
Composed of beings accepting defeat

But I can tell you about my motherland, or the hardness of her hands
As she struggles at the top, or the bottom of the can
Can do little more without much help to survive
First world problems? How about just keeping this life.

It’s ok if you’re lost. Go ahead, misunderstand.
Don’t tell us to work harder, poverty wasn’t planned

America, my other parent, imposed many countries
But Nicaragua is in tune with my heartbeat.
Now, how many secret wars are we fighting?
Like you’re ******* Genesis, the beginning of country
Well this is not why God himself sent me.

The great immigrations to one, emigrate with frustration
Looking for a better life, not just land; a nation.
We’ve graduated, far past the burning of witches
Although love may have been present, it was absent in ditches
Dug for the masses all over the world
Tell me the numbers don’t make your toes curl.

Like the owned. the bedraggled one in the line
Each of us in some way forever confined
To the cuffs of dark pigment or hair
The accent that these tongues flick out in the air,

I wanted to talk about the sky at jet-packed speeds
The broken men and that mystery
The wonder hiding on the other side of the reef
Or how certain dogs are not dogs, but a four legged beast
We put our ideas on those who can’t even speak
Judging and pointing deflecting our peak
Of feeling internally smaller and weak.

I want to talk about the man who hit on me last week
And the secrets that I have no real reason to keep
Perhaps tally up the hours and days without sleep
Or the relative meanings of victory or defeat.

I want to talk about the boy who was shot next to me
And the eyes on the girl who got away this past week
And now these heart valves have sprung a leak

There’s a reason I passed that spelling test in 4th grade
It’s a pact that me and some other nerd made
This test for some homework was the almost real trade
But then I studied anyways, suddenly was afraid
To be a real cheater at such a young age
So I waited until I was tired and baked
To cheat off of Tee Kay in the 8th grade.

I wanted to talk about the wonders of our skies
We see breathtaking birds and flutterbys take flight
Or how about the negative connotation with night
Instead of endless wonder, it’s dark, dead and trite.
Only letting the positive notions be awarded to light.

I want to talk about the things we all know
Like when someone asks you “what did he say?” at the same time as you
Following the first line in the show

Or

Wait, I forgot what I came into this room for.
I am now in my phonebook, what now?
--Swinging door.
Falling and yelling about what was left on the floor
Forgot that fearless child with instinct to explore.

And of course what about Fidel, the betrayal, conclusion
All in all, that epic Cuban Revolution
Or how we are scared to research the real scale of pollution
Settling for ignorance, unwritten, accepted solution
(I’m not a tree hugger, I’m a writer arranging each word just to lose them.)

How about what lies from sea to shining sea
And the immigrating souls giving testimony
To those who do, and will never know me
Each sea runs through the other
Like the veins in your body
And we all sadly add to our planet earth rotting

I wanted to talk about the first moment a hand brushed my cheek
My muscles finally gave in, tense to shameless defeat
The ridiculousness of the odd days in a week
Or how every sound in my almost mute world goes to the same beat
And the hook is brought to you by the bird’s tactful beak
And the beautiful colors the sunset uses to light up the streets

I want to spill each morsel of knowledge I’ve stolen, and the little that was free
And that I’ve learned from those before the ones that came before me
Being all of natures beautiful things.
Yes, did a bell mentally ring?
If you are alive, then you are one and more of all these
Even more beautiful with those scrapes on your knees
Standing with blood down your leg forgetting the dirt and disease
Carried away with the breeze through the trees

I can tell you those unspoken unwritten words from lost poetry
But that would be like asking you in the theater to scream
At that alien’s awkwardly shiny green screen moon beam

But maybe you should go out and growatree
Johnny the Appleseed Infantry
Or something to remember the free.

Discovery: Victory is only for the relentless
Walk up to a great oak, give thanks; we are rootless
Master ignoring those who labeled you useless
You decide what you are, and there’s no need to prove this

The heart that is mine beats with the rest that are beating
Trying to prevent a few scars and stitches from bleeding
Past error and self is no new acquaintance we’re meeting
Enjoy this life on a stage, I promise good seating

Fighting to clench onto every painful recollection
Every past hopeless pothole of the moments of rejection
Letting go is the key; allow me to mention
Freedom was, is never any man’s invention.
I’ll talk about the concept of our intentions
Hopefully you have good mental retention
There is one truth, and for some no redemption

I’ll give you one more line of ADHD poetry
I can put it short, and maybe even soerty
Some say  farfetched, or insurrectionary
Holding life’s weight at times sans what was necessary
Wide eyes at my inner strength, each arm is tearing
Felt each torn ligament swollen and flaring

Yesterday someone used the word evolutionary

I always write 'I am' before 'revolutionary.'

364

The Morning after Woe—
’Tis frequently the Way—
Surpasses all that rose before—
For utter Jubilee—

As Nature did not care—
And piled her Blossoms on—
And further to parade a Joy
Her Victim stared upon—

The Birds declaim their Tunes—
Pronouncing every word
Like Hammers—Did they know they fell
Like Litanies of Lead—

On here and there—a creature—
They’d modify the Glee
To fit some Crucifixal Clef—
Some Key of Calvary—

i'd like to expand your consciousness
darling tell me how to accomplish this
dwelling in sheer confidence
where existence can't seem to conquer it
a look of pure astonishment
pronouncing every consonant
your words fail to reach my grip
as they melt off your tongue and lips.

I’ve met 37 girls named Sarah. My name. Sarah. Five letters, nothing special. It’s not beautiful like Lena. Not creative like Anastasia. No one has any trouble pronouncing it. Which I guess isn’t all that bad. Until they go into that story about that one Sarah who gives my name a bitter taste in their mouth. Spiting out the two syllable, five letter word that defines me, like they know something about me. “Oh Sarah, I knew a Sarah once.” Please don’t say my name like that, don’t elongate that first a, cut sharp the sound of the r, only to drop the h at the end. Five letters said as if there are only four.

My father, gone fifty years,
A transplanted German,
Arrived early, in the 1920's,
Fleeing the worldwide depression,
That decided to follow him to America.

Traveling salesman, raconteur,
A busy man who decided he
Found the right girl at age forty,
But by the time I was teen,
He was, then uncommon,
An older man, an older father.

Raised three kids,
Working six days a week.
Unlike the other fathers,
White shirt and tie every day
Even Sunday.

No backyard in the city,
To toss a base or football to his son,
Though he wouldn't, couldn't,
While his son grew,
Grew up worshipping
Three Gods:
Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, and
The bold, the bald Y.A. Tittle,
Heroic sports figures.

The son who went to Yankee Stadium
For the first time,
There he saw the color
Emerald  Green in the Bronx,
In The House Ruth Built,
Whispered Hallelujah,
There, courtesy of someone else's dad.

Goatee he wore, and on Saturdays,
Wore a black jacket, striped pants
And Homburg hat to the synagogue.
Custom of his Hamburg upbringing.
The only one, the only dad,
Of course, dressed that way.
Proud of his style, his heritage,
Helping me not to fit right in.

Yet twinkle twinkle did his eyes sparkle,
Such that all the other children loved him,
Better and best.

But I was the son with the unlike,
The father, unlike any others.
Age thirteen, he's asked me this:
Now you are a man, I wish of thee this,
Accompany me to synagogue every day,
As is my custom, and all your father's,
Twenty generations before me.

When he passed, the stories of
His saintly deeds, his help,
How he saved, brought many to
The United States of America,
Including his five sisters and their families.
During, after WWII, became legends,
all the while, trying to make a living.

One time, I was listening to
Rock n' Roll, on the radio,
In the den, study, his home office,
Where
The Stereo,
proudly sat.

Chased me out,
Paperwork to do,
But stopped me first,
Listening to the song.
That happened to be next.

When this old world starts getting me down
And people are just too much for me to face
I climb way up to the top of the stairs
And all my cares just drift right into space

On the roof, the only place I know
Where you just have to wish to make it so
Let me tell you now

When I come home feelin' tired and beat
I go up where the air is fresh and sweet
Up on the roof
I get away from the hustling crowd
And all that rat race noise down in the street
Up on the roof

On the roof, the only place I know
Where you just have to wish to make it so
Let's go up on the roof
Up on the roof

At night the stars put on a show for free
And darling, you can share it all with me
I keep a tellin' you

Right smack dab in the middle of town
I've found a paradise that's trouble proof
Up on the roof
And if this world starts getting you down
There's room enough for two, up on the roof
Up on the roof

Up on the roof
Up on the roof
Oh, come on, baby
Up on the roof
Oh, come on, honey
Up on the roof
Everything is all right
Up on the roof
Say that, "It's alright"
Up on the roof
Oh, we gotta go up on the roof
Up on the roof
The Drifters - Up On The Roof

He listened carefully,
Pronouncing with an austere smile,
"That I like, now go."

Now fifty years later,
Having failed spectacularly as a
Father, family man, having never saved a
Soul or life, I remember the outcast days
Of my growing up years,
With a different kind of father
Than all the kids who
Played catch, had big suburban homes.

I never understood much,
Always struggled to be one
Unsuccessful in fitting in,
In my high school yearbook,
They outed my anomie,
"Either apart or ahead of us,
Nat stands, uniquely individual."

So here is a poem, an apology,
No, more an anthology, an anthem,
Of, and,
To my pop, for resenting, misunderstanding,
How
You were more than unique,
How you were special, in ways
No teenager could see.

I am have written some of this before.
Tender apologies, but when I awoke this
Post Thanksgiving Day, at
6:00 Ante Meridiem,
In not my bed,
In not my city,
Pandora surprised me
Real Good,
With an old song,
Up on the Roof.

These words,
The ones you are reading did not drift,
Nay, they spilled out in shades of
Tearful regretful guilt-filled,
Pooling tears that cannot n'ere erase
Prior youthful errors, grievous sins.

Of course,
They like to surprise you,
At the end of their song,
Twisty surprise ending.

I will say it, not you,
In some ways, not all,
I grew up to be just like him,

And for that,
I will give thanks,
Not just one day, every day,
Until it is among,
My last thoughts passing,
Proceeding me,
Preceding me,
As I depart this globe.

The tapping
and rapping
of which you believe to be rain
striking your glass
belongs not to nature
but of the rocks which
my hands hurl

Drowning in rain
and thoughts of you
driving me
placing me
a few feet below you
as you dream

the shouting of mine
is lost in the whirling,
whipping rain and thunder

pronouncing and proclaiming
true feelings
i somehow seem weightless
under the window
which i hope to glimpse your face

but... asleep you stay
comfortable under sheets and covers
with eyelids tightly sealed
dreaming away
white noise the only thing
your ears pick up

After hours of waiting
throwing and screaming
i quit
not wishing to awake the unwanted
i leave a simple note
tied round your mailbox
and let the rain
push my head farther into sorrow

walking away
not even comprehending
the fact
that the same rain that
drenches me and,
falls on your window
is blurring the ink
of which i confessed

truly and completely
i love you

entering year 2000
rewinding vhs tape
installing napster client
anticipating victorious gore
bursting dot-com bubble
blocking tomorrow's nostalgia
commemorating festival tragedy
examining supersonic concorde
watching election coverage
recounting inconvenient truths
puzzling interface design
booing nuc-u-lar president

rising black monolith
editing non-linear encyclopedia
feeling inaugurally bushed
reliving century's dawn
unchanging state flag
processing royal massacre
escaping insane asylum
sensing impending collapse
perusing city guide
collapsing contemporary structures
initiating quixotic peacekeeping
ignoring conscription threats

entering year 2002
reporting unfortunate pearl
relaxing shotgun porch
exploding roadside bombs
addressing thousand followers
hugging financial meltdown
writing resembling skylines
shocking archipelagic bursts
processing theatrical disaster
tightening homeland security

entering year 2003
proliferating elegant telegnosis
rejecting freedom fries
blazing wartime trails
toppling dictatorial statue
unfurling "mission accomplished"
handling continental blackout
ejecting coronal masses

entering year 2004
flashing multiple sobriquets
populating dorm-roomy website
high-grossing aramaic movie
generating tunnel vision
rushing national anthem
parading goth athletes
letting games begin
accepting soviet passports
continuing obscure flumadiddle
lunar-eclipsing world series
two-terming republican regime
declining personality cult
glowing orange revolution
eroding periglacial drumlins
inundating lacustrine basins
exciting geomorphological processes
enduring tumultuous tsunami

entering year 2005
blasting "galvanize" repeatedly
unforgiving cyclonic scenario
printing controversial drawing
sketching cartoon prophet
overturning hurricane alphabet
rigging medal count
preparing new horizons
rejecting flash sites

entering year 2006
setting plutonian destination
synchronizing new horizons
sighting stellar foison
maintaining feudal system
emerging microblogging service
reading ancient tweets
rotating golden statue
mounting social debt
protesting planetary demotion
forecasting catastrophic recession
executing "innocent" dictator

entering year 2007
declining share prices
building ruby railroad
lifting presidential term-limits
perpetuating oil-rich dictatorships
falling interstate bridge
slugging giant bonds
clothing blackwater mercenaries
disappearing internet personalities
unforgiving writers strike

entering year 2008
stealing variable thunders
relaxing domain names
letting games continue
exploding sunrise propane
requesting birth certificate
electing another suit
disappointing orthodox republicans
microblogging maximal meltdown

entering year 2009
inaugurating new president
encountering bear markets
cackling risible laughter
dying pop king
deleting neolithic internet

entering year 2010
collapsing presidential palace
prospering cinematic avatar
pronouncing eyjafjallajökull effortlessly
"kettling riot police
flaming cop cruiser"
blasting text-based vuvuzelas
leaking diplomatic cables
fading pre-twitter memories
self-immolating street vendor

entering year 2011
"enervating nine-point quake
propagating harbor wave
inundating nuclear plant
irradiating unclear fates"
raging mid-eastern spring
throwing body asea
locating trojan asteroid
penetrating financial throughfare
resonating oral amplifier
blazing verdant material

entering year 2012
rising chubby dictator
gentrifying weird twitter
exploding next month
intriguing "fake" passport
proliferating single-hued avatars
surging sandy cyclone
inhabiting alternate universe
manipulating another election
rigging people's ballots
perpetuating manipulated world
fulfilling megalomaniac urges
surviving previous apocalypse
surviving another baktun

entering year 2013
descending rogue meteor
encoding festival weekend
obfuscating's very own
approving snow den
searching yaya island
soaking wet veld

entering year 2014
missing plane geometry?
annexing peninsular territory
printing powdered medication
forecasting meteoric boomtime
prevailing monochromatic identity
avoiding aviation accidents
determining auspicious date
revising deactivation plans

thirty years
since Mark gunned you down
thirty years, passed
like a long sleepless night
that ends with taunting morning light
no brilliant sunrise grandly pronouncing
a glorious new dawn of man
although that would have been your plan
with your entreaties to give peace a chance
and imagine, imagine, imagine

now I kneel in this rain gray park
like a reject from some holy ark
a pilgrim in doleful disappointed pose
after seeing what your earthly brothers chose
was not to imagine a world of peace and love
but to wear reality like a cast iron glove
making mockery of your martyred chants
proceeding like a billion scurrying ants
deaf to your childlike pleas

across the soaked soil where your ashes lay
yesterday and today…and tomorrow
I feel the soggy sorrow
that you would have felt
if you could still see
all the rage of humanity

(written 7 years ago on the 30th anniversary of the ****** of John Lennon)

My mental health
Is far from sane
Books on the shelf
For days of rain
But I lose track of days
Caught up in the haze
Of the days that I miss
Far from my old bliss
Filling my days with pain
And so I sit in the rain
Waiting for puddles to grow
Into mirrors with my reflection
But even as I stare I'll never know
The reason for my mind's infection
Wishing puddles were lakes
So I could jump in and drown
Escape all the heartaches
See no sights and hear no sound
But the music in my head
Softly, sweetly pronouncing me dead

~~~
a poem derived from these words of
Joel M Frye
"Poetry is a self-policing agency, enforcing nothing
~~~

The Truth Burden
is the accursed need obligatory,
the sacred sanctity requisitioned,
when the whenever,
chooses to drops in and
upflag the mailbox,
an uninvited invitation,
announcing with precise bluntness,
that precisely now,
is the tool crafted moment
and you fool,
are the selected tool

you must render unto Ceaser,
by your own hand,
render your own rendering,
do your own undoing,
go forth and in haste,
will thyself into the cauldron of the
Great Mystery of Creation

you cannot lie in poetry

-one can only validate-

you will tell the whole truth,
and nothing but,

all in good order,
to secure me to thee,
to muddle
our molecular cocktail mix,
you must,
must give only
truth in poetry,
or give
nothing

police yourself
in every aleph bet,
don't substance abuse us with deceit,
give only your unburdening,
force us to lip kiss
when
we face each other,
when
pronouncing the blessed script of
ourselves,
that we have been granted by sharing
each other's unvarnished lettres

the burden is
to un burden

cut out what needs
to be bridged from
the secret walled-in safe,
and give form, life and breath,
expose it to the atmosphere,
reform your bleak introspection
and white horseradish bitter realism,
turn blue blood veined internal
into an amberina red,
all by being
unsaved, unsavory, unsafe

you are the enforcer,
you are the police,
you are the validation
and the validator,
enforcing this sole law,
police your self,
give us

with no agent in between,

give us
nothing but,
a voice
one will recognize instantly
as the whole fats milk of
truth

oh, how I will embrace thy
one and only,
when given,
your

one and only

for do we dare disagree that is
each other's truths that
shall set us free?

•••

for we are the inhabitants,
of this wild land of
no inhibitions,
no rule of laws,
except one,

defend the essence,
protect the defenseless integrity,
promote the mystery of the
human poem

i like that the freckles on your face match the ones on your back, and no two freckles are the same
like snowflakes
your kisses are soft and wet.
you said my full name is pretty, and i like how it sounds when you say it
i'd let you call me by it if you asked.
you drank all my wine but what you didn't know is that wine was already yours
you gave me head on the floor
in my bedroom, you pick the best songs to kiss to.
i like the way you say 'jasmines'
a quieter part of me wonders how you would go about pronouncing every flower, and how long it would take
i would stay till the end
i didn't expect to feel anything when you said i was just your friend
you laid your head in my lap, and my thighs grew feelings all around you
but you run your fingers through your tangleless hair, and all my feelings fall to the floor
i will tuck them into my shirtsleeves, wear them like a friendship bracelet
we're just friends till nightfall, by midnight i'm your favorite.
i am not a tender thing to you, and i won't tell you that i want to be
so long as you continue to say my name so softly

Ineffable: Too great or extreme to be expressed or described in words; Too sacred to be uttered.
-------------------------–-------—----------------------­---------------------------------------

The whimpered cries of the dying
in the rubble of Bangladeshi avarice,
announcing we were worthy of life,
to which we think to ourselves,
agreed upon
with our,
a whispery, silent
amen.

The still alive cries of children,
tornado-tormented parents screaming unfair,
teachers body shielding their charges, whispering
save us Lord, from your inventive toys,

to which we think to ourselves,
a whispery, silent
amen.

But here comes the Oklahoma tornadoes again,
now four more dead in Houston,
selecting the innocent, the brave,
logic in any of this, none,
nonsensical at its worst

to which we think to ourselves,
a whispery, silent
amen.

~~~~~
The first I-am-alive cries
of new born lungs,
I have grandson, stain-less, perfect,
recovering in the stainless steel delivery room,
I hear the all babies in the neo-natal unit in unison
pronouncing a Hebrew blessing,
the Shecheyanu...

(Blessed are You, Lord our God, Master of the universe, who has kept us alive and sustained us and has brought us to these special moments)

to which we think to ourselves,
a whispery, silent
amen.

These unspoken poem devotions of adoration
of the sleeping chamber, that cannot
be heard or answered for they're dreamt and
perchance in the morning thankfully recalled,
enough to be transcribed,

to which we think to ourselves,
a whispery, silent
amen.

Ineffable.

A day, just another supplying an average day
to the mass of average.
Birth + Death = an average day.

I thank a God for the
birth of a newborn perfection

On this day the newspapers report
about silence of the God others pray to,
could be the same deity,
reporting that in his holy places,
Jew spits upon Jew,
Muslims usurp Christian lives,
all for none,
all forgetting in
whose image they were created.

to which we cannot say nor think
anything.

Ineffable.

too sacred to be uttered,
so instead of the paucity of these unuttered words,
know that each tear in
the reservoir of my eyes
is my unspoken poem prayer.,
my amen.

*Instead of answering
amen out loud,
wipe my eyes
with your fingertips,
silently.

I frequently read my old poems and
feel my glass heart splinter with impatience
and demand why my muse escapes
my passions, and my talent must
sleep cold and lonely within the shadowy crescent
where an oil-fire’s tongues dare not lick.

Then, when face with banal, bittersweet
mimicry week after week, therein
braces a bothered stirring of flavorful
jumbles as aimless as houseflies bouncing
against the window blinds.

And, once again, my poems,
with their phoenix lifestyles, breathe brave
gulps with scarlet-robin-******* puffed
with gung-** vigor.
Where the poet’s rhythm takes on equestrian
expression along the staggered verses,
bequeathing shine to syllabic shine
and stealing pop from pursed, pronouncing lips.

Each doting word may kiss and nuzzle the
splinters that recognize a cut so rare
that this world’s physical balance would overturn
with no presence of such wondrous oddity.

He is a book that was recommended to me just after I passed the shelf on which he was displayed
When I said I hadn’t been reading much lately
Life gave me a chapter full of pictures to begin with
And told me that one page at a time is still progress
In fact, one page at a time is the only way to make progress
He’s a well-read book with new words for every reader
And instead of leaving paper cuts on my hands he leaves ink stains
There are golden letters on his spine that I’ve taken to tracing absentmindedly every time I re-read a phrase
And dog eared pages that I’m not sure I have the authority unfold
He’s captivating
And quickly becoming my favorite story
He is English as a second language and still teaching me more about my tongue than I ever knew
Translating fears into excitement and confusion into intrigue
I didn’t know my skin was cryptic until he decided to decode me
But now I’m fascinated with hunting for the hieroglyphics in his neurons
Listening to tales spun by our own curiosity
Story time trumps bed time whenever possible
And when we decide that language itself is sometimes a ****** up means of communication
We try for morse code heartbeats and braille necklines and bizarre entanglements of hands
And when we decide that sometimes language itself is the best thing in the world
We talk the hours of the clock down to ticking hands and hourglass sand
Or get distracted and I’ll decide that I could travel the world in one night using the roadmaps in his veins
Where I’ll get lost and ask for directions and go through the same streets again anyway
Because I didn’t see everything the first time around and I really enjoy the journey
He is a pronoun that sounds good between my teeth and tastes like learning how to whisper before you learn how to speak
One of those words that I was never sure I was pronouncing right because I learned it by reading alone and deciphering based on context and roots
But he’s also one of those words where once you learn it you start hearing it all the time
And you swear that the whole world acquired this new term with you at once
He is nostalgia in a new experience
Nostalgia-- roots meaning home, or to return home, and a pain or sickness
He’s a homesickness that draws me to him every night
And he is a wanderlust that draws me away from the home I’ve known
Convincing me that comfort zones need exploring the same way tropical zones do
He is an encyclopedia on staying warm in Michigan winters
An atlas from desert countries
And a topographical map that makes me think
I could learn to like geography
Or cartography because he knows that the best way to record new terrain is to explore it first
And I’m content to be a notebook full of scribbles detailing the peaks and valleys and abandoned alleys
And arrhythmic patterns of wind set to traverse through tracheas, reaching lungs only when necessary
He’s the breath I forgot to take when a cliffhanger was resolved
And I don’t always know if I’m a page-turner or just a bookmark within one
But he’s a genre that’s meant to be read under the covers with a booklight until the sun comes up and reminds you that time isn’t as frozen as you hoped it was
And even when I don’t know if we’re on the same page
He tells me that there’s a reason that books have more than one
And I’ve never been good at guessing how stories are going to end
But I'd like to spend some more time reading

I didn’t pray to God in the hospital.
I didn’t pray to God in the jail.
No one’s praying to God when their duty to truth hasn’t failed.

No one’s praying to God if you’re the doctor threatened with ****** for abortions you perform.
No one’s praying to God when you’re accused as a witch and the holy-fire at your feet’s getting warm.

No one’s praying to God when medicine stops the disease that uncontrollably spread.
I wasn’t praying to God, when it was time for my heart to break and the pieces are still aching.
I wasn’t praying to God when I saw from mountaintops the natural wonder of this land.
I wasn’t praying to God when the times were bad, better, or good.

But God isn’t funny
When government leaders say they hear the words that he spoke,
Or when the faithful say he hates us, internet decapitate us,
Bar atheist from running nations though we’re just normal folk.

God isn’t funny,
When Religion’s given money just so others can pray,
But instead try humanism,
Give the people penicillin,
Clean water, food, or a place to live in but,

Hunger isn’t hilarious.
Ha Ha
Ha Ha

I didn’t pray to God in the hospital.
I didn’t pray to God in the jail.
I won’t be praying to God when my mortal heart finally fails.

No one would pray to God if they realized heaven’s not there when they finally close their eyes
I don’t pray to God, I won’t take false comfort in lies.

But God isn’t funny,
When people use his views to deft scientific proof.
Pronouncing old conclusions, renouncing evolution,
If it’s faith or truth it should be easy to choose.


But God isn’t funny,
When he gives false hope to the hurting and bereaved,
And it’s goes without saying,
If you’re a different faith or gay then,
We’re all peace and love but you’re not in the club.


Doesn’t sound so hilarious


I didn’t pray to God in the hospital.
I didn’t pray to God in the jail.

I didn’t pray to God in the hospital.
I didn’t pray to God in the jail.

I didn’t pray to God in the hospital.
I didn’t pray to God in the jail.

Mister God look at your people they’re starving, freezing, diseased, or so very poor.

No one's laughing at God
No one's laughing at God
No one's laughing at God
Laughing at the sky is odd.

I

We sit on a tailgate pointed toward
the hills, where life ripples down the slopes
gathers in pools of the creek and begins again
to climb up the peaks and tree trunks on the
other side. It colors the breaths we take
green.
Children run here, learn their legs, as stalks
graze their shoulders and block their
view. They get dizzy as rows rush by.
We rein in our bovine friends here, watch
them jump and kick, see them call in
spring

II

We walk between rows of highly stacked cement and exhale smog that drifts
upwards to
join the cloud of soot.
We walk among so many abrasive shoulders. We get
hung up on abrasive personalities.
A gray wave in a black sea we’re vapidly
drifting. Legs move quickly to stay afloat.
swimming. Swimming always. Swimming further.

III

We sit for pictures with clogged eyes and stuffed chests
We coo at portraits of masks and dummies
We write books for laughs and money and friends
We read a little to find the romance and sorrow
and lay cold on the slab while our own pages turn.

IV

We pass out of porcelain faces with their tightly
drawn eyes that cast gazes over shoulders, homes
of last night’s kisses. We pass out of the electrical
current of youth
numbed and still alive
with eyes that look like stained glass windows of the
Church of Holy Suffering.


V

We wait for Sunday night to turn the dial to the Blues. We keep throwing something for an animal to pick up and return.  We string beads and sell them for redemption.

VI

We think of our friends. They’re draped in a future,
warmed with hot blood rushing through their veins,
slamming fists to tables, pronouncing their minds.
ripping off dresses, sharing their madness.
tossing paint to canvas, showing their hearts.
asking questions to startle, proving their love.

VII

We think of our parents.
dead and gone, dead to us, dead by self-proclamation -
Is their blood cold and still in their withered veins?
Have they their fill of slamming fists and ripped dresses and tossed paint and startling questions?

VIII

We are sad.

Last night you said you loved me
And your eyes had the same expression of a homeless dog
But we know that pronouncing every letter of "I love you"
What you really meant was "love me, love me"
Words caused by the need of a warm body by your side at bed
And by the possible passion inside your chest - or your *****.

What I forgot to tell you is that my chest - or my ***** -
Has the same need of a warm body on my bed.
Maybe I - in all the human fragments inside me -
Have the need of having somebody.
Somebody, someone, some you.
What I forgot to mention is that
Perhaps that someone is you.

Look for the point of contact
Savor the moment of friction
She has straight cut bangs
And a necklace that has a
Hamsa hand with an eye in
The middle of the palm
She blinks large blue eyes
That are rimmed with
Long, dark, black eyelashes
She leans her long neck
Her dark, dark hair
Swishes at her pale collar bones
She purses her light, light pink
Lips that have touched to many
Lovely red beating hearts
She puts her skinny fingers on
Your hand from across
The dinner table, across the coffee
And the half-smoked cigarettes
You glance at how the light
Reflects off of all those piercings
Up & down her ears
Her lips part & she says very slowly,
Pronouncing each syllable one by one
"Let-s, ge-t ou-t of he-re."
You throw a *** of cash on the table
Not caring if it's the right amount

Selah

~~~

is a word used seventy-four times in the bible.  The meaning of the word is not known, though various interpretations are given below.  It is probably an instruction on the reading of the text, something like *"stop and listen."  The Amplified Bible translates selah as "pause, and think of that." Alternatively, selah may mean "forever," as it does in some places in the liturgy.  Another interpretation claims that selah comes from the primary Hebrew root word salah, meaning "to hang," and by implication, as in weighing, "to measure"

for Sethnicity
~~~

what trifle these
modern words,
hurled, expelled from the
no country for an old body,
without passport or
earnestness of purpose

the yeah yeah yeah filler
of day tourists who
leave~refuse,
leave their refuse,
never mark-making,
nor even  a mark of
minor distinctions

what mystery valued then in these
olden words,
of which,
there are the fewer than
precious few,
possessing
ineffable, multifarious meanings,
never wasted or with dispassion disgraced

Selah

as a young boy
parentally captive
was POW forced-marched
to synagogue daily,
then weekly,
and now,
free at last,
Oh Lord
free at last,

to go
never

now wanting immunity
for my sins
but asking only from myself
my own forgiveness,
still and well recall the
puzzlingly feeling of

Selah

"forever"
explained the perpetually tired,
older father-man,
"it means forever,"
he who was wearily forever tired from voyaging
and living in a new, stressful,
inhospitable world

carrying in a single suitcase(1)
centuries of the continental drift of
global dispersal diaspora prior,
that cannot be well remembered,
only honored in the
forever recalling

but I disdain the explanation,
as if
"forever"
would satisfy
a ne're satisfied,
irreverent, teenage curiosity

here I am
decades on,
remembering the mysterious

Selah

embracing its many personalities,
endearing now by its revealing opportunities,
and its suitability
in this,
in the the hour of
now me as the
elder father-grandfather

weary-leery,
of a man's age of aging,
the approaching visible runway,
upon which you only land
and never takeoff,
during the phasing out period

and so I reconsider

Selah

and all its variants,
seventy four times

all those elders know too well,
there was never a

forever

so you
stop and listen,
but not to your own heartbeats,
but to tue

poetic lapsing pauses,

the in betweens,
thinking on that
hope for next one Nat

taking your own measure,
the hanging up,
the weighing up
of the always imbalanced
credits and deficits,
accepting the net net
sum of
the totaling up

yet once more,
despite all,
the poet rises,
stands up,
stops to listen,
to give blessing to
you the reader

all poet's
welcomed progeny and prodigy,
hearing your crying hearts,
youngest wishes
and grinding familia of
familiar fears,
expressed so clear
in all your scripts,
pronouncing
over them,
over you

Amen ~ Selah

once again ,
one last time
telling it to God,
or anyone who'll listen,
with fervor

smiling inward
believing even more now
in the olden
specialized mysterious,
powers
of a word
that means
exactly what you meant it
to mean,
when  your say

Selah*

Oct 2, 2015

Perspective is everything darling.

Anything you put work into you begin to hate and anything you put money into you love, so its a constant cycle.

I was a mad independent individual and you broke me down to be a weak dependent among other people.

I loved feeling something new.

The stories I used to respect and look up to were becoming my own, even if they weren't much.

Always put your well being, career, and dreams before any person or thing. Your life comes first and that perfect kind of love comes after.

I hate feeling helpless more than anything in this world. Even in the small moments when your feet dangle while you're riding passenger with a person you don't know very well and you're having to laugh at every awkward topic the driver brings up trying to start a conversation.  'It's polite' is what you've been taught but whatever happened to a deep conversation right off the bat?  Whatever happened to meaning and opinion and stories and not just a casual small talk everywhere you go? I want to be told something that will make me remember you. Tell me about the time you got so drunk you ended up sleeping alone in a field and the stars were the only thing that mattered at that moment, there weren't any other issues to cloud your mind and your bottle of bourbon made the best companion. How you had this unexplainable feeling of living in the moment, like nothing else could ruin your peace.  I don't want to hear who won the most recent game, I don't want to hear about the current event taking over the news channels. I want a story.

Some friendships come together quickly and you wonder how you hadn't known this person earlier. They meet up and get all intertwined with each-other and go crashing like a comet, burst into the ground and destroy everything in sight. Some are gradual friendships, the two can spend time apart but still grow together over time. I call these perennial friendships because they will return every year.

My dad was always a big hairy question mark sitting on the couch. He watched brave-heart, liked old westerns and cheesecake, was an Elvis Presley fan and liked cars. Fast old cars. He loved God and hated Obama and his views were oh-so traditional that sometimes you wished you knew why. You wished you knew his whole story but he kept everything private. That's all I know about him and I grew up in the same house as him. 20 years together and that's all I could tell you. There was apparently a lot in his past and he didn't talk much. When we went out to eat we could have a full meal in silence and it wouldn't feel awkward at all. I was told I took after him in a lot of ways and one of them being that I was an extreme introvert. I called into a radio show when I was 8 on fathers day and they asked what celebrity my dad reminded me of, "John Wayne" I replied. The host sounded surprised to hear an older actor, "and why is that?" he asked. I gasped for some more breath because I was so excited I would hear my voice on the radio, "because, he always says, "thatll be the day"". There was an eruption of laughter on the radio and when they played it I blared the stereo so my dad could hear.

As I got older I sort of hated and loved when I would see patters in personality occur between my mother and I. I used to make fun of her laugh and her hair by calling them witchy, but then I noticed once I was a little older that I had both of those things and that I loved this description at the time. The sound and tone of her voice was another, I made fun of her for being a northerner but never pronouncing a G at the end of her words; "Goin, movin, talking, we'll see without pronouncing the break, so it sounded like well. I would catch myself pronouncing those words in the exact same tone and I'd say to myself *******.

Money is a trap as much as it is a tool of freedom. With money you can do whatever you want as long as you continue to make it, and making money can become a trap within itself. Without the need to make money constantly you can have the freedom to do whatever you like but without that money you are limited with what you can do with that time. So if time itself doesn't slap a pair of cuffs on your hands, money will.

I don't like playing games I like winning them.

I'm talking about defining our own personal generation, if we were to define our generation as a general whole it would be dubstep, iphones, social media, and street-culture wear. But we are an almost underground type of generation, alternative I guess. When the generics of our generation are going to sleep we are rising, with our Acapulco, our records, our high life tall boys, and our ink. The wolves come out at night.

I want to play piano on your black flag tattoo. I want to sit around the fire and watch you howl at the moon. I want to lay my head upon your chest and hear your heartbeat pace I want to sit back in your bed and watch the sun illuminate the place.  

His favorite song was Tom Sawyer by Rush but he reminded me more of a HuckleBerry Finn. Rolled pant legs, straw hat, and barefeet everywhere he went, always on the go, always yelling and dancing and even the way he smoked a cigarette was attractive to me and only me. He had a James Franco look about him when he was cheesing. It was those smile lines around the eyes, it killed me. He ruined the look with a head full of hair he was growing.

Rushing anything is never a good thing, good things take patience.

I want to touch you with my words..
I want to spill myself in verbs...
Creating one sound
About one Noun..
I want these emotions to be heard...
Thought about then felt..
Translated then yelled
I want me to be memories..
Recited scriptures on the tips of your tongue..
I want this to be Fun...
Me explained in dictionaries..
You reviled in song...
I sing of you in rhythm..
This verse...
one untitled song
And you will love it's tune..
Adding power to these feelings
I adverb my love inside...
To many adjectives to describe..
The sight inside my eyes...
I want to create us memories..
Dreams that fall ideas..
Let my words surround you...
Releasing all your fears..
Touching you with every syllable
Accenting every R..
Pronouncing all my Ps and Qs
Our details will be the fuse..
Light the match with your sweet lips
Lets us burn in pages
But our memories and dreams
Are now Ideas
Words thought without a Fear...

my brother is the safe environment I’ve created for the history of my lord.  political awareness, I mean, I mean, is a darkness.  my eyeglasses tell me you’ve been to see a train station.  do animals wait?  several impatient years later, two blindfolded mouth-breathers walk cheek to cheek in an Ohio fog that combs forward worms the length of a screen name on craigslist.  I am nearly pronouncing krokodil until my tongue disappears so I can pronounce it correctly for my mother’s not frostbit ear.  as for the two, they are mistaken by the disembodied poetics of local policing as the trophy nose of an odd-for-these-parts moose.  any re-enactment is my father the victim of a spirited birth.