Slow sinks, more lovely ere his race be run,
Along Morea’s hills the setting Sun;
Not, as in northern climes, obscurely bright,
But one unclouded blaze of living light;
O’er the hushed deep the yellow beam he throws,
Gilds the green wave that trembles as it glows;
On old ægina’s rock and Hydra’s isle
The God of gladness sheds his parting smile;
O’er his own regions lingering loves to shine,
Though there his altars are no more divine.
Descending fast, the mountain-shadows kiss
Thy glorious Gulf, unconquered Salamis!
Their azure arches through the long expanse,
More deeply purpled, meet his mellowing glance,
And tenderest tints, along their summits driven,
Mark his gay course, and own the hues of Heaven;
Till, darkly shaded from the land and deep,
Behind his Delphian rock he sinks to sleep.

  On such an eve his palest beam he cast
When, Athens! here thy Wisest looked his last.
How watched thy better sons his farewell ray,
That closed their murdered Sage’s latest day!
Not yet—not yet—Sol pauses on the hill,
The precious hour of parting lingers still;
But sad his light to agonizing eyes,
And dark the mountain’s once delightful dyes;
Gloom o’er the lovely land he seemed to pour,
The land where Phoebus never frowned before;
But ere he sunk below Cithaeron’s head,
The cup of Woe was quaffed—the Spirit fled;
The soul of Him that scorned to fear or fly,
Who lived and died as none can live or die.

  But lo! from high Hymettus to the plain
The Queen of Night asserts her silent reign;
No murky vapour, herald of the storm,
Hides her fair face, or girds her glowing form;
With cornice glimmering as the moonbeams play,
There the white column greets her grateful ray,
And bright around, with quivering beams beset,
Her emblem sparkles o’er the Minaret;
The groves of olive scattered dark and wide,
Where meek Cephisus sheds his scanty tide,
The cypress saddening by the sacred mosque,
The gleaming turret of the gay kiosk,
And sad and sombre ’mid the holy calm,
Near Theseus’ fane, yon solitary palm;
All, tinged with varied hues, arrest the eye;
And dull were his that passed them heedless by.
Again the ægean, heard no more afar,
Lulls his chafed breast from elemental war:
Again his waves in milder tints unfold
Their long expanse of sapphire and of gold,
Mixed with the shades of many a distant isle
That frown, where gentler Ocean deigns to smile.

  As thus, within the walls of Pallas’ fane,
I marked the beauties of the land and main,
Alone, and friendless, on the magic shore,
Whose arts and arms but live in poets’ lore;
Oft as the matchless dome I turned to scan,
Sacred to Gods, but not secure from Man,
The Past returned, the Present seemed to cease,
And Glory knew no clime beyond her Greece!

  Hour rolled along, and Dian’******on high
Had gained the centre of her softest sky;
And yet unwearied still my footsteps trod
O’er the vain shrine of many a vanished God:
But chiefly, Pallas! thine, when Hecate’s glare
Checked by thy columns, fell more sadly fair
O’er the chill marble, where the startling tread
Thrills the lone heart like echoes from the dead.
Long had I mused, and treasured every trace
The wreck of Greece recorded of her race,
When, lo! a giant-form before me strode,
And Pallas hailed me in her own Abode!

  Yes,’twas Minerva’s self; but, ah! how changed,
Since o’er the Dardan field in arms she ranged!
Not such as erst, by her divine command,
Her form appeared from Phidias’ plastic hand:
Gone were the terrors of her awful brow,
Her idle ægis bore no Gorgon now;
Her helm was dinted, and the broken lance
Seemed weak and shaftless e’en to mortal glance;
The Olive Branch, which still she deigned to clasp,
Shrunk from her touch, and withered in her grasp;
And, ah! though still the brightest of the sky,
Celestial tears bedimmed her large blue eye;
Round the rent casque her owlet circled slow,
And mourned his mistress with a shriek of woe!

  “Mortal!”—’twas thus she spake—”that blush of shame
Proclaims thee Briton, once a noble name;
First of the mighty, foremost of the free,
Now honoured ‘less’ by all, and ‘least’ by me:
Chief of thy foes shall Pallas still be found.
Seek’st thou the cause of loathing!—look around.
Lo! here, despite of war and wasting fire,
I saw successive Tyrannies expire;
‘Scaped from the ravage of the Turk and Goth,
Thy country sends a spoiler worse than both.
Survey this vacant, violated fane;
Recount the relics torn that yet remain:
‘These’ Cecrops placed, ‘this’ Pericles adorned,
‘That’ Adrian reared when drooping Science mourned.
What more I owe let Gratitude attest—
Know, Alaric and Elgin did the rest.
That all may learn from whence the plunderer came,
The insulted wall sustains his hated name:
For Elgin’s fame thus grateful Pallas pleads,
Below, his name—above, behold his deeds!
Be ever hailed with equal honour here
The Gothic monarch and the Pictish peer:
Arms gave the first his right, the last had none,
But basely stole what less barbarians won.
So when the Lion quits his fell repast,
Next prowls the Wolf, the filthy Jackal last:
Flesh, limbs, and blood the former make their own,
The last poor brute securely gnaws the bone.
Yet still the Gods are just, and crimes are crossed:
See here what Elgin won, and what he lost!
Another name with his pollutes my shrine:
Behold where Dian’s beams disdain to shine!
Some retribution still might Pallas claim,
When Venus half avenged Minerva’s shame.”

  She ceased awhile, and thus I dared reply,
To soothe the vengeance kindling in her eye:
“Daughter of Jove! in Britain’s injured name,
A true-born Briton may the deed disclaim.
Frown not on England; England owns him not:
Athena, no! thy plunderer was a Scot.
Ask’st thou the difference? From fair Phyles’ towers
Survey Boeotia;—Caledonia’s ours.
And well I know within that ******* land
Hath Wisdom’s goddess never held command;
A barren soil, where Nature’s germs, confined
To stern sterility, can stint the mind;
Whose thistle well betrays the niggard earth,
Emblem of all to whom the Land gives birth;
Each genial influence nurtured to resist;
A land of meanness, sophistry, and mist.
Each breeze from foggy mount and marshy plain
Dilutes with drivel every drizzly brain,
Till, burst at length, each wat’ry head o’erflows,
Foul as their soil, and frigid as their snows:
Then thousand schemes of petulance and pride
Despatch her scheming children far and wide;
Some East, some West, some—everywhere but North!
In quest of lawless gain, they issue forth.
And thus—accursed be the day and year!
She sent a Pict to play the felon here.
Yet Caledonia claims some native worth,
As dull Boeotia gave a Pindar birth;
So may her few, the lettered and the brave,
Bound to no clime, and victors of the grave,
Shake off the sordid dust of such a land,
And shine like children of a happier strand;
As once, of yore, in some obnoxious place,
Ten names (if found) had saved a wretched race.”

  “Mortal!” the blue-eyed maid resumed, “once more
Bear back my mandate to thy native shore.
Though fallen, alas! this vengeance yet is mine,
To turn my counsels far from lands like thine.
Hear then in silence Pallas’ stern behest;
Hear and believe, for Time will tell the rest.

  “First on the head of him who did this deed
My curse shall light,—on him and all his seed:
Without one spark of intellectual fire,
Be all the sons as senseless as the sire:
If one with wit the parent brood disgrace,
Believe him ******* of a brighter race:
Still with his hireling artists let him prate,
And Folly’s praise repay for Wisdom’s hate;
Long of their Patron’s gusto let them tell,
Whose noblest, native gusto is—to sell:
To sell, and make—may shame record the day!—
The State—Receiver of his pilfered prey.
Meantime, the flattering, feeble dotard, West,
Europe’s worst dauber, and poor Britain’s best,
With palsied hand shall turn each model o’er,
And own himself an infant of fourscore.
Be all the Bruisers culled from all St. Giles’,
That Art and Nature may compare their styles;
While brawny brutes in stupid wonder stare,
And marvel at his Lordship’s ’stone shop’ there.
Round the thronged gate shall sauntering coxcombs creep
To lounge and lucubrate, to prate and peep;
While many a languid maid, with longing sigh,
On giant statues casts the curious eye;
The room with transient glance appears to skim,
Yet marks the mighty back and length of limb;
Mourns o’er the difference of now and then;
Exclaims, ‘These Greeks indeed were proper men!’
Draws slight comparisons of ‘these’ with ‘those’,
And envies Laïs all her Attic beaux.
When shall a modern maid have swains like these?
Alas! Sir Harry is no Hercules!
And last of all, amidst the gaping crew,
Some calm spectator, as he takes his view,
In silent indignation mixed with grief,
Admires the plunder, but abhors the thief.
Oh, loathed in life, nor pardoned in the dust,
May Hate pursue his sacrilegious lust!
Linked with the fool that fired the Ephesian dome,
Shall vengeance follow far beyond the tomb,
And Eratostratus and Elgin shine
In many a branding page and burning line;
Alike reserved for aye to stand accursed,
Perchance the second blacker than the first.

  “So let him stand, through ages yet unborn,
Fixed statue on the pedestal of Scorn;
Though not for him alone revenge shall wait,
But fits thy country for her coming fate:
Hers were the deeds that taught her lawless son
To do what oft Britannia’s self had done.
Look to the Baltic—blazing from afar,
Your old Ally yet mourns perfidious war.
Not to such deeds did Pallas lend her aid,
Or break the compact which herself had made;
Far from such counsels, from the faithless field
She fled—but left behind her Gorgon shield;
A fatal gift that turned your friends to stone,
And left lost Albion hated and alone.

“Look to the East, where Ganges’ swarthy race
Shall shake your tyrant empire to its base;
Lo! there Rebellion rears her ghastly head,
And glares the Nemesis of native dead;
Till Indus rolls a deep purpureal flood,
And claims his long arrear of northern blood.
So may ye perish!—Pallas, when she gave
Your free-born rights, forbade ye to enslave.

  “Look on your Spain!—she clasps the hand she hates,
But boldly clasps, and thrusts you from her gates.
Bear witness, bright Barossa! thou canst tell
Whose were the sons that bravely fought and fell.
But Lusitania, kind and dear ally,
Can spare a few to fight, and sometimes fly.
Oh glorious field! by Famine fiercely won,
The Gaul retires for once, and all is done!
But when did Pallas teach, that one retreat
Retrieved three long Olympiads of defeat?

  “Look last at home—ye love not to look there
On the grim smile of comfortless despair:
Your city saddens: loud though Revel howls,
Here Famine faints, and yonder Rapine prowls.
See all alike of more or less bereft;
No misers tremble when there’s nothing left.
‘Blest paper credit;’ who shall dare to sing?
It clogs like lead Corruption’s weary wing.
Yet Pallas pluck’d each Premier by the ear,
Who Gods and men alike disdained to hear;
But one, repentant o’er a bankrupt state,
On Pallas calls,—but calls, alas! too late:
Then raves for’——’; to that Mentor bends,
Though he and Pallas never yet were friends.
Him senates hear, whom never yet they heard,
Contemptuous once, and now no less absurd.
So, once of yore, each reasonable frog,
Swore faith and fealty to his sovereign ‘log.’
Thus hailed your rulers their patrician clod,
As Egypt chose an onion for a God.

  “Now fare ye well! enjoy your little hour;
Go, grasp the shadow of your vanished power;
Gloss o’er the failure of each fondest scheme;
Your strength a name, your bloated wealth a dream.
Gone is that Gold, the marvel of mankind.
And Pirates barter all that’s left behind.
No more the hirelings, purchased near and far,
Crowd to the ranks of mercenary war.
The idle merchant on the useless quay
Droops o’er the bales no bark may bear away;
Or, back returning, sees rejected stores
Rot piecemeal on his own encumbered shores:
The starved mechanic breaks his rusting loom,
And desperate mans him ‘gainst the coming doom.
Then in the Senates of your sinking state
Show me the man whose counsels may have weight.
Vain is each voice where tones could once command;
E’en factions cease to charm a factious land:
Yet jarring sects convulse a sister Isle,
And light with maddening hands the mutual pile.

  “’Tis done, ’tis past—since Pallas warns in vain;
The Furies seize her abdicated reign:
Wide o’er the realm they wave their kindling brands,
And wring her vitals with their fiery hands.
But one convulsive struggle still remains,
And Gaul shall weep ere Albion wear her chains,
The bannered pomp of war, the glittering files,
O’er whose gay trappings stern Bellona smiles;
The brazen trump, the spirit-stirring drum,
That bid the foe defiance ere they come;
The hero bounding at his country’s call,
The glorious death that consecrates his fall,
Swell the young heart with visionary charms.
And bid it antedate the joys of arms.
But know, a lesson you may yet be taught,
With death alone are laurels cheaply bought;
Not in the conflict Havoc seeks delight,
His day of mercy is the day of fight.
But when the field is fought, the battle won,
Though drenched with gore, his woes are but begun:
His deeper deeds as yet ye know by name;
The slaughtered peasant and the ravished dame,
The rifled mansion and the foe-reaped field,
Ill suit with souls at home, untaught to yield.
Say with what eye along the distant down
Would flying burghers mark the blazing town?
How view the column of ascending flames
Shake his red shadow o’er the startled Thames?
Nay, frown not, Albion! for the torch was thine
That lit such pyres from Tagus to the Rhine:
Now should they burst on thy devoted coast,
Go, ask thy ***** who deserves them most?
The law of Heaven and Earth is life for life,
And she who raised, in vain regrets, the strife.”

when god lets my body be

from each brave eye shall sprout a tree
fruit that dangles therefrom

the purpled world will dance upon
between my lips which did sing

a rose shall beget the spring
that maidens whom passion wastes

will lay between their little *******
my strong fingers beneath the snow

into strenuous birds shall go
my love walking in the grass

their wings will touch with her face
and all the while shall my heart be
with the bulge and nuzzle of the sea

The day you died I went into the dirt,
Into the lightless hibernaculum
Where bees, striped black and gold, sleep out the blizzard
Like hieratic stones, and the ground is hard.
It was good for twenty years, that wintering --
As if you never existed, as if I came
God-fathered into the world from my mother's belly:
Her wide bed wore the stain of divinity.
I had nothing to do with guilt or anything
When I wormed back under my mother's heart.

Small as a doll in my dress of innocence
I lay dreaming your epic, image by image.
Nobody died or withered on that stage.
Everything took place in a durable whiteness.
The day I woke, I woke on Churchyard Hill.
I found your name, I found your bones and all
Enlisted in a cramped necropolis
your speckled stone skewed by an iron fence.

In this charity ward, this poorhouse, where the dead
Crowd foot to foot, head to head, no flower
Breaks the soil. This is Azalea path.
A field of burdock opens to the south.
Six feet of yellow gravel cover you.
The artificial red sage does not stir
In the basket of plastic evergreens they put
At the headstone next to yours, nor does it rot,
Although the rains dissolve a ****** dye:
The ersatz petals drip, and they drip red.

Another kind of redness bothers me:
The day your slack sail drank my sister's breath
The flat sea purpled like that evil cloth
My mother unrolled at your last homecoming.
I borrow the silts of an old tragedy.
The truth is, one late October, at my birth-cry
A scorpion stung its head, an ill-starred thing;
My mother dreamed you face down in the sea.

The stony actors poise and pause for breath.
I brought my love to bear, and then you died.
It was the gangrene ate you to the bone
My mother said: you died like any man.
How shall I age into that state of mind?
I am the ghost of an infamous suicide,
My own blue razor rusting at my throat.
O pardon the one who knocks for pardon at
Your gate, father -- your hound-*****, daughter, friend.
It was my love that did us both to death.

The sprouting buttercup
dangles into the purpled,
doting sky. It's waxy spangles
nuzzle the moist,
crisply dewed, fluff
whilst billowing across merry air. 

The yellow buttercup
dozes in spiced, lean dapples,
setting its soul ablaze in sumptuous echoes at the sheer
drape of dawn.

The teacup buttercup
outspreads it's wings
amongst tall spiked grasses
and wild flowers.
Shifting shafts and shards
of grass and glass
and forever awaiting the larks cry
which means its time to die.

This is the game, set and matching end-piece to what is known as:

http://hellopoetry.com/poem/385266/poetry-round-find-your-self-within/

by way of an introduction....

T'is season to move forward,
back to old acquaintances renewed,
sand, water and salty sun,
three lifelong friends who,
Auld Lang Syne,
never ever forget me

I get drunk on their eternity,
their celestial beauty,
and they, upon my tarnished earthly being,
muse and are bemused

unreservedly and never judgingly,
share shards of inspiration unstintingly,
we share, never measuring
this captain's humanity, his human efficacy,
by mystical formulae of reads or hearts

grains of sand, water wave droplets and sun rays,
and his beloved words, derived there from,
all only know one measure...
immeasurable
http://hellopoetry.com/poem/699991/adieu-my-crew-my-crew/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Pilgrimage (Reunion)


at last to begin,
to begin the 'at last,'
this reunion occurs
this first day of June
where on my
body's flesh colored calendar,
X red-marked,
deeper than any real cut of despair


this morn, leave for familiar parts,
embarking 100 steps to that
Adirondack chair,
my name, my self,
(oh god at long last)
so often, long lovingly
revealed unto you


the garden's sundial welcomes me,
Prince, Guardian, of the gate to the green,
the green steppe way to bay and beach,
a brief song of "ring around the irises,"
blooming around him,
he issues,
to celebrate his own glory recalled,
his own purpled prosed long ago one ecrivez'd,
by having the third mate
ring the greened worn,
bronzed ship bell
upon conclusion of
his raising of the gate


shorts and T white hair shirt,
costume de rigueur
of this Peconic pilgrimage,
turban and baseball uncapped,
stepping humbly
toward that worn wood throne
where carved are
the initials of
my poetic friends,
and his vast modest,
Concordia of poetic essays


Those odd disordered
collection of aleph bets
that have been prepared for this hour,
are sun dappled,
breeze caressed,
wave watched,
a fresh redressing after a
dum hiems,
a long dark winter


all rise up welcoming with voices
tremulous yet oratory,
sing with a love so spectacular ,
Handel's Messiah Hallelujah Chorus,
au naturel


the armies of ants declare this a
Truce Day,
parading before me in formation,
the rabbits race
in elegant uniforms,
white tailed bemedaled, dress grays,
announcing their  showoff arrival
with a new across-the-lawn
land speed record


the dear **** deer,
familiar families and generational,
look upon this human and
grumble while chewing our shrubbery,
an act of sherwooded lawn high robbery
but perforce acknowledging our entrance,
by uttering a Balaam blessing/curse,
a neutralized
"****, they're back"


the seagulls on the dock,
sovereign state observers from
Montauk and the far island city,
sent by the mother winds superior,
observers and reporters to nature everywhere,
Summer Season of Man Has Begun


a few white wakes disturb the water's composure,
the early low arc'd sun has not peaked in strength,
at 10:00am, the temp just breaches 60 Fahrenheit,
the beach sand untrod, no unlasting human impressions,
no children's red pails yet to them decorate,
amidst the sea life's detritus and smooth licked pebbles


Enough.


each tree ring and grass blade demands a verse,
an all my own tributary accolade,
this too much to accommodate


a year ago I issued an invitation,
do so again for my word is my bond
my responsibilities, my *******,


there are chairs for all
on my righted round and my motet left,
here, there are
no Americans,
no Canadians,
no Aussies or Brits,
or Indians and Fillipinos,
no African or Asians present,
East nor West,
None Invited here,
Only Poets


even those hardy pioneer
West Coasters, a proud lot,
and my Southern family drawling,
and perhaps lessening the mourning
just a touch, a minute modicum,
all sit quiet in the admixture
of poets come to celebrate
the blessing to have been tasked,
to write from and of places we visit
in the cerebral,
and to imbibe each other's words


Three Hundred and Sixty Four Days ago,
I wrote :

We sit together in spirit, if not in body,
You join me in the Poet's Nook,
A few frayed and weathered Adirondack chairs
Overlooking the Peconic Bay,
Where inspiration glazes over the water,
And we drown happily in a sea of words...

I am exhausted.
So many gems (poets)
to decorate
My body, my soul

I must stop here,
So many of you have reached out,
none of you overlooked.

Overwhelmed, let us sit together now
And celebrate the silence that comes after the
Gasp, the sigh, that the words have taken from
Our selves, from within.

Once again, in your debt

Again,
I await your beckoning wave of hello,
greet you in your mellifluous native tongue,
iced drinks at the ready,
the opening ceremony already started,
when all are seats taken
we commence officially,
with a blessed

*"Now, let us begin"

I am he
   who blistered and
   purpled his aching
   fingers, upon playing
   the saddest, dissonant
   melodies out of
   his old, untuned
   guitar, whose strings
   of somber used-to-be's
   he ceaselessly strummed
   and plucked under
   the dullest starless
   night sky; and
   sing of his
   weeping heart the
   poetry of melancholy
   notes half-composed.

It is me--
   the lone guitarist
   on broken avenue
   who never stopped
   playing his love
   song of rue
   since you left--
   whose only lyrics
   is your name
   and your words
   he dearly kept.

Mark but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deny’st me is;
It ****** me first, and now ***** thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be;
Thou know’st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead;
  Yet this enjoys before it woo,
  And pampered swells with one blood made of two,
  And this, alas, is more than we would do.

Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, yea, more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is;
Though parents grudge, and you, w’are met,
And cloistered in these living walls of jet.
  Though use make you apt to **** me,
  Let not to that, self-****** added be,
  And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast  thou since
Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it ****** from thee?
Yet thou triumph’st and say’st that thou
Find’st not thyself, nor me the weaker now;
  ’Tis true, then learn how false fears be:
  Just so much honor, when thou yield’st to me,
  Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee.

Everything thing you are about to read is the whole truth, and nothing but...

she flew
via jet blue,
da coop

decamped urban lands,
leaving poet producing this
piece de (at-the-door poem-de crap) resistance:

Sad mad bad

where I asked?

a mountain in Mexico,
where purpled pink wild flowers decorate,
and the yoga mat is never rolled up
and post pampering included!

harrumph,
and worse,
exclaimed

NYC got florists
and yogi masters
for hire

with my sisters,
will commune,
hike by dawn light,
eat veggies day and night
and bone my body
with exercise

Manhattan got veggies, central parks,
and occasionally a pretty dawn,
bone doctors extraordinaire,
don't you know the best veggies,
grown in Whole Foods in the
Time Warner Center?

go then, leaving poet,
sad mad bad

to salve my soul,
know this!

I am eating
a tuna Swiss melt,
French Fries and ketchup,
Danish made with Danish cheese,
drinking my fatte latte.

This my stress,
so well expressed,
but baby, be advised,

I am doing it,
in our bed!

all day tv watching,
crushed neath an inconsolable need
to do all those spiritual things
of which you disapprove!

you went down the long hallway
at 6am,
you thot you heard me say,

Leila, you got me on my knees!

what was said but this:

*Save me babe,
from doing as I please!

… the beginning.With purpled haze and showered stars, the crowds heaved toward heaven, and bared their chests, with savage eyes that screamed alarms, who played with notes and placed hypnotic words, into colors embracing their nightly rage. I dreamed this ****, when all soothed purple; in mysterious beat, that stalked our moment in time; at the edge of our enlightenment.America! America!God mend thine ev’ry flaw,Confirm thy soul in self-control,Thy liberty in law.These apparitions danced, while the crowd drummed black, and with jungled code they conversed, lashing fiery tongues, until our black faced angels; loosened their hold. Oh worshippers, it was his ******-ripped hands, who captured our hopes, who demonized our little tap dancer; the Sermon Dream.And it was replaced, our faith, our faith, our faith; with marbled bodies morbid, with murderous overtures, and hooligan priests, their despicable acts, the white barbarism. I saw these heavenly angels, who drank us drunk, les foules fâchées, je prie pour nous; poor mobs of seer poets, who lived in filthy hotels, with the distracted ghost of Madame Rachou.Among the ancients, the artists, the Egyptians, injections of brutishness, and smoke from burning testaments, our moment reflected black to back, that found us huddled under hair, that warmed our skin with naked lightning, thrown from one hit peddlers, the movement went downtown with snickered grins and bust line pimps who fed us our chocolate dust. We ate their scraps and drank their ****, sipping to salvation, without the blood from He, who is never coming.… the acts of violence, unspeakable joy.The Angel birthed a disciple to wait, to sip his grace then dance below, to visit our tombs, and pray for He, whose second act, a delayed departure, flashes Broadway’s darkened corners.The showered stars, the rancid thoughts, the hollowed chests; tracks of pity and fallen words, naked on porcelain lambs, cracked with hope that someone scratched; the King of hearts, the purpled belief, the tap dancer’s Dream.Our faith, our faith, our faith; our bodies become the overture, the awkward rhythm, the Blood and Bread, the grace from He; who dreams of armageddon, then pleasures Himself with hymns of praise.… the waters encroach.Our fingers plug the desert, while waters gently pour; we lap dance grunt, panting to the written testaments; in mud, in blood, on the skinned infants who lost their chance.We danced with a beat or three; to the rolling blankets; the humanity lost, and the gentle touched, by cold and rigid toes; crossed for the Calvary and furious charge.The priests of marble, who prayed to Him; were found holding the lanterns, sweet trinkets, fast bullets and fresh water boogie; while the dark was lit, as a guide to His arrival. Hallowed by The name whose eyes openly screamed, who played with notes and fed the words, into colors embracing his nighttime rage.God shed His grace on thee,And crown thy good with brotherhoodFrom sea to shining sea!2010 Barry Comer

Come home from eagle-throated distance,
The canoe-tip of the crescent moon scuds
Into the silted, mud-bed of heaven.
Her face-dream beside the pine trees
The mollusc of purpled wampum beads shining.  

Bury my hands, ninidji, in the eagle’s nest,
Carry my feeling words to her on wings.
Let her mix roots, berries, clay
and the feather of my hands
To paint her face with my words and these trees.

Or let my hands ripple like flat-fish
Above the silt-bed of her slim stomach,
Held there in radiant scaled warmth.
Lappihanne, the rapid water of our river heart,
Like an arrow that glides from the bow,
My people where the tide ebbs and flows.

To us both, the dark, golden edge of woods whispers, kuwumaras…
And the water arrow will never land,
But carried in my eagle’s hands,
I say kuwumaras, my love, and pierce through all darkness
To the empty path made full with the ripples of all who have passed.
My nika, swan of the woods, let us dive into the dark, golden sea
Of forever in the hills.

my mother taught me how to work the dirt,
grub it between palms, savor the smells of chickenshit, and
raw flesh. she knows that crops are grown fifty-fifty,

a little coddling, a little resentment. look at the thing
crawling out of your leaking womb, purpled with lacking.
she taught me how to heal, let my body mend itself with

time. when i was born, the salt of my mother clouded around my
eyes. they broke me to let me live, and so forth. but i have never
stopped with the needing. i became a **** in the dirt i worked.

empty, glad with unwanting. i wanted to spread my branches and show my mother the world she forgot. i remember. i remember.
but my chants fell upon deaf ears. my prose too purpled to read.

if you can bring nothing to this dirt
but another dead body,
this is not a garden for you.

You say you love, and yet your eye
  No symptom of that love conveys,
You say you love, yet know not why,
  Your cheek no sign of love betrays.

Ah! did that breast with ardour glow,
With me alone it joy could know,
Or feel with me the listless woe,
  Which racks my heart when far from thee.

Whene’er we meet my blushes rise,
  And mantle through my purpled cheek,
But yet no blush to mine replies,
  Nor e’en your eyes your love bespeak.

Your voice alone declares your flame,
And though so sweet it breathes my name,
Our passions still are not the same;
  Alas! you cannot love like me.

For e’en your lip seems steep’d in snow,
  And though so oft it meets my kiss,
It burns with no responsive glow,
  Nor melts like mine in dewy bliss.

Ah! what are words to love like mine,
Though uttered by a voice like thine,
I still in murmurs must repine,
  And think that love can ne’er be true,

Which meets me with no joyous sign,
  Without a sigh which bids adieu;
How different is my love from thine,
  How keen my grief when leaving you.

Your image fills my anxious breast,
Till day declines adown the West,
And when at night, I sink to rest,
    In dreams your fancied form I view.

’Tis then your breast, no longer cold,
  With equal ardour seems to burn,
While close your arms around me fold,
  Your lips my kiss with warmth return.

Ah! would these joyous moments last;
Vain HOPE! the gay delusion’s past,
That voice!—ah! no, ’tis but the blast,
  Which echoes through the neighbouring grove.

But when awake, your lips I seek,
  And clasp enraptur’d all your charms,
So chill’s the pressure of your cheek,
  I fold a statue in my arms.

If thus, when to my heart embrac’d,
No pleasure in your eyes is trac’d,
You may be prudent, fair, and chaste,
  But ah! my girl, you do not love.

Lonely time the silent partner my shroud of light untouched ?  Stone horse caravan in flight beckons to your claw , to sail the truth of force untold beyond the gaping maw .

The trees a mountainous mirage , the
well of life , the soldier’s strife .  Their patterns form a                            
vast collage , oming beckoning call of life .

Like the drips concentric circles they sing a
mighty tune , of the force that has survived the tide
to look upon the moon .  

A camel’s **** with head and trail the
universal drone .  We track across the sea of time
like unicorns we hone .  Only to become ourselves
as we forge into our home .

Tomorrow is only yesterday beyond the here
and now .  We all must strive within ourselves to
make the tortoise paw .  To stand beside the endless
river and be what we can be , until we finally
become what we all need to be .  Introspect the
bottomless key , to stand an island in the sea .

Pieces of jade in a sun bowl , the purpled
crystal queen .  The fragments of forever continue
with the dream .  Islands in the sun , speaking just
for fun , of what it is that out survives the truth
that hasn’t come .  

God bless the child that has it’s own , gladiator
that .

The policeman strides the concrete,
some poisoned daffodil
in his stage boots of tread and leather
and fear of authority.

Troll-like he emerges over the sound
of the head-dressed busker,
her simple song, her trio of chords
singing under the shops,

who despise her art.

And I, against the tide of footfalls
and ‘aww’s’ at the latest range
of lipsticks and daily distractions,
I stop to watch as her will falls limp.

Her squeezebox is strangled of sound,
and the music dies at the order
of an order, the noise pollution
of the High Street’s mating call.

Chair folded, she evacuates through
the traffic fumes, ‘cross the road,
and with hope, with fingers crossed
and eyes wet, I hope this is a retreat

and not a surrender.

Once more he strides the concrete,
his fluorescent jaundice coat
a warning, a reminder, and I see
his eyes mouth the words:

‘Your license please,’ he says to her,
‘your paper proof of your right to play.
What profit plan do you have in place
and who approved your name?’

‘You can’t call yourself a busker’, he says,
‘much less an artist or work of art,
which talent show do you hope to enter,
to validate your part?’

‘Your part in this wholesome land,’ he says,
‘how you do your bit, your profits large,
because our economy is going asunder,
and so we have no time for art.’

‘So it’s with no due regret,’ he says,
‘that I’ll send you on your way.
And if with you goes the death of music,
well that’s just progress made.’

And so I walked away from this scene of
deflowered and purpled hope,
my stomach wrought with injustice
and no nicotine in tow.

And it is to this table I am sat,
with just one vocation upon my mind;
to reclaim her song, now sung in silence,
and steel her memory in time.

And it is to this table I am sat,
with everything on my mind,
to tell of what I’ve seen,
to indulge another rhyme:

Sing to me your sorrow,
sing unto the skies,
play to me your pleasantries
and please purge me of my lies.

Pay us with your sorry tune,
pay us with your life,
all your forsaken childhood dreams,
your faded hopes and strife.

And please,

bathe me in this sunlight,
and bathe me in time,
scour me with city streets
and allow me what is mine.

out in the mountains,
when my feet are pressed and purpled
from pushing the world to roll her callused breast,
then each breath, deservingly,
funnels the friction into fire.

but here our milk flesh thumbs
flick the ridges of the flint
and through trees we **** a Bic
just to exhale flame again.

oh-two deprived at altitude
or getting high with all the dudes
you’d count them as two trails that lead to the same place

but that’s just what the map says.
neurotransmitter math has
sold, by weight, the dopamine
wrapped like gods great gift
in threads of nervous lace

and you forget that different paths
never summit the same
if steep, or shallow, the peak can be
epiphany pleasure or just good ****

in green pill bottles, they trap the trees
and plastic cages hang on me
when the weight of our minds
bends our necks towards the asbestos sky
where porous plains of ceiling tile
have us counting holes in the light

so you see my disappointment,
when you were too ****** or drunk or cold
and said it would be better
if we just went inside

as we circled up the stairwell
you stepped easily on plaster pieces
of white ceiling that had fallen to concrete

perhaps it is from fear
that some can find a comfort
having heavens built so brittle
that they crumble within reach

My debt bubble has been de-leveraged & I'll fight with guns plastic
'cause in my life defensive maneuvers have been necessarily drastic
when my crooked, fist-fightin' limbs distend Michael J. Fox spastic
Hurry pops the time for peace has degraded into a campaign drastic
as it's off to Wales where Woody, Keef & Charlie have gassed ****
like Churchill planned for Bonn as he thunk toxic gas was fantastic
& normal like switching toothpaste with a gummy resin tree mastic
that's tacky enough to entrap a brown flea but not a ******, fast tick
on Hillary Clinton's saddle-sore ***'s ****-itchy crack iconoclastic
that forces epidemical ****-casting directresses to brutally cast sick
& crippled X-muffers in dramas that are heterophobic & bombastic
& contra-contrary to the T.N.T. needed to nucleate *** & blast hick
to decree '64 as bein' the year of producer Loke Wan Tho's last flick
I am stirred by murmurs of kittens that have daily purred but my fat
cats never bought never sold never used a toilet never spoke a word
as hairy cats are ecstatic to lick hanging parts that are thickly furred
& drenched in muco-pus, river mud, alkaline residue or mouse ****
that's added for spice with green duck gut, snake nose & rotted bird
to commonize felinicidal fare in stitch with farmerettes heatin' curd
to nourish ol' Jimmy Carter robotoid #14 whose death was deferred
to push puppet Lin Forbes Burnham as David Rockefeller preferred
makes recipes valid for McDonald's grinding men into meat absurd
& the cries of ***** smashing periodic squeals into groans unheard
by moon-friendly babes whose quims rest salmon-pink & uninjured
in aspections physico-social via spirographical methods unpictured
regarding cotomaster vulgaris or second-place placers placing third
with ears & belly buttons clogged by **** & blood-shot eyes blurred
Oh **** Kiki Ebsen, let's love forever the dead Larry, Moe & Curly
& their lower Australian counterparts: the scuzzy Fairy, ** & Girly
who gulp milk with hens' eggs knowing that not 1 dairy foe is burly
as I wanna see H.P.V. vaccine-pricking-swine Rick Perry goin' surly
like Squiggy might've on Garry Marshall's show Laverne & Shirley
starring Cindy Williams & Penny Marshall whose teeth ain't pearly,
& who in heels & padded bra passes as the twin of Jo Anne Worley
in 1963 when cream was in glass bottles & menopause started early
enough for Lee Oswald before The Eye Shadows backed Merle Lee
Disney destroyed maternal worries with furnace asphyxiants of gas,
proving that lungs full of carbon monoxide fumes ain't going to last
to see '39 as '38 wafted by in a whiff of monoxidized demise so fast
for those who cartoonize the near-future, animate God's distant past
so as to demand that Rabbi Shimon's Apocalypse tribes be amassed
to pike the head of Charlie Watts as El Shaddai can never be sassed
before a Satanical/congregational flock of U.S.'s pornocratical cast
conjuring underneath a devilishly-****** act's pornographical blast
framed as merry mix-ups the queerest of collusions that flabbergast
regardless of America's oldest race-baitin' ******'s homosexual past
as a Georgia state assembly guy whom toothless ****** outclassed
Whilst masonical N.A.S.A. creates super-speed planets between us,
nobody cares that our 500,000 mile-per-hour sun is paced by Venus
in aether squattin' like California smog in a stab wound of bean pus
that'll render mucho mas gorier the spit-stained walls of a clean bus
driven off the Sunshine Skyway Bridge by a *****-lovin' mean cuss
who aped a weakling diving from tin panels pitched via a lean truss
that constricts **** lard into prime cream corn to make a queen fuss
The costumes of the Gestapo & American cops are black not 'cause
I like hanging out with lynch mobs & ******* ****** in my shack
& writing Bible corollaries after rammin' enemas up my ****** tract
in repugnance to ***-wipe Zbigniew Brzezinski of the Warsaw Pact
as it is Russia's Crimean annexation of 2014 that he's denied as fact
I curl these 10 toes under so they don't get, by a machete, hacked &
I don't date angry Mafia assassins so as to keep from bein' whacked
whilst the pardoning integrity of demi-god mafiosos governs intact,
as sanctity is conferred knowing which cops by the mob are backed
through underworld graft to ensure pig police are doggedly tracked,
framed, extorted, beat up, spiritually broken & emotionally cracked
haunting dank alleys with the hapless citizens they had blackjacked
whose id acuity gave sway to id injury that caused 'em to be sacked
by politicians placed in places as these are places a mob has hacked
with paid-pain-placebo politicos la cosa nostra has placidly backed
& licked, tucked, hocked, blacked, ticked, socked, cocked & tacked
or redacted, corrected, misdirected, uncooked, rooked & shellacked
plus heckled, freckled, prickled, pickled, trickled, kicked & stacked
Las lebianas de T.V. sexcite & thrill as no low caliber gun ever will
on the battlefields of Vietnam where John Kerry liked to run & ****,
before porkin' John Heinz's Satanical widow in a billion-dollar deal
He couldn't kick his habit each mornin' of taking a birth-control pill
or attending parties of talk-show-maggot Donahue to cop a free feel
after crappin' into pizza boxes to implement Lucifer's masonic weal
I forget not from which side my ****, neck-breaking horse I mount:
hormones coursing, **** strap is tight! What in hell am I on about?
I swoon in love, dance over matches, feel *****, steadily lose count
Her cane, her walker, her wheel chair & support hose, quack-quack,
only prove what gigolos have always known, wealthy hags kick ***
in post-menopausal slump on cruise ships ******* apes for a laugh
up my you-know-what that is a big outlet 25 inches north of my calf
whilst allopathic veterinary cat medicine increases misery @ % 7½
because me no understand a tiny bit God's need for famine & wrath
against dullards whose algebra is more mathematic than basic math
that lets me hog-call the glossy-white pig Kathie Lee Gifford: Kath'
after she aborted 3 kiddies under the bridge on the coat hanger path
Many thrillin' Christian facts have just come to light with a colorful
computer-generated face of Lord Jesus, thank God He is very white
so that we may crucify the black Jesus theory without a ****** fight
that'd be the death-kiss for chimps chimping ghetto-ebonics at night
I care for you like a foreign **** with lots of cars in his huge car lot
I know that kitty-soft quims like yours ain't never wholesale bought
I just want to part your pink ******* in bed or on any army cot
I wanna probe the core of your womanhood like your mama taught:
Cousin Jethro, Uncle Jed, André from U.P.S. & that ****** she shot
in cop-crazed self defense as she feared for her personal safety a lot
'cause her husband had to **** Iraqi children in Iraq where he fought
toilet-strain that queered his insane brain giving him queer-brain rot
that bruised his belly button, above primal glands, with a blood clot
big enough to slow Chris Reeve's gallopin' horse to a paralyzed trot
that'd split the greasy 3 hairs on the cue ball of governor Rick Scott
who's a leg-shaving maniac, less frigidly warm than moderately hot
when he enjoys vein-popping-**** straining on his golden **** ***
where-from he farts that it's legal Agenda 21's new-world-order plot
Love me wet, like you loved ****** loving freak Jacques Cousteau
who drowned 350,000 Unitarians via Aqua-Lung, Don't'cha know?
Ah Satan sees Natasha while she'll step on no pets to see juice flow
along direct paths between points A & B, as would fly a sober crow
34 minutes late for an egg-layin' contest & house-cat-skinning show
that we bird-lovin' farts must look up to the sky from hot hell below
where evaporated diarrhea fills Carnation milk cans in a ****** flow
over irradiated breakfast cereal that radiates a healthful, green glow
that'll thaw **** ice & hypothermic ***** on banana cones of snow
I'm better off than dead, not better often dead, Totie Fields, you liar
I won't skate to Ohio whilst my **** is on fire with ****-love desire
Excuse me while I limp to hell, as my leg was pared just after a fire
that makes me hobble to hell after cooking in Gandhi's funeral pyre
The sweet nectar of rector Hector of the Catholic sector gives sway
to conjecture in the Protestant vector as his carotid artery neck tore
The new nectar of Hector rector of the Catholic sector gave sway to
conjecture with an elector of vector 7 as his carotid artery neck tore
As his carotid artery neck tore, a new nectar of rector Hector de the
Catholic sector gave sway to conjecture with an elector of X vector
As his real pecks & neck tore, black neck tar of rector Hector of the
Catholical sector prefecture shot a letcher, a selector & an inspector
With specks of neck gore, the tarry sect tar of trekked-for Hector of
papal facture could catch more than lure ***** ***** on a tech floor
This violent gothical life moved me into a filthy hermit's hut where
it keeps my ***** mouth shut, the limited movement in my left nut
This stupefyin' gothical life dug me into a buried hermit's rut where
it's kept my ***** mouth shut, the poor functionality of my left nut
has kept 666 donkey gobs shut, the campy dysfunctions of a walnut
It's kept my ***** mouth shut, the bad functionality of my hind gut
It keeps my ***** mouth shut, the limited movement in my left nut
It slams my ***** mouth shut, the fun moments of my lard-*** ****
Your pocked *** are 2 flabby people I haven't wanted to meet again
while I'm busy in bee-stung-hive land eating carp bowel & shark fin

DON'T TOUCH MY *** BECAUSE I'M A LESBIAN FOREVER
& ever & no man'll change it because, ****-wise, I'm lesbian-clever
I'll block you soon forever & blacken your eyes & hide your toupée
because I hate you more queerly than prissy Obama hates being gay
with Michael, as he expresses himself better durin' lactation classes
among the hammer-happy Hillary crowd & Bill's ****-****** *****  
that only worsen clownish ***** dunked by red-sock-ducked passes
through to the prostate in lucky, ancient Hugh Hefner ****** sasses
Eddie Money, Johnny Paycheck & Johnny Cash in 32 papal masses
Lord God, let us gaily promote family-oriented regional voter fraud
for a shiksa of the Red Sea whose **** & *** push a solid boater ***
I cocked hitchings to my petcock like a whinin' Alfred Hitchcock in
anticipation of 18 quacked ribs via unpatented Owl **** ***** Sock
as sinus infections purpled nasal-mucopus excreta into an itch pock
Let me scratch your lard *** in peace, a piece of ***, girly hot ridge,
on the farm with lazy Keith, smart-aleck Danny & Shirley Partridge
who refuses to follow hygienical protocols including hand sanitizer
as your glad, toothless Kentuckian chews via a manned-clan incisor
On blood-drenched sheets you scarf Jiff extra crunchy peanut butter forever & want me to love you for it after hurlin' chunky in a gutter
But I got more complex self-respect than blind respect that's simple
for your cheese-spewing-mucopus-heavy-acne-cystical *** pimple
that made Walker McDonald chuck his walker for a steel gimp pole
so that he could pole vault over Bruce Jenner's scrod & shrimp stall
Deeply from the cockpit of my ******'s messy shore I proclaim that
this itchy crack is a filthy treasure by my big ****** ****'s measure
'cause from it venereal-diseased Johns derive lots of carnal pleasure
until their ureters swell shut & good currents of ***** ain't ****-sure
fewer than 6 inches from the **** uretero-pelvic junction's fist core
where M.L.K., junior scratched deeply his pustulating ****** fissure
Shut up hard-*** **** I can buy & sell you whenever I ******* want
Sit there whilst I pray for guidance or I'll kick you for your defiance
Hi, my name's Kandy and I work in a cat house with mucho ******
who are girlfriends of mine plagued by ulcerative, syphilitical sores
made weepy by salts of the briny deep below Jacmel's ocean shores
Insane James Whitmore claims grit poor as he blames **** for what
shames *** sore after eating fried porridge that defied proper storage
Wherever condominiums are posh the battle is delirium vs.delusion
that illustratively eliminates an elusively-shrill illusion of a colossal
cerebral cortex calamity countering cranial, ****-clinching contusion
The gay estrogen king kept his **** well with agents anthelmintical
till he was killed by the girly estrogen king with pills antiparasitical
Algeria, Algeria, I despise you worser than **** films from Nigeria
made by queer-bait crotch crickets afflicted with advanced progeria
that they got from white-phosphorus-bombed kids of peaceful Syria
where Moslemical love thaws the icy hearts of ******* from Siberia
who ran over the Caucasus via Spain's Portuguese peninsula, Iberia
I'm doubly excited about Intact ******* Day I think I am I am sure,
'cause I got a dark cookie doll in raunchy eastern Mexico to live for
which's why the suicidal jump of Evelyn McHale was not vehicular
in traffic flow manual guides, as the crashed car was her stone floor
Commanding Lieutenant William Bligh was the victim of cowardly
mutiny by Acting Lieutenant Fletcher Christian, two years after His
Majesty's Armed Vessel Bounty did sail, 'cause sweaty-palmed freak
Fletch Christian snagged his mutinous, ripped ****** on a bent nail
Don't let's not, not let's don't count on doubt, unsounded into Jersey
where stinking **** #26 is officiously & officially known as **** Z
who'll scrape, bow, prostrate like a girl whose knees shake in curtsy
who'll scrape & prostrate like a lesbian whose **** shakes in curtsy
Look Santa Claus, my purpled *****' knobs are Christ-like & sharp
like push buttons of a dead angel's gaily-strummed, gay-baited harp
Wing Chun my *** up the center line & I'll hide beneath a tarp after
I call first dibs from a toilet, dharma & karma & catfishes kiss carp
I call first dibs from a toilet, dharma & karma & catfish kisses carp
I call first dibs on the toilet! It's daffy dharma over karma or vicky-
verky. Wing Chun my *** up the center line where jerks chaw jerky
I sank to the bottom of your love bucket like mice winning at bingo
for being ******* to cherry wood while houndin' a kid-killin' dingo
Your clingy love has done much to set me free since you lopped off
2 of your straight front limbs to become a crippled, double amputee
during a Jesus-dead Christmas like I don't like it in an ulcerated sea
under the current of a skinny, barbiturated Johnny Cash over for tea
as calculated gastrical absorption rates rate as constants minus a fee
that transmogrifies my sleek, **** **** into the bulbous *** of a bee
what pendulates & undulates below the bend of my lonely left knee
in relation to fly-papered catch-alls & bug zappers in my family tree
where 1 ape wrangler wrangles triangular angles, bangles, spangles
for Christmas like I don't like it because my ******* on ice dangles
whilst fearin' for Winston Smith as to when caged rats/mice fangs'll
avulse eyes & gnaw on his tongue, before weaving nests in his lung
that shall really make it tricky to sing sing-songs he ain't never sung
that'll make it hard to gaily sing sing-songs he ain't never gaily sung
Merry Christmas nice Santa Claus, happy birthday & prepare to die
'cause when it comes to murdering fat men, I'm not the least bit shy
around dippy/daffy ***** too dried out to give it that old college try
outside college because I am the same age while they are a lot older
with bruised head, dented instep, hammer toe & arthritical shoulder
that goes up when I slip down a hill that's got many a loose boulder
to crush Miss Austria even though I once angrily warned & told her
of what's in for tall chicks runnin' ledges in acts dangerously bolder
for beauty queens long in the tooth & **** babes significantly older
whose hottest movements render homely ***** withdrawn & colder
than the homosexy boy-toy lover of Obama pickaninny Eric Holder
from whom I've hid in 32 Kenyan files a blatantly-fraudulent folder
of cheery, cherry Christ Masses reamin' the beheld's queer beholder

A barren home,
but not of things,
where silence wanders
curiously
down the empty halls.
"Who's there?"
She stands to peek
through door ajar
at the dust  ::BOOM::
on the floor.  ::BOOM::

Nothing's stirred
and all's in place
and all is still
but subject’s face:
fieldstone hues
and wrinkles too.
A desol't eve
in fickle blue,
she’s marching dusk
with throated heart.

Purpled cirri
and pinholes white
high above her
stalwart ceiling.
Shunted thought.
Listless thunder.
Turn on heel
to pinioned sleep;
a reeling sanct,
an effete lover.

With nine iron rods

We held the gods

Balanced over jam jars

Then with nine iron bars

We broke those jars

And kissed the gleaming

Crystal knives left behind


Later we spead

Their essences on pumpernickel bread

We were glad when their folly

At last rested in our bellies

In the confusion

Of our purpled splintered mouths

We smiled

He washed his hands in the Caño Cristales.
Five colours of healing bruises put to pasture
Within his purpled veins. There was blood again;
He was now a resident of Earth.

****** hair had grown wildly into a half-beard.
He scratched at it in the Columbian sun,
Sweating in the lack of British rain
And thinking of all the miles he had
Put between the two.

He’d spent all his life combing the mirror.
Combing the mirror and expecting change;
An escape from vanity publishers and
Celebrity snapshots. Combing the mirror,
And so always ending up in the same place.

Searching his memories of Peruvian plains,
There were diagrams set by the former residents.
He took out his folded notebook and started on
The Brand New Testament; before throwing
Its ashes into the liquid rainbow.

Where, oh Heart, is the answer?
In man’s olive iris that pines
capsule of soulish vines stretching

by the water in that memory…
First pink touch: the long name,
Which you say is so
easy on the eye

In catching dim fair soft lights
blown in gloom’s silver odds

between two old pages or
News soaked in a gray ink drop bath:
The blending of war broken out on earth’s cheek
With the gossiping red margins and
Something eerie on the last page…

I step on it, walking straight.

In still mindfully begging
Oval windows on the church ramparts:
 Is it in the epoch
          Womanhood?
In the sore ******, in the sore slits
            Dribbling pollen of wounds of
            Nickings, gyps, slights, losses

Is it in a stasis
Forested with chocolate and sisters
Purpled bedtime music boxes
Dreaming or in the moment I
Stir my bland corners with song
            Not in victories banners cheering
            Hunched labor in running
            Something we get when winning

Is it in a process
That wrinkles like skin, then spots
            Or hangs over the path
            A great moss and changing
the wintery company of foliage and twig to
fire and blossom,
in the birth of death and growing?

is it in kissing or eating before praying
like guilt yellow as bruised pear hips
that melt to brown in your fingers

Should I see or hear or feel it
in the man himself, meat of his fine muscles,
his heart's voice, the buried hunger pang,
it speaks
or in his prayer's slow sadness,
black as the tomb's passage and
can you answer?

you don’t face me when we sleep
and I lie awake, composing couplets of it
then you palm at my lips and mumble
secrets                   I wish I would have kissed you
that night in the rain I wish you would have
  
kissed my toes when I pulled them
from their dripping socks and laid in your bed.

we come up with a hundred excuses not
to touch but I see lost love everywhere and resent
not bringing it to my breast  
     the lonely hate the fulfilled because they

  are kind of dead          we pile our emotions into
the bathtub until water dilutes them to fine
powder                      we build concoctions of

not knowing what the opposite ***
feels like even they’ve purpled my heart with
a bruise and cannot sleep in bed with you
       he whispers        I wish we would have kissed
so you were not lonely I wish you were my toes.

Twisting like fingers,
caught around these curtains –
a pattern, two colors and
more dimensions than the sea.

One wave shivers upon
our house’s shoulders, neck.
It looks so aged and wrinkled.

The rash makes rafts
of its skin, purpled from burn
and the nerves become tin
cans or rooms without guests:
she napped on the bone.

Jealous that there is not
flowerpots in less, not color –
death’s but a mirror of black.

And giving pearls to
maids: I watched them pick
the suede from clamshells
and become a mother flood.

Nature was here with
dovetailing white linen sheets
soiled by flame, cancer birth.

how don’t know to get the you in: a dis(miss)ing of anchorage, akin to ungrabable, purpled sky, and blackvelvet’s talks to morning sand. to get the you in: a table top of no greed. legs of giveness. to haiku the hell out of.



we are in the process of stunned voices praying to pregnant earth: word fruit meets wet tongue. prophet with no pockets up sand up. in a world that is to know what your sun exuding sounds like.



sweet loathing, singing cell. undernourished, remembering only two tons of. bites down boldly onto wear. ritualistic sweating betrothed to thecosmos. shake loose my skin. legs of giveness, and something that wouldn’t be about you.



or something about you that wouldn’t be. hiding in the corners of language that mask gaping unrelatables. Unrelenting maybeoneday. i’ll decide to hear you (sh)out. the italics of Monday evenings.  



Black tea, bumps head into mosquito bites on your thighs. oops, sorry, can i hug you? sorry. So from here we can deduce thetruth that oops, can i hug you? sorry its obvious, tied. eyed our lives in one swoop and now i’ll never possess of a series of creeks,



primordial. Like when the earth’s virginity was lost to the last respiris of a first dying. you as a plethora of suntan lotion3. but lotion is lotion, like the sea, it cant be quantified or split up into in order to be a “plethora,”



and still there’s no one to rub down my back places  my black places I can’t reach or see and so can’t mimic like a leglessness, a series of syllables.

Beginning in the evergreens,
Where the waters run sweet as wine,
The skies sing out shattering,
The ground spins down below
His marching feet.

One thousand and one years
Left him in the earth,
And raised up Typhon,
Come lightning staff,
Come thunder breath.

Moving through the mountains,
Purpled by the sun,
Floods cutting through the rock,
Come traveling through the caverns,
Through the cloud's rain that tear down.

Eagles eating gods,
And green, green trees stretching hands,
He stumbles through the paths,
Going all martyr in the shades.

Eventually, his progression meets the sun,
That scorches shadows from their place,
Plumes of fire preaching,
Here he finds the meadows,
Melting all gone in the red and stubborn sand.

Oh and there he fights the priests,
Oh and there he summons hell,
From the sun that never dies,
And the seasons never change.

There go I,
Through the paradises of elephants,
(White and rouge)
Palaces of sultans in the sultan shade.
Armageddon heavens twisting,
Where the spindle-bound spires raise.

There go I,
Vagrant feet forging,
The miles in meter
And the deserts in their damnation.

Eventually, the vagrant finds the rivers.
Eventually, there he claims all Moses,
Running wild through these waters,
Cutting heel into valleys pale and pink.

Golden Hordes, and god-kings,
And paisley patterns branded in the eye;
There are the journeys going unhindered,
Where the snow meets the soul.

The vagrant with his body,
Naked in the mind,
Storm by boat in the dead of winter,
Warmed by sails in the dead of spring.

The vagrant going east,
Then around again and west,
There shores of silver,
Horns of plenty fallen found.

One thousand and one years
Gilded in the green,
Fluorescent accents smiling,
Sounds smelting in the foreign forests.

The vagrant meets the sea
After his trials in their numbers,
Blankets thrown up,
White sheets waving,
Clairvoyance in antiquity.

The sea is blue and washing,
The vagrant's eyes are marbled,
As the notes progression goes
The water kisses the air.

Pillars taller than the stars
Stretch to heaven forgetting,
There oceans rising,
And the tranquil music dancing.

Tripped out not wanting,
Rise and risen,
The scavenger surface
And the molten mound.

Poor traveler,
In his vision where all eyes meet,
The savage and sacred nature,
The hurricanes and blissful storms.

Poor traveler,
Not meet your end,
One foot in the grave,
Where a million, million angels
Carry you down.

And poor traveler,
King in concert,
There hills and crevasses crawl to him,
Call to him,
Leave all their pasts searching.

I sat on the square of carpet and screamed
very quietly to myself.

I, the boy who
cried
melancholy.

I, the man who
watches his life
through his eyes.

I, the cruel ship that
glazes the waters of
a harsh music.

I, the silly hair that
obscures the face of
a murderess.

I, fit only for sleep
in the white palm
of an arthritic hand.

I, the child counting
backward on an abandoned
island.

I, glass-colored
and triangular like
the start of space.

I, the single ******
that begs for
a just spark.

I, the skin of glue
in a sweating
photograph.

I, the man selling
VHS players for
mega-discounts.

I, who clasped your
hand when you were
so very small.

I, an errant breath
in the postbox before
the empty Jones house.

I, keen on eating the
brick and mortar
beneath me.

I, who shall never
touch his face,
not even the one time.

I, in the midst of heat
and silence without
a single syllable of wet.

I, with a hatred for
your searching fingers
sticky-sweet.

I, sitting behind
long after the film
dies of exhaustion.

I, crayon and
8.5 by 11 inch paper
Valentines for violent boys.

I, second man,
forgotten man,
to my own movie.

I, grinning through
the lame as the
stitching wears.

I, strategic misery
on a tempest moon:
contemplating contemplating.

I, the laughing door
with a struggling ****,
and no keyhole.

I, who commits
suicide every Tuesday,
Thursday, and Sunday.

I, with cigar boxes
filled with all the tiny,
grandmotherish pieces of ****.

I, the knot that slips
off the head of a lonely
purpled finger.

I, and my
cloverfields,
and my rust.

I, with my dreams
about Japanese furniture
and magic, geometric roads.

I, dancing to a song
I cannot hear that issues
from a nonexistent room.

I stood and walked outside.

Melting sun
flows
red to gold
blushing gushing pink
on crimson purpled crows
no leafy waving trees
or clouds of white
to tame its spare and radiant glory
winter sunrise
tells a very different story

you don't mind the glass beneath your feet
or the bomb strapped to your chest
ticking second by second like your very own
metronome trying to harmonize the noise
inside your head

the gag inside your mouth feels real to you
but no one steps aside to help you untie
the purpled hands behind your back

and you wonder why no one can see
all the pretty girls strung to banisters
with their lipsticked mouths gaped with
muted screams and mascaraed eyes
bulged by Death's medusa-gaze

at the top of the staircase is a noose with
your name - Jane

and as you tiptoe up the steps, the faces
of the corpses blend and coalesce
into one generic image - a girl no one
remembers beyond her death - and you
realize once your neck snaps you're nothing
more than a statistic

the rope tightens and you join
the data set - the only place you've
ever felt you belonged

Her dark hair falls like the lowered trumpets,
Soundless as the eyelid-close of Accursed Gates,
Past the city’s outer walls and alley-clotted throes,
Some shield-hearted soldier sent to his earthen fold,
Her blood-rimmed sky-lids of night foretell the phantom peace
Of Autumn like a head sinking down with the fell-purpled leaf of war.

***
Love, you once guided the black looms of Autumn,
Olive-skinned druid, you are a dark everything,
And a toss of your hair flings to dust all of Rome.