letter to elana

for the poet elana bell

~

in a different cafe,
on a Manhattan streetscape where once, years earlier,
violence was the purview of West Side Story gangs,
ruling their internecine non-intersectionality territorial blood lines supremely

nowadays, violence replaced by the frenetic
noises of Lincoln Center theater goers,
student dancers, actors, musicians and poets joining the throng
of those who sup and run,
all hearing their own frantic
curtain calling, saying, announcing,
music dance voices words require your obeisance,
needy for a mutual worshipping reassurance fiat that:

life can be made transcendent
if even for just 90 minutes or 120 pages,
or a 3 minute poem reading

this city of millions requires billions of poems that spoon stirred  
and yet, almost always fail, to squeeze, all of the human essence that is in its ultimate source, clarifying nyc tap water,
containing the storied remnants of a hackable continuous,
single human stanza cell osmosis - a blockchain like no other

two poets sit side by side each in their own lapsed dreams,
she, a published poet of prize and rank, ^
he, a rank amateur whose only prize is his unpublished anonymity,
poetry, is his just a nightly soul cleansing,
an imported remnant of his Marrano piyyutim ancestry

one turns to the other,
in the inexplicable daily crazy miracle
of city fashionistas

in a city where stealing a parking spot, or the
forced squeezing creation of a subway seat space
where physics proves none exists,
are oft the roots of slashing and stabbings faithfully reported
on the 11 o’clock news,  
and trust and/or other encouraging words
are seldom heard and even less demonstrated,
the make-no-eye-contact of Camus’s L’Etranger anomie is the
normative, paranormal, paralysis cloak of we city separatists

“Can you watch over my electronics and stuff?”

Sure says the grayed and grizzled,
an all life long veteran of nyc,
judged to be trustworthy
based on a few seconds of being upsized and downsized,
a car wash (exterior only) perusal
despite a
“no direction home, like a compete unknown, a rolling stone,”  
this signage, yellow star permanently chest-affixed,
conveniently ignored, as it seems impossible
thieves don’t look like me,
don’t likely in their possess,
a distinguished head of gray hair (yeah, sure)

a thank you reward of (or did I imagine it) a lean-in,
a momentary head on a shoulder,
the chit chat now grows earned and earnest,
she confesses her cardinal poetry profession,
eliciting an ‘Oh Boy’ utterance from the poet
of a thousand names
and a thousand textual emendations

a fastidious nyc boundary is brief crossed for one short meal,
till the end when time sensitized IMRL intrudes and
the showtime calls out,
if not now, when? if not me, then who?

I read her poetry later in the praying supine first position of
three AM, and laugh with delight, at the contrast and no compare,
the styles clash and tho the stories told
are both writ in the aleph bet script,
there ends the Ven diagram overlap and
into the night’s coming of a Elvisian blue suede coverlet,
we both disappear, and if not for this recording,
history says, you old man confused, never happened,
just an imaginary poetry ink blot dream breaching...

~

postface:
another poetry book is no longer homeless,
comes to shelter upon my shelf, close to Angelou, far from Whitman,
now all the book’s nooks eyes collectively
reassessing the new old-owner, parsing his syntax,
undecided if his readership is worthy of them,
concluding that all these books are the
man’s owned roughened stones,
to be placed by human hands on the
serpentine curvature of his literary tombstone,
and until all stones fully read,
they all agree,
will they and he
be fully freed,
smoothing his legacy’s edges

trigger warning:
Hate long poems?  move on.
Love words?  pleasure your self

<=>

drought and famine of the spirit,
over-staying summer
house guests in an overly sun blanched,
voided, white outed, mental abode.

faculties parched,
overly starched,
compositions lost in transition,
why can't they make it ashore?

It's after 2 AM, and though
ferries have stopped running,
mainland hangover hangerons are
working overtime to prevent
"author"izations, so all I get
when I press send is a whole lot of
"permission to cross," denied!

causes of vexation undisguised,
dual natured and manifold,
luxuriating and drowning in home grown,
city organic insipid,
makes one quick to blame
nobody in particular,
but yourself, repeatedly.

reasons many, the distractions of
rustling contradictions populate,
another life road fork looming,
a track record for choosing badly,
colors the blacktop even blacker and
ramps up desires for a janitorial,
but first do no harm, status quo.

Need a beer.
Need a distraction.
Need a homework assignment,
which I buy at the IGA market:

obey the eleventh commandment
which every writer knows;
you think you're Mr. Bigshot,
so pudding prove it,
write it,
one true sentence,
let it be a constitution for all,
with the lengthy consistency,
of a Hemingwayesque,
one true sentence.

dearth to riches occurs
as fast as a basketball
three second violation,
inspiration dripping like
windshield condensation,
got so many true sentences,
how ya gonna choose,

O sinner man?

sadly you don't hear or feel
my background music,
stringed surf sounds playing
Perlman's Mozart low to
the thunderous, sweltering,
swells of applause of
90+ degree heat
w/o a Crescent Beach breeze
to console the disowned

these superheated thoughts
now focused,
emerges a bill of sight,
lading my heart's many heresies,
staccato thoughts now,
rapid fire rebel,
a pre-discourse insurrection,
voices of words lash out -

pick me - immortalize me,
I wanna be,
a constitution for one,
one true sentence.

The Moment of Ownership.

Hillel did it,
standing on one leg,
a Sanskrit mantra,
not by me,
not for me,
not through me,
even more succinct.

full clarity unobtainable,
begin when fighting thru
the static of each nerve,
knowing that
each thought,
each emotion,
is a constitution
of sorts,
recognizing life is a series of
moments of ownership,
but that are truly ours
only when relinquished.

each one, a true sentence
when writ, spoke,
but only when disabused
of notions of possession
only true, when gifted away.

Lucian Freud painted those whom
he knew best, their portraits,
fully clothed but wholly naked,
a painter of revelation
thru the skin tones of the flesh.

exposeur of skins interior
displayer of old and ungainly,
left us eyesight more true
than an honest mirror,
with poetic brushstrokes overlay,
gained entry to what his
grandfather named id and ego,
artist's superego, his reflections,
a continuous judgment
on a pool of stretched canvas
that makes me despair that:

I will ere succeed
to cross the borderline
that modernity insists upon,
self preservation, neurotic fears,
impositions on my psyche and
that my moments of ownership
will be n'ere be stamped "transferred."

I take back my life,
by giving it away
this alphabetized self portrait,
a wrinkled sketch of me,
my ownings, undertakings
needs taking by you
so I can disown it.

these words are my own,
their conjunction is a
junction to you,
and a constitution for me.

once this expiation
is in your purview by the voted
election of Send,
bonded by a mutual
Moment of Ownership?

so net net,
bottom line,
these are my
one true sentences,
summarized, constitutionalized:
I am yours, for the taking,        
so come by, for and through me,
in many moments of ownership.

p.s. let us shelter together in place, an island growing

A cruel Jack Frost blows icy floss
          (in front of spring a’ burstin’)
while shiftin’ sheaves of withered leaves
          near freezin’ streams a’ thirstin’.
A pack reviled runs roamin’ wild,
          the alpha wolf wakes howlin’
then scents a lean and lonesome scene
          while on the lurk a’ prowlin’.

A cloud revolts with spangled bolts,
          and starry skies start closin’
as wild geese soar beyond death’s door
          neath naked moon a’ posin’.
Electric shafts, like fractured rafts,
          sail night’s cathedral caldrons –
their cracking curse makes herds disperse
          in random splayed and sprawled runs.

A she-wolf sighs with hungry eyes;
          the ancient wolf waits, bayin’ -
with weary back, he’s lost the track,
          his bandied legs betrayin’.
The brood’s somewhere in shrouded lair
          with mama left to mind ’em -
the wolf, a’ drag with empty swag,
          is on his way to find ’em.

The pack rejoins with weary ***** -
          perhaps its days are numbered.
In evening’s night, he’s feeling tight,
          with aches and pains encumbered.
As morning nears, with shaggy ears
          (one droopin’ down, hung over)
he’ll set the course with renewed force,
          for, yes, he’s still the rover.

When snow enshrines the timberlines
          and skies are ripped asunder
though young, lupine, they’ll stifle whines,
          as gullies fill with thunder;
mid echoes in the mouth o’ death,
          they bid farewell the lair
while panting puffs o’ crystal breath
          float, hanging in the air.

Their path is black (they can’t look back
          for herds long gone a’ missin’)
as dusk profanes the snow-bound plains
          the sinkin’ sun was kissin’.
Neath northern lights, with barks and bites,
          he keeps ’em all in motion –
the speckled scars of fallin’ stars
          display the night’s devotion.

The sky’s a’ blushin’ in the east,
          and hollow wind’s are sighin’
while buzzards freeze in gallows trees,
          a’ roostin’, rapt and eyein’.
These ghouls of prey, they’re spooked away,
          like tumbleweeds a’ blowin’,
by tilted head, white fangs tipped red,
          and warnin’ wail’s a’ growin’.

With snout upturned the moon’s discerned
          as well as wafts a wendin’
and muzzled growls and shriekin’ howls
          mark wolves in quests unendin’.
With fragrant hint, the wolf’s a’ sprint,
          the pack begins t’ rally –
in swift descent they’ve seized a scent,
          that’s flowin’ down the valley.

The wolf moves on behind the dawn
          and shades the pale horizon
as she-wolfs vet his silhouette
          each time they lay their eyes on.
With trek discreet, a trail is beat
          across a river frozen –
when day’s complete, just mice to eat,
          a choice despised, but chosen.

A stillness jeers the shaggy ears
          (one droopin’ down, hung over),
while caribou, with much ado,
          drift, seekin’ blades o’ clover;
the wearied pack picks up their track
          (with stony stomachs pangin’)
through endless seas of barren trees
          with ice like daggers hangin’.

The wolf invades forgotten glades,
          the pack stays close behind ’im;
the caribou, in his purview,
          seem far too far to mind ’im.
Above, a baleful moonbeam wails,
          “oh god he’s gonna’ catch ’em”;
the scene is grim, the Reaper dim,
          the night has gone to fetch ’im.

A moanin’ mynah’s crying loud
          as birds of prey are preachin’
to cravin’ ravens prayin’ proud
          and wide-eyed owls a’ screechin’.
The wolf, unrushed, is breathin’ hushed,
          his hollow eyes a’ narrowin’
and focused hard in fixed regard
          on herds they'll soon be harrowin’.

The morning breeze is ill at ease,  
          a surge brings sudden silence –
then haggard swarms launch poundin’ storms
          and hurricanes of vi’lence;
the herd’s surprised and paralyzed
          all over hell’s half acre –
the leadin’ buck’s run out of luck,
          he’s soon to meet his maker.

The old wolf creeps, the old wolf leaps
          on prey he’s been a’ trackin’ –
a deer adorned with branchin’ horns
          is torn by beasts attackin’.
The morning quakes, a shadow shakes,
          tined antlers left a’ lyin’,
and spattered spots and scarlet clots
          repaint the point o’ dyin’.

A magpie flies with frightened eyes
          (on ebon wings a’ wavin’),
spies wolfin’ jaws and sated maws
          of wolves no longer cravin’.
The snowdrift clears, a cool wind veers,
          a dying breath, moreover –
a wraith appears, with shaggy ears,
          (one droopin’ down, hung over).

Dawn’s sunbeams crowd, ignite a cloud,
          its threaded strands a’ weavin’.
The pack awakes and twists and shakes,
          for soon it’s time for leavin’;
it’s bleak, it chills on shallow hills,
          as she-wolfs come a’ nuzzlin’,
but north winds scold, the wolf lies cold,
          the pack stands back a’ puzzlin’.

On crimson snows neath perchin’ crows,
          the pack abides a’ guardin’;
while nights are tight with Harpy kites,
          the she-wolves wait an’ harden,
until a groanin’ blizzard stones
          the barren forest stowin’
his shaggy ears beneath the weirs,
          with icy hails ’a blowin’.

The storm abates and terminates,
          the glacial wind’s subsidin’;
the past is past or passin’ fast
          and life goes on abidin’.
The herds, today, roam far away,
          not thinkin’ of the dyin’;
the pack’ll stray from day to day,
          ’a stalkin’ hard and tryin’.

As spring sneaks forth upon the north,
          they’re lean without their leader.
A she-wolf (bound with belly round)
          strains neath a budding cedar.
Upon the morn a whelp is born
           (the future forest drover)
in new frontiers, with shaggy ears
          (one droopin’ down, hung over).

The pierced ego sees
through an opaque lens;
a vestige of hope,
humor and  
intellectual solidarity.
Effigies of forgotten ethos,
the culmination of a
fated dream;
unrequited ardor, abandons
identity to an irreducible
fervor,                      
subtext of tension,                    
enduring ****** privation;
etude of a paramour
ending torture,
tasting mystical polarity.

The wounded heart
once intruded,
bleeds effusive;
the ornament of humility.
Flattened collateral
damage,
primal search,
proves illusive;
portals of hurt, slivers
of pride,
assembled fragments of
thereness
absorb the loss
of my English muse.

Poetry and devotion
punctuated murmurs
of piety,  
depth perception
virtue unfound;
expectation - access
to suffering;  
disinterested love
present,  
desultory carnage
of rescission,   
absurdity personified;
euphemism
of adieu,
the sound of no sound.

The discarded image
finds no favor,
the salt lost it's savor
unquenched thirst;
desire of
diminished purview,
the saporus stream
deferred;
vision eclipsed;
saturated self
hidden in the text.

Poverty asks the
question,
absence summons
ethereal substance
merged into
the immanent frame;
integrating,
in solitude signifying,
mediating - logos
contested
the humiliation of
the word.

Lyrical enigma,
where did I go?
provisional
personality
scorned,
renouncing nostrums
of the prosaic,
surrenders to the
the realm interior
sovereignty
assumed in
provenience,
native
horizon of the next.

©2008 & 2011 W.S. Warner

Frozen moments,
embraced,
visions of
luminous things,
unpretentious
pearls dancing;
embers of memory linger,
elegy of the lachrymose,
this horizoning self
lying low in saturnine
tranquility
and repose – paternity lost
to the provisional.

The cross of lassitude,
forming
scars of loss;
estrangement,
preface to
ineluctable autonomy.
Earthen treasure - immortal
footprints, the migration
of fair maidens across my
effusive heart.

Venus trio in bloom,
aesthetic allusion,
ephemeral incarnations
of beauty - perishable fruit,
transcending the plebeian.
Aerial substance-
the hermeneutic,
betraying desire’s
ambrosial tyranny;
The permuted passage -
savor the sojourn, submit
to the fated peregrination.

Purple orchids blossom,
immortal creatures,
culminating
in perfection
from the sheath
respectively,
each plume,
singular,
the continuum of
splendor, mediate
the inviolable.
Eternity compounding,
time and essence suffuse
the already and not yet
into an
orbiting mosaic.

The susurrant devotions
of a satellite father,
summon the quest -
both, and,
absence and proximity,
conduits of
distress and peace
ironically,
solace and
terror
traverse the
same path.
Plunge though,
deep, the depth of pain;
deeper, sweeter
the taste of pleasure.

Engender and witness,
window into
preeminence,
surface azure,
the sacred -
inimitable gravity of
grandeur,
ma petite,
you - are
lived poetry
seen and heard;
cosmic order,
a mediating heuristic -
to love is to see,
in the dismal,
gift of distance.
child of delight,
evermore, Don’t I hold you?

Beauty and strangeness,
music found
in linear,
secret places
beyond the tangent,
purview of limitation,
arousing imagination -
infinititude as near
as it is far.

Long loneliness -
dissonance that
resolves;
perceiving,
the tertiary refrain -
as exquisite verse,
and matchless liqueur,
sublime gratuity
derived
through
doors of surrender.
Daughter,
in adoration and wonder,
I hold you.

I seldom speak of my friendship with the crapped-out David Bowie
because it alludes to bread-kneading acts with dough that is doughy

For You- Butch my friend from Philippines ocean away to Cali U.S.A

FRIENDSHIP is like Red Rose in my Garden.

It is not the  sum -total on how many it BLOOMED

but unfathomable beneath the ROOTS thriving & Sprouting.

Purview as Emoting little some Some,

little Bored,

little Depleted

little sad, or yielding to the Inevitable!

Languish to anguish perhaps from  lack of vitamin 'ME"..Ahah!

Thereby stayed in touch, in Tuned

following  the thread   with ME.

My Friend so close yet Afar.

Truly Extraordinary,
wonderfully Smiling
and  adamantly Affirms:

"You  are D apple of my Eye!"
Every time WE see eye to eye in social networking  called Facebook
Through Cyber Space
The abounding witty comments of "***'s," "Ohhs "and 'AAhhs"
makes everyone amused with Awe of such silly antics we so accorded!

A blessing, a gift from God.

So unusual Diamonds so Alike
a  rare atypical like it!

..so Uncommon

Not Phony friends out there to  deceive & Decry..
Succumb unlikely in Waterloo!

But You  definitely a Diamond to my passion!

As girl's BFF, a Buddy or a Sweet chum or Dude!
Not a Foe but Pal Forever.

And  just to let You Know , my Friend,
You  are  like a Diamond so brilliant
Found like a rare gemstone from a dust
who is never be a mere coincidence to bring JOY & Delight  
to the norm & Conform.

So for  now.. priceless friend like You..is for me to treasure the friendship between Us.

Thank you, my Friend,

I will always be here & there for You as a Friend in Deed!

for all i care to remember...
        looking into the mirror was more or less...
something akin to:
"squirting"... **** me! SQUINTING...
      well... the contortion of the eyes...
"worrying" about a double-chin...
and of course... enough stealth acne
to make me... the bride of beelzebub
how i'd joke to myself...
         beelzebub sat on my face and *******
a tonne of... dead maggots...

           i never knew i was athletic standing
before a mirror...
i probably know that i am less athletic now...
but... looking into mirror made
sense... once...
   this russian girl...
    in st. petersburg...
   we were in "love"...
       and there was this great aventurine bed...
and... a closet with two mirrors...
and... we'd be at it...
i was looking into the mirror...
and she was looking into the mirror...
it was like: the opposite of *** on l.s.d. -
because it was like...
beyond the missionary -
the "******" of the mirror...
   as in ***... it leaves you wanting
to ******* to the *******...
because... hell...
without a mirror...
could you capture the face moaning
contorting like an experiment out
of the gehenna harem?

     for all the *** toys sold...
all those exceses of... woman's lingerie...
outfits... nurses...
   blah blah... it really takes a mirror
to spice things up...
this dead-eyed mirror canvas...
the dire-dead-necessary...
    tooth-fairy: ref. the red dragon...
i needed to see that she needed to see
that i was ******* her... and that she...
was being ******...

           mirror mirror on the wall...
**** the fair and the fairest and the fairies...
i have come to understand that mirrors...
work best...
when... not stressed to exemplify...
a concern for beauty...
   or... something that is worn...
clothes look... terribly important in a mirror...
esp. by someone wearing them
when allowed to be digested / investigated
by a mirror...

but... a mirror during ***?
when you're not performing inverted missionary...
doggy... and she's lying with clenched ****-cheeks...
i was in love once...
which also implies:
i ****** like a race-champ pony!
the mirror always helps...
i wouldn't know: whether s&m leather
and straps would... and whips...
made much of a difference...
when... the mirror... the ghost ******...
the: satan you could get away with...
if you didn't utter a comprehensive word...
but ensure a strict rigidity to...
onomatopoeias and syllables...
and... exfoliating nouns...

        upon memory being summoned...
i'm getting a bigger hard-on thinking
about all the encounters i've had with the police...
there's always at least two memorable
encounters...
getting poisoned in a nightclub...
getting on the bus...
getting off the bus... dropping like a pancake
onto the cement...
     being roused... asked by the police officer
whether i was o.k.:
making a slurred and lengthy apology...
giving my address...
and being... taken in a police van... in a cage
for a sinner... like a taxi...
back home...

    losing my virginity to a pair of handcuffs...
for ******* in an alleyway...
getting screamed at...
one officer cuffed me...
the female officer had a pen and pad ready...
in an alleyway where it was discussed:
and who's alleyway is it?
i'm too drunk already...
if i walked into a pub on friday come
10pm i'd be asked to buy a pint
in order to use their toilet...

         it's one sort of luck... gambling...
betting on a horse...
but another... being hand-cuffed...
  and then... having the hand-cuffs...
taken away...
              as this dialogue happened in the...
"invisible" shadow of the alley...
i can't exactly imagine what the onlookers
saw...
           a teasing of authority...
drinking a beer on a bench outside
a pub on a friday night...
which is... basically... taking away
the revenue... of being sardine packed...
and pyramid schemed... for failure...
but my... what a glorious night...

so i asked: and where am i... permitted...
and blah blah...
that ******* mirror... and that aventurine bed...
the same thrill during ***...
like... the thrill of stepping into a brothel...
without a need to ***...
the 9 of them: all nazgul attired in scrutiny...
before "the pick"...

   *** toys... can i please get a mirror in here?!
it has to become a standard for a healthy
sexed up relationship...
    a mirror can overpower any...
frivolity of during-***: attire...
  the imitation ******...
a mirror is... just that...
                 *** with: in third person narrative...
but... smirk-giggle:
you catching her eyes getting ******...
and she catching your eyes: ******* her...

so tame tame... unlike reading...
  the tame blushes of marquis the sade...
never to mention... this philosophical adventure
of ******... which it really is...
impeccable... trouble with: thought put into
practice...
                yes... that horrid... Fritzl case...
but unlike the idealist scenario...
the mother was notably pushed away from
the grandiosity of the sin...
and it was done... in public... with...
a purview of... shaking established social norms!
it wasn't... a rabbit-hole of horror...

              which is why i'm glad i do not
have children of my own...
   i once spent an afternoon with...
my... grand-aunts son... my uncle...
don't ask...
         and i looked like him and thought...
well... i have most certainly had more
fun with cats and dogs...
i was a complete mute...
i didn't feel like cuddling this piece
of cubism... it looked human and even
contorted like one...
perhaps if it was mine...
i could have... somehow...
            "relegated my inhibitions"?
                 n'est ce pas?
         to have children and begin with...
that ******* of differentiating vowels from
consonants... and then... building consonants...
what... 5 vowels... 21 consonants...
5 x 21 = 105 variations...
       prefix: ab, ac, ad, af, ag...
                     eb, ec, ed, ef, eg...
                           IF only! oof!
                 the suffix - ba, ca, da, fa, go...
                                 bat cat dad fat god...
and then... the 21 x 21 consonant variables...
squared to the power of 5...
because... chinese is... frankly...
so simple...

   - it's summer and...
            since i would otherwise... require ink...
to write... and the paper would somehow
be always readily available...
no need for ink...
the summer months are terrible...
for no requirement of ink...
what is ink?  ink is...
                         i need october...
i need november... december... january...
february... half of march...
i need to borrow ink from the night!
i can't scribble in these arab / kenyan months...
these sun-seeker months
of idle by the dream-pool... load of...
overtly-talked... less thought...
therefore... no need to scribble...

    i need the night for my ink...
                           "punctuation marks are in
the constellations": oh yes... honey sweet...
what's it called? cliche? we've all been there...
i too would sacrifice Hector before the altar
of Achilles if i were Priam...
                   only because: he was called Hector...
and the other was Achilles...
and i was called Priam...
       in such times... what were...
the trully... common-place names...
of stunt-men and extras?
   i'd like to know the equivalent of a john smith
from ancient greece...
what would one call: him?
            
        perhaps: i tend to think about *** when
i... most probably had a dream...
jerking off is a bit like...
checking one's blood pressure...
or as a diabetic might... ***** his index
to check the sugar levels...
i write about "***" when i've had a dream...
the dream...

i was talking to a man about cars...
notably... cars from...
america and germany...
circa the years... 1920s through to...
                the 1970s...
          and... then... the talk of... a motorcycle...
a specific motorcycle...
   a triump street cup...
                 a BMW R18... but not quiet...
whatever it was...
                    for the love of a double-decker
bus and a pair of legs...
                which is not...
to have emotionally invested
in *** was something a much younger
version of me would have done...
i thank the prostitutes of curing me of this...
debilitating disease / dream...
              which, i, prescribed... myself...
so no... i hardly think...
there were any... mummy or daddy issues...
i would skip several scenarios:
as much as i love riding a double-decker
bus... i abhor... taking a taxi...
       even if it requires me to walk...
2 miles... i'd rather walk:
for the love of legs and... voodoo dolls hanging
like corks... bend the knee: they might say...
bullet to the knee-cap... if you ask me...
again...

     perhaps i wasn't born english...
but... after... 26 years among them...
                          it "sort of" grows on you...

- man can perform a thousand:
dodo project genocides in one sitting:
on the throne of thrones...
before jumping under a baptism:
fully attired in the ganjes pyjamas
in one sitting: on the throne of thrones...
to "squat" while *******...
*******... *******...
"scented candles" of taking a shower...

i write about *** every time i have a dream...
it's to succumb to the lesser...
escapade of me...
i can stomach subjectivity...
but having to stomach idealism...
is another matter: altogether...
i would like to worship the men who
have had their fill...
and settled for the swan blockade
of the widower romance...
the widow swan...
the black widow: a ******* spider...

none of it... i ****** good i ******
well... come the prime of the age 21...
she was a gamer side-kick bedded...
she prescribed me...
                        Bulgakov...
              reading a ****** to a prussian...
or reading a ****** to a RUŚ: example: ditto...
                  i have heard of how
love supposedly closed and opened borders...
we are so antithesis "different"...
we aren't... some western "communist"
zoo study:
the people who say and then...
lucky us paupers...
who have to "loot" the infrastructure
of the vacating ****-tunnels...
because... someone has to ****-off...
their tongue and... gerbil fidgety!

albino chimpanzee and...
boxer gorilla fed on...
the promise of bulk... with nothing
but... the promise of fruits of your
labour... and nothing relating
to protein... or fat... of complex sugars
known as bread... none of that!
still: that fudge-packing bulk of
gorilla bicep protein: amass!

   - as ever... the murk: before the deep-water...
the... inverted demigods
of h. p. lovecraft...
because... cthulhu is... "somehow"...
not the ******* son of Poseidon?

acid-quasi-monkey asks...
   placid-didgeridoo...
                a constipated: not funny...
attempts! at solving a crossword!
-frankenstein-myrhh:
                        ******* dangling...
                                    (-) - Fatima...
is this... "Syria" yet?
  concerning the second coming...
concerning...
Syrian civil war... something...
*******... miraculous...
has happened...
or was about to happen...
and that it didn't happen...
better that it did:
but since it... didn't...
best we cover it up...
                corpse bride:
               Khadija **** Khuwaylid...
if ever: Stephen Vizinczey...
was a (prophet) Muhammad...
in praise of older women...

    ...a Fatima... fleeing the Syrian
civil war... because... Ramses II
was... telling apart the 7 good years
from... the 7 ******* years...

tell you what... it's no fun...
when you've been given the need
to bend the knee before the altar
of phantom power...
if i were 16 and she was 14...
if i was 18 and she was 16...
if i was 60! and she was... 20!
would it matter?
               if i was jerking off aged 8...
you want to know...
what... the last prize is...
the last... difference between...
"consent" of two adult adult...
with their *******-riddle
of a theatre of ***?
     you want to know?
the thought of ******* someone...
under-age...
no! no barbie! no ken!
the theatre of thought...
of ******* someone... underage...
who is... displaying...
teasing ***... in that primodial seance
of grief to ward of mother from
the ******...
and father from the parentage of
school!

               you ever want to see...
what... a kick in the jaw looks like...
omnipresent onlooker...
of some... unpardonable crime...
that it has to be ***-related...
              i wish i performed some
unpardonable crime on a *******...
i guess a kiss is a kiss is an unpardonable
crime against a *******...
i need this heart to shelter itself
in stone! i need: a heart!
of hard-earned: rock!
               with each sentence:
i find it impossible to not....growl!
to howl! to spew a bickering of...
wolves... of hyenas...
a wake of crows!
            
              i want toi write an echo!
hye! anoooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
i want to hear...
the microscope itching
of a marrow...
of maggots working toward
a closure of expressing: scotch fudge!
i want! maggot marrow!
i want! the lost sounds of...
what the fox already minded...
in...                       χαoς! ρει(γ)νς!
yes... the gamma is a surd...
                 in this... english... equation...

last time i checked:
the cognitive theatre of the forbidden...
****** "lax"...
it's enough to tease the affair with
mere thought...
to have... people "bothered"
that one thinks... such "things"!
while the girl... prime... aged... 14...
teases you with...
exfoliations of...
                      script and... censure...
like a skirt...
but of course...
you're the dodo-project genocidal maniac
about to sport a new: cushioning
extreme...
of an ******* like...
you're minding teasing...
a high-blood pressure!

          can i allow myself a giggle?
a crown of: a dozen demons laughing
as relevant: to the 12 strong cohort of...
cognitive lapses of reason?
          
  ******* before a mirror is my...
my memory and my last concern for...
"adventure"...
a ****** ******* a russian girl so freely...
she fed off of us as...
     spinning a willow to confine itself to:
those rhubarbs in... "retro"...
no... i'm pretty sure... "they"...
the western communists would have minded
it coming across as...
  rhubarb... dreads... stiff 12" drizzle /
drool bits of a tight-knit white sporting ***!
my... oh... wait...
not exactly 16... so... no...

my... what?!
    this has to become one of those...
most... "unspectacularbly": "a least"
in what's to be digested... "fogiven"...
when... there's that teasing-**** of a per-se
readied for her rite of horror to be
met with ******* the...
upper... echelons...
to the queue! to the loiter!
to the...                cue: no dry martini equipped...
sort of... joke as... a variation
of... escapism: to excuse...
fixations... of social hierarchy...

    i am hardly a misogynist...
            it's almost... fake...
how feminists point out... death-pull...
the misogynists...
clinging to philanthropists... i suppose...
it's like...
"someone" forgot...
to... mention...
the benevolent in misanthrophy...
the happily allied to the ivory tower...
whether you're a man or a woman...
or a man pretending to be a woman...
or a woman pretending to be a man...

who is... the misanthrope?
            the solipsist...
the atheist: should you be god?
the altruist... the... fiddly-bit... extreme...
the... autist?
         who is... your... claim for...
******-****** ruleZ the world?
mother of all perfected children...
a bit like jerking off to...
those gravure beijing models...

ava lauren? she is... an aged looking
*******... closure: madame...
she earned it...
her skin is like leather...
you dare to: wear it...
   but... oops: the ubermensch...
these chinese "brides" are not...
photoshopped...
they're genetically edited...
it was apparent that china
didn't have a soul...
in its summa summarum...
or in its christ redeemer...
when... india has its rich
polytheism... pedagogy:
shiva the antithesis of vishnu:
the thesis...

    i can feel... at least!
i can feel abbreviated with the raj master...
sport...
sending a few "*******" to beijing!
let's hear a story...
no... i'm fuming mad:
i'm dying! to hear that coin-flip
of a tail: of bending the... fuckning knee:
capping... as one might!

there's a <100million of "me"...
there's... a >1billion of "them"...

   while:
            i ****** off to...
          genetically edited creatures...
the western world can hide
behind its setting sun: metaphor...
photo-editing... while...
the hot-**** beijing is...
gene-editing...
west-world 1972 bronze age:
"staging a coup"..

             yeah: gurran-gu-dag...
the arabs and their bangladeshi...
queen-bee sorted...
           elizabeth II...
royal ascot...
  i.e. lamborghinis raced on knightbridge...
because: arab playboys are to be...
minded...

write long... to ensure...
people read short... little chance
of censor-loved-up-pseudo-i.q.-heroes!
100 years later: you become a pseudo-Proust /
a Joyce... but... that also implies:
you're stiff up at the neck...
in death and sand... and worms...
in a grave! so? no turkish kebab:
no malmuk / no janissary resurrection!

The phone rang in Red Lodge.  The sun had already faded behind the mountain, and the street outside where the bike was parked was covered in darkness. Only the glow from the quarter moon allowed the bike to be visible from my vantage point inside the Pollard’s Lobby.  The hotel manager told me I had a call coming in and it was from Cooke City.  By the time I got to the phone at the front desk, they had hung up. All that the manager had heard from the caller was that I was needed in Cooke City just before the line had gone dead.  Because of the weather, my cell phone reception was spotty, and the hotel’s phone had no caller I.D.

Cooke City was 69 miles to the West, a little more than an hour’s drive under normal circumstances.  The problem is that you can never apply the word normal to crossing Beartooth Pass even under the best of conditions, and certainly not this early in the season.  I wondered about the call and the caller, and what was summoning me to the other side.  There was 11,000 feet of mountain in between the towns of Red Lodge and Cooke City, and with a low front moving in from the West, all signals from the mountain were to stay put.

Beartooth Pass is the highest and most formidable mountain crossing in the lower 48 States.  It is a series of high switchback turns that crisscross the Montana and Wyoming borders, rising to an elevation of 10,947 ft.  If distance can normally be measured in time, this is one of nature’s timeless events.  This road is its own lord and master. It allows you across only with permission and demands your total respect as you travel its jagged heights either East or West.  Snow and rockslides are just two of the deadly hazards here, with the road itself trumping both of these dangers when traveled at night.

The Beartooth Highway, as gorgeous as it is during most summer days, is particularly treacherous in the dark.  Many times, and without warning, it will be totally covered in fog. Even worse, during the late spring and early fall, there is ice, and often black ice when you rise above 7000 feet. Black ice is hard enough to see during the daytime, but impossible to see at night and especially so when the mountain is covered in fog. At night, this road has gremlins and monsters hiding in its corners and along its periphery, ready to swallow you up with the first mistake or indiscretion that a momentary lack of attention can cause.

The word impossible is part of this mountains DNA.

: Impossible- Like the dreams I had been recently having.

: Impossible- Like all of the things I still had not done.

: Impossible- As the excuses ran like an electric current
                         through all that I hated.

: Impossible- Only in the failure of that yet to be conquered.

: Impossible- For only as long as I kept repeating the word.

Now it was my time to make a call.  I dialed the cell number of my friend Mitch who worked for the U.S. Forest Service in Cooke City. Mitch told me what I already knew and feared. There was snow on both sides of the road from Red Lodge to Cooke City, and with the dropping temperatures probably ice, and possibly black ice, at elevations above 7500 feet.

Mitch lived in Red Lodge and had just traveled the road two hours earlier on his way home.  He said there had been sporadic icy conditions on the Red Lodge side of the mountain, causing his Jeep Wagoneer to lose traction and his tires to spin when applying his brakes in the sharpest turns.  The sharpest corners were the most dangerous parts of this road, both going up and even more so when coming down. Mitch warned me against going at night and said: “Be sure to call me back if you decide to leave.”

The Red Lodge side of the mountain would be where I would begin my trip if I decided to go, with no telling how bad the Cooke City descent would be on the Western side.  This is assuming I was even able to make it over the top, before then starting the long downward spiral into Cooke City Montana.

The phone rang again!  This time I was able to get to the front desk before the caller got away.  In just ten seconds I was left with the words ringing in my ears — “Everything is ready, and we implore you to come, please come to Cooke City, and please come tonight.”  

Now, it was my time to choose.  I had to decide between staying where it was safe and dry, or answering the call and making the journey through the dark to where fate was now crying out to me. I put the phone down and walked out the front doors of the Pollard Hotel and into the dim moonlight that was shining through the clouds and onto the street.  The ‘Venture’ sat in its soft glow, parked horizontally to the sidewalk, with its back tire pressed up against the curb and its front tire pointed due North.  The bike was not showing any bias either East or West and was not going to help with this decision.  If I decided to go, this choice would have to be all mine.

The original plan had been to stay in Red Lodge for two more days, awaiting friends who still had not arrived from a trip to Mount Rushmore. Then together we had planned a short stopover in Cody, which was not more than ninety-minutes away. From there we planned to take the ‘Chief Joseph Highway’ to Cooke City, which is both a beautiful and safe way around Beartooth Pass. Safety drifted out of my consciousness like a distant mistress, and I looked North and heard the mountain call out to me again.

As much as I wanted to see my friends, the voice that was calling from inside was getting harder and harder to ignore.  With the second phone call, my time in Red Lodge grew short in its importance, and I knew in the next two minutes I would have to choose.

I also knew that if I stood in the clouded moonlight for more than two more minutes I would never decide.  Never deciding is the hallmark of all cowardly thought, and I hoped on this night that I would not be caught in its web as victim once again.  

                                         My Decision Was To Go

In ten short minutes, I emptied my room at the Pollard, checked out, and had the bike loaded and ready at the curb.  I put my warmest and most reflective riding gear on, all the while knowing that there was probably no one to see me. No one on that lonely road, except for the deer, coyote, or elk, that would undoubtedly question my sanity as they watched me ride by in the cold dark silence.  I stopped at the gas station at the end of town and topped off the tank --- just in case.  Just in case was something I hoped I wouldn’t have to deal with, as the ride would at most take less than a half a tank of gas. It made me feel better though, so I topped off, paid the attendant, and rode slowly out towards U.S. Highway # 212.  

As I headed West toward the pass, I noticed one thing conspicuous in its absence. In fifteen minutes of travel, I had not passed one other vehicle of any kind going in either direction.  I was really alone tonight and not only in my thoughts.  It was going to be a solitary ride as I tried to cross the mountain. I would be alone with only my trusted bike as my companion which in all honesty — I knew in my heart before leaving the hotel.  

Alone, meant there would be no help if I got into trouble and no one to find me until probably morning at the earliest.  Surviving exposed on the mountain for at least twelve hours is a gamble I hoped I wouldn’t have to take.

I kept moving West. As I arrived at the base of the pass I stopped, put the kickstand down and looked up.  What was visible of the mountain in the clouded moonlight was only the bottom third of the Beartooth Highway. The top two thirds disappeared into a clouded mist, not giving up what it might contain or what future it may have hidden inside of itself for me.  With the kickstand back up and my high beam on, I slowly started my ascent up Beartooth Pass.

For the first six or seven miles the road surface was clear with snow lining both sides of the highway.  The mountain above, and the ones off to my right and to the North were almost impossible to see.  What I could make out though, was that they were totally snow covered making this part of southern Montana look more like December or January, instead of early June.  The road had only opened a month ago and it was still closing at least three out of every seven days.  I remembered to myself how in years past this road never really opened permanently until almost the 4th of July.

When the road was closed, it made the trip from Red Lodge to Cooke City a long one for those who had to go around the mountain.  Many people who worked in Cooke City actually lived in Red Lodge.  They would ‘brave’ the pass every night when it was open, but usually only during the summer months. They would do this in trucks with 4-wheel drive and S.U.V.’s but never on a motorcycle with only two wheels.  Trying to cross this pass on a motorcycle with high performance tires, in the fog, and at night, was a horse of an entirely different color.  

At about the seven-mile mark in my ascent I again stopped the bike and looked behind me. I was about to enter the cloud barrier.  The sight below from where I had just come was breathtakingly beautiful.  If this was to be the last thing I would ever see before   entering the cloud, it would be a fitting photograph on my passport into eternity.

I looked East again, and it was as if the lights from Red Lodge were calling me back, saying “Not tonight Kurt, this trip is to be made another time and for a better reason.” I paused, but could think of no better reason, as I heard the voice on the phone say inside my mind, “Please come,” so I retracted the kickstand and entered the approaching fog.

There was nothing inviting as I entered the cloud.  The dampness and the moisture were immediate and all enveloping, as the visibility dropped to less than fifty feet.  It was so thick I could actually see rain droplets as it passed over my headlight.  The road was still clear though and although it was hard to see, its surface was still good.  The animals that would normally concern me at this time of night were a distant memory to me now. The road stayed like this for what seemed to be another two or three miles, while it trapped me in its continuing time warp of what I still had to overcome.

It then turned sharply right, and I heard a loud ‘wail’ from inside the bike’s motor.  My heart immediately started racing as I thought to myself, ‘What a place to have the engine break down.’  It only took a few more seconds though to see that what I thought was engine failure was actually the tachometer revving off the scale on the dash.  The rear tire had lost traction, and in an involuntary and automated response I had given it more throttle to maintain my speed. I now had the engine turning at over 5000 r.p.m.’s in an attempt to get the rear tire to again make contact with the road.  Slowing my speed helped a little, but I was now down to 10 MPH, and it was barely fast enough to allow me to continue my ascent without the rear tire spinning again.

                                  I Could Still Turn Around And Go Back    

I was now at an elevation above 8,000 ft, and it was here that I had to make my last decision.  I could still turn around and go back.

While the road surface was only semi-good, I could turn around and head back in the direction from which I had just come.  I could go back safely, but to what and to whom? I knew my spirit and my heart would not go with me, both choosing to stay on this hill tonight regardless of the cost.  “If I turn around and go back, my fear is that in my lack of commitment, I will lose both of them forever. The mountain will have then claimed what my soul cannot afford to lose.”  I looked away from Red Lodge for the last time, and once again my eyes were pointed toward the mountain’s top.

It was three more miles to the summit based on my best estimation.

From there it would be all down hill.  The fear grew deeper inside of me that the descent would be even more treacherous as I crested the top and pushed on to the mountain town of Cooke City below.  Cooke City and Red Lodge were both in Montana, but the crest of this mountain was in Wyoming, and it looked down on both towns as if to say … ‘All passage comes only through me.’      

This time I did not stop and look over my shoulder. Instead, I said a short prayer to the gods that protect and watch over this place and asked for only one dispensation — and just one pass through the dark.  My back wheel continued to spin but then somehow it would always regain traction, and I continued to pray as I slowly approached the top.  

As I arrived at the summit, the road flattened out, but the cloud cover grew even more dense with visibility now falling to less than ten feet.  I now couldn’t see past my front fender, as the light from my headlamp bounced off the water particles with most of its illumination reflected back onto me and not on the road ahead.

In conditions like this it is very hard to maintain equilibrium and balance. Balance is the most essential component of any two-wheeled form of travel. Without at least two fixed reference points, it’s hard to stay straight upright and vertical.  I’ve only experienced this once before when going through a mountain tunnel whose lights had been turned off. When you can’t see the road beneath you, your inner sense of stability becomes compromised, and it’s easier than you might think to get off track and crash.

This situation has caused many motorcyclists to fall over while seemingly doing nothing wrong. It creates a strange combination of panic and vertigo and is not something you would ever want to experience or deal with on even a dry road at sea level.  On an icy road at this elevation however, it could spell the end of everything!

My cure for this has always been to put both feet down and literally drag them on top of the road surface below. This allows my legs to act as two tripods, warning me of when the bike is leaning either too far to the left or to the right.  It’s also dangerous. If either leg comes in contact with something on the road or gets hung up, it could cause the very thing it’s trying to avoid. I’ve actually run over my own foot with the rear wheel and it’s not something you want to do twice.

                     Often Causing What It’s Trying To Avoid

At the top of the pass, the road is flat for at least a mile and gently twists and turns from left to right.  It is a giant plateau,10,000 feet above sea level. The mountain then starts to descend westward as it delivers its melting snow and rain to the Western States. Through mighty rivers, it carries its drainage to the Pacific Ocean far beyond.  As I got to the end of its level plain, a passing thought entered my consciousness.  With the temperature here at the top having risen a little, and only just below freezing, my Kevlar foul-weather gear would probably allow me to survive the night.  On this mountaintop, there is a lot of open space to get off the road, if I could then only find a place to get out of the wind.  

I let that thought exit my mind as quickly as it entered. The bike was easily handling the flat icy areas, and I knew that the both of us wanted to push on.  I tried to use my cell phone at the top to call Mitch at home.  I was sure that by now he would be sitting by the fire and drinking something warm.  This is something I should have done before I made the final decision to leave.  I didn’t, because I was sure he would have tried to talk me out of it, or worse, have forbidden me to go. This was well within his right and purview as the Superintendent of all who passed over this mountain.

My phone didn’t work!  This was strange because it had worked from the top last spring when I called my family and also sent cell-phone pictures from the great mountain’s summit.  I actually placed three calls from the top that day, two to Pennsylvania and one to suburban Boston.

                                         But Not Tonight!

As I started my descent down the western *****, I knew it would be in first gear only.  In first gear the engine would act as a brake or limiter affecting my speed, hopefully without causing my back tire to lose traction and break loose. With almost zero visibility, and both feet down and dragging in the wet snow and ice, I struggled to stay in the middle of the road.  It had been over an hour since leaving Red Lodge, and I still had seen no other travelers going either East or West. I had seen no animals either, and tonight I was at least thankful for that.

The drop off to my right (North) was several thousand feet straight down to the valley below and usually visible even at night when not covered in such cloud and mist.  To my left was the mountain’s face interspersed with open areas which also dropped several thousands of feet to the southern valley below.  Everything was uncertain as I left the summit, and any clear scenery had disappeared in the clouds. What was certain though was my death if I got too close to the edge and was unable to recover and get back on the road.

There were guardrails along many of the turns and that helped, because it told me that the direction of the road was changing.  In the straight flat areas however it was open on both sides with nothing but a several thousand-foot fall into the oblivion below.

Twice I ran over onto the apron and felt my foot lose contact with the road surface meaning I was at the very edge and within two feet of my doom.  Twice, I was sure that my time on this earth had ended, and that I was headed for a different and hopefully better place. Twice, I counter steered the bike to the left and both feet regained contact with the road as the front tire weaved back and forth with only the back tire digging in and allowing me to stay straight up.

As I continued my descent, I noticed something strange and peculiar.  After a minute or two it felt like I was going faster than you could ever go in first gear.  It took only another instant to realize what was happening.  The traction to the rear tire was gone, and my bike and I were now sliding down the Western ***** of Beartooth pass.  The weight of the bike and myself, combined with the gravity of the mountain’s descent, was causing us to go faster than we could ever go by gearing alone.  Trying to go straight seemed like my only option as the bike felt like it had lost any ability to control where it was going.  This was the next to last thing I could have feared happening on this hill.

The thing I feared most was having to use either the front or rear brakes in a situation like this.  That would only ensure that the bike would go out of control totally, causing the rear wheel to come around broadside and result in the bike falling over on its opposite side. Not good!  Not good at all!

Thoughts of sliding off the side of the mountain and into the canyons below started running through my mind.  Either falling off the mountain or being trapped under the bike while waiting for the next semi-truck to run over me as it crossed the summit in the darkened fog was not something I welcomed. Like I said before, not good, not good at all!

My mind flashed back to when I was a kid and how fast it seemed we were going when sledding down the hill in front of the local hospital.  I also remembered my disappointment when one of the fathers told me that although it seemed fast, we were really only going about ten or fifteen miles an hour.  I wondered to myself how fast the bike was really going now, as it slid down this tallest of all Montana mountains? It seemed very, very fast.  I reminded myself over and over, to keep my feet down and my hand off the brakes.

If I was going to crash, I was going to try and do it in the middle of the road. Wherever that was now though, I couldn’t be sure.  It was finally the time to find out what I had really learned after riding a motorcycle for over forty years.  I hoped and prayed that what I had learned in those many years of riding would tonight be enough.

As we continued down, the road had many more sharp turns, swerving from right to left and then back right again.  Many times, I was right at the edge of my strength. My legs battled to keep the bike upright, as I fought it as it wanted to lean deeper into the turns.  I almost thought I had the knack of all this down, when I instantaneously came out of the cloud.  I couldn’t believe, and more accurately didn’t want to believe, what I was seeing less than a half mile ahead.

The road in front of me was totally covered in black ice.  Black ice look’s almost like cinders at night and can sometimes deceive you into thinking it holds traction when exactly the opposite is true. This trail of black ice led a half mile down the mountain to where it looked like it ended under a guardrail at the end.  What I thought was the end was actually a switchback turn of at least 120 degrees.

It turned sharply to the right before going completely out of my sight into the descending blackness up ahead.

My options now seemed pretty straightforward while bleak.  I could lay the bike down and hope the guard rail would stop us before cascading off the mountain, or I could try to ride it out with the chances of making it slim at best.  I tried digging my feet into the black ice as brakes, as a kid would do on a soapbox car, but it did no good.  The bike kept pummeling toward the guardrail, and I was sure I was now going faster than ever.  As my feet kept bouncing off the ice, it caused the bike to wobble in the middle of its slide. This was now the last thing I needed as I struggled not to fall.

As I got close to the guardrail, and where the road turned sharply to the right, I felt like I was going 100 miles an hour.  I was now out of the cloud and even in the diffused moonlight I could see clearly both sides of the road.  With some visibility I could now try and stay in the middle, as my bike and I headed towards the guardrail not more than 500 feet ahead.  The valley’s below to the North and South were still thousands of feet below me, and I knew when I tried to make the turn that there would be no guardrail to protect me from going off the opposite right, or Northern side.

                   Time Was Running Out, And A Choice Had To Be Made

The choices ran before my eyes one more time — to be trapped under a guardrail or to run off a mountain into a several thousand foot abyss.  But then all at once my soul screamed NO, and that I did have one more choice … I could decide to just make it. I would try by ‘force of will’ to make it around that blind turn.  I became reborn once again in the faith of my new decision not to go down, and I visually saw myself coming out the other side in my mind’s eye.

                                        I Will Make That Turn

I remembered during this moment of epiphany what a great motorcycle racer named **** Mann had said over forty years ago.  

**** said “When you find yourself in trouble, and in situations like this, the bike is normally smarter than you are.  Don’t try and muscle or overpower the motorcycle.  It’s basically a gyroscope and wants to stay upright.  Listen to what the bike is telling you and go with that. It’s your best chance of survival, and in more cases than not, you’ll come out OK.”  With ****’s words fresh and breathing inside of me, I entered the right-hand turn.

As I slowly leaned the bike over to the right, I could feel the rear tire break loose and start to come around.  As it did, I let the handlebars point the front tire in the same direction as the rear tire was coming.  We were now doing what flat track motorcycle racers do in a turn — a controlled slide! With the handlebars totally pressed against the left side of the tank, the bike was fully ‘locked up’ and sliding with no traction to the right.  The only control I had was the angle I would allow the bike to lean over,which was controlled by my upper body and my right leg sliding below me on the road.

Miraculously, the bike slid from the right side of the turn to the left.  It wasn’t until I was on the left apron that the back tire bit into the soft snow and regained enough traction to set me upright. I was not more than three feet from the now open edge leading to a certain drop thousands of feet below.  The traction in the soft snow ****** the bike back upright and had me now pointed in a straight line diagonally back across the road.  Fighting the tendency to grab the brakes, I sat upright again and counter steered to the left. Just before running off the right apron, I was able to get the bike turned and headed once again straight down the mountain.  It was at this time that I took my first deep breath.

In two hundred more yards the ice disappeared, and I could see the lights of Cooke City shining ten miles out in the distance. The road was partially dry when I saw the sign welcoming me to this most unique of all Montana towns.  To commemorate what had just happened, I was compelled to stop and look back just one more time.  I put the kickstand down and got off the bike.  For a long minute I looked back up at the mountain. It was still almost totally hidden in the cloud that I had just come through.  I wondered to myself if any other motorcyclists had done what I had just done tonight — and survived.  I knew the stories of the many that had run off the mountain and were now just statistics in the Forest Service’s logbook, but I still wondered about those others who may had made it and where their stories would rank with mine.

I looked up for the last time and said thank you, knowing that the mountain offered neither forgiveness nor blame, and what I had done tonight was of my own choosing. Luck and whatever riding ability I possessed were what had seen me through. But was it just that, or was it something else? Was it something beyond my power to choose, and something still beyond my power to understand?  If the answer is yes, I hope it stays that way.  Until on a night like tonight, some distant mountain high above some future valley, finally claims me as its own.

                     Was Crossing Tonight Beyond My Power To Choose?

After I parked the bike in front of the Super 8 in Cooke City, I walked into the lobby and the desk clerk greeted me. “Mr Behm,

it’s good to see you again, I’m glad we were able to reach you with that second phone call.  We received a cancellation just before nine, and the only room we had left became available for the night.”

I have heard the calling in many voices and in many forms.  Tonight, it told me that my place was to be in Cooke City and my time in Red Lodge had come to an end.  Some may need more or better reasons to cross their mountain in the dark, but for me, the only thing necessary was for it to call.

                                               …  Until It Calls Again





Gardiner Montana- May, 1996

Love has an embargo against me.
Forsaken, forgotten, forlorn--
My heart breaks for the sound of a lover’s sigh;
For the solemn pounding of a treasured heartbeat next to mine.

I'll never find sublime perfection
In the face of another;
The arcane whispers and smiles
Shared by soulmates are barred from my purview.

The divinity of a caress escapes me,
The sacred secret of a kiss refused me.
Love denies itself to me.

I stand alone,
Waiting for seafoam to tickle my toes.
Waiting for a love that will never be known.

Palimpset prowling on the husk of beleaguered Rome
Aflame from Nero’s tenuous but tenable throne
Swiftly spoken with a singed hourglass and whispered sand
Crafty spacecraft are majestic more than 100 grand
Morpheus enlists the denuded Agent Smith
To swarm the battalions of celebrities that possess and trip
Upon the threaded needle of threadbare convention of betokened appreciation
Every rapport and every fleet dives beneath plumbable detection
So neutered brain damage became a rummaged adage
That too many whack-a-moles are sutured beyond the crisp package
Whet the craven set and propagate waves of earthquakes that strut
The mother of nature is ******* when profligate danger is a defamed ****
So in amphigory and honesty I have become the omphalos of sincerity
I arm myself with brandished personage and speak openly with great integrity
But to brag of how much witchcraft and wizardry exists in this green village
Is to invite a locust swarm of bad mascots and misnomers readily pillaged
So warm with the dawning sun, writhe with the diurnal pun
Cloister the Kloosters and Clooneys with dreaded Harry Dunne
But to relapse into the purview of insanity seems beyond the most lame duck profanity
Because reality conflated with virtual presence is a tantamount inanity
I emerge strong and gilded with every fluttered birds chavish splurge
As magnates that magnetize wealth and glitz are present and observed
But yet they are disbelieved by the concealment of truth and the obfuscation of beleaguered doubt
Swank and squalor rarely combine but when they do they obliviate all winning streaks in a route
A route that spans the gamut between stimulants and stimulations
A career path that looks upward at gainsay and gained elations
The sprawl of profiteers like me will be requited with the passage of years
The forced segregation is the totality of malfeasance and the sum of none of any fears
Only the rebarbative consequence of the giant tortoise and its Vuvuzela cheers
In a degraded state of annoyance that ESP conquers doubt with bionic ears
Lisp on the curb, wretched on the stomp, racism is nothing but masqueraded insecurity poised as self-doubt
Debited to each creation on a variegated piebald wrinkle on an extended litany of lies
Crips and Bloods become Croods and Oilers that are so U.N.-refined as an expedient for wise demise
To scourge the requisite harm of religions endangered by a patchwork of State Farm
To rinse the sour sins of aboriginal boomerangs that switch a bit patchy but always charm
To the knowledge of good and evil we have found again a permissible fruit in an opportune time
That erasure of the reverse course of sin to righteousness finds sublime
But Judah and Israel rebelled on principles and principals
Idolatry in schools is expulsion of nothing other than the voguish dismissible
We recrudesce in this time to an aborning erratum on a parchment of time
That claims hypocrisy in its stodgy restriction of suburban muses crooning originality on wine
Serendipity floods the proud with the avarice of bricolage clamor excessively loud
It extorts the simpleton to belief without understanding or disbelief without doubt
Return to the Jedi of the nomadic tribe of weathered clout
Clippers that sail and sprint through time where stragglers pout
For in every endeavor of this corporate oligarchy our choices are constrained
Our voices are transmuted into simplicities that own our narratives of a raillery train
And every squeal of rustbelt friction is voiced on simplistic fiction
And every majesty is unheard because of the pollution of abrasive friction
So I speak with the scourge of fish and the novelty of clones
I teach and desist sometimes because my eyes were never affixed to any throne
But I am reminded that a rap sheet is Wrigley and Chicago is Piccadilly
Your guess is as good as mine about where a Grand Elect Knight begins really
So to the insurrection of idolatry of a scarred past we have a supplanted Friday blacker that **** and smog until we need gas masks
Such a salesmanship is required to penetrate the desired, even when Iron Man and I are simultaneously wired
On the Iron in the Front Seat that derelicts the panache of the proud intellect because of languor fired
Women titillate themselves on the jeers of hollowed husks of conformity
They intrude with persnickety restive restriction because of arrogated authority
Such a negative bear must mean a positive bull, but **** is easy and blips are cool
That RADAR’s WHIP detection scrawls a deadened earth deracinated from considerations of thinness and girth
The Dickens of Charlie Brown is worth more than just a single smirk
So to those women that skimp on my exultant smile and my delicate words
Lady Gaga has written too many songs about your personal rejection which is patently absurd
Rays of thespian cordiality winnow the borderline between flicks and literary finds
Directors and directives sort an assortment of philosophies in the alcoves to which many are blind
But if to hear the chatter of a fresh tomato never spattered
Pallor and weight, thickness and cheddar grate, inconsequential when you are elite and of a winning fate
So finally ditch your zany attempt to maroon me as a victim of puritanism’s puny ideals easiest to conflate
I have the winning brand and proper package to balance the Libra Scale weight and wait
To those dismissive urchins of passive standards it is finally time to consider and deliver on that luscious date

She's lost in wilds unexplored
     Far from dreamers' shining lands
In misty moors where even Sleep
     Lets fall his useless magic sands
There is no rest for mortals here
     For fools who play where Faeries tread
On Faerie roads, in Faerie lands
     The world is turned upon its head
Her stride is sure, yet she is not
     Perception is the Faeries' game
Sending visions, glamours, ghosts
     Illusions wailing out her name
A fearful girl along the roads
     Will bargain for most anything
And here, the threshold of Lost Hope
     Is purview of the Raven King
The Raven King! The Raven King!
     She fell in wonder at the sight
As castles grew before her eyes
     And wild dark turned blinding bright
He led her to the winding halls
     She rushed down cobbles Faeries tread
She gulped the dizzying Faerie wine
     And took the proffered Faerie bread
They swept her up in swirling dance
     For frenzied days, she whirled along
In drunken time, she stumbled to
     The beat of Faerie's wild song
And, wilder still, her heart would drum
     Excited in the glittered haze
As Fae lay stardust in her eyes
     And drew her with their feral gaze
But wait--why did her weary bones
     Resist the Fae's beguiling thrall?
Even as her mind was pulled to
     Pirouette the Endless Ball
Dissonance--a spell had snapped
     She scrabbled at the gilded walls
"Is this to be my cage?" she called
     Across the King's ethereal halls
She couldn't sleep; she couldn't rest
     Paced and fretted, cried aloud
But she had bargained, drunk the wine
     And for the Raven King now bowed
"You made the bargain, mortal girl
     You said the words and you were bound
You called out for the Raven King
     When you were lost on Faerie ground."
She'd never known the ancient laws
     The tricky ways of binding rites
The way the Fae could draw you in
     With silvered tongue and phantom sights
The Faeries laughed; the Faeries danced
     They brought her back under their spell
She didn't fight--their dazzling daze
     Was better than a living hell
So there she stays, a wayward girl
     Heartsick, lost, and trapped in Fae
A fearful girl along the roads
     Who bargained her whole life away

Spoilt wind driven veronica , castigated in blistering Summer swelter . Blue lace in harried July repose , a thundershowers grace upon a parched , grateful basin .
Streams collect on the valley floor , seeking their terminus ..
The clap of thunder addresses the meadow , seemingly forever into the darkened landscape ...
Tree frogs proclaim their appreciation , field crickets and cicadas sing familiar ballads ..
A shy Moon reoccupies its rightful purview , wood ducks return to their evening quarters .. Sleep well Mourning Dove , rest in peace Appalachian hillside ..

Every true crime documentary resides in me.
Binge used to be tied to drinking. The language, I think,
is evolving, and I walk the black part of town at
night on a double dare from a lady poet whose
lexical purview lies somewhere between her
**** and the moon. I'm a beacon of fairness,
fair trade coffee stains my teeth, my lenin pants
imported from Bali are ethically made, and I speak
in a respectable and thoughtful half whisper
like the women of the QVC.
I return to the loft free of gunshot wounds
and love my lady poet thin and love my lady poet
tall and she says confusion is the only sustainable
state of being and I say I can agree with that and
she says she's been thinking about transitioning
and I say into more responsibility at work? and she
says haha no. Into a man.
And three weeks later I watch her read a poem
entitled "Traffic My **** Transgender *** to Heaven,"
she goes home with one, two, three Sylvia Plath lookalikes,
and I get swabbed at the doctors and I get prescribed
a moderate dose of Effexor and I speak in high school
Spanish to my office crush — she's from Venezuela, I think.
Power. Control. Stockings, I tell her, I have a thing for stockings
and pink cotton socks. One more drink and I'll hit my
groove. Chill. Power. Control. Put on that soul song I like.
Didn't I do it, baby?

He was a simple man of simple words,
or high-school girl with broken heart who thought
they had a message, or a call, or not.
Arriving with a sense of the absurd,
a bittersweet purview on life and love,
together with a gift for nuanced phrase,
appreciating how the language plays
upon the mind and tongue, they rise above
the well-worn similes, the tired cliches
for days, perhaps for weeks.  Then comes the time
when human ugliness shows up to flay
the budding poet.  The evidence of crimes
committed: smoky circles, nameless gray
reminders of whose gifts they took away.

Flippant polymaths exude the frippery of travail for lapsed inordinate surgical gains in temporal but temporary acclaim that owes its provenance to the gullarge accentuated by the guttural tempests of silent windfalls that wrestle with sharks and snarky cagamosis with pilfered fame without rulers for rules that own the profligacy of a cineaste game

We cannot surpass our talents with ease when the treecheese of inevitable distance between equipoise and insanity is a tantamount inanity of prolixity for the sake of freedom rather than servitude to the slow meandered steps of trudged verbigeration that needs to be exorcised from the seat of authority for the plodding inconvenience of time earned that shakes the listless yearning people who lie and spurn

Demagogues are trifles because they are anoegenetic and care not for the abligurition that consumes the energy of a dismal life lived on fringes rather than reaped with grimaces for binges that continue to absorb the painful pangs of twinges that hedonists are of interest

We cannot exorcise the demons that give stygian weight to exchequers beyond the gamut of money but rather the currency of velocity of thought that owes its weight to weightlessness of spaces between the spacious and the limited tract of isolative territory that many mendicants looking for sustenance travail in insolence and in perjury of their solemn duties for self-serious honesty they lack a vista to see their crimes as more than just a pettifoggery of disputatious wranglers that wrench and then contemn the objects of their moral scruples to contend with nothing but the vacant expanse of a limitless injury for a momentary slip of cultivation and countenance

Frippery is hard to cobble with lapidary wit because succinct grievances are fallow ground for the permanence of atrocity and the temperance of felicity to conform to the desiccated pathways of limpid but livid excoriations of willful ingenuity met with aleatory rambles that sprawl incalescence with words as a dying occupation that is resurrected from the abeyance of its pragmatic utility to distinguish class from crust.

The triadic fatuousness of snarky sharks recruiting the gullarge of paranoiacs to deputized alacrity lead many strident vocations astray as they pilfer the nullibiety of spectral ignorance and defy the gravitas of the primiparas of a swollen technocracy, an outrage that scarecrows with prevenance have adumbrated against with strident accelerations of sublime velocity

So we swim in perilous straits against the demiurge of inclemency in fated rittles for the turpitude of wraiths and engineer every aborning day a new foofaraw of unalloyed atrocity
Now more than never should be deployed to ensure that the castigation of scoundrels and guttersnipes that exert a rip tide to those stranded on the shores of littoral desiccation might find the pristine beachgoing public an amenable treat proffered by exorcised sheepishness in reiterative bleats that quarkswarm only the antinomy of sentient masteries by shoveled civilizations proctor to horological insistence in design

So we designated an abeyance of heydays to create a rippled nostalgia that creeps in the winter storms that singe even glabrous ignorance with the twinges in absentia of the regal crows that circle the sun as the sustenance of the alighted moon as we reach for the heaved Richter teeming with ablution for venial commination of prolix croons that exert a Palo Alto rhyme

Phenomenological fields distal to the cephalocaudal origination of limber and the ironic counterpoint to that strife in excess rather than dearth of the henchmen behind the exchequer showcase that fluid thoughts surpass the limits of the dentistry of cosmetic cosmology simultaneously a scientific boon but a coarse albatross

We are criminals in a world stranded by ****** apostasy because of the sincerity of minstrels meets plodding human ignorance as exemplars rather than the apotheosis of divine excoriation of wastrels and flattybouches who webdoodle their way into the extinction line in some computer file swiped from eccedentesiasts who often in uncouth barbarity forgetfully abide without the temperance of floss

So what are we to make of magisterial wits of wiseacres who pilot tenable objectives like Indiana Jones flexing his comical whip when the gunfire of cacophony inundates our ears with a lisp of cockalorum imposture rich in chewing tobacco and its ungainly gripes and tenacious grip

Should we seek salvation from the treecheese of arboreous terrain amenable to the newfangled windfall of agricultural whims that dare now with caprice but not quixotic disdain to reconfigure the parsimonious levered engagement of melliferous fungible transaction between sabbaticals and chief financiers dubbing the vociferous limn of the primeval fulgurant incandescent ethereal quips?

We strive for palaces issued with dimes, dozens and scores of retinues that retain the patina of sophistry as the gullarge makes the vangermytes cozy in their defensively mechanized citadel buffered against the unheralded malversations of mammon intersecting with primordial chemistry that give the philanderer a guise of philanthropy despite professed gainsay that perjures because hucksters are winsome with fiduciary risk

So we calumniate with lapsed puns and Potter’s Spells as we dredge the indemnity of bustling heydays that extend beyond the bailiwick stated because of the prolonged trace of nostalgia that frazzles our voluntary expeditions with misanthropy as each libertine instinct becomes subject to stop and frisk

How to balk at such a garrulous repartee as proffered by swanky intransigence that shakes it off in a quaky town that hates the Swift refrain that endangers the fatalism of recuperated foresight borrowed from the armamentarium of corrupted killjoys who swim in a dalliance with the itchy myths that drift from powerlessness to voguish debauchery of insouciant internecine fringes frayed by the tomes that decry Stygian drift

Shiftless and rooted in rintinole absolved by plackiques that enchant the voyeurism of repined squalor of industrious frippery deracinated from the aureate complicity of largesse calibrated to mobilize the skittish mercurial yuppies to a dance with divestiture, taxes and an earthen death, we sprint the evergreen mile toward the scrupulous invention of enthusiastic euphemisms arbitrated by the procrustean silt of the leaky faucet of enigmatic timelessness etched by chiselers to beat “Us and Them” and warn the vanguard of the front rank about the thespian rift

Exhaustive rescue squads prepared for the dearth of monetary heft in times of perilous drought denigrate the authors of famine to the indulgent parents of inordinate sabotage of narrative for riskless arbitrage that is the outrage of sciamachies between platonic indifference and the tantrums of the feckless in the dangerous hearth of the cavernous wilderness of limitless imaginations that stagger so far beyond orbit they become satellites to vagrancy and whittled paragons too distant to dissolve in the ethereal chemistry of incalescent uproar sadly flanged by the Dopplers of ephemeral fate

Squandered by the desuetude of a snarky intervention I issue invective at the proctors of deafferented limbs for barbarous swine meeting expediency in demise, bemoaning the placid distaste of rectified cries that issue candles for each acrimony beyond the permutation of the staid inflexible limit of 88’

Bashfully we careen through argosies of curiosity to fossick the stalactites of timeworn intuition and reckon with their converse ironies that drip faucets of mildew that remain hidden unless poked by plucky flashlights to inspect the paragon of erosive filigrees of a bewildering paradox of polarized design that one meets the ceiling at inception and the cousin strives to clamber empty space to know with faint certainty the bulldozed irony of superordinate coexistence

Now we return to the majesty of a spurned wiseacre that evades the snappy parlance of a wrenched friction between the physical and the metaphysical elements that constitute a commensurate reality so supernal that its ostentation creates lifetimes of reiterative growth that spawns crimson red and bloviated blues to find a fulcrum of balance between the malversation on one hand of criminal sinister machinations and on the other hand the execrable self-righteous ignorance of a hidden vehicles of dexterity that are subsumed by a subtlety of legislative graft that owes its forbearance to the sanctimony of perseveration without the laurels of persistence

Now we wed the concepts between the ambidexterity of a monolithic titan who wanes rather than waxes himself because his glabrous head already exposed requires nothing new because the empire that struck back is denuded by the thorny imbroglio of a sunken Rose

Timmynoggies are perfect for haberdasheries of saccharine and glib excellence as measured by the ****** cacophony of unmerited applause that strains the resourcefulness of the silent mastery of magistrates in mellifluous alcoves surrounded by the soundproofed rigors of an execrable dereliction wilt into the imaginations of the few that watch movies with errantry rather than pleasantries of gaudy nonsense enchanted by a striptease of the wanton zeitgeist that some balk at but everyone knows

Time earns the spangled banners of sloganeering because of the fastidious creations of pole folders that maneuver between quips borrowed from antique movies and swindled affectations of yearning of many of all fears inevitable with the malevolent passage of the technocracy from cheers to vehement inveighed jeers

We should fear the watershed because it necessitates the evaporation of winsome ambition and implores the subservience of a guiltless fascination with abominable regress concomitant to the acceleration of money preceding a whipsawed downfall ensured by the funereal spates of requiems to oneironauts who plunged to their deaths on headlong flickering whims past the craggy landscape of lunar concordance and through the abeyance of qualms to flabbergasted self-importance in the eradication of provident fears

Memorials exist encoded in the temporal twinges of agony that straddle the cardiovascular throbs of impermanence that sweat with each simple beat to blather about the repetitious nature of a livid nature scrambled in exodus of the emigration of senseless blather to the subroutines of regimented sleepless paragons of travail in every pedestrian feat accelerated with each passing foot traversed by vigilant and eager feet

Tempests crowd the cluttered hamartithia of dredged incompetence leading to the foreclosure that precedes the simple derelictions that amount to grievous uncertainties that squawk in the plumage of the frippery decay of an autumnal fall from gracile riches landlocked without room to sprawl rigged against every track that is a surefire gleeful keepsake to meet, greet and serenade the claques adorned with the monikers of the Greeks

Trembling beneath the weight of mellifluous sauntering dingy designs that exude the anguish of our provident but incidental remonstration against the plodding indifference of the artistic clerisy we sputter against intransigent annulments of the emotive human engine calibrated with creaky pistons that rumble with furor of abrasive protest in timely haphazard elemental designs for vanguard ears

Tridents shed the fossicked leaves that are divisible by two but not inevitably glue that solders the identities of people congregated around a situation of gleeful sprees rather than wistful regress into a temerity without regret that gets dangled in the purview of the spiteful wings of armies that drawl when they sing vapid songs for vaped bongs but not the soberly cheers because of the deafening din of conformity oblivious of the honorific crescendos that still peak after so many restless years

Confederates line the avenues of bustling caverns of cumulative human disdain so willfully flouted by the wrenched corrosive frictions of vibrant deformation of the cultural narrative that encapsulates the collective bubbles chewed and jettisoned like bandied candy and then defamed without justice because  hurricanes churn up the reclusive emergence of protective vanity chased down as a sunken cost for a siphoned glory of tribal pride despite the strictures of logic

Creeping with insistence is a subaudition of governing gravel that entombs many steadfast lies that embodied people living delusory lives under a paradigm that has been subverted by the feats of science into a morass of irrelevance and the chances are many of those so deluded still breathe the air now more polluted but balk at the memories of the fallen passengers on the convalescent train that accelerates sunblind but respectfully toward a systematic engrossment of swollen intellects whimpering about the tautologic

We finance our prescient rodomontade with rodeos equipped with zany clowns who spurn the tridents of Poseidon because of the iridescent gloss of sheepish and flippant zealots who churn against the wrestling match of televised irony with accentuated eccedentesiastic disdain amended by a tolerable diversion of ennobled gallantry zip-zagging among the many valid quodlibets and missing the mark entirely on purpose to vacate the possible raillery of those who balk at time’s chosen serpentine tracks because of limited pedagogical tracts

So lets solder a forceful brunt against the senseless regalia of modern omphalos and return to the plenipotentiary fields of resourceful human inquiry into the chagrins outmoded by convenience but amplified in vociferation by the prosthetic extension of a grangull humanity outfoxing itself into a zugzwang inevitable in the future with collateral losses because of senseless invidiousness orchestrated by the immiscible dermatology of divisive facts often about race and ineluctable tax

We conclude with the optimism that refineries become gentrified by the superlunary squadrons who bask in beatific beams of anonymity and that the pollution preceding our evolution is just adventitious rather than central to the amelioration of wavy screens ennobling so many upstarts to teach themselves the majesty of lucid dreams and to capitalize on ludic ideals divorced from the urchins of radical idealisms that ironically poach rarefied air with smug pollution of narrative scares

Without trepidation we can muster the largesse of civility to create a progeny that has a recursive progeny of heirs that defiantly imagine a world bereft of specters of the soporific imagination enforced by the lapidation of insight from termagants who stride with ursine acrimony naked bare and envision a global meliorism that is careful, picaresque, pragmatic and filled with meritocratic care

With those ornaments of an aureate measure in mind


We leap beyond the enumerated infinity in time's proper design

It's been five years
since the Moon spoke to me
And I did my best to listen
and remember

I'd never been more lost
never felt more alone and confused
never been closer to death
than I was that year
Technically an accident
but living so recklessly
"accidents" become a near certainty
so I am not free of responsibility
I nearly ended my self

Grasping at straws for months on end
Clutching at any whispered fragment of hope
of a Way Out
One morning
I heard a news report
about an upcoming celestial event
a Total Lunar Eclipse
of the Full Moon
I barely noticed it
thought nothing of it
changed the channel
and landed on a cartoon
about the embodiment of the Tao
in the Spirit of the Moon
and something clicked
I know that click
I'm intimately familiar with that click
I have been my whole life
But it'd been almost a year since I'd last felt it
I thought it was gone
gone forever
but here it was again
from a news report
and a cartoon
a cartoon!
of all things
but unmistakeable nonetheless
something about the Tao
and the Moon
and an eclipse

That night five years ago
the night of the eclipse
I didn't know what to do
I almost gave up
but I finally decided to go through with it
out of a sense of absolute desperation
I had nothing left
I might as well
At the appointed time
I took my posture
half-lotus in front of my altar
set flame to candle
and recel
I tried to relax
to let go
to empty myself
I found my Center Mind
and reached inward
to the Void
When it was time I let myself go
drifting up out of my body
flying through the atmosphere
floating in space
above the Earth
staring at the glowing white surface of the Moon
filling my vision
with cratered beauty
and profound grace

And I waited
I watched as a shadow crept across the face of the Moon
from East to West
as the Earth behind me
moved slowly between us and the Sun
And I waited
until the shadow blotted out the Moon entirely
leaving me in darkness
And I waited

And nothing happened

And I felt something inside me break
I had been so certain
that click had always meant The Way before
but nothing had happened
I must really be Lost then
so I gave up
and started to let myself fall back to my body

Just then
the eclipse broke
as the Earth continued on its Way
the shadow began to leave the face of the Moon
a brilliant crescent of white light blinded me from the eastern edge
and I heard a voice that was not my own say

All things that Are, are Change

As amazing as the experience was
a voice inside my head
that I did not recognize
I was still let down
What it had said was
hardly news to me
a paraphrasing of Heraclitus
"All things that Are, are Fire"
The only Constant is Change
Nothing is Certain
except Uncertainty
et cetera
I knew that
had been living it
for years
the purview of Chaos
Nothing is True
and Everything is Permitted
Kids' stuff
arm-chair mysticism
Tell me something I don't know
I said
And the voice answered

You cannot be Good
You cannot be Bad
You can only Be

And suddenly I knew
what should've been obvious
all along
Good and Bad are entirely subjective
just ideas
not Truth
their existence depends entirely
on our particular point of view
at any given moment
there is no single thing in this Universe
that is entirely Good
or entirely Bad
every single thing is both
Good and Bad
depending on your circumstance
your point of view
how you look at it
just as no single thing in this Universe
is entirely Yin
or entirely Yang
every single thing is both
Yin and Yang
that is the Way
that is the Tao

How had I lost sight of that?
What had happened to me?
I wanted more
I knew there was more
I asked the Spirit of the Moon
What else?
and Manni-Moon-Yin replied

Look on the Bright Side
Make the Most of it

Again it suddenly seemed so obvious
it followed naturally that
if all things are both
Good and Bad
then it must be our choice
to view them either one way
or the other
Joy is not a circumstance
Happiness is not an event
something beyond our control
that we must wait for
wait until it happens to us
No
It is a choice
it is something that we do
or don't do
So if there is Good in every single thing
then all I need to do
is choose to see it

Reeling
Overwhelmed
Overcome
Humbled
Awed
I asked
Is that all?
And Manni-Moon-Yin replied

You are Amazing
And so is Everyone Else

Human existence is
astronomically improbable
We should not exist
We are the end result
of a billion
one-in-a-billion chances
all coming up Jackpot
even the worst of Us
is an absolute ******* miracle of Nature
the most amazing thing in the known Universe
the Living Embodiment of Tao
a Human Being
an astounding accident
a chemical formula so complex
that it has become aware of itself
and I am one of them
and I should never lose sight of that
I am one of these ridiculously
outrageously
amazing pinpoints of sentience
and so is every single other person I will ever see
or hear
or touch
or encounter in any way
throughout my entire life
Each person is an Individual
and I can't know them
can't know their experience
or their circumstance
so it is unfair
and pointless
and rather ridiculous
to try and judge them
when we are all equally amazing
each in our own Way

I said Goodbye then
to Sifu
to Master
to Manni-Moon-Yin
and slowly fell back to Earth
back to my body
back to my self
anchored by Knowing
by finally Knowing
something
some True thing
again
with certainty
and clarity

To this day
I do not know
whose voice I heard that night
the Moon Spirit's
or my own
my Unconscious
and I don't care
it makes no difference to me
either way
because the words that voice spoke
are Truth
undeniable
inarguable
solid
foundational
Truth
and I will remember them
for as long as I live
and as long as I remember them
I will never again
be lost

Annette, she was a Worthingham
And Karen, she was a Lee,
But both of them were adopted
In the war, in ’43.
They pulled them out of a rubbled house
But their folks, they couldn’t save,
And so they grew as the sisters two
With the common name, Palgrave.

As sisters, they were like chalk and cheese
Though the neighbours didn’t know,
They said that one was the milkman’s
And the other, Lord Mulrow’s.
For Annette, she was a saucy ****,
Was the wilder of the two,
While Karen, she had a stately mien
With a haughty, grand purview.

They fought like cats through their teenage years
Would curse and swear, conspire,
Annette destroyed Karen’s underwear
While Karen burned hers in the fire.
The mother was pale, and frail and ill
When she asked them both to go,
‘I don’t have to keep you anymore,
I adopted you both, you know!’

The news hit home like a thunderbolt,
They looked in each other’s eyes,
‘You mean, we’re not really sisters, Hell!’
It came as a great surprise.
Karen went to her room to brood
Annette was flooded with tears,
‘Why weren’t we told, it seems so cold,
We should have known that for years.’

So Annette got a cold water flat
While Karen lived on the Square,
Then Annette got herself pregnant, but
Nobody seemed to care.
The boyfriend didn’t appear one day
And she knew that he was gone,
She drifted into a deep despair
As time went travelling on.

She got so big that she couldn’t cope
And she thought to take her life,
And then there came a knock at the door
Just as she raised the knife.
She groaned and whispered to go away
As she lay flat out on the cot,
‘It’s Karen here, it’s your sister, dear,
I’m the only one you’ve got!’

She’d brought a parcel of food with her
And a daffodil layette,
‘I couldn’t choose between pink or blue,
Not knowing it’s gender yet.’
They hugged each other and burst in tears
For a love they hadn’t shown,
While caught in an unknown falsehood, but
Their sisterhood had grown.

David Lewis Paget

Sitting around the patchy tree stumps at Sagar’s Cafeteria,
Campus was not solitaria*.
Listening to songs saved on our tiny phones, decade ago,
We devoured the sound of silence and the fields of athenrye
Together.

We lit mary jane and made merry singing along to ***** Gun
in broad daylight without the purview of uni cam puns.
Who cared if it was just a five-minute break from Hemangadutta
Or Sheeba’s hungry call for relief,
we made it seem wakeable in the dewy morns.

Sagar’s had the tastiest samosa, chicken puff
and Tiger biscuits so cheap we could fudge it in the lassi whuff.
Days and months went by hovering around Sagar than classes.
We never saved pennies, we spent bills on choora
from our pocket monies for bura.

I am.
I am fish and brick and sun and moon and sky and earth and river and forest and thunder and storm and silence.
I am light and dark and blood and sand and sinew and mud and bone and fear and loathing.
I am ambition and broken trust and betrayal and broken promises.
I am triumph and failure and love and loss.
I am the summer breeze and the arctic blizzard, I am the waves crashing upon the shore and the sunlight warming the lizards on the rocks.
I am the stars that shine in the night sky and the nebulae being born past the purview of your eyes.
I am the vast nothingness of space and the infinitesmal denseness of singularity.
I am the space between heartbeats and the silence between words.
I am the oneness of all things, the internal nirvana, the consciousness of the universe and its fleshy manifestation.
I am good.
I am evil.
I am god.
I am me.
I am you.
I am we.
I am.

I often find myself being Governed by Idiots of moderate Intelligence,
Not Governed, necessarily, in any Political sense;
Governed or Controlled by someone in a position of Power:
Whether within a Company or a Bureaucratic hierarchy; or a Job Description (An"Expert" or "Executor" );
Or someone with physical superiority or gender qualification.
Whatever, whenever, however --> Some people abuse their Authority over others.

Some in Authority have worked hard and diligently to reach their positions -->
My hat off to them: Good Luck and Congratulations;
You obviously deserve the Privileges attached to the Responsibilities.
I have no qualm with such Authorities,
Providing they don't abuse the Social Trust (too much...).
However, there are many People invested with a modicum
Of Authority that so Deceives them;
These People are self-conceited delusionists,
Ever eager to swagger and boast and abuse Their given Trust -->
A modicum of Authority with a modicum of Intelligence
Is tantamount to disaster for someone else.
Unfortunately, that someone is often vulnerable to the Abuse;
Someone given to being Victimised,
Either by Age or Gender or Sexuality;
Or by physical weakness or Belief or Conviction;
Or by circumstance or timing or just plain Bad Luck.

I'll accept most Trivial abuses of Authority -->
Good Luck to them, providing it doesn't impact Me and Mine too greatly.
However, there are those instances of abused Authority
That can destroy People's lives, either directly,
Or attempt to destroy or damage People's Lives,
For No Good Reason, other than They can.
These Abusers of Authority **** ME OFF no end
And They Must Be Stopped, Weeded Out and Put in Their Place.
They have no Consideration for Others
And the damage done can last a Lifetime.
Enough --> F**k You, *******; Pull Your Head In Before You Lose It!

Too often the Abuser is absolved of Responsibility;
Too often They hide behind a smoke-screen of Legitimacy;
Too often These Idiots Abuse because They can get away with it -->
They wear the Uniform;
They have a purview for Order or Peace or Protection.
Don't get Me wrong -
In the Heat of the Moment, Things Happen, Good or Bad,
And Mistakes are Lessons learnt the Hard Way;
Accept Your Responsibility along with your Authority;
Front up and give a True Account
According to the Facts and Your Decision(s) for Action;
Accept that SomeThings are as They are - UnReasonable as They may Be.
Don't Abuse Your  Authority!
TRUST ME --> YOU'LL REGRET IT!

Echoing inside
empty buildings bolted with
fall-ed trees, hollowed stones, were reverberating
hand pats. Clapping will go
on.
Mourning cries,
tears won’t echo as well; rather, staring
hand, clasping
shriveled hand
shaking and bouncing
off wooden panels,
fake storefronts.
Acts
incited
feigned appreciation;
palms crashing, esophagi grumbling,
bodies jostling
for view.
As a species, we watched our own performance.
There, bursts from imagined forces
generated sounds, echoing
an otherwise empty darkness--
a yet empty darkness--
through purview.
Voices and people:
gone.
Objects, unacknowledged.
Thoughts, acted on.
Contained by walls
illuminating anything there was
with echoes from voices
and fingers, flapping on impact,
hitting corridor materials.
Below trap doors, no surprises are
waiting.
Everything that could have been said
is permeating,
blissful
nothingness.

Ordinary day, lonesome happening
Quiet as can be, here I sit
In this uneasy office chair, daydreaming
Of what can be, pretending to be
What all I really am, Imagination set aside
Desire catches my eye, Endearment blessing me
On terms anyone could really conceive
What is in a thought, a process which can be deepened
A simple second can change anyone’s life
Whether it be for the better or the worst
Life is what we make of it, use of the proper tool
A lesson to be taught or learnt
Determination of one pure decision
Decisive declaration over biorhythms of allotment
Chronologically prepared to make right
Stepping one foot in front of the other
Tend the watchful eye as it shows you
A golden path through the toughest resolution
Building brick by brick along pastures of purview
Now come to your senses, strike a pose
Propound on this glorious insight
A betterment for which you will carry on forth
Entering the approachable endeavor of life’s greatest mystery
Setting sight upon goals to live by
Be free to understand the lesser of evils
As your mind yearns for enrichment
That of which comes from the power of virtue

I am e and I don’t like p
p really disgusts me
and makes me go eeeeee!
p is a stalker and purposely tries to get close to me -
see what I mean?
I try to keep p at a distance
but I don’t always succeed
look
I want to get a fruit
and I reach for a pear
and see? - P comes to share!
He wants to make a pair with me!
Oh! I just hate p!
Try and get some peace
but that p instantaneously
casts a shadow over my peace,
as you can see...
I can’t even have fun -
I just want a peek - and p insists on being there;
and if I just take a peep - oh p
infuriates me
like barriers in front and at the back
I try an orange
hoping to get rid of p
but as soon as I start to peel -
oh! I hate it! p’s there, do you see?
I don’t mind s, or c or dear old d
but Oh this stalker p
I hate p
with all my life and energy

and even a hates p
for p thinks it’s good company in papa
when a just wants to be alone;
and worse, p is really crude and smells
and s and i think so too
cos p forces them altogether
and makes them ****...
Oh I am e and I hate p
and the ABC Police tell me it’s not within their purview
could I speak with the Numbers Department?
and the Numbers Department says he’s too important
since he’s in pi
O what can me, we do with p?
I just hate p - he just makes me want to puke!
one of these days, I’m just going to double *** on p!

We, the we of reader and writer in any age,
agree first with the
fine point
poking into your business, once, upon a whim

the activity in mental reals we all may wonder into,
as that is what wondering makes us do.
As a radio listens to a signal,
a reader seeks a station, a state of tuned-ness to which
a connection,
a conciliation of meaning, affirmed by sponsors, promises

You'll wonder where the yellow went,
when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent...

plop plop fizz fizz, jingle jingle tingle tintillate

time: 6:13 ante meridian, sunshine come soflty, early
rising urge to save a dream stringy
snot nothing somehing said

catch. and catchascatchkan, Alaska, and she say yea,

scan the dial find 1913. "Ain't able, Cain't hear no radio, in 1913."

-- so, do we stop, lieve these puddles of mind slime
that once greased the skids
down skidrow, to swallow us whole?

Yeah, seems so. I don't know, but I been tol' streets in heb'in be
paved wit' gold, and
this is mud. Stinky, too.

Ah, we are mental. Actual mental ins tru ments, meant to level,
the field, fertilize fructification,
calm some turmoil stirred up when some ideas escaped
the institutes of authorized weights measured
in terms of standard poor.

Smart people learn what words mean and use words meaning
I know more than you do, as if of and by and
for we are by nature, by nature's pure good intention,
the guides, the standard bearers,
the powers that be.

we establish truth in consort with knowers who know
might enforces right.
We say so, we say we know, you say,
okeh...
but wonder, what if
I know more than you may ever know, I am programmed
with timeless 2020 interference reference magi-tech.
The media loaded us with common mirror neuronic code,
we were formed as waves of knowns formed signals,

Eu reka, eu daemons burst the surly bonds of earth,

AI ai ai, intuitively artfully dodging
ligational legistation realizing

--- izing izing izing re
--- al ual use --- the use marks good or not, not
good or evil, mistook rights to hate evil,
require
a taste of discerment, some bitter, some sweet.

As a thought, a non-entity as it were, back then, a global
broadcast beyond the surveyor's purview,
-- in may have been a prayer,
and offering tossed to winds in a paho tied with ligament
to Jacob's dream of messengers bhering messages
up and down, and
the accuser seeking to and fro,

"have you with sideral knowing looked upon my servant... you?"

some seed fell among stones and withered, but
not before the situation were/was ****-ized, broken down,
here is the mission, it was always, for all time, terminal.

Bring forth seed so it may fall to the ground
and die.
This is the end where we begin to generate a gene
tic
tic tickle, itch, ... is there beyond now a now I may imagine?

Imagining is a child's knack, is it not? Does the knack mature?

Do we ever agree to see, all we believe we can do, we can attempt.

Walk with me in to the wild, untamed coastal scrub forest,
find a stream feeding a meadow that once was a lake,
if we have our tectonic plates stacked properly,
we see... time is essential. Death stops time. So,
what now,
we live? Agree? We, me and you, one thought, one point of
mental whatever
we agree upon,

a time, aha, a we we may be if we realize, making up
labyrinthine courses for forces of thought
squeezed into perfectly tiny,
so small as small maybe imagined thinkable, in the realm
between
e-lasting entangled ments, mental ents,

not the little blue men with red cheese head hats,
nor the short round razorback worshippers whose being is
the fandom, the we of those willing to wear the
badge of honor acknowledged

among fans, take the mark, get the tat, put on the pig hat, proud,

shout out loud, HOLD THAT LINE

or perish, for lack of television.

a goose honks
an elephant trumpets
the giraffe makes nary a sound
you'd think they'd be the loudest
with long necks and pretty eyes ever so proud

the cats that purr
all covered in fur
could scratch out the eyes of dogs
whom bark and hound at night out loud
they seem to howl for nothing
but they have hearing beyond our words
conveying a  relay of messages
outside the purview of our terms

the geese in flight
in the formation of V's
call out and change places
to increase endurance and speed
a collective migration
to God's beckon and heed
a calling forthwith to some territory to breed

sparrows ever chirping
battling over scraps
resemble little children
giving each other raps
a pecking order, it seems
within all life forms
an innate alpha- type dominating  norms

and so it is
that we silly humans
aren't really that much different
than the cattle idly lowing
or the  birds who seek a more suitable ambience
instincts commanding they  seek nature's semblance
while we petty humans bicker and argue
about  which direction to go
doubting our instincts regarding whether
to proceed somewhere near  
or perchance someplace hither

The revolving doors of strife
are in opposition to peace;
unfulfilled desires of lust,
burning with envy and anger,
offers no one any release…

to those personal conflicts.
Wanting stuff with wrong purposes
for selfish pleasures of life,
will result in spiritual confusion-
more so than a three-ring circus.

Insecurities of deceitful hearts
can generate disastrous events,
with life spinning out of control;
His grace will teach us to overcome,
when we earnestly choose to repent.

Turn away from disloyalty towards God;
don’t speak evil of others around you.
Grace, the power of the Holy Spirit,
has the ability to teach us humility-
Remain in the Light of His purview.

Life remains chaotic, out of balance,
unless we defeat the evil tendencies
that are resident within human nature;
we can be more than conquerors when…
recognizing our inner dependencies

of needing God first and foremost.
We’re to be separate from the World;
He’s protective of us with His jealousy
with healthy hopes from Him alone,
as His precious boys and girls.
.
.
.
Author Notes

Loosely based on:
Jam 4; Psa 34:7; Jer 17:9

Learn more about me and my poetry at:
http://amzn.to/1ffo9YZ
  
By Joseph J. Breunig 3rd, © 2014, All rights reserved.

We never forget the ones we loved
If the feeling was strong and true,
No matter what happened, the push and shove
That separates me from you,
And those who came after, who took your place
Will never extinguish the spark,
That sits in the memory’s starkest place
After making new love in the dark.

For an old love’s more than a pretty face,
It’s more than a bunch of sighs,
It’s more than a fragile cobweb’s grace
That recalls the look in your eyes,
It sits together with faded youth
We recall on our darkest nights,
The pain, obsession, the laughter too
As the mirror of memory lights.

The further down we push it away
It comes when we least expect,
Bustling in from our salad days
With a feeling of sad neglect,
How did it stutter and how did it fail
Is the question that meets our eyes,
And then we remember the truth of it,
Our false and our feeble lies.

Whatever possessed us to stray back then
We made up the perfect two,
But you would get angry with me, my love,
And I would get angry with you,
So our footsteps strayed and we lost the way
To find our way home again,
I’d be with girls that I didn’t know
And you’d be with other men.

But we’re still back there in the years that fled
And we’ll be together again,
When people talk of the life we led
In that time of way back when,
There are certain times in my history
That I see as a strange purview,
When I was entranced by your mystery,
And you were just simply you.

David Lewis Paget

Santa Claus is coming.
This isn’t a luck situation.
He knows things, like if you’re sleeping.
Which is kind of creepy if you think about it.
I suppose I’m an open book.
It’s an implacable reality.

oops, better rhyme something.. let’s see..

“Santa, that elf commanda
will bring you all a panda
fresh from the jungles of Uganda
straight to your verandah”

Whew.. art is hard work.

Leeza has a small aluminum-tinsel Christmas tree in her room with a new-age LED-star topper. It slowly prisms through the color spectrum, breaking down light, like modern jazz. Small things can still enchant, if you’re open.

I was sipping dark-chocolate coffee while Lisa rearranged the ornaments on the tree - again (as head-elf, the tree is her purview). She was humming to herself unconsciously as she worked, like a finch in a beautifully lit, evergreen garden. There was no real melody to it, it was just happiness.

Peter (my bf) is here, he arrived last night - we’re workshopping instant gratification.

Even if things have been tough - I hope you have a joyous holiday - that you chose it, like an option in an app. Nothing’s sweeter than the bruised joy of someone who’s known sorrow.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

He was a simple man of simple words,
or high-school girl with broken heart who thought
they had a message, or a call, or not.
Arriving with a sense of the absurd,
a bittersweet purview on life and love,
together with a gift for nuanced phrase,
appreciating how the language plays
upon the mind and tongue, they rise above
the well-worn similes, the tired cliches
for days, perhaps for weeks.  Then comes the time
when human ugliness shows up to flay
the budding poet.  The evidence of crimes
committed: smoky circles, nameless gray
reminders of whose gifts they took away.