FIRST DAY

1.
Who wanted me
to go to Chicago
on January 6th?
I did!

The night before,
20 below zero
Fahrenheit
with the wind chill;
as the blizzard of 99
lay in mountains
of blackening snow.

I packed two coats,
two suits,
three sweaters,
multiple sets of long johns
and heavy white socks
for a two-day stay.

I left from Newark.
**** the denseness,
it confounds!

The 2nd City to whom?
2nd ain’t bad.
It’s pretty good.
If you consider
Peking and Prague,
Tokyo and Togo,
Manchester and Moscow,
Port Au Prince and Paris,
Athens and Amsterdam,
Buenos Aries and Johannesburg;
that’s pretty good.

What’s going on here today?
It’s friggin frozen.
To the bone!

But Chi Town is still cool.
Buddy Guy’s is open.
Bartenders mixing drinks,
cabbies jamming on their breaks,
honey dew waitresses serving sugar,
buildings swerving,
fire tongued preachers are preaching
and the farmers are measuring the moon.

The lake,
unlike Ontario
is in the midst of freezing.
Bones of ice
threaten to gel
into a solid mass
over the expanse
of the Michigan Lake.
If this keeps up,
you can walk
clear to Toronto
on a silver carpet.

Along the shore
the ice is permanent.
It’s the first big frost
of winter
after a long
Indian Summer.

Thank God
I caught a cab.
Outside I hear
The Hawk
nippin hard.
It’ll get your ear,
finger or toe.
Bite you on the nose too
if you ain’t careful.

Thank God,
I’m not walking
the Wabash tonight;
but if you do cover up,
wear layers.

Chicago,
could this be
Sandburg’s City?

I’m overwhelmed
and this is my tenth time here.

It’s almost better,
sometimes it is better,
a lot of times it is better
and denser then New York.

Ask any Bull’s fan.
I’m a Knickerbocker.
Yes Nueva York,
a city that has placed last
in the standings
for many years.
Except the last two.
Yanks are # 1!

But Chicago
is a dynasty,
as big as
Sammy Sosa’s heart,
rich and wide
as Michael Jordan’s grin.

Middle of a country,
center of a continent,
smack dab in the mean
of a hemisphere,
vortex to a world,
Chicago!

Kansas City,
Nashville,
St. Louis,
Detroit,
Cleveland,
Pittsburgh,
Denver,
New Orleans,
Dallas,
Cairo,
Singapore,
Auckland,
Baghdad,
Mexico City
and Montreal
salute her.



2.
Cities,
A collection of vanities?
Engineered complex utilitarianism?
The need for community a social necessity?
Ego one with the mass?
Civilization’s latest *******?
Chicago is more then that.

Jefferson’s yeoman farmer
is long gone
but this capitol
of the Great Plains
is still democratic.

The citizen’s of this city
would vote daily,
if they could.

Chicago,
Sandburg’s Chicago,
Could it be?

The namesake river
segments the city,
canals of commerce,
all perpendicular,
is rife throughout,
still guiding barges
to the Mississippi
and St. Laurence.

Now also
tourist attractions
for a cafe society.

Chicago is really jazzy,
swanky clubs,
big steaks,
juices and drinks.

You get the best
coffee from Seattle
and the finest teas
from China.

Great restaurants
serve liquid jazz
al la carte.

Jazz Jazz Jazz
All they serve is Jazz
Rock me steady
Keep the beat
Keep it flowin
Feel the heat!

Jazz Jazz Jazz
All they is, is Jazz
Fast cars will take ya
To the show
Round bout midnight
Where’d the time go?

Flows into the Mississippi,
the mother of America’s rivers,
an empires aorta.

Great Lakes wonder of water.
Niagara Falls
still her heart gushes forth.

Buffalo connected to this holy heart.
Finger Lakes and Adirondacks
are part of this watershed,
all the way down to the
Delaware and Chesapeake.

Sandburg’s Chicago?
Oh my my,
the wonder of him.
Who captured the imagination
of the wonders of rivers.

Down stream other holy cities
from the Mississippi delta
all mapped by him.

Its mouth our Dixie Trumpet
guarded by righteous Cajun brethren.

Midwest?
Midwest from where?
It’s north of Caracas and Los Angeles,
east of Fairbanks,
west of Dublin
and south of not much.

Him,
who spoke of honest men
and loving women.
Working men and mothers
bearing citizens to build a nation.
The New World’s
precocious adolescent
caught in a stream
of endless and exciting change,
much pain and sacrifice,
dedication and loss,
pride and tribulations.

From him we know
all the people’s faces.
All their stories are told.
Never defeating the
idea of Chicago.

Sandburg had the courage to say
what was in the heart of the people, who:

Defeated the Indians,
Mapped the terrain,
Aided slavers,
Fought a terrible civil war,
Hoisted the barges,
Grew the food,
Whacked the wheat,
Sang the songs,
Fought many wars of conquest,
Cleared the land,
Erected the bridges,
Trapped the game,
Netted the fish,
Mined the coal,
Forged the steel,
Laid the tracks,
Fired the tenders,
Cut the stone,
Mixed the mortar,
Plumbed the line,
And laid the bricks
Of this nation of cities!

Pardon the Marlboro Man shtick.
It’s a poor expostulation of
crass commercial symbolism.

Like I said, I’m a
Devil Fan from Jersey
and Madison Avenue
has done its work on me.

It’s a strange alchemy
that changes
a proud Nation of Blackhawks
into a merchandising bonanza
of hometown hockey shirts,
making the native seem alien,
and the interloper at home chillin out,
warming his feet atop a block of ice,
guzzling Old Style
with clicker in hand.

Give him his beer
and other diversions.
If he bowls with his buddy’s
on Tuesday night
I hope he bowls
a perfect game.

He’s earned it.
He works hard.
Hard work and faith
built this city.

And it’s not just the faith
that fills the cities
thousand churches,
temples and
mosques on the Sabbath.

3.
There is faith in everything in Chicago!

An alcoholic broker named Bill
lives the Twelve Steps
to banish fear and loathing
for one more day.
Bill believes in sobriety.

A tug captain named Moe
waits for the spring thaw
so he can get the barges up to Duluth.
Moe believes in the seasons.

A farmer named Tom
hopes he has reaped the last
of many bitter harvests.
Tom believes in a new start.

A homeless man named Earl
wills himself a cot and a hot
at the local shelter.
Earl believes in deliverance.

A Pullman porter
named George
works overtime
to get his first born
through medical school.
George believes in opportunity.

A folk singer named Woody
sings about his
countrymen inheritance
and implores them to take it.
Woody believes in people.

A Wobbly named Joe
organizes fellow steelworkers
to fight for a workers paradise
here on earth.
Joe believes in ideals.

A bookkeeper named Edith
is certain she’ll see the Cubs
win the World Series
in her lifetime.
Edith believes in miracles.

An electrician named ****
saves money
to bring his family over from Gdansk.
**** believes in America.

A banker named Leah
knows Ditka will return
and lead the Bears
to another Super Bowl.
Leah believes in nostalgia.

A cantor named Samuel
prays for another 20 years
so he can properly train
his Temple’s replacement.

Samuel believes in tradition.
A high school girl named Sally
refuses to get an abortion.
She knows she carries
something special within her.
Sally believes in life.

A city worker named Mazie
ceaselessly prays
for her incarcerated son
doing 10 years at Cook.
Mazie believes in redemption.

A jazzer named Bix
helps to invent a new art form
out of the mist.
Bix believes in creativity.

An architect named Frank
restores the Rookery.
Frank believes in space.

A soldier named Ike
fights wars for democracy.
Ike believes in peace.

A Rabbi named Jesse
sermonizes on Moses.
Jesse believes in liberation.

Somewhere in Chicago
a kid still believes in Shoeless Joe.
The kid believes in
the integrity of the game.

An Imam named Louis
is busy building a nation
within a nation.
Louis believes in
self-determination.

A teacher named Heidi
gives all she has to her students.
She has great expectations for them all.
Heidi believes in the future.

4.
Does Chicago have a future?

This city,
full of cowboys
and wildcatters
is predicated
on a future!

Bang, bang
Shoot em up
Stake the claim
It’s your terrain
Drill the hole
Strike it rich
Top it off
You’re the boss
Take a chance
Watch it wane
Try again
Heavenly gains

Chicago
city of futures
is a Holy Mecca
to all day traders.

Their skin is gray,
hair disheveled,
loud ties and
funny coats,
thumb through
slips of paper
held by nail
chewed hands.
Selling promises
with no derivative value
for out of the money calls
and in the money puts.
Strike is not a labor action
in this city of unionists,
but a speculators mark,
a capitalist wish,
a hedgers bet,
a public debt
and a farmers
fair return.

Indexes for everything.
Quantitative models
that could burst a kazoo.

You know the measure
of everything in Chicago.
But is it truly objective?
Have mathematics banished
subjective intentions,
routing it in fair practice
of market efficiencies,
a kind of scientific absolution?

I heard that there
is a dispute brewing
over the amount of snowfall
that fell on the 1st.

The mayor’s office,
using the official city ruler
measured 22”
of snow on the ground.

The National Weather Service
says it cannot detect more
then 17” of snow.

The mayor thinks
he’ll catch less heat
for the trains that don’t run
the buses that don’t arrive
and the schools that stand empty
with the addition of 5”.

The analysts say
it’s all about capturing liquidity.

Liquidity,
can you place a great lake
into an eyedropper?

Its 20 below
and all liquid things
are solid masses
or a gooey viscosity at best.

Water is frozen everywhere.
But Chi town is still liquid,
flowing faster
then the digital blips
flashing on the walls
of the CBOT.

Dreams
are never frozen in Chicago.
The exchanges trade
without missing a beat.

Trading wet dreams,
the crystallized vapor
of an IPO
pledging a billion points
of Internet access
or raiding the public treasuries
of a central bank’s
huge stores of gold
with currency swaps.

Using the tools
of butterfly spreads
and candlesticks
to achieve the goal.

Short the Russell
or buy the Dow,
go long the
CAC and DAX.
Are you trading in euro’s?
You better be
or soon will.
I know
you’re Chicago,
you’ll trade anything.
WEBS,
Spiders,
and Leaps
are traded here,
along with sweet crude,
North Sea Brent,
plywood and T-Bill futures;
and most importantly
the commodities,
the loam
that formed this city
of broad shoulders.

What about our wheat?
Still whacking and
breadbasket to the world.

Oil,
an important fossil fuel
denominated in
good ole greenbacks.

Porkbellies,
not just hogwash
on the Wabash,
but bacon, eggs
and flapjacks
are on the menu
of every diner in Jersey
as the “All American.”

Cotton,
our contribution
to the Golden Triangle,
once the global currency
used to enrich a
gentlemen class
of cultured
southern slavers,
now Tommy Hilfiger’s
preferred fabric.

I think he sends it
to Bangkok where
child slaves
spin it into
gold lame'.

Sorghum,
I think its hardy.

Soybeans,
the new age substitute
for hamburger
goes great with tofu lasagna.

Corn,
ADM creates ethanol,
they want us to drive cleaner cars.

Cattle,
once driven into this city’s
bloodhouses for slaughter,
now ground into
a billion Big Macs
every year.

When does a seed
become a commodity?
When does a commodity
become a future?
When does a future expire?

You can find the answers
to these questions in Chicago
and find a fortune in a hole in the floor.

Look down into the pits.
Hear the screams of anguish
and profitable delights.

Frenzied men
swarming like a mass
of epileptic ants
atop the worlds largest sugar cube
auger the worlds free markets.

The scene is
more chaotic then
100 Haymarket Square Riots
multiplied by 100
1968 Democratic Conventions.

Amidst inverted anthills,
they scurry forth and to
in distinguished
black and red coats.

Fighting each other
as counterparties
to a life and death transaction.

This is an efficient market
that crosses the globe.

Oil from the Sultan of Brunei,
Yen from the land of Hitachi,
Long Bonds from the Fed,
nickel from Quebec,
platinum and palladium
from Siberia,
FTSE’s from London
and crewel cane from Havana
circle these pits.

Tijuana,
Shanghai
and Istanbul's
best traders
are only half as good
as the average trader in Chicago.

Chicago,
this hog butcher to the world,
specializes in packaging and distribution.

Men in blood soaked smocks,
still count the heads
entering the gates of the city.

Their handiwork
is sent out on barges
and rail lines as frozen packages
of futures
waiting for delivery
to an anonymous counterparty
half a world away.

This nation’s hub
has grown into the
premier purveyor
to the world;
along all the rivers,
highways,
railways
and estuaries
it’s tentacles reach.

5.
Sandburg’s Chicago,
is a city of the world’s people.

Many striver rows compose
its many neighborhoods.

Nordic stoicism,
Eastern European orthodoxy
and Afro-American
calypso vibrations
are three of many cords
strumming the strings
of Chicago.

Sandburg’s Chicago,
if you wrote forever
you would only scratch its surface.

People wait for trains
to enter the city from O’Hare.
Frozen tears
lock their eyes
onto distant skyscrapers,
solid chunks
of snot blocks their nose
and green icicles of slime
crust mustaches.
They fight to breathe.

Sandburg’s Chicago
is The Land of Lincoln,
Savior of the Union,
protector of the Republic.
Sent armies
of sons and daughters,
barges, boxcars,
gunboats, foodstuffs,
cannon and shot
to raze the south
and stamp out succession.

Old Abe’s biography
are still unknown volumes to me.
I must see and read the great words.
You can never learn enough;
but I’ve been to Washington
and seen the man’s memorial.
The Free World’s 8th wonder,
guarded by General Grant,
who still keeps an eye on Richmond
and a hand on his sword.

Through this American winter
Abe ponders.
The vista he surveys is dire and tragic.

Our sitting President
impeached
for lying about a *******.

Party partisans
in the senate are sworn and seated.
Our Chief Justice,
adorned with golden bars
will adjudicate the proceedings.
It is the perfect counterpoint
to an ageless Abe thinking
with malice toward none
and charity towards all,
will heal the wounds
of the nation.

Abe our granite angel,
Chicago goes on,
The Union is strong!


SECOND DAY

1.
Out my window
the sun has risen.

According to
the local forecast
its minus 9
going up to
6 today.

The lake,
a golden pillow of clouds
is frozen in time.

I marvel
at the ancients ones
resourcefulness
and how
they mastered
these extreme elements.

Past, present and future
has no meaning
in the Citadel
of the Prairie today.

I set my watch
to Central Standard Time.

Stepping into
the hotel lobby
the concierge
with oil smooth hair,
perfect tie
and English lilt
impeccably asks,
“Do you know where you are going Sir?
Can I give you a map?”

He hands me one of Chicago.
I see he recently had his nails done.
He paints a green line
along Whacker Drive and says,
“turn on Jackson, LaSalle, Wabash or Madison
and you’ll get to where you want to go.”
A walk of 14 or 15 blocks from Streeterville-
(I start at The Chicago White House.
They call it that because Hillary Rodham
stays here when she’s in town.
Its’ also alleged that Stedman
eats his breakfast here
but Opra
has never been seen
on the premises.
I wonder how I gained entry
into this place of elite’s?)
-down into the center of The Loop.

Stepping out of the hotel,
The Doorman
sporting the epaulets of a colonel
on his corporate winter coat
and furry Cossack hat
swaddling his round black face
accosts me.

The skin of his face
is flaking from
the subzero windburn.

He asks me
with a gapped toothy grin,
“Can I get you a cab?”
“No I think I’ll walk,” I answer.
“Good woolen hat,
thick gloves you should be alright.”
He winks and lets me pass.

I step outside.
The Windy City
flings stabbing cold spears
flying on wings of 30-mph gusts.
My outside hardens.
I can feel the freeze
deepen
into my internalness.
I can’t be sure
but inside
my heart still feels warm.
For how long
I cannot say.

I commence
my walk
among the spires
of this great city,
the vertical leaps
that anchor the great lake,
holding its place
against the historic
frigid assault.

The buildings’ sway,
modulating to the blows
of natures wicked blasts.

It’s a hard imposition
on a city and its people.

The gloves,
skullcap,
long underwear,
sweater,
jacket
and overcoat
not enough
to keep the cold
from penetrating
the person.

Like discerning
the layers of this city,
even many layers,
still not enough
to understand
the depth of meaning
of the heart
of this heartland city.

Sandburg knew the city well.
Set amidst groves of suburbs
that extend outward in every direction.
Concentric circles
surround the city.
After the burbs come farms,
Great Plains, and mountains.
Appalachians and Rockies
are but mere molehills
in the city’s back yard.
It’s terra firma
stops only at the sea.
Pt. Barrow to the Horn,
many capes extended.

On the periphery
its appendages,
its extremities,
its outward extremes.
All connected by the idea,
blown by the incessant wind
of this great nation.
The Windy City’s message
is sent to the world’s four corners.
It is a message of power.
English the worlds
common language
is spoken here,
along with Ebonics,
Espanol,
Mandarin,
Czech,
Russian,
Korean,
Arabic,
Hindi­,
German,
French,
electronics,
steel,
cars,
cartoons,
rap,
sports­,
movies,
capital,
wheat
and more.

Always more.
Much much more
in Chicago.

2.
Sandburg
spoke all the dialects.

He heard them all,
he understood
with great precision
to the finest tolerances
of a lathe workers micrometer.

Sandburg understood
what it meant to laugh
and be happy.

He understood
the working mans day,
the learned treatises
of university chairs,
the endless tomes
of the city’s
great libraries,
the lost languages
of the ancient ones,
the secret codes
of abstract art,
the impact of architecture,
the street dialects and idioms
of everymans expression of life.

All fighting for life,
trying to build a life,
a new life
in this modern world.

Walking across
the Michigan Avenue Bridge
I see the Wrigley Building
is neatly carved,
catty cornered on the plaza.

I wonder if Old Man Wrigley
watched his barges
loaded with spearmint
and double-mint
move out onto the lake
from one of those Gothic windows
perched high above the street.

Would he open a window
and shout to the men below
to quit slaking and work harder
or would he
between the snapping sound
he made with his mouth
full of his chewing gum
offer them tickets
to a ballgame at Wrigley Field
that afternoon?

Would the men below
be able to understand
the man communing
from such a great height?

I listen to a man
and woman conversing.
They are one step behind me
as we meander along Wacker Drive.

"You are in Chicago now.”
The man states with profundity.
“If I let you go
you will soon find your level
in this city.
Do you know what I mean?”

No I don’t.
I think to myself.
What level are you I wonder?
Are you perched atop
the transmission spire
of the Hancock Tower?

I wouldn’t think so
or your ears would melt
from the windburn.

I’m thinking.
Is she a kept woman?
She is majestically clothed
in fur hat and coat.
In animal pelts
not trapped like her,
but slaughtered
from farms
I’m sure.

What level
is he speaking of?

Many levels
are evident in this city;
many layers of cobbled stone,
Pennsylvania iron,
Hoosier Granite
and vertical drops.

I wonder
if I detect
condensation
in his voice?

What is
his intention?
Is it a warning
of a broken affair?
A pending pink slip?
Advise to an addict
refusing to adhere
to a recovery regimen?

What is his level anyway?
Is he so high and mighty,
Higher and mightier
then this great city
which we are all a part of,
which we all helped to build,
which we all need
in order to keep this nation
the thriving democratic
empire it is?

This seditious talk!

3.
The Loop’s El
still courses through
the main thoroughfares of the city.

People are transported
above the din of the street,
looking down
on the common pedestrians
like me.

Super CEO’s
populating the upper floors
of Romanesque,
Greek Revivalist,
New Bauhaus,
Art Deco
and Post Nouveau
Neo-Modern
Avant-Garde towers
are too far up
to see me
shivering on the street.

The cars, busses,
trains and trucks
are all covered
with the film
of rock salt.

Salt covers
my bootless feet
and smudges
my cloths as well.

The salt,
the primal element
of the earth
covers everything
in Chicago.

It is the true level
of this city.

The layer
beneath
all layers,
on which
everything
rests,
is built,
grows,
thrives
then dies.
To be
returned again
to the lower
layers
where it can
take root
again
and grow
out onto
the great plains.

Splashing
the nation,
anointing
its people
with its
blessing.

A blessing,
Chicago?

All rivers
come here.

All things
found its way here
through the canals
and back bays
of the world’s
greatest lakes.

All roads,
rails and
air routes
begin and
end here.

Mrs. O’Leary’s cow
got a *** rap.
It did not start the fire,
we did.

We lit the torch
that flamed
the city to cinders.
From a pile of ash
Chicago rose again.

Forever Chicago!
Forever the lamp
that burns bright
on a Great Lake’s
western shore!

Chicago
the beacon
sends the
message to the world
with its windy blasts,
on chugging barges,
clapping trains,
flying tandems,
T1 circuits
and roaring jets.

Sandburg knew
a Chicago
I will never know.

He knew
the rhythm of life
the people walked to.
The tools they used,
the dreams they dreamed
the songs they sang,
the things they built,
the things they loved,
the pains that hurt,
the motives that grew,
the actions that destroyed
the prayers they prayed,
the food they ate
their moments of death.

Sandburg knew
the layers of the city
to the depths
and windy heights
I cannot fathom.

The Blues
came to this city,
on the wing
of a chirping bird,
on the taps
of a rickety train,
on the blast
of an angry sax
rushing on the wind,
on the Westend blitz
of Pop's brash coronet,
on the tink of
a twinkling piano
on a paddle-wheel boat
and on the strings
of a lonely man’s guitar.

Walk into the clubs,
tenements,
row houses,
speakeasies
and you’ll hear the Blues
whispered like
a quiet prayer.

Tidewater Blues
from Virginia,
Delta Blues
from the lower
Mississippi,
Boogie Woogie
from Appalachia,
Texas Blues
from some Lone Star,
Big Band Blues
from Kansas City,
Blues from
Beal Street,
Jelly Roll’s Blues
from the Latin Quarter.

Hell even Chicago
got its own brand
of Blues.

Its all here.
It ended up here
and was sent away
on the winds of westerly blows
to the ear of an eager world
on strong jet streams
of simple melodies
and hard truths.

A broad
shouldered woman,
a single mother stands
on the street
with three crying babes.
Their cloths
are covered
in salt.
She pleads
for a break,
praying
for a new start.
Poor and
under-clothed
against the torrent
of frigid weather
she begs for help.
Her blond hair
and ****** features
suggests her
Scandinavian heritage.
I wonder if
she is related to Sandburg
as I walk past
her on the street.
Her feet
are bleeding
through her
canvass sneakers.
Her babes mouths
are zipped shut
with frozen drivel
and mucous.

The Blues live
on in Chicago.

The Blues
will forever live in her.
As I turn the corner
to walk the Miracle Mile
I see her engulfed
in a funnel cloud of salt,
snow and bits
of white paper,
swirling around her
and her children
in an angry
unforgiving
maelstrom.

The family
begins to
dissolve
like a snail
sprinkled with salt;
and a mother
and her children
just disappear
into the pavement
at the corner
of Dearborn,
in Chicago.

Music:

Robert Johnson
Sweet Home Chicago


jbm
Chicago
1/7/99

my daily regimen, focused, intense,
a pugilistic kata of the tongue,
in preparation for our oral fence,
run laps around ideas, expand lungs,

my visualization of that day--
we spar with strikes and parries, counterstrikes,
in reasonings' most ****** kumite,
my verbal knuckles down her oral pikes,

so armed with good reasons to reconcile,
arriving at the place where she should be,
she proves to be so much more versatile
absent, my wasted versatility,

i cannot win with passion or with rage,
a lover's heart which simply won't engage

(C)2012, Christos Rigakos

1.

From our
safe windows,
we crane our necks,
rubbernecking
past the slow
motion wreckage
unfolding in Homs.

We remain
perfectly
perched
to marvel at
the elegant arc of
a mortar shell
framing tomorrows
deep horizon,
whistling through
the twilight to
find its fruitful
mark.

In the now
we keep
complicit time,
to the arrest
of beating hearts,
snapping fingers
to the pop
of rifle cracks,
swooning to
the delicious
intoxication of
curling smoke
lofting ever
upward;
yet
thankfully
remain
distant
enough to
recuse any
possibility
of an
intimate
nexus
with the
besieged.

2.

From our
safe windows,
we behold the
urgent arrivals of
The Friends of Syria
demanding
clean sheets
and 4 Star
room service at a
Tunisian Palace
recently cleaned
and under new
management
promising a
much needed
refurbishment.

The gathered,
a clique of
this epochs
movers and shakers,
a veritable
rouges gallery of
ambassadorial
prelates, Emirs and
state department
bureaucrats
summoned
with portfolio
from the
darkest corners
of the globe.

They are
eager to
sanctify
the misery
of Homs,
deflect and
lay blame
with realpolitik
rationalizations,
commencing
official commissions
of inquiry,
deliberating
grave considerations,
issuing indictments
of formal charges for
Crimes Against
Humanity
while
remaining
urgently
engrossed
in the fascination
of interviewing
potential
process servers
to deliver the bad news
to Bashar al-Assad
and his soulless
Baathist
confederates,
if papers
are to be
served.

Yes, the diplomats
are busy meeting
in closed rooms.

In hushed circles
they whisper
into aroused ears,
railing against
Russia’s
gun running
intransigence
and China’s
geopolitical
chess moves.

Statesmen
boast of the
intrepid justice
of tipping points
and the moving poetry
of self serving tales,
weighing the impact
of stern sanctions
amidst the historical
confusion of the
asymmetrical
symmetries
of civil war.

Caravans
of Arab League
envoys roll up
in silver Bentleys,
crossing deserts
of contradictory
obfuscations,
navigating the
endless dunes
with hand held
sextants of
hidden agendas.

The heroic
Bedouins are
eager to offload
their baggage
and share
on the ground
intelligence from
their recent soirées
across Syria.

They beg
a quick fix,
the triage of a
critical catharsis
to bleed their
brains dry
of heinous
recollections,
pleading
release from a
troubled conscience
victimized by
the unnerving paradox
of reconciling
discoveries of
perverse voyeurism
with the sanctioned
explanations
of their respective
ruling elites.

The bellies
of these
scopophiliacs
are distended;
grown queasy
from a steady diet
of malfeasance
an ulcerated
world parades
in continuous loop;
spewing the raw feeds
of real time misery;
forcibly fed
the grim
visions of
frantic
fathers
rushing
the mangled
carcases
of mortally
wounded
children
to crumpled
piles of smashed
concrete that were
once hospitals.

We despondently
ask how
much longer
must we
look into
the eyes
of starving
children
emaciated from
the wanton
indifference
of the world?


3.

From our
safe windows
we wonder
how much
longer can
the urgent
burning
ambivalence
continue
before it
consumes
our common
humanity in
a final
conflagration?

My hair already
singed by the
endless firestorms
sweeping the prairies
of the world.

How can we survive
the trampling hoards,
the marauding
plagues of acrimony
fed by a voracious
blood lust aspiring to
victimize the people
of Homs and a
thousand cities
like it?


4.

From my safe
window I stand in witness
to the state execution of
refugees fleeing the
living nightmare
of Baba Amr.

The ****** of innocents,
today's newly minted martyrs,
women and children
cornered, trapped
on treacherous roads,
mercilessly
slaughtered and
defiled in death
to mark the lesson
of a ruthless master
enthralled with the
power of his
sadistic fascist
lordship.

I cannot avert my eyes
marking sights
of pleading women
begging for the
lives of their children
in exchange for
the gratification
of a sadists
lust.

My heart
is impaled
on the sharp
spear of
outrage
beholding
careening
children mowed
down with the
serrated blades
protruding
from marauding
jeeps of laughing
soldiers.

I drop
to my knees
in lakes of
tears
reflecting
a grotesque
horror stricken
image of myself.

My eyes have
murdered my soul.

The ghastly images
of Homs have chased
away my Holy Ghost
to the safety of a child's
sandbox hidden away
in a long forgotten
revered memory.


5.

From my safe window
I seethe with anger
demanding vengeance,
debating how to rise
to meet the obscenity of
the Butcher of Damascus.

The sword of Damocles
dangles so tantalizingly close
to this tyrants throat.  

The covered women
of Homs scream prayers
“may Allah bring Bashar to ruin”

Dare I pray
that Allah trip the
horsehair trigger
that holds the
sword at bay?

Do I pick up
the sword
a wield it
as an
avenging
angel?

Am I the
John Brown
of our time?

Do I organize
a Lincoln Brigade
and join the growing
leagues of jihadists
amassing at the
Gates of Damascus?

Will my righteous
indignation fit well
in a confederacy
with Hamas and
al-Qaeda as my
comrades in arms?

Do I succumb to
the passion of hate
and become just
another murderous
partisan, or do I
commend the power
of love and marshal
truth to speak with
the force of
satyagraha?

I lift a fervent prayer
to claim the justice
of Allah’s ear,
“may the knowing one
lift the veil of foolishness
that covers my heart in
cloaks of resent, cure
my blindness that ignores
my raging disease of
plausible deniability
ravaging the body politic
of humanity.”

6.

Indeed,
physician heal thyself.

I run to embrace my
illness.

I pine to understand it.

I undertake the
difficult regimen
of a cure to eradicate
the terrible affliction.

This
pernicious
plague,
subverting
the notion
of a shared
humanness
is a cunning
sedition that
undermines
the unity of
the holy spirit.  

The bell from
the toppled steeples
still tolls, echoing
across the space of
continents and eons
of temporal time.

The faithful chimes
gently chides us
to remove the wedge
of perception that
separates, divides
and undermines.

Time has come
to liberally
apply the balm
that salves the
open wounds
so common to
our common
human condition.

The power of prayer
is the joining of hands
with others racked
with the common
affliction of humanness.

Allah,  
My eyes are wide open,
my sacred heart revealed,
my sleeves are rolled up,
my memory is stocked,
my soul filled with resolve,
my hand is lifted
extended to all
brothers and sisters.
Lift us,
gather us
into one
loving embrace.

Selah


7.

From the safe
windows of
our palaces
we live within
earshot of
the trilling
zaghroutas
of exasperation
flowing from
the besieged
city smouldering
under Bashar’s
symphony of terror.

Our nostrils
fill with the
acrid plumes
of unrequited
lamentations
lifting from the
the burning
destruction
of shelled
buildings.

Our eyes spark
from the night
tracers
of sleeking
snipers
flitting along
the city’s
rooftops.

The deadly jinn
indiscriminately
inject the
paralysis of
random fear
into the veins
of the city
with each
skillful
head shot.

These
ghoulish
assassins
lavish in their
macabre work;
like vultures
they eagerly
feast on the
corpses of their ****,
the stench of bloated
bodies drying in the
sun is the perfume
that fills their nostrils.


8.

From our
safe window
we discern the
silhouettes of militants
still boldly standing
amidst the
mounting rubble of an
unbowed Homs
shouting;

Allah Akbar!!!
Allah Akbar!!!
Allah Akbar!!!

raising pumped fists,
singing songs
of resistance,
dancing to
the revelation of
freedom,
refusing to
be coward by
the slashing
whips of a
butchers
terrible
sword.


9.

From my
safe window
my tongue laps
the pap
of infants
suckling from
the depleted
teats of mothers
who cannot cry
for their dying
children;
tears fail
to well from
the exhaustion
of dehydrated
pools.

10.

From my
safe window
my heart stirs
to the muezzin
calling the
desperate faithful
from the toppled
rubble of dashed
minarets.

We can
no longer
shut our ears
to the adhan
of screams
the silent
voices that echo
the blatant injustice
of a people under siege.


11.

From my
safe window,
I pay
Homage to Homs
and call brothers
and sisters to rise
with vigilant
insistence
that hostilities
cease and
humanity be
upheld,
respected and
protected.


12.

From my safe
window
I perceive
the zagroutas
of sorrow
manifest as a
whiling hum,
a sweeping
blue mist,
levitating
the coffins
from the rubble
of ravaged streets.

The swirling
chorus of
mourning
joins my
desperate
prayers;
rising in
concert
with the
black billows
of smoke
dancing
away
from the
flaming
embers
of scorched
neighborhoods.


13.

From my
safe window
I heed
the fluttering
wings
of avenging
angels
furiously
batting
as they
climb
the black
plumes,
lifting from
the scattered bricks
of the desecrated
city.

It is the
Jacob’s
Ladder
for our
time;
marking
a new
consecrated
place
where
a New Adam
is destined
to be formed
from the
pulverized
stones of
desolation.

14.

From our
safe windows
we peer into
resplendent
mirrors
beholding
the perfect image of
ourselves
eying
falling tears
dripping blood,
coloring death
onto the
blanched sheets
of disheveled beds.


15.

From our
safe windows
our voices are silenced,
our words mock urgency
our thoughts betray comprehension
our senses fail to illicit empathy
our action is the only worthy prayer


16.

From my
safe window
I hear the
mortar shells
walking toward
my little palace,
the crack
of a ******
shot
precedes
the wiz of a
passing bullet
whispering
its presence
into my
waxen
ear.


17.

From my
safe window,
my palms scoop
the rich soil
of the flower boxes
perched on my sill.
I anoint the tender
green shoots of  the
Arab Spring
with an incessant flow
of bittersweet tears.

Music selection:
John Coltrane
A Love Supreme
Acknowledgment

Oakland
2/28/12
jbm

A man I once loved told me he wished I “cared more about my body”
But I do care
I care for every lump and curve as much as I hate them
As much as he hated them

I remember yearning for puberty
A thing to make me tall
And thin
A biological fix for my
PROBLEMATIC BODY

Does he know the history?
The gain and loss
The bullies
The pushed-into-puddles
The nightmares

I despise the power of his lips
A lover disfigured
That’s the vibe
His words birthing a mantra of shame
And I’ll never outrun this skin

Thirty years later
And he’s pushing me into a lake
No principal to save me this time
No dry clothes

He left me years ago
Found a much thinner replacement for my side of the bed
It’s for the best
I tell myself as I drunkenly throw rocks at his window

“Don’t think
Just eat”
Is this just a game I play?
Three glasses of whiskey and a Postmate
Won’t chase the horror away

Momentary pleasure
(add guacamole)
Is that enough?
Will I ever be enough?

No
I am too much
Too much skin
Too much softness
Too many folds
Too much of me is filling up space
That’s what they tell me
I see the reflection and I hate all of this excess ME

“I wish you cared more about your body”

What is the remedy?
A perfect diet
A perfect exercise regimen
Pills
Sweat
Porcelain

Think before you speak on a body, sir
Because your words alone
Have the power to ignite a hell
Of
The
Utmost
Destruction

His venom is still pulsing through me
And I’m burning up
I want to escape
Crawl out from the water
Become pure wind

But how do I love me?
How do I allow myself to occupy space?
To stop hiding from every mirror, every glance at the ocean of my belly?

I don’t know
I’m not there yet
I am on an opposite shore consumed by self-hatred
Longing to set sail for somewhere

Somewhere I can cherish the secrets that these sacred ripples of flesh hide
Where my waistline is a treasure map of my wisdom
A place where his words have no power
Where I collapse into the sunset and set myself...
F
R
E
E

A true semantic literary meaning
awakening to curate
my being
or throw away it all and question
the delivery of
the ics and isms
determining not by me but by the reader
what is true
like Montague
proposing a new system
I propose a meaningful regimen,
one where words are either felt
, make me halt and listen,
to what they truly meant.
Or they don't.

Assisted suicide?
Physician Assisted Suicide is the process of a doctor providing the necessary sleeping pills/lethal dose to allow a terminally ill patient to perform the life ending act. In the United States, all but four states have made physician assisted suicide (PAS) illegal.When in a situation a terminally ill patient is in, they should have the right to commit a physician-assisted suicide.
In 1994, the state of Oregon enabled the Death With Dignity Act (DWDA). With 51% voting in favor of the act, it gives terminally ill patients access to PAS. Attorney General John Ashcroft challenged the act by saying it was not “real” and that allowing doctors to do perform that, violates the Controlled Substances Act (CSA). CSA protects the regulation of doctors from performing unauthorized distributions of drugs and drug abuse. If doctors are able to assist suicides, through Ashcroft’s claim, they would be using drugs as an abuse. In the Supreme Court, petitioner Paul D. Clement argued in the case about the violation of CSA, with 6-3, “we conclude the rule is not authorized by the CSA, and we affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals” (Gonzales V Oregon).
Patients of irreversible illnesses often develop disorders that go underdiagnosed causing them to live a life that isn’t happy for them or their family members. According to Dr. Fine of the Office of Clinical Ethics, terminally ill patients usually get depressed when dealing with intense suffering. When the patient is depressed, they may not respond to treatment as expected. If the patient is not responding to treatment well, the doctor may up the dosage of medication or consider adding antidepressants, causing the patient to be reliant on medication for the rest of their life.
Patients who receive a terminal diagnosis usually experience high levels of anxiety.  According to Dr. Fine, anxiety can cause problems such as, agitation, insomnia, restlessness, sweating, tachycardia, hyperventilation, panic disorder, worry, or tension. Sleep deprivation plays a huge part in the anxiety the patients feel. The patient’s sleep is often interrupted many nights and several times to get their blood pressure checked, blood withdrawals, checkings of veins, etc. Because these medical requirements can not be withheld, many doctors may feel the need to heavily sedate the patient to make them feel lucid during the day time.
Studies have shown that patients of terminal illnesses fear that they’d burden their families. The patients feel, “grief and fear not only for their own future but also for their families’ future” (Johnson), researchers say. The feelings of being in the way can cause emotional, physical, social, and financial problems. In  doctors Johnson, Nolan, and Sulmasy’s research, they found that feelings of burden are most likely to affect emotional symptoms, quality of life, and patient satisfaction. Wanting to feel like they aren’t a burden to their families and society was most important to patients seen by the doctors. The research the doctors conducted found that out of a list of 28 qualities, the wish to not be a physical or emotional burden on family, 93% of respondents said that this was very or extremely important to them. The doctors made three categories of experiences that were related to “self-perceived burden” (Johnson). The first one being “concerns for other” (Johnson), then “implications for self” (Johnson), and last being “minimizing the burden” (Johnson). Feeling like a burden can cause “empathic concern engendered from the impact on others of one’s illness and care needs, resulting in guilt, distress, feelings of responsibility, and diminished sense of self” (Johnson).
To let a patient commit an assisted suicide means, they’re freed from pain. To force someone who knows that their time's coming to an end quickly when they do not wish to be in pain anymore should be a crime. In Epidemics, Book 1, it states, “practice two things in your dealings with disease: either help or do not harm the patient”, by allowing the patient to continue their life is harming them, all physically, mentally, and spiritually. Doctors take an oath, the Hippocratic Oath when practicing medicine. In the oath, there is a phrase that says “Also I will, according to my ability and judgment, prescribe a regimen for the health of the sick; but I will utterly reject harm and mischief”, if the patient has considered an assisted suicide, they’ve been in too much pain and wish for it to end. Refusing them the help causes them more physical and emotional pain; physical being the illness itself and emotional being the feeling of being a burden.
Patients with terminal illnesses have the right to commit assisted suicides because it allows them to end their life from something no drug would be able to fix. With the illness being irreversible, dragging it out will cause both suffering and financial problems. Terminally ill patients have the right to die with dignity. Dying by choice will let their loved ones know that they are ready and have accepted their fate, easing weight off their families shoulders. Having the ability to die will portray the patients as human beings who want to make one last decision before going rather than people who are laying in a hospital bed waiting to die. A patient knows that the doctor’s job is to relieve pain, with a doctor refusing their wish, only cause distrust in their relationship. Letting assisted suicide would allow their families to begin healing. By refusing the patient their right to die, forces them to live a poor quality of life no one would ever wish upon anybody. It is in everyone’s interest to let them go. Doctors have a responsibility to make the patient happy and to relieve them of any kind of pain, letting them go is relieving them of the pain they wish to no longer feel. PAS gives them the ability to go happily and contently.

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Look at my face

Look at it right now

What do you see?

You know what, no I’m going to tell you what you see.

You see black.

Look at my hands

What do you see?

You see black.

Do you even need to look at my nose before you assume that it’s large?

Are my lips the same?

Do you even try to get to know me before you assume that I play by the rules of the stereotypical
“black” game?

When will people realize, when will people realize that we are not the stereotype that has been forced
upon us.

So many of us spend so much time trying to break through these minds of the people who see us for one thing. Black.

Now don’t get me wrong.

Black is important

Black is strong

Black is independent

Black is beautiful

I don’t need you to tell me that you’re surprised that I don’t speak “ghetto”

I don’t need you to tell me that you expect me to be a **** and walk around in stilettos

And I don’t need you to tell me that I’m inferior to you because my skin color doesn't fit your regimen.

No. I will not, I will not be defined by my melanin.

But I will let it push me to be the person that you so clearly doubt I can be.

I will let it excel me to levels of understanding and acceptance that you will never see.

I am more than my stereotype.

You expect me to stand here and pull a gun?

You expect me to stand here and say that I don’t know who my father is?

Or do you want to hear that I’m pregnant?

And all those questions are okay, right?

Because my feelings obviously come second

No.

I refuse to be reduced to how much melanin is in my skin

I refuse to stand here and listen to people tell me that it is a sin

To be proud of my race.

To be proud of my ethnicity.

And to not keep it bottled in.

Look at my face

Look at it right now

And tell me what you see

Better to close your mouth when someone is bad
Utter no word to defend or offend or just comment
At times keeping mouth shut is the only solution
By this act we save head and heart aches wisely

Many people do not know how to talk or converse
They simply tear heart by badly hurting our mind
During such occasions, strict silence is desirable
As our peace of mind will be absolutely preserved

We cannot expect great diplomacy from fools
They will stick to their regimen without any wit
And can never understand life's true intricacies
As their rotten thoughts will invariably hurt only

Piercing the heart using vitriolic words is a sin
God looks with contempt at wrong words said
Whenever indecent language is employed badly
That place is surrounded by devils with ecstasy

Devilish words that destroy peace are demons
Deadly emotions expressed indecently shall
******* peace of mind and happiness of heart
As they possess an evil influence to demolish

Use always kind words filled with great warmth
Practice sharing of love and merciful expression
Our duty is to make the atmosphere Heavenly
Surely that holy state is within our full control.

mvvenkataraman

Depth doesn't scare her.
In fact, it's the one thing she looks for in almost everything.
She was a swimmer, one who floated face-up in deep waters-- in the pool, sea, and metaphorically, life.
Depth to her, was a symbol of freedom and significance.
She wasn't afraid of it or getting lost in it. If she let the tides carry her of their will and to the shore, she knows she wouldn't drown. In the end, she was at home in waters and their uncertain depths. She didn't always need to see the bottom or what is waiting for her. This was life to her.

The same applies to the winds of the night sky, where she was a light cloud with a fleeting presence. She would be here today, and the next moment she would be gone with the wind, swept up in the dark skies above, far off into the deep atmosphere.

All the more has she fallen deep for this certain person in her life, a descendant of Orion.
His eyes were as bright as Betelgeuse and were deeper than the darkest parts of the ocean. ****** into the whirlpools of his eyes, and into the windows of his soul, did she get a glimpse of how he was like.
She would give anything in exchange for a long soak: she was deep in her love for him.

On afternoons she finished her swimming regimen in the sea and headed to the hilltop sports complex before sundown.
There, she watched him shoot arrows with his long bow embraced by his long arms. His deft fingers positioned to hold the arrow in place, and she almost felt her heart stop like the way a criminal froze in surrender before a policeman pointing a gun at him.
Only in her case, he wasn't a policeman nor was she a criminal (unless watching him without him knowing would be considered stalking, therefore an offense), he held a bow, not a gun and that he was not aiming at her.

But the way his slender body heaved with every deep breath spurred a similar memory in her: steady, balanced and clear as the skies above and the waters beneath her body and surf board.
Just before the board and her arms slice through the water's surface tension; just before he releases the arrow which pierces through the light air around him. Staying still for so long to get the perfect posture puts a pressure on one's body. To see him let go with one eye shut for focus was a relieving sight to her.
She knew that familiar tension and expectation that surrounded him.
To her, watching him was like star gazing as always; he was, after all what she called a "descendant of Orion". He was the only thing she saw so bright and clear in that dim archery room and only the sunset casted soft shadows on his face.

She wondered if he would ever find out about the way she felt for him. Every time an arrow slipped through his fingers faster than a time-slip, she felt as if a part of him departed along with it.
Why was it so, she thought, that it seems like I'm loving the impossible; a night dream which won't be carried off and fulfilled by dawn? As if he was a dream too deep in my sea of memories, anchored to the bottom of improbability and unable to rise to the surface to make itself known to him.
A fresh salty breeze filled the air. This happened whenever the winds blew over the waves or when she didn't notice her own tears fall.

His life had a sense of leaving in it. It was either the way his arrows left him and his bow or when he left the sports complex; and in the future, leaves the town and leaves her life. It was more than decided that he was bound to leave the place and head back to the metropolis where he came from.
He belonged to the city of bright lights.
Nothing can ever compare to the way he shines, though, she said to no one but the winds and waves that build up her life.
He was a rocket fueled for takeoff. Ready anytime to leave, to return to the sky, back in the home of the stars.

And she was a mere girl who sought depth in her life:
the water, the sky,
their existence and his eyes.

If you insist that your home
is not here with us then find
the right place to pitch your tent
and dwell with your people.
Permission is given to the one
whose ear is willing to contain
and hold the truth to stand tall
and get the crown for himself,
for many warriors are willing
to die for it.
Go for it the warrior of the land,
the man of war and the right hand
of the king.
Your strength is of the spirit,
mightier than the lion,
they speak of your strength,
your people salute you.
Stand out of the crowd,
you who are called to partake
in the regimen of the chivalry knights
of the chosen ones.
Find your place in the scheme of things
prepared for only those who walk in the
part of the divine light burning within them.
You truly belong to the chivalry knight of
the brave for you have shown yourself
worthy of such a high calling.
May you be blessed and protected.
©2018,Emeka Mokeme. All Rights Reserved.

Daily practice was my Catholic Regimen
On those strings
Blooded fingertips
Evolving into
Callused hammers

D 5th augmented, 7th
A transitional dilly
Will be
The end
Of me

Sometimes you can see in the faded
tapestry shapes and scenes that move
from foreground to background and
background to foreground.

Other times you only see the tattered
granularity of the weave and nothing else.

Is it the ocean that sounds
like traffic or the traffic that
sounds like the ocean?

As you ponder this question,
what you are holding slips
from your fingers and your mood
stabilizing regimen scatters
across the dusty floor.

Vitamin regimen of Dr. Abram Hoffer, 2008:
1. B-100 Complex : one capsule per day—contains all the B-vitamins
2. Selenium : 600 mcg per day
3. Niacin : 4500 mg per day, taken as 1500 mg, 3 times per day (with meals)
4. Vitamin C : 2000 mg per day, taken as 1000 mg, 2 times per day (with meals, I assume)
5. Vitamin A : 30,000 IU’s per day
6. N-Acetyl-Cysteine (NAC) : 3000 mg per day, taken as 1,000 mg, 3 times per day (with meals, I assume), it increases a naturally-occurring antioxidant in the body called glutathione
7. Coenzyme Q10, (CoQ10): 300 mg per day, taken as 100 mg, 3 times per day
8. Vitamin D (vitamin D3, I assume) 6,000 IU’s per day
9. Salmon oil (fish oil, omega-3 fatty acids), 2,000 mg per day, contains omega-3 fatty acids, DHA and EPA
10.  Zinc 50-100 mg per day
11. Folic Acid 5,000 mcg per day (which is the same as 5 mg)
12. Vitamin E 800 mg per day
13. Alpha Lipoic Acid (Lipoic Acid): 600 mg per day, taken as 200 mg, 3 times per day

Agitation, despair and its winged variations, you name it
all repressed but still rise to test me

What is my recourse?
I tread lightly on this Escheresque concourse
It’s repeated often, I know
but the pen and keys are my most cathartic release
they’re magma to emerging flames
they’re sedatives for demons and angels alike
that reside on corners of this clavicle

How many steps could you take through my lens, my concave mirror?
Have you felt what I felt?
The brimming, cerebral cauldron bursting, putting volcanic geysers to shame
the questions outnumbering seconds spent since Earth’s nativity
the emotions ripping a rift through which rationality deep dives
it becomes Phelps in unknown depths
your body becomes both a Vatican and a Colosseum,
place of worship and place of war
and you walk the tightropes your vocal chords have morphed into
careful to seem like another replica, don’t wanna upset the blades they all balance on
don’t wanna scare the rest hollow, no,
best to follow and best to follow the regimen:

coffee beans and spice of delusion in the hazelnut syrup,
sip slow
follow the same cycle because change is a cocoon and cocoons ache like the past
keep on pretending to love the workplace
love the norms held over you
puppet strings bring warmth after all
in this solitary world cold as winter missile silos
and just as destructive

So I ask again, have you felt what I felt?

Do the few days in utopia offset the majority on rodent wheels?
Have you risen so high, to satellite peaks, to the best you’ve ever been
only to have the worst waiting on the coin’s parallel?

We flip like saltwater fins and backstroke till a back is left broke
I’m learning to discard hope but breathe in the alternative
I believe in better days, I will carve them from local stone
and build a home upon their surfaces
I now know paradise is a set of blueprints
happiness is no state of mind, it’s a direction to me
you may not notice when you arrive
but you keep going

and that’s the beauty of it
you let it be the wind
It’ll find you on your journey

Tell me again,
have you felt what I felt?

I was too short, too awkward.
My belly too bloated, arms too thick.
It got so I couldn't harness my desire.
But I could make my stomach flat,
I could let those hip bones protrude.
Learning to control all my desires,
Discovering a new intimacy,
Which required no one.

I was terrified at letting in someone else,
Into my imperfect, hateful world.
It was me, just only me,
Who could control my cravings, my desire.
Denying myself food, proof that I was stronger,
Better than most people,
though still lonely for touch,
Still my own stiff regimen.
Trading my new-found power of flesh,
For something more trustworthy,
Something pure.

Naturally skinny,
But not dangerously so.
I trod the line between waif and child,
Hunger became my salvation.
Hunger, my sexless, undemanding suitor,
My only constant friend.

Dull orbs of green
Stare back from reflective material
Once vibrant fire cascaded down
Now lackluster

Once carefree and bright smiles
Replaced by emptiness and frowns
Darkness lurking in recesses
Springs forth covering everything

Thoughts trapped behind shutters to the soul
As lids lift allowing a stagnant light to glimpse
Dark and cold are blankets of warmth
Vibrant color so drab

Voices, smiles, laughter, light
Silent, empty, tears, pain
Arms reach out
Attempting to break through

Feeling the vice grip
Slivers of feeling enter
Screams bounce off just below the skull
Anguish read in the sea of green

Wanting desperately to break free
She can feel the anguish smothering
Sleep the escape
Wakened to more agony

Pills said to be the answer
Day in day out
More added to the regimen
No change in the mirror

Dreams the escape
Life the prison
Tell me how you feel
Visions of blades gauging flesh

Red floods the scene
Such warmth surrounds briefly
Suddenly very cold
No one thought to understand

Pills withdrawn
Voices no more
Lying in the poppies
Eyes dull and lifeless

Feelings gone
Peaceful rest at last
The fight long gone
Stark white sheet beneath
the cold black bag

I feel inspired
Inspired to write
Like my father and father before me
Inspired
To fight the good fight
For I know it's my purpose to show people
There's a light
Deep inside of them even if they
Don't see it shine so bright
For I know that every line
And breathe, breathed in to me
Is for a reason
Addi gave me 19
19 reasons I wasn't swimming in a sea
Of misconstrued energies
Lost in repetition
Everlasting patterns
They poud on but never see
Round and round they go
In the pattern of the beast
Lost blindly in a daily regimen
A material sin
They'll never see
If it wasn't for like lost boys like
Addi
Who make it there mission
To tell everybody
That these lines have a reason
Each year an eternal voice
It's all your choice
Addi sketched something on a night so bleak
On a page once blank
A work of art I'm blessed to keep
And written above those masterful 19 lines
"Put it in your thought bank
You don't have to be alone
You don't have to run away"

Rise, rise, out of the caverns of darkness,
through lives, unfolds your immortal journey

Collapsed field         Vast to small        particular                    blabberings
chosen timeline         growing ego        wonder, wonder        to structure

through vales sunny at times, but
through the vaults of obscurity often

Scribblings                 crowd of faces     men, trees,                 flowers
to consonants             to family              birds and beats         butterflies

grounded in the light ancient,whose
descension is all the souls that set out

Autumn leaves          Seasons                      tastes, smells         one of a kind
rainbow joy                of sun and snow      sound of music      for all things

before the dawn of time, branching out
into segmented existences, in a quest for Self.

regimen          run, roll,               infant bondings           slow march of
and play        skip and hop          friendships                 the little man

He gifts them Summer fields
and even fetches them twilight sun
stinting over rows of trees,
where  fireflies hover
and in the midst of paradise
you realise his regimen is familiar
he has already sent multitudinous pals,
adorned in grey and tarnished buckles
into fields of blood red poppies
and vortex craters filled with iron oxide
no greater love than scarred sacrifice
to perfect his  own dusk

I told you today
in a round about way
that I loved you
I spilt secrets and feelings on that blessed white page
hoping it had been sage
to admit in finality that I love you
now I await
for your response post haste  
as you struggle to figure out my name
and my heart I try to tame
as it flutters and beats
at your chairs every squeak
and I pretend cool
as I curse that once again I let my heart rule
over logic and pride
I need to learn to smite
these whims of adrenaline
and fix my hearts painful regimen
of loving you

Shofar  Ashera
Once set, they begin to direct their destination to the heart of the nativity area, where their origins and areas of the omnipresent West Bank belt were. They entered with strong winds clinging to their bristling camelids, everything had the atmosphere of a city as if it had never been inhabited. The fringes in floods of sun were distinguished orange-reddish weakened before the stormy gradients of the Red and Mediterranean Sea appeasing the Hexagonal primogeniture. Although they were seen squalling and with agile movements on the local atmosphere, several layers crossed with the inheritance of Persian cloths in colorful bluish and orange tints from the Red Sea and the quarrelsome storms of Aserá "The mother of all gods", and The one who was the "father of the gods." Known among the Babylonians as Ishtar, originally called Athirat (or Afdirad). She is the great Semitic goddess of fertility. In the Bible it is called Astoret, a distorted pronunciation of the original 'Astart, through the inclusion of the vowels of the Hebrew word boset (shame) according to the custom of the rabbis, to discredit the pagan deities. Bronze Age Ashera (before 1200 BC) the Greek form is Astarte. Astarte was considered the "goddess of the Sidonians". In the Amarna Letters, it is Ashirtu and Ashratu. The Ras Shamra texts identify Ashera ('atrt = atirat) with the goddess wife of El; They call her "Lady Ashera of the Sea" and "progenitor of the goddesses", here she would be the mother of Baal.

These discredited Babylonian forms caused discomfort and discomfort, in the face of a living past and present in the intangibility of the inheritances that greet others that could supplant them. This caused soil heating in the legs of the animals with abnormality of Greek-Babylonian wormwood prostrate on the feet of Ashera, leaving an odorous wormwood atmosphere in the land of two native Kings of this jurisdiction. Attracting dissipation from the roofs of some neighboring houses to the precise place where the Messiah saw the light of the lights and of those who waited for them cabi-together lighting it with candlesticks. This sacred wind caressed everyone's hands, insinuating them to take hold of the new Bethlehem, an event that was being reborn with the Apostle's illustrious visit. Their consolations expanded, like any caravan that increased its predictive volume, equalizing the pressures of the air that surrounded the streets, where no one appeared and was seen generic. This centrifugal force rotated their earthly spirits, originating a thick source of the orange gases that populated the roofs of the village. Creating greater weight and highlighting the freshness of the essences that were torn from the soils with the aroma of grazing.   Explaining to themselves the presence of sub-zones in the West Bank, insolating redemption of the arrival towards a protocol merit contrasted by the permission to be hosted next to this at night.  Varying many times to bring them the blessed condensed sacred water, deregulating the thermal sensation.

The density and buoyancy of the animals' legs made it difficult for them to select the right moment to stop and dismount. The aerial relief that rose and fell rose on the walls of the few rooms linked to the stable of nativity, pressing on them the adjacent words that joined from the ground to soon arrive in an upward spiral, turned into light and wind on the seventh horseman ; King David, appearing to them right there…, right there before Him, his Abigail, the third wife who gave him an early re-conception, presenting him with an altar, which he will endow with Eucharistic missions during his admission to Bethlehem. An unexpected phenomenon swirls on the gradient that led to the hill of the stable, affecting their vision and consequences, rotating them all to the rear of the original access to the stable. Converging the winds on the ground and upper external part of the stable, originating an anticipated effulgence of space that would prolong them to understand that they had already arrived, but they were still seven hundred meters from the main access and that the city was not Bethlehem, but another that It seemed to emerge from the arid soil, next to the stable, dividing itself into inter-zones that rubbed against the original and current ones, in such a way as to generate a great development of the sub-soil on the vertical that sounded stentorian and vibratory, as in a long stay, on the distributed assistants in this supra-abnormal regimen. They arrive exempt from grievances but dismounting gentiles ..., they leave the twelve camels in a friendly and predisposed circle, so as not to expose them to the strong winds that raged from the Canaanite gods that prevailed in personalized and ceremonial theocratic.

David speaks: “when I approached where Moab I requested asylum in protection of my parents…, thus I myself would burst the eardrums of the Philistines for each mountainous network of links that join me to the refuge of my advance counterattack towards their dominions. In its unknown enemy territories, a noble and friendly joy appears before me; Abigail, who fills the history of my land with beauty, before a very cruel Canaanite son; Nabal. She enriches my lands more than the entire multiplied population of animals, every time I count the units, I look into her eyes and I forget the greater amount that moves her heart towards me, because of that I did not shed blood on Nabal's house . Being Abigail the one who replaces my union with the Faith that moves my passion. "

Then Abigail kneels and touches the ground where he was, crossing himself after assigning a cross that kissed his hands, on his forehead and his chest. Thus from somewhere her parents rearranged the garments to enchant Vernarth for her bi-related purge with that of David and the Messiah-Vernarth. As in the Jericho story, Alikanto, Raeder, and Petrobus galloped around the periphery of the citadel. With all the strength of the steed's Golden hooves, they kicked liquid dust from the Bethlehem's fleeces. Alikanto did not carry a mount on his back ... he carried an Aspis koilé from Hoplite Vernarth. It was useful to re-sediment the sand covers sifted by the ergonometric forces of the shield, thus causing everyone to retreat and take the reins of the animals, to resume their advances in buttresses to build the walls that they had to mediate, to weaken Ashera's insinuations to disagree with the edges of the citadel. The Apostle, Etréstles and Vernarth blew the shofars, the times they surrounded the perimeter of the city, and they believed that there would be more turns ..., on the couch was the Shofar that could sound more times and louder, it was intact ..., but it ran to blow it Vernarth not leaving a drop of air looking at the sky that would appear with three bright stars filling the anxiety and love to break Easter bread for everyone. But it was not that effect; it was the astral echo of Betelgeuse of King David, which emanated with his blowing also helping to raise the walls that would protect him from the staunch invasions of the lackeys of Ashera. In such a way, the partitions were raised until reaching the governorships of the words of the watchdog angel who coordinated everyone saying:

Guardian Angel: "For us the partitions, for you the rooftops, on the heights mediate the limits and on their Shofar they will end Aserá, without any city to come and go" Such exordium is fulfilled and Bethlehem is surrounded by golden barred partitions, Walls were hoisted at remarkable heights to appease the winds and roars of the Canaanites, as in Jericho, but the other way around, here they succumbed by divine command, to allow them to settle in that millenary town hall.

Finally they withdraw the twelve camelids from the front circle that did not allow them to settle in the settlement, and they manage to settle to revive the bi-natality and double reign of whose splendor he will only speak with the luminances of the Messiah and King David embracing them. From the continents outside of the walls left desolate, revive Abigail's pristine and angelic countenance by bringing dinner and an amulet Shofar to each of the components of the Hexagonal Birthright that began to continue the seven weeks in Judah.

Magraner's ministers "Punica granatum", were bushes that appeared to him in the focus of the micro center of the fire, they entered with some tenuous and sinuous branched thorns becoming muddy as they descended from the tassels of the Shofar, feeding the curiosity of all who were camped, surrounding a campfire full of sounds with new positions, of devout sounds of pupils from high Jewish principalities, cordoning off the objects of the Apostle, who shared it with Etréstles ..., who gave sonorous instrumentalizations to the rams that approached around them ..., looking for the crows that were missing from their heads. Due to the cracked set of the shofar, in the opposing works of the luminosities of the bonfires, the wise ministers hung on the same faces, who displayed them with their young branches, glossy sheaths before the yellowish-greenish under-exposed with their obtuse apices. Leaving in its marginalized exceptions, polygons of pre-flowering  shofar-form, on the valves that escaped from the ashes of the valves that were released from the last fleeting flame of each minute run to the right. Everyone collected the nectars that the ministers poured into goblets, drinking them lying down to swallow them reclining and being able to look at the stars that emerged from their albiceleste flavors, rinsing each one's arms by touching them with the shofar, like petioles stalks on the seven rams that they sought to recover those that made themselves sound heavenly.

Etréstles says: “When the shofar speaks, their past pastorals speak inside and outside the community; the most outlined thing has been to understand it as a trumpet; of a bony projection, that is to say, formed by a bone and pointed material that arises from the frontal bone, sealed by a layer of keratin that forms an aerophone horn cover. The horns of Moses come from a translation of the original biblical text by Saint Jerome. When Moses descends from Mount Sinai, where he has interviewed God, "the skin of his face had become radiant," says the Bible (Ex 34: 29-30). In the original Hebrew the verb "to radiate", "to emit rays", is from the same root as the noun "horns", so Saint Jerome did not think twice and translated: "cornuta esset facies sua", that is, "His face was horned. Taking into account its timbre and sound quality here with you, it is not difficult to associate it with the sounding with the golden patina, simulating with my Messolonghi fingers ..., which three by three piston their bony reaches, linking of some forms of beauty, goodness, clarity, brightness and stories that will accompany us in this bonfire between these raised walls to pave the vaults of the Messiah's nativity cries.  Calibrations and catechesis on the real moment of his symbolic Lineage in the awake dawn and alive. With waves of graces voices with goat hosts rearranging the urban matrix of the erected town ..., everything will be at the expense of surrounding us and pouring out the voices shuffled with the shofar to protect us from Ashera, in their desire to get away from the fundamental site. "

Vernarth intervenes: “In this passage it is clear the capacity of the shofar…, and the sound produced by it and our similar voices being amalgamated with it, shouting and modifying the environment, to a multipurpose physical dimension. Now we are a herald of goodness, beauty and reconstruction, part of a noticeable dialectic to the neighboring Canaanite cultures as a sudden reconversion between what is built and what is to be built, even if something in it itself had to disappear. The wall was actually rebuilt surrounding everyone, beyond the golden glow of the shofar. Producing today creation and not devastation, encapsulating kingdoms in wisdom and learning ..., this is where we have all come from the return of the didactics of cultural forms, independently to attract us to its teachings in an anonymous world converted with a purpose of reconverting itself, in solemn alert in the one that precedes us, before unilateral events of antecedents of an apocalyptic shofar period”.

A web of terror would know quaintness  
in their crêpe variety where a spider grew angrier
only silk woven blouse blest bats
why darts inside heads if their tough regimen were slime
and never really frittered away an hour at bay.

Dear Dr. Heartthrob,
 
I’m guessing you did not know
Yesterday I was admitted to emergency
Taken from clinic in a death march
You pretended not to notice my urgency
Guess that all has to do with insurgency
 
That’s quite all right by me
My seizures are not pretty little features
The drug mishap is likely not to blame
No, they did not call any preachers
Agnostic I am and devoted to creatures
 
I have a complicated medicine regimen
Which is to be rationalized by conspiring minds
Dr. Eyes That Melt Me is a brilliant young intern
He had gizmos and probe scopes and interesting finds
He knows more specialists dealing in matters of these kinds
 
We had such intimate talks together
So I hope you're not embarrassed to hear
I’m firing you for lack of bedside manner
Though in fact you were prescriptively dear
My heart is now weak for another I fear
 
Your Loving Patient,
Poopsy

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In my younger days
there was pain
and a rage
that would raze
the world away;

A deep injection
of sorrow infections,
coupled with
disappointment,

and when I erupted
I kept almost all
of my volcanic outbursts
to the form of exercise
or other means of
self-hurt,

because I did not
want to cause
anyone
the same
sickness
of anguish
that I suffered.

Whether it was
waking in tears,
punching solid objects,
or working out
to the point of
exhaustion,
purging my stable
of demons,
what a
painful exorcism.

Now,
I am healthier,
and I only engage in
a less brutal regimen
in comparison
to deal with my issues.

He's needed someone to understand him;
I’ve only been trying to fix him.
—Erin Celello, 2013

I don’t know what will happen tomorrow,
or even today.  And I’m okay with that.
—James DeVita, 2017


I speak the screeching dialect of remembrance.
And I hear the bursting of bullets,
I smell the fetid stench of ***** blood drying.
My life is a toss-up, a takeaway.

Trauma is, for some, a set of limbs broken
Into scores of pieces and unable to heal.
Thanks be to the great healer for prosthetic
Devices and physical therapy.

For me, trauma is bits of brain, hiding in the
Cerebellum, which cannot speak to me, and
When they do, they are rusted out, and they
Speak to a different drummer.

There is no present, no past, just crumbs
Which lead and follow me, like Sisyphus,
One step forward, two steps back, and
There is no greener grass elsewhere.

I dream the fantasies of a decorated man,
Beribboned and exalted, his thunder claps
Echoing throughout the ward in which he
Sleeps, bottles of pills to guard him.

Such is the world of anxiety, odd breaks to
Touch my loved one, her backstory, as vivid
As mine, is dying on the vine, our fable one
Perverted portrayal of destiny.

We speak the language of a student trying
Out his gap year to avoid the stress of being
Grown up, when the passage of time grants
No favors or refreshment.

Is this act two of my life, and did I skip the
Prologue?  I experience now only daily
Hiccups of fear and loss, and she is trying
To love a touchstone.

I live in multiple dwelling-places, homes, yes,
Some in foreign lands, some upstate local,
Some in safety nets swollen by well-wishers
And methods.

I try to fly away, to invent my own environs,
To stretch out on a cloud or bury my toes
In sand, but to no avail because I keep seeing
My home base, and I must learn to stay.

Sun starts to shine on my tangled world as
An old barn becomes new to me, and a dog,
My service companion, comes to rescue me
From the fields of war.

Leave it to children and four-legged critters
To balance the equation of stress and trauma,
To equal the benefits of modern pharmacy’s
Stratified cocktails.

The canine tongue and wagging tail know
Only love and never ask to be rewarded but
By the same gratitude they give me, a star
Performer of the simplicity agenda.

I close my eyes and imagine a mystical figure
Playing an anthology of applause- generating
Encores, to which I whisper thank-you’s and
Promise to be loyal and true.

You can see a portrait of us: me, my spouse,
My dog, the townsfolk and friends, the
Children and the visiting vets, my comrades,
By glancing at the smiles on the horizon.

It’s a new deployment, unfettered by rules or
Metered regimen, by missions and bombs.
I have good days and bad, but we greet every
New day with confidence.


©   Lewis Bosworth, 4/2017

She never skips a micro-meal
She's familiar with her own late night solo acts
Reaching down, drenched nine fathoms deep

He's on the outside looking in
Slipping on his finger-less gloves
Hiding behind a smile as his feet take him
Somewhere dead

Over-stuffed mellow-dramatics
Prima Donas and drama queens

Its four o'clock I need, a pick me up
It's too early for this, I need my stuff
Oh, it's nothing, don't ask me what

It's time, time for my medicine
It's time, that time yet again
It's time, my habitual regimen

Soul subtraction brings me satisfaction
Eternal extraction gives me satisfaction

Security
Comfort
Vindication

Means to an end
All's well that ends well
I mean well
Well, ****

       -Tommy Johnson