Like thread in the tapestry,
So delicately woven,
With intricate detail,
Vibrant design, and such precise pattern,
We were once alive and full of life.

Our creation became a masterpiece.
A unique piece, significant to the rest,
Handcrafted with genuine love;
We devoted time,
With pure emotion
We didn't care for slight imperfection.

Our foundation has now become worn out,
As if our colours have been faded by the rays of the sun.
Little rivets show signs of wear and tear.
No longer an original,
It seems more like a hand me down.
One that has just been collecting dust,
Or has been settling inside the wooden chest,
Stored away in time.

If you wish to bid farewell of this work of art,
Please lay it down with gentle ease
There's no need for it to be a burden any longer.

One man's trash,
Just still may be another's treasure.

Earth’s sixth mass extinction has begun, new study confirms


How long before the rhino joins the list? Gerry Zambonini, CC BY-SA
We are currently witnessing the start of a mass extinction event the likes of which have not been seen on Earth for at least 65 million years. This is the alarming finding of a new study published in the journal Science Advances.

The research was designed to determine how human actions over the past 500 years have affected the extinction rates of vertebrates: mammals, fish, birds, reptiles and amphibians. It found a clear signal of elevated species loss which has markedly accelerated over the past couple of hundred years, such that life on Earth is embarking on its sixth greatest extinction event in its 3.5 billion year history.

This latest research was conducted by an international team lead by Gerardo Ceballos of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Measuring extinction rates is notoriously hard. Recently I reported on some of the fiendishly clever ways such rates have been estimated. These studies are producing profoundly worrying results.

However, there is always the risk that such work overestimates modern extinction rates because they need to make a number of assumptions given the very limited data available. Ceballos and his team wanted to put a floor on these numbers, to establish extinction rates for species that were very conservative, with the understanding that whatever the rate of species lost has actually been, it could not be any lower.

This makes their findings even more significant because even with such conservative estimates they find extinction rates are much, much higher than the background rate of extinction – the rate of species loss in the absence of any human impacts.

Here again, they err on the side of caution. A number of studies have attempted to estimate the background rate of extinction. These have produced upper values of about one out of every million species being lost each year. Using recent work by co-author Anthony Barnosky, they effectively double this background rate and so assume that two out of every million species will disappear through natural causes each year. This should mean that differences between the background and human driven extinction rates will be smaller. But they find that the magnitude of more recent extinctions is so great as to effectively swamp any natural processes.


Cumulative vertebrate species recorded as extinct or extinct in the wild by the IUCN (2012). Dashed black line represents background rate. This is the ‘highly conservative estimate’.  Ceballos et al
Click to enlarge
The “very conservative estimate” of species loss uses International Union of Conservation of Nature data. This contains documented examples of species becoming extinct. They use the same data source to produce the “conservative estimate” which includes known extinct species and those species believed to be extinct or extinct in the wild.

The paper has been published in an open access journal and I would recommend reading it and the accompanying Supplementary Materials. This includes the list of vertebrate species known to have disappeared since the year 1500. The Latin names for these species would be familiar only to specialists, but even the common names are exotic and strange: the Cuban coney, red-bellied gracile, broad-faced potoroo and southern gastric brooding frog.


Farewell, broad-faced potoroo, we hardly knew ye.  John Gould
These particular outer branches of the great tree of life now stop. Some of their remains will be preserved, either as fossils in layers of rocks or glass eyed exhibits in museum cabinets. But the Earth will no longer see them scurry or soar, hear them croak or chirp.

You may wonder to what extent does this matter? Why should we worry if the natural process of extinction is amplified by humans and our expanding industrialised civilisation?

One response to this question essentially points out what the natural world does for us. Whether it’s pollinating our crops, purifying our water, providing fish to eat or fibres to weave, we are dependent on biodiveristy. Ecosystems can only continue to provide things for us if they continue to function in approximately the same way.

The relationship between species diversity and ecosystem function is very complex and not well understood. There may be gradual and reversible decreases in function with decreased biodiversity. There may be effectively no change until a tipping point occurs. The analogy here is popping out rivets from a plane’s wing. The aircraft will fly unimpaired if a few rivets are removed here or there, but to continue to remove rivets is to move the system closer to catastrophic failure.

This latest research tells us what we already knew. Humans have in the space of a few centuries swung a wrecking ball through the Earth’s biosphere. Liquidating biodiversity to produce products and services has an end point. Science is starting to sketch out what that end point could look like but it cannot tell us why to stop before we reach it.

If we regard the Earth as nothing more than a source of resources and a sink for our pollution, if we value other species only in terms of what they can provide to us, then we we will continue to unpick the fabric of life. Remove further rivets from spaceship earth. This not only increases the risk that it will cease to function in the ways that we and future generations will depend on, but can only reduce the complexity and beauty of our home in the cosmos.

Eris

The press of
some boy’s
Levi rivets
on my hips
and liking it.
School girl poppets,
******* scraps
thrown in our faces.
A policeman
asking Eris
the colour of the
wanking man’s pants.
Fleshy pink she laughs.
Mysteries at 14.
Eris knows men
with fast cars.
Fast hands.
We fast forward
to forget most bits.
Never question
why we are taken,
we never
speak of it.
Why bother,
my mother’s drunk
with the man
whose daughter
Eris is.
Mysteries at 14.
I’m told
no alcohol.
There’s nothing
worse
than teenage girls
disgracing themselves.
Stay nice.
My father’s charcoal
drawing
on our wall
of the woman
with the
pointy *******.
She is Eris’s mother.
Double standard
mysteries at 14.

Eris is taller than me,
blocks my way
with her back
as I try to leave.
Stay she says.
Scent  of lemon
on her blonde hair,
caught up in a ponytail.
I flinch
as she flicks
it to one side,
like a stamping palomino.
Strands caught
by the butterflies
pinning
the gold studs
to her ears.
Blonde in my mouth,
lemon on my tongue,
best friend,
girlfriend crush.
She turns,
dissolute and desolate.
Eris says we’re enjoying it,
all the mysteries at 14

More towers must yet be built--more towers destroyed--
Great rocks hoisted in air;
And he must seek his bread in high pale sunlight
With gulls about him, and clouds just over his eyes . . .
And so he did not mention his dream of falling
But drank his coffee in silence, and heard in his ears
That horrible whistle of wind, and felt his breath
****** out of him, and saw the tower flash by
And the small tree swell beneath him . . .
He patted his boy on the head, and kissed his wife,
Looked quickly around the room, to remember it,--
And so went out . . .  For once, he forgot his pail.

Something had changed--but it was not the street--
The street was just the same--it was himself.
Puddles flashed in the sun.  In the pawn-shop door
The same old black cat winked green amber eyes;
The butcher stood by his window tying his apron;
The same men walked beside him, smoking pipes,
Reading the morning paper . . .

He would not yield, he thought, and walk more slowly,
As if he knew for certain he walked to death:
But with his usual pace,--deliberate, firm,
Looking about him calmly, watching the world,
Taking his ease . . .  Yet, when he thought again
Of the same dream, now dreamed three separate times,
Always the same, and heard that whistling wind,
And saw the windows flashing upward past him,--
He slowed his pace a little, and thought with horror
How monstrously that small tree ****** to meet him! . . .
He slowed his pace a little and remembered his wife.

Was forty, then, too old for work like this?
Why should it be?  He'd never been afraid--
His eye was sure, his hand was steady . . .
But dreams had meanings.
He walked more slowly, and looked along the roofs,
All built by men, and saw the pale blue sky;
And suddenly he was dizzy with looking at it,
It seemed to whirl and swim,
It seemed the color of terror, of speed, of death . . .
He lowered his eyes to the stones, he walked more slowly;
His thoughts were blown and scattered like leaves;
He thought of the pail . . . Why, then, was it forgotten?
Because he would not need it?

Then, just as he was grouping his thoughts again
About that drug-store corner, under an arc-lamp,
Where first he met the girl whom he would marry,--
That blue-eyed innocent girl, in a soft blouse,--
He waved his hand for signal, and up he went
In the dusty chute that hugged the wall;
Above the tree; from girdered floor to floor;
Above the flattening roofs, until the sea
Lay wide and waved before him . . . And then he stepped
Giddily out, from that security,
To the red rib of iron against the sky,
And walked along it, feeling it sing and tremble;
And looking down one instant, saw the tree
Just as he dreamed it was; and looked away,
And up again, feeling his blood go wild.

He gave the signal; the long girder swung
Closer to him, dropped clanging into place,
Almost pushing him off.  Pneumatic hammers
Began their madhouse clatter, the white-hot rivets
Were tossed from below and deftly caught in pails;
He signalled again, and wiped his mouth, and thought
A place so high in the air should be more quiet.
The tree, far down below, teased at his eyes,
Teased at the corners of them, until he looked,
And felt his body go suddenly small and light;
Felt his brain float off like a dwindling vapor;
And heard a whistle of wind, and saw a tree
Come plunging up to him, and thought to himself,
'By God--I'm done for now, the dream was right . . .'

Dorothy Gale, all freckled and pale
Was asleep in her gingham print nighty
When a ****** great twister enveloped the vista
And blew like the good lord almighty
It ripped up the grass and it took out the glass
As it lifted the house from position
And a blow to the head from the post of her bed
Put young Dorothy out of commission

She awoke with a fright as she fell from a height
Landing squarely on somebody's gran
She emerged from indoors to a round of applause
And her journey had surely began
The people of Aus (because that's where she was)
Gave her hazy but helpful directions
She should hastily wander the road over yonder
To reach Tony before the elections

So she took to the road from her former abode
In her quest to get back to her folk
She aquired some mates, all in similar straits
Or the **** of a practical joke
A man made of straw was quite hard to ignore
With a lion quite lacking in guts
And a fella whose skin was constructed from tin
Held together with rivets and nuts

Such adventures they had, though I think you'll be glad
That I've cut to the crux of the rhyme
Where a meeting was set, their request would be met
To meet Tony in ten minutes time
They arrived and were greeted, quite comfortably seated
It was then Mr Abbott appeared
He regretted to say, to their growing dismay
That their wishes had not all been cleared

"As I haven't a heart" he was heard to impart
"then the tin man is leaving with jack"
"And I'm gutless as well" he was careful to tell
"So the lion can hurry on back"
"And I've also no brain, so it's no once again"
"But young lady, your problems are sorted"
"You'll be locked up off shore for a month, maybe four
"And by christmas, we'll have you deported"

By Ben the Poet

Rivets of words
Like swords in a gunfight
Silence roars
Like love, without light
A singularity
of frightful might
Ravages the desert
and storms the memories, in
That little backyard of your own

Stories you shall tell
of places far and near
Reminiscence is cute
But it won't last, dear
A billion sparks
Drive you close to tears
Won't I wonder, whats inside
closing your eyes, its
That little backyard of your own

Denial is just a game
Still you run forever
Looking back again
A dreadful fever
Nobody wants to die
Nobody can live forever
Won't you hold my hand
For a moment, in
That little backyard of your own

blue house
brown house
tan house

brown house
blue house

brown house
brown house
brown house

backyard inside the fence
rocks inside of rivets

dead grass and
rocks inside rivets
rocks inside rivets

bridge over tracks
bridge over trails
bridge over the river
bridge over rails

parking lot
parking lot
parking lot
parking lot

high school called
a dead man’s name

circle
avenue
court
lane

wonder of wonders,
the men at Love's door
when a ripe man worships a woman,
the stars wake
and rivets of harmonious song filter through the universe
love is a release of majesty
the loved ones are a measure in kindness
were it not for Love,
man would have dissipated long ago
worship this yardstick
sever your pangs of ill will
the one who clearly loves
has on his side an angel
the one who resents is not forgiven
war is the trademark of a man torn with envy
love is the fortress of the blessed
wash your hands in a pool of love
the waters there will cleanse you
like no earthly waters can
love is a gateway to God
------------------
-----------------------
..(C) 1986/2011 Spiros Zafiris
..channeled; spirit Ram
------------------------------------------

In my dreams
the swell of the next wave,
was felt before it did pave,
a hard road on the sea,
that jolted me off my feet,

my sea legs left me,

just like when my last girl-
friend who kicked my
feet from under me,
landing on my grass of the
front lawn,
at dawn and my head
bounced and went off
then I saw a firing
squad of the sunrise.

She was one tough
day, that one but back
to the wave that lifted
our boat,
took the feet,
the rudder,
out from under us,
without a fuss,
and we landed,
and even the metal
rivets and joints
let out a hollow scream,

that haunts me till this day.

In my dreams,
so I still go back to
the ocean and open
bodies of water,
hoping to say sorry,
for what ever it was
we did, to deserve
the wrath and curl
of the ocean sneer,
and disinterest
in my sanity.

I still go back,
even though I see
that ocean wave,
like my ex-girl
friend standing
over me, waiting
to deliver the final
blow, that never
came...

and was no dream.


©ClemC092013

Articulate Throwback (Amazing Rap that Doesn't Get Enough Respect)
Fielding an eclipsed Jack the Ripper Sun
Yielding dismissal garish, begotten The Matrix smokin’ gun
Wielding a firebrand skittish
Skills levied an intolerable tax by quisling quoted British
Stunting on heyday levity marksman of primes
Flogged for flagrant dragons sinking nickels and dimes aimed beatific sublime
Flowing like centripetal orbit  galvanized by riddled spirits dashed in secondary impetus of reason over rhyme
Littoral swank partial to Taylor Series of dedications Speak Now peaks livid with fumiducts of crippled sheep blandished for reach
Apologies invited always welcome for a kitsch debased by universal theaters yet united for Payable on Death singing the deceit of receipts impeached
Islanders flooding suicides punning that a sunken treasure is barbs smuggling
Otiose on ribald corsairs blinkered by the rhombos of speculation thunder itself about lightning starts wondering
Where a City by the Bay shining on a Hill of travesties of decay tanks for domesticated Negros that flashbangs got to slay
To the wistful shaken house music garnishing the prey of prayer on heavy pulls of quotable 415 hay-day
The wrinkled stray dog never  far from *****
Slapsticks against the tribunes awaiting for meteoric functions of a recessive allele of a dominant comet
Ludacris flickers dancing in dormant revelry because On Top, Just Let Go..I am honest and On It
To the milk of harvested stars glaring at tankers and garish broken FaceMash scars teetotalers scatter with Thursday crashing into glass shards
Black fame is a white epiphany of infamy designated by name
Of the craven coltish spinsters who market the crackling whiplash of sanity apportioned to the regaled insufflation of blame
Streaky on a jejune Diggity hapless hop of Kumbayas etched by Trailer Park’s scalding flop
Glorifying a Gangester heir to titanic humbled beginnings chockablock divested to Kennedy’s dead Candy Shop
Impressive rags of riches of counterfeit tags blundering with lazy LASER Tag of sharks too bellicose to earn a pitfall pittance of swag
Trippin’ by tripwires too flippant to be flippin’ on known graves sidesplitters of treecheese yaggots grimaced on madcaps of bottlecaps swimming in ether of money too happy for House of Pain rags of gag orders intrepid because some blood is Bad
****** drapes of tapestries too woven on Ducking Badger duck tape
Pretending not even a slightest twinge of celebrity faked is a tantamount affliction to Kobe’s escape
Time to rig the 7/11 notoriety of a caper drawl in Cape Town Blue Sky Action can barely offer scrape
Let them eat cake and heads roll like Nicholas Cage clairvoyant in mystique quaking like a Quaker parody rank-and-file rancid graveyard creep
Cuz the best in the Business evokes singes of Dre grazed persistence a Space Rover rather than a broken-down drive-by Vegas Cheap Holyfield Jeep
Forgeries in trigonometric time gone haywire because ******* of fools is delicious neutered ballistic wrong with elemental statistic
Armed to the Teeth because twinges of righteousness is strongly established because it elevates truces well-predicted
Reckon the self-aware hive jetsetting with Jive warbles of departure yet to arrive
“Talk” of those fewer in knowledge yet living an invented diatribe
Lil Dicky mumbling his churlish codling vendetta
Too petty on the game like a turgid Mariah Carey Christmas Sweater evaporating on benzo bleats because exaggeration is a measuring stick more prone to delusion than the vapid version of Eddie  Vedder
Ripping through seamstresses of time a delope from impoverished cesspool grime
Certainly not swinging with sockdolagers like Musk as UPS owns insider angles about BitCoin riches scoffing at #11 Sublime
I owe respect to an upstart prescience scowling hatched never against fragile egg-shell minds
He’s the predecessor to the Walter White of cesspool inveterate rivets in hulking pretense of a measured stick lying like Tony  Hawk on the grind drawling on videogame addicts lost to numbers like Wall Street bet on fractions divisible like Scarface on cardinal crime
Blip on the WHIP cackles of clever pasquinade owned by sizzurp of Red Wings demolished like Draper balking at the West Coast ****** of East Coast royalty etiolating on Life After Death because of a teased script of March 26th shining bright like nine-inch nails longer than an exaggerated Dicky loving pollution more than Sina Loa loves bricks
Mad respect to juggernaut Michigan flow, but when you henpeck a rooster fewer regaled Ravens start to sing like Tomorrow’s sung by Sheryl Crow
So attack the kenspeckel hiding like sobriety itching to revel
Even the greats are grating despite prestige owned like Steppenwolf inventing Heavy Metal
Yet the raspy dengonin certainly a curtain call for the moribund smooth competition genius but not square to my elevated level
Time to brush aside, politics is a Velvet Morning rather than an Everest scaffold of glaciers divide
Flourishing Eden of a Seattle worthy of treason on rollercoasters yet to ride
The contumely of charlatans berating brassage is a Lie Boring in Federal Way united against prejudices scowling because Qwersy Mencia is too fraught to enjoy the jeers of a tattered Pride
Past-Tense Quinn in his Chauvin Blue Suit is Queer on The Bends
For a better radio the shatter of the quaff is Damon on the mendlatch for the rights of heroism among men
Applesauce is scary when the cooks are too chary for emoluments of cherry-picked vanity inoculated because hackneyed hacksaws aren’t that scary
To a Rush Hour acclaim that owes a Martian a fair-share of the inviolable degrees above freezing that guarantees the Hang Seng
The cretaceous dinosaur livid in the Fields of Dreams lives to the honor of the author rather a subsidiary prosperity rooting for the same exact team
Credit belongs not to slot-machine jibes of Navy throngs because the sealed pedigree of a Potemkin stonewall ravaged an Atlanta March that Richard Sherman found himself wrong
Ripostes of wavered glory serenade Field’s Medal accolades jaunty with brimstone repartee for persecution of Sing-Sang jailed avuncular Dana Carvey
Crumpled in missives etched decisively by Popcorn paparazzi Lee Harvey Oswald Part Three dinging Reagan’s Drugs because belittled Batman and Robin Harvey Dent is on a defalcation spree
Limited by the gambit of orbit I flex space measured only by perception hourglasses mistake for Dewey Decimal ministry
Because mountebanks of the tramontane canard unscrewed by Donkey’s without the triumph of vindicated colts spew the unwarranted without the warrant of upright parlance
Deflecting the useless caricature of Jezebels they barely even know dancing with fisticuffs choleric with jaundiced illuminati chants of an age bracing for the venom of viper’s of gratuitous pretense in violence because the whittled conscience scourges footloose profligacy in dementia that owns probability rather than certainty but doesn’t stand a chance
A billowing toxic fume of a Trojan Horse of galloped complicity of headless horsemen too scared to even pinprick the average Brett Hume huffs like mad wolverines dancing with Buccaneers for the fidelity of bridled brides with a tailored or sloppy groom
Cowering behind plashy starlets dashed for authenticity too soon
The Red Robin Hood ****** of silhouettes of Caste system indecency is reduced to reductivism in peddled paranoia of Randall Graves confronting his deepest specious tomb
To rogue slipshod miracles of denuded ice for Christopher Reeves Wally World White in Simple Jack owleries of confiscated light they caper encaged Caspergers ergotamine flavored favor uptight
Glaring prince dashing Rusty with ***** for Hummers glazed with donut torus hummus swift with reverend repartee
Sunken sleepless abyss ghosts haunt for quaffs evanescent in backbone bliss incurring parted sight for nebbich sprees
Calculated by persnickety prattle brazen with bravado promontory sparked on the flames of an overhyped hysteria ablaze
Raisins aren’t the determinant of a blinkered starstruck page gilded to amaze
Formidable reform conserved against blasphemies of ****
Withstands the immutable geotaxis of inevitable backfires in limited scourges of scorn
Time to sacrifice the badge earn the primacy of trimleggers making a dash rushing for hourglass sand prominent in fiat flash
In a second a trampoline against a specious marvel is a sour remorse of a crusade turning into protection not found in autumn ash
With autarky righteous rain boogies against bogeys of golfers livid with sensational inane
Lunacy predicated on sensational maudlin labors of Genesis 3:16 birth pain
Incurred upon the toil of the lugubrious heights of teachers that defy tribes and stripes
Soldiering for God without even the slightest nefarious mercenary spite
Because Ledgers cannot be mistaken for legends because petty battles Abandoned Pools named were avoided for Nobel Prizes of moonshot fame never King Kong because 24k magic called the Hang Seng  game enter stage right
The thematic liberation of the freewheeler isn’t a combustion of truckers Ruckers allergic to chattered shame
But the time honored Sevendust defies blisters because a brave heroism leaps into legacy vaunted by cheery repute in winning hegemony against rigged fraud in frigid feral tames
I march to an inaugural chance without a chance of quick inauguration because Junetao is a duck-duck-go childish flicker against Amsterdam Vallon besides the church with a touching spectacle of solidarity beyond temporal Anacondas of deserved blame
An ally to the kitsch the prosperity of Nas is afforded to optimism never so fulgurant because of a bewitched Tik Tok twitch
As the true flock regards the true shepherd the guardian of wonder and the captain avoiding Yellow Submarines because Stayin’ Alive is a prophecy not a febrile contagion of germs pitching tents for flukes insistent on incident rather than honorable to Canada Dry on Strike for better than a bubble gum mumble rap of Lil Pump’s pruned humps for a ******* ghost rider rather than a profaned itch
But the camel survives because the needle doesn’t thrive in a world where God is always Stayin’ Alive to strike a pose for the voguest Jive
“The Seduction” lives and the corruption limps with glib bribery fibs because 2 Timothy 1:7 in autarky is a generous rhyme that  gives and gives
In endless crusade to beat like David the ***** of a poker miracle that stars in a showcase of a life of splendor eternal rather than a cursory kamikaze reckless fib
Its time for  abundance of life to be lived fully to truly find riches in the best possible life winsome in discretion to quake and yet remain immune to a Walgreens of Stonewall myth
Cast not the first stone against the immaculate Giant because everybody is shaking to Bond and Saint Joseph’s guarded wordsmith

Rain plummeting
like rivets.

Seated in the mud,
soaked beyond notice,
beside a fried APC hulk,
eating cold C-Rations
with my ***** fingers.

Eyes like vacant windows.

This photograph
can never fade.

  mce

Hold your breath, girl.
Don't feel.
As he places his shallow love inside of you
Every breath feels like a brick
Pressed against your stomach
Collapsing the walls of your lungs
Until you feel yourself gagging.
Let him talk to you
But your words have become rather expensive
As he plays with your hair
As he touches your waist
As you turn away
Because his fingers cannot feel the rivets in your rib bones.
Your eating disorder makes casual *** a little harder
As does your history with assault.
Sometimes, your PTSD and bulimia want to have an ****
They are the extra lovers you never invited
But as you mount on top of him
Trying to make him forget he doesn't love you
And that you don't love him
It seems they are whispering in your ear
Why would any man want to *******?
                         He's all you have.
Stop pretending to be good enough.
Try to let these thoughts slip out of your mind
As you slip out of your clothes
Shedding your snake skin.
You kneel there now
His eyes are resting on each inch of your body
But your skin begins to crawl
Your heart begins to shake
You unravel before him
Every end of you is fraying
And he doesn't even know.
What happened to never doing this again?
What happened to getting over it?
Promiscuity smells like stale cigarettes and ***
In the back of a car
With an older man.
Promiscuity tastes like an empty transparent bottle
You can see through it like everyone sees through you.
Like ice cubes
On your fire slinging tongue
From that shot of whiskey a few minutes ago.
How many minutes ago?
Two hours ago.
Yesterday.
Wake up, girl
Detach
Stop holding on to the shards of glass
That break the delicate flesh
On your fingertips.
Put on a mask
Don't let him know you're dead inside.
Your job here is to
Make him believe you're still alive.

Born into this world through pre-existing spirits
Discovering the world through all my spiritual rivets
Designing new paths over my ancestor's lives
We are walking alone in our desperate hives

My body filled with the spark and symmetry of fire and water
Guiding my soul through life for its purpose which might not matter
Seeking knowledge, love and lucidity on this mortal trail
Our legend forgotten and lost, completely off the rail

As we are kindred and divine
The life of a human holds the key to chime
I share my soul to be alive and free
Right as our history stretches up to greet thee
The future advances like an unstopping ocean
At my wake the sound of generations

The art of humanity conjuring up from our planes of life
The land in past and future being the essences of strife
In every plane exists nature, love and knowledge
A voice of voices, the voice of the world

I have walked alone and to the edge all of my life
My human mind like a vast ravine filling with knowledge
It shows me true compassion for karmic deserving, a life of college

A time to share your soul in water and land
Just another day to show the God of knowledge withstands
Human peace and understanding provides the answers
We are all seeking promise of divine ability to give us chances

We take our knowledge and lessons for the records of life and time
The moments coursing through my body like a silent mime
I am but a human with a life to climb

A thin chain of a broken beaded necklace
separates you from
illumination. The muted metal *****
are smooth under your finger
tips. Clicks, mark ideas
like they mark the presence of
tacks in your soles on
linoleum.
Some things are better
in the dark. The strumming
of guitar strings, a cough.
The slide of skin
over velvet glass. Vinyl
hands wrapped around a globe,
turn it. Left, left, right, right,
metal twists, snug against
rivets, grinding, a dull black
nose. Shake filaments like
fractured electric fence
marked by a flash. The last
moments of daylight dropped
behind a horizon, made of
creamy silk pleats to shade
the glow. ‘Til the chain lights up
the room.
Illumination.
Some things are
better in the dark.

there is some great glowing thing buried
somewhere in my skin and
nothing in the world scares me half as much.
when you ask about fear, i'll mention
heights and strange men and
shadow-things,
but never the wildness in my bones
or the poison in my veins or
the slow oozing dark that's running
down the rivets in my brain.
some things are too sharp and slippery
to name.

i never meant to hurt you, but my love was
beastly and burning and
maybe you were scorched beyond repair.
i tangled my fingers in the
fibrous network of your nerves
and carved secrets into your spine.
i did not know how to love gently.
i ****** your breath into my lungs,
briny and saline and
wild like the ocean,
and now i can't breathe but
i can still taste you there.

the inky, fractured spirit in my skull
is stronger than my best intentions and
stronger than the love with which
you tried so desperately to drown it.
all the broken things in me
were more than we could fix.

i'm sorry i stopped calling.
you deserved better.

Soft padded sheets with a chalk-white fade
Contours from repeated pressure illustrating a familiar shape

Indented rivets in the overused cushion where you tried to hide
Red-turned-brown spots dried, markers of where you failed to keep it inside
Timid stains of salty moisture once fallen from your eyes
Now just a faded gravestone to the bliss simplicity brought before your fight died

Deaf ears and the pleas that pass through their shallow halls
But the sound changes octaves as it bounces off the thin beige walls
And so it echoes unheard as it falls
One too many close calls to accept the sound that emulates from it all

Trembling bones under heavy skin clutching the bed-frame with an iron grip
Second only to the pressure your upper teeth have on your lower lip

Revolving doors unhinged, flooding your thoughts as they race
Tired eyes stay bolted open, not recognizing the shape of your own face
in the jagged glass that now lays fractured and stained from the image you tried to replace
But it still didn't go away
“This is it,” you say

Cavernous holes,
Once whole,
Now just hollow shells you used to call home
Empty of all heart and all hope

And you brace for the hit, the moment where it finally all goes black
And the silence will finally answer back,
telling you you've ****** it up, it's all rotted through, you didn't fight hard enough and now you're done

And every single time you're still surprised when that moment never comes
And despite the tremors and daggers, your stubborn heart carries on

So find the narrow sliver of air where reality and your mind meet
And take in all the oxygen like it isn’t always free
There isn’t much too it,
You just put your head down and breathe

Because if there’s only one thing of which you can be sure
It's that these souls were designed to endure

And "this too shall pass" will become true once more

Let your heart and its resting pace made amends
Once the shaking stops you can finally stand
And wear that smile until courage finds you again

Somewhere inside you always knew this isn’t how it ends.

Buddha was the broken hourglass
that spilled seconds across my backyard.
Mother Earth scolded him for his slipup,
so I smoothed her over with my minute hands.
She told me that he who skips an interval
needs to double back his ticks
so, grain by grain, tick by tock.
She rewound my hands to round out
the stonewashed garden that was being fabricated.
So I steadily swept shards of seconds
under the rugged rug of ill will.
I riddled ripples within her granular skin,
skidded stones across her carved clock
face fitting ****** features together like cogs.
Buddha shook the soil off
and fixed his gaze on my clockwork.
He explained that patience is key
if one wants to harvest his feast.
Before the goods go about,
pivots and rivets need to tie together.
Mother Earth collected her thoughts
and agreed with his concept.
I finished my work, stepped back,
admiring the hourglass I rebuilt.

Some nights it
is alarmingly
imperceptible:
an exoskeleton ascends
on iron rivets and steel;
unseen scaffolding tapers
to a steady pulsing point
of phosphorescence—
a mechanical heart
circulating red light
into leaden clouds.

Some nights the air thickens
with cordite, grief, and snow.

Tonight with winter here
we can see the tower’s
beacon blinking through
a tangled scrim of trees
half a mile across town,
and yet even with our
bodies squeezed together
like radio dials in the dark
we are unable to tune it in—
the signal that would calibrate
our estranged transistor hearts.

I never leave the West when it isn’t raining,*
My brother says to me through the phone.  
He is on his way back
over the Rockies and through Nebraska.
He’ll never make it intact—
hands fuse to the steering wheel
like nylons on a burn victim,
knees and elbows bolted in
precise angles keeping the car straight,
tires pulling everything forward.
One foot is the pedal, one becomes the floor mat.

Shoulder to armpit with a semi truck
hauling jet wings from Denver,
he notices the paths of rivets
like bread lines in Omaha.
Some of them are starving.

But where is the rest, the airplane body
without its wings? A hollow silo,
pilot in a cockpit
not going anywhere.  
I think airplanes molt this time of year.
It’s still raining or it will be,
the white-lined highways
will carry you here unscathed.

Her fingertips tease the seams of the tattered trunk,
Like a recovered remnant of the Titanic,
Rotting velvet lid cap,
Torn paper liner,
Tilting, listless shelves.
The scent of two centuries of existing
Slowly seeping into her sympathetic senses,
The smell sparking a myriad of imaginings;
Like a menagerie of nostalgic rememberings
A kaleidoscope of irreconcilable memories,
The trunk tells many bold and treacherous tales;
She lets the stories play out in her mind
As she runs her hands across the cracked leather,
Visualizing the hand driven rivets of the trim,
Fingers stopping ever so slightly to pause on the cool steel,
The circular clasps and the rusty, broken locks.
She suddenly smells the salty sea air of the helm of a steam ship,
She sees a silk handkerchief with a lipstick print,
Seductively scented with her own blend of oil of lilac and rose water,
Quietly clutched with subconscious desperation
In the front pants pocket of his threadbare blue jeans.
A bouquet of flower wilts in a vase,
It adds a semblance of mourning
To amplify the loneliness of the scene,
The candles and the curtains drawn low in her cold, dreary cabin
She leans, shuddering, crying over the side of the trunk,
Red rouge making red rivers of silent tears
That run rampant down trembling, rose coloured cheeks,
She lifts the tin of his aftershave,
Breathes him in one more time before going to bed.
The gentle rocking of the ships stern lulls her to sleep.
And with a sigh,
The girl is sleeping too,
A gentle smile playing on her lips,
Her limp wrist still reaching for another story from the magic steam trunk that lies open
In the barest corner of her room.

sinews held in by rivets rh-rhy-rhythymed apart
frayed like cello bowstrings - the silly string hallways of hearts
a war where the marching drums sound like violins
the weapons wielded merge heartbeats and equestrian -
hook-hairs that snare the steely strings
ones not quite so metallic as we think -
they've frayed like flesh and refrained-
from sn-snaa-snapping -but just barely-
they still trip - trying to make music merrily -
still beat themselves up -with the singsong self-hate they're carring
they prefer to hide in the woods at the moment -
their cries as slight as the winds - perhaps they're out of breath
from trumpeting explanations - or perhaps they wish to rest -
tired of touching lips-
to instruments----------------
- they don't want this symphony to crescendo into treble this time
-  they're starting from the base up -
Happy for now and trying to hold their face up-
they are aware that they could be used
to make garottes  -or grand music -
to suffocate mute musician's who refuse to hear their sound -
or strangle guitar necks as deceptive cadence mimics resonance and resolve-
. . .
.........
there's a duet full of dissonance and you won't-
believe it but by the tear-tearing disbelief
you will timber like a tree -tone in two-
voices arguing inside of you- staccato soliloquies -
punctuated with melodic defeat -
intercede with a sharp or two - cut down to the root, the truth -
result in music i can dance to - symphonies , harmonies, rounds -
we are notes - in twoes and fours - together we are sounds-
adagio acrobatics emanat from where our feet touch the ground
in time, intonation the same as our romantic inclinations -
dances we just both seem to know - impromptu instrumentations-
the interval betwen  these two half notes made whole is zero-
you're a maestro whose got my heart crying in half time
-its the sound of requiem turned serenade - I was Alive on our wedding day -
and so were you - proceeded by a promenade -
of promises -
a recital of something more than just lyrics -
you said I Do to me-
a staff of out of sync harmonics
It's ironic  - I worship with shhhh- under my fingernals
and you - you love the sound - and the smell

Dancing so long that nocturne
turned to noonday sun -
until I , nightingale, and you the gales in night-
are one

I had every intention of changing
The raven amongst white doves
Weak, crumbling pieces, out of sync with the suns honey glaze
ruthless falling daggers
only in the meat of the night
I'm drenched with sweat
My sheets shallow waves
Rivets of white
Outlining my ghastly figure
Ideleness digs its finger nails into my popcorn ceiling
I searched within the orange hue for your hand to pull me through
One last taste of the honey



It was in my sweaty palms
a wilting flower
Petals bruised and obtuse
Bent and irrperable
Folding corners the napkin
Turned into some origami masterpiece
When the conversation was a, b, and how sad I felt when you were a hologram amongst my curtains
Dusty desires I put on my book shelf
Notes piled on top of each other like a dumpster of sweet nothing's
nothing
A lot of that

We met eyes drawn to each other
Magnetic force
The feel of your warm fingertips
Making webs throughout the vacancies of my soul
Vacancies
A lot of those

Your knuckles turned peachy white
The vigor of your words
Masked your content
All I saw was you
Your legs daddy long legs in the corner
I don't know whether I should **** you or let you invade me, entirely.

valiantly,
the Ship Fought.
many Days,
she took a pounding
her mighty Hull bracing;
against unforgiving Seas
her thick Armour;
withstanding Bombardment.

the first great Wave
knocked a Rivet loose,
a Steel Plate dented
by the first big Bomb

she didn't Shoot back
ever hoping for peaceful resolve
but the Seas and the Bombs
all took their toll!

the first 3 enemy Ships
packed their Punch
but she stood firm
armour deflecting every Bomb

but the Sea grew Dark;
the very Water
that held her aloft
now threatened her very Existence!

the Sea destroyed Rivets
The Bombs dented armour
and slowly but surely
she took on Water

for it is the small Rivets that hold a Ship together;
small rivets that Bind Metal Plates
and when the Rivets fail
the Ship is lost!

Noble Captain stood on deck
the death of His Ship
a mathematical Certainty

again and again the 3 locust ships fired
again and again the Sea pounded

the Evacuation order needs to come soon
only the Captain to remain with a final solemn Duty

for a captain goes down with his ship
when all others are safe.

the Sea will calm down
the 3 will stop firing
once the Bow of the Ship
slips beneath the Waves

the Charges set,
ready to blow,
scuttle the ship -
Down she will go

Captain salutes Her
a fine Ship she's been
as he presses his Pistol
to his temple

right finger on the trigger
the left on the bomb's fuse,
A solitary tear,
3,2,1...

Blue petal skin folding inward
A shivering self embrace
Trembling shoulders
and small cool notches
Freckled spine lingering
Beneath pale raised rivets
Scarlet fingernails rest for now
Having clawed at the neck
Never quite comfortable with how
She’s gotten bone deep
Unreachable
Asleep
Tucked within the marrow
Hibernating
Perhaps until spring

Screams of insanity pierced his mind,
And rivets through his body.
The handgun, which he held with a death grip, Found the floor.
The mirror.
Did not reflect him.
It showed the chairs, tables, even the gun.
But the person who stood inches away,
Could not be seen.

Panic and uncertainty moved him.
He needed to flee.
He wanted to flee.
To escape this hellhole called home.
Without realization, he picked up the rose he loathed.
Grabbed his spring coat and fled.
He wanted to know.
He needed to know.

The screams of insanity still raged in him.

Gripping the aluminum skin
with my fingertips
is one of the hardest things to do.
It can be a bit easier if you can claw,
find a couple of loose rivets,
maybe grab an emergency door
hatch cover.
But that's tough to do,
flying at such high altitudes
at hundreds of miles an hour,
outside the main cabin.

The plastic bag rolls against the wind
Once again, to let the sun glisten
Those brunette curls as the wind takes them
As they swim through the air,
Right into my arms,
With those watering eyes
And trembling lips
I simply cannot resist.
For once again,
Another has broken you,
And once again, I’ll prove
That men aren’t all bad.
Without you I drink the thought of you away,
And with you, I drink the red flags away
That cloud my vision
With warning signs.

It almost seems too easy
My sympathy already being taken advantage of
Yet knowing this, I wring out enough trust
From my cloth of chances
That you’ve let be used up.
You’re nothing but a snake
And my emotions are contained
Like a paperback novel
In the rain;
My heart is breaking
Feeling the pounding of yours
Knowing yours has been working fine,
While my shaking
Is not from the weather
Nor the tearing inside,
For I know that this plastic bag
Will drift away once again
When the wind breathes just right
And another bystander of yours walks by,

But you’ll leave a memory
On my table
For the last time,
And the plastic bag you left,
Will be the last sound
I hear,
After liquid courage rivets
My sensible nature into a cage,
And I hear it rustle
As the leaves did
When first you entranced me
With my inhales forced inaudible
Just as forced audible
They were laying in the grass
And I’ll play that image
In my head
Of the first moment I felt alive,
Until I fade out, lay still,
Never to breathe out again.

.
Even after visits to apartments in self-named cities to see soccer stars swathed in orange tuxes,
Swerving off country roads in berating fits of tenderness,
Sputtering 'i love yous' in ditches and river canals;
Even after chais with Ye Ye Elders,
Messenger powwows with ancestors, and
holding the hands of comforting Harmonies, I

Never got it right.
.
It was a pathetic attempt to join a traveling circus; a passive means for an escape. Who were the Elephant Man, the sword swallower, or the contorting twins?
****** if I know.
Buddy had his hands wrapped around my neck in a nihilist noose so tight that it bubbled up amaurotic visions within my retina.
I couldn't see or feel a ******* thing.
Lost consciousness on his cold bathroom tiles, sprinkled with ***** confetti, **** all up on my cheek.idonthavetimeforthis!sleeponthecouch!
Watching 'Teach Yourself Circus!' videos at circus camp, I learned to juggle,
albeit groggy and disoriented. Only brightly coloured ***** at this point but I was up to seven tosses! While the freaks and geeks headed to carousels in the big top tent, I headed back to my dilapidated den leased on a broken Concord.
getoutbitchgetoutbitch
Back at camp ( hazy lazy crazy ) rivets affixed so I could only stare forward at the wall.
An e.ch-o-y sound in my
left  ear
voice reverberating down thru
t
h
e

w
e
l
l  
past
   t
   h
   e

   b  u  c
   k  e  t

I turned my head,
slo-mo tracers flashed in warp speed,
glacial stares softened into slushy moss.
A buttery soft cashmere reply,
                                      i'm sorry? what did you say?
                                                           ­  you seem nice...
.
Infrastructure collapsed.
    ****
Gone.
Crumbled in a heap of rubble.
Impaled by rebar and rebar erections.
Dab. Dab. Dab. Dab. Dab. Dab. Dab. Dab. Dab. Dab. Dab. Dab. Dab. Dab.
Dab. Dab. Dab. Dab. Dab. Dab. Dab. Dab. Dab. Dab. Dab. Dab. Dab. Dab.
in a black plastic sack
And....then....
Who's to say about the linear sequence of events, anyway?
.