That happiest moments come in childhood
When innocence combed ones hair
And Saturdays bring respite
Bedrooms lined with a few toys
While two fair ground ballerinas
Curtesy on a white wood mantelpiece.

Then that snuggling down to sleep
Under homemade feather eiderdown
Hot lemon and sugar brought in a glass
The certainty of mother's voice
Climbing the stairs with wine gums.

Even if time stretched patience
It arrival brought only surprises
And leaf rubbings on paper
Were treasured achiements
Displayed in cardboard mounts.

Love Mary x

the sensation of the wires hanging loose from your headphones gently brushing up with the blonde hairs on your neck like little hairthin whispers- spiders crawling on you throat

leaflets
blankets


fleece summercamp sweatshirt

the a/c rumbling

crisp fallings
hatchlings
seeds
wax paper tracings-rubbings of leaves

downstairs
  pageling

I used to stick my tongue
out often,
pointed and flexed,
at the culprit. One time,
yours touched
mine, or mine
touched yours--
a pinprick of infection
spread up over
the soft pink bumps,
blooming onto my round
child's cheeks.

But I soon forgot
your tongue, its feel
or taste replaced
by the sand
paper rubbings
of the others
removing the layers
of polish I painted
my tongue pale blue

like my tilted bathtub,
like jake's eyes,
so it was, as if,
I really had
licked the sky.
Swallowing the plaster
of the cracked clouds
over my baby bed,
swallowing it
like rain that cures
the thirst of sailors
with only salt
water in their
blood. In my

blood
running marathons
from tongue
to toes, past tendons,
making blue
red again, making red
blue again. My heart
and lungs a patient
paint factory
with only two
primary colors.

You were my life's great distraction,
from the tedious ins-and-outs of seasons,
the still summers and the silent snows.

From childhood's great terrors,
slipping under in the swimming pool,
from the restless rubbings of the twenties:

When my soul seemed too large
for my ribcage.

When I bottomed out in my thirties,
penniless, a slipped clutch in my car
and nothing but mustard in the refrigerator,
I remained for you.

I quit drinking when you threatened to
leave me on the kitchen floor.

That is the first bullet-point
on the endless ledger of debts
I owe to you.

And though we were fruitless
(genetically speaking)
your perfect DNA will remain in the soil's pores

and your calcium will marry the grass roots,

so that this great, dull planet
might become less ugly.

Tessellation & Interstices


”A tessellation or tiling is the covering of a surface,
often a plane, using one or more geometric shapes,
called tiles, with no overlaps and no gaps…In mathematics, tessellation can be generalized to higher dimensions and a variety of geometries.”

the insistent need to be distinguished
means many are not,  
indeed,
this hunger
to be an influencer
and never just an influencé.

creeply creates a linear surface,
a flooring to be trod upon,
a tessellated plane,
were we each fit in
right-tight juxtaposition
and we are noticeable for our
uniformity and

the scuff marks of having been trod upon,
well used.

it is in the chips of irregularities,
the overlaps and the gaps
where we touch and connect
with our individual Ah Ha’s,
where our Venn Diagram Lives
intersect, infect, interfere, inject,
in the tiny
interstices
tween us,
the jagged, irritatingly edgy
rubbings
that the friction of creativity
is comedically inseminated.

I love a good tense sweat,
that invasive, deep boring burring,
that demands
instant creative solutions lest the angst of
an unwritten-in-the-moment-poem
is even more annoying,
before it is annoyingly,
befogged, lost forever.

that is why with old age,
fearsome fast
short term memory loss,
some turn to the speedy freedom of
free verse,
unconstrained by socks
and well fitting shoes,
and the slip on sneakers
of rhyming,
so insistent on perfection,
that the
burr is absorbed,
the irritant rubbing is creamed away,
and that loss of
a pouring of the soul’s ******* of
Done!
is
our exclamatory mutual curse

crude
but the shape
of things to come

the Seine
Notre Dame
in pencil rubbings and erasures

the mind
a potter's wheel
with clay raw and ready to be tossed

Whit Howland © 2019

I like elephants, wood, and rust.
I like elastic feelings and good, clean filthy textures.
I like peaceful rage and boxes with glass (broken or not).
I like detailed abstraction and smells that make you sick, but not literally.
I like words that are shaped like people and wind that doesn’t move or make a sound.
I like gravely voices with sandy tones, meaty bones, and eyes of stone.
I like chalk and dust and asking questions without words.
I like structured flow and red-ripple eyes.
I like amputated thoughts and snaking through forests.
I like the words ‘expunge’ and ‘spleen’ and coarse vengeance, but not together.
I like egg-shaped objects and touching washable whiteboard erasers with my cheek.
I like all human faces but not all human people and unnamed creatures we haven’t seen, in places we haven’t been.
I like writing secret thoughts and making words emboldened with my tongue and lips.
I like real life fiction and burning bridges to places I’ll never revisit
I like pencils, but only HB or above. 5H can **** right off. F makes me unsure.
I like the smell of poison from the lips of disturbed creatures.
I like people with cats for a head; tigers, lions or domestic.
I like the theoretical idea of punching a horse, for the way it sounds and smiles at me.
I like pegs and what they bring to the table and comedy that takes itself seriously.
I like circles and all their relatives. Even ***** Uncle Oblong.
I like how language makes my breath smell and squeezing hope out of sponges.
I like to name things that are mine, but then use things that belong to others. Staplers mainly.
I like darkness and light in all measures; even when drank from a well in a shoe.
I like climbing into clouds and discussing anything but the weather.
I like how randomness is a concept thought of by someone else.
I like to unravel thread and then eat the evidence.
I like the fecality of machines and cogs that catch rain.
I like to listen with my mouth and reply with my veins.
I like the honesty of chaos and the cynical nature of fingers and toes.
I like swinging my mind fluff at innocent bystanders.
I like falling into gold by tripping over dead-end roads.
I like round numbers that are sharp and spiky and hurt when applied freely.
I like getting trapped by my own volition and eyelashes that live alone and care not what you or I think.
I like it when clouds become aggressive and spit disdain on the revolution you started.
I like slatted fences that don’t let things get them down; except falling dust that is just a thought.
I like universal understanding of things nobody understands and how your blue is my yellow and you stole it, so give it back.
I like how the letter Q is so shy, despite its ***** size.
I like to find the veinality in all things; with my eyes and then my sweaty blood pen.
I like stealthy science that is really a ghost we invented in a room made of futures and pasts.
I like forced relationships; especially if a monkey or a spoon are involved.
I like to glue my face to walls to see if anyone watches. Don’t worry, they always do.
I like reaching milestones only to find someone has scratched out my name and replaced it with an arrow pointing backwards.
I like big licks that are really lips that got kicked.
I like wrinkles that twinkle when sprayed with the slap of life.
I like that we all pretend that we know what’s going on, but that if we did, we wouldn’t have eyebrows.
I like hidden rooms that hold everything we were trying to hit. Except that horse I punched.
I like to drive a truck gently down a stream, only to tickle a deer on its belly with my headlights when I get there.
I like finding things that are so me, it brings painful heat out of my smiling face holes.
I like reflections in glass, of things that aren’t happening now, but will after lunch.
I like the rhythm of word *** followed by the ******* of a donkey-punched idea.
I like the iron will of freedom and how the camel **** of life sends us all back to the ***** sea.
I like the familiarity of a number and how they let us down, but we kiss them anyway.
I like pockets of air in black-like snowflakes in the fog.
I like seeds, Velcro and moon sand.
I like burnt umber, but only because we once were friends. He stayed. I left. *****.
I like paper and news, but never together and strings on rings dancing like feathers.
I like visual echoes and all other types of see-sounds.
I like stories both fat and tall, but not hairy-backed. I’m not an animal.
I like the sounds comics make and soundless comets that like me.
I like how one rule is made to break another, like a seagull might be used to grout a tile.
I like how a hundred things can be small or big, depending on whether you are lying down or on crack.
I like indents and outdents, but nothing beats a trombone.
I like scissors and their forgotten cousin the compass. They weren’t really related after all.
I like inflammatory statements such as ‘best before’ and ‘backspace’.
I like toast and brittle confidence, especially as a mid-morning snack.
I like chilli, flutes and harmonious ornaments.
I like running a mock and mocking a run. Oh and raspberries.
I like over-elaborate job titles invented by under-elaborate job-nockeys.
I like a pinch of this and a pinch of that. But if you touch me, I’ll cut your fingers off.
I like red apples and the smell of disappointed parents.
I like peanut shells in their own personal hells that are destined to do well.
I like sabre-toothed sauces and burlesque mornings
I like tree bark rubbings made from the fallen bodies of birds.
I like reaching for the hips of a star and releasing gristle from my teeth, in equal measure.
I like that swans break arms but never a sweat.
I like cherry protein and scratching an itchy thought.
I like snake skeletons, spider ***** and darkly lit minds.
I like half a man wrapped inside the womb of a stag. Why? Because I just thought of it.
I like divining a feeling with sticks made of rope inside houses of hope.
I like running downhill on palms of marbled ham.
I like cosmic justice in my box of tricks, with tea and biscuits.
I like making it worth peoples’ while, all over their face. But not with cheeky juice.
I like coming to an end, turning around and sleeping.
I like animals that have people for a soul and speak mythical wisdom by staring.
I like drawing what I think and making sandwiches that sing.
I like resting on my morals and dancing on yours.
I like stains on both the mind and my table.
I like visual symmetry, left aligned and crooked; valuable teacups and sage.
I like one-worded concepts like ‘calculators’.
I like appendages that swing and drinking *** from a tin.
I like water and vinyl and female urinals.
I like having no favourites, seasoned chips and music.
I like delving into lives like a fish flying on the back of a bird. Business class.
I like tapered limbs but not jeans; roasted egos but not beans.
I like scary hares laid bare and children being horses without sticks.
I like magic which is smooth and soup that is crude.
I like ninjas in shelters and watching shadows paint pictures.
I like how nothing ever ends, but everything bends. Even teardrops.
I like puzzles that sting and seaweed disguised as hair.
I like to leave people with a thought. Not you though.

The whispered cry of a lonely man
Reverberating eyes with stars around the walls stare at unknown clutching hands
Through these desperate nights of violent quiet
Nothing to the left in me is left of me but at least it’s now silent
To feel a thing of mine so perfect become someone else’s is to not want to feel at all
I found a house of possibilities and all you did was put up all these walls
To the right of me is a girl that seems more nothing than the nothing itself
In the darkness of daylight the glancing blows of affable screams demand that you show yourself
In a place with a face I hate to love, mother emits tender screams whilst we sleep
I am not here even when she is because she was never mine to keep

A perfect painting ruined by maddened men with their selfish brushings
I saw the first strokes and have had to watch her become tarnished with childish rubbings
Though beautiful some may call it, its layers peel after time
It is not what I knew it to be and therefore it is no longer mine
To see a thing of mine so perfect become vandalized is to not want to see at all
The incessant shadows and lowly intellectuals insist she always crawls
This darkness and aged ******* take pieces and replace them with ***** of their sodden pages in her hair
You lie next to me but we are both blinded by your mirror you insist was never there
There is medicine for our disease but you will not take it without a guilty kiss,
I will give you what is left of my working pieces to try and fix you from all of this

To believe you are dying in your life when you are living your own death is not an existence
Reason gives reasons and I hear them but I know no sense in sense
So I will lay here with my perfect nothing
Give to you all the things you were supposed to have been
To hear a thing of mine once so true now fall apart is to not want to hear at all
With my tools you can keep my stars in your eyes but close them so that they shall never fall
I will become the nothing, the living death I had to take from you and start the end to begin
You can have the sounds of songbirds from my ears so in your darkest winters you can hear them sing of coming spring
Now the sound of your breathing I don’t recall and your face is nothing but that of a stranger
I roll over to my left and stare into a mirror you have put there that shows me a perfect painting I now can’t remember.

She is certain
she just wants
to be friends.
So, I shouldn’t
touch her skin,
give her all those
back rubbings
cause it is all
so confusing,
using oxytocin
like a **** addict
and it’s not like
I asked for it.
She just requests
I massage her feet
and I comply
obediently.

It was a yellow background,
The sort of yellow that lets the light in,
Here and there were brown rubbings from furniture,
But the overall pattern of black arabesque stalks and couplets of flowers;
A spiky pattern , rather,
Not quite nice in some way.
I expect the rolls had been a reduction at sale time,
Those January trips with dad in the rain,
Arms laden and collars tightly round faces.

I would sit by the fire tracing the design,
Making up stories in the landscape;
That yellow wallpaper was my childhood,
My father's love, my mother's comforter,
I am sitting by it now just remembering.

Love Mary **