there are so many places to hide,

in my home at 17th and South screaming death threats at my roommates laughing diabolically playing  videogames and Jeopardy cooking quinoa stretching canvas the dog going mad frothing lunging  spastic to get the monkeys or the wookies or whatever random commandments we issue forth  drunken while Schlock rampages the backdrop,

at my uncle's row house on 22nd and Wallace with my shoes off freezing skipping class to watch March  Madness unwrapping waxpaper hoagies grimacing with each sip of Cherrywine or creamsicle  soda reading chapters at my leisure,

in the stacks among fiberglass and eternal florescent lima-tiled and echo-prone red-eyed and white-faced  caked with asbestos and headphones exhuming ossified pages from layers of cosmic dust  presiding benevolent,

in University City disguised in nothing but a name infiltrating Penn club soccer getting caught after  scoring yet still invited to the pure ***** joy of hell and heaven house parties of ice luge jungle  juice kegstand coke politic networking,

at Drexel's nightlit astroturf with the Jamaicans rolling blunts on the sidelines playing soccer floating in  slo-mo through billows of purple till the early morning or basketball at Penn against goggle- eyed professors in kneepads and copious sweat,

in the shadow tunnels behind Franklin Field always late night loner overlooking rust belt rails abandoned  to an absent tempo till tomorrow never looking behind me in the fear that someone is there,

at Phillies Stadium on glorious summer Tuesdays for dollar dog night laden with algebra geometry and  physics purposely forgetting to apply ballistics to the majestic arc of a home run or in the frozen  subway steam selling F.U. T.O. t-shirts to Eagles fans gnashing when the Cowboys come to town,

at 17th and Sansom in the morning bounding from Little Pete's scrambled eggs toast and black coffee  studying in the Spring thinking All is Full of Love in my ears leaving fog pollen footprints on the  smoking cement blooming,

at the Shambhala Center with dharma lotus dripping from heels soaking rosewater insides thrumming to the  groan of meditation,

at the Art Museum Greco-fleshed and ponderous counting tourists running the Rocky steps staring into shoji screen tatame teahouses,

at the Lebanese place plunked boldly in Reading Terminal Market buying hummus bumping past the Polish  and Irish on my way to the Amish with their wheelwagons packed with pretzels and honey and  chocolate and tea,

at the motheaten thrift store on North Broad buried under sad accumulations of ramshackle clothing  clowning ridiculous in the dim squinting at coathangers through magnifying glasses and mudflat  leather hoping to salvage something insane,

in the brown catacombed warrens of gutted Subterranea trying unsuccessfully to ignore bearded medicine

men adorned with shaman shell necklaces hawking incense bootlegs and broken Zippos halting conversation to listen pensive to the displacement of air after each train hurtles by,

at 30th Street Station cathedral sitting dwarfed by columns Herculean in their ascent and golden light  thunderclap whirligig wings on high circling the luminous waiting sprawled nascent on stringwood pews,

at the Masonic Temple next to City Hall, pretending to be a tourist all the while hoping scouring for clues in the cryptic grand architect apocrypha to expose global conspiracies,

at the Trocadero Electric Factory TLA Khyber Unitarian Church dungeon breaking my neck to basso  perfecto glitch kick drums with a giant's foot stampeding breakbeat holographic mind-boggled  hole-in-the-skull intonations,

at the Medusa Lounge Tritone Bob and Barbara's Silk City et cetera with a pitcher a pounder of Pabst and a  shot of Jim Beam glowing in the dark at the foosball table disco ball bopstepping to hip hop and  jazz and accordions and piano and vinyl,

in gray Fishtown at Gino's recording rap holding pizza debates on the ethics of sampling anything by  David Axelrod rattling tambourines and smiles at the Russian shopgirl downstairs still chained to  soul record crackles of antiquity spiraling from windows above,

at Sam Doom's on 12th and Spring Garden crafting friendship in greenhouse egg crate foam closets  breaking to scrutinize cinema and celebrate Thanksgiving blessed by holy chef Kronick,

in the company of Emily all over or in Kohn's Antiques salvaging for consanguinity and quirky heirlooms  discussing mortality and cancer and celestial funk chord blues as a cosmological constant and  communism and Cuba over mango brown rice plantains baking oatmeal chocolate chip cookies,

in a Coca Cola truck riding shotgun hot as hell hungover below the raging Kensington El at 6 AM nodding soft to the teamsters' curses the snagglesouled destitute crawling forth poisoned from sheet-metal shanty cardboard box projects this is not desolate,

at the impound lot yet again accusing tow trucks of false pretext paying up sheepish swearing I'll have my  revenge,

in the afterhour streets practicing trashcan kung fu and cinder block shotput shouting sauvage operatic at  tattooed bike messenger tribesmen pitstopped at the food trucks,

in the embrace of those I don't love the names sometimes rush at me drowned and I pray to myself for  asylum,

in the ciphers I host always at least 8 emcee lyric clerics summoning elemental until every pore ruptures  and their eyes erupt furious forever the profound voice of dreadlocked Will still haunting stray  bullet shuffles six years later,

in the caldera of Center City with everyone craning our skulls skyward past the stepped skyscrapers  beaming ear-to-ear welcoming acid sun rain melting maddeningly to reconstitute as concrete  rubber steel glass glowing nymphs,

in Philadelphia where every angle is accounted for and every megawatt careers into every throbbing wall where  Art is a mirror universe for every event ever volleyed through the neurons of History,

in Philadelphia of so many places to hide I am altogether as a funnel cloud frenetic roiling imbuing every corner sanctum sanctorum with jackhammer electromagnetism quivering current realizing stupefied I have failed so utterly wonderful human for in seeking to hide I have found

in Philadelphia

i want you to imagine standing in the middle of an already collapsing house, and having everything suddenly flip upside down; or after years of homelessness, picture yourself being told you had somewhere you could stay for good, only to wake up just before being handed the keys. these are some of dangers of making places out of  people.

1. don't ever turn a human being into a home unless you are prepared to be evicted without warning.
2. when you start to notice their arms taking the shape of a roof over your head, you have two choices: run, or wait for it to cave.
3. if they ask you to stay and burn with them, you have the right to say no.
4. it is not your responsibility to save anyone, and it is not your fault when you can't.
5. salvaging the photos from a house fire will only re-break your heart every time you pull them out to look at them.
6. when the basement floods, hold their hand.
7. if you are not a strong swimmer, remember that the difference between love and codependence is that one of then will drown you.
8. love will never drown you.
9. i knew this from the start but let you hold me beneath the waves in spite of it, just so you could stay afloat. i can't do that anymore.
10. i don't think i'll ever set foot on your hardwood floors again, but i'll pray that someone new moves in soon.

- m.f.

my mother got frisky with the publisher,
she danced latino
without a care, and gave her first interview
for my hometown newspaper...
the intro to my flashback of being 8 and leaving,
with inflation and with pepsi cola glass bottles
and spending most of my childhood
outside and not before a nitendo screen
shooting ducks...
picking up a ***** mag from the church being built,
chasing petted dogs near the gombrowicz river,
going into the forest and wiping my ***
with a leaf... when writing make some place
small big, bigger than you could have ever imagined...
make it bigger than you ever considered 6ft1
to be when aged 9...

i'm about to publish an entrée for the literati elite
with a fresh off the causeway book,
i became an ex-pat not being caribbean enough
who forgot their tongue and became encrusted
for the easiest integration of migrant tactics,
i forgot my slave tongue voodoo
and decided upon sunny english...
no problem then...
but with me i had too much history, too much pride,
my mother flies in to see her parents via warsaw...
i take it to be krakow originally...
i can integrate but you tell me to forget my tongue
i'll call you racist with linguistics... never, never!

e.g.?
w ramach swej kultury
zachód broni
w ramach swej kultury, zachód:
jak niby władza na wschodzie
jest prawdą taka sama:
władza broni go i dusi kulture,
no tak, zachód swym kabaretem i
płodnią rodzi nowego księdza,
a na zachodzie nowego komika -
który stanie mu na opór by żyd
nigdy nie mógł skorzystać -
mesjasz mojej dupy warunkiem
ten mesjasz prostata więzi podatku i ryb...
zachód karmi kulture która śmiechem
go wklucza, wschód jednak broni go
i karmi kulture głodem - jak ***** riot -
wschodem zachować święte jest
tłumaczone z zachodem jako święte nie piękne...
jak więc zachód karmi swą kulture na wschodowi...
igrek nad każdą kropke na konieć sentencji...
ja ameryka ja anglikaniń...
ale tak szczerze? chrystus ma lepszą muzyke
niż mojszerz czy też muhammad...
pieć razy la illah ila allah co dzień czy też
judasza sha shtill! pierw nad bach'a, beethoven'a
czy też mozart'a? nie wydaje mi sie.
bo i tak powiem krzywe słowo przeciwko jemu
jako niby tact dialektyki racji,
to nawet wtedy krzyż nadal będzie kwitł
prosto... czy nawet stanie się płonącym...

with the birth of money the old, ethnically categorised
unity broke apart,
now the rats in banks, now the rats stocking
cheap metal jump the ship called humanity unanimously,
we no longer have tribes of apache, or maori,
we have ethnicity via professions - the ‘i scratch my back
you scratch mine’ lots drawn... the shortest match
gets to be in the philosophy gang of severe individuation:
it’s not that the english languages from philosophy orientated maxims,
the english language is quick on that, quick to spot that,
but in terms of a philosophical narrative like a complex prose book of fiction...
well... its legs are broken, its arms are broken, it’s simply languishing
behind all the truths proofs innuendos and falsities, like an eager puppy.
with the birth of money traditional tribalism died and became
a curiosity prior, the least amazing job in a society with the piston
named money expects us to gratify existential qualms like so:
least responsible most likely to profit... most responsible the type
to be political in salvaging the least responsible role of a postman
or a cashier with lies...
now you... waiting eager for the ear to hear sweater music,
fare well with the anti-communicative charon - ah death
has a boat and a gondolier’s oar, rather than hood wings and a scythe...
see past the pagan burial of putting two coins in the cauldron inferno of
******* stacked to send the signal of the departing soul: partly brain
partly heart... that inverted exoskeleton capacity to feed the idea of soul -
they make break my bones with sticks and stones...
on the outside bruised... but then the surrealism of the inside attracting
an unfamiliar species of thinking: either singing or harking.
with four beers in the churchyard i took the last remnant of my past
with me, a d.c. belt of my ex-girlfriend, and thought about black magic
and voodoo, hanging it on a branch... instead i wrapped it
around the tree and gave it a model’s size 0 circumference,
thus i ended the session thinking about buying new gloves for winter
feeling my hands turn into ivory at the touch of the cold beer can...
but prior i was well aware of the possibilities, when the theft / injury took
place in a frenzy of such jealousy as to acquire theological dimensions of proof:
at least i will leave the world satiated by convenience of the misguided act -
as to answer that famous question: leave numerology aside,
come with me from how you acquired your use of language, your vocabulary,
make me see you turn words to words... away from the jewish tradition
of numerology... let’s face it... would you answer the question:
what’s the meaning of life? with (23 + 8 + 1 + 20 + ~9 +19) etc.?
or would you care to peer in and say:
the question has no verb in it, i.e.: not activity, anyone can ask it
but still prevail in their vector coordination of plumbing or
spanking faraday equations with newton training the monkey to dance:
pronoun (what) 3rd person singular present indicative of be /
you might as well be saying 1st person plural non-present non-indicative of be /
schizophrenic / there’s meaning in the sewer blockage with eager hands to fix it /
the crooked tree with a straight shadow / the badger shrunk from a zebra and became
the petted dalmatian that became a cow (is, i.e. too much is happening) i’m looking at something with myopic directness of the far far blurry / a direct article (the) now open the dictionary and tell me how cave is a ditto of rock and mountain without antonym proximity (noun) prior to me there was ****** and mussolini, pre that while i mind the pro that’s me (of, preposition) the river sooner than soon pours into the ocean and becomes saltwater, it could be called the heraclitus estuary, but it’s the thames we’re talking about; many men became rivers but still the godly wound itched for more bloodshed, and all those that attracted sweet water fish ended up as salt water poisons known as oceans, known as humanity (life).

i never understood why people decided to couple such symbols into images esp. in fictional narratives rather than see the sound in lipstick smooched for symphony; how hard you try, the a to z will not provide you with a mental cinema image of a giraffe; more like a gaff, and what's a gaff in photo? leopard on giraffe or a giraffe on a leopard, because it's all very fine telling the narrative of traffic coordination evolution coming back from africa with the zebra to suit pitchfork stoppages in hay on the redneck lazed walk. the sole reason why it's understood: fiction is the use of lettering for the creation of images, poetry is the use of lettering a bit like a waterfall for a bored emperor apprehensive of the sound of thinking; and philosophy is the reverse of all that, strike two flints together, and enter the realm of ideas with the onomatopoeia of the image - given that onomatopoeias act like surgical scalpels, or a miscarriage of ideas bundled up for something else by kandinsky; actually, saying that, onomatopoeias are images in motion, prior to the movies, when all you had was a painting embraced by a fancy rim - still life of decay of the royal flotilla on the thames with a mouth moving: chatty chatty boor of a bloke who talked.*

i see the dead sea when i cry,
and i wager
a salmon with other sea fish cropping up flying
into a butterfly net:
before the assemblage of bacon
into the mouth watering eye.

i see the dead sea when i cry,
and i wager
to have seen a thousand flamingos
strut invoking tide -
on a boneless march into marsh of
a bubbled gill of fish popped for whatever name alive,
or dead in the disco crescendo for a nixon:

tears of a robot had always the glory of man laughing akin;
since annexed was the dualistic ambiguity
of the theatrically mistaken two masked.

My hands were shaking
Not as hard as yours, I'm sure

You almost lost everything and I
was forced to watch,
bearing silent witness to a
destruction not my own
but at which I felt at fault,
thus I digested it as my own

Who knows?

In my mind, I had lived fantasies of
something like this happening--
you, helpless, I hold fast to your life and then
salvaging you, just barely,
scaring us both out of life and then
falling back into something new--
dark, strange, and yet intimate

This has happened to me twice now (for real)
and neither time was nearly as glamorous as
I had played out in my mind

(I'm a stupid girl)

Both times I felt drained of a vital energy I couldn't
call back--ever

I became an echo
of me
and us?
we were skeletons of
the children we once were. Both times
robbed me---
of sleep, and years, and appetite.
robbed me---
of innocence, and soul, and
love
which always
bleeds out uncontrollably
in times like these
unclottable

and out with love
spreads guilt and shame

(I'm a jinx, I'm a cursed girl)

across the tar, filling the black empty
cracks with invaluable energy

Full of foreign weight
cargo stored too long
too far pushed down our throats
too removed

My hands were shaking
Not as hard or as long as yours
I'm sure

This life is a poisoned glory.
Gloried and poised, it's only a temporary
Illusory bulwark of an elusive heaven.

Darling, I have worn sores into this Temple
I can't plead innocence
For all the times I pulled the purple veils
Over my better judgment.

I have sold goods to the devil
And worse, I have tried to excuse myself.

Baby, please don't hate me.

Don't pull away so harsh when I try to kiss you
I'm not that ugly. Baby, you told me.

You said it would all be okay.
Look, I've stayed strong for us,
I've kept steady believing in the light,
And we'll melt softly into death.

Soul is the sole sanctuary
A sojourn for serenity
A soulful journey starts
And sorority with peaceful self
Salvaging the soul from strife*




© Amitav (Radiance)

I've given up hope of salvaging you
of salvaging everything I knew to be true
to be true, well that's foreign to you

so go to your quiet place
where you used to lay
gaze at the stars for hours
and be okay

I'm sick of your smile 'cause I know it's fake
so how about you ******* cry instead of getting baked
I'm done with caring and believing in you
because it hurts too much to hold on to what you let slip through

so go to your quiet place
where you used to lay
gaze at the stars for hours
and be okay

you sleep sound while I'm haunted with memories
and you ran away 'till there was nothing to say
you left it open ended, you strung me along
that's exactly what made me write this song
you need to know that it's not okay
to wish away every word you used to say
you used to

so go to your quiet place
where you used to lay
gaze at the stars for hours
and be okay

well talk to me, I'd listen intently
you know there's nothing you could say
that would push me away
just put down that cigarette
put down that beer
put down all the things that get rid of your fear
embrace the pain, don't push it away

so go to your quiet place
where you used to lay
gaze at the stars for hours
and be okay
without me

a seven year nebuchadnezzarª psychosis will do
 that to you, waking up from such a dream
can be bewildering, esp. when taking up a pen,
remembering cohort conventions of clearly
insinuated arguments, in essays of wide ranging
historical interests.

but, but i haven’t aged...
ha ha (ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha)
also called a magpie cackle; in reverse
dentistry's *a, i.e. aħ, i.e. 'open wide, now say a'.
i never wished for a cage for a voice to wish
either, i liked free limbs to try to swim
rather than attempt paparazzi sinking for a fret
once dubbed swimming.

ªand as nebuchadnezzar's dream second interpreter
after daniel, it really doesn't matter who you ascribe
the feet of iron and clay to, all all preceding
portions of the statue, the gold (babylon), the silver
(persia), the brass (greece) and the iron (rome),
they all fall, because empires like the men who
found them, reach a zenith, and then tumbleweed
into the nadir, the abyss of papyrus, bookworms,
silent concert halls of reading, dust and yawning,
for both men and their empires are but clay / iron
(well, you have to remember the iron in haemoglobin).

Distant shadows,
Traveling into the absence of light.
Illuminating a pathway of sorrow,
Imagining the beauty of Helen’s sight.

Diving into the abyss,
Searching for lost remains.
Encountering a series of melancholic words,
Reliving one's past fate.

Salvaging sunken letters,
Written in Cephalopod ink.
Subsiding into Davy Jones' locker,
In quest of the skeleton key.

Pursuing the Sirens voice,
Inducing a tidal wave.
Awakening to disillusion,
Anchoring hope to reality once again.

By: Michael M. De La Fuente

She said: wait. what are you apologizing for.
I said I'm sorry for the words
and they're never enough to tell you
about the things that I never meant to happen
She cuts me off: everything means too little
to me right now.
I said again let me say I'm sorry for the words
She puts her hand on mine
she said I understand
but if you don't go now
I will.

waiting outside of the recording studio
near the train tracks and the tall buildings
running out of time.
an old gypsy woman
wearing magenta rubber boots
and riding a  stained crimson fixed gear
passes me, trains come and go billowing
their impatient whistles
as I take double exposures of them and the sky
with my lomo 35mm.
Ate nothing but six shots
of espresso
and a pack of cigarettes last night, with
a side of liquor which
reminded me too much of memories too good
to be worth remembered .

Best advice I've read in three months;
wear sunscreen, and realize that
good advice is wasted on the young,
advice is also a form of nostalgia,
the givers of it reach out to the dirtier parts
of their memories, clean it up into something
hopefully worth salvaging.
another train passes and I start to grow
impatient myself, a long day of work
ahead of me.

Before the birth of Me
I felt a warm light shined on my eyes, informing me to prepare for the World.

And my birth felt like an employee stepping out of a building into a cold, blistering December

where your toes and fingers are numb as a soldier's brain

but your heart keeps pumping like an Ethiopian salvaging water in the wilderness

Spine tantalizing sensations
Bringing xylophone ribcage shivers to a halt
Salvaging an output of love
From an input of purity

Find me tangled in webs of elation
Laying prey to your immensity
Riddles I don't want to solve yet
Simply to relish in moments of you

Each day comes as relinquish
From times before we found love
Hidden in blanket forts and wedding rings
Loving each other like children

A little girl; so innocent

Broken, like concrete

Forsaken in this world

As God had chosen to replete

Forever damaged

Spare me the deceit

That I have long encountered

Mentally ****** and incomplete

I broke the mirrors

That distorted my vision

I am not perfect

I am far from precision

Just a judicial decision

To execute this excision

To ensure that this provision

Of unwanted unborn children

Remain broadcasted on public television

For the captivity of the elderly

Scorned, defeated and miserable

Left in utter decay

Salvaging day and night

Part of this twisted foreplay

That took place on Christmas Eve

For Chirst to be born

On such a horrible day, to entail

This sad story of evil

Demons from hell rose in this tale

But Jesus did nothing

Except to defy the Holy Grail

My exorcism, my ghost

To whom shall I toast?

To the one who left me to burn?

To define myself in these lies

God, I am flawed by your unconcern

Jesus, I am mocked by your reputable lies

For that you deserve a noble prize

Can't you see the concern in my eyes?

I have lost my allies

And I have become the worst

That I could possibly be

Part taking in these sins

Is that what you wanted from me?

You deny my existence

You hide behind pride

You force coincide

And you deny individuality

You force this conceited ******* to form

Or so you implied

Turns out the shock was worldwide

But that didn't stop you

From setting me aside

Sitting in your corner

Contemplating

Is she human or a mutation

Something somewhat malformed

Or perhaps just a devil

An ogre at best

Fine be that way

I am not one to detest

My worst side though

I do not advise you test

I am not blessed

For it is in black that I dress

"Satan's spawn!" they protest

Is it my fault that I am possessed?

Conniving and witty

I am sick of this mess

God you put me here

But nevertheless

I am obscene

And forever your mess

Hey Mom,

I just wanted to tell you about the amazing day I am having. First, I woke up to water dripping on me, as if the leaky roof were trying to improve the lumpy bed by giving it a good soak- when the brochure said I “would feel closer to nature more than ever,” I didn't think it meant so literal. After salvaging some semi-dry clothes, I went outside to realize my car window had been broken into. It was dumb of me for leaving my laptop bag in the car when I got in last night, I was just so exhausted from the drive. Well, you know how I get when I get upset, so I chunked my phone, as if it was the one causing my great morning. It landed in some bushes, and after wrestling with the branches for a bit, I finally saw him. Not even ten feet away from my phone did I see the most beautiful pelican. Something about his simple eyes, looking at me with some mixture of boredom and apathy, made me realize where I was. The cool air filled my lungs, leaving smell of salt in my nose. The sand I was sitting in was warm from the sun, feeling like that cozy quilt grandma made for me years ago.
So yeah, today was an amazing day.

With Love,

Chris

There is an uncomfortable ledge on the tip
of your tongue. It is the place where your
flimsy thoughts uneasily sway, and in these
debating moments of loosely hanging on,
you decide to spit or swallow. For you, it is
the worst place for words to stoop, and
sometimes your tongue just flicks them out
like cigarette buds and all you can do is look
down the ledge in disbelief. I catch the words
at the bottom, salvaging rusted-penny-like
sentences. If I pocket enough, I know I will
be able to give them worth. I will surely turn
uncertain stammers into something much more
amiable and toss myself up the sill; our anxious
balconies colliding and combining. I absorb
the last fretful words, out of your mouth,
and sip the apology slowly off your lips.

It's a shared pain that shifts weight as denial grows. Each of us has suffered the grief of loyalty unreciprocated.

You held my faith as I held your hand. Your grip loosened and like salvaging a favorite paperback book, pages slipped out individually until an empty shell met back to front.

That shared pain is called to fill in the empty spaces that naïveté leaves. The weight becomes a burden on those of us who expect more.

There is no resolution for betrayal. I lock my fears up tight and covet the pain.

You can see the ones who shoulder this burden in the warm grave of routine, going through the motions of daily life without a smile or by putting off life's responsibilities for the sake of blissful sleep.

The soles of my feet,
raw.
Mile after mile, i run
To clear my mind, but deep down it’s to see how far away I’m able to get from this version of myself

My spine,
bruised.
Sticking out like thorns in a garden, piercing the skin
Every sit up brings me closer to pain.

Fingers and toes,
cold and brittle.
The blood does not flow fast enough anymore to keep me warm.
Once iron filled, now ghostly pale.

But
don’t you dare try to write me off 
as if I am completely broken
when all I am is cracked.

I will learn how to fill the missing pieces,
the parts that slowly dissipated behind closed doors.

Trust me,
I am worth salvaging.

You gave me in the shining image raw with
Water, claws and streaming head  
- That oblate crunch of teeth  
Set in a grin that lives and dies with all our rivers.

Loving on the run,
You keep your red blood rapture close:  
Defiant body heat  
Amongst the Winter reeds and ******* eddies  
Lit with bone white moons coldly  
Whispering to the quaking weak
'you..and you - you will not see the Spring...'

But YOU - You will  
You've got it sorted you have - YOU!
And I know about your Previous -
Oh yes, Sunshine, the list goes on:  
That already-landed trout,  
The picnic scraps,  
The soggy **** (a shock   they   were!)
The little girl in daddy's boat
Who so wanted you for home and comfort...

But you love and leave them all YOU do.
Hey! Come back here! I've got more questions to…

But you've gone of course -
A bark, a twist, a finger (if you had one) to the bleary world.  

Taking your pagan grace to depths we cannot see.  
The Celtic torq of crystal bubbles track
Your ancient underwater poetry and poise  
This artist's camera lightly saves.

And me?
My hopeful words: a suffixed flap  
Of flattened gestures;  

While slim you slip away  
To snap your life on Life,  
Salvaging the Sun  

For Spring,
For us.

post dim sum,
I had my lights dimmed.
walking back to the car,
slipping on the winter-slicked
tile steps of my favorite Chinese
noodle hut, down I went.

limbs and crutches akimbo,
there was no salvaging my dignity.
I lost the daily challenge after enjoying
some twice-cooked pork.

Cerebral palsy doesn’t **** around
in the wintertime.
and I was reminded all too thoroughly
just who the boss is,
and it sure wasn’t me.

when asked to describe my day-to-day
to the able-bodied,
I always say: “It’s like being born with roller-skates on
but never being able to learn how to skate.”

and I still don’t know.

(my elbow, my knee, and Pam are well aware.)

*
-JBClaywell

© 2016 P&ZPublications

I'm waiting in the Starbucks line-
Homework due in an hour.
I realize my clothes don't match.
I also realize this is a lot like
what love feels like.
A letdown.
A constant urgency.
Insecurity that a deadline will not be made.
Making small stupid decisions based on your addictions.
Then the coffee I sip tastes like ****
all because the line to get it was super long-
too much ice and not enough coffee.
I drink it too fast and it makes me sick-
I'm thinking it was because of the pills
not so much the coffee this time.
And I continue to think about love.
How I never want to take that many pills again.
How I never want to play tic tac toe
with every negative emotion I have
I don't think I ever want to find love again.
Because this type of destruction should not happen more than once-
but to me, it's happened more than that.
Even the worst things in history are often repeated.
That's what being in love with you feels like-
A used history book too worn and used
to even show any inherent value-
But you love history and what it has to offer.
So you tape back the broken spine
in hopes of salvaging what you love so much.
But it's never enough to make it readable
it's never enough to use for notes later on
or to read your favorite chapter
and all you can think about is how wonderful it once was.
When you were pulling back each page
so filled with joy about what the next had to offer.
You had a lot to offer-
but all you saw was your broken spine
and torn apart pages.
I wrote my name inside the front cover
etched in pen so everyone would know it was mine-
but I guess my name faded and now it's all just smeared ink
you can't even spell out what it says anymore
maybe because I lost myself inside of you.
I'm again looking at how my clothes don't match
and how much time I took to put this outfit on
but the lighting in my room is dim
and when the actual sunlight shows more things
than the darkness of faded counterfeit wattage
you start to see the things you're missing-
like yourself.
You would like to send someone out to find you
maybe your parents or your friends
but they're all too busy in their own lives
so you look for yourself-
by yourself
and you wonder how you got this way.
How two nights ago you happen to be the same person
you were six years ago-
even the worst things in history are often repeated.
I'm starting to think taking this medicine
wasn't such a good idea.
But the only reason I did it in the first place
was because of how crazy I felt with you.
I didn't want to be crazy anymore-
I wanted love to work for once.
I guess you can't teach yourself something you've never seen
like how I taught myself to swim by watching my brother
and I taught myself how to tie my shoes watching spongebob.
No one ever showed me love-
no one ever put on that play for my young eyes to see
so now I'm searching and searching for something
when I don't even know what the **** I'm looking for.
I think I would rather look for myself instead-
I'm sure I never want to look for love again
but what happens when I try to love myself?
How can you achieve something so foreign?
God could be a fat, black, lesbian jew
and how would we know, we've never actually seen God..
That's kind of how I feel about love.
It could be a giant hurricane destroying everything
because that's the only love I've ever known.
I can read about it until my eyes are heavy-
I can watch it in movies until makeup is stained on my cheeks
but none of it ever means anything to me
in a world where I never mean anything to you.
Love is kind of like starbucks-
it's convenient because it's everywhere
and everyone is waiting in line to get a taste
most of the time it's not what you expected
and it's usually just bitter-
but sometimes you get lucky
and everything is sweet-
the way you wanted it to be
until it's empty.
I am empty.

Your shoulders, sturdy,
hold me, heavy,
I am groggy but awake.

Push at a rock and hope it will move.
You reap what you sow but I did not
plan for your barren lands,
I hadn't thought of the desert,
I have not been able to dream, I have yet to fall asleep.
Watch me fall into the abyss of my own unconscious,  salvaging dollops of conversations we have not had.

Look at you ramble... uneasy, too afraid to let
a comfortable silence sit between us, too insecure
to share anything but emptiness disguised as words.

I did not believe in the power of company,
and their influence.

Now all I can do is stare inertly at the fallow lands of my nightmares
Only to awake, heaving, still heavy, gesticulating wildly,
reaching for familiarity.

I hate this obstinate reality.

We are friends by habit not love.

14
Every song or sonnet
singular in its intricacy,
in time it becomes something
other, hyper-personal and resonant.
14 things may burst into millions.

13
Three times I've felt alone
this minute. I should stop tallying
hours in my schedule, messy
rubric.

12
11-years old and jumping off
mud-mounds, playing King of the
Hill. The strongest rises to the top.
The cleverest usurps.

11
One thing for certain:
we are human. We are
not human.

10
Six times in school I got
detention. It was often due
to my willingness to be a
follower, silly sheep to a
slaughter.

9
Five languages of love we are
sure of, no more so far.

8
10 tally marks looks a lot
like less. Some things, like
people, refuse to show their
face.

7
13 is supposedly an unlucky
number. At this age I uncovered
a part of myself I did not know
before. Discovery. This is luck.

6
A dozen is meant to represent 12
because it is simpler, same syllables
only one less letter, a convenience.

5
If you flip an eight on its side
you can see forever.

4
Seven times I've thought this poem
gimmicky.

3
[redacted for time constraints
and continuity]

2
The artist places her pen to
paper and borrows, not stealing
so much as salvaging, wrapping
old presents in neat new bows,
satin or silk or rough twine.
Nine variations on the same
subject.

1
Four lids harbor two eyes,
a galaxy, universe,
each hiding half a heaven
from view.

funny how they write in their spare time poetry, or that they
write poetry in their spare time as art's necessity:
the fifth minding the four are lacking in functioning
accountability - never necessary, but always there.
poetry akin to such past-times as gluing together
model aeroplanes - what a shame for the art
that no longer attracts the upper-muddle class
to "excess" themselves as if salvaging something
worth a brief encounter with the Antiques' Roadshow.
the love i loved since the Renaissance was
extinguished ever since we've been left with
part-time art, artists on the sly -
more than impotent popes -
i mean impotent popes, impotent popes -
old men knowing as much of art
as the art of decoration - floral canapes
and wallpaper scraps? that'll do.
royal highness, hmm, whatnot?
crimson is synonymous with cherry on paper -
but in an artwork totally antonymous,
the peculiarity of shades necessary - old stink
of unpolished mahogany of Burgundy, the deep red
almost brown - settling into respectably dated bottles.
i guess democracy is short-lived,
we're all uneducated illiterate X on the ballot papers -
sign your name with X -
but they educated us and robbed us at the same time -
all you have left concerning a *** life is
consolidation in ******* -
a cocktail shaker ******* to mind
along with the guillotine - chopped off, not stirred.
well, i'm sure they care, care as much
for their children's teddy bear - ooh smooch coma
self-abuse - the revealing part is st. Paul's cathedral -
as once it stood in zeppelin shadow,
so too it stood in the Focke-Wulf Ta 154 Moskito's shadow:
biblical reminiscence of the lord of mosquitoes
rather than Beelzebub - and a McDonald's takeaway;
western society is so ******* keen on utilising
respected sadism - so keen that it doesn't bother to read
books - the paranoid me says to the un-paranoid me?
why would these people once salon bound
educate us for the purpose of reading by making reading
non-vogue - if they themselves have not found
reading a part based on a stiffening? but i hardly think
a book is worth a pyramid of human sweat - less brow
and more armpit sweat - i still find it frightening that they
seemed to educate us in order to read book reviews
and become informed via that than the actual books themselves -
meanwhile the Chinese are laughing with "menial" labour
kindred of the unconscious prescribe of the drum-kit of the heart,
via being existentially less demanding -
via a respect for family - what with the sadist nurses
and aged soiled great-grandparents in fly-saliva-spas
on the quick to comment on your professionalism and keen
career making.... well, urbanity served us well,
until the times of: not so well.
oh sure, my vocabulary can sometimes become a
chewing gum simulation - elsewhere it's considered pure fibre:
means you eat less than you **** out.

you say the problem
is I am ground zero
   I am the Earth's surface closest to the detonation
you say the problem is
I am ground zero
    and the Earth is at war.

I kept trying to tell you
I was made to feel.
everything on this Earth that exists without a purpose
all the ethereal
that was made for me.
    and I am made to feel.

and I feel those things.

but she doesn't care she says
what are you hiding

stop, i'm not,
just trying
    i'm trying to forget

now she's screaming

why are you behind
why aren't you keeping
yourself here
why are you always drifting
why is there so much fog around you
why is there so much fog around you

stop crying i'm so sorry

because I am feeling so much
all the time
and I am drowning in myself
and i just want to know how come it always ends up with
me on the floor sinking.

of every mistake of
every person on this Earth
and they are all
causing me SO MUCH
I don't know which one did it to me first

how many names do you have for frustration?
how many names do you have for frustration?

if it makes you happy, i'll have none.

okay okay I'll
**** it up and say
I'm calling you again
hoping you'd pick up because
all I'm ever asking you to do is to
to take all these pieces of
me and reconstruct them into something
that makes sense to us.

it already makes sense to you

You think it makes sense to me?
which part of it?
   why i'm thinking about
these things all the time
why i'm losing myself in my own mind
why i'm trying to get  back
          into what i'm trying to leave behind
why i can't admit to habit
but i can admit to loving some of that kind?

i'm still salvaging
nothing's changed
i'm still salvaging dollops of conversations we've not yet had
this is a continuation
of the love I used to feel.
it doesn't mean it wasn't
real
it's just not
here.

so you expect me to feel better?

then where were you when I was trying to convince myself that I'm too busy thinking to feel?
that I'm too busy feeling to think?
and which is worse? i'm asking you, but you're dreaming now, aren't you/

                   It's okay.
but do you keep wondering whether it's worse that these feelings don't come from me
               that they come from you and everyone else on this Earth setting off a million things all at once
clawing at earth
pulling apart at earth
     pulling apart at earth
the earth of the Earth that's always tried so hard to be my ground
and yet you all break it
      and expect me not to fall in cracks
that I promise you I tried to
fill with
everything you wanted me to fill with but
I was never a builder. I was never
able to fix anything
more than I was able to stare at it
with a longingness that never served me any good.
then yes
but now my thinking session is over- you're awake again"
you say
I am ground zero
and everyone is
going through
the same war over and over
and I'm so sorry I'm so sorry to say this
but can't you just get out?

and
that was two months ago
now you're whispering
you're caught in yourself, you're caught in yourself, you're caught in yourself
so I can't help you
caught in everything around you but
mostly caught in yourself
and crashing into waves
that are so intent on crashing back into you

always letting go of things you know will
come back for you
and pulling at moons and watching them float past you
and betting on games
and losing those, too

and even after all that
she takes my hand and says
*you're going to lose me too

I'll go under the knife
Operate on myself
Split my head open with the toothpicks I used to poke at leftover failures that weren't there

I'll take my own brains out of my head with my hands
Ask the doctor for a scalpel
And maybe a friend

Humans weren't always like this, you know
Maybe there was a time when the things we were most afraid of were outside of our heads, maybe there were enclosures besides our own ribcage we never wanted to be trapped in

I feel a mini version of myself
Pounding against the glass of my forehead
Begging to be let out

The key is around here somewhere, maybe
But I can't be too sure because at some point being stuck in my own head was all I ever wanted.

Let me out.

I breathe here and there
The rest of the time I feel lifeless
There is nothing in my body worth salvaging
I could call a suicide hotline and ask them why I would ever want to live

And they wouldn't know what to say
The world would be more or less the same without me

Why do I plunge daggers into my own legs and then sit on the rocks by the trail to mourn my fate
Unsuccessful
Worthless
Wasted
I could have been so much more
More what, you ask
And the truth is I don't know

Maybe I am a paper cup in a cupboard of crystal glasses and beautiful things

Maybe I'm the ashes after the rare and beautiful light of the fire has faded

How am I supposed to know what I am?

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder
But the beholder is broken because the beholder is me.

Maybe one day I will gather my postcard thoughts and have a thesis on why people hate, and why my face twists into ugly grimaces when I think about the bad in the world

I wish the good had as powerful an effect as the bad, and maybe it does but the good might not occur as often.

I don't really have a way to end this,
Even though I want to.

And the lines above could refer to my life, this poem, these tragedies.

How distant my Swabian* youth seems now.
I made a glider which really flew, you know.*
Not far, but yes, it carried me! I soared!
  
Some accused me of being a showboat,
of tooting my own horn. . . . I learned early
that the laurels don't go to the meek or the bashful.
  
Yes, I was a ****. Those aristocrats
on the General Staff* belittled the Fuhrer--
but where had they gotten us?
I liked his enthusiasm and optimism.
We were in a hole; he led us out,
got the economy going again,
restored the Sudetenland and Danzig.
(Danzig where Lucie and I had been married!)
  
I thought Poland would be the end
but when we attacked in the West
I didn't shrink away.
My troops and I were the very spearhead:
strike quickly; do the unexpected.
  
Who was I to deny
Germany's world-wide destiny?
  
The African war agreed with me.
The open space gave a latitude to my strategy
lacking in hilly, forested Europe.

The victory at Tobruk is often cited
as the height of genius, military.  
I, myself, prefer what preceded it:
the retreat into Tripolitania--
salvaging men and tanks, shortening supply lines,
lulling the British into complacency;
turning and stinging at Agedabia.

El Alamein: the Fuhrer and I part company.
"Victory or Death", he cabled me.
I disagreed: my men would not die senselessly.

We were desperate for gasoline.
Ship after ship was sunk trying to deliver it.
(Lax Italian security, no doubt.)
  
We were outnumbered five to one.
I favored withdrawing immediately,
consolidating troops in Europe.
The Fuhrer wouldn't hear of it.
  
I flew to East Prussia to confront him.
He'd grown pudgier, more strident--
wouldn't give an inch.
I sensed that not just Africa
but the war as a whole would be lost.
The weight of the forces against us was crushing.
The only question'd been their willingness to fight.
That had been answered at Stalingrad.
  
I fought on in Italy and in France,
hoping to convince the enemy
that the price of taking Europe--
especially Germany--
would be too high.

I really thought we had a chance
to stop them on the beaches.
But now that we've failed, our destruction's inevitable.
  
I've tried to make the Fuhrer see reason:
surrender to the British and Americans;
don't let our country be overrun by Russia.
  
He condoned ******--
ordered me to **** the French Jewish soldiers
who'd surrendered at Bir Hacheim,* for instance,
(I didn't) -- and much more. . . . And yet,
and yet, I couldn't quite bring myself to wish him dead--
and certainly never took part in that plot--
though, yes, I knew of it . . . after a fashion. . . .
Defending myself to that group would be hopeless. . . .
Lucie and Manfred must be spared
the humiliation of hearing me declared a traitor.

I bestrode the plains of Africa--
Rommel, the invincible--
always with the troops where the battle was most critical.
I was crafty and brave,
dared to act when others shied away.
I was the apple of the Fuhrer's eye;
idol of the German people;
scourge of the British military.
All the world applauded me. I lost--
but only when outnumbered overwhelmingly.
  
Now I sit in the back of this Opel*--
an outcast, a criminal--
waiting to take a cyanide pill.

We failed to assess properly
the will of other nations to honor treaties
and preserve their freedom.
And, more basically:
Were we right to force our rule on other people?

Icarus-like, we flew too high.

We were bold and strong
but it seems, in the end,
in the end, not supermen.

sometimes i think about our friendship.
there's nothing worth salvaging,
i just remember
when we hated ourselves with a passion
that belonged to an empty past

we found ways of lighting matches
and setting flames to things
that we never even knew existed

and then the king of marionettes
tied strings to all his enemies

and the ones he should have trusted most
were considered unpredictable because
he did not control them

and so he hated us all
and i cried because i think
i may miss who we used to be

I cast my shine
far back into the
darkest of times.

I'm looking for
the reason,
a word,
the moment that
will complete
this next line.

I'm rummaging
like a wino in
the trash for
something worth
salvaging.

I'll pull out a
worthy memory
like a rabbit
by the ears.
Lay it all out
letter by
let down by
shinning moment.

That feeling which
is this hole
in my
chest where love
once lived begins
to fill
with every line
completed.

I began to smile
and soon feel
whole.

Each one completed
is another one
ended.
And once again
I began to
panic.

Grief
Collapse, Wreckage
Settling, Salvaging, Crumbling
Profound loss of rose-colored glasses
Trapped.

back then, when communism was
heralded on the fifth of may
to glorify work,
you had old people dump coffee
beans into the river because
no one told them what to do with it,
you had unselfish atheism back then,
you were encapsulated as a species,
fully noble to be categorised as
**** sapiens; but now you're not;
we're all artists now,
spare time writing wonders,
full time displaying unmade beds
in former power-stations of vast spaces...
i guess in order to provoke thought...
after all, congested spaces breed
claustrophobia, a display in an economised
space like that is no comparison to a
large open space where you sort of
have to attract thinking
about the most debased work imaginable
to be considered in the realm of being, a
qualifiable work of "art"... well, what do you expect,
qualifying an unmade bed as art will
give you insight into newtonian causality
(i know, einstein muddled it a bit):
to qualify an unmade bed as art akin to
the statue of david will eventually
quantify an expression of art in another
medium exponentially, namely poetry;
modern visual art is the reason why
we have an exponential increase in
poetic output - if the beauty in visual art is
missing or is abstract or just plain ugly,
people will turn to the 26 signatures
to simply un-imagine what's being plated,
by the time we return to the grander aesthetics...
well, by the time anything is accomplished,
people will have to re-imagine the body
by salvaging it from *******,
and poetry will have to depose what advertising
does to the phonetic units, with so many
fonts and copyright trademarks whatever.