A Poem for Three Voices

Setting:  A Maternity Ward and round about

FIRST VOICE:
I am slow as the world.  I am very patient,
Turning through my time, the suns and stars
Regarding me with attention.
The moon's concern is more personal:
She passes and repasses, luminous as a nurse.
Is she sorry for what will happen?  I do not think so.
She is simply astonished at fertility.

When I walk out, I am a great event.
I do not have to think, or even rehearse.
What happens in me will happen without attention.
The pheasant stands on the hill;
He is arranging his brown feathers.
I cannot help smiling at what it is I know.
Leaves and petals attend me.  I am ready.

SECOND VOICE:
When I first saw it, the small red seep, I did not believe it.
I watched the men walk about me in the office.  They were so flat!
There was something about them like cardboard, and now I had caught it,
That flat, flat, flatness from which ideas, destructions,
Bulldozers, guillotines, white chambers of shrieks proceed,
Endlessly proceed--and the cold angels, the abstractions.
I sat at my desk in my stockings, my high heels,

And the man I work for laughed:  'Have you seen something awful?
You are so white, suddenly.'  And I said nothing.
I saw death in the bare trees, a deprivation.
I could not believe it.  Is it so difficult
For the spirit to conceive a face, a mouth?
The letters proceed from these black keys, and these black keys proceed
From my alphabetical fingers, ordering parts,

Parts, bits, cogs, the shining multiples.
I am dying as I sit.  I lose a dimension.
Trains roar in my ears, departures, departures!
The silver track of time empties into the distance,
The white sky empties of its promise, like a cup.
These are my feet, these mechanical echoes.
Tap, tap, tap, steel pegs.  I am found wanting.

This is a disease I carry home, this is a death.
Again, this is a death.  Is it the air,
The particles of destruction I **** up?  Am I a pulse
That wanes and wanes, facing the cold angel?
Is this my lover then?  This death, this death?
As a child I loved a lichen-bitten name.
Is this the one sin then, this old dead love of death?

THIRD VOICE:
I remember the minute when I knew for sure.
The willows were chilling,
The face in the pool was beautiful, but not mine--
It had a consequential look, like everything else,
And all I could see was dangers:  doves and words,
Stars and showers of gold--conceptions, conceptions!
I remember a white, cold wing

And the great swan, with its terrible look,
Coming at me, like a castle, from the top of the river.
There is a snake in swans.
He glided by; his eye had a black meaning.
I saw the world in it--small, mean and black,
Every little word hooked to every little word, and act to act.
A hot blue day had budded into something.

I wasn't ready.  The white clouds rearing
Aside were dragging me in four directions.
I wasn't ready.
I had no reverence.
I thought I could deny the consequence--
But it was too late for that.  It was too late, and the face
Went on shaping itself with love, as if I was ready.

SECOND VOICE:
It is a world of snow now.  I am not at home.
How white these sheets are.  The faces have no features.
They are bald and impossible, like the faces of my children,
Those little sick ones that elude my arms.
Other children do not touch me:  they are terrible.
They have too many colors, too much life.  They are not quiet,
Quiet, like the little emptinesses I carry.

I have had my chances.  I have tried and tried.
I have stitched life into me like a rare *****,
And walked carefully, precariously, like something rare.
I have tried not to think too hard.  I have tried to be natural.
I have tried to be blind in love, like other women,
Blind in my bed, with my dear blind sweet one,
Not looking, through the thick dark, for the face of another.

I did not look.  But still the face was there,
The face of the unborn one that loved its perfections,
The face of the dead one that could only be perfect
In its easy peace, could only keep holy so.
And then there were other faces.  The faces of nations,
Governments, parliaments, societies,
The faceless faces of important men.

It is these men I mind:
They are so jealous of anything that is not flat!  They are jealous gods
That would have the whole world flat because they are.
I see the Father conversing with the Son.
Such flatness cannot but be holy.
'Let us make a heaven,' they say.
'Let us flatten and launder the grossness from these souls.'

FIRST VOICE:
I am calm.  I am calm.  It is the calm before something awful:
The yellow minute before the wind walks, when the leaves
Turn up their hands, their pallors.  It is so quiet here.
The sheets, the faces, are white and stopped, like clocks.
Voices stand back and flatten.  Their visible hieroglyphs
Flatten to parchment screens to keep the wind off.
They paint such secrets in Arabic, Chinese!

I am dumb and brown.  I am a seed about to break.
The brownness is my dead self, and it is sullen:
It does not wish to be more, or different.
Dusk hoods me in blue now, like a Mary.
O color of distance and forgetfulness!--
When will it be, the second when Time breaks
And eternity engulfs it, and I drown utterly?

I talk to myself, myself only, set apart--
Swabbed and lurid with disinfectants, sacrificial.
Waiting lies heavy on my lids.  It lies like sleep,
Like a big sea.  Far off, far off, I feel the first wave tug
Its cargo of agony toward me, inescapable, tidal.
And I, a shell, echoing on this white beach
Face the voices that overwhelm, the terrible element.

THIRD VOICE:
I am a mountain now, among mountainy women.
The doctors move among us as if our bigness
Frightened the mind.  They smile like fools.
They are to blame for what I am, and they know it.
They hug their flatness like a kind of health.
And what if they found themselves surprised, as I did?
They would go mad with it.

And what if two lives leaked between my thighs?
I have seen the white clean chamber with its instruments.
It is a place of shrieks.  It is not happy.
'This is where you will come when you are ready.'
The night lights are flat red moons.  They are dull with blood.
I am not ready for anything to happen.
I should have murdered this, that murders me.

FIRST VOICE:
There is no miracle more cruel than this.
I am dragged by the horses, the iron hooves.
I last.  I last it out.  I accomplish a work.
Dark tunnel, through which hurtle the visitations,
The visitations, the manifestations, the startled faces.
I am the center of an atrocity.
What pains, what sorrows must I be mothering?

Can such innocence **** and ****?  It milks my life.
The trees wither in the street.  The rain is corrosive.
I taste it on my tongue, and the workable horrors,
The horrors that stand and idle, the slighted godmothers
With their hearts that tick and tick, with their satchels of instruments.
I shall be a wall and a roof, protecting.
I shall be a sky and a hill of good:  O let me be!

A power is growing on me, an old tenacity.
I am breaking apart like the world.  There is this blackness,
This ram of blackness.  I fold my hands on a mountain.
The air is thick.  It is thick with this working.
I am used.  I am drummed into use.
My eyes are squeezed by this blackness.
I see nothing.

SECOND VOICE:
I am accused.  I dream of massacres.
I am a garden of black and red agonies.  I drink them,
Hating myself, hating and fearing.  And now the world conceives
Its end and runs toward it, arms held out in love.
It is a love of death that sickens everything.
A dead sun stains the newsprint.  It is red.
I lose life after life.  The dark earth drinks them.

She is the vampire of us all.  So she supports us,
Fattens us, is kind.  Her mouth is red.
I know her.  I know her intimately--
Old winter-face, old barren one, old time bomb.
Men have used her meanly.  She will eat them.
Eat them, eat them, eat them in the end.
The sun is down.  I die.  I make a death.

FIRST VOICE:
Who is he, this blue, furious boy,
Shiny and strange, as if he had hurtled from a star?
He is looking so angrily!
He flew into the room, a shriek at his heel.
The blue color pales.  He is human after all.
A red lotus opens in its bowl of blood;
They are stitching me up with silk, as if I were a material.

What did my fingers do before they held him?
What did my heart do, with its love?
I have never seen a thing so clear.
His lids are like the lilac-flower
And soft as a moth, his breath.
I shall not let go.
There is no guile or warp in him.  May he keep so.

SECOND VOICE:
There is the moon in the high window.  It is over.
How winter fills my soul!  And that chalk light
Laying its scales on the windows, the windows of empty offices,
Empty schoolrooms, empty churches.  O so much emptiness!
There is this cessation.  This terrible cessation of everything.
These bodies mounded around me now, these polar sleepers--
What blue, moony ray ices their dreams?

I feel it enter me, cold, alien, like an instrument.
And that mad, hard face at the end of it, that O-mouth
Open in its gape of perpetual grieving.
It is she that drags the blood-black sea around
Month after month, with its voices of failure.
I am helpless as the sea at the end of her string.
I am restless.  Restless and useless.  I, too, create corpses.

I shall move north.  I shall move into a long blackness.
I see myself as a shadow, neither man nor woman,
Neither a woman, happy to be like a man, nor a man
Blunt and flat enough to feel no lack.  I feel a lack.
I hold my fingers up, ten white pickets.
See, the darkness is leaking from the cracks.
I cannot contain it.  I cannot contain my life.

I shall be a heroine of the peripheral.
I shall not be accused by isolate buttons,
Holes in the heels of socks, the white mute faces
Of unanswered letters, coffined in a letter case.
I shall not be accused, I shall not be accused.
The clock shall not find me wanting, nor these stars
That rivet in place abyss after abyss.

THIRD VOICE:
I see her in my sleep, my red, terrible girl.
She is crying through the glass that separates us.
She is crying, and she is furious.
Her cries are hooks that catch and grate like cats.
It is by these hooks she climbs to my notice.
She is crying at the dark, or at the stars
That at such a distance from us shine and whirl.

I think her little head is carved in wood,
A red, hard wood, eyes shut and mouth wide open.
And from the open mouth issue sharp cries
Scratching at my sleep like arrows,
Scratching at my sleep, and entering my side.
My daughter has no teeth.  Her mouth is wide.
It utters such dark sounds it cannot be good.

FIRST VOICE:
What is it that flings these innocent souls at us?
Look, they are so exhausted, they are all flat out
In their canvas-sided cots, names tied to their wrists,
The little silver trophies they've come so far for.
There are some with thick black hair, there are some bald.
Their skin tints are pink or sallow, brown or red;
They are beginning to remember their differences.

I think they are made of water; they have no expression.
Their features are sleeping, like light on quiet water.
They are the real monks and nuns in their identical garments.
I see them showering like stars on to the world--
On India, Africa, America, these miraculous ones,
These pure, small images.  They smell of milk.
Their footsoles are untouched.  They are walkers of air.

Can nothingness be so prodigal?
Here is my son.
His wide eye is that general, flat blue.
He is turning to me like a little, blind, bright plant.
One cry.  It is the hook I hang on.
And I am a river of milk.
I am a warm hill.

SECOND VOICE:
I am not ugly.  I am even beautiful.
The mirror gives back a woman without deformity.
The nurses give back my clothes, and an identity.
It is usual, they say, for such a thing to happen.
It is usual in my life, and the lives of others.
I am one in five, something like that.  I am not hopeless.
I am beautiful as a statistic.  Here is my lipstick.

I draw on the old mouth.
The red mouth I put by with my identity
A day ago, two days, three days ago.  It was a Friday.
I do not even need a holiday; I can go to work today.
I can love my husband, who will understand.
Who will love me through the blur of my deformity
As if I had lost an eye, a leg, a tongue.

And so I stand, a little sightless.  So I walk
Away on wheels, instead of legs, they serve as well.
And learn to speak with fingers, not a tongue.
The body is resourceful.
The body of a starfish can grow back its arms
And newts are prodigal in legs.  And may I be
As prodigal in what lacks me.

THIRD VOICE:
She is a small island, asleep and peaceful,
And I am a white ship hooting:  Goodbye, goodbye.
The day is blazing.  It is very mournful.
The flowers in this room are red and tropical.
They have lived behind glass all their lives, they have been cared for
        tenderly.
Now they face a winter of white sheets, white faces.
There is very little to go into my suitcase.

There are the clothes of a fat woman I do not know.
There is my comb and brush.  There is an emptiness.
I am so vulnerable suddenly.
I am a wound walking out of hospital.
I am a wound that they are letting go.
I leave my health behind.  I leave someone
Who would adhere to me:  I undo her fingers like bandages:  I go.

SECOND VOICE:
I am myself again.  There are no loose ends.
I am bled white as wax, I have no attachments.
I am flat and virginal, which means nothing has happened,
Nothing that cannot be erased, ripped up and scrapped, begun again.
There little black twigs do not think to bud,
Nor do these dry, dry gutters dream of rain.
This woman who meets me in windows--she is neat.

So neat she is transparent, like a spirit.
how shyly she superimposes her neat self
On the inferno of African oranges, the heel-hung pigs.
She is deferring to reality.
It is I.  It is I--
Tasting the bitterness between my teeth.
The incalculable malice of the everyday.

FIRST VOICE:
How long can I be a wall, keeping the wind off?
How long can I be
Gentling the sun with the shade of my hand,
Intercepting the blue bolts of a cold moon?
The voices of loneliness, the voices of sorrow
Lap at my back ineluctably.
How shall it soften them, this little lullaby?

How long can I be a wall around my green property?
How long can my hands
Be a bandage to his hurt, and my words
Bright birds in the sky, consoling, consoling?
It is a terrible thing
To be so open:  it is as if my heart
Put on a face and walked into the world.

THIRD VOICE:
Today the colleges are drunk with spring.
My black gown is a little funeral:
It shows I am serious.
The books I carry wedge into my side.
I had an old wound once, but it is healing.
I had a dream of an island, red with cries.
It was a dream, and did not mean a thing.

FIRST VOICE:
Dawn flowers in the great elm outside the house.
The swifts are back.  They are shrieking like paper rockets.
I hear the sound of the hours
Widen and die in the hedgerows.  I hear the moo of cows.
The colors replenish themselves, and the wet
Thatch smokes in the sun.
The narcissi open white faces in the orchard.

I am reassured.  I am reassured.
These are the clear bright colors of the nursery,
The talking ducks, the happy lambs.
I am simple again.  I believe in miracles.
I do not believe in those terrible children
Who injure my sleep with their white eyes, their fingerless hands.
They are not mine.  They do not belong to me.

I shall meditate upon normality.
I shall meditate upon my little son.
He does not walk. &n

In time we stand still forgetting the memories
That burden the frontier with poison and tragedy
Lest we forget that the deed had been signed
By prospectors and cowboys who’ve long since died
Aiming a loaded shell towards eradication
An idea that precedes psychopathy in terms of petition
Yet ponders so freely to children so willing to point them the barrel and fire such rounds

I urgently take the bounty for the hunting of the buffalo
Using their skulls for declination, a sturdy stronghold
Yet deep in heart I realize that it spawns back to devils
That pay only to spoil their countless fruits of survival
The cause paints our flag a brilliant blue
The blood breeds red and helps assimilate too
From their ponytails, against remorse, I could yank off their heads
And perhaps repay the herd of bison for their dead

We danced mountain songs naked under pale blue moonlight
Imitating their gestures in the style of caricature
The stars glistening, reflecting in pools of gory mucus
The rotting carcasses that attract forest vultures
Which we willingly hunt and devour without hesitance

A rack of scalps hung from the duster, cloth sodden with their fluids
Marking migration patterns on various maps to follow and stalk with
Here we sing to the villages of which we’ve burned down
Hoping that God, in His grace, could forgive such savage hounds
The calls of doves forfeit an olive branch
Which I gleefully wave just as they have
My own Trojan horse stitched together with leather
That wasn’t dried enough, and now radiates a stench that reminds us of their innards

I’ve slaughtered and mangled all over this place
Made worse by their stories of which I desecrate
Publishing such influent texts that examine the earlier beds
Of which they rose, so little prose, such daft fools with stone age tools
Crops yield only ******* food made for the feeding of the poor
Discarding the rest of them as bait or our personal ******

“I weep for the white hand that cared there for me!
To wrap me in blankets and help me to feed
The weak child in infancy cooing so sweet
Not knowing they’d have him killed in his sleep”
Annihilation fits best at the source, this genocide funded by the Master of Greater Deed and Good
The weary dead, the weary live, the weary now stay in places we couldn’t stand to be in

A gift that gives only twice, an upstart arch that cradles this land so warmly, inspiring us to embrace our homes
The promise of freedom which notions an equality we could find only in remembrance of scattered bones
The lawmen there, they never repent, they’ve lived all their lives and they never forget of their deeds, which secretly brings a perverse enjoyment none other recieve
Unless you count rapists and murderous men which tally their targets and hold out the heavy heads of victims in satchels and bags
A shame we now see them as monuments honored so swiftly, decorated with golden plaques
Please leave some flowers in the mass grave I was buried in, somewhere in Arizona, it wouldn’t hurt to sense the illusion of fresh air
A torso of tooth and rib and a dried clump of hair
Look down on your works, ye lowly, and despair!

For years, they stole and robbed from our pockets.
For years, they murdered what faith we had,
Killed what hope we gained for ourselves.
Poverty loomed over us like death, the
Loss of materialistic payment. Currency controls;
We have none.

Beginning with a silly addition to parchment and paper.
A "stamp act," if you will. Oh, the rarity of a few extra
Coins to spend on a cake for the mistress!
Rebellion and violence against the act increased,
The Sons, the ones of Liberty left
Blood splattered on the ground we walk on.
Fear installed in the hearts of agents,
Collecting and shivering as coins ring in their satchels.
Soon, though, they left. Resigned and replaced themselves with
Another thief.
The Townshend- adding cents more to imported,
Provided, goods. The people starved for things
They need and can not afford.
Naive. They had materials. They had the skill,
But no need to use what they contained in their minds
And their bodies.
Begin the new world! Spin your own yarn and twine!
Build your own shoes! You don't need the goods
From old English factories and makers.

The disagreements and retaliation, the lack in
Morality in the brainwashed heads of soldiers.
A bothered redcoat drew his gun, leaving holes,
Horrible voids.
The dive from cliff to cliff, swing from tree to tree,
The ****** of blood and
The determination to be freed from the grasp of
A controlling monarchy.
The greed they exhibit and the cruelty.
Revenge for taking what is ours?
Sweet tea, English tea,
Soaked in the harbor. The tax will be no more!

The need for peace, rejected by one
Who wanted control and a steady reign.
The isolation, suffocation of the new land like an
Abused child.

It was only a matter of time before the child ran away.

Where I grew up
We didn't celebrate celebrity
And weren't slaves
to the cattle-drivers of the masses

Where I grew up,
We were just young

And free

We toiled on train-tracks
Inventing troubles requiring
A daring escape.

With our stick-strapped-satchels
We foolishly mocked the local bums

Jealous of their freedom.
Ignorant of their pain.

Imitation is the hallmark of love
And yes, we loved the bums
And we were thorough through it

Where I grew up
The incandescence of the late afternoon
And early morning suns
Drew in a vibrant orange
Cast as paint on pale walls

The apartment... and eventually... the house
Shone brighter for it;
Though it seemed to struggle less in a house
That was considerably more empty

Especially around the holidays.

Where I grew up
We were taught racial and radical equality
Exacted with extreme prejudice
At every pep rally and presumably PTA meeting.

And while neighboring towns held race riots
We were racing our bikes, well...
I do miss my rollerblades

Where I grew up
Every girl was pretty as a movie star
And chased the bad boys
Like in every story I'd ever heard

And those boys won by popularity and power of presence
Girls they never deserved

Where I grew up
In winter we built massive palaces
From the winter's teardrops that huddled together
For warmth after the plow

Where I grew up...

I grew up too soon.
A little more than a little at a time
And it became clear
I had to move.

Between the cool-quarried kitchen
and paint-faded south facing door
runs a windowless wall
sugar-papered with childhood dreams.

Memories of roughly folded gifts
squirreled in satchels,
crossed creases still intact;
curled corners fixed with shiny pins.

Luminescent paint heartens the darkness of a pitch grotto
anticipating a flicked switch
to illuminate dimmed histories
of abstract symbols, visionless figures and countless fingers.

The small pink fists that captured
Time's most precious pieces,
now live with vaguely painted hope
of sheering unsteady walls
in their uncertain world.

You’ve got the lighter bags
Satchels of shame you slung over your shoulder
Then walked on
Well I’m far behind with weights of a different kind
And a suitcase of sorrow
And a duffel of doubt
And I’ve lost the words I long to shout
My mouth moves slow and mad
I’ve lost the legs that ache for adventure
And the skip inside that I once had
So I slip myself into one long lag
One sad song, one harsh drag
A caterpillar cocoon’s bundle of doom
Wrapped in a heart soon to break BOOM
Then I’ll be fine cause I’ll be gone
And you’ll wipe your head with your sighing palm
But thank the constellations
For the biting revelation
We’re just one eroding equation
Of empty elation and pretty persuasion
And my bags of demons shall remain
Under my eyes in a dark blue stain
And your bags of troubles will still remain light
Tossed over your shoulder in the cool of the night

I sit along the sunny sea
The waves
… kiss my toes.

I close my eyes
I giggle
Picking petals from a rose.

The scent
… of salty breezes;
A buoy sounds it’s bell.
Seashells tumble…;
Brother plays…
Sherman takes the hill.

Nana and Poppy are flying
Kite-tails…
Dance towards the sun.
The gulls hover free
Over the sea…
And, the sandpipers are on the run.

The summer’s cottage;
The stony walls
The rose garden blooms near the sea;

Remnants sewn
... in little satchels;
..., sea-salt and rose,  potpourri.

Stood lonesome beneath the old floodlight
Sweetest embrace, the Gods shone down
Forging great dramas in steel slabs
and returning home with a picture of Hollywood
I, sad-eyed fool, asked after you, and heard nothing
Though, in Benzedrine dreams I was gifted your scent
and awoke to the stench of ******* *****, and the powder dissolved
Ah, I have heard your voice
Yet you ignore mine

The great whale twisted in the alley, with biceps bulging
and tussling with hoodlums we were sent packing,
Awaiting us were the sterile walls of some grande hospital
Lined with officers, their pads and pens at the ready
Beds spinning, squinting under neon, docile
and confused

Bars and bars, from one t' other, flicking roaches into the gutter as we went
and howling at the harlots stood 'neath street lights, flickering
Poisoned in body, poisoned in mind, the spirit on it's way
Brick lanes and paddy wagons, urchins and knock-a-door run
The unshaven dealers, passing poor product to the children
and they, still in uniform, bleary eyed, satchels and sandwiches
We, tied, cuffed, stranded and free

Flags! The flags were a sight, satirical and stupefying
Patriotism always made me chuckle, it being so absurd
Yet her majesty still reigns supreme, have we no shame?
Oh justifiable mockery, tainted our streets, the names we know
How can one free one's country if one is but one person,
and how could one simultaneous be one million?

But even here in this mournful cell that layeth ten feet below, I am free, I may not know it yet, but I am...

I never thought I’d be one of those people
the ones who sit in coffee shop's on Bay
readied note pads in hand, sitting with engraved pens
bought by mothers with high expectations
of their child drawing out the new future

But here we sit, a collective sum
drawing out pathetic fallacy’s
peoples right arms
someone else's future in poetic prose
finding details in the blur
of business men rushing past
so green is a theme in these woods

Grande Decaf 2 Sugars 2 Milk
and a shot of espresso
I stayed up late finishing a politics paper
What’s keeping you up “Todd of TD Bank”
Your extravagant 2 bdrm 2.5 bth on Bloor?
Or the realization your wife cheated on you
with a younger college drop out
i don't actually care Todd
i just want to write a new **** poem

Satchels hang from wooden chairs made by moroccans who get paid bottom dollar
I sit drinking over the sweat of latin americans picking coffee beans in a summer heatwave
the music plays to mask the confusion i feel here
displaced
my sperrys muddy and unkept
i am a large flaw in this small system

i'll keep my pen gliding
finding the answers to my questions
hoping when my words meet they shake hands in agreement
they are thoughts but not entirely
thoughts are questions short lived
and often unanswered

it turns out theres no answers in my silver pen either
engraved with an edgar allen poe quote
to a poem my mom never bothered to read
she wants me to draw a future
yet doubts me in every step to achieving one

As men, we respond. With sticks, in garments wet with black anthologies of life
Which whistles out of us as thorns, and sticky eyes that point that way. Exact hours.
Despite lust, from what has taken us before- to that androgynous triumph that brings
Us tears as we undo our buttons. That rakes time over our backs with the needles of small
Trumpets the teeth of ghosts, blood on the stems, awarded to brass ballerinas dancing on
Wounds each quotient inside our breaths, terrified strips the branches from the everywhereness
In front of what we can't see. Or open our eyes. Or follow our hands. The legs that we used to know.
The pallid girl I called home, dusty eyelids with energies sharpened with the sweet water and gold Threads atop a haystack I burned in pyres of all the yesterdays.

Once I was human, but not for my breaths or my volume or my sullied attitudes. Not for the denature of
My rotten mood, or the noxious smells from some evil words, or noisome meat, or grueling and expired
Thoughts. Unrolled canvases cauterized with the silks shreds in a suitcase beyond. A caption unread Intwined at the bow of her hip, or the hems that dotted her skin. Black and blue staled songs a father Sung so long ago. The hill rolled on as our bodies clung to satchels we hid, each watery step we steeped In the mud, culms fell and I didn't think, I haven't thought; everything I forgot approaches the tines of my Nose once aching thews overcame the moors I'd undone, there acarpous hues were pried into me.

Everything I've seen, is a muse that disperses my lungs.
Is the incantation of the thoughts I don't spake. Intwined in the fingers I shook, at the people that I
Wanted to hate, I am steal the weight of their steps. This urgency, penury hides. The silt hasn't moved
From the cenacle place. While cloffined the ashes stuck to my face. An eroteme I still uphold
As if this rock inside of my chest, only wanes when I lay on her breast.

Consider it defunct,
Like a shuttered window,
Like a witless drunk.

Consider it done and said,
Like a water-logged book,
Like the service for the dead.

Consider it forgotten
Like packets of love letters,
In satchels that are rotten.

Consider it old news,
Like old somethings for a wedding,
Something blue, that you would choose.

Consider it's really over,
Like a badly mangled body
Finally covered by green clover.

Still Gabriella swears by the colour red,
Torn sashes of yesterday can only consume
the mindset of  her forgotten azure,
as the neck of dawn sneaks accidentally,
Yellow's parody the greater shame,
no school or satchels of mouldy black,
behind the lumme
she needed more time,
like a fulcrum balancing taciturn's turn.

she lives in a crystal ball of paradise.
at the windows flowers of any and every kind sell themselves to you
it's a rainforest in a china tea cup on a chipped saucer
it's a conservatory in north east England

for 10 years we've watched each other's lives
for a while I was small enough for it to be a jungle, somewhere I could get lost in
small enough to believe that tigers didn't live in the outside world
but then gradually it just became a constant.
something in my life that stayed the same
and kept the monsters in

entangled in the plants, ivy crept up the legs of a chair.
hugging it into the floor such that it too seemed to grow from roots
roots which after so long I stopped tripping over and became a part of.
next to the chair, fragmented through leaves, bits of a table sat
and within that, books, books , books

this well-read vegetation read me
as I walked past every day and stared
as I changed my routes and grew 2 feet taller
as I let others tread my path too, let them get my compost in their shoes
and I loved this paradise for not a single thing died or wilted in all of that time
and as I walked home carrying satchels of heavier problems I saw this chunk of rainforest and felt safe, somehow

it sits on the end of a long street 5 minutes away from my front door.
in it sits a woman who every day for 10 years waves at me but never speaks.
not to me or anyone it seems
she does not know me
I do not know her and yet she waves, and I wave
and it saves me.

and I wonder when it started and if she knows how important it is to me
or if I started it or she
or if her only purpose is to wave
or if she even likes flowers
or if she is real
or if we will ever speak.

I have no answers but one.
We will never speak.

a cold day, too cold for October, too damp for mild, milky, smokey October
I pass a lamp post not too far away and I see it's peak
The conservatory peak and I think ahead and I feel scared
for today I am not lost in my problems
I am broken by them and think of anything else
I think of the woman and of who she is and what she did and I resolve to wave first
and I do
and for the first time in 10 years there is no one to wave back.
but the flowers
and even they look wilted

I still wave to the marvellous woman who may or may not be there
I can't see her but then
i don't know I ever did
her paradise is still there though the flowers are pastels
and I wave
and still, in that glass paradise, nothing wilts or dies

construct and noose from tulip branch and be fed to the foxes
- live is in liver which will become desolate tomorrow trying to sort out my stupidity

I’m a numb statue
Built to remind you all
Of what isn’t worth doing

- diagnosing connection problems (with close friends)
- dance for the sake of keeping your mask intact

I hate you and love you all
In some odd dynamic way
I’m sober, then I’m resentful
I’m drunk, and intent’s full

- "where I end and you begin" if only I could begin with you
- "there’s a gap where we meet" ALL THE TIME

- why do I find it hard to connect to you? is it because we’re both fundamentally socially ******* or is one of us in denial of something
- can’t express ourselves without getting drunk oh dear

and then we trip out of windows
and break ferns and furniture

in some bold dream scene
ego’s arising like iron waves
for the queen of the scene

black serpent and white viper
scramble to avoid eachother

- four foxes once dwelled here
- mistakes can seem meticulous, just google it
- if you could cuddle an insecurity like it had flesh and breath
- finding a new depth, ***** maths exams
- why must I be this way to write the best poetry
- we don’t know how to raise kids, we’ll bribe them instead
- minimum wage ******, an absurd public order
- I love your quirks like I love canyons
- numb is sometimes good when you can share feelings but not thoughts
- COME OUT OF THE CLOSET ALREADY

washed away my mind
in wasteful wishful thinking
wish I left a morsel of me behind

buy and sell sense in satchels
premium price my parable
sell it for members only
******* elitist

bernake. bank my soul
store it in between your teeth
eat my wages, waste away resources

argumentative stepfathers
second in line
come again
when you can bend time

wasted my time
inebriated entrance only
scoring chicks, only
everyone else lies in denial

an embarrasment your ego
such a shame you cut your ****
now tell me something else

you love him deep down
you keep him from me
you keep him from the eye
I’d ******* but I lvoe you

paraplegic prophets
on denials and amphetamines
screaming obscenities
dreaming denied fantasies
jesus

get out of your shell
all that lies outside is hell
abolish the polished snakes
their heads are venomous

- “it’s awesome when I’m this ****** p because it’s harder to decipher the meaning behind my poetry”
- “or maybe I’m being pretentious”
- “but I’m ****** anyway so it doesn’t matter”
- “when we’re like this we deny responsibility and give to mother nature and her world”

the pallettes are patented
we’d nothing more to lose

my liquerrational ramblings

lungfish wallow in the sand
wait for the willowy fertile crescent
to change its course
snakes by a pyramid’s sphinx
there lotus grow papyrus scrolls
where stands a hippo
crocodiles are grim-eyed satchels
denial is not for you and I though

Younger now--
Winking-wards-back-
-Never feeding satchels
With broken thumbs.

Slightly sniffing-
Sorrows in--
Decrepit hand-bags,

The silence is short.

And supposing day-beings
Are breaking evenings,
For nights that always come.

We know attics; see-how
Detached I am.
That boldness of single
Salmon-sand.

Like the four horsemen
They're walking two abreast
In brown with clipboards;
Bulging satchels hang by their sides,
With brochures and pamphlets
For me, who looks down from my window,
To ponder when they leave.

The crowd on the hill is talking,
Gathering, nothing's still.
All ages, colors and creeds,
Smiling, grasping, awaiting his will.

It looks like earth they're offering,
Year after year the same.
Casting nets, these fishermen,
Fishermen beget.
They're card said they were sad to miss me.

They take it from the young and old,
The ill and hale, and all between.
They are the cream between the wafers,
These Guides and their cookies.

i wish there were more ways to say that i found an oasis in the form of your touch
i wish i could count the pains that i carry like satchels everyday
strung off my shoulders
i wish i knew why i refused to let them fall
i wish gravity would just have its way with me
toss me aside and find a new giddy little thing to run this so called world
i wish i knew how to tell you that i want to be a bird
not because they can fly away from here
not because they grace their homes with bright colored feathers i could never adorn
but because they are hollow
they are hollowed out, weak, frail and somehow it makes them stronger
or perhaps i wish not to be hollow
but to filled with something other than you

My satchels are mismatched
Its deer doesn't laugh
No pencil sharpener ever

کیف های مدرسه ام لنگه به لنگه اند
گوزن اش نمی خندد
هیچوقت تراش نداشت

Color’s dervish, wanton rays
bark big waves out to little eyes -
surmise that they could live so bright,
or cut their burden down in middle flight
with Pantone Answer. Limber fantasies
hung dainty on the wire, we blast
a spectrum: chilling op-eds,
townless crier making hay
from sunny days’ hot take.

Alarm us! Twist like windy satchels
full of Great Divide
between the Haves and Left-Behind.
And as the bank vanishes wage,
we colors come of age
in numbers borne to rap
the sounding toll upon its steady head
and leave for dead his monuments
to Avarice, Big Dollar pulled in tow -
it’s too much meat, you know.
Too sufferful for show
when corny love could fit the bill:
high-mounting, climbing still.

Arrest the cold diversions from
your living-time and feel the sun
whenever possible; the harbingers
of war will tremble color-ward
and drop the gun.

sweet child of the walrus
Horus was your father
in an african wilderness you ran
into waters of renewal
while white alligators hustle
all our dreams became nightmares
salvation is past
like a rash upon your skin
satchels of venom
if you choose them
people use them or
sell them to the markets for cash
splash in the water of the oasis
Isis my daughter
your feelings are safe and sound
the feminine essence is so divine
that you don’t let it spill out
against your better judgement
you return younger than an arrow
sparrows come before us
love is underestimated
like selves reflected in the sun
movement melts the mirror’s judgement
and suspends our hearts mid-sentence
no thoughts just comfort
pleasure in the moment’s oblivion
smooth like obsidian
we deserted our wanderings
and became a time ship of love

Places somewhere
Selling cream colored
Vases
Kept in golden colored
Satin satchels
Keeping
My whiskey
With crystal glasses
Life colorful

It's time to fold the deckchairs pack the buckets and the spades.
Your tan is just like everything eventually it fades.

No more ***** do, or lazy afternoon.
It's time to say goodbye my friends, we hope to see you soon.

It's time to iron the uniforms and polish all the shoes.
With heavy heart the satchels packed, gut wrenching Monday blues.

Summers over now my dear Jack Frost is in the wings.
We try to put the lady off but eventually she sings.

The king is in the counting house, the catchers in the rye.
There's emptiness inside my heart, a tear falls from my eye,

Because it's been the best of times makes coming down much worse.
No more whiskey in the jar no pennies in the purse.

Writing this has somehow helped, I'm starting to feel better.
I think I'll rummage in the drawer and find my Christmas sweater.