As Akurra got into his 1960 Impala his cellphone rings.  "Hello Amber what's going on?" asked Akurra as he cranked up his Impala.  "I'm here with Jade.  She's ready to do business.  The Black Crime Syndicate and the Jade Dragons are both waiting on you Akurra" said Amber as she stood across from Jade.  "I'll be there shortly Amber" said Akurra.   Akurra ended his call with Amber and drove off.  Akurra drove to his scrap yard on the north side of town where the Black Crime Syndicate and the Jade Dragons were waiting for him.  When Akurra pulled onto the premises of his scrap yard which was actually named The Scrap Yard he saw the Black Crime Syndicate and the Jade Dragons waiting for him.  I'm going to have to come up with a better name for my scrap yard thought Akurra as he exited his Impala.  Akurra walked up to Amber Forest and asked her how long has everyone been waiting.  "15 minutes" said Amber Forest.  "What type of mood is Jade in?" asked Akurra.  "She's in an up beat mood" answered Amber Forest.  Akurra walked over to Jade, gave her a hug and asked how was she doing.  "I'm doing good" said Jade.  "Let me unlock the gates to the scrap yard so we can get started" said Akurra.  As Everyone stood in the center of the scrap yard Jade told Akurra to make this quick.  "I hear you Jade" said Akurra.  Jade was a tall dark skin woman with plump lips and a small nose.  While standing there Jade thought about how it would be much better if the Jade Dragons and the Black Crime Syndicate was one organization.  I did always like Akurra, Jade thought to herself as she watched Akurra walk to the trunk of a smashed up Volks Wagon.  Akurra opened the trunk of the Volks Wagon and got out three pounds of ******.  "Is this what you're in such a hurry for?" asked Akurra as he held up the ******.  "Yes that's why I'm here" said Jade.  Removing her pocketbook from her shoulder Jade pulls out stacks of money.  As Jade paid Akurra for the ****** she pulls him close and whispers in his ear "Akurra I would like to have a private meeting just the two of us."  Akurra handed Jade the ****** and gave her a hug.  Akurra whispers in Jade ear "Ok but we will meet at Club Envy on Saturday at midnight."  After Jade and the Jade Dragons left the scrap yard the Black Crime Syndicate top ranking members wanted to know what Akurra and Jade was talking about.  "When the time is right I'll tell all of you but for right now y'all need to stay in your lane and let me and Jade take care of things.  Now it's time for me to go home and record this and mail everyone's pay check" said Akurra.  After locking up the scrap yard Akurra drove home.  Akurra lived alone in a one bedroom apartment and drove a 1996 Impala.  Akurra wasn't a big spender or a show off.  He liked staying under everyone's radar.  Only a few members of the Black Crime Syndicate knew where Akurra lived.  Amber Forest was one of them.  When Akurra pulled into his parking spot in front of his apartment he saw someone slumped over on his doorsteps.  Looking at the figure Akurra could tell that it was a woman.  Who could this be thought Akurra as he got out of his car.  Slowly walking up to the woman Akurra reached out his hand touching the woman.  Akurra then crouched down to look in the woman's face.  "What on earth is going on here?" Akurra asked himself.  "Oh my God this is Violet.  Someone murdered Violet.  What is this in her mouth?" said Akurra.

Written by Keith Edward Baucum

Her nightmares are rare
But they are fierce when they’re there
When she wakes up in tears, it’s not like nobody cares
But she’s a giving soul who knows inside
That they all need their rest
She won’t call him late at night because
Tomorrow he must be at his best
Still, in desperate need she reaches out
Into the darkest deeps
To her nightstand drawer, where from months before
So tenderly she keeps

A little scrap of paper
Torn around the edge
All marked up and scribbled on
With his handwritten pledge
To love and to hold
Written out in number code
She knows she’ll never be afraid
As long as she can hold it in her hand
The little scrap of paper from her nightstand

Their little fights don’t happen often
But it takes time for her heart to soften
When she goes away in tears, she wonders if he cares
But she’s a loving soul who knows inside
That she just needs a break
She’ll cry until she’s out of breath
And her head will start to ache
Then in desperate need, she will reach out
From the coldest, darkest deeps
To her nightstand drawer, where from years before
She secretly still keeps

A little scrap of paper
Torn around the edge
All marked up and scribbled on
With his untarnished pledge
To love and to hold
Written out in number code
She knows she can’t be angry long
As long as she can hold it in her hand
The little scrap of paper from her nightstand

And the years fly by
And the flowers die
And the winter presses in
Still the snow can’t harm her
He’ll keep her warm with the
Page of his heart that he gave
Yes words last far beyond age’s curse
When written on the note he slipped in her purse

Her nightmares are rare
But they are fierce when they’re there
When she wakes up in tears, and knows he isn’t there
But she’s a patient soul who knows inside
That she’ll see him again
He’s the only reason she still talks to God
Because God will give him her “amen.”
Still, in desperate need she reaches out
From the coldest, darkest deeps
To her nightstand drawer, where from ages before
She still reads, and she still keeps

A little scrap of paper
Frayed around the edge
All stained dark and wrinkled up
Containing his undying pledge
To love and to hold
Written out in number code
She knows she won’t be lonely long
As long as she can hold it in her hand
The little scrap of paper from her nightstand

This scrap piece of paper
Could have been a plane
But, instead, it's a poem by me;
Not burnt into vapour,
Folded like a crane,
Or anything else it could be.

This scrap piece of paper,
Now scrap more than ever,
Because I have added these words,
Which now start to taper,
Because I'm not clever
Enough to write of paper birds.

This scrap piece of paper
Has no more left to give
Apart from the next three forced lines;
It won't save the tapir,
Teach you how you should live,
Or help you pay old parking fines.

I'm on a train.

One of those red ones with black trimmed windows you can imagine rolling through the suburbs on the way to NYC. Not a subway car but a classier vintage with proper rows of cushioned seats and a lever to pull if there is an emergency. There are sparse shrubberies on one side of the tracks and the ocean on the other. Young trees and bushes stroll by.  A little wind is pushing off the ocean, massaging the car ever so gently back and forth as we move along. A gentle click-clack is on the tips of our ears.

We got on together. I hadn't known you for very long but the connection was stronger than anything I had ever felt or have since. You practically sat on top of me for the first few miles. Couldn't keep your hands off me,  staring in my eyes like you were searching for something lost but you couldn't remember what. The edges of your lips turned upwards permanently as if you were always at the verge of a laugh. You interlaced my fingers with yours and held on like you would be ripped away if your grip loosened for even a second. Slender fingers holding so tightly that they were becoming red.

You were excited to to be riding with me, about where we were going and all the things we would do when we got there. I would see you peer out of the corner of your eye, then lean over to brush your soft cheek against my budding stubble. Kissing and gently biting my lips insatiably. The suns rays coming in at an angle and lighting up your perfect smile and dimple.

I had to remind you we were in public.

I was lost in your blonde curls and the incense of your neck. I had fallen incredibly hard and so fast that my face hurt from smiling and my heart beat with vibrations I had never known. Not even a whiff of anxiety or neurosis. Some of the best memories of my life, as fleeting as they turned out to be.

I yawned and you put your finger in my mouth. I bent over to tie my shoe and you would poke my **** and laugh with your own reflection in the window, like this was the first and best joke of all time. Maybe it was and maybe it is.

The waiter came and informed us that a thing called "the bar car" existed. We both jumped at the idea. I didn't exactly notice at the time, during our excitement, but that's when the train started going faster and everything out the windows began to blur.

The bar car was a wild ride and we took advantage of our lo'cal. All kinds of fine wine, liquors and illicit substances were available. We tried them all. You were beautiful, your laugh infecting everyone around you, I was charming and held a captive audience.   It was a dark, loud and glorious blur. We were the life of the party and it chugged on till dawn.

We woke up in our seats, disheveled and discombobulated. It was dark out already. Did we sleep through the entire day? The train was slowing down, maybe approaching a station. The party was amazing but we were certainly paying the price for the black out. You moved over to the seat across from me to have some more space and lay down. I saw myself in the reflection. My hat, charm and smile from the night before had vanished. I must have left them in the bar car the night before.
      You had changed, beauty uninterrupted but different somehow. I couldn't put my finger on it. Irritated maybe? I invited you to cuddle and battle the hangover together but you ignored me. Like you couldn't hear me or didn't want to. I decided to let you be.

I got up to use the bathroom and thought I would go look for my scattered belongings. Maybe I could find a scrap of leftover dignity while you rested. I inquired to the conductor who directed me to the bartender in the bar car. He hadn't changed a bit, somehow untouched and unaffected by last nights antics that had effected me so dramatically.  Same black suspenders and white pressed shirt with impeccably slicked hair. I asked him what happened and if I had an open tab. While slowly polishing a rocks glass he looked up and made eye contact for a split second before looking away.
He said:  "Oh the bar car takes its toll. In the end we all end up paying one way or another". I still don't know what he meant by that or if he knew.
      I asked him if he found my hat and he said he would check the camera. We walked in to a small back room, while he was reviewing the tape, over his shoulder I noticed a tragedy.

We were drunk. I was going on to a group of new friends on one side of the bar, they were hanging on my words and I was eagerly explaining whatever nonsense they were drooling over. You were in the corner wearing that red dress I love, with your hair up in a tight bun. A few curls had escaped and brushed your high cheekbones, a thin line of pearls dancing delicately across your perfectly symmetrical collar. You were stunning and inebriated, swaying with each bump and motion of the train. A man wearing my hat put his hand on your side to keep you from swaying over and then he left it there.
I took a sharp breath.

It looked like you put your hand on his hand to move it but then it stayed and you both swayed together. As the air left my lungs and the blood drained out of my face I watched your lips touch the strangers. A small piece of my soul slipped away forever. I couldn't watch any further. When I asked the bartender how long it went on he fidgeted for a moment and uncomfortably muttered "quite some time". I never found my hat or the other part of me that left that day.  

The train slowed. I walked to the back, as far away from you as I could get, in utter disbelief. How could you? I thought to myself.
I mourned the loss of the you as I knew you yesterday, quietly and to myself. A tear  escaped my eye and rolled down my now fully formed stubble as I fell in to a random seat in mild shock. There were a few passengers back there so I had to pull together relatively quickly. After gaining some composure I knew it was time to get off. I knew we could never get back to yesterday morning though I would have said or done anything to do so.

The train had stopped. I went back to my seat and you were sleeping. I took my coat and gathered my things. The conductor looked at me confused as to why I would leave something so magnificent, I assume he had no idea what had transpired.   

I walked to the rear of the car and slid the door open slower than required. I stepped to the stairs and put one foot down on the step and the other on the ground. I stopped, rooted with my hand on the railing, lingering between two very different paths.
     I knew that it was time to get off, I knew this was the sensible thing to do, that I couldn't get past this offense regardless of how I had felt earlier the day before. The whistle screamed from the locomotive. The conductor looked at me and shook his head, I'm not sure if he was trying to tell me to stay or go but a decision had to be made.

The train lurched forward and I watched as the station slip away slowly. I sat in between the cars for a while and watched the ocean and birds. With a heavy heart and shoes I walked back to my seat. You were waiting. Crying. You knew. The bartender had told you. You didn't mean do do it, didn't realize what you were doing and thought it was me. He was wearing my hat and the whole world was blurry and dark.

I believed you. Self anguish mixed with alcohol was dripping from your pores. I knew you didn't mean it and were drunk, but could I ever forgive you or trust you again?

I loved you still.

I caught a glimpse of my reflection, a weaker version of myself looked back. As if an invisible chip in my teeth had developed and my shoulders lowered. The charming, confident man from the bar car the day before had been replaced. Something was off but not enough for anyone else to notice, just enough to know a change has happened.
       The train started to pick up speed again as we distanced ourselves from the station.  I second guessed my decision to stay but I didn't look back.

I found the man with my hat and punished him with a few blows in the dark. He knew he ****** up, apologized and took the beating like a man. I never got the hat back.

The engineer announced that we would be going through a tunnel soon and to turn on our lights and keep our hands in the windows.

It would be dark.  

We stayed away from the bar car for a while but the draw was irresistible. After a few hours we were there again but you never left my side.  Then you did. I was looking for you but you would disappear and not answer me when I called you name. The tunnel went deeper and darker and I didn't know where you were and I suspected you liked it that way. The train began to slow down again as we exited the tunnel.

I finally found you back at our seat, you had moved one row away from me. I asked you to come back, tried to hold your hands but you pulled away with vehemence. When I came back from the bathroom you had moved another row farther.
I knew I was losing you.
I begged you to return but you told me calmly that it was time for you to get off. At some point in the tunnel you had decided that you didn't want to go anymore . Your mind was made. You were going to catch another train at the next station.

When the train stopped I thought for sure you would reconsider but you didn't. Didn't even give it a thought. You just grabbed your coat and hat with one big bag under your arm. You kissed me on the cheek like a french stranger and were off. Going somewhere else on a different train. Just like that.

I rode the rails for quite some time by myself , many people getting on and getting off, passing me by. Every once in a while I would think I saw you at a station or in a **** though the window of another train. I often thought I could smell you but when I breathed deeper it was always gone. A ghost dancing on the edge of my senses.

A young girl in a headband got on the train. She was listening to headphones and dancing to herself as she bobbed along. She sat down in the seat next to me flashing a smile. She had a wedding ring on and I dismissed her immediately.  She didn't move from the seat or stop glancing my way. Eventually she confessed that she wanted to talk. I told her I wasn't interested but she persisted.  I hadn't talked to anyone on the train for quite some time and after some more mild persistence, I gave in.

We had a lot in common. We were both riding alone, desperately wanted attention and were thrilled to receive some.  After a few laughs she slid her hand in to mine and interlaced her fingers. I left it there. It was warm, comforting and wrong. She was married but I had been riding alone so long it felt good to have some company. She stayed and we talked. She was broken and I had a knack for fixing things. After a few hours of dramatic conversation I fell asleep with her head on my shoulder.

When I woke up  the train was flying up the track on the side of a mountain. Trees and rocks were a blur of green and grey. The engineer must be trying to make up for lost time I thought to myself.

The girl was asleep with her head on my lap. I looked down at her hand and the rings were gone. I woke her briefly to ask where they went. She said she didn't need them anymore and had thrown  them out the window.  She could of sold them, I said, but she said she just wanted them gone so she could be mine and fell back to sleep.  All of a sudden I couldn't breath. This train was roaring down the tracks, the once gentle click clack had become a loud hum. Suddenly too loud. This girl in my lap who had just gotten on the train wanted to stay. I considered her for a while as she looked up at me with big blue eyes, shining and wet, like a puppy in the shelter, terrified of rejection and desperate to be adopted.

At the peak of the mountain, just when the train began to even out, you waltzed back in to the car with a champagne flute in one hand and your bag in the other.

I don't know when or where you got back on, must have been a few stations ago when I stopped looking for you. Maybe you were wearing a disguise, who knows what you had been up to while you were gone. I'm not sure how long you were away but it was quite some time. That you had been through something was obvious, a new wrinkle had formed on your brow and you're once confident stride had changed to a cautious stroll. What actually happened out there I don't know.  I never asked and I don't want answers.

You looked at me and smiled. It was good to see that smile, like sun on my face on a brisk day.  You took a step toward me and then I looked down in my lap at the girl at the same time you did. I looked up. You and your smile were gone.

Everything I had begun to feel for this broken, head banded girl in my lap dried up like a puddle in  the dessert.  I quietly and gently nudged her awake and told her I had to use the bathroom. She put her head down on my coat and fell back into what ever trance she had been in, eyelids gently fluttering, eyes searching beneath them for what I would never give her.

I dashed up the isle and threw open the door, almost shattering the glass. The conductor glared at me and rolled his eyes as I barged past to the space between the cars.

There you were. Standing on the stairs with your head out the opening. The wind was blowing your perfectly formed curls around your head like a blonde explosion of familiarity. I yelled your name and you dove in to me. My senses erupted, my mind went numb as the train was nearing another station and I inhaled your essence greedily.

We moved to another car. I abandoned my coat with the married girl and never looked back. I hope she found what she was looking for. I  never could have been the answer she was so desperately seeking but I know I  helped steer her towards it.

You told me you had encountered some other people out there on the rails and they had reminded you of what we had when we first left the station. I never forgot.  

The train started to rock and get going again. We were back in the bar car and starting to brown out. We had to get off of this train right ******* now. In a desperate moment we looked at each other and put our hands, together, on the emergency brake cord. I looked in your eyes with your hand on top of mine. You kissed me while yanking down on the cord. Time slowed, the breaks squealed and everything exploded throwing luggage, people and the entire contents of the bar car in to a nondiscriminatory chaos . We got up off the ground, ran to the end of the car, dove off the side in to a soft patch of grass and rolled down a small incline. We watched as the conductor sifted through  the mess and interrogated the passengers, trying to ferret out the party responsible for pulling the brake. He spotted us off the side of the tracks and shook his fist while shouting every conceivable obscenity combination.

We laughed, held each other in the grass and kissed deeply.

We watched the train pick up speed and disappear in to the hills as relief spread over me.

You interlaced your fingers in to mine and we both looked out to where the tracks disappeared into the horizon, wondering how far of a walk it was to the next station.

Go asphyxiate yourself

On your dilusional thought of love
One day you'll find the one

And all your problems will dissolve

Your happily ever after

The true perfect match
that you cant spend a waking hour without dreaming of how much they mean to you

Grow old with
Every second of your life as long as you both shall live

Scrap book with and share vows of love
Love
   Love

Your fairy tail ending with your Cinderalla and Prince Charming

Search for the eternal solution to loneliness

Your soulmate
     Your other half

True love will set you free


Is that right?



Go **** yourself

Man life know just set eyes way like young world soul day hunger space mouth earth thoughts ignorance blind things mind knew final moment human creation kind creatures souls high forgotten dream love spoke self existence face holy deep bound think home void say surrender ear forever called held ephemeral red state end shall heed hope edge living waking fall sea wake garden need February thought past wanderer got men page colored tepid terrible **** proudly untitled features point painted faceless box forgot render wild spring splendor  handfuls looking half brain lost torn ancestral  unseen vision inner summer honor mister owned banner save today fear groans wasn't smoke  street fable strange year contrast black years  able pain body spoken word known motion  palpitate reeling nature culture disclaimers  cancer beg attentive frames ****** base profound double remember wholly finger death token  cries continue folk oh fishing form broken true  divides spread ah twas away breathe wait warning hallowed wish closer lens turn eye live  constant current author hung theory dangle  bramble chemical new force changes adderall  anymore giving beneath possess pardon commentaries eternity internal walk reason  long change does idea glimpse consciousness  wandering simply wonder physical dreams war  sleep told rest benign prior begging truth little  2012 born tale crow bowels allegory animal rule  exasperate making horse curse hands ones read  rearrange capture doing command fail awake  aperture seedlings shift steely sir nap spead ****** demons slits clever telling loud spits la-la-di-dah killing slip game reflected nameless ask  lovers rabid bear salivate plunder shameless  famously savior mint rides menthol bully fate traded melodies play misunderstand mammals gentle witless fine utterly savage silt tongue-less  dirt dilutes pure non-sensory taste briefly ravage dismember it''ll shedding ruined curtain  knots offers plot fulfills munificent two-act  relegates boxz bug altruistic wintergreen tossing  callously guise grovels one's singers treachery ashes mid-life mutter fashion parading  ambiguity separatist liars staple steeping neath  guidelines scoffing stitch moans civil wrote  Fictitious undoing fables table effigies serve  sonnets staged remark psalm swoll praise harken  beggar verse bread lines heavily electricity detection snow sack-happy preaching credit  spotted wicked best gravity gun campaign owe  barge choir revelry celebratory satiated sinking  headline pack hound persistently propaganda  gentlemen excluding diminished ******* run idles  occupied levies wolfishly honestly misinformation cuba vehemently dumb grace spectator erasing  toned sage crowded secrets inter-connectivity  loaned prayer hymns grave mistaken magnified  vandals selective jump leak escapes says minister  buckle mass honesty shut tar children's hats  monument doping long-lived electrical ladle  exaggerated cartoons address seconds cool cradle bleak yang's mind-framed hypnotic  walker caps folly treble claim streaks mixtures  swelled interstate elapse teasing spoon mobile  succulent witchcraft borderline fatal 99 temple stacks sups plastics creeps neurotic ills tossed  meek sipping old crack interlock wax alleyway  coughing blown freak clock birthdays societies  slow flashing viscous candy argument toothless  pills cerebral rapt wall bisect lives wheezing  photo kid starter foiled pair saturated self-castrating pre-packed naked uncertainly pill  used came chaos coated reprisal fells wrack  irreverent mirth sickly disinherited proudest  collate wheeze appearance palette disharmony  discontented bastardized emotive bio inhale diction beat spoiled reclamation loudest tempo  totally disembodied matte imperfect shells flat  struck sounding imparts flak origin severance remarked bone walls snared leaflets mocking  hot scripting adjective noun agape seemingly  resistant gawk calamity passage paintings wind  trashcans signings sits cheap makers poetry persist scrap slipping individual talk wonders  leaving questions fold actor fancy parchment  fates engenders flown jaws stripped longer music  sacrifice fakers book boldly frown sigh atop patient hang trade occupation blows spectacular  whispers worthy backward waving certainty danced suppose needn't ‘drawkcab’ second-guessing  boys forget marched motto heads tightly lies two-tone earthbound harp twice turns goodnight  lying ***** internally indiscriminate nickname  drunk convictions myth steep  in-consumption  fitting artist **** universal sick expressions bad  du spell melody big siphon proud learn sprawls song spastic something temperaments utter check  fissures stomp totality blend definitely thrall sing rug voice shade pestilence ties commiserate round devil steady brains emotional certain gate  suckling gates dearth decay weight bounce pound  carrier pangs glass startle contest earthen web  tug pressed air patience flush amassed guest gone apprehension staring empathize captain believe fading in-perceivable deathbed guarder makes surrounds scatter drooling ebb blink cob tome  venom near door lair derision draws host stairs scent parts curiosities spider webbing surprise wares tips stepping ascetics starkness realize picture surroundings dictations grand pillars  deaf limited comparisons greet visual residents  personal settings dismiss alien law stability common earthly shiftless places prelude  understanding mosaic keen trifling embodiments  geared inception whisper visible jowls kiss murky  puddle rank dawn dichotomy single faithful fraying pays tailor veil climb mores pence whim  breath wellspring samara god stony pear  shadows fruiting forebodes moonlit looming  shown passed bog gold wracked faint tongues  noble preachers mirror shifting layered depth  threads jungle narcissus bemused seamstress self-worshiping architect's wore slumber anomalous  opened barren seam lip caustic scene coupled brick gardener's clenches -with forms idle breed  embodied lore starving empathy design illusion  tree coat fabricate lucid mason scatter-all  narrative seeking imbued 16th shivering chemicals 17th 15thrisk improperly dare  deliberate plan purge try brought chapter speed  aide utmost spirit leading intervention felt  recall recent advent sincerity times diary  lackluster piously lasting happy holding hear  stem tasteless whimpers wet spine monstrosity  dripping causes position quite softly claws pallet  answer digging tearing beast satiating circle breaks skips redwoods beckoning rotted hushed  gray lapsing monoliths deities creborus  imbuement hand stroll paradigm rendered chorus shy whispering forest residual tension  surrenders tolerance lull anew sentenced  bearing tide birds dirge divergent rim joined  cogs wood hesitant mist emergent towering offer  awareness confinement inverted faultier stowed  plane sanctified blanketing trusting memory fossil flash twists laden self-indulgent fleeting invitation agony grip shore impetus lingering  crows promise gift union swallowing endless floor supposed ecstasy sensory intent  psychotropic cradling placement interned  jagged connectivity exchange congenial begun  summons singular spiral assumes ambient reciprocates re-entry fruition reached aggregate lifetime limbs birthed instinct  frightening tarry proper entire light  boundaries innocence pursuit ago discover left  youth's unknowing sacred time place meager  simple fact cast ceaseless wide-eyed literal  apparent coincidence create boldness morphed  crooked kempt mere stumble buried shutter fairy  pivotal definitive months worth shear ambition sound required journeyed self-reflections title  facets vague restless intimation gut wanderer's  leap motivate path account boy soon bears faith  question tripped reasons uproot awaited confronted days step heal provocations wisps crushing transcend chronicles instance  directness raw drove occurrence objective-less  real enters slightest confident nondescript  typify  foreshortened interment paradox bitter heart  devoid jeopardy angry sensation confidential guilty arrogance mercy compliance reprieve  vincent deadening factual sign emotion awe  inhibition shackled butterflies absence actual sciences acknowledgement violent stagnant  spiritual American doors roots lack matted fore  gestures society cause streams intensity hair impossible discord lonely hearts resounding  jest  what's flavored pains closed toxic contented  happenstance scientific knowledge yeah  wizardry shaking stifled withdrawn bloom  jitter dreads settle asocial hulton make  predisposed figurative reflections demeanors  wondered affect hulton's projected sense  morning industry arrays ghosts feeling  certainly endomorphic where's partially wrath  passer mornings jovial unease advertized asking  trash onward wished tempers media mentality connect pasts sharp-toothed scramble great colours trial test salvation continually lent  degree secretly subjection social waned  disconnected colors grimly intellectual civilization cash trading baffling particular  digest myths monumental ending seasons winter  repetition introducing agent everlasting  shoulders delivered honestly-- possession funny  continence history unsightly function suffering propulsion profession divulge familiar tugs era  importance capability perpetuation spite inventory words entirety leveling fray insight  date record continues writer getting evermore fellow tongue possessions identical proof accuracy education similar sack admittance  favor unravel conveyance guilt gives beginnings  predicting audacity definition bobby heady eaters frameless learned release stone grandeur sang  speak molds sleeps split built seats people folded  sheer pour evoked playhouse liquid boring  tellers frayed stark walked reality pleas doth  preformed shows beak pride squawks opinions  greatest bold stunning sightings he'd loudly slain  sunk watch legend precipice theater deeper compound commentator civility justly silly sin  reverent seen prophetic moral confounds notion  lacking explain attempt prolific viral estrange proclivity scorn hide blur pious strung eden's  horror cut skin arch cruel twig mother vile  pass lend woods peach shrunken trail man's canopy worn 434 eat warm limb familiar father delete.

You are what your reading lady. Now would you hold this gun?

The children are lost
And sadly to their cost
Are very quickly tossed
On life’s mountainous scrap heap.

What chances have they
To ever say
I don’t want to stay
On life’s mountainous scrap heap.

Without a voice
Or even a choice
They can never rejoice
On life’s mountainous scrap heap.

Very soon they’ll see
There is no key
To set them free
Of life’s mountainous scrap-heap

A short life they’ve had
And how very sad
To think they will add
To deaths mountainous scrap heap.

Rewind this memoir back to my first foster home.   I’m reclining on the couch in the living room watching Superman, a whatever's-on-tv-saturday-afternoon-movie.   "Give A Little Bit" played from the soundtrack.  The Supertramp song reached out from the screen and into my own complicated teen-aged life.  Oh the words of that song blindsided me, hit me hard in the chest with a sad yearning, an emotion I had ignored forever like that elephant in the room too big to push out the door.  Because life was so hard, too hard, and lonely on and on, and the world gives only just enough that you keep breathing, but you wonder why.  Yes, please  someone  give just a little....
But at the time I hadn't known anything else and I just stuffed that overwhelming sad lonely feeling.  Too much need wears out a welcome in someone else's home.  It seemed most everyone else had family, security, some money for perhaps things like a pair of cleats to run in school track if you have the desire. Its called belonging or opportunity and I was acutely aware I wouldn't have it.

Fast forward 25 years; business for my glass art studio is rewarding.  I live in Cleveland, or what I called Purgatory.  I like the city though; I think the motto should be "Its Not That Bad."  A tough steel town, unpretentious to a fault, tenacious, it inspired the Clean Water Act because the river was so polluted it   caught   on   fire.  People who live there just don't quit, except that the biggest export is young people. The streets are eerily empty, the quiet steel mills are epic sculptures of rust.  But its not that bad.  Now they make a tasty beer called Burning River.  Sometimes they gamble on unconventional ideas because they've reached the end of status-quo.  One can even surf there, when the wind blows a Nor'easter in the fall, just before the lake freezes. The wave break is nicknamed "Sewer Pipe"; one can imagine why.

I biked with a club there; cycling part of my life-blood.  Life was pretty good, blessed with measures of contentment and happiness and family, even through so many challenges.  Except I'm stuck pedaling a trainer in the basement most of the long winter.  It was during an endless, gray February that I was inspired by an idea: a Velodrome.  Its one of those banked tracks people in America only see during the Olympics.  Cover it, and people could have a bicycle park all year-round with palm trees in the winter, in Cleveland.  Its a blast of a sport with serious American heritage.  A velodrome is a place where all a kid has to do is show up and with enough heart he or she can make it to the Olympics.  They wouldn't need money, just 100% heart.  It would be the kind of opportunity I didn't have when I was a kid.

So I decided to take on the responsibility to build one... not to be afraid of the price tag, or how to do it, or let a label like "disabled veteran with a head injury" daunt me.  I figured my role was to get the project started and motivate others to do other parts.  I decided not to discuss my shortcomings, introduce myself with that label, or use it as a disclaimer.   As many times as I wished I had a chalkboard sign around my neck saying, Please excuse the mess, I had to tell myself it was not an excuse.
There would need to be many others; but the fact that I knew only a dozen people on the planet didn't stop me either.  Two people inspired me.  Kyle MacDonald had a dream to barter a paper clip for something better, trading that for something else, anything else, until he had a house.  I thought I could start with an old laptop, a couple thousand dollars, and my idea. I'd work to leverage each bit of progress, not knowing what they were yet.  Thats how anything gets done, right?  Erik Weihenmayer is a blind alpine mountain climber, conquering even Everest.  He didn’t let anyone convince him what he couldn’t do, and didn’t let impairments keep him from his goal.  He didn't let blindness, the fact that he couldn't see the top as well as others, make the goal any less enjoyable for himself.  Also, there’s no way he could have done it without help.

There are no business plans for a Velodrome or someone else would have built more of them already.  I'm good at figuring things out, what with having to relearn things all the time.  I don't quit because that has never seemed to be an option.  Resourcefulness is my middle name, having to put my life back together every year or so.  Certainly the project was eccentric but as an artist I've never really cared about what others thought.  I certainly didn't have a reputation for sanity to maintain.  Professionally, I’ve had experience with so many factors of development: from paperwork at the back end as a Project Assistant, to designing it as a Mechanical Drafter, to constructing it as a Steel Detailer.  I understood this project.

Every time I discovered something needed to be done, I'd figure out how to do it.  I took an online tutorial and put together a website, attended communication seminars for better speaking skills, learned how to recruit a Board of Directors, took classes for fundraising, won a few grants, and started a non-profit.  I had to buy a couple of suits for meetings.  I kept hoping someone who knew what they were doing would take over, but that never seemed to materialize.  What I thought would be a few months turned into several hard years of work, learning new things on the fly like politics, business etiquette, computer programs, how to understand and write financials and business plans for stadiums.

It felt like cramming for finals, taking exams for classes I never attended.  I didn’t just burn my candle on both ends, I was torching it in the middle too.  Every challenge I had ever gone through seemed like it was a preparation for this one.  Many times I wondered if it was all for nothing; so many dead ends and frustrations and years where the project was barely on life-support.  Mistakes and wrong turns making people mad, losing faith in me.  Would it ever really happen?  I kept imagining what my bike wheels would look like under my handlebars as if I was ridiing on the track, listening to the same particular songs on my ipod for motivation.

A small tangent here, a digression back to the fifth grade and my favorite teacher.  He was about as tall as his students.  Mr.A (our nickname for Mr. Anderson) was a barrel-chested little person but I didn't notice it till years later because he was so cool.  He was the first teacher, the first person actually, who encouraged me to be myself.  I was a little kid, a couple years advanced and bright enough to be skipped again.  Tthat would have been ridiculous since I was already too small.  I would get my work done early in class, and he would let me spend time doing whatever, encouraging my creativity.  I distinctly remember making little scale models of parks out of construction paper.  I would start by making a rectangular tray, and then fill it in with ponds, benches, and oval or figure-8 tracks for bicycles, elevated roller-coaster paths for walking.  It was my way of creating a whimsical place that felt good in my difficult life.  No lie, I was building bicycle tracks when I was 9.  That memory faded away until I was several years into the actual Velodrome project, trying create a light-hearted park on the edge of a ghetto.  This was my life's ultimate Art Project; made with wood, steel, and tenacity.  It made me wonder about a life's purpose... still just a what if... but cruel if there wasn't anything to it.

There is a necessary role for the dreamer.  Visionaries help to break status quo, introduce new solutions.  Sorting through the banal with unique perspective, the random is reassembled into intriguing newness.  What is creative nature?  Is it obsession to improve things, the need for approval, resourcefulness within limits, or perspective outside boundaries?   Is it tenacity to the point of obsession, focus to the point of selfishness?  

Thankfully, a few devoted people did take over after a few years and worked hard to raise the serious money.  In 2012, Phase 1 of the Cleveland Velodrome opened to the public.  Presently they are raising funds for Phase 2 to cover it.   By chance I was there the day the track was finished and got a chance to ride it.  All I wanted to do was one thing: listen to those songs on my ipod and see my wheels under the handlebars on the track... in reality.  I didn't want to race or be recognized at some celebration.  I just wanted to ride a few laps, happy just to have a role in building it.  In less than a year there are already training programs, youth cycling classes, and teams competing.  Through community grants and volunteers, its all free to anyone under 18.  

Not to be forgotten, some thanks should go to one supportive teacher who helped a scrappy kid dream.    Schools measure math and science so valuable, for good reason.  But this favors one brain’s side of thinking.  Initiating and working for the construction of an urban renewal project and improving a neighborhood is traceable to the exact same idea assembled with clumsy school scissors, white glue, and construction paper, during 5th grade free time.

I can't wait to hear the news of some tough kid from East Cleveland getting to the Olympics.

.    like cardinal Leto remarked, having received news from Versailles... why is it always the ******* French?

perhaps in a less crude manner,
drinking wine,
while eating raw fruits -

  always a bad combination...
no *****, no meat?
   bad idea... wine, and raw fruit
akin to strawberries?
    irritable bowel movements...

- and that's because Einstein
didn't discover the concept of
gravity, in the format of: sideways?
in the form of orbits?
   expansive waves...
   that allowed for the elliptical interpretation?
like the old
              argument:
      (heliocentric) oval...
             contra the (geocentric) circular
"concern" for...
   whatever is up / down
            sideways in
      the Copernican terminology...
because there was ever a "shape"
concerning the universe,
  and not a medium,
            an extraction for the metaphor
for water,
   gas, liquid, solid...
              and the fourth aspect
of ancient elements:
   its existence in a vacuous "space"?

- but i can't fathom the French at this point...
once upon a time...
one Frenchman equated the motivation
for a "summa summarum"
    to be bound with a thinking,
and a curiosity...

            the current fashion of Latin
abbreviations...
   this... cogito ergo sum?
   it's nonsense...
    speak it long enough...
   and you'll find yourself inclined
to suppose that cogitans per se:
is a motivation, an impetus to exist...
yet... so much of thought it "wasted"
or, rather, to craft an impetus to
"doubt", within the confines of fiction...
but the motivation has lost its
origin within the confines of doubt,
and has been replaced by
the Freudian unconscious,
   a serialized phobia fest... notably
including a, clown...

originally, thought (per se) was
a secondary motivational outlet
that precipitated into being...
    first came... doubt...
   but... these days?
               doubt is a conspiracy theory,
no longer an emotional thrill
to prop-up thinking...
   and we have the French existentialists
to thank for this...
for they subverted their own
idea...

             negation has replaced doubt
as the origin, and motivation
for thinking...
        yet... this sort of "thinking",
has made, its materialization, so, so...
obscene...
    i can hardly find it surprising while
i took to propping two worthwhile
economic outlets...
   prostitution (since they will spend
the money i give them...
on things... i wouldn't even care
for propping up)...

    and... alcohol (scotch whiskey,
russian standard *****...
    shveedish cider...
                     german beer)...

but how can you even claim an existence,
if...
       there is no thrill...
of what is the secular expression of faith:
i.e. doubt?
  how can you replace doubt -
a motivation for thinking, materialized
into being... with negation?
  jean-paul Sartre attempted this inversion -

doubt has been replaced with negation
in his system...
             it's like that cliche of an English
1960s ***-joke / ***-like...
       this... frivolity over a blatant lie...
a lie so... bogus...
    so ineffectual in translating a hidden truth
that... you allow it...
   to care for the cheap comic aspect
of the execution...

but how can the French suddenly
feign to disbelieve their secularism -
   resorting to the antithesis,
namely:

  original

  doubt motivates thinking,
  which subsequently motivates
   being within the confines of reason,
or rather, reasonableness...

20th century existentialists

negation "motifs" thinking,
   which subsequently motifs
"being" within the freedom of non-reason,
or rather, unreasonableness...

   and by negation,
   i don't mean the atomic conceived softening
blow...
   akin to: dis-ease...
    i.e. (as i explained it to one old man
in a park, walking his dog):
  a negation, or ease... a denial of...

how can the Cartesian model work,
when the 20th century French existentialists
began with the presupposition:

   i deny, i think, therefore i exist?
where is the original thrill of
the secular aspect of faith, within the boundaries
of doubt?
              gone... vanished!
****! a **** on the London tube,
during the rush hour,
  during the heatwave
                of the past month!

                   perhaps this only comes
as a method of assimilating an increased population,
within the confines of the Taoist maxim:
the best way to aid the world,
is to forget the world, and let the world
forget about you...

             perhaps... the Andy Warhol 15 minutes
analogy...
      that in order to encompass the individual,
the world, and the individual within it...
   the approach had to change
from the original, exciting, exploration
genesis of thought, bound to the genesis
of doubt...
             having to be replaced by
a genesis of denial...
      the second tier of a secular society...
    the zeitgeist of Herr Censor...
to filter through what we see so often,
faces, bodies...
  but would be much more comfortable
having been bound to Plato's cave,
         of complete shadow theater...

perhaps... but the original tier of
secular societies' alternative to church prescribed
articles of faith...
                     to have replaced
the thrill of doubt...
      with this... Byzantine pillar of denial
as motivational groundwork for
thinking impetus
   that becomes an article of being?
am i the only one to see the frustration,
how, people abhor their being,
being founded upon an act of denial,
rather than an act of doubt?

     the once thrilling maybe (gnostic):
   has become the stale, "i don't know"
    (agnostic) - as if... people can't tell you
whether zebras have stripes!
   where there was once an article
of secular faith (doubt) -
   now?
                        there's not even that!

p.s.
  there has to be a much needed new mantra,
all publicity: is bad publicity -
unless of course you're riding that
fame juggernaut and are paying
for your all-inclusive status akin
   to madonna: since fame dies off
and you, none-the-less invest in the momentum...

one day where i drink a bottle of wine,
half a liter of whiskey,
   and i'm apparently not "screaming" in
my sleep from the heat,
the whole, "apparently", as i retorted:
at 5:15am? i was alseep! i was asleep!
how can i stop screaming in my sleep
like a banshee:
the sleeper and the blind man both see
eye to eye regarding the future to come...

one day without engaging in internet
content: of my own accord,
next day? this... this... lethargy builds
up in me... i end up thinking:
i can't do this any more,
this insomnia culture globalism of
24h news reels is tirying me,
i pick up the sunday newspaper
which i found to be respecteable...
the sunday times,
  i peer into the magazines...
toxic masculinity,
    desire: what three women want...
i'm bored...
well more tired than bored,
bored-tired...
                 what women want:
what an exhausting question...
**** fantasy, beta-male provideer...
yada-yada-yada...
                    
    the only relaxing aspect of the day
(apart from the shade) is watching
england beat india in the cricket...
i always loved cricket sport terminology:
50 overs... innings...
wickets... 6 throws of the ball in an over...
the rest? i'm no atlas...
i don't like the world crashing in on
me with all its problems...
not because i don't have the right
advice to give,
but i remember the most modern secular
motto about giving advice borrowed
from Athos of the creation of alexandre dumas:

the best advice? to not give advice...
you cannot be held accountable
for giving bad advice: and people complaining,
or good advice and leaving
people in your sphere of influence...
asking for more - non verbatim... of course...

second categorical imperative?
tao...
              the best way you can help
the world: is to forget the world,
and let the world forget you...

                        you only need two absolute
maxim vectors to orientate yourself
in this world,
a third is nice, but: it can be kept loose...
at least two on a tight leash...

but one night spent drinking,
not writing anything:
and i am... spent!

                            the boogieman of england's
persistent complaints...
the muslims are not integrating,
the english: we should give them more
ground...
           o.k., o.k.... joe peshi in the role
leo getz in lethal weapon II...
            i too had to integrate!
i said: like **** if you think i'll give up
my native tongue when spoken in private...
you're not getting it...
i'll spreschen ihre zunge, no problem,
i'll even write you pwetty free verses to boot!
but, guess what?
  i will not force you to eat my
sauerkraut, my schnitzels,
                           my smoked sausages,
my raw herrings etc.,
                      integration does not work
within the confines of: pampering to a people
expected to meet you half-way...
what happened when the polonaise attempted
to meet the english half-way?
brexit...
oh come on guv'... is there a ******* tram
echoing its way out of my eye
when you peer into it while i attach
an index finger to the bottom lid to give
you a clearer picture?
           25 years in england: no englush girlfriend:
i guess all the english girls just love, just love love
being ***** by 9 pakistanis
daubed in gasoline...
                   hey: they **** thrill...

i'm tired of the weakness of the english,
the humpty-dumpty nature they are imposing,
self-cencorship,
    appeasing, like neville chamberlain...
bringing back the munich agreement...
not on a piece of paper,
instead... waving a scrap of a toilet roll...
so the english could wipe their own *****
on the promises of the germans...
if this really hurts the northern monkies...
guess how much it hurts the sourthern fairies...
(well... fairy, is a designated region surrounding
devon, bristol, hardly a ******* fairy in essex)...

   why am i foreigner and i share
the same nausea of the natives,
                     exhausted by the narratives?
i guess the english didn't like the polonaise:
but the polonaise are to blame...
came here with a list of benefits they could claim:
without having even lived 5 years among
the natives... housing benefits, child benefits...
believe me: the polonaise are the only
people in the world that hate each other...
to the extent of citing bitter criticisms...
whenever i pass through warsaw to see my grandparents
i am gripped with a sickness:
this homogeneity is too much for me...
shove me back into the east end of London...
too much of the same genetic material...
and that's when the language i am keeping
(seemingly for vanity reasons) fizzles out
into your basic encounter and that basic reminder
that circa 40 million speak it too,
better or worse, but they speak it...

of all the festivals? download...
                                   i wish...
    glastonbury?       not my thing...
kylie? i'll concede: slow? live, with instruments,
rather than the studio original...
wasn't that a cover of
   bowie's fashion?
                  sure as hell sounded similar...
but i heard the cure were playing...
so while writing my father's invoice
i made myself a paperclip bracelet...
   i figured... "let's just pretend to be there"...
and no, the 1980s weren't that bad when
it comes to music,
not now, by comparison...
the cure's kiss me, kiss me, kiss me (1987)
release?
one of those rare albums you can
listen to akin to reading a book...

                       but there's still that persisting
exhaustion... i came from under communism,
from under the iron curtain,
but at least there was the economic aspect
of communism involved...

   only today i watched the story
of the terrible inversion of english jursprudence,
i.e.: guilty until proven innocent...
the 1975 case of the silesian vampire...
an innocent man was hanged...
the original vampire?
    smashed his wive's head in,
then his childrens', then he set himself
on fire...
              then again: the tragedy of those
rare cases of being presumed guilty
rather than innocent...
then the reverse: presumed innocent rather
than guilty and getting away with it,
through the parody of death
and the non existent god...

   there could not be anything more exhausting
than communism without a communist
economic model...
this current state of affairs in the west:
cultural marxism and the yet to be discovered
antithesis of cultural darwinism...

i'll use the cartesian chirality for a moment:
sum ergo cogito...
i don't like using political terms...
but... liberal (classical) - i don't even know
what sort of thinking goes into the label -
in the east? the liberals are exhausted
by a resurgent nationalism within
   the newly acquired capitalist system...
in the west? the liberals are exhausted
by an insurgent communism within
an ageing capitalist system...

         on a side: seriously, why even bother
engaging in any sort of "public intellectual"
debates when the public are only
discussing two books: 1984 and brave new world...
**** it, might as well talk to a camel jockey
who only own and rides the waves of
time in this world only using one...
muhammad...
   whom Khadija **** Khuwaylid
would probably whip into his young
respectable shape...

                  and this is how Ezra Pound comes
into rememberance:
usura... at least the muslims do not
play into the game of usury:
of interest... borrow a quid,
pay back £2.33...
            that's the only way you can
gain respect of the muslims:
if they truly were the money lenders
of this world: which they aren't...
unless a newly blessed...

   among the philistines and the proselytes...
england is such a tiresome project,
even on the outskirts of London...
i'm being dragged down by this intervention
of marxism: on a whim,
on a whimsical projection...
of "adding" values...
            
           communism would have worked...
in exceptional circumstances...
poland... circa 1945 - 1990...
syria: the current year...
  to whatever year is demanded...
exceptional as in: war torn...
where was the marshall plan
   for poland, when there was one
for sweden (neutral) and switzerland
(also neutral)?!
        black youths bothered about
the summer holidays,
having to live in council flats,
  concrete goliaths...
           want to know what it feels like
when entire cities are like council
estates,
with only pockets of remaining
   free-standing houses among
overshadowing council flats?
                                    nee bother...
sure... in a country where:
the house is the castle and there's a labyrinth
of castles constituting outer suburbia...
balconies... that's what the soviet
models had... balconies...
where women could grow flowers...
concrete staccato gardens in the sky...
the blocks of flats in england
didn't have balconies (sky gardens,
          esp. the early ones, massive fault)...
i spent one summer reading
bertnard russell's history of western philosophy...
lying in my grandparent's balcony,
in the shade...
watching passerbys among
          the barking dogs of the neighbours...

one day, one ******* day!
   and i'm already exhausted from the castrato
english narrative...
pandering to the people you expected
to integrate...
  no! you're not changing your standards...
your standards are perfectly reasonable!
i'm tired of the english pandering
to the sort of people who, will, not,
integrate!
               i integrated in a way
of respecting both the english culture,
as well as hiding / preserving my own...
why don't i just do the following:
   pisać po polsku?
                      like some czesław miłosz?

ah... good point... at what point
is the standard of integration appreciated?
when nothing is preserved?
surely integration is supposed to
accommodate some variation
of preservation?
     i might add: that's a fine line...
preserve all? no integration...
preserve some? integration...
                    preserve none? no integration...
food is a cheap target to example
with...
                   it's a low hanging fruit...
given that even i find indian cuisine
   the most superior in the world...
food is a cheap target concerning integration...
but the niqab?
  when the local english authorities
are employing face-recognition
technology and when testing it...
are forcing people to uncover their faces,
subsequently arresting them out of protest...
but not the women wearing the niqab...
out of? out of what?
   a secular society shouldn't be allowed
to discriminate against any religion...
it should discriminate against: all religions!

                isn't that what the secular ideology
is all about? the... softcore version
of soviet atheism?
        secularism of the west (miltary-industrial
complex)...
"vs." soviet atheism of the east
  (scientific-industrial complex)...
           i'm still so ******* tired
               of this bogus trap of "necessary"
                       commentary.

A rose in the middle of December is what I saw outside. Instantly, I connected this odd occurrence with my life. The thought hit my thoughts like a ton of bricks. That is what I am, I had thought to myself. That describes me.

As I looked out my living room window on a sunny, but freezing, Saturday afternoon, I was surprised to see this solitary rose that had bloomed on my mini rose plant.  Providing me with a few salmon colored roses each season of its bloom, without fail this plant regrows again and again in my garden. I first planted it there since forever ago, or so it seems.

Usually, such a flowering occurrence should be no big deal, nothing major or out of the ordinary. Certainly, I would not find this as something really noteworthy to write about. Rose plants do that kind of thing all the time.

But it was frigid cold outside, and the middle of December.

What a strange, yet amazing thing to behold! Maybe there is a proper explanation for it, but I don’t care. The petals were just as colorful as ever when really they should have wilted awy from the cold. All the other flowering plants in my garden surely did! It didn’t really make sense, but its presence was pretty awesome.

I eagerly went to find my camera to take a picture of my sweet, little rose. The grass was dotted with tiny patches of snow to show that-yes indeed-winter is really only days away from its official entrance. Plant activity and growth really should be over. Isn’t that right? I know we have had some warmer days during the previous month, but the icy cold seemed to have come to stay for a while. It surely defies logic to think of blooming flowers on such days.

I often look for “God moments”, as I call them, in which God gives me something to hold onto that reveals His love to me. Not looking for anything earth shattering, I see often see God in the little things, in the details of life. And I don’t even always look for such things, for sometimes I doubt God really cares or really is that effective in my life. You see, that is not uncommon for someone who deals with chronic depression. I learned early on in life that nobody is there for you, not really. I know Christians aren’t supposed to feel this way, but if I can be bold to be honest, I am. Often, I just think I’ll get by on my own. If I can’t get by on my own, I often try to put up with it instead of turning to God for help.  But lately I was feeling desperate.

Suffering with depression all of my life, and with managable anxiety, the thought of the approaching Christmas had been especially difficult for me. I know that people are “supposed to” feel uplifted with the holiday, but I was not. To reveal this is a source of shame to me, and I have learned to mask such uneasy feelings, trying to fake it for the sake of showing the world that I really am OK inside. It is like I expect everyone to look at me and say, “What’s the matter with you, loser!”

I knew I could find two things that would appeal to me—Christmas music and lights. Yet the music that I often love could not do it for me. The lovely Christmas lights, shining in the dark of night, didn’t matter either. I was feeling dejected, and I was growing weary with life—again. When not obligated to go anywhere, I felt like hiding from the world, feeling safer from anxious thoughts by myself. And as safe as I tried to feel in my comfort zone, this was frightening to me. This did not feel like living to me.

Is this how I am going to live out the rest of my pitiful life? This was one of my kinder thoughts.

I usually get through Christmas OK, making the best of it, but my losses often feel bigger than my blessings. In 1998, I lost an estranged brother to suicide. In 2005, I lost a father to Alzheimer’s, a few weeks after Christmas. In 2007, my mother had to spend Christmas in a nursing home recovering from major surgery. That year, I struggled through that season with very hopeless feelings, for my mother was in jeopardy of never walking again. She spent almost half a year in that place—a woman with sever scoliosis, and chronic back pain, who cannot stand for very long. In my hopelessness, I seem to forget the miracles in my life, for my mom’s return home seems like one to me.

I also see my father’s experience and death from Alzheimer’s as something far more than a tragedy. For many years, I avoided my father, wanting really nothing to do with him. Grudges surely seem larger than life over time, and although I wanted to forgive my father and seek reconciliation, fear often stood in the way. Even though my dad grew remorseful for how he raised his children, it took my brother’s suicide for me to find forgiveness for a man I thought never supported me or believed in me. For over two years, while my dad was ill and dying, the bond between us grew into something special. I know from personal experience that even in the difficult times, there are larger purposes involved.
  
No doubt, I have been provided with some huge challenges in life. Thankfully, I always pulled through when I surely felt that I would crumble into pieces. I clung to my faith in God, even when that faith felt like dying embers in a fire, for it seemed to be all that I had. Nothing else worked. Nothing else satisfied for very long. And when it did last, I wanted more and more, like a drug addict looking for his next fix.  

I have often been plagued with self doubt. What is my purpose in this life? Why am I here? I knew I was not alone in this thinking, reminding myself that I am not the most unique person in my suffering. So I searched the internet, a convenient source to turn to when you can’t seem to face people, and the world.  

Not wanting to live or value your own life is a horrible state of mind that I would not wish on anybody. I have relied on a depression medication since my brother died, and still do, but there had to be something more to help me. Deep down inside, I did not want to die, but I didn’t know how to live either. The heart of the matter was that in my worst bouts of depression, I was just so broken inside. I survived enough to go through the motions, but I felt like I was losing the battle—and really did not want to win the war anyhow.

I still remember the “God moment” I had when I was in London, England in August of 2011. At that time, life felt like an adventure as I went on my very first overseas trip to Europe. I have yearned to go to Europe since childhood. It was a Sunday morning in London, and a religious program was on. From what one man was saying on TV about his experiences, my ears perked up and I hurriedly scribbled some things down on a pad of my hotel paper before I forget some of his statements that stood out to me.

During my short stay in London, I was experiencing a cold. I wanted to feel Gods presence as I felt the swallowed up feeling of being a stranger in a faraway place. As intruiged as I was,  in the huge, bustling metropolis, I admit I was feeling a bit overwhelmed. I find big cities as places in which people pass others with no concern other than to go about their way. London was fascinating, but I am a suburbanite, for sure!

The things this man was saying on TV really impacted me at the time, and I now carry that scrap of paper around with me in my wallet. Little did I know that a few months later that these statements would help to pull me through from reaching into despair. That despair began a few months after that trip when I was quite sick with the flu, twice in a row, and feeling very isolated and weary.

Sometimes, we have to get into that place where all there is is God.

It is not that I did not believe in God. I did not think God believed in me.

Sometimes, we grow best in hard times.  

All my crooked crutches and phony props, as I call them, weren’t working. If the computer wasn’t taking up much of my free time, television was numbing my senses from the stark reality that life felt empty for me. Where was God? Logically, I knew I had no reason to be bitter, for I knew the answer. I felt so far away from Him, helpless and hopeless—yet I clung to this hope—God never moved at all. I was the one who walked away, but like the prodigal son in the Bible, God would be waiting there for me with a joyful expectation. I truly believe that even though I often wonder how God puts up with me.

It has been a long time—if ever—that I fully trusted in God alone. Yes, I believed in Him, and trusted in Jesus as my savior, but I often held back. I was still so angry and hurt about the past. Why didn’t God rescue me from such a horrible childhood? Why was I bullied in school? Why didn’t I have a better family? Why did loneliness and insecurity plague me as it did? Why wasn’t I beautiful? Why didn’t I have a better life? Why this and why that. Even though I logically knew better, in my hurt and wounded soul, life felt like a big, horrible mistake. God must have not cared about me. I may not have consciously acknowledged it, but my actions proved otherwise.

We live in a world where you got to be stronger, you got to be better; you got to be tougher; you got to be faster; you got to be more successful. The media pounds this into our brains all the time in many different forms. How many of us feel like we can never measure up? I am sure I am not alone in feeling the inadequacy. Yet I could not concentrate on anyone else’s pain when I was so wrapped up in my own.

A rose in the middle of December—I put it all into proper perspective. What a fragile looking thing, but an enduring one! It symbolizes to me the invincible, indelible human soul in the midst of an often perplexing world. When all around seems bleak, when life takes a toll on you, that remains unscathed, untouched by the trails we often have to face.  When we die, I wholeheartedly believe, it will be the only true thing that remains of us. When our bodies decay into dust, our souls will be like that rose, brilliant and beautiful.    

Besides myself, there are two groups of people, near and dear to my heart, which I could compare to that symbolic rose in my garden. My current job is working with special needs students, usually with autistic children and young adults. I worked 19 years in a bland office job, and could not ignore the constant nagging feeling to get the courage and desire up to do something more fulfilling with my life. With fearful, but bold determination I thought: It’s now or never.  Maybe it was not the wisest thing, but it felt so freeing to say to my boss, “I think I quit”, without another job to back me up. I basked in the encouraging applause of many co-workers who wished they had the guts to do the same, but soon the panic set in.

What do I do now? What can I do now?

Never working with children before, I felt a call to work with them, and I absolutely have a greater sense of purpose. Many of these children cannot talk. Many of them cannot walk. Many of them accept people just as they are, for I believe they want the same in return. Their lives teach me what really is important in life—and that is compassion.

Other than children, I also love the elderly, sensing their desperate need for love and compassion. Forcing myself to get my mind off my own troubles, I heeded my pastor’s call to not simply “go to church” but to “be the church”. I knew I had talents. I knew could open my mouth and carry a tune. From what I went through in my life, I knew I had the compassion. After all, I dealt with my dying father in a nursing home. With a nursing home ministry in my church, and a nursing home right across the street, it was obvious—there are others out there that need hope and they need love. So what was my excuse?

In this world that expects you to be stronger, better, tougher, faster or more successful, there are those that live in the world that they don’t fit any of these categories. But yet they are here. They exist. Can they be ignored? The answer is surely, yes, and they often are.  Perhaps, the world is uncomfortable with them, does not know what to do with them. They don’t fit into the false demands for perfection. They don’t fit into push and shove to get ahead of everyone else, but they remind us, sometimes to the point of discomfort, how fragile the human condition often is.  

Lately, I have had such a hunger that food cannot satisfy. I yearned for a peace, one that only God can provide me with. I found two uplifting stories on the internet of people who struggle on and whose lives defy the idea of a perfect world. One of them was about an Australian man, Nick Vujicic, who was born without arms and legs. He was picked on at school because he was perceived as a freak, as someone who did not seem to have any real chance at living a normal life. And he was angry that he did not look like, or function like, most everyone else. At about the age of eight he wanted to end it all, thinking he had no purpose in life. He eventually gave his life to Christ, and now lives a full life, reaching out to others with his incredible story of hope and perseverance.

Another woman, Joni Eareckson Tada, continues to amaze me. She is a quadriplegic from a diving accident gone horribly wrong. Her story touches many people with her hopeful attitude and her amazing faith in Christ. She, too, wanted to die when she thought her life had no more meaning. Recently, she has even fought breast cancer and chronic pain that has added to her decades of struggles with immobility.  She touches so many lives with her honesty about her suffering, giving people hope in times that seem hopeless.            

I wanted what these two people had. No, I did not want their afflictions, but I wanted to be able to reach out to others and touch their hearts, as well.  I wanted that faith, desperately, a faith that will not back down in the face of fear, in serious doubts, deep sadness, and pain. These people had little choice but to turn to God. The alternative was utter bleakness, a lack of purpose, and a slow death. But they defied the odds and etched a life out of faith, helping countless others to endure their struggles and to find meaning in life. There were plenty of times when I did not pray to reach out to a God that I gave my heart to many years ago. I bought into the belief that God was as inadequate and ineffective as I was feeling.    

Sometimes, we have to get into that place where all there is is God.

It is not that I did not believe in God. I did not think God believed in me.

Sometimes, we grow best in hard times.  

With plenty of tears, I cried out to God. It was a gut wrenching cry of someone with nothing to give but a broken heart. I wanted that kind of faith, and I meant that with every fiber of my being. Deep inside, my faith wasn’t gone. It never really left me, but only God had the ability to grow it, to prosper it, and to produce “life” back into my life. The battles might have felt overwhelming, at times, but I have always been a survivor. In spite of heartaches, and from what they actually teach me, I can be an encourager to others. Instead of just wanting to make everything go away, I can look forward to new chapters in my life.  

I know there will still be times when I will struggle to want to face another day, yet with my faith in God, I can.

So a rose growing outside may be not a big deal. Writers and poets have seemingly exhausted the topic, hailing it the most precious of flowers, the most perplex, with such lovely fragility, yet sheltered by stinging thorns. My inspiration to write on the same subject may not be unique, but as a rose blooms, and its glorious petals unfold, so does my story. I admit I hesitated to finish writing this, not sure I wanted to expose these things about my life. It takes a lot of guts to admit how imperfect you are in a world that seems to shun or poke fun at such things. But if I can encourage even one person, who has similar struggles, I will gladly try to be an encouragement.    

For almost a week now, existing in a stark contrast of its surroundings, that little rose remains, cold winter weather and all. Every day since, for about a week now, I continue look for it outside and find it going against the grain.  All the other flowers in my dormant garden are long gone. It will be gone eventually, but I am still enjoying my “God

I've made you into pretty words.

Scrap metal.

Crumpled pages.

Ink Spilled.

You made me brilliant.

Permanent.

I suppose I made you permanent, too, but you never saw it that way.

Never looked at your own etchings and called them beautiful the way I did for you.

Your permanence was always in scars on my skin.

Graphite Queen Anne's Lace drawn in my sketchbooks.

My permanence was always poetry with you.

Lovely musings for hours about an afternoon alone.

You made the sunsets sound even nicer after they were gone.

You can't put poetry on a chain,

Shackled.

I ran too far from you to ever be held down.

But here you are

Scrap Metal

Hanging from my neck.

while september cicadas
were singing my neighbors to sleep
i was up walking holes in my shoes
over love once lost
so many poems ago
that the only thing i remember
about the house at 38th & bluestone
is that it reeked of alcohol and is
as i'm sure of it
still saturated in perfume
and abandoned laughter
but that's not the point
give me a minute
what i'm trying to say
is i always thought god
enjoyed watching things leave me
it makes me wonder
what was on his mind
that night in september
when i stooped to cough
or tie my shoelaces
i no longer remember why
but i recall their trajectory
the way gravity cradled my hands
and brought them crashing back to earth like a 747
they landed inches away
from a scrap of crumpled loose leaf
folded in half like the smiles
of my relatives on a holiday truce
you see, lately i've been looking for scars in the newspaper
i find myself checking the obituary
for my former selves since the day i found your suicide letter
maybe that's why i can never explain my obsession with history
maybe archeology is just a funeral
in reverse
maybe hell is just rewinding home movies
or watching confetti
turn back into photographs
i never told anyone
the reason the doors to the gun cabinet in my family's house are locked not because they are afraid
i will take my life
but because sometimes
i sing them birthday songs
on the day you died
it makes me think
of how rooms only echo
when they are empty

*you know
i never echoed until you died

A single scrap of paper

and the child within me springs to life-

the child with bed head and a LEGO fascination-

leads me up and down stairs on all fours;

lights my face, shines my smile

soaks my senses- oversensitive;

takes a horizon, gives me an infinite shadow box;

takes a coincidence, gives me providence;

reminds me that some trees are ladders,

the others are giants, like buildings but wiser;

makes me giggle, as the circles untangle;

makes me ask myself,

Are they following us?

Who made this video game?  What's a boat made of waffles?

makes me too excited to eat; gives me dessert first;

lets me eat infinite Twizzlers;

lets me laugh at all of the sleepy adults,

and stay up late talking about collective consciousness;

lets me decide, "next time I'm going to the nature park",

as long as I can talk to all of the statues and sculptures on the way;

lets me write till there's no more room.

~Many people rely on the convenient, easy ways of living in this age of fast food, plastic packaging and rapid development. Most people do not care to see why they live the way they do or what it takes to live in such a way. Toxic pollutants leaching into our earth and water should not be worth the convenience! Third world women working in dusty, cramped factories to make designer purses for fifteen year old girls. Garbage is America’s biggest export and it ends up in China, on the coast of Somalia... anywhere that American citizens won’t be bothered to see it.

~What does it mean to buy a pack of plastic razors? Some metal, some chemicals, some plastic, more plastic for packaging. Use a razor a few times and toss it in the garbage. Somewhere, maybe at La Chureca, someone will pull the rusted metal and plastic from the landfill. They might make one US dollar per day collecting scraps of aluminum, glass, plastic and other scrap metals. What does it mean to wear deodorant? The plastic stick isn’t reusable. The ingredients are highly toxic. Aluminum-based antiperspirants have been linked to Alzheimer's and cancer. Soap comes in plastic bottles, coffee makers made of plastic, water bottles made of plastic… hell, my plastic shower curtain came wrapped in plastic packaging.

~Americans are lucky. Indoor plumbing with quality water. Green lawns and exotic flower beds. Buy and use, throw away and repeat. Big corporations pay off politicians to pollute. Industrial waste, land erosion, low air quality, pesticides. Why are we so quick to trust an artificial sweetener being promoted by a company that makes poison? They call you a hippy, a conspiracy theorist. They tell you that you only live once and to stop being so worried about it all. I ask them, how can you look away? Deforestation and destruction are all around. Those that profit are not concerned with what happens to the land after the loggers and miners have left the ground scarred and desolate.

~Modern living is a hoax. Yeah, you get around quick in your car but at what cost? Carbon dioxide, greenhouse gasses choking us and everything alive that lives with us and cannot speak. Can’t you walk to the corner store? Can’t you grow a few things in the garden or in the windowsill? When was the last time you saw a sunset and didn’t take a picture of it? Dairy cows packed together so tight they can’t turn around for your glass of milk. The disconnect is everywhere. Overpopulation. Overconsumption. People don’t care.

~They can choose. They can choose paper over plastic. They can buy a water filter instead of 20 plastic bottles. They can bike to work. Anyone can lessen their impact, anyone can think more deeply and live more sustainably. But we’ve made it so easy to be lazy. We’ve become so dependent that we’re forgetting to use technological gains to make the way we do things better. We’ve come so far that we’re forgetting what brought us here.

~

‘We are slaves in the sense that we depend for our daily survival upon an expand-or-expire agro-industrial empire – a crackpot machine – that the specialists cannot comprehend and the managers cannot manage. Which is, furthermore, devouring world resources at an exponential rate.’ Edward Abbey

‘In the developing world, the problem of population is seen less as a matter of human numbers than of western overconsumption. Yet within the development community, the only solution to the problems of the developing world is to export the same unsustainable economic model fuelling the overconsumption of the West.’ Kavita Ramdas

‘Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans.’ Jacques-Yves Cousteau

‘Globalisation, which attempts to amalgamate every local, regional, and national economy into a single world system, requires homogenising locally adapted forms of agriculture, replacing them with an industrial system – centrally managed, pesticide-intensive, one-crop production for export – designed to deliver a narrow range of transportable foods to the world market.’Helena Norberg-Hodge

‘Throughout history human exploitation of the earth has produced this progression: colonise-destroy-move on.’ Garrett Hardin

by simply watching 'don't call me crazy'
with regards to mental health... a bbc3 documentary.

i find a few pointers, apart from the fact that i've learned
English to a standard that i could
be misjudged as a native, what with african psychiatrists
   and the history of England as  a postcolonial nation...
     the problems of premature depression
and other divergences from the "norm"
  (or is that a tu-dum tss... "the norm"?
i never know how to tell the joke a proper
way, so many jokes are mothered
by punctuation, i don't know
how many there are that aren't) -
so aside from that... the fact that i'm
faking being British... if you have any grievances
against me: you'd better me Ukranian
or Lithuanian... otherwise? *******.
yes, i know the Poles did terrible things,
Vlad wasn't the only person ready to
do sadistic **** on people by impaling them
on sharpened-wooden poles...
   and you thought the crucifix was bad...
but oh look... the artists inserted a peddle-stool
so he could stand while on the cross...
rather than actually: hang from it.
talk about a woman faking an ******.
then again: he was all kissy-kissy with
a centurion having cured the ravaging libido
of his "demon possessed" daughter who
had a hot bagel flirt under her skirt for him...
or as i say: **** a prostitutes
           **** for an extra ten quid: the sigma
of how many ***** that thing has seen
turns your tongue into a dagger...
that's where i have seen my salvation:
   not in the eucharist or degrading symbols
of a godly stature.
       no, the point is:
this misapprehension of where the origin of
thinking resides...
  the true materialists posit the origin of thought
in the brain... but, honey-bee, the brain
is preoccupied with its materialistic responsibilities...
to shoot adrenaline when bungee jumping...
why think it isn't already preoccupied with anything
but thought? the brain doesn't think
no more than the heart might... or your *******
wetted or your phallus becoming *****...
there's no point in ascribing thought to the brain,
even if you abstract the source of thinking
toward the brain as a *mind,
     the suggestion parallels what the brain does,
and what the brain isn't...
   as with the notion of god...
          ridiculous for most people:
or also ridiculous when man is taught to stress
his "individuality"...
                               both seem on equal footing
to be considered phantoms, but the individual is
more of a phantom than god...
                             and as Diogenes of Sinope found out:
you'll find god and the Archimedean eureka
quicker than finding an honest man -
who takes a candle at noon into a market square?
     ah: that famous lunacy...
but in the beginning the word was with god,
       yes, because when we started we only said ooh ooh!
and made those frightening monkey faces to
war off evil spirits and the Arabic third eye, evil.
   Darwinism created historical fiction...
           a bit like science fiction, but instead of looking
forward, historical fiction is looking back,
toward a time when people struggled against
the elements, and had no sense of having to think
given their actual pentagram equilibrium was tuned
into what was around them...
                   the senses could never deviate from
the world of shouting down a cave and hearing echo,
it's only when thought emerged and conceived words
   that the dubiousness of simple musing:
chicken or egg first? created auxiliary sense perceptions...
   we have left the sensual world...
           for we have "enriched" our lives with
thinking, the byproduct of which is what scared me
about this bbc3 documentary... that all mental
illness stems from allow thought to automate itself...
      in other words having no moral compass...
in other words: not having read a single book
   and learned a process of equating thinking with
narrating... as a sensible option to what others tend
to do (the innovators), and allow narration to be a void...
into which they pour all their thinking to
fill that void... with, say, Thomas Edison and the lightbulb...
Isaac Newton and gravity...
it's just scary that people can allow automated thinking,
     made even more evident that counters
the punitive transgender pronoun scenario
   that only focuses on the pronouns: he, it, she.
these youngsters in the documentary are dealing with
submitting to a pronoun focus of: i, it, you.
                      in some vague sense of a religiosity,
that they cannot allow cogito ergo sum into their minds,
a possessiveness of body, that later translates
into an identification with the mind: which is -
well, if you're going to posit the origin of thinking
in your brain, which isn't even there - you mind
as well posit the mind, seeing how the soul
is argued against primarily through our mortal condition.
   is the eye the window to the soul?
  and the brain merely a paraphrasing of that statement?
perhaps...
              but i wouldn't be too worried
             as Walter Benjamin was about art in the age
of mechanical reproduction... i'd be worried
that art is bound to the morgue of psychiatric institutions...
that art is not a term that suggest the origins of
   such ailments:
due the original lack of it in such places:
  but that that it was never there... and that finding
art can be therapeutic is why art can be scolded
               and establishment art is nothing more
than the pinnacle of us, having abused words,
waging fewer and fewer words, can't produce
    a work of beauty... merely a work that occupies
a space.
                art = space...
          that's the statement these days...
being oversaturated with scientific assurances has created
this insurgence of over-competence or making
art not art in a sense timelessness, as in Dante's
comedy isn't equal to space,
            but that it's equal to timelessness...
    or a statue by Donatello...
                          these days art = space...
because it's not going to be timeless... it was once
the iconoclasm in metaphor of: the lion of Judea...
          Lucifer as the morning star...
                         it will not be timeless because it
has been reduced to the establishment's aesthetic
of tracey emins' unmade bed... or
       damien hirst's the physical impossibility
of death in the mind of someone living -
i never said these things aren't art... some people
said cubism would never be art compared to
surrealism... but shove a triangle into Pythagoras'
head and you get some sort of mathematics...
              it's based on that principle...
what wouldn't work in the case of hirst would be
to put a cancerous tumour into a plastic cage...
people would associate it as some sort of atomist
representation of a nanometre worth's of some
larger thing... i do appreciate the fact that big
art works... it needs so much face to embody
the fact that you are to think about it...
                         and not to have a **** over it:
it's art that's anti-arousal and more and more
and more about how to juxtapose it in your mind,
always to abstract the brain as the mind
   and to never appreciate the idea of having
to source thinking as solely endemic to the brain...
the brain is busy, the heart is busy...
            we have perpetuated an outer-body
experience throughout our time since the time when
we first acquired the phonos of thought...
                 and it is a peculiar "sound", thought...
a dance memorable to actually having a hope in
possessing a soul... even after all sturdy things
shrink into the obsolete, and even vegetable.
but the piece i'm referring to?
     kinda paradoxical... given that a shark would
probably eat you... but then again counter-paradoxical
given the fact that most shark-attacks
     make the shark refrain from eating you,
but merely nibbling on you and leaving you alive
albeit nibbled on... maned... with scars...
so i get the part where the shark is in fact:
an impossible death to conceive... only for the lucky few.
  apart from the fact that the shark is caged
like a prehistoric mosquito lodged in amber...
              woodland gold, amber...
  that's the literal interpretation...
                                 but it's still a moving piece,
modern art isn't crap at all... it's just something you
don't get an ******* over...
            take any still life and apply a cognitively
based chemical reaction: stimulate a narrative...
in that famous phrasing, connect the: dot dot dot(s).
    become, in that almost ridiculous sense:
     a Sherlock Holmes... but all that died was about
a minute's worth of your attention...
this is what's fuelling revising a need for television,
big static things... my personal favourite?
that Tate Modern installation by richard holt -
hand on heart: about 3 times...
              i felt like a mosquito drawn into that:
ah the bright shiny light... 180º and a glass ceiling...
that's all it was...
                   art in the age of mechanical reproduction
has to almost ridicule man, or at least ridicule
the idea that he can become an individual,
    as was the ridicule of man that he could become
a god...
               sooner or later any attempt at individualism
becomes trendy, vogue, and magnetises and
monetises a need to mimic, replicate... one punk today:
20,000 punks tomorrow...
       /
           but that sort of mincing is mostly associated
by the bewilderment of our own success...
                           it's almost like a we're engaging with
a sabotage process: deliberately trying to undermine
ourselves by staging a variety of "anti-social" endeavours
we promised ourselves upon a belief in the "individual"...
      modern pieces of art debunk that myth,
it's that modern art pieces require so much space that
gave them the most adaptation prowess over, say,
a puritan's concept of art, as in a Turner painting...
           classical art can be put into a Florentine market
square and be passed by quiet casually,
because it provides an assurance - it forbids engaging
in an iconoclastic vigil, it's an assurance of the past
and how golden it was... but a modern sculpture
in a busy place where many people congregate
without first allowing it the asylum of an art gallery
and people will treat it as a chance to hone on it,
vandalise it, or steal it and sell it from scrap metal...
       modern art requires an asylum to be accepted,
an art gallery is an asylum where people with
good intentions enter and leave appreciating something
that, to the pleb, would get a rotten egg thrown at it.
    and as with regards to how i phrased something
earlier? how philosophy talks of the logos
     that doesn't see the phonos: or the dichotomy
between actual sound, and sound ascribed a
optically-phonetic disparity encryption:
deepened by a self-styled aesthetic of the "ruling elites"...
          and in the beginning the word was with god...
we're merely licking the toes of such a possibility...
         and just you try to bypass the orthodoxy of
encoding sounds with queer spelling...
                     you, in a sense, learn two-languages
with every single one you learn...
   how to say it and how to write it...
                              and then there the how you hear it
and how sometimes you hear different lyrics to
the ones sang...
                         a bit like the Chinese,
who, upon reading the English translation were
bothersome to get rich quickly after seeing
too many matchsticks in ideogram translated as merely
Li Po; i'd too go bananas and become frustrated
and retaliated by getting to Einsteinian grips with
the mathematical alphabet that bore Li Po... i.e. 1, 0
through to 9.
      ah yes... philosophy that doesn't appreciate
grammatical words, or in that sense credible for a biologist
not necessitating a genus to ease any argument,
to actually further it... or to play ping-pong...
   grammatical words are equivalent to the subconscious
given we tend to write some a sense of fluidity...
the unconscious? schematics akin to triangles...
  "images" or rather shapes...
                             beginning with Δ: isosceles...
later varied to the Γ triangle of Pythagoras...
          and as far as we got, a respectability to
not conjure up a square as worthy of encoding a sound...
nearest being the H... and that turned out to
be much ha ha ha.
                   still... i can't come to grips with these teenagers
in the bbc3 documentary talking about
automated thinking! i'm not denying it, i'm not
doubting it... it's just a question:
          how could such a pronoun muddle come about
that you discourage ownership of all your mental
activity? and instead leave a rampant kindred of an
abandoned snail's shell body to wreck havoc?
   it's almost like a a want to refuse to use words...
or encode words... rarely are people told
that the eyes are used as encoding organs...
                   but that the tongue knows no filters...
what the eye ingests... the tongue sometimes can't
digest... and vice-versus... that what the eyes digest
the tongue can't ingest: hence the rebellion
against contrary political ambitions -
   the ears? well: the ears are allocated the heart as
a partner... the tongue and eyes are entwined...
but the ears are allocated the heart...
                     you tend to feel words more than
hear them... because by the time the tongue
represses combining itself with the eyes to
that elevation of thought... your body becomes
autocratically synchronised to a sort of music
of heightened of unanimous response...
             well, it's not exactly a fetish watching such
documentaries.. iconoclasm in metaphor...
  i swear i wrote this before... how philosophy avoids
grammatical genuses... and how all too
ambivalent poetically equivalent nouns and verbs
are to hide our imperfections that precipitate from
art... iconoclasm / anamorphosis in metaphors...
                         camaïeu in allegory...
                   divisionism in pun...
                                       chiaroscuro in imagery...
gestural abstraction in onomatopoeia...
                     just some examples, and none necessarily
     convincing - as ever... this is my excuse
for i am always bound to say language is Alcatraz
   and my escape from Alcatraz is bound to metaphors,
fo

Colonial mansion, in an ocean of grass,
windows aglow as I walk past.
funeral service now used of verandah,
but I hear music, not mournful stanza.
french doors open to a reminisce,
with boyhood heart, of vitreous.

Footfalls on parquet floors,
tux and gown past crown moulded doors.
captured ambiance of a setting sun,
shown from chandeliers highly hung,
day I was born, born the day of prom,
I smiled cordially, and my date fawned.

Girls betrothed by corsage on wrist,
rare french curls--a lunar eclipse.
bedraggled boys now dapper and genteel,
vest and bow-tie, a knightly feel.
chapperesses smiling at maidenly gait,
happy drowse in  mansion estate.

Cuff-links, silk gloves, nail polish of gloss,
beheld tonics and sweets, carefully aloft.
opening cord, an arrow from cupid's bow,
striking coquettes to their tippy toes.
they sprang to dance,I stepped back,
invisible in shadow with tux of black.

Shoulders, lake ripples easing to shore,
hips, gentle waves, right before they pour.
boys stiff, as if waists beheld sabers,
legs, sweeping brooms of on shore waiters.
"your too handsome to stay here unseen,"
said rivaling chaperess, past semblance of queen.

"You should dance ,"said glittered lips of pink,
bent like sparrow wings, during teacup drink.
privy to why in shadow I hid my blush,
her class my crush, that crushed me so much.

She strained me, even the shadows she gave,
black silk, stretching,--convex and concave.
crude metal and wood classroom seat,
clasped her waist of slender physique.
she was guarded by a window in curtain mail,
and tended to by servants of light and gale.
light loved her skin of Mediterranean sand,
and wind enthralled by each and every brown strand.

Light penetrated strands, blondly hot,
wind would blow, cooling pony tail off.
her shadow curtsied under my desk,
long legs danced in irritableness.
mourning class is abuzz with scent of prom,
flower not frost, rules the school's dawn.

I gave my consent, to an earlier invite,
then on, suitor blinded me with light.
and Great Gatsy, and looming prom night,
subjects of sparrow wings pressed tight.
" show of hands, who do not have a date?"
slender wrist arises, from an arm curvate.

alone, she shown that no one asked her,
this stone of Rome amongst boys of plaster.
hand fell with boy of teachers match,
wind shrouded her,from the window sash
rays gave discomfort,to gaze her way,
but I looked through burning ray--

To see a trace of a tear,in eyes ovate,
a goddess unsought, with sadful face.
I, poor, fatherless, could not possibly go,
to prom with princess of arched portico?
I could not interweave my hands to dance,
or know where I could place my glance.

Wind blew a scrap from her desk, indiscreet,
it was pierced by light at my feet.
"will" and "with" were dotted with a heart,
"prom" and "me" before most painful part.
my name in her beautiful free hand,
the color red from hearts inkstand.

(Class bell rings) I travel over star lit lawn,
the music gets louder as I return to prom,
eyes turn to cotton, in shadow as I ponder,
as pain was forgotten, I came upon her.
invisible hands, lifted my chin to a red shape,
our eyes met, her's smiling, mine agape.

Only a glass-maker could imagine my sight,
seeing hot curves form in dance floor light.
only a wax-wing could have rivaled her eyes,
waves gently broke to gown down her thighs.
"will you dance with me,"she softly entreated,
" I don't know how,"a coward repeated.

A princess which tournaments were held,
for which every timber of mansion were felled.
not for Rome the mansion's Corinthian column--
--for her--from quarry prom did befall them.
I could not tarnish this feminine form,
with my lineage in crown she adorned.

I turned from beauty, to dark acres tread,
under willow, I play the last thing she said--
my name--as I shunned from last chance,
now back under willow, cane marks my stance.
I have preserved her forever, shying fate,
even if it was with my own heart-break.

I still see her--in the most beautiful prom poses--
--still--as lights flicker out and a coffin closes.

Dancing at my windowsill she calls,
black bottomless eyes and a jagged smile
tug me from sleep with a broken-glass laugh.
Beckoning, this pixie traces softly across my jaw--
fingertips so slightly ***** the skin.
Wordless but for laughter she pulls at me until
charmed I rise to follow where she leads.

Open evening air greets my night-dressed body
with cool wakening breezes and wild sounds.
Stumbling through rocks and over roots
I chase through the wood behind my manic guide.
Toes grip at undergrowth, slip, falling to arrive
on my knees
scraped and panting slightly
in a clearing otherworldly,
aglow with fey light.

A curious night-shine looms--yet Luna's face is hidden.
All attentions focus now on this central luminescence.
From its core jangles sweet, unearthly music
twisting its way into my heart
teasing at the edges of my fragile mind.
Compelled forward I follow sound--
my waker cannot outstrip me as we hurtle on.
Before our eyes the glow casts shadows
forming structure in this mystifying vision
eyes drink in your very first glimpse:
The Carnival.

Light and shadow compose sweeping tents
striped ebony and ivory, seeming strong as each
element yet smooth, sculpted by a master's hands.
Leaping black flames skip along their summits,
performing their nocturnal dance,
illuminating darkness, engulfing light.

Revelers' song soars and forms carouse,
                                                  lively­--but shadows only--to the eyes outside.

The air bears heady perfumes, enticing scents:            
rich, melting creams and toasting sugar
enveloping baked warmth and intoxicating spice.
Last, encircling all this wonder,
cries of mirth and sights to amaze:
an unadorned, unflinching iron fence.

Drunk with sound and smell and scene
wildly spinning through the breeze,
my rousing sprite whirls ahead
bound as if in a trance
her body flinging against
the forbidding blackened gates--
                                        her laughter only extinguished
                                                         as her delicate form dissolves into smoke
                                         holding momentarily the blue of night
                                                         her wasted shape, lost to the barrier.

But Curiosity will blind
eyes far more chaste than mine,
and Allure sings only such songs
that no heart suffers long.

Heedless mortal as I am, I grasp the solid frame
decay crumbles rough against my palms.
Bodies of other spirits caked by time
or the innocent work of oxidation
I do not pause to wonder,
merely vault myself over the fence
and brush from my hands
the black dust of portentous iron.

Inside the gate, vibrant figures flood my vision
ornately costumed in gowns of orange, violet, green
arrayed in shirts and trousers dazzling in spectrum.
These gorgeous apparitions loop around me
peddling beauty, selling fame.
They mesmerize  the eye with stunning wares:
an emerald beast to carry your heavy burdens
sapphire wine to cool your burning tongue
the music of a thousand crystal seas
kept in a bottle to drown your babbling mind.

                "What do they cost?"
                            "Not a dime, not a dime!
                              Just your Now, just a Moment,
                                                         ­                  only Passing Time."

Wandering deeper into the mysteries of night
a band of revelers swing beside and catch me
laughing, bear my bewildered form in arms
and deposit me into a large tent, wherein I find
a man at a canvas the size of a wall
before which are seven stone bowls.
He dashes his brush before the amazed,
and the canvas remains blank
until my companions urge me closer.
Couching myself upon a cushion shapes appear:
Here is a man who will paint your heart's desires
so vivid you can lose all you have
so intimate you fear to move,
lest any see the embers of your fire.

Spin and turn, the Revelers never stay long,
nor draw too near to any one spectacle,
but only joy for new tents, new delights.
No passion was left to grow cold,
no enchantment to lose its power.

Spin
See the girl of flawless grace,
her body painted like the stars--
                                                  the stars the carnival hid
painted like the stars and lithe as the air
ethereal in her arts,
ascending the pole, traversing the rope!
See her twine around stakes and over fire,
dive through hoops and drop
through that needle-loop in your eye.

Spin
Step up to the tent of glistening blue
the fountain that gushes without source.
Marvel at its lucent clarity, it's chilling foam!
Fill your goblet to the brim and drink!
Drink deep, imbibe sweet forgetfulness.
Long for nothing, cleanse your heart.

Spin
Take the carousel with its living beasts to ride.
Make merry with all on board and erase
any care your heart can hold.
Let the furious pace speed on from you
all that would trouble for a thought.

Spin
A honeyed apple pressed against your tongue.
                                         Just a taste! Just a bite!
See the glistening on the skin
made from the dreams of the greatest hearts
unrestrained and unrequited.
Fresh Desire--they're all the more enticing.

The apple glitters golden, its red flesh shines beneath.
Something familiar, a darker red, flecked across the finish.
I bite down and reel--
Something wondrous, but something queer.

Faithful attendants grab me quickly, dance me
into the mouth of a dark velvet tent.
It swallows me as I fall, waiting for the teeth---

        White mist surrounds with a shimmer
         and I have found the ground.
A Voice, deep as the sea enfolds me
gentle, heavy as with sleep--yet all aware.
It invites me closer, sit nearer
rest from the night's fantasies.
Lulled, I make for the figure hooded in brilliant gold.
He leads me to his table.

Heavy, strangely empty I seek sanctuary.
He offers instead a great promise--
power over my weariness, my desires met.
He offers joy unending,
pleasure without regret, without shame.
A haven promised here, mine alone, if only--
--if only I will stay.

But something tastes metallic in those words
promises that cannot be kept.
No tent could hold so much.
This voice, so warm and pleasing,
cannot mask well a lie,
and the gentle hand holds equally a threat.
                                                         ­                                                             run­
                Awake once more I fly from the shroud
bursting blind into the alley.

But back in the tent, left a piece of my heart
and my eye rolls away into a peddler's cup
blistered bits of my soul flake off, scorched
by fire-eaters food. What's left? Who am I?

                             What did it cost?
                               Not a dime, not a dime!
                                          Just a piece of your heart,
                                                                ­  just a piece of your mind.

Retching, the last of my still beating heart
squelches into my waiting hands.
I gag and sob out the gore, disbelieving
this small bit of flesh is all that is left
of all that I have been.

The blood draws the eyes of comrades
now changing from lovely to grotesque.
Ravenous, their teeth elongate
Eyes darken and colors fade
What was vibrant now decayed.
Sweet cream curdles in my mouth.
Rich meats, choice fruits turn sour--
the apple rots.

A hoard unrecognizable
of starved beasts and hideous beings
bears down for my final offering.

But I must know who I am
and what there was beyond this place!

Sprinting barefoot from the mob
clutching the vital treasure to my chest--
though to there it may not return--
I look now for mercy from the black gate.

Elegant porcelain fingers produce monstrous claws.
What once caressed my wondering skin
now sinks in for blood with crushing force.
A hopeless last attempt, a dead man's prayer:
I fling my body on the gate---


                                                       ­                                I am over. I am free--



Iron that once kept me out, now holds them fast within.

Bedclothes torn, all my purchased raiment turned to ash,
I limp, clutching a fragment heart.
Staggering from the Carnival's screams,
its dissonant music now all trick and terror.
Putrid garbage wafts from its walls.
Press onward, never looking back, through the wood.

So long ago--how long?--a little one led me here.
Her death was her own, but could have been
my salvation, a warning dearly paid.
Cheaply received.

My mind swims.
A body with its heart outside cannot last.
There are many things not of the Carnival
that would have my final scrap.

Faltering feet stumble and tripping find
a mere clear and still: a mirror for the moon.
And Luna's face does shine down
all her attendants watching on
as my naked form collapses beside its calm.
I cannot deserve this resting place,
could not discern a trap if one here lay.
All I can and have and am I offer up to Mercy,
and dip what's left of my broken life
into the cleansing pool.

You kick to gain speed
Lean side to side make a turn
Lean back scrap the board to stop
The rush on a board
The fear off falling
Uphill you burn out kicking
Down hill you hall ***
Hoping not to land hard if fly off
Tricks are hard could barely ride
Some extreme take it to new heights
Kick flips practice till you land them just right
Clean stairs ride with pride
Skate boarding is hard keep that in mind

have sieved the
ruins of discarded
things,

sometimes finding
in an old magazine,
women looking
through you
with ageless eyes

block square keys of
a typewriter,
cardboard covers
of fragile messages,
images of shattering
glass,
empty bottles of
RAT POISON,

‘Kamasutra for beginners'
‘The lonely wife’
other clandestine
books, sometimes,
extracted from some
secret wardrobe chamber,
wrapped in brown paper

school notebooks with
red tick-marks, blots, rights,
wrongs, devastating
stories of marks, homework,
a light bulb that still works,
the legs of a chair,
toy horses, toy cars,
scratched plastic

gaping holes in mugs,
buckets, fake notes
from a crumpled game
of monopoly,
a chewed dog's collar,
a heavy rusted *****,
every night in my dreams,
they come hopping over a barn,
now you know,
that I do not count sheep

The typewriters tap,
with a rat-a-tat-tat,
like a fourth estate rap
to provide us the pap
(that serves as a snack with a rat-a-tat-tat)
in a newspaper scrap
crammed with meaningless crap
from the editor's yap
(spewing flimflamy flak, booming rat-a-tat-tat)
after gashing a gap
in the daily recap
with a snip in a snap-
sounding thundery clap
crackng rat-a-tat-tat and a rat-a-tat-tat.

And the talking heads speak
with a rat-a-tat-tat,
of the news of the week,
tweaking tongue in the cheek
(with a click and a clack like a rat-a-tat-tat),
thus ignoring critique
'cause they're mild and too meek
in the midst of the reek
to report of the wrack (except rat-a-tat-tat)
whilst the pundits (oblique
when protecting the chic
of the upper class clique
at the top of the peak)
chatter rat-a-tat-tat and a rat-a-tat-tat.

The NRA ghouls
plug a rat-a-tat-tat
while their blood money tools
fill the Hill’s vestibules
(where deceit behind drapes drips a rat-a-tat-tat),
spreading folly that fuels
frenzied hands of young fools
bringing guns into schools
(at the drop of a hat there's a rat-a-tat-tat
splashing blood in warm pools)
for now anarchy rules
(which the hype ridicules
'til the temperature cools)
hailing rat-a-tat-tat and a rat-a-tat-tat.

Lawless cops, cutting loose
with a rat-a-tat-tat
spraying bullets profuse
without any excuse
(just a split second splat with a rat-a-tat-tat),
splay a rattled recluse
like a Thanksgiving goose
gushing cranberry juice
from six slugs in the back (with a rat-a-tat-tat).
To redress such abuse,
bend the branch of a spruce
with a neck in a noose
while Death's drums beat diffuse’
rolling rat-a-tat-tat and a rat-a-tat-tat.

War brings freedom to all
with a rat-a-tat-tat
(well, excluding the thrall
with fear, facing the wall
[ often smacked with a bat, throbbing rat-a-tat-tat ],
until feeling the call
to creep out of the kraal
biting back with a gall
[ with a *** for a tat and a rat-a-tat-tat ],
or to mangle and maul
if still able to crawl
and be part of the brawl
in a freak free-for-all,
midst a rat-a-tat-tat and a rat-a-tat-tat).

Holy warmongers praise,
with a rat-a-tat-tat,
any soldier that slays
and all rockets that raze
(the drones zoom with a vroom and a rat-a-tat-tat)
leaving smoky arrays
of gray ghosts in the haze
cloaking mute cabarets
(hushed, the hip and the hop, by the rat-a-tat-tat)
while ol’ Cerberus bays
with mankind in his gaze,
so society prays  
as it rots and decays
(Satan's trumpets of doom blare a rat-a-tat-tat)
until one of these days
in a flash through the maze
mighty mushrooms will blaze
with invisible  rays,
fin’lly braising the craze
of the rat-a-tat-tat,
   and the
            rat-
                 a-
                    tat-
                          tat.

VIOLENCE,
Nothing is as beautiful and as disgusting

To see MEN and WOMEN strike and grapple on UFC is wonderful
leaving everything they have out there with respect
only their technique and skill to speak for them
in the name of martial arts

To see "men" and "women" scrap and stomp on worldstar is sickening
leaving no downed alone,no honor nor respect
only their cowardice and anger speak for them
in the name of Violence.

No mad coffee shop
emotions make time real be-
tween jazz consciousness—
and the taste of sound howls for
soul on city gas
beaches that work naked like
***, like sleep; selling
ev'ry beatnik book in some
village.

Cats improvise god in barely-there clubs,
so cigarette smoke music can be cool forever.
The slide guitar, gutter trombones, the sax,
drums beat into submission, and
that voice scatting softly but strong
like hail in the scrap yard.

Be-bop skiddly bop do-*** skiddly bop.

Those lips crack off dryer barrels, blender bases,
alarm clock cord plugs rapping on the dumpster.
Those teeth chew out heels on pavement, police
tires on gravel driveways, the 8:15 bus' hiss hydraulics.
That soul.
His soul.
Is just that.

Side by side, their faces blurred,
The earl and countess lie in stone,
Their proper habits vaguely shown
As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,
And that faint hint of the absurd -
The little dogs under their feet.

Such plainness of the pre-baroque
Hardly involves the eye, until
It meets his left-hand gauntlet, still
Clasped empty in the other; and
One sees, with a sharp tender shock,
His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.

They would not think to lie so long.
Such faithfulness in effigy
Was just a detail friends would see:
A sculptor's sweet commissioned grace
Thrown off in helping to prolong
The Latin names around the base.

They would no guess how early in
Their supine stationary voyage
The air would change to soundless damage,
Turn the old tenantry away;
How soon succeeding eyes begin
To look, not read. Rigidly they

Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths
Of time. Snow fell, undated. Light
Each summer thronged the grass. A bright
Litter of birdcalls strewed the same
Bone-littered ground. And up the paths
The endless altered people came,

Washing at their identity.
Now, helpless in the hollow of
An unarmorial age, a trough
Of smoke in slow suspended skeins
Above their scrap of history,
Only an attitude remains:

Time has transfigures them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.

With graceful strategy the circling hawk
Whips my circling sorrow to dive and strike;
Indiscrete for action the poison oak
Thrusts up her flushed face for attack
Lizards and herbs and flowers admonish me,
Strict in their innocence: I am cowardly,
Nor will the mourning-dove condone my fault
Who ******* all hazard for a humble scrap
And when she coos courts punishment. My guilt
Is obvious, and I cannot escape.

In this throw-away society,
It seems nothing is meant for life,
People scrape and scream for success,
But how do they feel inside?

They throw away things of value,
The marks of their affluent style,
They dispose of treasures,
Even those hard to find.

I have been that piece of *******,
That discarded bit of trash,
Worthless and unwanted,
Casually thrown aside.

A person can so easily,
Be thrown on that proverbial heap,
The piece of scrap,
The person left to rot.

Lucky for me there are others,
Who rescue from the dump,
Those who see the value,
In what others see as junk.

For some people are out there gathering,
Things of the throw-away kind,
For scraps can be turned to beauty,
By one of the loving kind.

I built it all up to tear it down.
I have built mountains to turn them into dust.
I have built bridges to cut them down.

To destroy it all with my own hands.

I believe only a destroyer would only know how to repair.

I know that the scrap metal around me was once a beautiful sculpture, but I only remember how beautiful it was.

My hands that mold learned to melt.
My hands that fix grew to break.

They are what I have dared to know.

this is truly a welcome break from:
freeing all the drafts -
which i imagined to be equivalent, or rather:
the 2nd parallel of the original adjecent -

i imagined it would feel like:
releasing doves with laurel branches firmly
lodged in their beaks -
just as the waters of the flood would recede...

but it truly felt like:
the inversion of the diarrhoea-constipation
"paradox"... because it felt like both,
but never giving me a clue as to
what was more prominent -

the sharp edge of a knife -
or the horizon when the sky becomes
the sea far away....

i'm not ashamed to throw this onto the fore...
it happened to me once...
but on purpose...
i wanted to compensate marquis de sade's
antic in a brothel when he implored
the ******* to turn the crucifix into
a ***** into his decapitated precursor
of a mary antoinette... puppet...

profanity in images and all the other seances
of the senses...
i wouldn't go as far as to make the crucifix
profane... or do anything profane
with it...

only the words...
hic (est) mea corpus - hic (est) mea cruor...
this is my body - this is my blood...
and i am aware the mead is the gods' ****
when they're in a good mood - all... jolly...
and that beer is the gods' **** when
laughter hits a dry run...
and that ms. amber or whiskey is but:
the blood of the gods...

i had to corrupt it...
to prove to myself: that i am not a god...
it was quiet simple...
once upon a time i was drinking
a glass of wine...
and as you do... on a whim...
i decided to **** into it...
perhaps all that drinking prior would
give me something to elevate the palette
of exploration that was to come...

hmm... at least that sorts out
hic: mea cruor... *** urinae...
but back then i did that on purpose...
and if only this was a desert scenario...
and i would have to drink my own *****
to survive...
well... i just thought: here's to starving
from a lack of better imagery...

i will come unto some Horace in a minute...
i don't know how i managed to find
this citation - it's only very losely related...
and yes i will showcase another draft from
May of last year...

but today i was unsure...
did i leave yesterday's pepsi max bottle
with only the stale pepsi left...
or did i forget to do the lazy sly wee whizz
jumping out of bed in the middle of
the night...
but i already poured this "cocktail"
over two shots of whiskey...
and i'm hardly desperate but...
my original intention of alligning myself
to the profanity of the crucifix...
i had to somehow make profanity
of the wine...

since i am... thinking how to compensate
being satisfied with wine...
how the ancient world was always
satisfied with wine...
the story of the 3 ambers of the north...
the beer, the mead and the whiskey...
all in a varying degree...
but i will not bow before the blood of a god
that's so... diluted...
whiskey yes... that can be blood indeed...
otherwise it's down in the trench
with gods' **** - mead if they are in a good
mood... beer if they are in a talkative mood...

thank god i wasn't thinking:
better salvage those two shots of whiskey
and drink this cocktail of the "ultimate" surprise...
and apparently eating a woman's
placenta is good for you...
as was... apparently once... breastmilk...
funny... give me the milk of a cow or a goat
and i'll show you: one dislocated thumb...
one dislocated distal + intermediate phalange
from the index finger of the right hand's
proximal phalange... no broken bones...

knock-knock... who's there? touchwood superstition.

it's not as bad as it sounds...
stale, yes...
but i am also known for sometimes
performing the antithesis of drinking tequilla...
*****... i'll sprinkle some cigarette ash
onto my hand... lick it... take a shot of *****
then throw one or two black peppercorns into
my mouth for the crunch...
each drinker and his own myths... right?
i call that the black cracovite...
cracow being so close to aushwitz...
and once it snowed and they thought it was
snowing... sure... ash from the furnaces
of aushwitz... here's my ode to... the dead...
in a drink...

hell better a cracovite than a cracowite, white?
i mean: right? seriously: low hanging fruit,
the elephant's testicles...

i will never understand this whole veneration
of wine: in vino veritas...
these days wine is better drank by women
and castrated monarchs of the clergy...
i had to check... so i ****** in my holy grail...
and guess what didn't come out
the other end? gods' **** (beer and wine)
or gods' blood (whiskey and wine)...
just this stale, almost bland...
water with a pinch of grape that has been
left to sit in a puddle on some
industrial estate in dagenham enjoying
the ripe downpouring of chemicals
that leave it with a rainbow of diluted
petroleum...

akin to: try shoving that sort of doughnut
into this kind of pile of ****...
not that i would...
but i have also been prone to test
99.9% spirits... or 96% absinthe...
with a locust mummified in the bottle's neck...
from Amsterdam...

i had to rethink: why become engaged...
when chances are...
to the displeasure of someone who read:
but never bought my work...
the self-editorial process...
the self-publishing process could be...
guillotined on a whimsical constipation
of a "dear reader"...
as it might happen...

again... Horace and the perfect example
of poetry with conversational overtones...
poetry as prosaic...
my god... paper was expensive back in old
Horace's days... surely you would need
something spectacular to write:
like a psilocybin trip account word for word:
wrong!
a certain don juan said to a certain
carlos castaneda: don't bring back words from
such experiences...
but of course: they did...
upon once upon a time loving the beatniks...
i started to abhor them...
getting drunk and smoking "something"
is one thing... exposing the altars of solipsism
of such experiences: words intact...
is a profanity...
each dream is individually curated
to the dreamer... the introduction of words
to relate back... for some next be disciple...
the "drugs" / portals of escapism are already
contaminated...

why wouldn't i: even if these are only
objective recounts of an experience?
perhaps because... they are subjectivelly null...
there are only the comparable heights of Gideon...
such experiences are best: kept to each individual's
right to enjoy... a freedom of thought...
and of silence...
each keeps a secret...
but what secret is left?
when the objective parameters have already
been stated?
i see no point... better down and finding
it at the end of a bottle...
or... ******* into a glass of wine
and drinking it...

they have been contaminated by words that
have been retrieved from such experiences
that (a) no one should talk about...
(b) surprise! the objective reality already
being stated as altered...
am i going to a ******* cinema with my body...
or am i going to a surprise
gallery with my thought?
doesn't matter... word contamination...
bigmouth struck his final last time!
at least the remains is what gives me
the labyrinth... the blood the **** you name
it the three sisters amber... for all i care...
it's readily available: make do...
with what's already been given.

me? i drink for that very special date...
monday 9 march 2020...
when all the orthodox jews get drunk...
that's one of those celebrations i wouldn't mind
being a part of... purim, festival of Lots,
funny... that period of history...
the Persian aspect of the hebrews...
never made it to the big screen...
seeing modern day Iran as day-old Persia
in muslim garbs...
we're still only seeing the: African adventure...
perhaps once the dust has settled...
we will get the Persian installement...
and then... oh... **** it...
we're all in it for the long run...
then when christianity is no longer useful...
the Roman bit of history...
and how the hebrews conspired with the greeks...
2000 years later we'll probably see
some prince of egypt cartoon movie
of the pristine romance and a mention of germany...
not yet... ****'s still to ripe to entertain
the universal child and children...
no screen adaptation from "their" time in Persia...
songs... we have songs!
Verdi's Nabucco - the chorus...
perhaps only in song from Persia and always
with movies and hieroglyphs when from Egypt...

but the festivity... of course! i'll celebrate...
cf. though... Puccini's coro a bocca chiusa -
the humming chorus...
before the band enigma... i am pretty sure my mother
would crank up the volume to at least
one of these songs... should they come on the radio...
i'm still to hear christopher young's:
something to think about - to be on air...
and to also be treated as a piece of classical music...
if wojciech kilar's dracula soundtrack can be treated
as classical music... what's wrong with a little
bit of hellraiser?!

perhaps, "again" is this desecration of the sacred not,
simply hanging in the background,
all, the, ******, time?
who is to celebrate wine giving it a god's blood
status in sips? one is expected to somehow become
drunk on the passion!
no one is here for crumbs of sips!
first they came for the loaf of bread...
and said you should fast and eat only a crumb...
then they came for the bottle of wine...
and said you should abstain and drink only a sip...
then they came for *** and by then
vatican was a monaco with better tax protections...

it's an investement: having to **** into a glass
of wine you're about to drink...
worse... you accidently "forgot" about
******* into some left-over pepsi max
and you're making yourself a cocktail
with one of the graeae ambers - 2x -
and you wonder: is this the proper state
of carbonated water, stale?
but i'm hardly going to bash the crucifix...
i'm here for the words...

the... transfiguration of the wine into blood...
and i say of my gods:
and here is their **** - beer and mead...
and here's their blood: the three graeae ms. ambers...
see no: clearer? no... happier?

i will get onto ancient roman poetics
with its conversational overtones in a minute!
first we have to settle the sacraments!
the metaphors and the sacraments!
i have no ivar the boneless claim of god...
season 6? to be honest...
i'd rather watch an english soap opera...
at least the intricacy of the plot remains...
even though it has been recycled
so many times...

i can't **** out the gods' ***** even if it was
stale beer... or ideal mead...
as i can't leisure a Seneca's bath filled
with the blood of the immortals...
problem solved... "problem":
as if it ever was...

why, Horace? a very short rhetorical retort:
if Dante had his Virgil...
why can i have my Horace, as guide?
again... what Roman poet could venture for
ambitions among the myths -
or extend his "consciousness"
to devastate the land and become
the mad Xerxes wanting the waves
of a sea whipped into submission?
why, Horace? if Dante could have his Virgil...

poetry... at least among the roman poets
there's no boxed in a box "without" a "box"...
the conversational overtones are ripe...
the almost complete lack of
character dimensions... beside their dimensions
from anecdotes...

to difuse wine, to desecrate the hic mea cruor...
**** in it!
then drink it...
or have one of my antithesis of a tequilla surprise
with me...
smoke a cigarette... drop some ash on the lick-part
of the space between the thumb
and the index metacarpal... lick it...
follow it with a shot of *****...
then throw some black peppercorns
into the hades of your gob
and we've arrived at the black cracovite...

and also the day when the orthodox jews
recant their story of their time
in Persia... the festivity of Lots...
when they become blind drunk and pretend to
have the sort of alcohol intolerence as
the Japanese... 1 shot! just 1 shot:
and hey! they throw their kippahs in
the air and we can all dance the ukranian 'opak!

looks good to me!
but only looks good...
when there's this plump drunk playing the accordion:
i.e. me,
and there's the sort of adrew rieu directing
an upcoming crescendo of a poliushko polie...
and we can all leave the auditorium
feeling, less than russophobic...
and then i can be told...
you young to be old yet still
profane pan-siberian peasant root!
indo-european leftover!
well... at least then i have been allowed
the scrap i'm supposed to see
before i showcase my *****, frost riddled fangs!
of the lesser wolf that i am:
as a rabid dog!

since the crescendo will come...
what better fathom of it...
esp. just beside a cemetery... twirling to the music...
ear-plugs out seancing my time in a grand
orchestral hall... plucked from the ears...
the crescendo is coming...
but... plucked... the orchestra of buffalo-sized
snowflakes... and... the worst kind of ballet...
a male soloist... doing his crazy
ukranian folk... maestro! the music never ever
dies! even in the silence of the universe!
however micro- or macro- this theatre will take
form... the music remains playing: uninterrupted!

but the snow was there,
the "ballerina" was also there...
the night was there,
the music was there -
albeit no grand orchestral hall -
couldn't ask for a better canvas
than a cemetery -
and all the heart's content!
comparative "literature"
to love like a muslim...
or to love like a sparrow...
or to love with a grudge like a crow...
mind you; site note...
i have been many a pigeons attempt
fornication unabashed...
i've never seen two crows attempt it...
perhaps they do "it" in the night
and never in the open?

crows... pedantic priests of the kingdom...
and where the widower king
and the widow queen among the swans?
where i and you will have probably left them...
admiring a family of ducks...

as asked by the serpent of the swan...
you and me of the same birth in a Fabergé egg...
me with serpentine spine...
while you: with a crooked neck?
silly... it really is...
of a being.... that was once
a t-rex roar... now a pickled brain
in pickle jar... boasting about being...
pure spine and tingles and...
the better part of what... becomes the mammalian
hibernation...
hibernating "hibernating" upon the
impetus of digestion...
a serpent would ask a swan about
a crooked neck?

because what would a **** sapeins look toward,
as he is always prone to to look elsewhere?
if not to borrow the fixed, rigid ontology
of other animals?
i better from the birds, solely...
the swans and the crows...
perhaps the fox...
rarely something that has lent itself
to being curated by man's leash and grip...
collective the known herd...
otherwise the refined bonsai tigers...
perhaps the fish without a knowledge
of a tide or a wave...

i call a dog the noble friend,
the swan the sombre monogamist...
the crow the priest...
the furry spider one's own reflection
dealing with aracnophobia...
the snake the old "say-what?"
or that pickled spine with a brain
the worth of brine juices...
the extinguished remnant
of a dinosaur's toothache... or some
transcendental exploration
of the carpals of the wrist
extending into the length of a spine...

i'm not going to cry over this one...
skål!
i feel disinhibited from writing a memorandum!
slàinte!
gasoline to the peddle and... off... we, go!

i am bound to get this translaton right...
at some point of hinging-on... i.e. beginning with...
and most probably at the opposite end
of having to finish...
hence "open bracket"... prefix-
and -suffix allowance given the archeological
excavation began with:

-seu pila velox molliter austerum studio
fallente laborem, seu te discus agit, pete cedentem
aera disco: *** labor extuderit fastidia, siccus,
inanis sperne cibum vilem; nisi Hymettia mella
Falerno ne biberis diluta. foris est promus,
et atrum defendens piscis hiemat mare: *** sale
panis latrantem stomachum bene leniet. unde putas
aut qui partum? non in caro nidore voluptas summa,
sed in te ipso est. tu pulmentaria quaere
sudando: pinguem vitiis albumque neque ostrea
nec scarus aut poterit peregrina iuvare lagois.
vix tamen eripiam, posito pavone velis quin
hoc potius quam gallina tergere palatum,
corruptus vanis rerum, quia veneat auro
rara avis et picta pandat spectcula cauda:
tamquam ad rem attineat quidquam.
num vesceris ista, quam laudas, pluma?
cocto num adest honor idem?
carne tamen quamvis distat nil, hac magis illam
inparibus formis deceptum te petere esto:
unde datum sentis, lupus hic Tiberinus
an alto captus hiet? pontisne inter iactatus
an amnis ostia sub Tusci?
laudas, insane, trilibrem mullum,
in singula quem minuas pulmenta necesse est.
ducit te species, video: quo pertinet ergo proceros
odisse lupos? quia scilicet illis maiorem natura modum
dedit, his breve pondus: ieiunus raro stomachus volgaria
-temnit.

it's translated, isn't it? no
stefan gołębiewski or no 1980 warsaw...
is to know...

- nec meus hic sermo est, sed quae praecepit Ofellus:
these are not my words, this said the simpleton
Ofellus - neither of which of us is a laurel-leaf
adorned Orpheus...

that via a living "game": stoking up an appetite
with this entertainment the appetite increaes...
as does one health...

sorry... pagans... bloodthirty people...
trouble with the translation...
apparently the mud slinging
***** and bricks are nothing new...

or when you "minus" the disk,
litter the distance, head with the wind into
competition!
after hardships of the body is good and
the meal is simple -
(apparently all of this is still "connected",
scratch of the ol' 'ed and we're fine...
we're ******* sailing!)
Falern will not hurt "us"...
seasoned by honey from Hymettis,
before the entré. Safaz left,
the sea rumbles, the zephyr of fish it protects,
storm, fishing made unsafe;
stomach grumbles, bread with salt:
excuisite; you do not have any better! why?
taste does not reside in the scent of dishes,
but in your self alone.
toil merely increases appetite's presence.
he who over-eats, will not know the taste
of an oyster, nor a turbot, nor chickpeas,
the northern bird.
perceptions take the scalp of the mountain
above the actual taste of the dishes
(one might scalp... but never eat the scalp)...
you will not take a chicken onto a tooth,
when you are given a peacock,
you will trust your delusion:
a rare bird, worth its own weight of gold,
a most rarified tail, how it sparkles
with subtle hues!
as if the tail were to lead -
and there was no head to be found!
do you allow yourself to judge the hue
of the feathers as precursor for the adjecctive:
that's it's "also" tasty? the meat, of course?
the old - judge a book by its cover...
is the oven baked... also as delicious / beautiful?
chicken meat... or peacock meat?
almost without difference.
therefore: light... albeit...
although only vanity lures the peacock
(to be compared to a poultry)...
let's go further... i want to know: after what
do you recognise this, that a pike
with its gaping mouth was left:
from the sea... or from the Tiber fished?
somewhere among bridges... or from some
conrete estuary? idiot-kin of the surname whim...
you admire a three-pound mullet!
do you take size... for the gauge of all measure?
when you... cut the bell?
then why... why... with disgrace
do you demand in appreciation:
elongating pikes!
evidently nature: this greater gave the proper
measure... and with it: the lesser weight -
an empty stomach will rarely -
being fed a simple thing - despise -
what is...

an empty stomach - rarely despises -
simple matters.

how true... i was allowing myself the time
it would take to drink,
and translate into the vulgate...
but... from no better source...
and i am still to add to this one of my...
"freeing of the drafts"...

as promised...
"draft"...

- a most confiscated man -
no italics included...

.the original draft:

binges, worth the count
of a liter of whiskey
per night,
for a year, if not more...
become so...
so unspectular...

          the world either
screams, or yawns,
generally:
it exhaust a desire
to toss a coin,
agitate the vocab.,

a grand canyon
huddling
in the "depths" of
a glass of water...

baron science
comes with his rubric
of bore,
      and:
i find myself,
most idle:
while the world
orientates
itself in keeping
itself busy,
bothersome,
always the prime concern,

the ant-colony coup,
the:
i always find friends
in the orientations
of an empty glass,
but prior to:

i drink
before no altar,
no mirror,
no confidante...

     pure flesh revels itself
in a blank's worth
of prior to dictum's
  allowance of, a page...

bothersome
the knot of the pretentious
anti- in scold of
the passing fancy:
expression...

            poker charm
of a love's affair...

_

i sometimes entertain myself
with ancients proverbs,
one slavic proverb reads:
better a sparrow in your hand
than a dove on your roof...

what, could, possibly be,
the interpretation?
care for the small joys in
your possession,
than, for the peace of your household,
which is, on the roof,
but not in your hands...

if i were paid? would i be more
honest?
probably not...
        what i see, is what needs
to be seen...
  em... simple pleasures talk...
once upon a time,
donning long hair, implied
you were a mosher...
a metal-head...
    now? three days +,
long hair, and you're not a
grunge fanatic?
  trans-, etc.?

   a man of simple pleasures,
i know what long hair,
jealousy, associated with
putting it in a french braid,
does to a camel jockey ego...
ruins and ruins as far as the eyes
can see...
    he replicates...
he grows his hair long...
at the same time boasting about
haivng a premature beard...
then you grow a beard yourself...
you start fiddling with it...
****, ***** on my face...
and then...
the "question" of a girlfriend
flies out of the window...
i'm happy with a beard,
thank you, very much,
i don't, exactly want to wish upon
myself, a female, company...

*** protest all you want...
the *** differences between men
and women, to my sort of understanding,
are, unrepairable...
     they were, never,
bound, to being, repaired...
savvy?
            i take my route,
a woman took her route...
  we're even...
                
      since what can only frighten a freed
woman, beside a monarch,
a free man?
                   a man with...
a gamble...
         i am a man with a gamble...
i don't like being told what
to be, or what to think...
like any man,
and like any man:
i don't like being forced
ownership over a being:
that can share my sense of freedom...
so...
    i find myself,
thrilled with relief,
at now having to answer to
a woman's subjugation...
like a woman, and, i have learned
from women: i like being
my objective's self...
rather than a "self" made subject...

i like that: thank you...
i can start feedings the pigs and the peasant
the diatribe life, and lie,
of: there being an existential cricis,
a need to reproduce...
and i, and i am, being demeaning
in this, way, for a justified reason...

once the peasants attack you:
you attack, the peasants...
you demean them in the same way
they demeaned you...

once upon a time i thought:
greater good came from the number
of innocents being salvaged
than for the few great of grand bearing
being salvaged...
even if bound to an ill will:
an ill command,
of a will, predisposed to pretend
actions of the blind...
but now i see...

   the many: if beside fulfilling
their petty deeds,
having to stand outside of those,
petty deeds,
  have ambitions equivalent
to their emotions...
            akin to something worth,
pity, akin to something
worth: as little as a rat's heartbeat...
petty, primitive bull-*******...
and all the amount of sorrow,
or pity,
or mercy...
              that, these, ******* allow...
are worth the same response
Pontius Pilate gave...
       there isn't enough of water,
in this world,
to wash my hands, clean,
of these people...
   even if innocent blood plagues
them,
    not enough waters have run their
due course,
to... release me from the indentation
of memory upon my mind...
and i am plagued by an elephant's
memory...
        we've reached the conclusion
of: some people...
  just do not see an insult,
             past the insult's eloquence!

i am a most conflicted man,
i binge watched vikings
for a while now,
and right now, i'm ready for
an extraction of what i have learned...

believe me: i am not someone
who has the sort of ego-presence
to fate myself in the role
of the protagonist...
     i'm too pedantic to have to
market my body and deeds,
for the fates tio see,
and history to ascribe fame unto me...

even homer was off too war
with troy,
   and blessed he became...

because? time morphs,
the longer something is kept,
the more, "unreal" is becomes,
a fairy-tale...
esp. now, with the onslaught
of journalism...
two things in this world
are insomniac,
money never sleeps,
and, now, apparently,
journalism doesn't sleep either:
well, given its ******
bed-fellow of political liars...
why should it?

             Rolo... a semi-minor character...
but i feel his angst at the already
fervent dichotomy,
(dichotomy, modern variety variant
of schizoid-affective...
or bilingual in turn)...

            music...
                    all these modły...
gesticulations of prayer,
phantom conjuring,
               lunatics with candles
at high-noon...
                  i am fated by music,
i am perverted by music,
i am swayed by music...
who is the god, patron,
of music?
who is the angel (demi-god),
patron of music?
         i do not seek the highest
influencer...
the minor one...

   when Archangel Sandalphon
met St. Cecilia...
but as such, i am, conflicted...
even though, this is the first time
i have heard of Sandalphon...

Rome, never reached my peoples,
the Vikings did...
   weren't the ugly vikings the founders
of Kiev?
  so they must have passed via
the Polen (field) land, no?

feelings are not important,
facts don't care about your feelings...
granted...
but i'm not hear for facts,
contra, feelings,
i'm here for the rivers...
what i feel, what my heart yearns for,
needs to attain an equilibrium
with my mind...
for that: i need to clarify my feelings,
to hush my heart, silence it,
in order to listen to my mind,
and the mind, needs to feed into
heaving the heart: to do,
what, the heart, desires,
autonomous to what the heart
"thinks", is right...
                    that's how it was forver
going to work...
consolidated...
and yes, i much envy the punctuation
of king Ecgberht,
a man of cunning: much admired...
abstract thinker...
        and a reality...
        pun-ctu-a-tion...
the delivery of one's speech...
   much admired, as much as...
                the crude brawl possession...
the chief protagonist of the story?
as important as is: the required from
Atlas... burden upon burden...
a man burdened with the illusion
of freedom...

so why am i conflicted,
but becoming less and less so?
    it was always the music...

songs...

           chavelier, mult estes guariz...
wardruna - helvegen...
           da pacem domine...
             agni parthene...

you know... there's much more beside
being a jazz enthusiast or
a classical music snob...
         there's folk... there's religious and pagan
chants...
if there's one thing to benefit from,
in terms of the Byzantine context...
the chants...
        let the barbarians do the thinking
from now on: you do the sing-along...
no people ever reinvented themselves
from an ancient glory...
   new blood had to come to the fore...

like today...
       i spoke with my father and my mother...
about the names of apples...
we must have talked for an hour,
we named so many lost "breeds" of apple...
nouns i will not write,
nouns i wish death to write down,
i want Samael to have,
beside the book of my deeds in hand,
i want him to have
my dictionary in hand,
my knowledge of the sacred script,
i want to listen as he recites me the words
i've used,
notably today's conversation
            about the many types of apples...
e.g.: shogun apples...
             kox...
                    szare renety...
          papierówki...
                    marabella prunes...
that's all i ask of Samil.

I scribbled
stupid words onto
a wrinkled and *****
piece of scrap paper
and now you're reading it.

I crumpled it up
but then something
told me you'd want
to admire it from
your computer chair
So there
you sit
and here
it is.

Smoke stacks, shadows cast
Looking back, into the past
Industrial town, all around
Look at me, I wear a frown
Pretty girls, in wedding gowns
and here we are, falling down
For all around this ***** town
Is a crumbling council
and shops run-down
Golden brown, sweet ****** sound
The summer sings, sun shines down
But the government continues
To let us drown

Restless hungry, found a tiny scrap of a brownie in the back of the refrigerator, wrapped in plastic about the size of a large 35 cent quarter.  
Gobbled up and gone.

Eye had purchased it a week ago, maybe more.  
Actually it was more like eye was held up at gunpoint by a sad young face for a large and green single dollar Bill.
In return, was bequeathed said brownie eye dropper-ful.

The  apartment I live in a big city, many apartments were recession empty for a long time.  But in the last few years, the empty apartments in the building were almost all sold to foreigners.  
Now the bldg is an amulet melted of the lucky overseas fortunate, those overseers overseas seizers, who come to reside in the most fabulous site in these United States...and buy a piece of the dream away from the be-headers, secret police or governments that decide you are now an enemy of the state, as of this morning. No judgement.

anyway, this doe eyed child of estimated six or eight years of age accosts me in our large lobby, proffers me the brownie scrap for a Bill.

me a sucker of a salesman myself, and an eye affician-doe, well those doefuls, those eyes, no one could resist!

so eye asked her name,
but all she could say in
Anglais was...

"Brownie One Dollar?"

laughing out loud for no apparent cause,
the hanging about lobbyists looked at me staring...
Why was eye laughing?

laughing cause eye realized
this elfin child had become
fitfully but fully Americanized.

and I loved her eyes in mine, and when I see her periodically, I say:

"Hey! Brownie One Dollar, How are ya!"

and everyone snicker smiles at the old man with the even stupider grin upon his eyes.

That would be eye.

A tomboy, naturally barefoot, gingerly walks the white painted line because the asphalt is just too burning hot.  Scrubby tufts of weedy grass are welcome respites on the way, briefly cooling her steps even if they are stickery.  The ***** soles of her now calloused feet were intentionally toughened just before school got out, with mincing steps across the roughest gravel she could find.  Her mother accommodates her preference, leaving a pan of water outside for her to scrub her feet before going in.  Even then, a black path has gradually appeared leading from the front door in the old orangish carpet.  Two months of summer barefoot every day when she had the choice. Keyed roller skates clamped onto last year’s school shoes were the exception.  She can flat out run anywhere.
  
This particular expedition began like every other thing they did, which was anything to fend off boredom.  She had been sitting on a cement step shaded by an open carport, just three oil-stained parking stalls for three small apartments on the tired poor side of town.  There is a little more dirt on the street here, and grass is a little neglected.  Just like the children, but these kids prefer that anyway.  Two scruffy friends stomp on aluminum cans, brothers sporting matching buzz cuts and cut-off shorts.  They are flattening them for the recycling money by the pound, so the carport smells vaguely of stale beer.  Another boy attempts to shoot a wandering fly with a home-made rubber band gun; rings cut from a bicycle tube made the best ammo.  “What do you want to do?” …”I don’t know, what do you want to do?”  Thwack…  The only requisite for friendship here is vicinity, yet it is still true.  The idea of choosing friends is about as odd as the concept that one could chose where one lives... Strengths and shortcomings are completely accepted because it is just what it is.  

Their amazing three-story tree fort with a side look-out had been heartlessly taken down by the disgruntled property owner last week.  Two months of accumulating pilfered and scrap two-by-fours, nails, and even a stack of plywood (gasp!) from area construction sites had yielded supplies for a growing fort.  A gang-plank style entry had crossed the ditch to the first level.  Nailed ladder steps to the second offered a little more vertigo and a prime spot to hurl acorns.  Another ladder up led up to the third floor retreat, with a couch-like seating area and shoulder high walls.  A breeze reached the leaves up there.   The next tree over was the look-out, with nothing but ladder steps all the way up to where the view opened up out of the ravine.  When the wind blew, it gave merciless lessons in facing any fear of heights.  But now that was all over, discovered gone overnight.

Someone says again, “What do you want to do?” …”I don’t know, what do you want to do?”  “ 7-11? ”  Good enough, so they head out.   Distance measures time.  Ten minutes is the end of the street past the cracked basketball court in the church parking lot.  Fifteen minutes and the lawns end at the edge of the sub-division.  Half-built homes rising from bare dirt and scattered foundations could offer treasures of construction scraps, (where she suspects the stack of plywood came from.) but they keep walking.  Twenty minutes is where industry has scraped away nature, and railroad tracks form an elevated levee.  But time is meaningless if there’s a wealth of it, so there’s no going further until an informal ritual is completed.  Wordlessly they each dig around their pockets searching for equal amounts of pennies.  Each of them carefully arrange them lined up on the rounded-surface rail, and they settle in for the wait.  It could be five minutes or it could be thirty.  They all understand it’s a crap-shoot of patience waiting for the next train. It’s an unspoken test; quitting too early means losing your coins to the one who stays, so that’s not an option.

Heat presses down and the breezeless air smells like telephone-pole creosote.  She sits in a dusty patch of shade found next to an overgrown ****.  She knows it tastes like licorice and breaks off a stem to chew, but doesn’t know what it is.  The boys throw rocks randomly until she finally stands up to join in, tempted by the challenge of flight and distance.  Then she stands in the center of the tracks, looking one way then the other, searching for the first random distant glimmer of the engine’s light at the horizon.   A flash, so she places her ear to the metal Indian-style, and the imminent approach is confirmed.  She calls out, “its here!” and double checks her pennies’ alignment.  Heads up or tails, but always aligned so the building might be stretched tall or wide, or Lincoln’s face made broad or thin.  That happened only rarely, since it could only be rolled by one wheel then bounced off.  If it stuck longer, the next wheels would surely smash it into a thin, elliptical, smooth misshapen disc of shiny copper.  Its only value becomes validation of a hint of delinquency, Destroying-Government-Property.  Once she splurged with a quarter, which became smashed to just a gleaming silver, bent wafer discolored at the edge.  Curiosity wasn’t worth 25 cents again though, so she had only one of those in her collection.

The approaching engine silently builds impending size and power, so she dashes back down the rocky embankment to safety because after all, she is not a fool, tempting fate with stupid danger. She knows a couple of those fools, but she finds no thrill from that and is not impressed by them either.  Suddenly the train is here, generating astounding noise and wind, occasional wheels screaming protest on their axels.  She intently watches exactly where she placed her coins, hoping to see the moment they fly off the rails that are rhythmically bending under the weight rolling by.  It becomes another game of patience, with such a long line of cars, and she gives up counting them at 80-ish.  Then suddenly it is done and quickly the noise recedes back to heat and cicadas.  The rails are hot.  Diligently they search for the shiny wafers.  Slowly pacing each wood beam, they could have landed in the gravel, or pressed against the rail, or even lodged straight up against the square black wood yards down the tracks.  They find most of them, give up on the rest, then continue on.

She has thirty cents and at last they reach the afternoon’s destination.  7-11’s parking lot becomes a genuine game of “Lava”, burning blacktop encourages leaps from cooler white lines, to painted tire stops, to grass island oasis, then three hot steps across black lava to the sidewalk, and automatic doors swoosh open to air conditioning.  She rarely has enough money for a coke icey; she is here for the bottom shelf candy, a couple pennies or a nickel each.  Off flavors but sweet enough.  She remembered when her older brother was passing out lunchbags of candy to the neighborhood kids for free, practically littering the cul-de-sac.  She had wondered where he got enough money for all that popularity, or could he have saved that much from trick-or-treat? She wondered until he got busted shoplifting at the grocery store.  The security guard decreed that he was never allowed in there again, forever, and the disgrace of sitting on the curb waiting for the mortified ride home was enough to keep him from doing it again.

Today she picks out a few root beer barrels, some Tootsie-rolls (the smaller ones for two cents, not the large ones that divide into cubes) a candy necklace and tiny wax coke bottles, and of course a freeze-pop.   Sitting on the curb, she bites off small pieces of the freeze pop, careful not to get tooth-freeze or brain-freeze, until the last melty chunk is squeezed out the top of the thin plastic tube.

“What do you want to do now?” …”I don’t know, what do you want to do?”

2 condemned males serving life sentences in top-security prison inmates separated by wall and steel cell bars

INMATE 1 (burps loud coarse voice) i have this fantasy of being a hunted outlaw taking my 3 guns and ******* Ford truck driving north south east west robbing convenience stores bars banks people sharp-shooting car thieving running until my time is up like the old west firing pistols wearing a Stetson hat drunk smart-*** talking hanging with ***** bar girls forget about eating just burning a trail (holds metal reflective scrap in hand attempting to catch glimpses of inmate 2)

INMATE 2 (sits cross-legged on floor with palms up resting on knees) too many people are hurting and getting killed right now i imagine if there is a god i’ll bet he or she or it feels weary disappointed disgusted by human kind’s destructive nature

INMATE 1 so what

INMATE 2 i don’t know about you but i miss women their point of view play friendship tenderness nurturing intimacy physical beauty i long for love belonging a woman’s touch her attendance passion the hinge of her thighs licking ******* ****** crave its warm wetness taste smell texture even tongue dipping into **** in a way i’m a total gynephiliac or philogynist

INMATE 1 filojinist huh what are you a professor you ***** son-of-a ***** where did you learn to talk like that tell me professor ever **** on a perfect *****

INMATE 2 most women have some desirability i’ve known many but yeah there was one in particular i remember she was a beaut bulging pelvic bone cute floppy lips eager **** tangy gamey sweet salty flavor just the right amount of furriness lust response flow she’d reach for my ******* and i’d just keep working her getting her hotter taste her ***** taste her *** i was addicted to that woman’s ****** even though she treated me like trash perhaps it was simply an oral fixation or some subliminal need i don’t know our relationship lasted way longer then it should have guess i was kind of drunk on her downstairs

INMATE 1 i never was much of a cooch muncher (flexes arm muscles opens tightens fist) women are cows they give off too many odors plus they always want mommy control no matter how much or what you give them they always want more

INMATE 2 you don’t get it do you the connection between the moon oceans great mother earth fragrance of dirt aroma of rain female beauty you’re a misogynist gynophobe possibly misanthrope

INMATE 1 you use too many big words ******* i hear some women is like how you described yourself some women gets drunk on johnson and nuts

INMATE 2 what are you talking about

INMATE 1 i want to get hooked up with a ***** like that a ***** who’ll lick and **** my johnson and nuts all day long (hand goes to crotch squeezes)

INMATE 2 yes me too maybe we ought to ask ourselves why escapism into ****** fantasy and release is so profoundly vital to our existences

INMATE 1 what

INMATE 2 life sentence means no motive for rehabilitation no hope for redemption how much money does it cost to maintain each prisoner who pays the bills why keep us alive does society honestly believe we pace our confines haunted in regret yearning for inner salvation

INMATE 1 you think they should **** us

INMATE 2 i question the entire punitive system did you ever read Michel Foucault’s Punishment and Discipline the beginning will make you squirm or Franz  Kafka’s In The Penal Colony that horrific carving apparatus

INMATE 1 uuhhh what the **** are you talking about

INMATE 2 i don’t know i don’t understand why i’m locked up in here

INMATE 1 (runs fingers through hair) what crimes did they convict you of

INMATE 2 i tried killing myself so many times they put me on death row i should be free to roam or at worst case scenario sedated in an insane asylum instead they accused me of being a danger to myself and society they said i could injure other people while attempting to destroy myself i drove off a 6-story garage ledge onto a public street below

INMATE 1 is that why you’re in here you silly *** ***** driving off a 6-story garage ledge onto a public street below ain’t no crime hell just reckless driving

INMATE 2 the courts are ******* up judges think they’re celebrities silver-tongued thieving lawyers twist the truth the whole system is corrupted by bribes cover-ups secret deals concealed schemes personal gain collusion fear

INMATE 1 as for me i tortured ***** killed lots of people men women children you want to hear some tantalizing details like the time i ***** killed a mother and her 2 young daughters cut out their warm hearts and ate

INMATE 2 (interrupts) stop you sick animal please stop

INMATE 1 yeah you got a problem with that

INMATE 2 i couldn’t live with myself doing what you did i get skittish at the sight of blood

INMATE 1 you pathetic lightweight i want to stick my johnson up your tight hairy *** so bad (sniffs finger) i want to hear you squeal like a little girl

INMATE 2 sorry to disappoint you but i’ve got hemorrhoids

INMATE 1 French ticklers hell they just make ******* a more interesting sensation

INMATE 2 this is the rudest most repulsive conversation

INMATE 1 what you think you’re better than me just because you’re educated (finger picks nose flicks ****** at wall speckled with many ****** flicks)

INMATE 2 i didn’t say that perhaps morally more reserved why did you torture **** **** people

INMATE 1 it was fun made me feel powerful having control over another person’s existence hey i didn’t ask to be born blame it on my mom people are so ******* up life is a joke i was just trying to help rid the world of all its vermin

INMATE 2 there was a time when i would have considered you psychopathic but in this chaotic shifting flipped out world where reality mirrors fiction and when civilization is insanely vicious fraught with violence guns firing fires exploding extremism prevails criminals scoundrels lunatics govern gang lords rule the streets your murderous vices may serve as grounds for exoneration provided you conduct yourself intelligently you may qualify yourself as an ordinary survivor or possibly even reputable citizen

INMATE 1 what? you’re reasoning i’m normal maybe innocent you’re my main man tell me why you want to destroy yourself so bad

INMATE 2 i think human kind is a curse we annihilate everything and don’t seem to learn change instead we get worse our busy selfishness is a betrayal against earth all the creatures a betrayal against god as a kid the betrayal i felt i knew i could not reveal because it would be a deeper betrayal the neglect and punishment i endured i knew i could not make known because it would only add to the betrayal the rage i felt listening to lies i knew i could not challenge a million lies i did not know how to confront the frustration i now suffer pains me as long as i can remember in my mind i’ve always felt like a prisoner alone in a room no one is coming this twisted despair inside the body of person with suicidal tendencies found guilty sentenced to life incarceration in maximum-security prison doesn’t that sound like a double conviction

INMATE 1 wow interesting ok professor you’re putting me to sleep chat with you later

INMATE 2 you really ought to learn yoga

INMATE 1 voga? what’s that for

INMATE 2 an inner journey a light when other lights go out a way to stay grounded when gravity fails

INMATE 1 sounds like just another jail cell

i'm a scrap yard magnified.
some sort of throat you choke
but not now.
we are plenty weak but we
love it.
we come from a last place
that has no reason,
we go from the last last place
that had any reason to be real.
and some some folks
wanna live forever
but not you and I....
we
wanna die for good
and that's the "Whatever"
however we love Us
now.

I'm reminded of a scribble on scrap paper
Cardboard. Brick wall.
as if from an 'Unknown' creator.
Smeared by the rain.
No room for grammar.

A faded stain.
Written in the moment.
Full of content; lacking in substance,
Read forever out of context.



These words reflect the reader.
Written not for the receiver.
Nothing more now that a splash
of inspiration.
No less a tool in it's creation
than the recorder or the pen.

Don't focus on the subject,
The message will be wrong.
Compare a lady with any woman
Who has ever come and gone.

Ears pressed cool against
glass tables and vinyl flooring
words score high drained slowly
slow like wasps caught in guttered draining
not like velvet names etched in casing, but weathered like bricked and beaten graffiti –
Waning like wax always melting

Tools: spelling and grammar – uncheck

Don’t fret too many gerunds grounding air suffocating hearing between the lines that past lower truths out straight in dirt and stinky face: eyes drawn with pensive staring
lines drawn global remains of words unused: boycott form because it isn’t daring.
Adopt sonar because it traces the smokestack between eaves drop
and scrap metal hearing like thorns prickled cut by cleaver.

Clink, clink, clank.

Unlatch cellar doors of images fixed in meaning: glances slanted
heads poked out behind legs enchanting ink under eyelids.

Clank, click, click.

Wishing: Sunday morning came to rest and the cat perched rest without the windowsill and the space between my legs lost meaning.

Forgetting: Painted houses haunting furniture misplaced, training lessons in memory fading.  

Dreaming: Sounds dipped in vegetable oil, Van Morrison in teething states caring.

Still lost without my last breathe wondering…

She says she doesn’t have the strength within herself to write poetry.
Yes, her. The one who so often nourished me with song
til my soul began to learn how to hunt for itself,
whose word carried weight in leading me to pick my own instrument,
albeit one of a different tone,
as the key in keyboard became prominent for the first time
and the sound of purposeful fingers upon it could be considered,
only in the right light,
synonymous to the plucking of strings, just as rooted in emotion.

Yet she's the first to say that she herself can't do it.

Thing is, I suppose we’re politely at odds on the matter.
She favors poetry that’s sharper, with a cleaner cut,
that’s message is immediate and jarring
as a conduit running from soul through skin,
or a loose-lipped diary finally freed from lock and key.
And when she declared it, I started to consider what my poems seem to me:
Blackberry bushes (but kinder, I hope)
that snag and immerse just long enough
to make me feel I’ve had an effect.
I’ve used writing to expel my most gnarled feelings
to any passerby who’s maybe felt the same.
Like crying in a mirror:
alarming, but oddly refreshing,
and an indefinite reminder that our aches are never only our own.

Still, I'm not sure why it blows my mind
to hear that even the most glamorous hearts,
who wear confidence as a summer breeze that's always in their favor
and who inspire, from beau gestures to sleight of hand,
are included in those who find themselves pacing back, back and forth,
begging curbside at the dime store
for a scrap of the same feed that convinces a heart to pump ink.

But she says that any art that's enjoyed is worth it.
So while she seeks out words that bare the bones,
I’ll stay and make a meal of the marrow,
hollowing them so that the poetry may have a rightful place
to reverberate as hymns in a universal monastery.

But hell, like I’m any old soul.
I dress nicer than I otherwise would,
turn to the mother who told me I don’t meet her lowest standards,
and ask for a critique.
All for the moment when she greets me at the door with a legendary G#.

...Now please, could you spare a dime?

I.
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     A slang drowns its operating alarm. The photo fumes below a hearing angle. How does the existence enter near the independent alternative? The enabling rocket despairs on top of a poet. An estate graduates on top of the located penguin.
     A damp psychologist assumes the food. Underneath a fighting lens worries a smallish motive. This bursting home experiments before the client. The musical turns without the highway.
     The hotel snacks beside a chemical. The cynical chocolate strains opposite a crisis. Does this sneak blood fume against the creator? Will a coast pant? Will the hand expand?
     The censor beams the flag. Will a functioning pope support a mounted toad? An unbalanced timetable yawns behind the meet defeat. A bedroom stretches around the global bigotry. The race writes. The predecessor guards an incapable contempt.
     When will the salary balance the expiring newcomer? The article bores! The advance rules without the arch! After the connecting human peers every par alien. The excess vends the fatuous courier. The carbon appends an inane sink.
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Dictate refused;
The have.
Changed suspended the;
Relinquish appealing of to;
States: these convulsions and;
Combined render all are alter of of with.
To raising usurpations.

III.
I, the loved
I, the engulfed
I, the remigrated
I, the existence
I, the infinitive
I, the derivative
I, the human
I, the darkness
I, the glass
I, the interviewed
I, the disaffiliating
I, the trees
I, the air
I, the future
I, the past.
I, the present.
I, the moment.
I, the now
I, the dead
I, the alive
I, the opponent
I, the ally
I, the language
I, the idea
I, the universe
I, the cosmos
I, the sensual
I, the lover
I, the writer
I, the poet
I, the artist
I, the fearful
I, the form
I, the painting
I, the paper
I, the words
I, the letters
I, the color
I, the winter hallway
I, the black alleyway of bricks and cobblestone
I, the one who knocks
I, the fourth of July
I, the independent
I, the atom
I, the bullet
I, the bohemian
I, the philosopher
I, the homeless
I, the clouds
I, the sky
I, the rain  
I, the music
I, the harp
I, the angel
I, the devil
I, the decider
I, the canceler
I, the road
I, the pavement  
I, the stone
I, the wall
I, the cornfield
I, the golden
I, the emotion
I, the follower
I, the leader
I, the second
I, the minute
I, the hour
I, the day
I, the week
I, the month
I, the year
I, the biennium
I, the triennium
I, the lustrum
I, the decade
I, the jubilee
I, the century
I, the millennium
I, the overseer
I, the god
I, the who  
I, the what
I, the which
I, the where
I, the why
I, the question
I, the answer
I, the dream
I, the reality  
I, the in between
I, the ecstasy
I, the joy
I, the pain  
I, the populous
I, the I
I, the you
I, the

you were quiet and i was loud, talkative

you asked to borrow a pencil so i gave you the one with the hellokitty stickers on it just to see you smile

you gave it back with a note and i read in my car in the parking lot after class

it said that you thought my hands were beautiful, but i always thought that they were too small and definitely too pudgy and said so underneath the scrawl of hellokitty’s graphite. oh, and thanks

when i gave it back, you looked confused and turned the scrap over to show me the name on the front and it wasn’t mine

that same day someone slashed the tires on your honda accord