Fall has been my favorite season since seeing the sight of multi colored leaves, laying amongst each other in silent beauty. I guess thats why I loved your hair so much. Auburn with flashes of blonde like capturing dark moments in sepia.

I want so badly to believe I'd decline the opportunity to bathe my beaten skin in your serenity, one last time. But alas, my seas run deep with fleeting hope of you, and me, unbreakable like skyline pines fighting off northern winds, akin to the ebb of leaves painting the fall ground, captured in sepia. 

Fall has been my favorite season since the allure of its equinox, balanced out my day and night. Like your touch balanced my strength, hushed my troubles, and gave life to my harmony, equal to capturing dark moments in sepia.  

If only for the sake of peace, bask in my elixir at the end, before the sun burns out, and fall turns to endless cold. Before its equinox is lost among the shuffle, the skyline pines give in to the wind and the leaves turn to cinders. Let it be birth into fruition, before the seas run dry, before there is no longer you or I. And let this dark moment be captured, in sepia.

And in that moment, I was her.
It was like her conscious, her perception began expanding,
and ballooned, consuming everyone in the room,
as she sifted through the sepia toned pictures.
Suddenly time slowed and the waves outside got louder,
it drowned out all other noises except her voice,
hesitant to recall yet eager to reminisce,
as recollections of her past flashed before her eyes,
out of her mouth, and into my head,
where I could see them,
sepia toned, vivid, just like the pictures.

When I was absorbed I was hit by two tones,
one being the tone of sepia,
which soaked the memories splashed before me,
and the other being the tone of joyous death.
The sepia was the color of the pictures and the tone of the mood,
while joyous death was the joy we found in reminiscing the dead.

The waves washed away the memories when her voice ceased,
I returned to Earth as they exhaled their last trembling breath.

Mouth
every mouth
every mouth breathes
every mouth breathes autumnal.
Every mouth breathes autumnal investigations.
Every mouth breathes autumnal investigations
     tinged with sepia tones-
Torch trees
live in lazy desperation,
these last cider days
in burrows and blanket caves.
Heat in color - amber, saffron, goldenrod, maize.
Sepia tones
sepia tones tinged
sepia tones tinged with investigations.
Sepia tones tinged with autumnal investigations.
     They see every mouth breathe.

See every mouth.
                Mouths.

I remember her hands turning the knitting needles like mercury. Beating yarn into fabric.And in her wisdom, she'd spin her words into gold. I studied each line on her brow for truth. Reading the creases like India ink. Dark. Permanent. Earned. And she hums along with the record, knowing each warm pop and crack like lyrics. Like history.

We skip generations like the songs on the album and I am more like her than I'll ever know. A vinyl copy. Pressed and shiny. But she was gone before such things began to stick.

She is like the smell in a well used kitchen, even when the oven is off.
An afterthought.
A sweet recollection of a melody you hum under your breath.
But I am drawn to her like warm covers.
Like a soft glow.
And me, mid-life, and still with wet wings.
And she prepares me for the world with these moments. Keeping each second accounted for.
One pearl stitch at a time.
We listen as the room melts to afternoon sepia. the song lifts and sways. Kissing my ankles like the tide. Stroking my face like wind.
The woman makes the music sweeter with each rock of her chair.

"Why does the album skip sometimes Grandma?"

She laughs. Doesn't look up.

"Because it is old and eventually it won't play anymore at all."

I knit my brow up like her blanket.

"Then why do you listen to it so much? Won't you use it up?"

She organizes her work, spreading it across her needle as she does the same with the words in her head. The album sings out to her.

"Because it tells the truth."

I listen harder. Looking for hidden words between the notes.

Nothing.

"It doesn't talk, Grandma."

She smiles at how little I know. Sad for me. And says,

"Yes it does."

"What does it say?"

And our game is done. I now have Grandmas eyes, smile, and attention all to myself. She sets her labor in her lap and fixes on me. I am now her project and she will knit me together with the same love.

"Listen. That part says that your friends won't forget who you are. Even when you do."

And they won't. And you will.

"Ah. This part says, You, My Love, are the prize. Not them. Remember that."

And I am.

"This part says that Men don't cry. But if she loves you. If she really loves you, she'll hold you when you do."

And she will.

"This part knows that God is not counting on us as much as we are counting on him. He knows we will let him down and loves us regardless. Remember this part of the song when you are a father."

And I will.

And Grandma sat quietly. Her fingers still seemed to be a blur of motion. Her mind, even faster.

"One day Grandma will quit playing too. I've already begun to skip."

And then we sat together. Quietly.

And sepia became blue. And blue became black.

And all at once, the music stopped. Replaced by a motor whir and a methodical thump.
A one legged tap dancer, facing finality.

"What do we do now, Grandma?"

We sat, listening to more time pass like music. Clickthump. Clickthump.

It was in this moment that I would finally se the jigsaw puzzle for the beautiful picture that it was.
All creases and landscape and hello goodbyes.

Grandma reached over and cast magic as the years in her hand settled the needle into the groove once more.

She answered all of my questions as the music whispered it's truth to me a new.

"We let the song play out."

"Why?"

"Because it's romantic."

cedar planks line the dim lit hall
morning snow begins to fall
sepia print in a chipped wood frame
embers spark from the franklin flame

rustling sounds from bunks below
records play in a tight alcove
bacon grills on an iron sheet
gloves are warmed by baseboard heat

bean bags tossed on colored ****
papka placed as a punching bag
red brick wall with mounted poles
windows filled with glacier bowls

whiskey jack on the southern rail
a frozen patch of wine and ale
pine cones fall in gathering white
brothers bathed in firelight

sleighs are on the table top
canyon road is at a stop
northern winds that bite the face
lines are up the gondola base

cornice clipped by gully goats
the rubber man appears to float
alpine depths are on the rise
peaking sun through parting skies

triple ropes and nordic luge
honored guests from baton rouge
gelande jumps on rainbow drive
nostalgia’s light and warm reply

Colors, have ways of making us soar,
or fall.......they make us buoy...
they, too, can divide and isolate...
long ago,  a magazine
was colored and identified for a reason.....
also,
a kind of blue-sy music, upon which i groove,
...was named for the same reason...
.............a magazine..... a music genre,
became instruments...and parts of
dark and golden moments.......recalled
and enjoyed, every now and then...they're
painted.......registered in people's minds....

life is a magazine of stories, of  poetry...
life is a jukebox...filled with soundtracks
life is an album...a collection of smiles
...of colorful images and emotions
reddish brown at first...turning yellow brown,
with tinges of taupe.......mottled through the years,
turning...into fading shades  of sepia...

i refuse my late summer moments on earth
............to be done in Grisaille,
painted, only in tones of grey and dark green...
...it is written...one day, life would be hued with
subdued colors...the blues, silvers and grays,
...........will be cold as winter...

but, until then,
i'd rather be consumed with liveliness
i would adorn my days with peach and lilac
blossoms, hang fuschia pink pennants
on my wall....to brighten my disposition,
i'd practice...play the guitar once again,
i'll wear my ruffled, dappled-purple skirt,
and yellow converse sneakers when i walk on
the pavement....under blue skies that enhance
greens, and gold...colors that breathe existence
transforming weariness to courage...

wherever...whenever, however possible,
i speak, whisper to  God words of gratitude,
and endless thanksgiving...i  pray for strength.    
and acceptance........prepare myself...when,
.....i, too...would face my own moments,
...............of fading sepia.

Sally

Copyright August 6, 2017
Rosalia Rosario A. Bayan

He had been away. Just a few days, but long enough to feel coming home was necessary. He carried with him so many thoughts and plans, and the inevitable list had already formed itself. But the list was for Monday morning. He would enjoy now what he could of Sunday.

Everything can feel so different on a Sunday. Travel by train had been a relaxed affair for once, a hundred miles cross-country from the open skies of the Fens to the conurbations of South Yorkshire. Today, there was no urgency or deliberation. Passengers were families, groups of friends, sensible singles going home after the weekend away. No suits. He seemed the only one not fixated by a smart phone, tablet or computer. So he got to see the autumn skies, the mountain ranges of clouds, the vast fields, the still-harvesting. But his thoughts were full to the brim of traveling the previous November when together they had made a similar journey (though in reverse) under similar skies. They had escaped for two days one night into a time of being wholly together, inseparably together, joined in that joy of companionship that elated him to recall it. He was overcome with weakness in his body and a jolt of passion combined: to think of her quiet beauty, the tilt of her head, the brush of her hair against his cheek. He longed for her now to be in the seat opposite and to stroke the back of her calf with his foot, hold her small hand across the table, gaze and gaze again at her profile as she, always alert to every flicker of change, took in the passing landscape.

But these thoughts gradually subsided and he found himself recalling a poem he had commissioned. It was a text for a verse anthem, that so very English form beloved by cathedral and collegiate choral directors of the 16th C (and just that weekend he had been in such a building where this music had its home). He had been reading The Five Proofs for the Existence of God from the Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquinas, knowing this scholar to have been a cornerstone of the work of Umberto Eco, an author he admired. He had also set a poem that mentioned these Five Proofs, and had set this poem without knowing exactly what they were. He recalled its ending:

They sit by a lake where dead leaves
Float and apples lie on a table. She
ignores him and his folder of papers

but I found later the picture was called
‘In Love’, which coloured love sepia.
Later still, by the time I sat with you,

Watched your arm on the back of a chair
And your hand at rest while you told me
Of Aquinas and his proofs for the existence

Of God I realised love was not always
Sepia, that these hands held invisible
Keys, were pale because the mind was aflame.

He remembered then the challenge of reading Aquinas, this Dominican friar of the 13C. It had stretched him, and he thought of asking his wordsmith of thirty years, the mother of his daughters, to bring these arguments together in a poetic form for him to set to music. She had delivered such a poem and it took him some while to grasp it wholly. He wondered for a moment if he actually had grasped it. But there was this connection with the landscape he was passing through. She had mentioned this, and now he saw it for his own eyes. She had been to Ely for the day, to walk the length of the great Cathedral, to stare at and be amongst the visible past, the past of Aquinas. He remembered the first verse as only a composer can who has laboured over the scheme of words and rhythms:

The Argument from Motion

Everything in the world changes.
A meadow of skewbald horses grazes
Beneath a pair of flying swans
And the universe is different again.

And no sooner is potency reduced to act,
By a whisker’s twitch or a word,
A word, that potent gobbet of air
Than smiles and tears change places.

And everything has changed. Back
Go the tracks beyond seen convergence
To a great self-sufficient terminus
Which terminus we might call God.

And so it was in such a spirit of reflection that his journey passed. He had joined the Edinburgh express at Peterborough to travel north, and the landscape had subsided into a different caste, still rural, but different, the fields smaller, the horizon closer.

Alighting from the train in his home city on a Sunday afternoon the station and surrounding streets were quiet and the few people about were not walking purposefully, they strolled. He climbed the flights of stairs to his third floor studio, unlocked the door and immediately walked across the room to open the window. Seagulls were swooping and diving below him, feeding off the detritus of the previous night’s partying in the clubs and pubs that occupied the city centre, its main shopping area removed to a mall off kilter with the historic city and its public buildings. What shops there were stood empty, boarded up, permanently lease for sale.

Sitting at his desk he surveyed the paper trail of his work in progress. Once so organised, every sketch and plan properly labelled and paginated, he had regressed it seemed to filling pages of his favoured graph paper in a random fashion. Some idea for the probably distant future would find its way into the midst of present work, only (sometimes) a different ink showing this to be the case. Notes from a radio talk jostled with rhythmic abstracts. He realised this was perhaps indicative of his mental state, a state of transience, of uncertainty, a temporariness even.

He was probably too tired to work effectively now, just off the train, but the sense and the relative peacefulness that was Sunday was so seductive. He didn’t want to lose the potential this time afforded. This was why for so many years Sunday had often been such a productive day. If he went to meeting, if he cooked the tea, if he ironed the children’s school clothes for the week, there was this still space in the day. It represented a kind of ideal state in which to think and compose. Now these obligations were more flexible and different, Sunday had even more ‘still’ space, and it continued to cast its spell over him.

He put his latest sketches into a sequential form, editing on the computer then printing them out, listening acutely, wholly absorbed. Only a text message from his beloved (picking blackberries) brought him back to the time and day. There was a photo: a cluster of this dark, late summer fruit, ripe for picking framed against a tree and a white sky. Barely a week ago they had picked blackberries together with friends, children and dogs and he had watched her purposely pick this fruit without the awkwardness that so often accompanied bending over brambles. He wondered at her, constantly. How was this so? He imagined her now in her parents’ garden, a garden glowing in the late afternoon light, as she too would glow in that late-afternoon light . . . he bought himself back to the problem in hand. How to make the next move? There was a join to deal with. He was working with the seven metrics of traditional poetry as the basis for a rhythmic scheme. He was being tempted towards committing an idea to paper. He kept reminding himself of the music’s lie of the land, the effectiveness of it so far. It was still early days he thought to commit to something that would mark the piece out, produce a different quality, would declare the movement he was working on to be a certain shape.

And suddenly he was back on the train, looking at the passing landscape and the next verse of that Aquinas poem insisted itself upon him with its apt description and tantalising argument:

The Argument from Efficient Causality

We are crossing managed washlands.
Pochards so carefully coloured swim
Where cows ruminated last summer
In a landscape fruit of human agency.

And I think of the heavenly aboriginal
Agent of all our doings in this material
Playground of earth I can pick up,
Hold and crumble and cultivate

And air that is mine for the breathing
And the inhabited waters that cling
As if by magic to a sphere. What cause
Sustains the effects we live among?

For there is no smoke without fire
And as we sow, thus we reap. Nihil
Ex nihil, therefore something Is,
Some being we might call God.

So ‘nothing out of nothing, therefore something is’.  Outside in the city the Cathedral bells were ringing in Evensong. The sounds only audible on a Sunday when the traffic abated a little and the sounds in the street below were sporadic. He thought of going out into the Cathedral precinct and listening to the bells roll and rhythm their sequences, those Plain-Bob-Majors and Grand-Sire-Triples. But he knew that would further break the spell, the train of thought that lay about him.

He sketched the next section, confidently, and when he had finished felt he could do know more. There it was: a starting point for tomorrow. He could now go towards home, walk for a while in the park and enjoy the movements of the wind-tossed trees, the late roses, the geese on the lake. He would think about his various children in their various lives. He would think about the woman he loved, and would one day assuage what he knew was a loneliness he could not quench with any music, and though he tried daily with words, would not be assuaged.

lady craighead played the blues
on a stand-up samick
in the ***** room
along side the parsons project
and squabbling dogs
and night moves

stairs creek
up the mezzanine trek
wool sheets slide
on finished floors
little angels
play late into the seventh
(a closing match nearing
the midnight hour)

croaking toads and cicada
sing in the blue moon
musty smells and mothballs
settle deep in the vault
the kettle boils
and cat coils
as the pump house rolls
its heavy drawl

the red phone rings
and bird clock sings
(behind the ruddy stall)
a sleeman variation of the ruy lopez
employed heartily
by the incomparable master jack
marble toast burning
wringer wash churning
chris craft running
near the old carp canoe

rooster calls
and west wind squalls
rustle through the porch screen door
chicken *** pies
and rogue flies linger
a rocker chair placed
near the  sepia face
(softened by the intricate frame)

donkey in tow
(with a fastened ***)
maggie in her dreams
of green tambourines
the nocturnes
reflections
and whispering gospel bells

tractors pull on
the grinder stone
horses lay still
in the mid-day sun
a trump card is fingered
at the furnace click
(crosswords and puzzles are next!)
while the sparrow
and that **** rabid fox
are drowning
deep in castles well

She knows she’s in
the sepia photograph
but doesn’t remember why
or who the others are

or why she dressed
as she did back then
or why there was a dog there
at the front

she keeps the photograph
tucked between
the pages
of the black Bible

some clergy gave her
and a dark secret
she was forbidden to tell
and sometimes

that short woman
with the Mongolian features
steals it to gawk at
then she has to go get it back

sometimes violently
which brings the nurses running
with their rough hands
and strait jackets

or that skinny woman
who always stares
takes hold of it
and stares at it

pointing to the various faces
of the males and females
and at the dog
and smiles and wets herself

and then laughs loudly
which causes
the other inmates
to bellow or laugh

or cry or scream
bringing the nurses trotting
with their what’s going on?
or what’s all this then?

she holds the photograph
to her ***** when she can
or tries to remember
who they all are

staring back at her
including herself
and when the quacks
question her

about the photo
as to who is who
or why she has kept it
she doesn’t have a clue

and one said
she ought not to have it
as it disturbed her
but a nice nurse

(and there were some) said
o no doctor she needs that
there will be hell to pay
if she doesn’t have it

tucked between the pages
of the Good Book
she kisses herself some days
talks to one or two

of the others there
but who they were
or to whom she speaks
she doesn’t know

and on cold wintery days
she looks toward the sun
for a message
or a warming glow.

The songs do it for me.  
Tones of yesterday remind me today..
Sunlit Sepia days on the baseball field..

Riding our bikes to nowhere..
As the Sepia day turns into Rose color fade..
We knew we had to be home before dark..

The street lights with rust glow lead us home..
My brother and I ride together..
No words, just the ride..

Photography,
Photo journalistic,
Everyday, realistic.

Commercial, architecture, landscape, artistic,
Industrial, fashion, ethnographic, pornographic.

Big Brother, fallace, stealer of souls, vouyer.
News seller, instant gratifier, man pleaser, woman abuser.

Barthes, Sontag, Cindy Sherman,
Virginia Woolf, Warhol. Weegie, Francesca Woodman,
Leibovitz, Adams, Arbus, Tina Modotti,
Nan, Evans, Hoffer and even the Paparazzi.

Cheap *****, digital manipulator, image poser,
Center fold, coupons, Jackie O and Marilyn Monroe.
Where did they go:

Lifeless paper product, painter's picture mess,
C-type, digital archival,
Sepia, black and white, hard drive retrival.

Image addict,
Image taker,
Image maker,
image seller,
image buyer.

Newspaper, magazine, graphics and ads,
TV, dreams, even the trash.

Billboards, subways, phones and buses:

Utopia:
Surreal, crop, stretched and air brushes.

Modern ideal.
Surface manipulator.
Brain conditioner.
Consent manufacturer.

Oh Photography,
I got you in my eye.
A few thousand dollars,
A BFA, A critical scholar.

Or maybe a nerd,
Just boys with toys.
Telephoto genitals, with motor drive action.
Studio lights, umbrella traction.

Oh Photography,
You proprietor of obscene.
Detailed, de-sensitized.
Court ordered, jury analyzed.

Click, image, copy, edit, paste, print or post.
Myfacespace, twitter, flicker,
An internet media overdose.

Pry, spy, your friend's friend's acquaintances.
Parties, picnics, reunions and shows.
Visits, vacation, style, shoes and clothes.


Pics, photos, images, jpegs and giffs.
Snap shot, portrait, panoramic, Kodak kiss.

Exacerbate:
Divorce, break-ups, jealousy, envy, love and fears.
Devour and captivate society for years.

Slaves to Western and Capitalist desires,
Destruction of Earth with psychological, monetary empires.

You choose a sepia filter
To match your timeless visage
To match the clothes you've wandered into today
But it is not a selfie.

Your eyes pierce them through their iPhone screens
Your smile is casually not directed towards anyone in particular
Your outfit is recklessly on point
And it is not a selfie.

It is a punch in the gut
to everyone who has ever
said you are not good enough.
It is not a selfie.

The wings by your eyes will go out of style.
The dye in your hair will wash down the drain.
The clothes will wear out and you will take pictures again.

But you have fabricated a moment.
You are smiling towards yourself.
Slap your image onto every social media you know
Next to the supermodels and Kardashians and words of self hatred
This is the fulcrum with which you will lever the world.
This is not a selfie.

Sepia sheets of notes read
the blues, that rested over
corroded strings of an old
guitar with petals of roses
that once used to heal the
wet coasts of the eyes and
an unfulfilled dream of a
firm embrace, stays dusty
at the corner of my vacant
room with the memories of
the blue notes like an old,
obscured calligraphy with
the dry roses, murmuring
the tales of an old love,
penned on bits of old
and dusty sepia sheets...

Freedom rang,
bang   bang   bang
and we traversed the dense foilage
of my Sepia Jungle
Populated by Spirited faeries
Whose lives came and went with the blowing wind.
And Time dissappeared beneath the sublte sunshine
As we entered Apricot Village
Where twisted, sappy leaves gnarled between
Milky white blossoms that decorated fetal fruits,
Whose crowning golden heads pushed petals fresh,
From budding limb,
Now kidnapped by the wind, a lazy sloshing sea of air,
The ground garnished by its aged spices.
It was a village where cottages grew among the Trees.
Devoid of holiness & Dogma, but steeped in the rife Purity of Nature,
No Man was to be seen, rotting fruit about the feet of Trees,
The floors of cottages strewn with Apricot pits, fleshy fruit half eaten
By the Birds, nestled into fertile Earth, and sprouted Life
rising fresh from pichest soil.
We ate of the fruit, now rested in the Golden Afternoon, which
Reached beyond the fringe of Time,
The fleshy pulp of Apricots the strands of bygone Universes,
Which taught us how to slumber there among
The petals and the Wind.

. i'm not against psychedelics... ****... syringe in excesses of LSD... but memory is also a psychedelic drug... albeit there is no excess of colors, and it's not b & w, but sepia tinged... i like the notion of a sepia curtain... maybe that's why i have my head ******* on so tight, and a hardened heart, to be able to write this... while others write, having drunk as much as i have, like kindergarten 5 year old, children!

i'm not here for the 80+ years that don't matter,
lying lethargic, semi-conscious,
demented, in a care home bed
where i'm abused for ******* my nappies...
i'm here...
   for the 16 or so years that really matter...
hence?
   i like to watch the metamorphosis of skin...
i never understood women who
cut and wait for some"magical" revelation
of internalized pain...
   those four stumps worth of knuckles
upon which i exhausted the amber of
a cigarette burning?
   second look?
      nice to see the many layers of skins,
prior to, and not including the bone...
     liver damage, whatever, bring it on...
i'm waiting...
  i can't, but i'm hoping...
to sow unto my skin the faint tincture
of a gangrene tattoo to
boast ink in Frankenstein green...
mingling with tongue numbing
yuck of bruise plum, and a dash of
Vishnu blue...
       oh i'm waiting: i can't wait...
   death is such a farce:
like i explained to my mother...
  you know... sometimes you're after
the pain: since you've reprogrammed
yourself, to enjoy it...
                  no, no *****-whipping
wimp diarrhea -
   i want the "furry" liver...
              i'm waiting, and i'm waiting...
and...
            nose-bleeds are past my worries...
i've had one in school, during
english class...
    no problem...
  can you believe it?
my neighbor's cat, Bella,
an albino climbed roofs, climbed into
chimneys...
   was knocked by a car,
presumably...
               and is in need of an operation,
might have one of her hind legs
amputated...
but she's also anemic...
so she might die during the operation...
poor ******, she...
                    heterochromic to boot...
      the sort of beast, which,
if being a Saudi Sheikh...
you'd love to put an Afghani burqa
over...
            Fonz... eeeeeeeeeee...
why bother with a counter argument?
the European variant of the niqab is
already in place...
sorry... the women you see in movies
or *****? ever see the same quality
shopping for underwear?
      not once...
                 it's such a sad little world
out there, jealous men...
who can't afford keeping
            castrato men for their, "harems",
and, evidently, don't poke enough
****** to keep the concubines entertained,
whole strap-on ******?
well... they're just strap-on ******...
ha ha!
                  ha ha ha ha!
        oh sure, i'm a loser, honey bee...
point being: i much prefer the company
of whiskey to that of a woman...
oops... did i say something, sheepish,
i.e. b'aah b'aah b'aad?!
   couldn't figure out the stuttering A
in diacritical markings...
since there isn't one...

   as i asked my Jewish convert into Islam...
i don't mind the Quran...
but what's your opinion on the, Hadith?
no answer... dumb look...
akin to: how do you know about that?
it's my eight's in a row right
to know what i consider, hostile.

         well, given that in Hindu...
the H... is a surd, rather than an authentic letter...
e.g.? dhaal...           that veggie
curry made from lentils?
there's no H in the name...
it's not a letter... it's an orthographic
inclusion of: consonant (d), surd (h)
                      vowel(s) (a, a), consonant (L)...
unless you of course deduce
there being a microcosm of the macron
hovering about one of the A,
deducing the other A is not necessary...
i drink...
because my excuse rests on the argument:
i'm not here for the 80+ years,
a life filled with an exhausted memory
bank,
    that is of no use
when it doesn't allow itself an
immediacy of convergence in
    what bicycles are founded upon:
teeth and chain, overlapping...
immediacy of overlapping -
memory... that alternative to psychedelic drugs...
some people take this over-bountiful
drugs to exemplify colors,
hyper-inflate them...
i just remember,
   and i know what memory is,
compared to the educational rubric
of, say, learning the Pythagorean equation,
how modern schooling is...
primarily?
   a memory erosion tool,
of a personal life, but more esp.,
  a childhood...
                  you want a drug more
potent than the Amsterdam legal mushroom?
RE-MEM-BER.
               like i said:
i can do what others won't do in
80 years... i can be content with
the zenith of doing what i do,
within a space of what excess drinking
allows me...
      the rest?
   either nostalgia... or regret;
i don't have the time preference to entertain
either...
esp. if what awaits me is
a sober case of dementia,
   and bedsores (odleżyny)...
             but sure, **** me,
go for it!
                   i pray to god that i managed
to fulfill my "evil genius" plan,
of drinking myself to death...
**** it... i have to match the sensible
life expectancy of the poorest of
the poorest African nations...
    don't really feel like living up
to the European turtle, neck,
demands for glorifying medicinal advancements.

You are smiling in the picture
curly hair ruffled and a defined living jawline
teeth gleaming and soft wrinkles around the eyes

It is a warm and windy day
the sky a pool that is sepia colored
the squirrels dance and the birds fly
and chairs, picnic blankets and banquets
are strewn across the lawn
children's feet dart across the grownups
who are busy questioning themselves or falling in love

there is flowing tipsy music
musicians in gloves, suits and mustaches
a sole lovely flute woman in a silk kimono
two dancers: one with feet bound embracing the earth
and the other as free and light as the wind,
relishing in the sky  

for some unknown reason
everyone is united,
feeling free as air
and content as living life itself

and I clutch the camera
crouching down in over-sized denim overalls
messy bun intact, colorful painters' fingers
settling with a smooth anticipation to wait,
the perfect moment will be here any time soon

And the cloud lets out a special airy breath just for you
so when you glance up at the sepia colored sky
and float back down to the earth below,

you are smiling in the picture
curly hair ruffled and a defined living jawline
teeth gleaming and soft wrinkles around the eyes.

Summer never ends, these days
And days drag on until
     You spend all night just wondering
When Fall will cool off all
     this lovely strain
     and sweet distress--
Will just bed down in burnt sienna
     and sleep off sepia tone headaches
so you can sleep all through next Summer,
     store your dreams in sweet October
--keep them fresh while the rest decays.

Flip the card and snowy streets
can keep you company through winter--
Keep you smiling through Hot Summer--
     because we don't have Spring no more--
Until it's time to wake at year's bedormance
                                           once again.

All the seasons start to look eerily alike
     after so long at one latitude,
But at least there's still one as speaks
     with seeming silence.

He's looking at me again.
Eyes fixed like he was insane.
Clay pipe propped on lips, pondering,
seriously sepia wondering.
No name on the severe brown frame.

He stares but doesn't see me.
I don't see him for what he was.
I see a fictional facsimile,
conflation of another's fantasies
- comic working class
- salt of the Earth
- his own man
- hero or Caliban.

i write about these things,
because in all honesty?
they don't matter to me.

you can call it assimilation, then you'll call it
   i'm making a worded salad, so it doesn't really matter
whether i speak the language or not,
being native you'll tell me i have to be a diacritically
riddled over-laden version of you  nativeness...
you'll basically tell me i have to speak a worse-off
native than you didn't bother to grasp...
after that? i turn Sioux and scalp you.
  because that's what you deserve.
i could have come up against you
in the thick of night and turned you into a kebab,
and do you think anyone would have
cared? is it one thing to assimilate,
and another to assimilate into a skin-head culturalism
implosive that's brimming to the full with your patriotic
hopes as being acted upon? i can speak the perfect
English and still be more welcome in Scotland
than in Kent... but that will not not do,
not until i shave my hair off,
grow a beard, and runsack my skin
with quasi-Hindu ******* tilts...
           and when this foreign legion
of Swedish journalists bemoan why
their **** ain't where their heart is?
have you seen the *sienkiewicz"
trilogy of *potop? you want history?
how about: in the beginning
there was an invading horde of Swedes
that tried to topple the proto-commonwealth
of Poland and Lithuania...
  even how much i cared to learn the tongue:
i'd be left belittled by ugly accenting
stereotypes...
                          i'd be Islam of drunk,
while the engineers would be left saying:
and unto us amphetamines,
and Mamelukes were never Egyptian...
because Egypt was what Egypt desired...
a quasi thingy... then i turned my ear
to Macbeth, and earned 70 years
and a Spartacus' worth of ears to my nearing 31...
                   i turned to Macbeth the theatricals
silences, and let, the music... play.
i can learn the language, but i am expected
to push the natives from a career of criminality,
i am expected to become the criminal,
i've learned the language beyond the natives,
what else?
   to learn the debasement of the natives akin to
every other culture? am i to become the
criminal statistic of the ruling political elite?
so they can "know" but that they merely quote?
   i owe my ode to Macbeth,
for Hamlet can become tiresome aligned with
Sisyphus in hell...
              we'll have builders by the end of
the debate...
     how much more do i have to learn?
is language not enough? then velkommen Syriac!
               is it not enough that i know the tongue?
must i be jeopardised by using it,
and say that universality is to be excluded,
simply because it does not abide by an utopian
ideal of pure English sprechen pure English?
         there are scapegoats to be festering upon
the spike that's readied to be fried...
but come on... is this deutschesprechen?
              it can't be! if i pretend to be Malcolm...
you pretend to be Duncan,
but nonetheless the speech makes us both truant
ghouls and guises receding
   into the demands of operatic - kindred to
Lady Macbeth (a protestant, or should she be
known catholic: McBeth) -
      as Glasgow religion of the coliseum of the times
testifies... celt and ranger... green & white vs. blue and
   black...
     lady mc.: what beast was 't thou,
        that make you break this enterprise with me?
(no matter if you killed a man, of whatever
stature he be worth, what beast are you to suddenly
cage my heart, when having agreed to make my heart
and feeling thus: storm the heights of Ben Nevis,
and descend as angrily as a woman might please,
  and with her whim, descend from the mountain
as if a mountain descends into desert?! what
courage, ye! to throw a woman into such woe
and leave a man's promise, the very least
a man can bestow upon this earth: but a woman
yet to come to correct!) so thus the elvish Anglican
was spoken, and thus continued:
- when you durst do it, then you were a man;
   and, to be more than what you were, you would
be so much more the man. nor time, nor place,
did then adhere, and yet you would make both...
  from his boneless gums...
nor have i understood Hamlet as the model student,
the puppet if not the mere mascot...
for the Freudian couch... then again i navigated
past Kant with Macbeth,
having yet to complete reading the critique...
       i took to maturity, and said
what others wished upon: there is true
adult agony in a well versed poetry...
       more so than adolescence in what's deemed
a maturation process...
             perhaps i should have served the concern
for Hamlet and laid bare upon the psychoanalytic
couch... but Macbeth: of said
sepia as copper, so said of woad as in aquamarine
surrender... led me to cite...
          for i was never bound to own the tongue
i would acquire... i was told:
   well, hello there, dishonourable squire...
ah... the queen's majestic airs...
    will make any Irishman desist from the republic's
gaze...
             and sloth in a respectably believed state
of consolidatory affairs under the kites of Yates...
   but never you mind the Silesian consumed
by former guardian of the coalmine...
or what L'vov wouldn't say in Ukrainian...
mind you Nevada and Lasso Vegan...
mind you that...  for that speaks biblical studies!
i will never assimilate, in that i will never be
allowed to own this tongue...
            and if i am allowed to own it...
i am but a furry-faced-bloat of faked pleasantries
   and closet nationalism...
        i wish i could own this language as if i
might own a typewriter... but i'm apparently
not welcome, by the pseudo-irish who
mediate the English assertion of the understanding
of the dover sieve...
                 ******* leprechaun mafia...
  paddy paddy oo too the butch-faced freckled girl...
   it's as if the Italians have Manhattan,
    and the Corke conglomerate prescribed
everyone a pint of Guinness rather than iron-pill
supplements...
                 well: and so the Titanic bellows
out an oceanic morse code of tantrums on
the accordions.
                      which sorta soothed the mermaids
digest contemplation for the vegan accomplishment
of shrimp... and over seafoods...
being digested.
         now i'm apparently not speaking English,
or i'm speaking English and i don't understand it,
or i'm understanding how i'm speaking English,
and how i'm supervising all things uranium
                               bound hallucinogenic...
or how, even though urbanity took off and
the countryside disappeared, you think you'll never
meet peasants in smirk attire to condescend you
gravity toward theatre or opera...
     but peasants are reall... you can recognise a peasant
the minute they don't recognise you insulting them;
it's a bit like telling a very witty joke...
         i don't get witty jokes because i tend to treat them
like a siegl heigl salutation...
   and i respect the memory of Octavian...
                                 it's the wittiness that comes into
contact with actually not telling a joke: and people
end up laughing... that's when you spot the peasants.
    so you see... i speak the ****** language,
but i'm sorta denied the access for drinking a cosmopolitan
at a Shoreditch pub...
                        which makes all arguments
for learning the language obsolete in terms of gaining
a "fair" advantage... and this is European to
European lingo...
        didn't i ask that Swedish journalist
ingrid carlqvist to watch the trilogy, including
potop about the war between Sweden and
the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth, and ask her
about what's to be culturally inherited?
**** me... maybe i'm sleepwalking...
                     dodo zombified or something...
                                     oh wait...
                                         if ever there was a regressive
reparation policy in a country:
i'd hear: guilt from western countries taking the bribes
of the Marshall Plan...
      and overt pride from countries post-world-war ii
being prescribed communism, as a way to rebuild
their nations: for fear of having to commit to
hara kiri... or *******...
                                         as said: becoming
the easily bribed convenience...
                              the concept of assimilation
within the construct of selective migration has transcended
the mere acquisition of language...
  acquiring a language isn't enough...
         the reverse policy of colonialism is hushed-down
ethnic cleansing...
          which goes beyond language per se,
since it goes beyond dialect ex lingua...
              it is a necessitation of also acquiring
national stereotypes of unengaged in dialectics...
it is one thing to rhetorically assert a need to debate,
and another to understand that dialectics ≠ debate;
but rather a service to prompt and engage thinking,
rather than debating... dialectics is an art-form,
     it's intended to encourage thinking,
rather than the continuum of polarised / schizoid
debating: debates never accomplish a convergence...
whereas dialectics is intended to establish
a convergent pinpoint... as Socrates said unto the young,
so i find myself talking to old men and being
in accordance to have shared a park bench,
one sunny afternoon at the nadir of summer.
                why is it that acquiring language is not
enough these days?
       or why is it that a poor acquisition of a language,
or acquiring a language without correcting
accentuated stresses particular to a tongue
are given a freer access to labour, then
acquiring a language to a standardisation of
mimic localisation, and fence: a faking of
a faking (ad infinitum) or locality?
i.e. overly-successful assimilation?
             overly-successful assimilation is punished!
   it is punished by speaking as a fluent native
might... but having no discriminatory biases
that could enable one to be completely native...
and this is punishable!
             by a stance that it's a robotics project,
that one is nothing more than an a.i. enterprise...
even those dearest to me acknowledge me
as a robot... an a.i.,
           but they can't seem to understand that
artificial intelligence, and authentic intelligence
cannot be superficial intelligence of
natives... for the natives have a placebo
to what is otherwise a Pompeii resurrection
to the volcano-dynamic of analysing-ergo-synthesising
           ana ergo syn           which
constructs the opposite of thesis and antithesis,
given that the equation combines two adequate prefixes,
ana- and syn-...
                      "against" therefore "with".
isn't that how we cling to social pressures
or prejudices and still accumulate 8 billion examples
of a comparative e.g. that's a John Smith?
     i have yet to come across a contemporary that
might become as if fatherly...
   i just see opportunist buckling down the M25 of
encircling nothing more than a venture into
gaining a quick buck... and it could, it could
almost be sad... but it's not...
              it took me almost 13 years of synthesising
the English language: synthesising i.e.
mimicking - before i started analysing it...
      and when i say the groundwork for any
theory on the subconscious is to focus on grammar
and grammatical word interjections into
a Joycean stream-of-consciousness...
                              for that's worth the upper-tier
working from the sub-level...
                          of utilising language:
then the unconscious is far from dreaming...
it's equivalent in seeing how i acquired a language
at the age of 8 to synthesise / mimic what the children
around me were saying...
   but that it took me so long to analyse the language...
which the children around me acquired within
a reflexive bias to later strand such reflexiveness into
a divergence of calling their angular retraction
philosophy, linguistics, poetry, psychology...
whole all i had to do is to appropriate a reflective bias to
later strand such reflectiveness as to say:
of my mother i say polski, of my father i say:
             ojczym - and i can reflect upon him,
foremostly his diacritical lack of the wriggling-blagger's
economisation, when due coinage is needed.

The time of the shining of
Wind-summered grasses, has passed,
-To the lark-breast mottle-
The harvested skin of the
Senescent land

The candle-****** gutter of
Hurrying wing sees
The last of the coin
That was minted in thatches
Of deepwood
Of latticing bramble
Of crumbling eve.

The mourn of the Moorland
Has  feathered a will
With the clot of the Ash,
Where a heather of cinnabar
Freckles the splash of
a simmering tarn

As gravelling Easterlies
Peel the cling of
The verdigris fades,
Some twilight of sepia
Musters the pastel
of Wintering calm.

On a sepia afternoon,
we'll meet in a rented room,
I'll have cleared my schedule.
And you, my sole to do.

Gray and faded
Cold crisp edges
The crunchy of fallen leaves under our feet
The only warmth found here is a
Chic charcoal coast fastened with bulky brown buttons
My milky vanilla bean coffee
And your hand holding my own
A shy smile given to me as you glance over
And brush the hair out of my face
That had been misplaced by the cold winds
In that moment
The clouded skies and birds heading south
The foreboding winds and icy water filled with fallen gray hues,
Even the scent of my favored drink
Escaped me as time froze
In the dark world around me the only color i found,
Was deep within those espresso bean eyes.
Captivated in that moment, I couldn't move
As his soft lips embraced my own
Oh sweet satisfaction.
Just as i went to kiss his back
I shuddered awake.

Dude, what the heck?
The ice cream truck added a hip-hop beat to the good ol’ “Do your Ears Hang Low” song.
Somehow it takes away from the innocence and nostalgia that should come with it
When I think of harkening to the sepia-toned tune
And running barefoot on the summer-kissed pavement
In my pink, flower-embroidered shorts
And baby-blue tank top
To pay a buck for some sweet, sweet colors
To mix and be plastered on the little mouth  
Of baby-faced
Eight-year-old
Me.

“Those who do not want to imitate anything,
produce nothing”.  Salvador Dali -- Dali on Dali

Dreamrise.

The sliced steep slopes of those cliffs could be anywhere--say, Yosemite--buttered by
the same sun, not battered by these calm seas, or bothered
by melting timepieces draped about the landscape.

Why does the artist’s head melt, deconstruct, feather into foreground loam— teeth, tongue,
lips fading nearly without notice, nose pillowed on his own ear?

Is there a reason a single housefly struggles against sky-blue stickiness--imperiled heroine
awaiting the locomotive crush of the sweeping minute hand--or why the bottom
of her golden prison melts in the sepia heat, its silver sisters hung limp
from a branch long dead, or laid carefully
as a blanket over the sleeping
focal face?

What of the copper watch, alone in original form, though a cluster of ants spews from its center
in lieu of hands?

The artist provides no answer, perhaps presuming the question sufficient.

That dead tree—
the only thing vertical, unless you stand beneath the cliffs;
the only thing anchored, unless you allow the cliffs;
the only thing obviously dead, unless those buttered cliffs are someone’s skin—
that tree is Watcher and Scribe, the Presence of the World, and at its base
a face is embedded, of some Bosch-spawned horror, gaze trained beyond
borders, back to the Middle Ages, or maybe on its own shadow.

Straight lines are few enough to count.  The horizon is one, or four, depending on how you tally.
Plain plank painted every hue of blue on the canvas numbers ten—again, depending—could be seven.
And the platform: four, or six?  Are these tricks of the eye or the mind—or math?  By the magic
of perfect draughtsmanship it works out to just the right number.

Note the placement of pebbles—gold right, gray left—for each side of the brain, he dreams; for balance,
for focus, for scale and distortion, placed with precision to escape first notice, the better to manipulate
mind and eye to see what isn’t there:
                                                          ­          the dark,
                                                           ­                          the void,
                                                           ­                                          this universe collapsing,
                                             ­                                                                 ­                                     howling open emptiness,
no stars, no cliffs, no clocks
wormhole of sleep which draws all from there to here,
bloated, belligerent Babylon of black consumes the bottom corner, far removed from ants,
beckoning the dreamer homeward--or Hellward?

In every direction lies fear or fulfillment,
each boundary spreads wide to possibility,
from this static domain where no breeze exists
to mar the surface of an ocean
so vast.

Inspired by a vintage ****** postcard from the 1920s - 30s:

The Muse sits resplendent
caressed in sepia tones and pastel cream
gilded with the glaze of a bygone era
her silk Charleston negligee
worn proud like a vintage ornament
perched on an aesthetically pleasing
shapely pert insolent *****
blossomed with tiny beads of sweat
the heat of such anticipation
entices the pearls of the ******
to pamper and pleasure their perversions

etched as if in a radiance of candlelight
the flickering limbs pulse their bloom
nimble fingers of dancing shadows
cupping the feline curves of a chaise longue
the purposefully out of place set piece
the fantasy of a gentleman's reading room
caked in casked sherry
and Nat Sherman cigar infused aromas

her elegant pose sumptuous reclining
elbow length satin gloves
sensually wrapped in wanton desire
******* clasp a Sorbranie Black Russian
smoked like a sultry gypsy
with a fervent demeanour
from a silver opera cigarette holder
beckoning with the cats eyes of mischief
over Pinced nez eyeglasses
with a fascination imbibed
in the praxis of passion

the peach skin of refulgent youth
directs the viewer downwards, slowly
survey each contour of olive skin
and stroke every hidden cleft of fabric
to glimpse the nubile thighs of grace
leading the eye to the arch of an ankle
slipped like a fitted glove
nestled in the cleavage of her calf
and the chastity of future wonderment

the forgotten photograph
captures a period in time
the memories of the muse
now in motionless existence
a demure allure forever frozen
once lost, but now
never forgotten

It is June. Plaridel is in sepia, or leaden – whichever,
  this is the leitmotif.

Soon clouds with jettison a plodding swathe of
  water. You will wear the petrichor,

While a ramshackle of a passing tricycle
  whelms a throbbing orchestra of junk.

Here is the hearth that rears no fire:
   a mother, children in tow – a troika,
   on a cart not even close to ease of
   a hurtling thing.     Trees naked in vulnerable
   green – the verdigris carried by a
   miniscule Maya.

Here comes again, the neighbor peering through
   the nuisance, is alarmed, eyes like a fugitive,
   curses my mother – I grab the nearest, sharpest
   object available that was my own hand.

Ingrained deep within, a root – or a stone, among many
  other stones in me, this salt-well, a savingslight of turning wave
   that is almost an approximate oceanview in me.

Gnarled over the longest time. In here we soothe by
    gin, passing out in front of our gated homes,
    singing whatever was available, close to our pitch.

Somewhere, Windsor has lost the poem / critiqued by
  a mirror fecundating a smeared image, a blot.
   A Rorschach was it, or just a day dazed they did.
Somewhere, this is scattered. Uncollected. To make remnants
  of as evidence, not to investigate if true.

The 6th body of this is what I am speaking of in glossolalia.
   A requiem leaves it stark and cold in this consummate weather.

Another piercing salvage of metal cuts the humdrum town
and unlike the sturdy mango tree, this is a collective of secret
  encrypted lasting more than a life.

It is June. Plaridel has ripened from the expired summer.
   Perchance the exquisite promise is sweet, holding all the bitterness together,
    ready to fall, at last.

They weren’t all cut from the same cloth
vilified tenders of the iron *****
some were lovers
(or lucid dreamers)
stage romantics
hidden behind jackboots
and skull caps
and switchblade seams

Caste members of a forlorn pack
counting their patchwork and deeds
conjuring up demons
around the console
filling their dreams
with radio reds
and dusted quarries
and faded sepia prints

Brass knuckles
and marches of the few
lightening bolt cracks
from a chilling blood moon
death’s dark specter
cold and ominous looms
the cobalt sea swells
near the nestled, and lost
Clubhouse at Kiusta

to Dani*

remember when, you do not:
you are a ground slicing the center of
    this home.

the long divide the furniture endures.
in front of the colossal tv
bodies spilled like water.
20 minutes was all it took – your name alone,
a potent hygroscopy.

when close enough:
dissipate. You took all the green the foliage could,
    soldered to your body a forest it manifests.

   repeated, if not a newer foundling:

    the   space   you  take  for  acquisition ,
    the faultless tenancy   you   mistake   as  counsel.

every saved for, and gleaming space
   aspires for venue – translates to an arena for snapshot.

[some mundane depiction ascribes for you to be known]
years later my portrait still hangs perpetually
on a modern furniture from a contemporary skillset.
  take this declaration.

years later, leapt to this day and forward:
the surgery of galvanized steel is reminiscent of a departure.
the tedious laborer smiling through bonsai pots
  carrying out lobotomies. The afternoon more sterile than
   your    face  as if operation.  This town knows you by practice
  
  and habit: all of it sepia, if not leaden.

This one's for me
and I'm gonna watch it burn.
Watch it flicker and pop and crackle and spit.
Gonna take lessons on how to dance with the draft,
also hoping she doesn't ******* out.
I'll make poems out of smoke and shadows
and fading, lonesome, sepia-tone summer photographs.
I want to make dusty picture frames feel like well-loved tuxedos.
I'm gonna see if candlelight can be all the company I need to keep.
Gonna sweep this floor clean,
like it's not what we say, it's what we mean
between the lines of
one too-polished table setting:
one knife,
one spoon,
but two forks for wishful thinking.
I'm gonna eat my fill
and fill my cup again and again,
to the point that I begin to make conversation
with my reflection in the bathroom mirror.
I'll tell that *******, "My friend, you are drunk."
and he'll tell me, "Kid, look who's talking."
Then it'll be back to a glass
that treats its brim like a suggestion.
Gonna have whisky and black lager and champagne
'til my toes and thumbs tingle.
Thin blooded and numbed;
Steeled by my father's novocain.
Come morning, this house couldn't get more hollow.

In these hallowed halls where I wallow in the way that
I only seem to appreciate the preciousness of days
Once they've passed,
here's what I'm gonna do:
I'm gonna write questions on one side of the wooden window blinds,
and write punchlines to completely unrelated jokes on the other.
I don't know why. Maybe just to **** with people.

I'm gonna reminisce with full streets of ghosts
That glow like kerosene lamp posts
all the while, stomping my feet, just to prove that I can.
Gonna make toasts to the isolated;
to the quarantined and the misanthropes.
I'll boast that lovers are not unlike poachers,
but I'm not gonna mention that in every other under-cover dream
I seem to swoon like ivory elephant tusks.
I'm gonna gamble on Dusk
because I think it's got a little less honesty,
but a little more promise than its
attention-*******, good-for-nothing, go-getter big sister Dawn does.
That flirtations *****.
Gonna give Christian names to half drawn caricatures
of people who only ever existed when the lights died out
and the snow fell heavy.

I'm gonna let the levies break.
I'll go insane, just ******* lose it--
do the Boot-Scoot-'n'-Boogie in a onesie
with the hind flap flying free and the Greek Theatre masks of
Comedy and Tragedy painted on my *** cheeks,
(because no one should ever take their art too seriously)
And I'm even not gonna even care who sees,
partially because there's no one around to watch anyway,
but mostly because I want,
more than anything, to just be me.
Or at least I want to want that.
See, I read somewhere that,
"You should always be yourself…
unless you can be a unicorn,
then always be a unicorn."
And that really struck home for me because,
even though I've never really ached to be
the ******* love child of a Narwhal and Zebra
(In my imagination, unicorns are
striped and impecable swimmers)
I truly believe that Men will always dream of being Titans
and Titans will always dream of being Gods
and Gods want nothing more than to be Wind--
to twist with lit candle sticks
and teach the lonesome how to dance.

A one-step waltz tip-toed to distract.

But the fact is, I'm bound to take a few back steps.
I'm gonna think about her.
Gonna harbor hard feelings towards back bedroom dealings
that I have no right knowing about.
Gonna pray like a desperate atheist
that they keep their knees locked in a one night stand.
I might break down.
Only once, just long enough to regain my strength.
Then I'll tame the earthquakes in my hands, like I always do.
Gonna find what it takes to move on.
Not just regenerate, but to grow stronger than I ever was before.
So I'm gonna meticulously straighten these place settings:
One knife.
One spoon.
A healthy dose of wishful thinking.
Gonna try my hand again at dancing with the back draft;
I heard she's been aching for a duet,
and with all the life of candlelight
I'm gonna ignite the coal shafts beneath my eyes.
Gonna finally see me as the man I am,
not the titan I wish to be,
because I heard somewhere that,
"You should always be yourself…
Especially when all you've known
all you've ever shown
is some mythology."
So raise your glass because this one?
This one's for me.

Where now are our heroes?
Faded  pages in an
Encyclopedia
Dry
Cracked
And
Sepia
Stars and supernovas
Quarrel with displeased eyes
And sing songs to empty
Rooms
Halls
And
Theaters

today we celebrated pain

crowds gathered in the close hole they'd made,
and, too, in fields where once were harvested
anonymous body parts and broken luggage straps  
and, why do they still need to remember that ...

sad birthday

he stares ahead, piercing the lens with blue eyes,
apparent youth belying ancients inside
uncertain how to smile yet,
the tie uneven around his starched oxford collar
there will be cake later, one supposes,
laughter of other children gathered 'round the table

the pretty brown girl in a pink dress
accepted presents from those who'd gathered -
maybe her mother set her hair in those loose braids-
her brown eyes brushed him, lips smiled
and newspapers said it was wrong
because it made too much fire, burned whole cities to the ground
he never saw her again

until

bobbing hens got lost in a wailing Hammond;
they'd missed The End
it was spring again then, like in Eden,
when, unashamed and perfect, her ******* danced with music
and a yellow rose was
pressed between their unused notebooks to mark the occasion
Mother was mad, and derided the prospect of pickaninny babies
taking seats at her fine linen-draped table
until everyone forgot once ... again

Now

the New Yorker has finally canceled itself,
ever a meager meal, its offerings of pinto beans and metaphors
quickly swallowed in secret
in hopes that divine inspiration might ensue
as he picked ripened tomatoes and peaches, each in their seasons,
and ate of them lustily, too

and suddenly it's spring ...  again
but eyes weak and weepy,
his life lost in stone-walled sanctuaries that protected
imaginary pickaninnies and half-breeds
today accustomed to titles of "mister" or "ma'am"
because it's America, and at her own End,
Mother fell in love with so many other brown-skinned girls
it didn't matter anymore

Clayton leans on his push broom,
always remembers to smile
as he requests the odd bit of change
"if you can..."

the boy can't remember his own name anymore
nor her's
rubs broken dust with his black leather shoes,
wonders where they've been -
because bold hues loudly pronounced the arrival of spring again,
which revives nagging pain from the picture he'd saved
and not yet time for tomatoes or peaches
nor the pretty, brown eyed-girl, her pink dress and braids

which had always come and gone without celebrations

death mourns a life
that succumbs to suicide...
classical lawless-ness?
calls the jyst...
        a thieving;
a stolen death,
a suicide....
         bride riddled to a bridge...
baking...
left half awake and half baked...
you count with the number of
blinding equations...
your 80+ segments?
i want nothing to be part of,
whether polymath,
bilingual, or polymath...
    you resd yourself into "it"....
  *******, and...
*******...
   in terms of .gif ***** files...
                 no... the part where
we don't parrot?
  for no worthwhile surprise!
death is alal b & w...
memory?
all invigorating sepia...
          life?
the blooming of color...
you take shrooms,
to invigorate the colors?!
oh look...
             you're as loony as me...
and why would i
give a ****, about your
tall-tales of subversive religiosity?!
you're right!
like you have been with me
to begin with...
there aren't any!
   now?!
      suffer!
you're in good hands...
turns out?!
i'm a sadist...
i somehow tested the pain on myself...
i enjoy...
the pain, of others,
having, prior, teased the pain
on, myself!
i forgot teasing the pain...
i taste it...
       i welcome it...
i've become welcoming
in allowing it,
a stature abbreviating a transcendence
of victim-hood!
    i need pain,
to craft an erasure of ever having
the capacity to instruct
a modus operandi for pleasure!

death contra suicide...
     a fact contra a premature contest
of pleasure...
        suicide is what
death calls thief...
               there is no moral artifact
of a "question"...
   suicide is the thief,
when death is the executioner...
  what moral question is
to be entertained?
non!

        i can't blame the mortality
arsonist...
    less Tartarus and more Gehenna...
less S.S. and more khaki
S.A. night of the broken windows
and less...
  hyper-Hindu
        reincarnation,
hue hue grey...
woo woo the ashen pillage...

no... i'm not here for the
cinder and the *******...
   it's enough that i drink
the sort of excuse,
that sober people could hardly make
excuses about...

            and that's enough...
and enough, is, where i'll stick to.

She'd swooshed by on her skates.
He'd seen her in her reflection that day
On his car’s rear view mirror,
For the first time ever.
The new neighbour, was she?

That very night, for the first time ever,
Both happened to be on their respective rooftops.
The clock had just scaled eleven.
Now that they’d seen each other,
Tonight's coincidence sufficed to make way
For a rendezvous every night, thereafter.

He’d often be smiling his sheepish smile,
Panting for breath as he’d reach the terrace
While the clock would strike eleven,
A few heartbeats later.
Oh, but she would often already be there,
A teasing laughter on her lips,
A childlike smile in her eyes.
Relief followed by exultation in his heart.

And so, they’d be standing a lane's length apart,
United under the zoetic starry sky, every night hence.

You’d wonder, how both were somehow convinced,
That the other still believed
This nightly tryst
Under the sky's roof to be a coincidence.

She'd light cigarette after another.
He'd pretend
To be caressing his pet,
Fast asleep.
Or some such silly thing.

How he’d wish the whiff of smoke from her cigarette
Would drift across to his terrace.
He’d imagine the wafting smoke
That’d emanate as she’d part her lips
To be a peek into her coy desires.
And many such cheesy things.

They hadn't exchanged a word till date.
Oh but they'd exchanged hearts that very first night.
She didn't even know his name yet
She'd wonder if he knew hers’?
'Has it ever mattered?' she'd think.
'I'm better off not knowing her name!'
Thinking a name could define her
Is to be silly', he’d think.

She was at his door one evening,
To hand over a letter,
Mistakenly delivered at her home.
Or so she said. Something he'd happily believed.
She'd slipped her heart along with the letter,
She later happily realized.

The ensuing night lingered
Six and a half cigarettes longer,
The first time ever.

Fifteen evenings gone by since
She wouldn’t be seen.
He stayed for a brief bit on the sixteenth night.
Disappointed less, worried more.
Did she feel this silent encounter
Of their worlds had stayed silent too long?
Words could never suffice, didn't she know?
He went down to his room ruefully.
Oh but she’d reached just the terrace at that instant.

And they thought coincidences could only always favor them.

A few evenings later he saw her.
Not veiled by the sepia-tinted street lights this time.
Nor in the crimson blush of that evening.
Decked in bridal finery
The vermilion vows on her forehead
Staring starkly at him like an exclamation mark.

And you thought coincidences could only always favor us,
Seemed to be the rhetoric she was throwing at him.

That night, his tattered heart
Writhed in dead wakefulness on the rooftop.
Even now, he looks across
At her absence, a presence in itself.