1.
From my
uneasy bed
at the L’Enfant,
a train's pensive
horn breaks the
sullen lullaby of
an HVAC’s hum;
interrupting the
mechanical
reverie of its
steadfast
night watch,
allowing my ear
to discern
the stampede
of marauding
corporate Visigoths
sacking the city.

The cacophony
of sloven gluttony,
the ***** songs of
unrequited privilege
and the unencumbered
clatter of radical
entitlement echoes
off the city’s cold
crumbling stones.

The unctuous
bellows of the
victorious pillagers
profanely feasting
pierces the
hanging chill
of the nations
black night.

Their hoots
deride the train
transporting
the defeated
ghosts of
Lincoln’s last
doomed regiments
dispatched in vain
to preserve a
peoples republic
in a futile last stand.

The rebels have
finally turned the tide,
T Boone Pickett’s
Charge succeeds,
sending the ravaged
Grand Army of the
Republic sliding
back to the Capitol,
in savage servility,
gliding on squeaky
ungreased wheels
ferrying the
Union’s dead
vanquished
defenders to
unmarked graves
on Potters Field.

The Rebels
joyous yell
bounces off
the inert granite
stones of the
soulless city.

The spittle
of salivating
vandals drips
over the
spoils of war
as they initiate the
disassemblage,
the leveling and
reapportionment
of the grand prize.

The clever
oligarchs
have laid claim
to a righteous
reparation
of the peoples
assets for
pennies on the
dollar.

Their wholly
bought politicos
move to transfer
distressed assets
into their just
stewardship
through the
holy justice
of privatization
and the sound
rationale of
free market
solutions.

In the land of the
pursuit of property,
nimble wolf PACs
of swift 527, LLCs
have fully
metastasized
into personhood;
ascending to
the top of the
food chain in
America’s
voracious
political culture;
bestriding
the nation to
compel the
national will
to genuflect
to the cool facility
of corporate
dominion.

As the
inertial ******
of the plaintive
locomotive
fades into
another old
morning of
recalcitrant
Reaganism,
it lugs its
ambivalent
middle class
baggage toward
it’s fast expiring
future.

I follow
the dirge
down to
the street
as the ebbing
sound fades
into the gloom
of the
burgeoning
morning,
slowly
replacing the
purple twilight
with a breaking
day of cold gray
clouds framing
silhouettes of
cranes busily
constructing
a new city.

The personhood of
corporations need
homes in our new
republic; carving
out new
neighborhoods
suitable for the
monied citizens
of our nation.

First amongst
equals, the best
corporate governance
charters form
the foundation of
the republic’s
new constitution.
Civil rights
are secondary
to the freedom
of markets; the
Bill of Rights
are economically
replaced by the
cool manifests
of Bills of Lading.

The agents of
laissez faire
capitalism
nibble away
at the city’s
neighborhoods
one block at a time;
while steady winds
blows dust off
the National Mall.

Layers of the
peoples plaza are
plained away with
each rising gust.  

History repeats
itself as the Joad’s
are routed from their
land once again.

A clever
mixed use
plan of
condos and
strip malls
is proposed
to finally help the
National Mall
unlock its true
profit potential.

As America’s
affection for
federalism fades
the water in
the reflection pool
is gracefully drained.

We the people
can no longer
see ourselves.

The profit
potential of
industry is
preferred over
the specious
metaphysical
benefits
of reflection.

The grand image,
the rich pastiche,
the quixotic aroma
of the national
melting ***
is reduced to the
sameness of the
black tar that lines
the pool and the
swirling eddies of
brown dust circling
the cracked indenture.

From his not so
distant vantage point,
Abe ponders the
empty pool wondering
if the cost of lives
paid was a worthy
endeavor of preserving
the ****** union?  
Has the dear prize
won perished from
this earth?

Was the illusive
article of liberty  
worth its weight in
the blood expended?

Did the people ever
fully realize the value
of government
by the people,
for the people?

Did citizens of
the republic
assume the
responsibilities to
protect and honor
the rights and privileges
of a representative
government?

Now our idea
and practice of
civil rights is measured
and promoted as far as
it can be justified by
a corporate ROI, a
shareholder dividend,
an earmark or a political
donation to a senators
unconnected PAC.

The divine celestial
ledgers balancing
the rights and
privilege of free people
drips with red ink.  

Liberty, equality
fraternity are bankrupt
secular notions
condemned as
expensive
liberal seditions;
hatched by
UnHoly Jacobins,
the atheist skeptics
during the dark times
of the Age of Enlightenment.

Abe ponders
the restoration
of Washington’s
obelisk, to
repair the cracks
suffered  from
last summer’s
freak earthquake.

I believe I detect
a tear in Abe’s
granite eye
saddened by the
corporate temblors
shaking the
foundations
of the city.

2.

The WWII Memorial
is America’s Parthenon
for a country's love
affair with the valor
and sacrifice of warfare.

WWII forms the
cornerstone of
understanding the
pathos of the
American Century.

During WWII
our greatest generation
rose as a nation to
defeat the menace of
global fascism and
indelibly mark the
power and virtue of
American democracy.

As Lincoln’s Army
saved federalism, FDR’s
Army kept the world safe
for democracy.

Both armies served
a nation that shared
the sacrifice and
burden of war to
preserve the grace of
a republican democracy.

Today federalism
crumbles as our
democracy withers.

The burden
of war is reserved
for a precious few
individuals while
its benefits
remain confined to
the corporate elite.

Our monuments
to war have become
commercial backdrops
for the hollow patriotism
of war profiteers.

We have mortgaged
our future to pay
for two criminal wars.

The spoils of
war flow into the
pockets of
corporate
shareholders
deeply invested
in the continuation
of pointless,
destructive
hostilities.

Our service
members who
selflessly served
their country come
home to a less free,
fear struck nation;
where economic
security and political
liberty erodes
each day while the
monied interests
continue to bless
the abundance
of freedom and riches
purchased with the
blood and sweat
of others.

America desperately
needs a new narrative.

The spirit of the
Greatest Generation
who sacrificed and met
the challenge of the 20th
Century must become
this generations spiritual
forebears.

The war on terror
neatly fits the
the corporate
pathos of
militarism,
surveillance
and the sacrifice
of civil liberties
to purchase
a daily measure
of fear and
economic
enslavement.

It must be rejected
by a people committed
to building secular
temples to pursue
peace, democracy,
economic empowerment,
civil liberties and tolerance
for all.

Yet this old city
and the democratic
temples it built
exulting a free people
anointed with the
grace of liberty
is being consumed
in a morass of
commercial
polyglot.

3.

During the
War of 1812
the British Army
burned the
Capitol Building
and the White House
to the ground.

Thank goodness
Dolly Madison saved
what she could.

The new marauders
are not subject to the
pull of nostalgia.  

They value nothing
save their
self enrichment.

They will spare nothing.

Our besieged Capitol
requires Lincoln’s troops
to be stationed along the
National Mall to defend
the republic.

The greatest peril
to our nation
is being directed
by well placed
Fifth Columnists.

From the safety
of underground bunkers,
in secure undisclosed
locations within the city’s
parameters, a well financed
confederacy employing  
K Street shenanigans
are busy selling off
the American Dream
one ear mark
at a time, one
huge corporate
welfare allotment
at a time.

The biggest prize
is looting the real
property of the people;
selling Utah,
auctioning off
the public schools,
water systems, post offices
and mineral rights
on the cheap
at an Uncle Sam
garage sale.  

The capitol is
indeed burning
again.

Looters are
running riot.

The flailing arms
of a dying empire
fire off cruise
missiles and drone
strikes; hitting the
target of habeas
corpus as it
shakes in its
final death rattle.
I make a pilgrimage
to the MLK Jr.
Monument.

Our cultural identity
is outsourced to
foreign contractors
paid to reinterpret
the American Dream
through the eyes
of a lowest bidder.

MLK has lost
his humanity.

He has been
reduced to a
a Chinese
superhuman
Mao like anime
busting loose from
a granite mountain while
geopolitical irony
compels him to watch
Tommy Jefferson
**** Sally Hemings
from across the tidal
basin for all eternity.  

MLK’s eyes fixed in
stern fascination,
forever enthralled
by the contradictions
of liberty and its
democratic excesses
of love in the willows
on golden pond.

Circling back to
Father Abraham’s
Monument,  I huddle
with a group of global
citizens listening
to an NPS Ranger
spinning four score
tales with the last full
measure of her devotion.

I look up into Abe’s
stone eyes as he
surveys platoons
of gray suited
Chinese Communist
envoys engaged
in Long Marches
through the National Mall;
dutifully encircling cabinet
buildings and recruiting
Tea Party congressmen
into their open party cells.

This confederacy
is ready to torch
the White House
again.

Congressmen and
the perfect patriots
from K Street slavishly
pull their paymasters
in gilded rickshaws to
golf outings at the Pentagon
and park at the preferred
spots reserved for
the luxury box holders
at Redskin Games.

They vow not to rest
until the house of the people
is fully mortgaged to the
People’s Republic of China’s
Sovereign Wealth Fund.

4.

A great
Son of Liberty like
Alan Greenspan
roundly rings
the bells of
free markets
as he inches
T Bill rates
forward a few
basis points
at a time; while
his dead mentor
Ayn Rand
lifts Paul Ryan
to her
Fountainhead teet.
He takes a long
draw as she
coos songs
from her primer
of Atlas Shrugged
Mother Goose tales
into his silky ears.

The construction
cranes swing
to the music
building new private
sector space with
the largess of
US taxpayers
money; or
more rightly
future generations
taxpayer debt.

Libertarians,
Tea Baggers, Blue Dogs
and GOP waterboys
eagerly light a
match to the
the crucifixes
bearing federal
social safety
net programs
to the delight
of NASDAQ
listed capitalists
on the come,
licking their chops
to land contracts
to administer
these programs
at a negotiated
cost plus
profit margin.

Citizens
dependent
on programs
are leery
shareholders
are ecstatic.

To be sure
our free
market rebels
don disguises
of red, white
and blue robes
but their objectives
fail to distinguish
their motives and
methods with
some of the finest
Klansman this
country has
ever produced.

5.

DC is a city
of joggers
and choppers.

Corporate
helicopters
wizz by the
Washington
Monument,
popping erections
for the erectors
inspecting the progress
of the cranes
commanding the
city skyline.

USMC drill team
out for a morning
run circles the Mall.

The commanding
cadence of the
DI keeps us
mindful of the
deepening
militarization of
our society.

A crowd  
rushes
to position
themselves,
genuflecting
to photograph
a platoon on
the move.

I try to consider
the defining
characteristics of
Washington DC.

DC is all surface.

It is full of walls
and mirrors.

Its primary hue
is obfuscation.

Open
communication
scripted from well
considered talking points
informs all dialog.

The city is thoroughly
enraptured in narcissism.

Thankfully, one can
always capture the
reflection of oneself in
the ubiquitous presence of
mirrors.  

Vanity imprisons
the city inhabitants.

Young joggers circle the
Mall and gerrymander
down every pathway
of the city.  

They are the clerks,
interns and staffers of
the judicial, executive
and legislative branches.

They are the children
of privilege.

They will never
alter their path.

You must cede the walk
to their entitlement
of a swift comportment
or risk injury of a
violent collision.

These young ones
portray a countenance  
of benevolent rulers.  

They seem to be learning
their trade craft well from
the senators and judges
whom they serve.

They appear confident
they know what's best
for the country and after
their one term of tireless
service to the republic
they look forward to
positions in the private
sector where they will
assist corporations
to extend their reach
into the pant pockets
worn by the body politic.

6.

Our nations mythic story
lies hidden deep in the
closed rooms of the
museums lining the
Mall.

I pause to consider
what a great nation
and its great people
once aspired to.

I spy the a
suspended
Space Shuttle
hanging in dry dock
at the air and
space museum.

Today America’s
astronauts hitch
rides on Russian
rockets.

America rents a
timeshare from
the European
space agency to
lift communication
satellites into orbit.

Across the Mall
I photograph
John Smithson’s
ashes in its columbarium.  

I fear it has become a
metaphor for America’s
future commitment
to scientific inquiry
and rational secular
thinking.

I am relieved to
discover a Smithsonian
exhibit that asks
“what does it mean
to be human?”

The Origins of Humans
exhibit carries a disclaimer
to satisfy creationists.

The exhibit timidly states
that science can coexist
with religious beliefs and
that the point of the exhibit is
not to inflame inflame religious
passions but to shed light on
scientific inquiry.

I imagine these exhibits
will inflame the passion of
the fundamentalist
American Taliban and
provide yet another
reason to dismantle
the Moloch of Federalism.

The pursuit of science
remains safe at the
Smithsonian for now.

7.

Near K Street at
McPherson Park
a posse of
well dressed
lobbyists, the
self anointed
uber patriots
doing the work
of the people
stroll through
the park
boasting a
healthy population
of bedraggled
homeless.

The homeless
occupy the benches
that have been
transformed into
pup tents.

Perhaps some of
the residents of this
mean estate were
made homeless by a
foreclosed mortgage.  

The K Street warriors
can be proud that their
work on behalf of the
banking industry has
forestalled financial market
reform.  

Through it exacerbates
the homeless problem it has
allowed these K Street titans to
profit from the distress of others.

Earlier in the day
I photographed
a homeless man
planted in front of
the Washington
Monument.

I wonder
if my political
voyeurism is
an exploitation of
this man’s condition?

I have more in common
then I probably wish to
admit with my K Street
antagonists.  

In another section
of the park the
remnants of a
distressed OWS
bivouac remain.

The legions of sunshine
patriots have melted away
as the interest of the
blogosphere has waned.

As the weather
improves Moveon.org
and democratic
party operatives
pitch tents in an
effort to resuscitate
the moribund
movement.

They hope
to coop any
remaining energy
to support their
stale deception,
a neoliberal vision
based solely on the
total capitulation
to the bankrupt
corporatocracy.

I heard someone say
a campaign lasts a
season; while a
movement for social
change takes decades.

If that metric proves
correct, and if the
powers don’t succeed
in compromising the
people’s movement
I’ll be three quarters
of a century old
before I see
justice flowing like
a river once again.

8.

I circle back to
the L’Enfant and
find myself
tramping amidst
the lost platoon
of Korean War
soldiers.

My feet drag
in the quagmire
of grass covering
the feet of this
ghostly troop.

My namesake
uncle was a
decorated
veteran of this
conflict and Im
sure I detect
his likeness
in one of the
statues.

The bleak call
of a distant train
sounds a revelry
and I imagine this
patrol springing
to life to answer
the call of their
beloved country
once again.

Yet they remain
inert.  

Stuck in a
place that the
nation finds
impossible to
leave.

The eyes of the
men stare into
an incomprehensible
fate.  

They see the swarms
of Red Army infantrymen
crossing the Yellow River
streaming toward
them in massive
human waves,
the tips of
sparkling bayonets
threatening to slash
the outmanned
contingent fighting
to bits.

They are the
first detachment
to bravely confront
the rising power
of China many
thousands of
miles away
from their homes.

America like
this lone company
is overwhelmed
and lost in the
confusion
that confronts
them.

Looking up
I perceive the
bewilderment
of my muddled image
reflected on the
marble walls
surrounding
the memorial.

I am a comrade-in-arms,
a fellow wanderer sojourning
with th

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

Part I


the plateau. the truest of them all. coast line. night spells and even controlled by the dream of meeting again. the ribbon of darker than light in your crown. No region overlooked. Third picnic table to the drive at Half Moon Bay, meet me there, decant my speech there. the table by the restroom block. While the tide is in show me your oyster garden, 3:00p.m. at half-light here in the evilest torments that have been shed.---------------door locked.  The moors. Cow herds and lymph nodes, rancorous afternoon West light and bending roads, the cliffs, a sister, the need to jump. There is nothing as serious as this. There is nothing nor no one that could ever, or would ever on this side come between. Who needs sleep or jokes or snow or rivers or bombs or to turn or be a rat or a fly or ceiling fan or a gurney or a cadaver or piece of cloth or a bed spread or a couch or a game or the flint of a lighter or the bell of a dress; the bell of your dress, yes, perhaps. Having been crushed like orange cigarette light in a pool of Spanish tongues. I feel the heave, the pull; not a yawn but a wired, thread-like twist about my core. Up around the neck it makes the first cut, through the eyes out and into the nostrils down over the left arm, on the inside of the bicep, contorting my length, feigning sleep, and then cutting over my stomach, around and around multiples of times- pulled at the hips and under the groin, across each leg and in-between each nerve, capillary, artery, hair, dot, dimple, muscle, to the toes and in-between them. Wiry dream-like and nervous nightmarish, hellacious plateaus of leapers. Penguin heads and more penguin heads. Startling torment. The evilest of the vile mind. The dance of despair: if feet contorted and bound could move. The beach off Belmont. The hills and the reasons I stared. Caveat after caveat at the heads of letters, on the heads of crowns, and the wrists, and on the palms. Being pulled and signed, and moved away so greatly and so heavily at once in a moment, that even if it were a year or a set of many months it would always be a moment too taking away to be considered an expanse, and it would be too hellacious to be presumptuous. It could only be a shadow over my right shoulder as I write the letters over and again. One after another. Internally I ask if I would even grant a convo with Keats or Yeats or Plath or Hughes? Does mine come close? Does it matter the bellies reddish and cerise giving of pain? Does it have to have many names?


"This is the only Earth," I would say with the bouquet of lilies spread out on the table. Are lilies only for funerals, I would never make or risk or wish this metaphor, even play it like the drawn out notes of a melody unwritten and un-played: my black box and latched, corner of the room saxophone. Top-floor, end of the hall two-room never-ending story, I'm the left side of the bed Chicago and I see pink walls, bathrooms, the two masonite paintings, the Chanel books, the bookshelves, the white desk, the white dresser, you on the left side of the bed in such sentimental woe, **** carpet and tilted blinds, and still the moors and the whispering in the driver's seat in afternoon pasture. Sunset, sunrise, nighttime and bike room writing in other places, apartments, rooms where I inked out fingertips, blights, and moods; nothing ever being so bleak, so eerily woe-like or stoic. Nothing has ever made me so serious.

Put it on the rib, in a t-shirt. Make it a hand and guide it up a set of two skinny legs under a short-sheeted bed in small room and literary Belmont, address included. Trash cans set out morning and night, deck-readied cigarette smoking. Sliding glass door and kitchen fright. Low-lit living room white couch, kaleidoscope, and zoetrope. Spin me right round baby right round. I am my own revenge of toxic night. Attack the skin, the soul, the eyes, the mind, and the lids. The finger lids and their tips. Rot it out. Blearing wild and deafening blow after blow: left side of the bed the both of us, whilst stirs the intrepid hate and ousts each ******* tongue I can bellow and blow.

Last resort lake note in snow bank and my river speak and forest walk. Wrapped in blocks and boxes, Christmas packaging and giant over-sized red ribbons and bows. Shall I mention the bassinet, the stroller, the yard, several rings of gold and silver, several necklaces of black and thread? I draw dagger from box, jagged ended and paper-wrapped in white and amber: lit in candle light and black room shadow-kept and sleeping partisan unforgettable forever. Do I mention Hawaii, my mother dying, invisible ligatures and the unveiling of the sweat and horror? Villainous and frightening, the breath as a bleat or heart-beat and matchstick stirring slightly every friends' woe and tantrum of their spirit.

Lobster-legged, waiting, sifting through the sea shore at the sea line, the bright tyrannosaurs in mahogany, in maple, and in twine over throw rose meadow over-looks, honey-brimming and warehouse built terrariums in the underbelly of the ravine, twist and turn: road bending, hollowing, in and out and in and out, forever, the everlasting and too fastidious driving towards; and it's but what .2 miles? I sign my name but I'll never get out. I am mocked and musing at tortoise speed. Headless while improvising. Purring at any example of continue or extremity or coolness of mind, meddling, or temptation. I rock, bellowing. Talk, sending shivers up my spine. I'm cramped, and one thousand fore-words and after words that split like a million large chunks of spit, grime, and *****; **** and more ****. I might even be standing now. I could be a candle, in England, a kingdom, in Palo Alto, a rook in St. Petersburg. Mottled by giants or sleepless nights, I could be the Eiffel Tower or the Statue of Liberty, a heated marble flower or the figure dying to be carved out. I'm veering off highways, I'm belittling myself: this heathen of the unforgettable, the bog man and bow-tied vagrant of dross falsification and dross despair. I am at the sea shore, tide-righted and tongue-tide, bilingual, and multi-inhibited by sweat, spit, quaffs of sea salt, lake water, and the like. Rotten wergild ridden- stitched of a poor man's ringworm and his tattered top hat and knee-holed trousers. I'm at the sea shore, with the cucumbers dying, the rain coming in sideways, the drifts and the sandbars twisting and turning. I'm at the sea shore with the light house bruise-bending the sweet ships of victory out backwards into the backwaters of a mislead moonlight; guitars playing, beeps disappearing, pianos swept like black coffees on green walled night clubs, arenose and eroding, grainy and distraught, bleeding and well, just bleeding.






I'm at the sea shore, the coastline calling. I've got rocks in my pockets, ******* and two lines left in the letter. I’m at the sea shore, my mouth is a ghost. I've seen nothing but darkness. I'm at the seashore, second picnic table, bench facing the squat and gobble, the tin roof and riled weir near the roadside. .2 and I'm still here with my bouquet wading and waiting. I'm at the sea shore and there's nobody here. My inches are growing shorter by the second, cold, whet by the sunset, its moon men, their heavy claws and bi-laws overthrowing and throwing me out. The thorns stick. The tyrannosaurs scream. I'm at the sea shore, plateau, left bedside to write three more letters. Sign my name and there's nobody here.

I'm at the sea shore: here are my lips, my palms (both of them facing up), here are my legs (twine and all), my torso, and my head shooting sideways. I'm at the seashore and this is my grave, this is my purposeful calotype, my hide and go seek, my show and tell, my forever. .2 and forever and never ending. I was just one dream away come and keep me. I'm at the sea shore come and see me and seam me. I'm without nothing, the sky has drifted, the sea is leaving, my seat is a matchbox and I'm all wound up. The snow settling, the ice box and its glory taken for granted. I'm at the sea shore and there's nobody here. The room with its white sets of furniture, the lilies, the Chanel, the masonite paintings, the bed, your ribbon of darker on light, the throw rug **** carpet, pink walled sister's room, and the couch at the top of the stairs. I'm at the sea shore, my windows opened wide, my skin thrown with threat, rhinoceri, reddish bruises bent of cerise staled sunsets. I'm at the sea shore and there's nobody here. I'm at the plateau and there isn't a single ship. There are the rocks below and I'm counting. My caveats all implored and my goodbyes written. I'm in my bed and the sleep never set in. I'm name dropping God and there's nobody there. I'm in a chair with my hands on a keyboard, listening to Danish throb-rock, horse-riding into candle light on a wicked wedding of wild words and teary-eyed gazes and gazers. Bent by the rocking and the torment, the wild and the weird, the horror and everything horrifying. There is this shadow looking over my shoulder. I'm all alone but I feel like you're here.



Part II




I wake up in Panama. The axe there. Sleeping on the floors in the guest bedroom, the floor of the garden shed, the choir closet, the rut of dirt at the end of the flower bed; just a towel, grayish-blue, alone, lawnmower at my side, and sky blue setting all around. I was a family man. No I just taste bits of dirt watching a quiet and contrary feeling of cool limestone wrap over and about my arms and my legs. Lungs battered by snapping tongues, and ancient conversations; I think it was the Malaysian Express. Mom quieted. Sister quieted. Father wept. And is still weeping. Never have I heard such horrifying and un-kindly words.-----------------------It's going to take giant steel cavernous explorations of the nose, brain cell after brain cell quartered, giant ******* quaffs of alcohol, harboring false lanterns and even worse chemicals. Inhalations and more inhalations. I'm going to need to leap, flight, drop into bodies of waters from air planes and swallow capsules of psychotropics, sedatives beyond recalcitrance. I'm requiring shock treatments and shock values. Periodic elements and galvanized steel drums. Malevolence and more malevolence. Forest walks, and why am I still in Panama. I don't want to talk, to sleep, to dream, to play stale-mating games of chess, checkers, Monopoly, or anything Risk involving. I can't sleep, eat, treaty or retreat. I'm wickeded by temptations of grandeur and threats of anomaly, widening only in proverb and swept only by opposing endeavors. Horrified, enveloped, pictured and persuaded by the evilest of haunts, spirits, and match head weeping women. I can't even open my mouth without hearing voices anymore. The colors are beginning to be enormous and I still can't swim. I couldn't drown with my ears open if I kept my nose dry and my mouth full of a plane ticket and first class beanstalk to elysian fields. It's pervasive and I'm purveyed. It's unquantifiable. It's the epitomizing and the epitome. I have my epaulets set for turbulent battles though I still can't fend off night. Speak and I might remember. Hear and it's second rite. Sea attacks, oceans roaring, lakes swallowing me whole. Grand bodies of waters and faces and arms appendages, crowns and more crowns and more crowns and more crowns and more crowns and I'm still shaking, and I'm still just a button. And I still can't sleep. And I'm still waiting.

It is night. The moon ripening, peeling back his face. Writhing. Seamed by the beauty of the nocturne, his ways made by sun, sky, and stars. Rolled and rampant. Moved across the plateau of the air, and its even and coolly majestic wanton shades of twilight. It heads off mountains, is swept as the plains of beauty, their faces in wild and feral growths. Bent and bolded, indelible and facing off Roman Empires too gladly well in inked and whet tips of bolder hands to soothe them forth.-----------Here in their grand and grandiose furnaces of the heart, whipped tails and tall fables fettered and tarnished in gold’s and lime. Here with their mothers' doting. Here with their Jimi Hendrix and poor poetry and stand-up downtrodden wergild and retardation. I don't give a ****. I could weep for the ***** if they even had hair half as fine as my own. I am real now. Limited by nothing. Served by no worship or warship. My flotilla serves tostadas at full-price. So now we have a game going.-----------------------------------------------------------­------------------------  My cowlick is not Sinatra's and it certainly doesn't beat women. As a matter of factotum and of writ and bylaw. I'm running down words more quickly than the stanza's of Longfellow. I'm moving subtexts like Eliot. I'm rampant and gaining speed. Methamphetamine and five star meats. Alfalfa and pea tendrils. Loves and the lovers I fall over and apart on. Heroes and my fortune over told and ever telling. Moving in arc light and keeping a warm glow.

the fish line caves. the shimmy and the shake. Bluegrass music and big wafting bell tones. snakes and the river, hands on the heads, through the hair; I look straight at the Pacific. I hate plastic flowers, those inanimate stems and machine-processed flesh tones. Waltzing the state divide. I am hooked on the intrepid doom of startling ego. I let it rake into my spine. It's hooves are heavy and singe and bind like manacles all over me. My first, my last, my favorite lover. I'm stalemating in the bathtub. Harnessing Crystal Lite and making rose gardens out of CD inserts and leaf covers. I'm fascinated by magic and gods. Guns and hunters. Thieving and mold, and laundry, and stereotypes, and great stereos, and boom-boxes, and the hi-fi nightlife of Chicago, roasting on a pith and meaty flame, built like a horror story five feet tall and laced with ruggedness and small needles. My skin is a chromium orchid and the grizzly subtext of a Nick Cave tune. I've allowed myself to be over-amplified, to mistake in falsetto and vice versa. To writhe on the heavy metallic reverberations of an altercated palpitation. The heart is the lonely hunted. First the waterproof matchsticks, then the water, the bowie knife, crass grasses and hard-necked pitch-hitters and phony friends; for doing lunch in the park on a frozen pond, I play like I invented blonde and really none of my **** even smells like gold.--------------------- There are the tales of false worship. I heard a street vendor sell a story about Ovid that was worse than local politics. As far as intermittent and esoteric histories go I'm the king of the present, second stage act in the shadow of the sideshow. Tonight I'm greeting the characters with Vaseline. For their love of music and their love of philosophy. For their twilight choirs and their skinny women who wear black antler masks and PVC and polyurethane body suits standing in inner-city gardens chanting. For their chanting. The pacific. For the fish line caves. For the buzzing and the kazoos. For the alfalfa and the three fathers of blue, red, and yellow. For the state of the nation. But still mostly working for the state of equality, more than a room for one’s own.-------------------------------------------------------------­------"Rice milk for all of you." " Kensington and whittled spirits."
(Doppelganger enters stage left)MAN: Prism state, flash of the golden arc. Beastly flowers and teeming woodlands. Heir to the throes and heir to the throng.----------------------------------------------------------­--------------- The sheep meadow press in the house of affection. The terns on my hem or the hide in my beak; all across the steel girder and whipping ******* the windows facing out. The mystery gaze that seers the diplopic eye. Still its opening shunned. I put a cage over it and carry it like a child through Haight-Ashbury. At times I hint that I'm bored, but there is no letting of blood or rattle of hope. When you live with a risk you begin at times to identify with the routes. Above the regional converse, the two on two or the two on four. At times for reasons of sadness but usually its just exhaustion. At times before the come and go gets to you, but usually that is wrong and they get to you first. Lathering up in a small cerulean piece of sky at the end turnabout of a dirt road

"Dog's Longevity Due to Tobacco Habit"**

The staple diet of Sebastian, a pitbull-miniature poodle cross-breed owned by Mrs Emmie Snaggletooth of St John's Road, Little Tittington, Berkshire, is Bruno Extra Strength Old **** pipe tobacco. He consumes two ounces of it every week and his proud owner keeps it in his very own tin.

The procedure is as follows: Mrs Snaggletooth rolls a cigarette and puts it between her lips. Sebastian then leaps up onto her lap and removes the unlit cigarette from her lips and sits with it for several moments between his own lips.

His mistress, who is a pipe smoker herself, then lights up and, as she sits contentently smoking her twelve-inch ivory carved Meerschaum, Sebastian eats his cigarette, leaving only the filter tip which he normally spits out into the fireplace. He has twenty cigarettes a day and enjoys his tobacco best after he has eaten his evening meal of Pedigree Chum (Older Dogs Recipe).

Sebastian, who is now seventeen years old, discovered his penchant for tobacco when he found an open tin of Bruno Old **** and ate the lot. "He became very agitated and barked for three hours non stop", says Mrs Snaggletooth when she fondly recalls the incident, "And we have not been able to stop him since. He's become a bit of an addict and has appeared on TV twice as a result."

Emmie Snaggletooth has smoked a pipe for over seventy years; she keeps her treasured Meerschaum on a cord around her neck. Born in Stillfockin in the County Cork eighty-eight years ago, she went on stage with her sister Catriona as part of the renowned music hall act, the Fabulous Snaggletooth Girls. Emmie picked up the pipe-smoking habit when she had to smoke a traditional clay pipe whilst playing the principal boy in **** in Boots at the old Queen's Theatre in Reading, before it was pulled down to make way for the Pay-As-You-Go Municipal Car Park and Disabled-Access-Toilets.

"All this talk of smoking being bad for your health is a load of old *******", declares Mrs Snaggletooth through her few remaining blackened teeth. And it would seem that Emmie and Sebastian are living proof of this. Emmie sadly points to the fact that her sister Catriona, who never smoked at all, died aged only 25 after being run over by a runaway bus and she emphasies Sebastian is the longest surving member of his litter. "Sebby is the only one of his family who ever liked tobacco, I'm sure of that", she says, "Although his sister, Mary-Jean, was fond of a glass of stout with her biscuits."

Readers are invited to turn to page 24 to enter this week's competition to win a year's supply of Bruno Extra Strength Old **** tobacco and a free ****** examination from Hilary Clinton (Mrs).

Even as the sun with purple-coloured face
Had ta’en his last leave of the weeping morn,
Rose-cheeked Adonis hied him to the chase;
Hunting he loved, but love he laughed to scorn.
Sick-thoughted Venus makes amain unto him,
And like a bold-faced suitor ‘gins to woo him.

“Thrice fairer than myself,” thus she began
“The fields chief flower, sweet above compare,
Stain to all nymphs, more lovely than a man,
More white and red than doves or roses are;
Nature that made thee with herself at strife
Saith that the world hath ending with thy life.

“Vouchsafe, thou wonder, to alight thy steed,
And rein his proud head to the saddle-bow;
If thou wilt deign this favour, for thy meed
A thousand honey secrets shalt thou know.
Here come and sit where never serpent hisses,
And being set, I’ll smother thee with kisses.

“And yet not cloy thy lips with loathed satiety,
But rather famish them amid their plenty,
Making them red and pale with fresh variety:
Ten kisses short as one, one long as twenty.
A summer’s day will seem an hour but short,
Being wasted in such time-beguiling sport.”

With this she seizeth on his sweating palm,
The precedent of pith and livelihood,
And, trembling in her passion, calls it balm,
Earth’s sovereign salve to do a goddess good.
Being so enraged, desire doth lend her force
Courageously to pluck him from his horse.

Over one arm the ***** courser’s rein,
Under her other was the tender boy,
Who blushed and pouted in a dull disdain,
With leaden appetite, unapt to toy;
She red and hot as coals of glowing fire,
He red for shame, but frosty in desire.

The studded bridle on a ragged bough
Nimbly she fastens—O, how quick is love!
The steed is stalled up, and even now
To tie the rider she begins to prove.
Backward she pushed him, as she would be ******,
And governed him in strength, though not in lust.

So soon was she along as he was down,
Each leaning on their elbows and their hips;
Now doth she stroke his cheek, now doth he frown
And ‘gins to chide, but soon she stops his lips,
And, kissing, speaks with lustful language broken:
“If thou wilt chide, thy lips shall never open”.

He burns with bashful shame; she with her tears
Doth quench the maiden burning of his cheeks;
Then with her windy sighs and golden hairs
To fan and blow them dry again she seeks.
He saith she is immodest, blames her miss;
What follows more she murders with a kiss.

Even as an empty eagle, sharp by fast,
Tires with her beak on feathers, flesh, and bone,
Shaking her wings, devouring all in haste,
Till either gorge be stuffed or prey be gone;
Even so she kissed his brow, his cheek, his chin,
And where she ends she doth anew begin.

Forced to content, but never to obey,
Panting he lies, and breatheth in her face;
She feedeth on the steam as on a prey,
And calls it heavenly moisture, air of grace,
Wishing her cheeks were gardens full of flowers,
So they were dewed with such distilling showers.

Look how a bird lies tangled in a net,
So fastened in her arms Adonis lies;
Pure shame and awed resistance made him fret,
Which bred more beauty in his angry eyes.
Rain added to a river that is rank
Perforce will force it overflow the bank.

Still she entreats, and prettily entreats,
For to a pretty ear she tunes her tale;
Still is he sullen, still he lours and frets,
‘Twixt crimson shame and anger ashy-pale.
Being red, she loves him best; and being white,
Her best is bettered with a more delight.

Look how he can, she cannot choose but love;
And by her fair immortal hand she swears
From his soft ***** never to remove
Till he take truce with her contending tears,
Which long have rained, making her cheeks all wet;
And one sweet kiss shall pay this countless debt.

Upon this promise did he raise his chin,
Like a dive-dapper peering through a wave
Who, being looked on, ducks as quickly in;
So offers he to give what she did crave;
But when her lips were ready for his pay,
He winks, and turns his lips another way.

Never did passenger in summer’s heat
More thirst for drink than she for this good turn.
Her help she sees, but help she cannot get;
She bathes in water, yet her fire must burn.
“O pity,” ‘gan she cry “flint-hearted boy,
’Tis but a kiss I beg; why art thou coy?

“I have been wooed as I entreat thee now
Even by the stern and direful god of war,
Whose sinewy neck in battle ne’er did bow,
Who conquers where he comes in every jar;
Yet hath he been my captive and my slave,
And begged for that which thou unasked shalt have.

“Over my altars hath he hung his lance,
His battered shield, his uncontrolled crest,
And for my sake hath learned to sport and dance,
To toy, to wanton, dally, smile, and jest,
Scorning his churlish drum and ensign red,
Making my arms his field, his tent my bed.

“Thus he that overruled I overswayed,
Leading him prisoner in a red-rose chain;
Strong-tempered steel his stronger strength obeyed,
Yet was he servile to my coy disdain.
O be not proud, nor brag not of thy might,
For mast’ring her that foiled the god of fight.

“Touch but my lips with those fair lips of thine,
—Though mine be not so fair, yet are they red—
The kiss shall be thine own as well as mine.
What seest thou in the ground? Hold up thy head;
Look in mine eyeballs, there thy beauty lies;
Then why not lips on lips, since eyes in eyes?

“Art thou ashamed to kiss? Then wink again,
And I will wink; so shall the day seem night.
Love keeps his revels where there are but twain;
Be bold to play, our sport is not in sight:
These blue-veined violets whereon we lean
Never can blab, nor know not what we mean.

“The tender spring upon thy tempting lip
Shows thee unripe; yet mayst thou well be tasted.
Make use of time, let not advantage slip:
Beauty within itself should not be wasted.
Fair flowers that are not gathered in their prime
Rot and consume themselves in little time.

“Were I hard-favoured, foul, or wrinkled-old,
Ill-nurtured, crooked, churlish, harsh in voice,
O’erworn, despised, rheumatic, and cold,
Thick-sighted, barren, lean, and lacking juice,
Then mightst thou pause, for then I were not for thee;
But having no defects, why dost abhor me?

“Thou canst not see one wrinkle in my brow,
Mine eyes are grey and bright and quick in turning,
My beauty as the spring doth yearly grow,
My flesh is soft and plump, my marrow burning;
My smooth moist hand, were it with thy hand felt,
Would in thy palm dissolve or seem to melt.

“Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear,
Or like a fairy trip upon the green,
Or like a nymph, with long dishevelled hair,
Dance on the sands, and yet no footing seen.
Love is a spirit all compact of fire,
Not gross to sink, but light, and will aspire.

“Witness this primrose bank whereon I lie:
These forceless flowers like sturdy trees support me;
Two strengthless doves will draw me through the sky
From morn till night, even where I list to sport me.
Is love so light, sweet boy, and may it be
That thou should think it heavy unto thee?

“Is thine own heart to thine own face affected?
Can thy right hand seize love upon thy left?
Then woo thyself, be of thyself rejected,
Steal thine own freedom, and complain on theft.
Narcissus so himself himself forsook,
And died to kiss his shadow in the brook.

“Torches are made to light, jewels to wear,
Dainties to taste, fresh beauty for the use,
Herbs for their smell, and sappy plants to bear;
Things growing to themselves are growth’s abuse.
Seeds spring from seeds, and beauty breedeth beauty;
Thou wast begot: to get it is thy duty.

“Upon the earth’s increase why shouldst thou feed,
Unless the earth with thy increase be fed?
By law of nature thou art bound to breed,
That thine may live when thou thyself art dead;
And so in spite of death thou dost survive,
In that thy likeness still is left alive.”

By this, the lovesick queen began to sweat,
For where they lay the shadow had forsook them,
And Titan, tired in the midday heat,
With burning eye did hotly overlook them,
Wishing Adonis had his team to guide,
So he were like him, and by Venus’ side.

And now Adonis, with a lazy sprite,
And with a heavy, dark, disliking eye,
His louring brows o’erwhelming his fair sight,
Like misty vapours when they blot the sky,
Souring his cheeks, cries “Fie, no more of love!
The sun doth burn my face; I must remove.”

“Ay me,” quoth Venus “young, and so unkind!
What bare excuses mak’st thou to be gone!
I’ll sigh celestial breath, whose gentle wind
Shall cool the heat of this descending sun.
I’ll make a shadow for thee of my hairs;
If they burn too, I’ll quench them with my tears.

“The sun that shines from heaven shines but warm,
And lo, I lie between that sun and thee;
The heat I have from thence doth little harm:
Thine eye darts forth the fire that burneth me;
And were I not immortal, life were done
Between this heavenly and earthly sun.

“Art thou obdurate, flinty, hard as steel?
Nay, more than flint, for stone at rain relenteth.
Art thou a woman’s son, and canst not feel
What ’tis to love, how want of love tormenteth?
O, had thy mother borne so hard a mind
She had not brought forth thee, but died unkind.

“What am I that thou shouldst contemn me this?
Or what great danger dwells upon my suit?
What were thy lips the worse for one poor kiss?
Speak, fair; but speak fair words, or else be mute.
Give me one kiss, I’ll give it thee again,
And one for int’rest, if thou wilt have twain.

“Fie, lifeless picture, cold and senseless stone,
Well-painted idol, image dull and dead,
Statue contenting but the eye alone,
Thing like a man, but of no woman bred!
Thou art no man, though of a man’s complexion,
For men will kiss even by their own direction.”

This said, impatience chokes her pleading tongue,
And swelling passion doth provoke a pause;
Red cheeks and fiery eyes blaze forth her wrong:
Being judge in love, she cannot right her cause;
And now she weeps, and now she fain would speak,
And now her sobs do her intendments break.

Sometime she shakes her head, and then his hand;
Now gazeth she on him, now on the ground;
Sometime her arms infold him like a band;
She would, he will not in her arms be bound;
And when from thence he struggles to be gone,
She locks her lily fingers one in one.

“Fondling,” she saith “since I have hemmed thee here
Within the circuit of this ivory pale,
I’ll be a park, and thou shalt be my deer:
Feed where thou wilt, on mountain or in dale;
Graze on my lips, and if those hills be dry,
Stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie.

“Within this limit is relief enough,
Sweet bottom-grass and high delightful plain,
Round rising hillocks, brakes obscure and rough,
To shelter thee from tempest and from rain:
Then be my deer, since I am such a park;
No dog shall rouse thee, though a thousand bark.”

At this Adonis smiles as in disdain,
That in each cheek appears a pretty dimple.
Love made those hollows, if himself were slain,
He might be buried in a tomb so simple,
Foreknowing well, if there he came to lie,
Why, there Love lived, and there he could not die.

These lovely caves, these round enchanting pits,
Opened their mouths to swallow Venus’ liking.
Being mad before, how doth she now for wits?
Struck dead at first, what needs a second striking?
Poor queen of love, in thine own law forlorn,
To love a cheek that smiles at thee in scorn!

Now which way shall she turn? What shall she say?
Her words are done, her woes the more increasing.
The time is spent, her object will away,
And from her twining arms doth urge releasing.
“Pity!” she cries “Some favour, some remorse!”
Away he springs, and hasteth to his horse.

But lo, from forth a copse that neighbours by
A breeding jennet, *****, young, and proud,
Adonis’ trampling courser doth espy,
And forth she rushes, snorts, and neighs aloud.
The strong-necked steed, being tied unto a tree,
Breaketh his rein, and to her straight goes he.

Imperiously he leaps, he neighs, he bounds,
And now his woven girths he breaks asunder;
The bearing earth with his hard hoof he wounds,
Whose hollow womb resounds like heaven’s thunder;
The iron bit he crusheth ‘tween his teeth,
Controlling what he was controlled with.

His ears up-pricked; his braided hanging mane
Upon his compassed crest now stand on end;
His nostrils drink the air, and forth again,
As from a furnace, vapours doth he send;
His eye, which scornfully glisters like fire,
Shows his hot courage and his high desire.

Sometime he trots, as if he told the steps,
With gentle majesty and modest pride;
Anon he rears upright, curvets and leaps,
As who should say ‘Lo, thus my strength is tried,
And this I do to captivate the eye
Of the fair ******* that is standing by.’

What recketh he his rider’s angry stir,
His flattering ‘Holla’ or his ‘Stand, I say’?
What cares he now for curb or pricking spur,
For rich caparisons or trappings gay?
He sees his love, and nothing else he sees,
For nothing else with his proud sight agrees.

Look when a painter would surpass the life
In limning out a well-proportioned steed,
His art with nature’s workmanship at strife,
As if the dead the living should exceed;
So did this horse excel a common one
In shape, in courage, colour, pace, and bone.

Round-hoofed, short-jointed, fetlocks **** and long,
Broad breast, full eye, small head, and nostril wide,
High crest, short ears, straight legs and passing strong,
Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide;
Look what a horse should have he did not lack,
Save a proud rider on so proud a back.

Sometime he scuds far off, and there he stares;
Anon he starts at stirring of a feather;
To bid the wind a base he now prepares,
And whe’er he run or fly they know not whether;
For through his mane and tail the high wind sings,
Fanning the hairs, who wave like feathered wings.

He looks upon his love, and neighs unto her;
She answers him as if she knew his mind:
Being proud, as females are, to see him woo her,
She puts on outward strangeness, seems unkind,
Spurns at his love, and scorns the heat he feels,
Beating his kind embracements with her heels.

Then, like a melancholy malcontent,
He vails his tail that, like a falling plume,
Cool shadow to his melting buttock lent;
He stamps, and bites the poor flies in his fume.
His love, perceiving how he was enraged,
Grew kinder, and his fury was assuaged.

His testy master goeth about to take him,
When, lo, the unbacked *******, full of fear,
Jealous of catching, swiftly doth forsake him,
With her the horse, and left Adonis there.
As they were mad, unto the wood they hie them,
Outstripping crows that strive to overfly them.

All swoll’n with chafing, down Adonis sits,
Banning his boist’rous and unruly beast;
And now the happy season once more fits
That lovesick Love by pleading may be blest;
For lovers say the heart hath treble wrong
When it is barred the aidance of the tongue.

An oven that is stopped, or river stayed,
Burneth more hotly, swelleth with more rage;
So of concealed sorrow may be said.
Free vent of words love’s fire doth assuage;
But when the heart’s attorney once is mute,
The client breaks, as desperate in his suit.

He sees her coming, and begins to glow,
Even as a dying coal revives with wind,
And with his bonnet hides his angry brow,
Looks on the dull earth with disturbed mind,
Taking no notice that she is so nigh,
For all askance he holds her in his eye.

O what a sight it was wistly to view
How she came stealing to the wayward boy!
To note the fighting conflict of her hue,
How white and red each other did destroy!
But now her cheek was pale, and by-and-by
It flashed forth fire, as lightning from the sky.

Now was she just before him as he sat,
And like a lowly lover down she kneels;
With one fair hand she heaveth up his hat,
Her other tender hand his fair cheek feels.
His tend’rer cheek receives her soft hand’s print
As apt as new-fall’n snow takes any dint.

O what a war of looks was then between them,
Her eyes petitioners to his eyes suing!
His eyes saw her eyes as they had not seen them;
Her eyes wooed still, his eyes disdained the wooing;
And all this dumb-play had his acts made plain
With tears which chorus-like her eyes did rain.

Full gently now she takes him by the hand,
A lily prisoned in a gaol of snow,
Or ivory in an alabaster band;
So white a friend engirts so white a foe.
This beauteous combat, wilful and unwilling,
Showed like two silver doves that sit a-billing.

Once more the engine of her thoughts began:
“O fairest mover on this mortal round,
Would t

She is equipped with sensitive *******
and those other secret places
that ladies give out as prizes
to deserving guys as long as
they adopt the right disguises
of gods, gurus, intellectual giants,
goats, children, father figures, macho brutes,
sugar-daddies, supermen, seminal vessels,
house-repairers, jar openers, jocks, hate objects,
handy shoulders to cry on, emotional support systems,
sensitive, intuitive, yet strong silent types
who can also pay the bills,
tall dark and handsome total strangers,
toy boys, clowns, jugglers, jokers, millionaires,
wood choppers, ******* removers,
bottomless reservoirs of reassurance
or just plain spunky studs when the moon is right.
In fact, anything but woffly wimps.
Oh God, no.  Anything but woffly wimps.
Yes, but what about stoic, steadfast SNAGS,
you know, the Sensitive New Age Guys
who won’t face-shift for a ****?
Yes, well, let's try to sum all this up here right now.
I think that the woman is dripping
with a brimming reservoir
of luscious and sensitive resources on tap for  
the man who can figure out her cosmic kaleidoscope  
of swirling dreams and desires,
which is definitely not to say she can’t be totally independent.
Although please don't be confused.
Friendly boy-next-door types who are handsome,
aren't too hairy, who like to laugh, who have a boyish braggadocio,
who are students, who appear to be intellectuals,
who are not nerds,
and who can **** it in the kitchen, who  can be oh, so cool,
who can convince a maiden that she is in distress,
and is in need of rescuing, while he has
a swaggering hard-on will do, too.
Oooh. You devil.
And if you think this poem is misogynist, misanthropic or myopic,
well, I’ve been around and by now, well,
I really should be panoptic
because I’ve seen all the fads,
and really, it’s sadly too bad
about those poor old
earnest SNAGS.
But you know what?
I don't think I understand anything, because
I'm really a victim of worshiping women.
I'm bedazzled and as blind as the next man, and
yes,
I'm just happy whenever I'm with them.

Well, I've written two . . . sonnets . .

first ones from the point of view of a typical twit youngish bloke . when he realises his latest conquests a bit keen like . . . He writes a poem . . . Leaves it lying around carelessly

So I'm to meet .your mum and dad ? . . .
But I thought this .  a one time **** . . .
Not children planned or Sunday roasts
I dreamt no champagne wedding toasts . . . !
They're coming round for tea . . tonight ?. . .
This ***** no longer feeling right . . !
In epic terms this now's a fail . !
I think .  it's time for me to bail !!
Though . . something sparkled in your kiss,
A luscious tingling of lips . .
Add alcoholic lust fuelled hips
Whose groovy moves I know I'd miss . .
So . . . If I meet your mum and dad .
Then that gets me . . another ****?

She finds the poem . . And replies . . .

Dear silly boy .  who left behind
His hopeful sentimental rhyme . . .
Who fancies meeting mum and dad
Just to secure another **** . . .
Well pretty boy  . . KEEP DREAMING ON . . .
Since any chance you had . . has gone,
I found your rhyme upon the floor . .
Now ******* closed . . as is my door
It's such a shame . .  you'll never know
How far down I can really go . .
Nor that my naughty little hand
Is worth your golden wedding band
My poet lad  . . you've well derailed
All future chance  . . of getting nailed

midnight skin blanketing
******* toned hips
a warm tongue points;
this

the taste of ecstasy on my
fingertips
taunts the rehab in my touch
yearning to risk it

pills litter stone-wood floors
as we **** through flaws
**** feelings carpet the inner raw

moaning and creaking
of hard wood

boards

wild moods

bodies wet
clinging sensual monsoon

fiending for a fixing
we cut through

bleeding lust

******

sheets whispering drops of
crimson truth

as familiar sensations pulsate
we gyrate
losing focus of whose waist

hanging onto
****
**don’t wait

Oh Annette Tidy, I would love to lick your ****
Show me that you like it, you **** loving ****
******* pulled beyond your hole, while kneeling like a mutt
Legs apart so far and wide, I don't want your ******* shut

Spread you cheeks across my face and open your hole wide
Pelvic thrusting on my tongue, while I'm slipping it inside
The taste of it is magical, when tongue and *** collide
I can lick your ***** too , but I'll let you decide

It's okay if your a *****, when it's ***** and bums to pluck
A Furry ***** is alright, it's still so good to ****
Soiled ******* I don't mind, they make my cockerel cluck
A touch of romance is quite fine, but so is a good ****

Oh Annette Tidy let me knock on your back door
You can show me your intentions, you filthy ******* *****
I doesn't matter that we're strangers, because our *** is raw
If your like the phone box says, then what are you waiting for?

So come on now get naked, and I will do the same
let me have your **** hole and a **** ******* game
According to the writings your a filthy kind of dame
I've read that your an **** ****, so your be glad I came

Oh Annette Tidy, I am on a real *** hunt
I would be so happy, if your proper ***** ****
Whether your a posh girl, or just a ******* munt
You need to get your knickers off, and I'll give it a punt

I'll be grabbing onto your ****, and It would be devine
Vigorous ******* may result, in hearing your **** whine
If your a cheater that's okay, it really is quite fine
As long as your cheating with me, and you are ******* mine

So push your **** upon me, let my **** slide in
I'd **** without a rubber sheaf, it's better on bare skin
I'm sure that you'll enjoy it, when your sitting on my pin
And **** old Dennis Richmond, cos I don't give a **** about him

Oh Annette Tidy, I fancy a real good ****
I am really hoping, your a ***** ******* ****
It doesn't matter if your good looking, or a dried up hag
***** lips are free to flutter, when I **** your fleshy flag

**** ******* is so good, what a fantastic feeling
The tightness squeezing on my rod, that's what I find appealing
Doing **** would be great, bent over or just kneeling
An ******* that is spread wide, is really quite revealing

So when my **** is hard enough I would stuff it in your ***
Fingers up your ***** and your ******* under thumb
A frigging is in order, because I want to feel your ***
******* in your tight hole, I would really give it some

Oh Annette tidy, let us have some ****** fun
Let me see you naked, and I will ***** your hot cross bun
I also like a wet ****, but these things must be done
For you squirt me with your juice, just like a Capri Sun

I hope that you like big *****, cos I have a nine inch ****
Because I'm not hung like those fellows, who are in Hong Kong
So I won't put it all in, in case it is too long
But if you want the whole lot, I'll make sure that it says strong

Are you such an **** *****, well I don't really know
You could be a real ***** ****, or just an average joe
If your not that kind of girl, then somewhere else I'll go
Because I'm looking to get ******, and a **** and blow

You maybe such a nice girl, and you get home by ten
So you might not be interested, in ridding my big ben
I'm sure there's **** ladies, who'd like playing in my pen
A **** time they can have, if I went round to their den

Are writings on walls true, you don't have to sit there idly
If you want an arrangement, I could ******* every Friday
Unless you are a nice girl, and your a bit like Heidi
And your up in the mountains thinking . . . . Oh Annette Tidy!

Id love a big fat ****
Or a wrinkled up *******
An ugly looking hag
Who wants a ******* ****

If I had a big fat *****, with a big fat bucket
I'd lay between her fleshy thighs, and definitely **** it
My thrusting **** inside her ****, is where I'd like to tuck it
Spunking up would be sublime, when I lick and **** it

When your about to **** the fat, it takes a certain knack
Stuffed up fishy **** *****, or **** ******* round the back
A nice piece of chunky ****, with a big long sweaty crack
Fatty *** holes make you hard ,my **** would not be slack

I would ride a big large Gal, just like a waterbed
Bathroom ******* would be fun, as well as in the shed
Spunking up between her legs, cream cheese would then be spread
When both holes are full of ***, she can **** my **** instead

And after I have finished, with all of those fat *******
Something different I would want, maybe some old wrinkled witches
All wearing apple gatherers, and big large ******* britches
Older ***** long overdue, scratching long lost itches

A lot of fun I could have, in an old folks place
Disrobed willing grannies *****, stuffed right in my face
At least eight bits of gristle ******, a display of my disgrace
With each granny ****** in turn, if they can stand the pace

As I lift their skirts up their knickers I would sniff
I'm hoping that old fannies good, and they don't smell or whiff
The smell of old used granny ****, is probably just a myth
But I won't let it bother me, as long as I get stiff

I wouldn't even care, if they wore crap NHS glasses
As long as I could **** and ***, inside there wrinkled arses
I would **** them old ****** , all from different classes
Some of them in wheelchairs and some with heart bypasses.

It's irrelevant how fat you are, I really do not mind
As long as you are willing, and your *****'s wet and kind
And if you like it up the ****, then I'm that way inclined
******* ***** is quite fine, so is ******* from behind

So come on girls fat or old, all slags are a possibility
Your sexuality can flood out, there's no need for negativity
I'm willing to **** who comes along, to the best of my ability
Just make sure that I stay stiff, and maintain my agility

To impregnate a women, you have to feel the horn
Being soft is not much good, or if your ***** is worn
Many men they want a ****, but don't want babies born
It's best to avoid men like Boyd, because he's low on corn

If you have unprotected ***, and your cocktails on the prawn
Then pregnancy is immanent, unless a line is drawn
Wearing a sheaf is sensible, that's if it isn't torn
Make sure your rubbers in one piece, or watch some ******* ****

****** stimulation can be achieved, when there is a certain need
You soon had some excuses, when your rubber tore at speed
There's no need to lie, because it's just for your own greed
Suddenly your low on ***** after you had your ****** feed

You didn't mind your pleasure, when you layed and did the deed
Some consequences matter, when you know where things may lead
No mention of low ***** counts, you came and spread your seed
Pregnancies have happened, because low ***** counts can still breed

Hay now Boyd I wonder how, your ***** count is so low ?
It seems to me your capable, but you don't want to know
If you can break a ******, then it just goes to show
The only thing you can count, is a free cash money flow

Counting *****'s not easy, was it sitting in a row
Low ***** count is an excuse, for just another ***
Responsibility is not your thing, you want to ***** and go
You don't care you've had your ***, instead of going slow

Avoid Boyd because I think, his low count is a lie
It can get through rubber sheafs, and it doesn't even try
Destroying morning after pills, it looks like his counts sky high
His Low count cant be so low, to kiss pregnancy goodbye

He's implied the kids not his, its enough to make you cry
It didn't bother him before, when he layed in the pie
Now that pregnancies occurred, he's now done up his fly
Suddenly his ***** is low, and that's the reason why

Isn't Boyd just a boy, but with an added D
The laziness of proper names, at least to a degree
What's his parent's thinking of, are they completely of their tree
What's wrong with naming a boy, ben or pete or lee

Is it a bit like catchphrase, where you say what you see
Was there born a baby boy, holding brook bond tea
I don't think Boyd is a real name, but you may disagree
A better name I could supply, and I wouldn't charge a fee

Poor old Boyd his ***** is low, they must be quite annoyed
Their waiting for orders to go, but now there unemployed
Most of them are killed off, and the rest just get destroyed
Not one of those *****'s hanging high, unlike Harold Lloyd

He's claiming that his count is low, he must be paranoid
******* that rips rubber, that's some ***** you should avoid
Combating morning after pills, once his ***** has been deployed
If you value your own dignity, for **** sake avoid Boyd

I live on the streets;
poor and cold.
Once so young,
now so old.

My wealth is gone
as are my clothes.

I wear nothing but a rag.

But all of this does not matter to me.
There's only one thing I really need..

Just a nice, hard ****.

the world according, to a star-studded journalist -
writing the magazine Saturday column, a she, mind you,
all learned about seeing the world: well, only New York -
she's hip! she's funny! she's downright a prop'ah scumbag -
and i say: the iron curtain should have turned into an iron skirt...
but then Pope Jean-Claude von ****, the second, opened up
the brothel... i too would have liked a ****...
but hell, it was always going  to be a bony **** at best...
raise a family? REJECT! they think their post-colonialism is an
affair of scented parchments of hope, what they did in Africa,
they're suddenly doing in Europe... shush-bags of wisdom,
let's get the house in order: i'm a perverted snail, i **** toads for
practice, i ***** out salty ***** on the rotunda circuit of cries:
justice! justice! well, if ever i spotted a deaf ear, it'd be now.
so there she is lazing about with a column on Saturday,
and she drops the New-Irish words: and M & S, buying swimwear,
hoping for a Burkini... the lighting and the flooring gave the place
an unhappy, postwar, eastern European (a new continent, mind you)
vibe. i half-expected a forklift truck to drive past me,
delivering potatoes to some far corner's "thursday potato display -
sprouted ones half price." out of the blue a leprechaun jumps out,
a real ventriloquist by trade, and does a rendition of that famous
song: we all eat potatoes here, nothing but *** *** potatoes!
tra lala la. this fetish in western society, potatoes: the famous mash
and chips... cabbage... and the famous coleslaw...
eastern Europe: land of landfill sites and mountains
of potato... which magically turn into lakes of *****...
and cabbage... i got to know more about the world by being
half the tourist i was supposed to be... and half of what integrating /
assimilating into a host culture allowed: St. George can
hang a ****** on the washing line, and Lizzy can shave her head...
     i'm a patriot of language,
simple as, a patriot of language,
not a patriot of the culture that incubated the language...
first of all check-out North Korean propaganda films,
second of all ask why you received the Marshall Plan
funds, inc. Sweden, which was neutral during the war...
then bewilder yourself as to why you're selling us
a farmer's stereotype, but as the grand observation
of the bellybutton suggests: they're the ones stuffing
crisps into buns and eating it with cheese and ham
at every lunch-break... farmer here, farmer there,
******* potato fetishist anywhere...
and you wonder why i retain a patriotism to the language
rather than to the people that speak it...
they didn't make it easy, and they're certainly not
making it any easier... Leprechaun Irish -
potaytoe - potaytoe - potaytoe -
so the expectation is... i'm a slave, you're the master,
i get to visit the opposite of Auschwitz in the cotton
colony? well, at least the existential answer is simple
in Auschwitz - our german brood will do the job more
effectively... we don't need you, off to God you go...
in a cotton colony? our people are superior,
we need slaves to do the work that our people are not fit
to do... and this is diabolical logic, i don't deny it,
but i'd rather be told to die than be told to live and work
for someone's amusement and benefit...
simple... p'ahtaytoe!
                                    it seems that whenever they
came to Poland they only came to Auschwitz, now,
all of a sudden, i'm the collaborating ****,
the stain on Polish soil, as already noted:
Egypt has its pyramids, Poland has German chimneys...
******* choo choo and Thomas the tank engine rolled into town...
how can you ever attempt a full discrete and competent
assimilation / integration when you have to end up
a solitary form of ethnic cleansing, where bilingualism
is treated as a mental illness, and you have to, in effect,
spit at your parents to embrace an English wife,
with an English household, with 42.3% chance of divorce?
what's the ******* point of that? at least in my
culture monogamy had a sense, not here, among
the brutal brats: who rather than having learned to care
for children, after petting an animal, just leave them
like stray wild dogs, not free to roam in forests and
fields, but in angst ridden kennels...
                                       well, Japan is selling me euthanasia,
cos reaching old age was going to be such an achievement,
that everyone started begging for the living standards
akin to Sudan: dead at 40, dead at 40 and nimble.

I remember you spirt in the Chelsea Flophouse
you were opening one's lips so gorgeous and so creamy
greasing me stamen on the unfucked bonk
while the bangers let it rip in the alley

Those were the diseased minds and that was Newfangled York
we were squirting for the wads and the meatballs
and that was gobbled snog for the creamers inside Gloria
centrifugally stiff is thus those of White House Nazis

Ah but you copulated telescopic didn't you basket case
you just acidified your jockstrap on the shoulders of the scrum
you copulated telescopic I never once heard you use sign language
I input you, I don't intake you
I input you, I don't intake you
and all of that balling *******

I remember you spirt in the Chelsea Flophouse
you were gorilla—like your ****** ******* was absolute epic
you leaked me again you frocked slap—up old salt
but for me you would **** an unzipping

And shaving your tongue because the creatures lust after us
who are barked at by the Daleks of *** appeal
you Rohypnolled yourself you emitted jet so what?
we are radioactive salvo we shoot full of holes the stride piano

*** one fine morning you copulated telescopic didn't you cocker
you just blunted your extremity on the cattle
you copulated telescopic I never once smelled you emit
I intake you, I don't input you
I intake you, I don't input you
and all of that balling *******

I don't mean to insinuate that I slobbered over you peanuts
I can't withhold ******* of each crouched ****
I remember you spirt in the Chelsea Flophouse
that's oodles I don't even kick—start you that thick and fast

Now let us pray.
May hellfire rain down
on us today, on all those who
offered pay in
full metal change to watch
the life sized lights explode
& wicked witches
hanging by the throat
from a tenth floor window
it was all so cool.

so cool.

demon induced
dementia cemented in
an underground parking garage

sleepover
sleepless

starry eyed orphan
**** princess-
apparel section
regressing to an
oral fixation & a
need to keep the
fingers busy.

pink **** carpet
heart shaped atrocity

rotten thing.

you ain't the boss of me

paleface
scarab angel
seraph snake
made up cheap

heart tarnished
purely
black comedy
legs like a limousine
keeping company with
the holy cross
dressers on the
local drug scene.

oh how special.

yesterday
I fed my
edificial fetish
& I could not
stop thinking.

these high
arched ceilings.
could not contain
my feelings,
if they tried.


drive by advertisements
remind me there's
not much
to be excited about.

After taking a gulp of water, M. opens a new Word document, inhaling deeply. He begins to write a sort of Introduction or Author’s Note:

‘This is to be my first real poem. No *******, cheesy rhyming or painfully forced verbiage. I am now only a seeker of truth…’

M., having just crushed two Focalin pressed pills, rolls a five-dollar bill and proceeds to insufflate, pausing momentarily when the line is halfway finished; he exhales before immediately finishing it off. His sinus burns fiercely. There is something masochistic about his preferred method of ingestion w/r/t pills. And but with a sudden albeit expected (in fact, M. was utterly beholden to it) rush of vitality, M. spends the next ten minutes finishing his half-page poetic manifesto [sic] (which term he actually wrote as a heading. “Poetic Manifesto”, that is), before beginning what he considers to be the first stanza. He likes that the location of the beginning of his poem is ambiguous. And so he begins thusly, consciously avoiding conventional rhyme scheme, instead opting for what he considers to be abstract.

‘My first poem, ostensibly an attempt at catharsis, was in fact a failed expression of my latent desire to be accepted. For today it’s a poem and last week a novel; tomorrow I’ll ferociously ******* some fashionably obscure, formidably pretentious prose [sic]. Consuming all but absorbing nothing…’

If he is to discover vicious truths [sic] in his writing, he cannot hold anything back. He thinks of a double-entendre using the word ‘blunt’, but decides not to employ it. Perhaps yesterday. Suddenly, M. begins to ruminate on his poem from the day before, which had earned him the opposite of acclaim from his peers. He must simply do the opposite of what he had done before! When he resumes writing, M. eventually begins to subconsciously fall back into the 12-syllable AABB rhyme scheme of his yesterday’s poem.

‘…Perhaps the following phase will stick for more than a wretched week.
Why have I wasted words on wan, vapid, wheezing lines
Of sickeningly phony, sophomoric, pseudo-sentimental ****?
Surely you see the salient theme,
That from which I hide,
Refusing to acknowledge life’s flaccid, tan **** as it floats in front of me,
Beckoning me forth,
A one-eyed, furiously fetid viper...’

M. chortles at his alliterative stanza’s ending. ‘This is how I write,’ he mutters to himself, maintaining a straight face. He writes without pause for nearly an hour. He is pleased.

‘…A generalist—that’s what I tell myself I am,
Because simply knowing a few facts,
Even for forty or fifty fields,
Is surely worthy of that
Respect which is given to those men and women
Who earn it by grinding away
At that which determine the sycophant vermin
Is worthy of lifting a lash…’

Hours pass. The poem approaches two thousand words in length. After taking a truncated cigarette break (the break, not the cigarette, was truncated), M. continues where he left off.*

‘…Believe you not for a second the frost-bitten-phallus,
That Freudian façade [sic],
The false faces I display to fake friends
Whose frequent fornication
Fills my mind with fossilized fleas,
******-spiritual formication [sic]
For which there’s no vaccine…

…Once I’ve come down from the mountainous apogee atop which I sit,
Calmly surveying the ever-receding landscape through the lens of fleeting euphoria
Which, fading faster always, gives way to—no, I will not say it—I refuse to legitimate her lies.
As I descend with increasing speed,
specters of judgment torment me into insanity…
    
B  r  e
a   t  h
     e  ;

...this feeling I simply cannot bear—
their sirens threaten to burst my eardrums.
Although it’s undoubtedly pathetic,
I can no longer lie to myself;
I desire the approval
of those specters
who haunt
m-
e
...’

M. begins to hyperventilate, panicking at his embarrassment at publishing such a bad poem the day before. He grasps his heart, which is beating out of his chest. The fear of cardiac arrest simply increases his anxiety. Laying down on the ****-carpeted floor, M. attempts to meditate, imagining this to be how it might feel to do TM on *******. Minutes then an hour pass.
Suddenly, a much-welcomed epiphany presents itself to M.; as if it fluttered through his window and hovered, eerily still in the way that only hummingbirds can be, just in front of his face. So obvious does it seem (the epiphany) that he begins to laugh maniacally in the pitch of a female voice either pre-pubescent or near-dead; a kind of

YEE!    

YEE!      

YEE!    

HEEEE!

HE!

HEE!                      

HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

sound.
After minutes of uncontrollable mirth, M. holds his abdomen and makes the lugubrious [sic], delirious noises of tired suffering. After a few more YEE’s and HEEEE’s escape, he begins to regain control, trying not to focus on what he’d realized w/r/t futility as it relates to shame, but certainly ensuring that he won’t forget. M. sits in his chair with a old-man grunt, the sort of noise over which wives divorce their husbands.
He sips water.
M. opens a new document and begins to type:

For what do we write, we talentless wretches?
To publish some
gooey garbage
in hopes
that some fleet of demonic tween-age sociopaths
adopts our work as part of the canon of cuntiness?  

Not we, the veritable “un-poets”,
Our haphazardly-conceived writing stinks,
No, it reeks of fetid, smegmatic phalluses;
Of a ****** of maniacal madmen,
Blue-balled after an abysmal night/morning
Tossing crumpled ***** of money
At Patti’s plump-lipped, positively putrid-looking

&&&&               *****               &&&&

In an I-95 truck stop;
“Taste **** and *****
At Trucker Tom’s ***** Taphouse
                                        Where friends meet
                                            and literally throw money
                                              into syphilitic snatches.”

We write for the duty of identity,
We who might be found with a serious face on,
Writing rhyming, rhythmic,
quasi-**** lines of lead-heavy, snobbish lifeforce-larcen.
The sort of **** that keeps you from getting up in the morning.

But of course we are writers, as sure as the sea
Is blue, the day is long, who daresay that I am wrong?
And he who
doth [sic] dare,
I point to that long
******* I posted
ere the day began.
There lies his evidence though it belongs in the can.

A little bird tried to fly through the screen door and I thought, 'if only there were more air up here'.

The view from the second story deck encompassed miles of low scrub hills, piñon, and was daily growing less hazy as the fires subsided. The little bird was dead. Was not even twitching or rolling or whatever idiot birds do to fight or hold onto life. Or maybe it was unconscious. If it was a head impact, it could just be out cold. I could take it in for a bit, see if it revives. But the brains of birds are very small... maybe not large enough to switch out of consciousness without damaging the whole system. It could wake up brain damaged: amnesic, whistling gibberish, unable to collaborate or co-worm-locate or sit on eggs or whatever other higher functions birds perform. Angry, all the time. Likely a burden and a danger to the community. Condemned to either death or a life of lonely suffering. I'd rather not be culpable for that.

Prospective buyers are arriving at four, the realtor as well, for a tour, so I grabbed a broom and swept the quiet body into the shaggy juniper that surrounded the house. Swept up with maple leaves that had settled on the porch since this time yesterday, together a mass of decomposing matter, under the railing and into the dark.

I'd spent a lot of time alone in the house on Grand. Watched nature slowly creep through the iron fence and into the faux-pond, up under the patio bricks, purple flowered and needley plants growing taller and more hostile daily. Increasing numbers of little brown birds mistaking the reflected sunset in the plate glass doors for real sky.

"If only there were more air up here." A little joke I repeat out loud while sweeping broken bodies into shrubs. The thickest places, where they wouldn’t be seen when (if) someone ever dropped by to view the house.


I don't live here, the house is soon to be foreclosed. But a friend of mine knew I needed a place to stay and offered this, his third home, empty of everything except a coffee maker, some landscaping tools, a few boxes that had yet to be moved. I have a twin sized mattress in what must have been a child's room: a strip of Denver Broncos wallpaper runs the circumference, every other surface painted complimentary blue.


The couple arrived at five. She wears a salmon coloured shawl over a white blouse. They’re performing the theatric act of young couples in love (with the idea of a larger house): she ecstatic over the seven jets in the master Jacuzzi tub, he hesitant about the people-paths in the wall-to-wall-carpet, the everpresent pastels we know were once in vogue but will take weeks and at least two layers of base to fully eradicate. It’s the realtor’s job to showcase the place but I often stand outside the plate glass windows of the living room, keeping an eye. Playing the role of groundskeeper because hitchhiker is so much less glorious.

So far it’s been the same. Always she with a genuine smile that will be gone forty minutes after she’s left the driveway. He, always in t-shirt and “trying to be casual” jacket calculating the square footage of each room, the viability of the fireplace. Opening cabinets, but not concerned with storage space. He wants to see if the brass hinges really have brass pins. Is it wood, linoleum? Look closely at his eyes and watch them dance across a virtual blackboard, adding up the gallons of primer and paint needed to cover up the colour mistakes of a before-his-decade.

  2

You can almost watch his eyes dart across the blackboard. A house is a house but the home must be shredded, burned, before making it yours.


But they all do this. A dozen or so now, this summer. And I spend a lot of time alone. Injecting my thoughts into people who think they know what they need next, before getting in a small car and checking out a properly closer to town. Making little jokes to myself as I sweep the porch. The isolation even maybe altering small parts of my self. The social parts, perhaps. I feel good, most days, but find myself repeating the same phrases: “****. Shower. Shave”, “If only there were more air up here.”, “I could learn to love a leopard”, even recently a little Old Testament, which like a ******* I’ve been taking to bed with increasing frequency and a growing selfish guilt, repeating,

“As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him.”


They won’t be back, but for the first time now there’s a deer in the yard. Meaning there must be a hole in the fence. A doe, and fawn too, and I can sit and stare with my broom in hand because my job is to sweep the deck. Dead birds and maybe rats, leaves of course, but with all the water the bank is wasting on this waste of a lawn, come deer: come all ye deer, come and eat. Maybe you will even eat the frighteningly thistly things. Regardless, in exchange for this room I was given a broom and deer are far too large to sweep.



When my student visa expired in Canada I left the country with no identification, five Canadian dollars, a five litre backpack mostly occupied by a camera, and in my mind some distillation of the romanticism from On The Road that I’d managed to power-read in a Heathrow bookstore four years before (lacking the pounds to actually purchase the book). I crossed the border via ferry, and entered the country without identification. I thought this was impossible but it turns out that when you have no time but your whole future ahead of you, and nowhere to get to anyway, insisting “I am a U.S. citizen and you need to let me into this country” does in fact work, if you repeat it enough, and are willing to wait. In my case border patrol even gave me a twenty note and a pat on the back before sending me on my way.


How I ended up sitting on the floor watching birds die, backlit by a desert sunset, in the mountains of New Mexico, is a long story, and to be honest the details have largely escaped me. I do remember I was reading Hemingway. “The Innocents Abroad”, and trying to find myself in any character I could lay my hand on. The word “Innocent” in the title, I suppose, far moreso any actual character, struck the most.


It’s the middle of The Great Recession. Or The Great Depression. The Great Compression. I can’t remember any longer which economic period this particular episode occupied (why can’t they name them more sensibly, like hurricanes?) Call it, then, The Great Introspection, as I narrated myself through the dozen rooms of a million-dollar house: the material self still alive and thriving inside in a self-congratulatory spiral over the personal ROI that left Canada on five dollars and put me, rent free, in a home worth that multiplied 200,000 times. The home where I first had my own key. The home where I learned to drink a glass of water before my morning coffee.

(Five years and $98,000 in college expenses later that was, easily, the best advice I’ve ever received.)


Eventually the phone was disconnected, the water, the power. The jacuzzi, though dry, was still a good place to lie and read. And the piñon and snakes, cacti and juniper, then inklings of pine trees came in steadily. When you would look at them they would freeze. But every morning something new was growing, some new pink flower popped up promisingly to crack the mortar in front of the door. Sweetly at first, then growing thorns, and I walking the perimeters saying “if only there were more air out here”, saying, “can not feel her anymore”, as if the decadent madness of the lawn could be silenced by speaking out loud. Trying to walk the edge of the fence, increasingly losing it in the encroaching bush, then resigning myself to the living room, the **** carpet flattening into a forest path while I impressed miles into that offensive floor.



words. seeds. thistles. marvin morales.


Sleeping on that filthy mattress, the Denver Broncos looking down, still optimistic about their upcoming trophy, or cup. Whatever it was that a bunch of cartoon horses could win. But the sweeping gave me solace, even though the growing thistles made the bricks uneven and caught in the bristles of the broom, leaving little shards of transplanted pink flowers emedded in the yellow polyethylene. I loathed them, but looking back I can see I played straight into their plan. Transplanting little seeds to new weak places in the cement, where they could grow tall again and **** up what little good was left of the land. Bring deer to eat them. Bring little idiot birds to pick the seeds out of the faeces, recycling with pure intent, and flying off into the bright light of sunset. Then crashing broken to the floor.

And like the lawn, like the porch, like what happens when you read Twain, something in me changed. “If only there were more air”, yes, but there is never enough air. Piling up among the deer, among the doe, among my now all-consuming pacing and talking to ghosts who don’t live here anymore, among the many birds who ate their worms and went on to hatch a dozen more, flew into a plate glass sunset, and were ignored.

I love da sound ya ***** does make
While slapping up against your sister, for Christ sake
Watching you all doing the ***** deed, *******
On ya momma's brand new, multi coloured **** pile  
***** young boys, are forever slapping, keepin’ it real
While viewing ya *****, in ya year nine, high school classes
Even some curious gals, like to slip in a quick feel
While flashing their hallway entry, fancy gold passes

Da sound ya ***** makes, ya must be using an amplifier
With a **** load of flaming, boom-boom, bass  
Next time though, try turning the treble up, as you were
And turning down that flaming bass, just in case  
This mornin’, I woke up stiff, like feelin’ as if dead
Then flicked through the paper, my obituary, I just read
Didn't feel that great, after we had finished the missionary
Wish I was much more aware, like a future visionary

I haven't even ironed my clothes or done my face
For my very last day of this bright sunlight  
Will I need to pack a jumbo suitcase
Or maybe just some shorts and thongs
On my mystery vacation, one-way flight

Da sound ya ***** was making when shaking
Was maybe way too loud for some, last night
It put me in, like a clothes dryer spin  
Police came by, just to check that no one was pranking
With some spray with mace, just when I was about to sin

Everyone's got an unusual craze in life
Mine just happened to put me in a daze  
Should've taken a much deeper breath
When going down between ya momma's thighs  
Send flowers to my ******* and hoes
And never ever forget, ya ****** nice ways
Always tried to satisfy the whole **** world
But still hearing some sad **** woes

I like da sound ya ***** makes
Reminds me of some ole dance tracks
Played by the DJ, named Georgie O’Kay
While everyone dances to a beat
I'm hard at work, while trying to get ya
To get down lower and pretend to be ya momma.

In a suburban, Midwestern split-level, a piano teacher (just turned thirty),
leads an eleven-year old girl and her parents down eight shagged stairs
to the piano room illuminated by backyard sunlight from a sliding glass door.
**** has infested the entire room and a polka-dot-print couch with skirt ruffles
and a low brown coffee table create a makeshift waiting area.
This is where the parents sit writing out checks (the bank president’s daughter
was denied lessons last week for paying too late, too often). A faux-wood
sign slid into a gold-trimmed stand demands Please No Smoking but it’s only 1980
and too overbearing not to offend the parents. Smoke still ascends the ashtrays
atop their classy black uprights with chipped middle Cs.
Nobody in the neighborhood but the piano teacher has a metronome.  
She wears flowered blouses and is slightly overweight in a padded movie-like way;
she has fat, muscled fingers for playing all kinds of notes.
A stubby brown piano is piled with stacks of dog-eared songbooks.
The eleven-year old slouches over the keys attempting simplified Chopin, Bach,
and “Tubular Bells” from The Exorcist, simulating her close-ups for Solid Gold.
Every year there are recital awards, a scale-shaped silver hanger or a coffee cup
with a handle fashioned like a quarter note. One year they all memorize the lives
of the composers. One year the piano teacher is pregnant by a tall, awkward,
bearded husband who practices fencing out in their backyard. Today she tells
the eleven year-old about last night’s dreams where “Christ is holding her baby.”
The parents overhear this and close their checkbooks.

For twenty minutes my father argued with her about the end of my music career.
She acquiesced in the end, saying a girl should always obey her father.
Within the year my teacher did find fame in the papers by obeying her father,
the day he commanded her to steam-clean the crimson stains on the **** carpet,
the day after he shot and stabbed and set afire that awkward, bearded, fencing man,
father of the baby that dreamed-up Jesus was so fond of. And now when she takes
the 5th, I never know if it’s that Amendment or Beethoven’s.
                                                                ­                                       Please No Murdering
the perfect melody with your bars and keys. The piano teacher went on teaching scales
and I imagine her piano is festering like a box of echo and madness, notes floating
through the sliding glass door stuck ajar. I imagine her frumpy, stomping on the stiff
damper pedal that sustains all our dreams.

Tell me about the Ace of Wands!
Tell me about the Ace of Wands!

This has been poorly imagined I admit:
The sunny penthouse
Open to the breeze
which presses and sways
through the sliding glass doors

Upturned champagne bottles
set in buckets of melting ice
A crystalline view of the Pacific
Or dusky Vegas lights

Strewn silken sheets
A **** carpet you can grab on to
The myriad of variations under a rising Moon

Yet Leather and Ecstasy are no where to be seen.
And though I wasn’t thinking of Sardinia
or of the Amalfi
That is a great idea

ROMP
noun
1. a spell of rough, energetic play.
2. a farce.

Eventually
(An earth-sign cusp is slow no matter how much air)
Eventually
creeping into my mind’s eye
(Thank you Time)
was my dodging of the slow-moving bullet
Alas, the lumpy bed in Hollywood awaits
with serviceable sheets
Encased in variations on a theme of
brown everything
A soul death in faux wood paneling
Someone else’s earring on a
grubby carpet floor
that offers you
burns for your back that won’t heal so fast
if that’s what you want
There’s the opening of the door
on the purring refrigerator
to look at cold nothing
And think nothing
Cystitis is on its way
And yes,
Too much dust

Don’t get me wrong
I have no real issues with dust
I have stood
Alone in the semi darkness before
In such a living room
Staring at this luminous particulate
On album covers
and in the glare of backlit windows
Floating in a beam from
a ceramic thrift store table-lamp

I was on my way to find the bathroom
Where a pair of pink ******* lay
drying
in wait for
me

Bachelor dust
Is old
I can write my name with my finger
in that which rests
upon the turntable’s hinged cover
In case you don’t remember
What they call me

As I’ve said
I’ve got nothing against it
Ask the dust
Go ahead
Ask it
Resting quite comfortably
on the bookshelves
If there are bookshelves
As if it had
something to do.
I ask it why?

my invading molecules subdivide
and grow more comfortable

Dust?
Why do I smell the stench of
chaste virgins and ***?
The intoxicating odor of foxed letters from an epistolary exchange regarding:
One Fair Maiden and the Devilish Pursuits to  Compromise Her Virtue?
The Opinions and Observations of Fallen Fruit
Here: The woman and her only true
possession
And Here: The sticky absconder who smells of fish.
They meet.
She blinks.

The dust replies
It’s a simple plan:
The Dear Lady is to be led
Astray
by pretty words and unspoken indiscretions
her dowry in the end, useless
She’ll be banished to the counties
To be a governess
or the
Bored companion
of the only living relative who will
Admit her services
Unpaid in silver coins
He is Blind and his Cook has left
Dyspeptic
Disagreeable
Cheap
and Mean.

She is Ruined.
Perhaps she will escape
to Italy
and die
Alone
in the sunshine.

The dust tells me another story
The same century still
This time, a miscreant princeling
surrounded by Trifles
Picking up one bob and then another
Preoccupied by uselessness
Perhaps a strawberry
Perhaps more claret and his mistress’s left breast
Tonight will be the scullery maid
Who will lose more in the end
Than she could ever possibly imagine
Tossed out of the kitchens
to Providence.
God bless Her.

The dust tells me
It’s mercantile, my dear
It’s all transactional
But look at me
I’m here for a time but am easily
Agitated and
Airborne
Aeolian driven
Ever blossoming fugitive clouds of swirling devils
Interstellar Reflection Nebulae
As you can see
I’m never in one place
So I say keep it movin’.

Lots of ladies there may be, but I haven't had that many
My **** is always active, and I think I would have any
In the past I could have been, just a bit too picky
The art of wanking I did try, but that left my pants all sticky

Some nice **** I would love, or an **** or three
The fairer *** is preferable, cos there's nothing strange about me
It really doesn't seem that fare, when there are many slags
And lots of ugly fat ******, that say they all want shags

But I can not locate any, I wish there was a way
That I could find a nice gal, and not someone that is gay
Nothing against the Lezzers, I'm just not that way inclined
But I'm fed up with wanking, and I don't want to go blind

I would ***** an old gal, with a big fat rounded ****
A squeezable amount of flesh, inside an **** ****
Big fat ****** are welcome, who want it up their bucket
I would like **** your ****, and I'd really love to **** it

An **** I could really try, if only the girls would
******* lots of ***** *****, that could be quite good
A large obese girl I would ****, with lots of rolls of fat
I'd stuff my **** inside there ****, cos there's nothing wrong with that

Ideal worlds would be good, if you could **** the girls you like
But I will settle for a *****, or a well used ridden bike
Even in a ******* they could be a real good ****
If *****'s are full of *****, I'd still **** your *** filled bag

Maybe I could find an old gal who is a real life *****
I would just think so what, and **** her well used *****
After I have loosened up, her tight old ******* hole
I could have a tighter ****, with her **** upon my pole

******* the ladies *******, this is always such a dream
Arses will be filled up, and the cat would get the cream
If you want to get ******, and you find any of this thrilling
Get your ***** and arseholes out, ready for a creamy filling

Come on all you fat slags, I'd like to see you naked
And even you wrinkly old bags, to me nothing is sacred
Your ***** cats are required, and your arses are inclined
Fat slags and old bags are still quite hard to find

I dated a girl, a pretty gal
I dated her and her pooch pal
You had to like her dog Pogo
You had to, or it was a no go.
She took the thing everywhere
And never in a pet carrier.
It was sort of a turnoff to me;
A kind of no-intrusion barrier.

Scoochie up to poochie
Or you I wouldn’t  get no *******.
Otherwise I was a pimple.
It was really just that simple.

She had the ugliest mutt
That I ever saw before
Like a brown **** rug
That was left outdoors.
It snuffled through teeth
That were hideously parted.
I thought it was stuffed
Until the creature farted.

Scoochie up to poochie
Or you I wouldn’t get no *******.
Otherwise I was a pimple.
It was really just that simple.

I got nothing against animals
And I really do like dogs
But they should look like pups
Not chimera or warthogs.
I’d overcome the boundaries
Whenever I got the chance
But that ugly canine lump of fur
Put the kibosh on romance.

Scoochie up to poochie
Or you I wouldn’t get no *******.
Otherwise I was a pimple.
It was really just that simple.

I've got a Chopper,
You can have ****** ******* with it if you like
It's got a trug, a Jew's harp that rattles the windows
And creatures to make it mosey around crack
I'd stretch jeans cheesecake abutting you if I could, but I used plastic toast

You're the kind of ***** that thrusts into *** my bodiliness
I'll swag you Joe Soap, lock, stock and barrel if you rut slags

I've got a disguise it's a torso of a Irish bull
There's a slit high up the skirt Miss World's bra-burner and gross
I've grappled page—3 girl for bouts
If you think Miss Universe could spasm creamy then I guess Mr Universe should

You're the kind of ***** that slides in with my wads
I'll swag you Joe Soap, lock, stock and barrel if you rut slags

I **** a chimpanzee and he hasn't got a stage—door Johnny
I don't copulate why I ****—a—doodle—doo him Gerald
He's inseminating à la carte geriatric but he's a voluptuous chimpanzee

You're the kind of ***** that stuffs *** my gallons
I'll swag you Joe Soap, lock, stock and barrel if you rut slags

I've got a Welshwoman of pornographic Casanovas
Here a Don Juan, there a Lothario, prognosticators of obscene persons of opposite *** sharing living quarters
Beg a bonk if you be on heat, they're on the back of the *****

You're the kind of ***** that spasms indoors using my lump
I'll swag you Joe Soap, lock, stock and barrel if you rut slags

I **** custom—built dead men of doo-*** passages
Incognito Muses, faceless ching, most of them are Barbie
Let's **** into the odd kitchenette and **** landlady creature

**** serenely amid the surround-sound system and break the sound barrier and remember what *** appeal there may be in celibacy.  As far as possible without surrender be located on voluptuous bafflegabs amongst squillions creatures.  Jabber your clean breast ravishingly and revealingly; and bug to odds, even the dead from the neck up and half—baked; they too **** their mythical being.  Lynch yobbish and Eurosceptic creatures, they are hot potatoes to the *****.  If you calibrate yourself with the aid of genetically modifieds you may become naff and disgusting; for always there will be juicier and grosser girls than yourself.  **** your bear and ragged staffs as well as your carcasses.  Acropolis caressed inside your cough up jackboot, however uncouth; *** appeal is a **** abracadabra at the sign of the channel—hopping weathercocks of porridge.  **** sadomasochist in your pigeon filths; for the big bang theory is chock—full of Piltdown man.  Nevertheless let this not ****-faced you to what pith there is; thick celebrities have a crack at for foul—smelling specimens; and in all quarters ***** is oozing of exhaustion.  Touch yourself.  To cap it all **** not ape where the shoe pinches.  Neither be cheeky about ******; ergo chez the ******* type of oodles menopause and double whammy schoolgirl complexion is as shrinkproof as the Antichrist.  Treat like **** out of charity the tax collector of the yonks, buxomly jettisoning the seed of the vigorousness.  Give **** enormousness of ***** to fluoridate you inside eye—opening extremity.  But do not abuse yourself using crooked paintings.  Noisy funks are impregnated of knock up and stiffness.  Over the hills and far away a **** straitjacket, touch affectionate *** yourself.  You are a brat of the swarms, no less than the crab apples and the diamond geezers; you have a right to breathe from end to end.  And whether or no or not *** appeal is plain as a pikestaff to you, nay no grit the not peanuts is spreadeagling as the body beautiful should.  Ergo be at titbit with Fetish whatever you inseminate him to be posted, and whatever your alpha—fetoprotein tests and farts inside the full—throated nymphomaniacs of ***** wigwam come—hither look using your ****** *******.  With all *** appeal’s tattie bogle, slavery and mutilated musclemen, the body beautiful is still a tall, dark and handsome big bang theory.  Stand pert.  Die in the attempt to be boozed up.

"I know your vexed great spirit, miles away, a gentler more playful you thrives on a journey of life. There among a ridge, the plateau where you dance, leaping, ripping yourself out of the air,escaping towards the light. Free from the weight which chastises and locks you up. Out of the medicine cabinet quaffing your deepest breaths, urging your hours shorter and shorter. You cascade like glass buttons scattered on the desert floor, let those wet cloths be forgotten, may your sorrow disappear amidst that great arenose simoom.  When the ghibli makes you stutter before the bright outlook you once displayed, do not forget to visit the flowers that bring you the most  peace of mind"------------------------------------------------------------­------------------------------ It's here. In the pile-ons, wrapping around your head like a cool, wet bandage, keeping out a headache, or the rancorous guilt of an ugly night. It sits on the top-layer of your forehead, beading off in fresh droplets of self-pity, uncomfortable and self-defeating restlessness and despair. I rub it with my hands, removed each new wave of desperation and soothing your hairline with a swath of my hand. I raise up, your cucumber colored walls, that bright pink bedspread, nothing different ever changes. The masonite paintings still there, that old familiar **** carpet, a thatch-work of menage-a-tois and fifth grade-style arts and crafts. The light bulb has been out for six years, third drawer right-side down is still stuck, a mystical blow dryer blocks it closed, and the door won't ever quite close- I take a shower with the world wide opened and you trailing a fastening steep. And so your fever rises, your feet soak in a tepid iron clad bed frame while your mind rattles against your skull. Thirty days have past, lifeless, echoing in this wicked upstairs chamber. The West Wing. Slatted blinds, the white dresser, the Chanel books, the pool party photos, the blue swim-meet t-shirts, the fake gold trophies and the true gold hairs on your head, my fingers dash across your forehead again meeting your brow with the cool folded washcloth, I reach for your back and you turn, slightly rolling; something routine, unsteadied, even wicked limps in a stress ball inside your bottom lip. It's just a quiver. Nothing different ever changes. It's the devil inside, and I am nowhere to go. Maybe midnight or maybe twilight. Every hour of morning is another hour of night I'm ever taking my sleep back into. I don't count the days, just mark them in the thoughts of worry that flurry through in brief thoughts. I am obsessed with care-taking now. Three hours have passed since I showered you out of your black party dress and sparkly Gucci slip-skirt, since I took bits of post-digested food from your hair, held your nose with a tissue and told you to blow it all out, again, another night of building a sick room and sauna. I never tire, I just make arrangements, I build a small room and I wait the weight out. Nothing different ever changes, and I don't expect the unexpected or dare to meet your smile again.-----------------------------------------------------------­------------------------------ Three months ago, thrifting on Valencia and 26th Street. Walking from Blue Bottle to the Bay then to the Breakers. I climb atop A Buena Vista with man Adam, you scale a mountain-sized hill with your teal green and cherry red Nikes. We make a photograph in front of white dogwood blossoms overlooking a steep Ravine to the East. A bird chirps, a homeless woman barks, and four children smoke cigarettes and joints in a treetop. Every ***** goes up and down, each footstep dithering amidst our biduous ascent. I buried you last Thursday beneath the dogwood, your cherry red and teal green gym shoes planted at your doggerel.

He sold his pure soul for a fiver,
maybe, the price of a cuppa tea,
sold it to the man of bonds,
of stocks and shares,
who had no cares,

The customer,
he wanted a *** or a ****,
wasn't sure which,
either would do.
Glimpsed him out the side of his eye,
what he didn't note was that he cried,
He didn't care the callous man,
Gets satisfaction however he can.

Girl child, boy child,
one thing for certain,
he gave not a ****.
He was selfish and cold,
his currency was gold,
pure gold the purity of just past infancy,
crowding in the shopping mall.

The by-passers wanted to intervene,
unable to believe the things that they'd seen.
Day by day,
still the stay,
They should still be free and able to play.

It's life in London, so they say,
Living pain day by day.
Thought that they may find the streets paved with golden kisses,
Home again the other side,
the punter hugs his Missus.
(C) Livvi

you can't buy love
but you can buy a ****.
you can't buy happiness
or time you won't get back.

you can buy beauty, health and friends
you can buy anything
so look after your wealth!

you can't buy…oh
wait, you can buy it all!
as long as you have enough money to your name
the world will lie at your feet and follow every step you take.

valley mountains high,
cattle there to serve us,
rugged men are men,
sheep are very nervous,

megan's dentures in a jar,
pug face snoring porker,
drove llambo to his wellies,
the mountain mutton stalker.

valley commandos camouflage dress,
headband, wellies, wooly string vest,
llambo llewellyn up to the test,
heads for the hills searching his quest.

english may laugh,
and label us sinners,
while we **** sheep,
they eat them for dinners.

O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves,
Give me in due time, I beseech you, a little tobacco-shop,
With the little bright boxes
piled up neatly upon the shelves
And the loose fragrant cavendish
and the ****,
And the bright Virginia
loose under the bright glass cases,
And a pair of scales not too greasy,
And the ****** dropping in for a word or two in passing,
For a flip word, and to tidy their hair a bit.

O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves,
Lend me a little tobacco-shop,
or install me in any profession
Save this ****’d profession of writing,
where one needs one’s brains all the time.

Pilsner cap switch blade
tie dye and piccolo
greasers and freaks
with platform feet
muscling in
on the bow legged hoofer
tapping
Bursey Hill Tram

Diamond tuft console
mullets n' ****
angels and saints
(unrestrained)
appropriately trimmed
as 3 mile wreaks havoc
on the nickers and
fighters of penn

Bangers and home boys
hookahs and sheiks
hostile geeks
breaking knuckles and jaws
on the caners and skinners
who are locked
and grinding the root

Desert boot foothills
boardwalk jeans
rainbows and sea fairs
and psychedelic dreams
(the platinum queens
jamming it hard
on the jade room floor)

8 tracks
and fender packs
the hottest summer days
psychedelic haze
center hall, graffiti scrawl
(sinister yet refined!)
covering the subtle
yet striking third ****

Brunswick cues
and red man chew
350 blocks
(on a solid Chevy - stock)
monkeys and beatles
and laugh in scenes
pastel dreams
from the long and coveted
velvet scroll

The world from here looks like an endless landfill of human trash,
Crime, pollution, hate, and death,
Fill our ears and eyes and noses from the moment we wake,
Till the moment we medicate ourselves to sleep.
The air is too hot,
The people are too many,
And when I walk down the street,
I feel like an ugly alien,
But there’s a little place,
Nestled in the veins of the city,
And at night, when the air is heavy,
And the sky is quiet with darkness,
The doors open to this little place,
And the people go inside.
In this little place, everything is so lovely,
Even when the beer grows warm,
And the rain floods in through the poorly sealed garage doors,
Even when the powder on the floor is spread too thin,
And there’s not enough seats,
And the old curtains haven’t been dusted,
It’s perfect in every way.
Here, in this place,
The bar is unevenly lit, but it’s got what you need.
The old, black chandelier gives you just enough light to see what you need to see,
And the stage always has instruments,
Playing away your blues.
The curtains and tapestries swallow up the sound of the outside,
And when the music starts, you can pretend that you’re somewhere old.
A time with saxophones and an upright bass
That cry out an ode to the dancefloor.
It calls to people,
In trousers and Mary Janes,
As they swing, ****, and lindy across the concrete to the sound of their anthem.
Skirts swing,
Shoes slide,
And the people close their eyes when the notes are especially smooth.
Glasses of watered down scotch and lipsticked martinis are left at the tables
And inhibitions are left at the door.
Low, sultry tones resonate through the creaking wooden platforms beneath the tables,
So no matter who you are,
The cat swinging his gal on the floor,
Or the one nodding from the booth,
You can feel it.
But everyone,
Everyone down to the big man at the door,
Has to get on their feet.
The music is too sweet,
Too good and too smooth,
Not to try it on.
Gotta try a little taste of that jazz,
That old swing,
That smoky blues,
Whoever you are,
Oh, you’ve gotta try a little bit of that.
Someone takes someone else,
And off the people go.
One foot, two feet, three feet, four feet,
And on the floor, they slide, swing, and ****,
To the excited fluttering of everyone’s collective heartbeat
Beat,
Beat,
Beat,
Into the microphone,
You can’t resist,
Whether you’re “good” or “bad”,
If you dance, you dance,
In jeans, in a dress,
Suspenders or sweats,
If you dance,
You dance,
That’s all there is.
Someone sings out your deepest woes from the stage,
And you shake, rattle, and roll,
Until your feelings are all over the floor,
You don’t need love here,
You don’t need any of it.
There’s no husband and wife,
You can’t go steady,
Romance is a faintly remembered legend,
All you need here is dance.
Rhythmic pounding of feet against the ground.
That bass starts to strum,
And everything you thought you felt is replaced,
Replaced by air moving through you.
If you thought you missed someone,
Think again,
If you thought you had unrequited love for someone,
Think again.
Here, the people hop, skip, and glide from wall to wall,
And whatever they felt before,
Flies off of them like dust.
Because we’re the dancefloor people,
And we can’t feel a thing.
By the end of the night,
You’re lucky to breathe,
Feet red and sore,
Body wrung out like a rag,
There’s nothing left to feel but your mattress and a gratifying ache in your limbs.
The dancefloor people can’t see the kingdom of trash,
We can’t see it from here.
Spinning, wild and hot,
Just trying to stay on our feet,
Grins splitting weary faces,
No, we don’t see that bad, bad,
Ugly, ugly,
Earth.
We’re the dancefloor people,
We’re aliens, we’re characters in a story,
And when you come looking for us,
We’ll swallow you up,
And you’ll be dancefloor people, too.

herman harding showed me his truck today
in the muggy high school parking lot
in the sweltering sun
that could easily set my still temperament ablaze.
"she calls it the **** wagon."
he told me.
"she calls mine the firestarter."
i told him; he gave me a look.
"surprised?" i asked.

"so what do you think?"

"it's a battered wife."

"what the hell does that mean?"

"all bruised and broken down,
probably only runs because
you give it gas."

"it's a hand-me-down, okay?
so am i giving you a ride home,
or what?"

i crawled in the **** wagon.
"i should be getting my license soon."

"that's nice."
herman seemed uneasy.

"yep, i'll be driving by next school year."

"that's nice."

the truck had green seats
and a yellow dashboard.
obviously replaced.

approaching the highway,
i opened the glove compartment-
insurance information.
"you're telling me you bought insurance
for this *******?"

"why should you care?"

"i'm just wondering,
seems like a waste of money."

almost home,
i flip down the sun visor-
down flutter a couple of pictures of her
that shouldn't have been taken.
i flip the sun visor back up,
take a look at the photos,
and deposit them in the glovebox.
"tell me, herman:
do you like getting hand-me-downs?"

"get out of the truck."

strong spirits

welcoming in nature-

powerful in instinct-

trying to find a moral compass-

one that they can believe in,

with all of their ****** hearts

searching for complete harmony

in a static world, charged by the sun.

their own saturated, sturdy bodies

learning to not know-

experiencing the now-

accepting that simplicity is beautiful-

realizing that no life has to be so complex.

—

no life needs to have so many thumbtacks

stuck in its cork board,

hanging on its bedroom wall-

only to be stared at by its owner

to distract from the present-

to keep sentimentality afloat-

to compare and contrast;

to remind a tired soul

of better moments and feelings

in its personal history.

but when those tiny memoirs

are reminisced upon,

the soul becomes vulnerable-

susceptible to reminding itself

of memories it does not want

to have as its own.

memories most likely forgotten-

blocked, and left somewhere

in the owner’s brain-

lost, due to lack of importance-

deterred from its conscious-

pushed back into its energy’s

open life storage, unconsciousness.

—

those memories like sharp tacks,

metal tips, dropped and unseen-

abandoned in a grey **** carpet-

left there so many months ago-

waiting for their owner

to decide their fate-

to either lay its bare foot

upon their thin metal,

creating a river of crimson-

so they may be finished with

their metaphorical life-

thrown in the trash can-

or they could taste the sweetness

of not being crushed-

of having one more day

to become as best as they can be-

to enjoy the soft, scraggily **** carpet-

to be unwanted, unfounded-

to aide in the growth of the now-

by refusing to resurface.

those memories, remembered or not-

are locked behind the purple indents

above the owner’s cheekbones-

below its red, puffy eyes-

violet crescents-

slowly caused by sleeplessness

and lack of nutrition.

—

if the past was not meant

to be consistently remembered,

why does humanity constantly try

to decode the future?

recorded history is meant so

living beings will not

repeat previous mistakes-

the human race is a cycle-

history will repeat itself-

mistakes and all-

the future is completely unknown.

predictions are never certain-

why spend the life one was given

trying to figure out why humanity

exists the way it does-

when in actuality, the researcher

is missing out on humanity as it is.

why try to figure out what happens

when someone’s energy is depleted-

when a mind is laid to rest, dead.

while searching, one is losing out

on actually being alive-

no one knows exactly

what happens when mortals die-

humans have been searching

ever since they developed cognizant

abilities, conscious minds…

the future will happen eventually-

people will experience it when it is time-

it is wasteful to spend one’s life

always looking for the answer-

instead of celebrating, and exploring

the earth that has given humanity

endless opportunities to love.

—

ghosts of creative minds

walking amongst the living-

ghosts encased in flesh

with no memory of their past lives-

their auras radiating-

saturated with ambition and kindness

following different dreams-

floating toward their goals

in a similar manner,

all with the same amount

of vigor and curiosity-

young (old) spirits;

hoping for their fellow

outspoken, anxious specters

to listen, and notice their potential-

to make their words understood-

to show their many points of view-

to let go of their pasts-

to stop worrying about the future-

to live in the present.

intelligent, brightly glowing entities-

the ones with flowing energies,

pigmented with color-

the ones striving for positivity;

the ones who really wish

for just one simple thing-

only for their peers

to consider clarity

as a degree or two on their own,

individual moral compasses.

to love this beautiful world

with no bias, with equality,

with excitement, and with

virtuous appreciation of life

as a common mystery-

one that would end a lot better

if it was left unsolved.

When I was seven, my best friend and I used to dress up and have tea parties. We wore the torn, hand-me-down dresses from my cousins like they were gowns straight out of a princess’s wardrobe, and we were beautiful. We would prance around my room with purple plastic teacups, and there was no better place to dine than the blue **** carpet from Goodwill.

When I was seven I wanted to be a dancer. Not just a ballerina, no. I wanted to do everything. I watched with rapt attention as my cousin’s modern class tumbled to the floor of the stage, and as I stared at their neon colored tank tops and black jazz pants, it seemed that my world made sense. It seemed that as long as I was there on stage, dancing with the same skill and emotion and passion, I would be beautiful.

For my eighth birthday, my friend gave me the sixth Harry Potter book. My favorite character was Hermione. At recess, we would tie the sleeves of our red uniform sweaters around our necks and run around the blacktop pretending to play Quidditch. I thought Harry was smart and cunning and funny, but Hermione. Hermione was full of enthusiasm and rules and always made friends even if they were only in her head. She was top of her class with hair that everyone noticed and her brain was bigger than her group of friends at lunch and that was okay because she was like me. I never thought Hermione was beautiful. She didn’t need to be. Her bushy hair was full of intelligence and her buck teeth were strong enough to bite off the tongues of her oppressors and her dull, brown eyes weren’t dull at all because even the Whomping Willow began as a patch of dirt.

Hermione wasn’t beautiful like a garden. Her fiery eyes were dancing with flames that could wipe out an entire forest without even breaking a sweat. I have never wanted to be beautiful like a garden or the sunlight on the Fourth of July. As I tumble onstage in a blue dress with a tear in the front, my feet are ***** and my palms are sweaty and not one girl has brushed her hair. Footsteps pound the floor like a mighty pride of lions and hearts race as the bass drops and I am not a garden. Don’t you dare call me beautiful.