like that pill bitter Sunday morning (after)
with a nauseating hack
the previously uneventful Tuesday
derailed
in surrealistic tale
with Auntie and Jack (and a quarter of fate)
in the 748
on a night flight
from Sherwood to Lore

reverberating waves
of imminent summer haze
river flats
and flower fields
fly weights
and silver bait
shredders and shysters
and open gates
(into those everlasting
and sweated journeys of hope)

bloods and strays
and florentine grays
(reminiscent of Rockwell fame)
running horses
and overgrown country lanes
morning grace
and gentle cheer
eyes clear
on the river pass
blunted paddles for those ancient
and not so willing suckers!

duke making his own way
(to the corner club)
Parsons and Poe
stream from the torn screen door
cricket cadence
and symphony of the Deere
calm and deliberate
in the soft
and silent fields

meadows open for grazing
(guineas scamper across the till)
pocket apples fill
the country ripe air
drunken bees
and chestnuts
and electric fingers
strike the surface pool
(a cedar strip wedged on the white wash dock)

baited bull heads set to cast
evenings with hearts
and Nolten Nash
may flowers bloom
across the grass
~ time unmatched ~
with blue jays
and river bends
and channel cats
...and that warm
and recurring
Coleman drift

Let the poetry of others repose in majestic halls:
My poems are filler for paper shredders,
For packing in shipping boxes,
And backing for flypaper sticky strips;
To wipe the muddy soles of shoes
That have seen too much of springtime
In the garden.

Others poetry fills the airwaves, and sits between the covers of books;
My poetry is for grocery lists,
And sudden messages you need to scribble while on the telephone,
And maps to undiscovered geneological treasures
That are only a township away-
To trace the faces of cool tombstones
Under a mid-day sun.

You won't find my poetry near any other kind of list
That doesn't say get bleach, dog food, and toilet paper.
Still, my poetry is from a well lettered life-
I have written all my heartbeats, and most of my sighs
Into sibylline hieroglyphics, from midnight initiations
In the secret brotherhood, of my own soul:
And I will die a freeman, because nobody
Will ever feel the need to own any of these words.

I have a friend who plays guitar
I've worked with thousands ... but none quite like him.
His chord choices, the melodies and the riffs that he plays
They can only come from within.

He's been out living as a big rock star
But that's not quite the world that you'd think.
It's a rugged, rough struggle of perseverance and passion
And your life flashes by in a blink.

He isn't a shredder as are many these days
Never cramming notes where they don't belong.
He is tasteful and creative, a sound so original
His strings envelop the songs.

He has no need to display some arrogant plumage.
He doesn't show off with any thousand-note solos.
He doesn't do intros that are way too long.
His moody style transcends virtuoso.

He is my friend and proven it so
Once guiding me through a valley of black.
Not with his music, although that helped.
He did so with his hand on my back.

A music teacher once told me that
"Music is the silence between notes".
If that is true, then his silence is golden
As I love every song that he's wrote.

So all you pickers, players and shredders
in garages or with gold albums on the wall.
Take a lesson, from this humble man
You needn't over play at all.

But don't think that he is timid or without some flair
Don't make boastful quips that you think are so witty.
If the mood and the moment strikes him just so
He can make that guitar sound like Godzilla destroying a city.

I am so proud to call him my "Brother"
Such a musician, such a friend.
His music and his camaraderie have both touched my soul
and I hope that neither see's end.

Paper, it even sounds cool
Remember Paper Mache at school
Paper is a versatile beast
Paper can be folded and creased

Paper can hold your chips and cod
Paper holds the words of your god
Litmus paper turns a different hue
Paper you use when in the loo

Newspaper to get all your lies
Paper comes in many a disguise
Paper anniversary first year gone
Blank paper ready to write on

Sand paper’s rough but smooths things out
Paper cuts, paper tickets from a tout
Paperless office never to be
Remember paper comes from a tree

Rice paper, sugar paper, paper that’s embossed
Printer paper, blotting paper will absorb the cost
Carbon paper, gold leaf paper, cotton papers too
Origami, baking paper just to name a few

Paper for your love letters, notes to her indoors
Old discarded wallpaper to line your chest of drawers
Paper table cloth and napkins, paper plates and cups
Paper when your computer fails you, just for your back ups

Paper planes, Christmas decs, sticky labels to remind
Envelopes and stamps, paper roller blinds
Wrapping paper for presents, to make someone’s day
Fivers, tens and fifties, to help you pay your way

Paper mills keep turning, magazines and books
Paper muffin cups for bakers and for cooks
Paper bags to shop with, bunting to celebrate
Fancy tissue paper, paper to laminate

Paper for all of mankind, paper pocket diaries
Paper trails and shredders, papers for your enquiries
Paper in the wastepaper bin, paper piles so high
There’s nothing like a piece of paper 1,2 or 3 ply

When I die
throw my heart
into a dying forest
so that way
when the bulldozers
and the saws
and the cranes
and the shredders
obliterate the tree line
my heart might be
obliterated with it.
When I die
throw my heart
into a dying forest
so that way
i will have topped
every poet
every writer
every lover
who has ever insisted to know
what love, or beauty felt like.
When I die
throw my heart
into a dying forest
so that way
everything i've ever tried to
give you, show you
finally ends up on paper.

The world is just a puzzle
We try to find our missing pieces to make ourselves whole
Sometimes we find shredders
Or the edge of the table below our cardboard limbs

The college guy that goes out on Friday nights to the same bar,
Trying to find a temporary thrill,
Seeks excitement.

A young lady who wakes up every morning to get to the gym
Seeks wellness.

An old widow with his knees bowed next to the alter at church,
Looks to find sanctuary.

A man watching the people pass
Looks for inspiration in the lives of others.

The greatest of sinners
His back to an metal table
Limbs strapped one by one
Says one last prayer before darkness overtakes him.
He seeks redemption.

What are you seeking?

My wife rolls her eyes
When I point out another wind turbine
“Bird Shredders”
“Pork Barrel for guilty Liberals”
“Don’t they disrupt wind patterns?”
But
When I look up at a stately giant
Broadcasting infrasound across the plains
I remember my nose pressed against the window
Of a 1957 Pontiac
In Wisconsin
Yelling
“Windmill”
As we passed every farm
As my parents rolled their eyes.

Arms crossed
like the hopes to die
on my heart.

Head bowed like the empty prayers
I've made for eternity.

Hands on the hair.
Feet on the ground.
Arms crossed.
Head bowed.

Hands in my hair.
Feet around his waist.
Arms grasping for
the bowed head.

Promises sent out
to broken paper shredders.

last time i heard, the germans had two
trills to the R -
the frontal, and the "backstory"...

the back trill became french -
the harking - akin to R becoming H...
like some gluttonous laugh..

the front trill became english -
the numbing - akin to R becoming
a heimlich maneuver (akain the baron
parrot with its heimlick) -
that deviated from the rolling
tumbleweed, from the rattlesnake...
from the drumroll...

evolution can really find shortenings
to its endeavour -
it doesn't have to begin with
monkey through to man,
it can begin with letters -
the best example? R...

   there is no trill in english
and there is no trill in french -
one was bitten by a tarantula,
that other pretended to hark,
or chained smoked and tried to
be rid of excess tobacco phlegm
on the tubes...

but only in german was the trill
explained:
   the rattlesnake frontal trill,
and the hydra rear trill -
and the rear trill manages to explain
the french harking...
         while the frontal trill
explains the tongue-tied numbing...

  these are not transcendental moments:
these are transgressional artefacts -
akin to mutations -
         and evolution does have a
rarer spectrum of interest to itemise -
    it does not necessarily have a genesis
and an exodus...
          firmly placed to compete
with biblical affairs...

look, mythology has a branching to a root
of a logic... mythology is worth as much
of etymological respect, of theological craft...
mythology awaits a saying:
mythology spans too many years beyond
critical history, beyond history per se,
mythology is when poetry transcends,
mythology is the logical conclusion
of the only manner of expression:
via ars poetica -
                  
                   mythology is a type of history
that cannot be written with a critical eye,
a critical conclusion - a conclusive
"existentialism" - the assured "i am" -
yet here we are: primarily through the medium
of "i think", even if jealous or missing
the "i am" of achilles...
                  but achilles, with that being
said: didn't leave an "i think" paradigm...

mythology is the upper tier of history,
after all...
     all of history has to become sacrificed
upon the altar of poetry, and upon this
altar, turn from history, into myth...
      and both are logical conclusions -
it's only that the latter remains "afraid"
of the critical essay of nearing contemporary
"compliments" of attention...

there's a reason why myths are logical,
but as many people dislike poetry as they
are bound to dislike poetry:
yet most of these people never manage to
finish artefact of prose, finish the efforts
of chicken scratches, of lumberjacks,
of amazon shredders -
    people who might as well write on toilet paper.

give it a 100, nay, a 1000 years:
and i'll be the most evil person in the world -
the one who closed the short-lived hoarding
of the closure of the 20th century...
       just a premonition...
   a sickly, i know, but also an innocent kind...
it's called:
    cogitans qua helium *** ego qua vesica
(thinking as being helium
               with the ego as being a balloon) -
oh dear one, float float, float away!
to the never descending geometry of
                           starry constellations.

darwinism still seeks a history that doesn't
necessarily compete with physics'
chronology -
  the english speaking worlds simply can't
keep both, and not congregate upon some
sort of dualistic finally -
   instead of this schizophrenic dichotomy...
where are all the chemists?!
      in the ***** of faust, like the jews
are, in the ***** of abraham...
         and the kiddies keep chanting:
we made pacts with the devil -
tell your god, the queries are worth a dustbin
defunct de facto: limusaurus per se
    (mud lizard) - id est: inextricabilis;
     "sub" / post sequentia: *** ergo finis similis;

and i do wish to speak the resurrected latin,
unlike when the english teachers from
the beginning of the 20th century still
manage to trill the R rather than numb it...
namely? lingua plebei... lingua vulgaris...
and for me? that's how latin will be known
from thereof... and **** **** ****
you will make oaths from words,
and **** **** ******* will not excuse
yourself, surrounded by ***** excesses,
and **** **** ******* will not
guise yourself in linguistic niqabs of
censorship,
    and **** **** ******* will not play
hide and seek with U in a word like
f&ck -
        you will not become morons who
are nothing more than pedantic queer hoppers -
you will not become those people
who joke while swearing: pardon my french...
  you already brush your teeth...
you will not be the ones that agree
to watching violence, ****** violation,
disinfected by news and paparazzi epilepsy,
but are somehow told that:
reading the words **** **** ****
is more offensive than all the listed, above.
NO!

only in england, and perhaps just shy
of only in essex -
     where the behemoth of London
almost finishes,
               and the countryside starts
nibbling on the beast's roasting toes...
and esp. in June,
                   can you find yourself sitting
up at night,
            smoking a cigarette from
the window,
                       immersed in the orchestra
of metalworks, and iron teeth clinging
to oyster shells in attempts to open
and feed on the genital pearl of the lunar
                                    sea...

foxes!
                   li-ßý   (-ee not lie through to
                 whip-S         and a hollowing out)...
                              it's hardly a howling
wolf, or a growling wolf...
                                 but it will have to do...
not exactly music but at least
not an animal pestered with domestication,
and given the local ownership
of dogs and cats:
               a brief interlude between
the dog-bone-dog-barking-dumbness
of a predictable evening...
         and to think:
   chirping birds just above not bothered
by the shortening of the night-hours...
yet in the thick shrubbery of
the gardens, this unholy vibration that
cuts through heart to reach
                                             a stone...
     and...
                  only partially a sinking
sensation...
                      more a loss of a nibbling
on conscience...
    
some nights are reserved to purposively
stay up and listen to these
rapists of bird song,
   these shredders,
                          with their jigsaws
for teeth, harking not even harking nor
close to barking,
          hyenas of the north,
almost laughing, then at the same time
squealing...
              jumping ship yet at the time
steering it against the rocks of the shore...

ugh: no onomatopoeia entry point...

sure birds and the other "wild" animals,
semi-domesticated pigeons,
   scavenging crows and all too happy
sparrows, pirate seagulls, you name it...
but with the foxes, in the den of thieves...
i don't have to go to the wild,
the wild can just come to me...
       particularly at about 3 - 4 in the morning...

i'm still wondering about
the diacritical detail of the english attention
to including
                   the superscript over two letters...
   as if it is even necessary...
                 pry open the goods and...
    monumentally adrift on
                  a sea of inconsequence -
            for lack of a better word...
    ȷohn could tell apart a norwegian
                                 ȷan from a yin yang,
        or rather, he wouldn't.

                there's always a ȷoe in        y-oddle:
                               should it begin with j...

               ה                   and                ח    

   who attaches the tzere and ט‬ (tet)
                         to the latter to craft a name?  
   or is that tzere and ת (tav)?    

sure, hidden vowels,
               albeit the two adams:
                                                   א and ע‬...    
                          aleph and ayin -

     braille seems to have already existed
among the semites, with niqqud -
   ever brimful the fascination with it -
    to have it in my eyes,
   but not, on the tip of my tongue:
            seen, but not spoken.

- melolontha melolontha -
      catching cockchafers during the warm
nights of my youth in Poland -
        May and childhood and honey,
as i now: metaphorical father
    demand sight of a child from
              the age of 4, through to 8.

the cut off to form words from given
letters, beside the semites -
clear cut offs: a-lpha
                             b-eta
                                  g-amma
                  d-elta,
                          e-psilon,
               z-eta,
                 th-eta,
                       i-ota,
                            k-appa and the rest
of the congregation,
                    but who could possibly
read but the seen, and braille if not
a hebrew?

such spare thoughts,
          i am almost tempted to go among
the people, drink with eyes
    the morass of bodies in the temple
of commerce and: high-brow achievements...
see: the complicated man,
   and the civilised horde and barbarians
to boot...

      instead...
                   a vagueness requires rekindling,
just off B175...
             beginning with pinewood road...
through the havering county park,
through to bower farm road...
      past the river rom,
                         near to spurgate brook,
and then into hainault forest...
        finally emerging romford road...

the world already knows,
  what the world already knows,
and all that is, between, before and
beyond has but a missing pilgrim to
mark with foot and silence
      the grounds of churning times...

not to imply a sadness,
                          but a blistering disarray,
hardly a solitude with
                              a baggage of self,
constantly that gluttonous
  mouth of ego,
                    and constantly the thing
that eats and feeds it at
                         the same time - thought...    
how else to explain the lost:
                           ( )ought               (i)?    
    
darwin might as well placed (an)athema
        on etymology -
                          seeing how there is
bountiful form in the persisting revelation
of history in a nutshell...
        perhaps i feel inclined to escape
the persisting hullabaloo to begin,
                   and to begin again,
              and again, begin -
      beginning as explanation for everything
that has and is yet to pass...
              what is currently not the year
of darwinism not being vogue?
            tiresome intellectual vogue -
    can anyone possibly not tire of
                                    peering into that
      abyss, as: with it, the sole explanation,
            great time eraser,
nothing of the 18th century, through to
                                    only last Monday...

apart from the fact that drinking
beer while walking is probably an always
welcome waste of time...
                 because why would i even
begin to admire a standstill with this
                                          fizzy pale amber -
and not take to: the allocated views
    already planted for the early afternoon?
not the pristine weather,
                     as ever, English summer,
but in the moist yoke of the air
                             a perfume of pasture...
or at least, that's the intention
   in finding the simpler man,
          the base man,
                  the any and every man who...
just happened to come across
                       nymphomaniac vol. I and II...
of course, nothing to us alien,
                  yet how to not find
                   a post-scriptum of once tasted,
reduced to an infructuous plateau
         of a nostalgia or: the teaching from
example base.
                  
   if only the use of language could persist
like this,
                   in its inconvenience -
                 esp. if only props and peddlestools
are artefacts of it being used...
yet always, a return,
      toward language, a conventionality,
   a steaming ****-pile of dittos
                                                      impasse.