man who wears a hat sits still near the back unmoved by the world or the exposed breast of a statue (brain waves do not discharge through a fedora)

tag attached: bald is sanitary

oranges have more delicacy raw smelly and afterward singing allons enfants de patrie ding dang **** like that, all frog-ese so we don’t understand chanteused stiff basso profundo to excite to let us see with the clarity of a dream curled with hate set firm, firmer in the arms of a sleeveless girl then slung to sea level white as a leopard’s eye

remember its peroxide bathed, bleached inclined on the pillow just at the angle of expectancy without a hat sideward glance and the crippled heels of angels sparking down the hall

bulletin: young man willing to wear false beard to ease the pain for all

or trumpet blues broken played horizontal touched by seaweed hands in the light of boats (unfurled)

slowly

and the memory dies slowly half-forgotten, half-remembered

halved again

slowly

only
to begin
again

grim molecules of love

Kids these days make me sick. Too much time spent on IT. What’s IT you say? Well IT is the only thing that is not. IT is in but really IT is out, like a drunk left in his ***** passed out on the couch. The ultimate cool the epitome of breathtaking, and your left taking this out of proportion. What is so important? I mean really I don’t understand the importance. A synonym for the learned: imperative or even essence. That is the idea of something but your left holding nothing. Not even a burnt out flame like the lack of heat from the passion in your heart. Does it need to start…once more? A muscle unused is abused and left to consume itself. You incite cannibalism! Munching on ourselves to feed our soul lost in this dangerous world. You’re too tough to ask for directions, too stupid to read a map, or too naïve to think you are alone in this? What is THIS? THIS is just IT after THAT. THAT is simply free thought. Yet the brain sits and rots in your cranium. That’s a fancy word for skull. The helmet, not to keep thoughts in, but to let them become mature and flow down into a puddle between my feet. You see this and harmful words escape your mouth and say I ****** myself. I think not; if my head is leaking that means my thoughts cannot be contained. In pain I see the young adults of our time reading line after line of the same crap we are feed everyday of our lives. A lie, a lie I scream from an empty room, a classroom. There are entities inhabiting the same plane, yet in the same they are not here. So far away lost in this digital age. I agree you cyborgs need entertainment all the same; however, the smile I receive from seeing the moon in the middle of the day is the found on your face when someone likes your page. A paper trail untraveled by so many and misplaced in cyberspace. I walk at night to see the darkness, and you see only the lit up text message from your lazy boy recliner chair. I am convinced you’re not all there, but that’s not your fault. I blame it on the generations. I do blame you because you succumb to IT. There is that funny word again that carries no weight, but wait it can mean so much. IT is the idea of reality and your losing touch. Thus, there’s a word I don’t think gets used enough. Thus, reality is known only by how well it is defined on Wikipedia or an online dictionary equipped with spellcheck of course because without that how would we know the right way to spell. Well, well in my lap a newborn child fell. Not crying, not smiling, I’m not sure if it was even breathing. This baby, helpless and fragile, is society. We as an assembly need a babysitter for our whole lives. Why? Why live without experiencing life? Why be content with any answer that was given, not found. You have to search to find and in time life’s chorus line will start and so will the tears. The so perfectly phrased line will place fear in all who understand. How can we understand when all left standing is man? Man a fragile thing like a mansion on the beach. Sand ******* up the existence of all the living. I want to introduce a new word: WHEN. WHEN will we not take the so-called facts as face value and attempt to discredit them with logical thinking. WHEN will we move the rudder instead of waiting for the tides to change? WHEN will we place IT on it’s own head and explain something we know to someone else. Learning is gained not by blindly memorizing facts, like my mac, but by forming an attack on the disbeliefs. Hopefully to hone an opinion and be ready to defend IT, and I mean in every sense of the word. IT is the idea of reality and your catching on. Leave the bottle of forward thinking, and begin to chew on the backwards and sideward food your not use to.  Open the mind and heart to be restarted by learning. Thought is the jumper cables to this world’s battery dead from leaving it’s lights on all night, and now late to work for it wouldn’t start. Roughly 6 billion, 775 million, 235 thousand, and 741 people on this earth and we still don’t feel part of IT. Have we lost IT, have we tossed IT overboard? The only savior to the sickness and now it is sinking to the bottom of the sea to be discovered like a lost treasure. A gold doubloon used to measure the currency of our time. The state of our States is left to us to state whether we hate or don’t care about the shape we’re in, a sphere, a bubble, a circle with no beginning or end. Nowhere to start just have to keep moving in the same general direction or be swept away by the undercurrent. Drop your anchor and disturb the flow, stop the overused pattern. Turn the cycle of a circle into the turning of a wheel and use that to drive. Finally to take a destination of you’re own and truly think of the cosmos. To place you’re cognitive mind into motion and here the notion that there is more to THIS then IT.

fade into a crowded bar,
smoky, wispy;
three bar stools,
empty.

enter our three heroes
(or our three victims),
strangers.
they each take a seat,
throwing sideward glances lightly, curiously.
they hail from three different worlds
(but they're three sides of the same die).
and they all
hurt.

"shot of jameson."
the words seem to come from the stool,
only reverberating through a man in his forties.
two strangers glance sideways again, nodding slightly;
both gesture sideways with a wave of a wrist
and a point of a finger
before looking back down to the wood paneling
which seems to swirl and crack into a world all its own.

the jaded veteran of life is the first to get his drink,
followed by the frizzy haired young woman,
and then the boy who could be no older than twenty three.
three shots laid on the counter;
gulp.
three shot glasses clinking empty against the counter.

we all drink to forget, i think
(and the man, the girl, and the boy are no exception)

the man isn't happy
(and neither is his wife).
his world is woven of arguments and broken plates,
lost and tarnished love.
the burn of whiskey is nothing new
(more the burn of alcohol on a fresh wound).
his bar visits start with a head scratch and a sigh
and end with a taxicab back to his musty pillow
(and his musty love).

a tap on the shoulder,
he turns to look behind him.
"jesus, ****, bob! i've seen prettier expressions on train wrecks!  come sit with the guys."
he chuckles,
they stand
arms around each other's shoulders
to a darker corner.

the man needs to forget his life
(and the frolicking through meadows he thought it'd be).

two shots on the bar,
two empty glasses thud.

it burns, but she's had worse.
the girl hasn't been so lucky.
thrown bottles and cigarette burns are her world,
and the liquor is her respite from remembering
deadbeat dad
and mom,
who
(bless her heart)
wasn't there to stand in the way.
but she's better now,
all on her own
(or so she tells herself).

the ring of a cellphone pierces the chattering of the scene
briefly
before the click;
she answers.
"oh hey.  your flight's in?  sure, be right there."
her heels click against the floor,
the bar stool legs creak with her exit.

the girl needs to forget her jagged recollections
(though they pull from her like barbed wire from a corpse)
so she can forgive.

a lone shot on the bar.
a lone glass full no more.

his mouth stings like a newborn's being rubbed with the *****.
he won't ever get used to the sting of good liquor
(or of wanting her at his side through cold nights).
he didn't want school or work,
striving or achieving,
or his name in print.
just their fingers intertwined, or her head upon his chest
(because secretly, he can't fall asleep,
no,
not when she had the most lovable look in her snooze).
but his affection spans mountains, fills trenches, trails from rockets blasting through the galaxy
even though his sleeve-pinned heart has been skewered without remorse
more times than he could count when he was six years old
(so, why does it come as a surprise to him that the same couldn't be said of her?).
he tells himself he'll learn how to **** and not love
(so next time he won't have to drink himself back to normal).

another
shot.

*he drinks away his future
instead of past or present
(because he needs to forget how to love).

i miss the "talking stage"
i miss having butterflies from seeing you across the room
i miss the sideward glances
i miss blushing from feeling your eyes on me
i miss the flirting
i miss trying to get you to like me
i miss losing sleep just so i could talk to you
i miss being able to say goodnight
i miss falling in love
but the talking stage turned into dating and i finally had all that i never knew i would
but for you the butterflies began to die, you wouldn't glance at me anymore, you stopped flirting, you went to bed without sayin goodnight, you stopped falling in love
and now my butterflies have turned into snakes that eat me from the inside out
you don't look at me at all any more
you stopped smiling at me altogether
i don't blush
im still losing sleep but not so i can talk to you but because you haven't said goodnight
no, you said goodbye, you said goodbye a long time ago and you haven't said hello since.
goodnight, sleep tight, dont let the bed bugs bite, i love you.

When I sit among the oaken seats
surrounded by Your endless faithful,
the angelic choir in my ear,
incense cleansing my soul of woe,
I am there. I am there beneath
Your golden altar presiding, steadfast;
I am there. I am there feeling that same spirit
that has endured for millennia and imbued the souls of
our greatest writers, our greatest poets,
our most beautiful songs, our most saintly people,
and our drive for charity which
no force of evil in the world can ever, ever undo.

I sit there in awe, astonishment and fear,
as Your humble and quaking servant
raises Your True Body and Blood to the heavens;
You are among us!
Not riding in a chariot of gold nor bearing an ivory crown,
nor in flaming glory nor terrible thunder,
but amongst the sick of heart, the poor of soul,
the vain of face and the dreadful of mind.

It is then when I hear those chanted words
from the mouth of Your servant,
whatever tongue of men they be uttered in,
that I come to fully understand Your unchanging core:

"Through Him and with Him and in Him,
O God, almighty Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
all glory and honour is Yours,
forever and ever. Amen."

The goosebumps upon my skin,
the shiver down my spine,
the sideward glance to your tearful faithful;
my own eyes brimming amidst such wonder.

Some kind of craftsman is working at his bench
Peeling ribbons of soft wood under a dim lamp
He watches the growing pile of discarded strips.

The timecard is now an electronic monitor
An old woman at the factory wishes
That it were instead a thick piece of yellowing cardstock
So that she could use a hole punch.

Somebody’s daughter is dancing naked in the yard
A business man drives by and hopes that somebody will photograph her.
He is remembering the blush on his lover’s face
When he first saw the photo of her and her sisters
Flat chested, unclothed, and splashing together in the bath.

The waitress from town has left for school.
Somebody there is brushing the hair away from her eyes
And wondering whether or not it is a good moment to kiss her.
Meanwhile there is a young man sitting in his regular spot in her diner
Wondering if her eyes really were the color of the winter grass
He is contemplating joining the army.

A wiry beggar is sitting outside of a convenience store
He asks for a cigarette and gets not even a sideward glance
Later he asks a thin, young thing for a few dollars
Once she is gone he goes inside to buy a pack
And smokes them immediately.

There is a funeral processional going through town.
There is a woman at the end driving with clenched hands
She feels guilty because of her anger
But the traffic is making her late for work.

You may now kiss the bride.
And he does.
The older women are crying.

Without any of these things
It seems we would be left with nothing,

but an insatiable thirst for punctuation.

She hums a few nursery rhymes
Tiny tender  stomps
Swinging forward, swaying sideward
In her womb randomly, gracefully.

Little feet listen as her heart
Drum rolls the beat.
In tranquil nights, sudden kicks
Danced her to sleep.

After history with Mr Finn
about Saxons or Vikings
or some such thing
you walked home

from school
with Helen
along St George’s Road
the afternoon traffic

hustling and bustling by
and Helen said
that Cogan boy
pulled my plaits

and called me four eyes
and said I looked
like a pug
I think you look pretty

you said
do I?
she said
yes

you replied
and don’t mind
about Cogan
you said

tapping your jacket pocket
(where you kept
your six-shooter cap gun)
he said he’d smash my face

but he never does
he’s all mouth
and short pants
you said

Helen put her arm
under yours
and squeezed it
nice of you to say

I’m pretty
she said
no one’s said that before
and she looked ahead

and you stole a glance
sideward on at her
her plaits held in place
by two rubber bands

her thick lens spectacles
which made her eyes
larger than they were
and her small nose

beneath the bridge
of the wire frame  
you looked away
carrying the image of her away

storing it in your mind
and she said
my mum likes you
she said you’re not like

the other boys
around here
o
you said

thinking of her mother
large as life
pushing the big pram
squeezed into

the huge coat
nice of your mum to say
you said
she pulled your arm closer

to her
her dark blue
raincoat
against your black jacket

you sensed the six-shooter
against your ribs
thinking of Cogan
and firing a cap bang

in the back
of his head
my mum said
I can go

to the cinema
with you
on Saturday morning
matinee

Helen said
o good
you said
not caring what

the other boys might say
with her along side you
in the sixpenny seats
you in jeans

and open necked shirt
and she maybe
in that flowered
red dress

white socks
and black battered shoes
sensing her arm
on yours

as you approached
the traffic lights
at the big junction
catching a glimpse

of her smile
as you both crossed
the road
when the lights

turned green
the afternoon sky grey
rain seeming near
smelling it in the air

thinking of Helen
and of a snatched kiss
but you didn’t think so
or didn’t dare.

She was almost tempted
To jump from the bridge
Despite the crowds that
Passed, despite the coldness
And filth of the water below,
But she didn’t; she walked
On and slit her wrists in the
Hospital corridor instead;
In some dark place no one
Noticed until the blood
Followed her footsteps
Like a worrying child.

Two men stopped her
And took her to nurses
Busy at some sideward
Desk; found her in the
Corridor, they said, blood
Everywhere, doesn’t answer,
Though, we’ve tried that,
Won’t say a dickybird,
Maybe she’s dumb or deaf,
One man suggested, standing
Back as if to see her better,
Watched the young girl as
If for the first time, taking
In the blood soaked jeans,
Tee shirt, hands and arms
And turned away, nodding
To his companion, with a
One of those druggy types,
No doubt, suggestion in the
Slow movement of his head.

Then she was gone, taken by
The nurses behind curtains,
Low voices, murmurs; their
Interest slipping away, the
Men moved on, chatting
How Cardiff would do in
The next match, and don’t
Tell the wife about the girl,
She’ll get the wrong idea,
Then there’ll be hell
To pay, one said, walking
Through the doors into
The afternoon sunshine.

She was almost tempted
Speak, to say how the devil
Tempted her to jump, how
The voices told her what to
Do, but she said nothing,
Just watched the nurses
Dab at her slit wounds with
Wads of bandages and frantic
Touches of their hands, while
Up on the ceiling, she noticed
A fly buzzing around the naked
Bulb, looking for a way out
From death; just like me,
She thought, just like ****** me.

daydream dances
          sideward glances
                    sipping from his mug
pensive eyes
          muted sighs
                    absentminded shrugs
heavy drinker
          over thinker
                    bizarre state of mind
across the table
          sitting, staring
                    wishing he was mine

we left early
couldn't've been half-past
6 o'clock in the morning
the dawn gray left dew-dripped
melancholy on the foggy front lawn
beyond your mother's portable home
we drove down I-4 singing Anberlin's "A
Day Late" and took the back route down
A1A to the secret place where

the waves whispered languid lullabies
as heat rays traced your skin and harmonized
with the ancient anthems of the Atlantic
as it hummed its gentle cadences

beams of light filtered through sandy
tresses on that solitary beach in the
middle of April
lens flares immortalizing sly grins in ways
i thought only celluloid could deliver
yet you were corporeal and immediate
a fragment of an inch from me

film clumped in loose spools around us
wasted shots used and then discarded
we lay on our sides
exchanging joy in silence
and mirth in sideward glances

barefoot along the boardwalk
beneath the shadows of mangroves
trespassing in the backyards of the bourgeoisie
feet kicking toes dipping minnows nibbling
in the brackish Indian River

J.B.'s Fish Camp was slow
that time of year
we gave manatees fresh water
watched the dolphins' distant dance as
i debated whether or not  
i should try to hold your hand

you drank lukewarm beer as our star
sank over your sunburnt shoulders
and a blues musician played
somber tunes of lust and loss that
carried us away as we ate coconut shrimp
and the breeze blew in from the bay

you wore a baseball cap with
the Atlanta Braves' crimson A and
sported a matching jersey of your
little league softball team and though i may
not quite remember every little thing you said i
can't shake the way you caught
my eye and blushed before turning your head

boats drifted past and
the sun tucked itself to sleep
and you made me promise
to let you read every ****** poem i'd ever
breathe into existence

you said you'd value them more than gold
prize them always cherish the memories
even when you grew older but
the sun had already set
its absence left a chill in my bones

possessed
injected
sublime
veins
uncontrolled
spasm
travelling
upward
sideward
downward
rocket
fuelled
ignited
star
­burst.

I cannot bear the sun.
It makes me sing
and pierce my lungs.
We're left with all the kings but one.

The ballroom has no door,
the windows tall,
stars claim the floor.
I should have guessed they'd ask for more.

I take of it and eat.
I need not search.
Nor take a seat.
For human meat lies at our feet.

There was no room to dance.
They ask for more
with sideward glance,
then claw the floor with paws and hands

Their overcoats are torn.
The blue turns red
the hunger fed.
And roses break the stone with thorns.

I cannot bear the sun.
For dare it rise
we might realize
that no one in this room has won

You know that he is looking
As the train leaves the town
The carriages are closed now
No one moves around
And your face goes down as you feel his gaze
So you drop a sideward glance
In the window pane
The scarf across your neck
Is a deep shade of brown
And it matches your hair
With its red topped crown
But you do not move
Not an eyelash blurs
Just sit in the silence as he stares.

Love Mary x

for my parents with love

Such a grand and festive lady
that steamer to Put-in-Bay
escaping her dock
just after dawn
leaving Detroit's factory din
moored to the Michigan shore.

Sunbeams glanced off waves
in lake Erie's tranquility
bound for Sandusky
and Put-in-Bay Island.

Clattering silver and porcelain
veiled by sweeter sounds
of congenial banter and
ballads crooned by the shipboard band.
playing late beneath the stars
for 'swing' and 'jitterbug'
reeds and horns and ritual beats
blazed the air with frenzied jubilation.

Paired in the rhythm section,
Jim drove chords from strings and pick
while Janice matched beat for beat -
fingers gliding over ivory and ebony
until Detroit lights shone ashore
on the port side bow
where the Put-in-Bay would
re-tether to its Motor City pier.

How their union sealed is forever’s mystery.
Was it bonded
checking chords in a Gershwin tune
or on break over scotch at the bar
or with a sideward smile during “All of Me? ”
No one knows but the moment came,
as sure as rain to Lake Erie,
when Janice knew that Jim would ask
and he knew she’d answer, 'Yes.'

Thanksgiving day, 2008
(also Dad's birthday)

Wisped back from the ocean overlooking
Highway scenery separating bliss from bruises,
The Rock and I headed hillside,
Back to the fold of familiarity and frowning faces.

“When I was your age, we used to shoot pigeons,” he recalled.
“Something for fun – nothing more.”
Foul feelings furrowed far, leapt from the heart into the mind’s field.
I retorted, “Killing for fun? So, you might as well **** men for fun –
They’re as numerous as pigeons!”

Shocked, he shot a searing sideward glance,
Rock to rude boy.
He took hold of his seed with a summoning to silence.

Touring the tides of truth,
I was tossed in the current of straight-talk, pounding against the cliff face.
Fearing not Libra’s blindness in her determination
That the injustice of my tongue has tipped moral scales.

To brandish and damage the Whitmanian sheen:

Can no one tarnish this?
Must anyone pollute it?

It is why I have taken you out into fields-
To make the possibility drift away from empty sight.

Does it not bother you?

To see a mismatched face,
a scrunched lip or sideward glance,
an awkward gait;

Does this not bother you?

I do not think it does.

I live in a rusted compass-
The jittered movement of a world of people opposed to me, fundamentally,
and if they do not appreciate some superficial charm, a quick wit or jawline, then I am a burial ground.

Does this make sense to you?

My shell- who I AM and what I AM in myself,
Is everything of myself in this world: do you understand?

This complaint is a feminine one- a constant feminine one and I do not understand-
it is why I have no patience for the division of quarrel when it allows a space for a will,
and no patience for women when they are born such beautiful creatures.

Do you not understand this?

Everything constitutive of the feminine- be the term bastardized in logistical torment or made to lay prostrate at the altar of the Wesleyan Thesis- is condensed and made perfect in the fold of an elbow, or the basic weakness felt in opposition to the disgusting brute that is the man.

I am a disgusting brute. I have a gut and I have hair on my body. I am a machine- the secondhand contrivance of a protective god. A monument to gestation.

Even when I ***, in brief movement and in brief moment, I am but a moving forth- out of myself and into another to be held, and this action (so crudely overlooked as to be made the absent declaration of an ALGORITHM) reminds endlessly of my transience;

And my transience IS ME-

In the womb I am a decision- behind the first action, the basic action that is womanhood.

There is no reading about this:

The problems of order, systems of order made unto systems of order, are for themselves, and as such exclude the scrunched lip of the passerby- they extrapolate from them an unrealized intention and fold into them as a torment…

And in the fold there is ruin,
and life conditions for patience in the ruin-
to be greeted with anything ‘other than’ is no different than being granted love in a passing dream;

And in the fold there is hope,
I am conditioned through and through, surely, to become something other than myself.

There is no medication for this-

No return to the unconditioned, or
Escape in the unconditioned,
only Logic in torment for the the significance of the interplay between a slit and a rod,

And the gentle retardation of Women
And the gentle retardation of Man

Made into a choice of scarves and lugnuts.

The mind resists
What seems to be
An entryway into
Emptiness
The cloak of Fullness..
Fear pulls us back
Into comfy norms of
What we know so well..
And that seems the end
For many explorers..
The leap not taken..
But the invitation
Remains..in a
Blooming flower
A sideward glance or
A crushing defeat...