“Speak! speak! thou fearful guest!
Who, with thy hollow breast
Still in rude armor drest,
    Comest to daunt me!
Wrapt not in Eastern balms,
But with thy fleshless palms
Stretched, as if asking alms,
    Why dost thou haunt me?”

Then, from those cavernous eyes
Pale flashes seemed to rise,
As when the Northern skies
    Gleam in December;
And, like the water’s flow
Under December’s snow,
Came a dull voice of woe
    From the heart’s chamber.

“I was a Viking old!
My deeds, though manifold,
No Skald in song has told,
    No Saga taught thee!
Take heed, that in thy verse
Thou dost the tale rehearse,
Else dread a dead man’s curse;
    For this I sought thee.

“Far in the Northern Land,
By the wild Baltic’s strand,
I, with my childish hand,
    Tamed the gerfalcon;
And, with my skates fast-bound,
Skimmed the half-frozen Sound,
That the poor whimpering hound
    Trembled to walk on.

“Oft to his frozen lair
Tracked I the grisly bear,
While from my path the hare
    Fled like a shadow;
Oft through the forest dark
Followed the were-wolf’s bark,
Until the soaring lark
    Sang from the meadow.

“But when I older grew,
Joining a corsair’s crew,
O’er the dark sea I flew
    With the marauders.
Wild was the life we led;
Many the souls that sped,
Many the hearts that bled,
    By our stern orders.

“Many a wassail-bout
Wore the long Winter out;
Often our midnight shout
    Set the ***** crowing,
As we the Berserk’s tale
Measured in cups of ale,
Draining the oaken pail,
    Filled to o’erflowing.

“Once as I told in glee
Tales of the stormy sea,
Soft eyes did gaze on me,
    Burning yet tender;
And as the white stars shine
On the dark Norway pine,
On that dark heart of mine
    Fell their soft splendor.

“I wooed the blue-eyed maid,
Yielding, yet half afraid,
And in the forest’s shade
    Our vows were plighted.
Under its loosened vest
Fluttered her little breast,
Like birds within their nest
    By the hawk frighted.

“Bright in her father’s hall
Shields gleamed upon the wall,
Loud sang the minstrels all,
    Chanting his glory;
When of old Hildebrand
I asked his daughter’s hand,
Mute did the minstrels stand
    To hear my story.

“While the brown ale he quaffed,
Loud then the champion laughed,
And as the wind-gusts waft
    The sea-foam brightly,
So the loud laugh of scorn,
Out of those lips unshorn,
From the deep drinking-horn
    Blew the foam lightly.

“She was a Prince’s child,
I but a Viking wild,
And though she blushed and smiled,
    I was discarded!
Should not the dove so white
Follow the sea-mew’s flight,
Why did they leave that night
    Her nest unguarded?

“Scarce had I put to sea,
Bearing the maid with me,
Fairest of all was she
    Among the Norsemen!
When on the white sea-strand,
Waving his armed hand,
Saw we old Hildebrand,
    With twenty horsemen.

“Then launched they to the blast,
Bent like a reed each mast,
Yet we were gaining fast,
    When the wind failed us;
And with a sudden flaw
Came round the gusty Skaw,
So that our foe we saw
    Laugh as he hailed us.

“And as to catch the gale
Round veered the flapping sail,
‘Death!’ was the helmsman’s hail,
    ‘Death without quarter!’
Mid-ships with iron keel
Struck we her ribs of steel;
Down her black hulk did reel
    Through the black water!

“As with his wings aslant,
Sails the fierce cormorant,
Seeking some rocky haunt,
    With his prey laden,—
So toward the open main,
Beating to sea again,
Through the wild hurricane,
    Bore I the maiden.

“Three weeks we westward bore,
And when the storm was o’er,
Cloud-like we saw the shore
    Stretching to leeward;
There for my lady’s bower
Built I the lofty tower,
Which, to this very hour,
  Stands looking seaward.

“There lived we many years;
Time dried the maiden’s tears;
She had forgot her fears,
    She was a mother;
Death closed her mild blue eyes,
Under that tower she lies;
Ne’er shall the sun arise
    On such another!

“Still grew my ***** then,
Still as a stagnant fen!
Hateful to me were men,
    The sunlight hateful!
In the vast forest here,
Clad in my warlike gear,
Fell I upon my spear,
    Oh, death was grateful!

“Thus, seamed with many scars,
Bursting these prison bars,
Up to its native stars
    My soul ascended!
There from the flowing bowl
Deep drinks the warrior’s soul,
Skoal! to the Northland! skoal!”
    Thus the tale ended.

This is america.
It's a one of a kind.
You can buy **** at the store.
You can bide your time.
Voting red or blue.
Is a favorite pastime.
Doesn't really matter which side you choose.
Like it doesn't matter if a poem will rhyme.
Hell you could write freestyle poetry about nothing
and that's accepted.
Cuz this is america and you're free to be an idiot. Inspected. Suspected.
Slot machines and credit cards
Stop lights and go-go bars
Social security and national debt
Red white and blue baby
We're the best!
Patriots of olde
and punks of New.
World Order abound
The olde ways are through!
By and by
Time after time
Woe are to those
With woman and child.
Times is tuff says the country station
but be the 5th caller
to win this Ozark vacation.
Skoal and Miller High Life 40s.
Marlboro Reds, rap music and shorties.
Sorry shawties but midgets are better.
What's more profound
than talkin bout the weather?
I forgot the original point
that I wanted to share with ya
but **** it, you know what I mean?
This is america.

i thought.

you tasted like lust and you smelt like wintergreen and your hands were feathers and tickled my skin.


i know.

you tasted like skoal.
you smelt like smoke.
your hands felt like regret.

Flashback...




We'd spent all day
In "the fields"
Not twenty yards from the whitewashed cemetery fence posts
Floating and then burning
Paper boats on a muddy puddle in a depression in the dirt

Phillip and Chris scored some Skoal From Danny or Billy, I forget which...
It was "long-cut"

We try a bit...putting it in our cheek
Like the big kids did
The Skoal making a strange and potent tea from our spit

The smallest amount of this tingly elixer is swallowed- and it's over.

I lose my lunch.
I am yawning in technicolor.

Chris and Phillip laugh and laugh.  
Then Phillip follows suit barfing on his shoes
Chris gives him an arm punch, with a smile.
I think Phil and I were both done with chew.

There was never a shortage of things to do here

Under an old barnwood board, was a magazine with glorious pictures that made us feel strangely isolated
From one another

We would memorize each line, each curve
For later when each would be alone
With the Sears catalog and some tracing paper.

We made single line trails for our bikes
With banks and jumps
Chris was the daredevil of the bunch
He would take a new ramp at top speed

His little brother would too
Sometimes with drastic results
Concussions and broken bones.

There's a chain store now
in the spot we called  "the fields". 

It used to seem vast.  
And now it looks small.
But that is the past.
Memories. That's all.

Today I understand incoherent rage
Learned the loss of my best disposition
With the youtube clip
Of a felt tipped double dipped *******
Spitting ******* about how the government
Is coming to **** him

Pleading please help me by killing them
Empty brained slack jawed hee haw
Huffing the exhaust fumes from some
Sixteen mile a gallon extended cab
Four-wheel drive ford truck

Chubby face running of with
Nineteen twenties style militia hate
Red neck panting and paranoid
Rallying others to his cause
With sloppy sentiments and stupid slurs

No information or reason
From this white entitled flat earth creationist
Spewing patriotism and treason
In the same stank skoal scented breath

Afraid of the Muslims, Communists,
Socialist, and Intellectual atheist

Won’t wait to debate with facts
Cause facts are what he lacks
Just rash reactions with explosive violence
Beating up protesters to the point of silence

Reality ******* in favor of
Slow pre-used slogans with no clarity

I am getting so tired of this
Same old ****

i am the cigarette
you forbear yourself from taking
every daybreaking morning
you make it distasteful and unpleasant
when you’ve had a little too much
too deep of a drag
you **** me slowly
corrupting my lungs
disfiguring my heart
it's the sun i gaze at
the start of every day
swearing i'll never taste your
skoal lips again
but i breathe in your dissolution
becoming its demise
you’ll make better mistakes tomorrow
this much i know is true
though i take you in, again today
now it's clear to me
i'll always be your ashtray

I guess was stalking
Stephen Hawking,
a digital wonder
when he starts talking
speakers squawking
out more brilliance
then a million
of those treasure troll
jelly roll
spitting skoal
racist rednecks.

Chased down Bill Nye
the super sonic
science Guy
cause I hoped he could help
me learn why
creationist and politicians
get so far by telling lies.

Sat next to
Richard Dawkins
who left me gawking.
Never saw a scientist
so perfectly British
with his “Selfish Genes”
questioning everyone’s
“God Delusion.”

And Neil De Grass Tyson
was on the radio splicing
science with pop culture,
making “Star Talk” podcasts that
are trying to bring back
scientific literacy
before our society
actually becomes
The movie “Idiocracy.”

in the
shoulder of
this bag
she made
declare her
notes of
cancer with
praesidium that
Riviera toll
earth as
skoal of
her combine
shoot pool
now jake
of school
lack luster
in environment

D'Israeli's take on truth's stats, history, id est

It is I who leave the mark on this  trail
through ever upto now, you and I,
amble in minds, fetterless, no one to bump,
or breathe upon, or directly into,
no crowds on a concrete path
overlain with chewing gum
and skoal stains, and stubs of smokes
with no filters

-- ******* flash, smoking a Camel, with Joe, he sees this needle,
lying in the sun, and bends to see its point,
it is one of the latest in embroidering tools,
gold plated carbon steel, super sharp.
I see this by the rustlessness,
when my finger's tiny thing lifting edge

picks this sharp, single-eyed needle
from the hay left after the weeds
have been eaten,  hold it -look
through the eye of the needle, see

Joe blows the smoke from 'is Camel,
through the eye of my needle, and winks.}

so we must be, in time, circa
1970's version of the 1950's, emerging
in mind's exposed to ideas leaked
from academia, via TV.
--- here comes the pitch
Now pre posting in 2021, Atomic Rooster
Lee Michaels and the Moody Blues,
waddayagoddaloose  to use the mind blown

to filter sense from puffs of smoke
signaling each of us to grow on and pass,

as smoke that once made you cry,
but you don't remember why.

Hey, rich man,
We gotta show -
it's for kids, it causes them to groupthink
it puts the individual child in a we.
A safe global age appropriate wedom.
-- Yes, as Nickelodeon and Mickey Mouse club
-- and NRA VBS and Madrassah Basic Bomb Camp
-- hate apportioned on international stats
-- complied by Intel engineers, in their spare cycles.

Awe, shucks, it's easy. We act as if
life needs no sense,
senselessness is so simple six esses
yeses of x divided
into a subset after cable
another after AOL
then… events proceed through Netscape
to now. G5, and still alive, that’s some survival.
Or we can say re vival,
we return several instances
constanding point in terms of piercing
ancient eber's story told literally says

shaw maw yim, three sounds thought to mean

heaven, thought to mean a place,
attainable through a stacking of things,
as a safe place,
a hiding place, when we were two, me
and you, then the smallest we
in any history, she said, with a wink

come think of wisdom as a she,
and tell me of your trinity, from all you
know is so,
for some who say they/we read the right book,
told you so.
and unbelief of what's been told,
grave danger lieth thence
done seen it done,
excommunicative lock out of those
who, upon completion of proper
basic servant, general labor,
read, write sufficient to lead,
abacus or algorist skill enough
to measure tribute and pay.

Investment and contravallation,
sappers and miners,

take down the imagination exalting
itself against the knowledge of

the script, history has a script, see
they say they
know this story true, and so shall you

as we prebend your ear to hear it
as it is, we say, the world works this way,

we know, and you do not.
All children must be taught, tamed
broken, like a dog, or an ox, flummoxed

finally willing, by self-will alone, to be
in the we, a we we form on oaths,
sworn on the book.
yes, as we all are or must become
people of the book.

Well, look, there are said to be
several sorts of lies, using d'israeli approach to truth's oppostion:

Plain lies, ****** lies, and statistics.

That is my AI's favorite abacus joke,
but I don't get it.
--------- distraction asreal as imagined, at the time
Moody Blues:
Just what is happening to me
I lie awake with the sound of the sea
Calling to me
Old man, passing by
Tell me what you sing
Though your voice be faint
I am listening
Voices in the sky
Smoke blown through your why, life in after
all is strange as you may imagine, never dull.

Lured by the slurred
word that she heard
which plied with lies
that made her hum and purr.

Late for her classes
she moved like molasses
and stopped at a hot mud spot,
to sit in the slop
letting the filth
flow from the bottom
of where she was squatting
up to fill each crack and crevice.

She thought the wet dirt
would only hurt her white skirt
as the slick liquid was sliding
up and down her body.
In that moment writhing,
She had the feeling akin
to being pleasurably pig skinned.

How strange the change
as her belly engorged
and her limbs grew short.
Then from her lacy drawers
a corkscrew tail emerged.

How weird was it
when she heard
squeals of concern
spew from her snout.

She began to doubt
her humanness
as her dress
vanished
and she was grabbed
by a drab brute
with skoal breath
and lots of flab.

Pork patties were made
of this maiden led astray
by the wiles of a worthless
**** that made a feast of her
soft pork belly.