terrible machines slipstream the extreme in-between where they grind the invalid star heaps into dust
there, they spike the lion's paw of life's Sphinx, methinks it winks at God's Riddle, and twiddles a thumb of some god, in a sky pod of dead people, hording jasmine and madness and pancakes, upon the everlasting Maybach sedan with the chrome piping and the platinum plinth, regal in ice and fire !
what aspires must be crushed into tiny little else. into neutrinos of speculation in the non rational abode of  our most holy joke. the spun spoke, in a wheel of cold lotus. we  know this is not a dream without motive. we know this because we notice, know this because it's flawless, and flawless reveals a mind of terrible machines that slipstream the extreme in- between  where they grind the invalid star heaps, into dust ! they might spike the lion's claw of Life's sphinx, where it thinks that most people are dead inside, that might can take a joke if joke is told in a void baritone with Gamelan Bells of Unbearable Revelation, the revery of a Greek nose on the face of a broken clock.

I know that I have loved you
sometime in the past
we're two souls out in the slipstream
with no sail upon the mast
two souls in search of someone
and I know that someone's you
we've been in love forever
at least a time or two

I have known you for forever
yes, I know that it was you
we are looking for each other
and each time, our love is new
we are souls without direction
we have been in love before
and we're destined to repeat it
in time forever more

we might skip a generation
ok maybe one or two
we are searching for each other
at least I am for you
we aren't famous individuals
just two souls on the wind
who are cursed to keep repeating
for once, we must have sinned

we are stuck inside the vortex
of an endless loop of souls
coming back to search forever
through a sea of timeless holes
we have been in love forever
and until we get it right
we are two stars always burning
in the cold dark winter night

we are souls out on the slipstream
we have played the lover's game
we both know we've been together
because our love it seems the same
it's a love built on the ages
we know we'll meet again
one day we'll get it perfect
so now my love...'till then...

A bicycle is the most efficient transportation machine.  A little input and I’m gliding, moving a useful measurable distance but more than that. I like going fast enough so the wind in my ears is louder than my thoughts.  On a tough day I like riding until I can be grateful again; sometimes that takes a couple hours but every ride is a good ride.

My youth’s independence was a banana seat Huffy pulled from an under-appreciated pile of rust in the back of St. Vincent’s Thrift Shop.  No school bus meant riding to school, the first 45 minutes of every day in all weather. Afternoons were exploring detours; summers were expeditions to the city limits, sometimes beyond.  I needed an upgrade for high school; I found a spotless antique 3 speed Raleigh, the cultural English workhorse collecting dust in an unlikely garage for $50.

I kept it through two foster homes. The first one kept me busy with farm chores, but the second was back in town. There, I had the bike back, and as an aside, they had a phenomenally sophisticated wall sized sound system: reel-to-reel and amazing headphones. I would forget myself in records: Sgt. Peppers, Genesis, Yes, etc, and another favorite. Just a guitar and piano instrumental album with a simple melody called Bricklayer’s Beautiful Daughter. Something about that one song in particular I heard faint glimmerings of contentment that was denied to me.  I would replay it to cling to this hint of a simple happiness I didn’t understand; that if it was in the song, it was somewhere deep in me.
Without a car for 10 years, one used 10-speed or another got me to various eccentric jobs.  

Fast forward to the life-changer, after a divorce. Needing to reconnect with myself, I searched for a decent bike. I found it hanging dusty in the back of a cluttered boutique shop smelling of tire rubber, quiet with racers’ confidence. They had a Lemond thoroughbred on consignment, assembled custom 5 years earlier to race. It was slightly outdated, but a dent on the top tube put it out to pasture. It was steel though, so rideable enough for me.  My entire $300 savings and it was mine. Then I discovered the special pedals needed special shoes, so another month saving for those.  I wasn’t going to wear those silly spiderman outfits, until I started to ride more than 10 miles and my **** demanded it.  And those pockets in the back of the shirt were handy.  I met a friend who taught me how to draft: my skinny wheel a few inches behind the bike in front at 20 mph, to save precious energy in the slipstream. Truly dangerous, vulnerable, and effectively blinded; but he pointed at the ground with various hand signals to warn of upcoming road hazards. I was touched by this wordless language of trust and camaraderie. This innate concern is essential to the sport, even among competitors, so it seems to attract quality people I liked.  My new life expanded with friends.

I discovered biking exercise could stabilize the life-long effects of brain injury, lost some weight, grew stronger, and started setting goals.  First longer group rides, then a century (100 miles in one ride), then mountain biking: epic fun in nature, unadulterated happiness.  Then novice racing, then the next category up with a team, then a triathlon.  It became an admitted obsession but I won a pair of socks or bike parts every now and then.  Eventually tattooed two bike chains around my ankle, one twisted and the other broken.  I loved the lifestyle, and had truly reinvented and rediscovered myself.

A 500 mile ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles with fellow wounded veterans helped dissipate the old shame from the military.  I had joined the ride to raise money for a good cause.  I respected the program and knew personally that cycling had changed my life.  They turned out to be inspiring, helping me more than I could have helped them.  Some had only just started riding a bike for only a few weeks, some were amputees fit with special-made adapters on regular bikes, some had no legs using hand cycles.  They all joined on to the task of riding 500 miles. No one whined, and helping each other finish the day was the only goal.  While riding with them, I began to open up about my experience.  I found a few others who also had TBI, and we could laugh about similar mishaps.  The other veterans didn’t judge me about anything, like when I was injured, the nature of my disability, how much I did or didn’t accomplish. I had signed up just like them, had to recover back to a functioning life just like them.  It was the first time in my life that whole chapter in my life was accepted; I wasn't odd, and they helped close the shame on that old chapter.  (Thank you, R2R.)  The next year I took a 1500 mile self-supported bike trip through western mountain ranges with my husband and soulmate, whom I had met mt. biking.

There was one late Spring day, finally warm after a long winter, when I just wanted to ride for a few hours by myself.  No speedometer or training intervals, just enjoy the park road winding under the trees. I had downloaded some new music on the IPod, a sampler from the library.  I felt happy.  Life is Good.  Rounding a bend by the river, coasting through sunbeams sparkling the park’s peaceful road, my earphones unexpectedly played Bricklayer’s Beautiful Daughter.  I hadn’t heard that simple guitar tune in three decades.  My God, time suddenly disappeared.  I was right back in the forgotten foster home, listening for the faint silver threads of the contentment I was feeling at this very moment on the bike.  The full force of this sudden connection, the wholeness of the life and unity of myself in one epiphany, brought me to tears. I found myself pouring my heart into praying hang in there, girl, hang in there, you’ll find it and I felt my younger self hearing echoes of birds singing in new green leaves.

De-winged and flightless
         is the dragonfly
              that tried to slip by
                       in my slipstream,
It found instead the pickup
          traversing the alleyways
               of my convoluted imagination.
I don’t know why I’m driving,
          ever driving someplace
                unrealized and unexplored.
I feel so disconnected,
I feel so disrespected by the world
                sometimes
But that’s not fair
           it has been good to me.
I feel so disconnected
        sometimes
and yet it comes in times
           when I’m most consumed
                most surrounded.
Maybe I’m just tired
        and the walls around me quiver only
from the struggles of my waking eyes,
Maybe I’m just bitter
        that I can’t have the perfect life
                 and feel as if nothing could be better,
Maybe I’m affected
        by this liquid life I’m draining from my cup
                 in hopes of finding a different day
                                            at the bottom.
Is it jealousy that lingers in my mind
        or mere longing tinged with a heavy
                 dose of confusion?
I am confused.
And yet I’m still alive
        unlike my dragonfly
                  and so I stumble onward.

-*BRD

I went to sleep in a slipstream
Woke to a world gone mad
Red ran like a river down barren streets
All was upside down
The sky was a seamless grey
People were black and white
Lost in an old time movie
The sight filled me with fright

I heard a hideous laughter
A one eyed magician poked me straight
Pick a card, he said
Pick a card or forever exist in exile
before it is all too late...

“One of the effects of living with electronic information is that we live habitually in a state of information overload.”                                                      
                                                                                      Marshall McLuhan
So, let’s review:
Man is a thinking animal.
Stanley Kubrick took us to space to get us to think.
Marshall McLuhan:  “There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.”
Hemetucky: what was I thinking?
The Rapture for the 1%:   The Language of the World and The Language of Enthusiasm explains why Sir Richard  Branson’s ****** Galactic will only be taking the richest among us to space.
Ian (Limey Futurologist) Pearson:  “Binary is already the dominant language on Planet Earth with today’s machines having more conversations in 24 hours than the whole of humankind since the birth of Eve.”
Larry Flynt:  “**** is the answer to everything.”
Goofy:  “Yeah, I ****** Minnie. I shagged her rotten, baby!”  
Winston Smith:  “Do it to Julia!”
McNugget Buddies:   “Parts is parts.”                                          
Stunod: “Donuts-a -spella backwards issa stunod.” Think about it.
Tony Soprano.  “You ****** stunod, it's a joke.” (Stunod:  in southern dialect Italian means stupid, or a stupid person) http://(www.urbandictionary.com) define.php?term = stunod  / buy stunod mugs & shirts
Marshall McLuhan:    “Jokes are grievances.”
Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino:  “Antonio Gramsci thought that Stalin and Bolshevism could save him and Italy from Fascism:  stunod.”
The Cloud:  My acceptance of the Cloud into my life and my changeling cyborg self is by no means a capitulation to the surfing life.
Paulo Coehlo:  “The God you seek; that someone who awaits you is you.”
Howard Beale:  “That’s the God *******.”
God:   “Because you’re on television, stunod!”
The Elders of Zion:  Nu?
Meir Kahane:  “Let us not suffer from a national amnesia that causes us to forget who and what we are. No trait is more justified than revenge in the right time and place. I know that American and Israeli elections must be limited only to those who understand that the Arabs are the deadly enemy of the Jewish state, who would bring on us a slow Auschwitz - not with gas, but with knives and hatchets. Vote for Newt!”

**** Jagger:    “Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out” (40th Anniversary Edition, Rolling Stones)
Keith Richards +Fijian palm tree = Stunod.  
Marshall McLuhan:   “The more the data banks record about each of us, the less we exist.”    
Howard Beale: “If there's anybody out there that can look around this demented slaughterhouse of a world we live in and tell me that man is a noble creature, believe me: That man is not only full of *******, that man is  stunod.”
The Nam, Part I:   a demented slaughterhouse within a microcosm and grains of beach sand inside micro-Cosmo Kramer’s shorts. When I was in the Kingdom of The Nam I was always under the influence of some drug, mostly my own pure adrenaline when scared shitless--a frequent condition for me—not only my own piquant adrenal juice but other stuff like ****, hash, Thai stick, *****, amphetamines, H-Horse ******, quaaludes, horse tranquilizers and Russian *****. The drugs were always a welcome and needed friend, a respite from the horrors of war in Southeast Asia. To meditate & levitate, to transmigrate & navigate, to negotiate & regurgitate myself, I needed a head start if I was going to SLIDE through what would be called a wormhole today, making a three-dimensional movement between different parallel universes, a conquest of time and space. Cue our favorite narrator:
Rod Serling:  “You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension--a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You're moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You've just crossed over into the Twilight Zone.”
WWII, Part I:  A slider now, I SLIDE to my father’s war—the War in Europe in the years before V.E. Day, May 8, 1945. Suddenly I’m flipped right out of the jungle to Germania, to Deutschland in the winter of 1945. I am a P.O.W. of the Germans, sent out into the economy as slave labor. It’s February in Dresden, Germany, the Baroque capital of the German state of Saxony, the city called lovingly by her (****!) many lovers: “The Florence of the Elbe.” It was a long time ago, during the war and I Survived to Tell the Tale. I am a wet floppy Kilgore Trout; I’ve flopped right out of the Twilight Zone into what appears to be an underground meat locker in Dresden. There are animal carcasses hanging from the ceiling and the building is known as Slaughterhouse Number 5. I am a lucky ******* because even though I don’t know it yet, I’m in the safest place in the entire city. Cue the Bombing of Dresden, a strategic military bombing by the British Royal Air Force (RAF) and the United States Army Air Force (USAAF).  In four raids, 1,300 heavy bombers dropped more than 3,900 tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices on Dresden. The resulting firestorm destroyed 15 square miles (39 square kilometers) of the city centre and killed many thousands, according to **** figures-- largely discredited by the victors who not only get the spoils but get to spin the history any which way but loose. Casualty figures were 200,000 and death toll estimates went as high as 500,000. Or maybe just 25,000 total, if you believe the ******* Anglo-American valkyries who unleashed the wrath of Khan’s Smoking Joe’s Barbecue Ribs and Hotlinks. Win a war, get a medal and a seat in Congress, maybe the White House; lose a war, get indicted. You’re going to Nuremberg, pilgrim, or the ******* Hague.
Kurt Vonnegut: “World War II was over and I was standing in the middle of Times Square with a Purple Heart on and a purple hard-on.”
Colonel Kurtz:  “We fight for the land that's under our feet, the gold that's in our hands, women that worship the power in our *****.  I summon fire from the sky. Do you know what it is to be a white man who can summon fire from the sky? ...What it means? You can live and die for these things, not silly ideals that are always betrayed  . . . I swallowed a bug. Who are you, captain?”
Willard:   “Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste. I've been around for a long long year, stolen many man's soul and faith. Stuck around St. Petersburg when I saw it was a time for a change. Killed the Tsar and his ministers, Anastasia screamed in vain. I rode a tank, held a gen'rals rank when the blitzkrieg raged and the bodies stank. Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name.”  
WWII, Part II:  The bombing of Dresden had to have been some kind of a violation of some International Code or Geneva Convention. But, of course, the bombers, the Victors, ran the Nuremberg show trials. The bombees didn’t get a chance to say much, didn’t want to make a fuss, seeing how generous the Army of Occupation was with their coal, gasoline, clothing and food handouts. But I was there when it was safe to climb out of the meat locker, and immediately got put to work on the après les bombes clean-up. I was there doing the ***** work, a corpse miner, tasked with collecting the fried grasshopper remains of so many unlucky Krauts who were simply burned alive, like heretics at the Inquisition. So it goes.
William Tecumseh Sherman: “War is Hell, Babaloo!”
Colonel Kilgore: “You can either surf, or you can fight!”
Sam Bottoms: “I dropped a tab of acid at the Do-Long Bridge, so I think I’ll surf for awhile: ‘I see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour.’ Reading Blake: for years it was the only way I could block out the war, that and losing myself in a bunch of undercover assignments. Yeah, it was William Blake, I-Spy and lots more acid; that how I dealt with PTSD.”
The Nam, Part II, LT DAN:  “Good job, trooper; those ******* drugs got you coming and going, sliding so fast you’ve missed latrine duty 3 times this month. Now go get 5 gallons of diesel fuel and gasoline, mix it together and torch that ******* feces, soldier.”
** Chi Minh:  “This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no fooling around.”
***** Friedman:   “The Democrats and Republicans are the same guy admiring himself in the mirror.”

Muhammad Hosni El Sayed Mubarak:   “Vote for Pedro.”
Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard:    “Fight Fiercely!”
Marshall McLuhan:    “I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t believed it.”
The Author:   I am a disaffected angry old man, formerly a disaffected angry young man; a Hopi-Italian Jew with Chinese offspring, namely my left-brained son, a mathematical genius but having a tough time dealing with idiots, the many truly stunod people in the world.  Then there’s my Rose, my sweet King Lear-jet daughter, like her half-brother, not yet finished paying for my sins. My offspring are haunted, visited upon daily by their father’s  ghosts, ghosts created, ghosts hovering over me, from wars hot and cold and peace lukewarm and cloudy, like the uranium ground contamination on the mesa, visited upon mothers and infants  and children who seek only a glass of cool water from the spring not to be glow worms in the dark, leukocytes made insane by something in the water. My sins, a father’s sins; things I did to curry favor, to ingratiate and advance myself with the 1%, things I did to get ahead in life, to get what I thought my father and others in the ancestral slipstream had failed to get, twice to the Rabbi for a get (Hebrew: גט‎, plural gittin גיטין), to get the edge my kids need now, the edge I never had, and life reduced to an exercise in ultimate combat, little more than a cage fight, man against man and God against all. The things I did for money and position shame me now. And shame is a large  source of my anger.  I will remain angry. I will hang on to my anger at God and myself and all who have been disappointed in me, by me, especially the cavalcade of short-term caretakers, women used, abused, left behind and forgotten. Why am I me? Sometimes I think that’s the way I’m programmed. But it’s okay, like Gaga: “I'm beautiful in my way 'Cause God makes no mistakes I'm on the right track, baby I was born this way' Cause God makes no mistakes, I'm on the right track, baby, I was born this way and will I continue to surf the Cloud: even though God is dead and I don’t believe you, or me, or them.
Basic: remember Basic?

10   A IS FOR ANGER NEXT 20
20   START STEP TWO ANGER KUBLER-ROSS INFINITE LOOP
30   GOTO 10
10   A IS FOR ANGER NEXT 20
20   START STEP TWO ANGER KUBLER-ROSS INFINITE LOOP
30  GOTO 10
10   A IS FOR ANGER NEXT 20
20   START STEP TWO ANGER KUBLER-ROSS INFINITE LOOP
30 A IS FOR ANGER NEXT 30
30  GOTO 10 Ad infinitum

The world is a Bersinski painting
The rain is a Plath poem
The night is a Fellini film
The day is a Bach cello Suite
Our love is a winter fable
Cold, warm and passing.

The stars are drips of milk
The wind is God breathing
The sky is a floating mirror
The grass is mother earth’s hair
Her ***** is the earth
Shapely, comely and nurturing

French roast coffee is the turning of pages
A scandalous book in a leather bound cover

The Snow outside is the harp strings strumming
Flaking specs falling lightly and patiently

The city is a never-ending waltz
The *** lives are directed by Bertolucci
The homeless vagrants are saints in rags
The People walking are sinners
Each a sphere within a sphere
A world within a world

The theaters are abandoned rib cages
The poets are Russian matryoshka dolls
The painters are lost children
The eyes are broken, stained glass
Your arms and body are home to me
Cradle me, soothe me and touch

Those words won’t do it this time
Sometimes the silence is what I need

And you with me, away from it all

For all of my coastie dad's wisdom
My summers spent learning to sail
My affinity for swimming since I was three
The countless snorkeling trips
The hours spent in canoes and kayaks
The trips paddle boarding and whitewater rafting
Somehow
I'm still petrified
By the rushing numbered current
Of a digital stream

i never told you this, but:
i didn’t want to say “yes” when you asked me on our first date.
i was thinking of someone in buffalo
who was (at the same time) making playlists with my name in the title
and sending me poems in the mail.
you were just on my periphery,
something of a backup –
until you weren’t,
until you were
everything.

all summer, we were just kids kissing on the beach
just sweaty palms, just chasing trains --
until suddenly it became
running down the hallway of the hospital
and sneaking into the radiology ward,
losing my mind in the waiting room
and holding your hand, twisted up in tubes.
i’ll never forget the way you looked at me that week
and i’ll always remember
making out in the x-ray room,
the nurses on the other side of the door
and wondering if the man behind the divider could hear you
when you told me you loved me for the first time

the truth is:
it’s not fair that you stopped wanting me
and started wanting her,
just because she was convenient
and i was far away

maybe one day i’ll stop being angry,
maybe it’ll stop feeling like someone pulled all my bones from the sockets,
maybe one day i’ll stop missing you so much
and maybe, someday, my body will stop feeling
like a burial ground

but in this moment,
like a stupid animal,
my heart is still waiting
for you to come home.

i don’t know how to tell it you aren’t coming.

Walking home alone on Saturday night,
social sounds spilling around me then
fading in my slipstream,
I round the corner of my street and
an image of your face rises
to combat the cold that searches for
the marrow of my bones.
Hope flutters like a wounded bird into
the pale sky of a vision desperate
with longing.

Forgive my physical hunger.
You were right to deny it
because by morning
you had given me
a far greater nourishment.

All oceans would this navigator discover
seven seas in seven years did he roam
whist sparkling stars in the heavens tried so hard
yet this broken navigator could not get back home

So he bites on solar winds and sails
to a place of many days of doldrums
this place so stagnant and most morose
he had to his sins, has to wait with his kin within

His crew are that hard of salty seafaring kind
with maps written on their faces cracked by sun and salt
they his, had only ****** smells and shells
call them hero's as seven seas they did horridly sea's fought

This was his last voided slipstream event
these mariners by the cut of their gibe
prayed to an Egyptian Hero some call Alligator
for he is the first and last of Navigator

So whist this captain of mapped minds falls
his company will care for his last orders
for they have witnessed in ancient tears
and the breaking of the navigator

Oh fly the flag and be proud
live poetry with passion long and loud
let your heart embrace this creature proud
whist you watch the breaking of the Navigator


By Christos Andreas Kourtis aka NeonSolaris



By NeonSolaris
© 2013 NeonSolaris (All rights reserved)

“some say love is a burning thing. that it makes a fiery ring.”

so kiss her.
or don’t.
and always regret.
always bike home thinking.
always think of love.

she’s in a parking lot somewhere drinking cheap wine,
balancing on the bumper.
he’s on the river somewhere drinking cheap beer,
balancing boulders.

a dog sprints by and forgets all heartache.
he is happy.

the town and the people and the job and the dreams.
the nothings
and the everythings.
and the little life this is.

to slipstream years gone by.
one fire in the sky, or another in the hills
just west of town.
something said about the smoke.
we take a weekend to spool through the story of your folks.
film cans or video cassettes,
or home re-sets. rewind.

words and faces scrawled in a tome of note.
spoken little memories,
little mysteries.
stories to tell no one.
stories to tell those who will listen.

the boys with dirtbike brothers.
the brothers with drunken fathers.
the fathers with dead wives.
the wives with ancient mothers.
the mothers and their children.
and the children living well enough.
living calm, then free.
far away, then close.

an empire.
of highways and histories.
of songs and the souls they swing.
of old money/new money,
betrayal on the horizon.
blacktop jamborees and assassinations.
driveways and nicely neighborhood lit-upon lawns.
well-trimmed trees.
a never-ending tree of lovers,
grasped and gasping for the sky.
listen and wait.
for the sun to kiss the moon goodbye.

                              [a family and their dog.]

this chrysalis.
this coincidence that is us, on one good gust.
from heart to hand to sons and daughters.
synchronized to die and revive and imbibe along the ride.
a tableau of animalia.
feasting and sleeping and awoken
by the wide little world all around.

“we are fires in the night. let us bathe you in our light.”

I've been looking at the world from a different perspective

IG filters and Snapchat interceptions

I was off the grid,  I am now in inception

Social media dance floors
no escape or exceptions

what do you stand for?
put your hands in the septic

so your arms can take all the **** that
Your legs normally dealt with

Apartment, complex complicated life consequences

Brothers life deciphered
into the trenches

Despite all of the help we lent him

Life can be a loan when you are alone
It can get expensive

Don't own a home,
but I could show you what rent is

I could show you what hustle is,
I'm that relentless

Slick mouth, silver tounge...this is manifested

Bike peddling, rebelling Ambidextrous

Quiet devilish, my medicine makes most hella lit

I speak in crooked tongues like most nuns who settle with

Being Singular minded there Vibes are so celibate

A courier in this Corredor settlement

How do I, in these times, stay not high but relevant

I'm confined in thin lines, tell them **** time,
if the sunshine, makes us dumb blind

Like retail and it's details with the big signs

See this conclusion is just a visual illusion
A cesspool in the mainstream visual pollution

This vortex is just a digital confusion
Digits to acidic, hash tags for the lab rats to abuse them

watch me slipstream into a hazmat suit and snap back to an audience all the toxics that I'm using

my minds a clock incapsulated in the bottom of a backpack but only in math class, I state facts for your amusement

How can you do this?! Who the **** are you kid?!

I'm Duke Nukem with a scorpion fist ready to hiduken!

I'm Isaac Newton with a paint brush when I do this

Painting photosynthesis with my sentences, I conclude with...

Nothing but a chronological order I cause a cascade of disorder

I'm on the edge don't **** with me and my border...can't **** with me I'm the best this visual mess is what your ordered

Silhouettes in moonlit mazes
your tears are complex superstructures.
Superclusters wrinkle I, negative energy,
tunneling through chasms forbidden;
you and I float.

Comes  a sound, depth charged sleeper cell,
a bloop, a mystery, an unsweep,
a whistle, a Julia, a train, a slow down.
Heard by 350,000 zombies.
You and I sleep.

A child derails a train, safe to say,
that the world has its trapdoors.
Its a mystery, they say, but what do they know?
About us and our death.
You and I disorient.

Your two ******* hide a heart,
A mother board center of circulation.
Your body’s iterative delusion
Graces mine. And dissolves me.
You and I disintegrate.

We need to hack the heart,
With absurdity and farce and slipstream:
Into subspecies, we, simians,
We are grateful, gratified.
You and I evaporate

One white page.
One black dot.
One white page
with one black dot.
That is all.
You see it.
Good.
Now wiggle that dot.
Just a tad.
Watch it shake.
A single vibrating cell.
A fly in the wind.
Trembling up. And down.
And down and up and right and left.
It's a ***** smudge
ruining your clean page.
So rub it out .
With your pencil thin rubber.
But it dodges like a boxer's head.
A darting fish.
You want to get rid of it.
You want a clean white page.
Plant your rubber down.
A dramatic staff in the ground
cracks the white soil.
But it circles you.
That fly, that fish,
that blurred boxer.
That singular cell.
It circles your staff.
Your statement.
Magnetically.
A metal ball.
Orbiting your invisible eraser.
To erase the invisible dot.
But it is there.
Circling faster.
Wider.
Angrier.
Leaving a trail behind.
Too fast for the eye.
The sultry smoke of speed.
The slipstream of a cannonball.
The page is warped.
Earthquake epicentre on the A4.
Shook by the fault lines.
Jutting canyons drop down.
Ledges crumble and crash.
Sugared pie crust
hit with a hammer.
Everything collapses.
Invisible things are also under
the spell spell of gravity.
Hit on the head by invisible apples.
But it's not invisible.
It's not a cell.
A fly or smudge.
An agile boxing fish head.
A cannonballing canyon pie.
It's not even a white page.
Nevermind the black dot.
It's nothing.
Not a thing.
Not invisible,
but  the kind of nothing
that can't be seen.
Yet there it is.

For my mate Ernest W who cared....

Invisible in silky strands, a gossamer of lethal thought,
Drifting through the nether regions, touching on my mind.
Complication’s vagaries encroaching on the circumspect
Magnifying well beyond solutions I can find.

Nervous in the groundswell now, I feel it all inflating,
Inflating to a curtaining beyond my self control,
Waves of peristalsis in a shrill persistant keening,
Locking out the sanity in holding logic’s goal.

Waves of peristalsis in a bath of perspiration
Panic in a rupture at the coccyx of my spine,
Ravenously eating at the fabric of all reason
Ravenously gnawing at this rationale of mine.

***** in a puddle on the floor beside my footwear
Cloying is the stench of the ***** in my drawers,
Lost are the vestiges of any thought of decency
Gone is the differentiation in my flaws.

Clenching of hands in a bind of blue confusion
Catatonic slowness in arresting the decline,
Vaccilating eyeballs are rolling for the camera
And utter desolation is a flavour on my mind.

Why be concerned with the shaming of tomorrow?
Why come to terms with the maunderings of late?
Why face the music of the mirth and derision
When there’s a more practical direction to take?

Glide to the realm of the smooth overflowing
Slide in the slipstream oblivion makes,
Slip the bonds of your sad  mortal tenure’s
Awful array of destructive mistakes.

Glide to the realm of serene independence
Glide far away from the troubled and hard,
Gone to the gossamer web of the ether
Gone to the nether world’s silky facade.

...........: But what's the guts Courageous,
You happy with your deed?
Are your friends all overjoyed
To see your suicide succeed?
Is your family unaffected
By the loss and guilt remorse,
Your sudden grand departure
leaving kids without recourse?

Did you think about the aftermath?
The chaos and the pain
And the long term implications
Of your shattered families' shame?
The guilt within your partners heart,
The kids who are confused
And the ****** dissapointment
Of your mates.. who feel abused?

The mess you left behind you
And the tangled web you wove
And the bruising of good memories
For which, you once,...had strove.
Your painless, quick demise, you thought,
Released you from all this.....
But the sadness in the silent eyes
Condemns you as remiss.


Marshalg  
In an effort to understand why?
....And explain why not !
9 December 2010



Read more: http://hellopoetry.com/poem/suicide-12/#ixzz17kzvfsTk

particle flight within sight
movement in motion delight
the faster you go the greater the traction
the broader the front
instant reaction.
      
no world is safe in heavens gate
nothing is conquered so late
try as you might  its always alright
pace out a lifetime-take flight

where are we now in the rush hour of life
what did we gain, in the struggle and strife
why not accept the fate that is ours
settle in grandly, ignore the powers

Author Notes

Optional
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved, a month ago

troll tooth
oger toe 
flow stupid 
fistful of shiny carbon lattice wilt
and a composted halo too
beautifully torn derivatives slid
from this orifice
oven timer set fer 

office space wasted

noob cubed 
these are exponential times we're livin in, sim

yer prolly obsolete, so tap the banner below
for more there's more
trends friend then interrogate 
unfriend those has-been's for the win dim 
naked lightbulbs swing from
threadbare strings faster than light plus **** too 

there's ***** adorno

how right you were 
this **** is almost criminal 
art narcs on

the hole a' truth
so help me dog

im
the hominid 
that stood up 

this fiction.

slipstream hoolahoop no-show

dark cave spiraling up
into jagged spires of silent distances falling
into splintered sunlight

the winds of the river Styx flows  
on a distant shoal and waits
beneath the waxing moon

for the wounded lovers to bloom
into white and blue wild flowers

and into the loving arms
and silken threads of time lost.

Shun individuality,
encourage conformity,
rejected, shunned;       out of place.

Put on your mask,
lets stray outside...
into the slipstream of the mainstream,
and drown in the shallow waters.

Reveal Yourself,
ego dissolves when at peace like a Berroca.
Bring you back to life,
in a spliced moment of clarity.

The ego is society,
your face looks familiar,
but I can't put my finger on your name,
quietly,
we tip toe on the footsteps of the raconteurs,
and forget those that meant the most at moments.

Don't let the mask slip.

Out of time
No rhyme

Slushing the universe
Nibbling the edges

Moving fast and slow
Steady as she goes

It’s inevitable
The inevitable

Until you find slow
Shift: reverse

She just could not believe that she had come
To this

                                        Again

He had  said – Come on – you used to like this
Just for me – and us – it might be good.

- Try
- Please

For me.

Yes – for him.
                                            Again.

So on this chilly day:
Awkward helmet boots and fumbly gloves.
Cold and fear and knees near ears
(The pillion's lot on sports machines.
...and he wouldn't buy the chop...)

They were off, and now she hoped that was not a pun.
She did her best not to wobble and resisted the temptation to put her feet down when they stopped. Ungainly awful Stop Wait, Jerky Action.
An old film forced to watch.  
Miserable claustrophobia in  traffic queues, between a fuel tanker and a hearse.
Hot foul breath of diesel smoke.
  
She felt sick.  
She wanted out.

[The World convulsed, dissolved reformed
Things changed for her for once
For all]



The slipstream coming off the curved bubble above the glowing clocks buffeted her head with a roaring chaos that added to wild riot.  She hooked the next gear and opened the throttle wider.   The determined act of twisting the grip brought her body lower to lie on the tank, and her heart closer to the heart of the engine's breathing fiery centre.   A green high-sided truck disappeared over her shoulder into into her past: into non-existence.  And in front she knew - a climbing curve left and a stiff side wind.   She relished the anticipation of the change, getting ready to shift her weight, her eyes burning up the road - fixing the aiming point at the apex of the bend. Now! - the bike eased off the vertical, and healed into the challenge of a new world order of curve and cross winds.    
An alliance of forces at the Edge:  United,
Poised, and aimed by thought and skill -  the creation and flex of a true sword.    

And the noise!  

The noise was an overwhelming but understood cacophony – the packed high-RPM music of the Engine - loud and hard.  
The blaring exhaust and the tyre roar and the wind...
Coming at her from the left now.  She bucked and weaved a little with road bumps and sideways forces - a muscular fish in a torrent - but these were trivial disturbances.  
Together they were the embodiment of an Act of Will and Purpose -
THIS course THIS speed.  
She wanted more.  

More power, more speed - so more lean to hold it
With now a less than perfect gear change in the mix.  
A sudden bump absorbed by the suspension, and the left hand wing mirror blazes with a shower of sparks from the grounded footpeg arcing back into the dusk.  The rear tyre briefly spins in mid air – the engine screaming to the rev limiter - and returns to tarmac with a zwip.    A rictus of mortality  and terror shudder the bike -
A whiff of Death that lets her live.
This time.

They were through the moment.  

And she had kept the throttle wide.


Courage.  

No substitute. And its sometime close friend -

Instinct.

You live by them together or not at all.  

This curve was ending, and the speed extreme
Almost – Supernatural.

Difficult to hold her head forward against
The flat of the wind's hand held up in her way:
“An end to your defiance!”  

But she was not to be turned aside.   The landscape could only be seen clearly about a mile ahead - All else was pulsing blur:  
An unwinding ribbon of dark green and blue and orange - like a star field at jump to light speed.  But the moment held forever visceral –  remembered forever.       She thought her heart would burst with the joy of being alive on this edge -  
At this time  
Of all time.  

She knew -

There would be more curves and cross-winds
But Now - she was Up Front, In Charge
and,  BY GOD she shouted with the wind
SHE WAS GOING FOR IT!

I

Under a hollow sky
grey worn concrete listens
scream of a solitary car.

“Just want to write something. anything. been too long. Mind, liquid pencil. You know.”

Jazz tickets on the dash.
(solo performer – no net over absurdity)

“Write about that..”

Street lamps recede infinitely
fathomless ether’s lost
slipstream of rust swallows all.

“See what he’s like first.”…”Your call.”

There’s a tug, a pull towards
the light and motion
the swirling abstraction
luminescent dance in glass and shadow
seeping out of brocades of steel and concrete

the city at night
night tides thick with colour.

“Empty road, inviting city. Very Kerouacian.”

Car screams a little louder.

The outskirts come into view.

II

Empty streets repeat in circle
asphalt constant self devouring.

Neon hums, street lamps chatter
sidewalk smoke ripples
reflections upon reflections.

Jazz tickets slide across the dash.

Chicken broth of ancient forever
rides night airs
long ago memories
fast filing seats, flavours upon flavours.

Logic abandoned
signs abandoned
knowing abandoned
we just follow the way.

Neon roar echoes in hollow factory caves
colourless flames abstract burn.

There, under the
Ashen Dragons gaze
empty seats, luck that can’t be passed up.

We eat noodles under starlight.

Ashen Dragon, indomitable
keeps flickering,
and flickering.

III

Stage lights roll.

Red light
hangs in dust.

In the hall, over the seats, over the stage.

Jazz tickets now stubs now becoming cranes.

Silence, bass ambles forth.
First steps turn into
stumbles, tumbles,
scrapes, hacks,
accumulation of mistakes
collective hang in red dust.

He tries everything. Arco, pizzicato,
bass as percussion – devoid thumps.

He’s patient though. Amidst the inferno,
there’s the sense, the knowing, he’ll find the way.

He stops. Stops seeking. Turns to sought.

IV (Musical Interlude)

A thread only he can see
faint, and fainter still gossamer.
bow swish arc, tentatively ensnared
dark enigma thread entwined among bow strings
a weave drawn into a screen
across the stage wall.

Abstractions start to turn into form.

Pizzicato dance
chips away,
immortal peaks of gleaming jade.

Arco slide
carves away,
innumerable valleys of shining emerald.

Tips and taps
river flows, duckweed and herons
hermit huts in forest and moss
troops of gibbons with melodious howls.

Tunings align with heavens changes
cherry blossoms bounce on singing winds
oriole songs drift through five willow forests
recluse paths swept clean of tumbled pine cones
pines rest under blankets of silent white.

Across the stage
crafted in pregnant emptiness
the ancient forever
in a down town dive.

Two cranes rest on a table.

V

Re-emergence under the
hollow sky.

“…there’s truth in abstraction.”

Ashen Dragon
still flickers.

Chicken broth
still lingers.

Empty seats,
still luck runs.

Noodles under starlight,
and sky grey caravans.

“Nice title…hanging around?”
“Catch the train back, gotta write this.”
“See you soon. Stay safe kid.”

Ashen eyes flicker
words clatter by under a neon gaze.

And so I slipped into the mirror;
finally after years of staring, I saw the ripple.

I crossed over into fantasy, a paradise, my personal wonderland.
I wonder where I'll land.

And down I go into the unknown,
Red string theories, space and time; time and space.
Running on the endless slipstream
And so I open my eyes and overcome the race.

I opened my eyes and to my surprise I stood before the garden;
I opened my eyes and to my surprise I stood before the Queen.
I opened my eyes and to my surprise; I was falling again.

Free fall into my dream,
Dance with me and by my queen;
This is my reality, grab my hand and walk through the mirror with me.

Handclaps, trapped, you are another clapped out hasbeen fading on the subtle regret of a haunted dancefloor,that echoes to a trapdoor of your reflection ,deep on a stained echo of  a fatigued stand up romance  fall at the feet of saints part time actors on shadows of downbeat sadness ,that chance meeting fall out from insight to quicksand that pours on a sinking fragrence of pitiful sadness and tide tiredness of desert slipstream and fragile happiness to upturned madness ,undressed to a ****** round of applause that maps teach us to follow to a statue frozen and silent .

You are still waters that run deep;

a challenge some may say.

But to me, your closed emotions

are like a test to see



if I can crack you open.



You're not one to spill your secrets

yet every time we talk

whether it be cellular device

or heart to heart in person

I notice



(for intrinsically I notice everything hidden and important not seen with the naked eye)



I notice you slip

some of your most shielded

vulnerabilities

and I catch them

with soft cold hands



(because for some reason or other my hands are always cold)



with soft cold hands warmed

by your toasty rough ones warmed

by your sensible muttering warmed

by your discreet aspirations warmed by your witty attitude.



I like that we can be waggish

together like two jesters

high strung.



My facetious view on life is somewhat wrought with doubt.



My senseless family drama scaling backwards for months on end.

Return is what I want; a sense of peacefulness whereas I'm pulled into the flighty nature of my parents' inconsistencies and my aunts' finicky nature when all I want is for everyone to get along.



You have your barriers drawn and  sometimes and I don't mind it.



We are emotional opposites, bouncing off each other like ping pong *****, but in this scenario it works because we've both got paddles and are willing to play.



That's what I see in you.

An ever-eager possibility;

passionate in your politics,

loyal to your friends,

leader in some circumstances

when I am at a loss for words.



And you spark a sort of electric chord within me, plugging right into my frontal lobe, sparking my interest, lighting up my receptors.



My neurons have never been this happy before; I have never in my life had a romantic reciprocal relationship like this before.



Nothing has prepared me for this.

This floundering of feelings, sloppy, spilling, leaking out of the cauldron every time we speak.



You are boiling broth, a frothy drink I've put up to my lips and sipped from, a drink I did not order but delightful all the same.



You are still waters that run deep;

a sensual spice of parsley or dill that can lighten up any dish;

and it doesn't take a genius to see how much I need a person like you in my life to challenge every predisposition of romance I've seen, read, fantasized or imagined.



Caught in the slipstream of figuring out my future after the new year has yet to arrive. There's still so much to work out; there's still so much hope I have brimming inside me even after my confessions, even after I've asked for forgiveness and complacency.



Where there's hope and forgiveness, there's also peace.



Maybe all it took was the repetition of swimming pools in dreams this past week to understand where I stand. I'm not drowning anymore.

I'm on the edge of the pool looking into clear waters, finding the wise guide of my blue water dragon

and his humongous whiskered face

staring straight at me, into me, telling me that I have all the strength I need to overcome the obstacles. I need not cling to fear any longer. I need not hide away, like I've done in the past, behind thick curtains to blot out the light.



My only constant now is the sun rising and the moon waning.



You are still waters that run deep;

a sure-bound belief



that everything will be okay.

I was lost, afloat but adrift
I was trapped, with wings but clipped
I was asleep, stuck in a looping dream
I was gasping, though I knew how to breathe.

Then you shone a light, so I could see within
The fog vanished, and the curtains parted
I was repulsed, aghast, ashamed
But you never judged, just asked questions

Questions that needed answers
Questions that I had never asked
Questions that the world had forgotten to pose
Questions that I still struggle to grasp

What you mean to me, is the hardest question to answer
Soulmate, my one and only, my other half
These are just words, they are but bluster
My love is endless, my soul is now attached

It is a kite that has found a string, and now flies with the wind
A moon that swims the sky, scratched and pockmarked, yet dancing
A river that knows its mark, the sea, the abyss, the void
yet it tumbles and turns, meanders and churns

I gather the dust, I reflect the stars
I look further and further, within and without
I have no fear, of the dark unknown
I am touched by an angel, and she guides me home

On the cusp of usurping the dominance of sadness, with a light in the flesh, I fly towards the moon to meet her...

I'm overflowing with light, just at the sight of your star-crossed smile, I think we'll be here for a while, watching time dissolve until this "while" loses meaning, and singing, we wander the cosmos in thought, together...

The problem is in thought and thought alone, only there does creation still carry itself through this dream, only in thought will we remain asleep. To relinquish all fear, will that make us God, or, bring upon a wholly different awakening... Are we still dreaming?

Soaring through the sky and slipping between realms, so I continue to dream...

I don’t care if I have to drive my auto in manual, I still will go to your side, for you are the sun-kissed star shine so many a night I have sought.  
For so many years I have fought, the urge to slip into the slipstream, becoming one with the wind. We have all sinned, and only through love can we find absolution, you and I are the solution for one another...

I sit at my computer sipping *** and orange, and all I can see are your pristine aqua eyes, paragon pools other metaphors envy.

This I call calm curiosity, the enthrallment ethereal, a cosmos contained within emptiness, you bring forth a warmth that for so long has been absent; sure it’s just our imagination, but hell, that’s the true creator behind the veil is it not?

Emptiness enthralls, curiosity captures, but for a moment, only if that moment can be perceived, to preserve false perfection, protection of an age old illusion. Avoid illumination within the void lest you wish the truth set you free. Radiated pain permits perception, however reluctant, and it is now that I know simply, that I am among the living. How few are actually left...

In this vicious cycle, the sickle swings faster and faster, nearing my nimble end if ever I slip away..

                  Ahh concrete heaven to kiss me good day...

I see the strings that hold us up, except the marionette has gone and we ourselves play this charade nonchalantly as if there were nothing else...

         Take away all movement within a moment and what is there? Who are we behind the many masks we wear?
          I walk around with this semblance of humanity, practically profound yet lost atop the cosmic carousel we call life. watch me wither and breach the barriers, illusion within illusion, to hear the calliope muted subconsciously, to awaken from this dream would that make me God? Or shall I simply disappear behind padded walls?
I think being this close makes me feel so far away, and now I know I am far more human than I give myself credit.

stretching on the carpet
alone
listening to a video
about ancient Mesopotamia
an approximation of a yoga routine
and I go to take a ****
thinking about Hammurabi

"the law was made between two rivers"
i think, and sigh
letting my stream go

Fear of fears and cruelty.
Abandoned and haunted by silence
A silhouette tear, statuesque frozen through years of permofrost drama,
like the anguish of youth, a conundrum to sterile,
a truth of whispers fly bye-bye to the ghost in your closet.
Now a skeleton of has been purpose that sails by on a slipstream of memory,
biting tongues caress the heartbeat of your anguish,
sweet lullabies dance to the frozen tears.

We counted seventeen that morning,
driving in circles around Greenbelt Park.
Biding time before preschool drop-off,
we moved in measured paces beneath
a verdant canopy of oak and Virginia pine,
crossing diminutive rivulets repeatedly,
revisiting the same downed tree limbs
and tired park signs, disappearing and
reappearing in mist, our languorous
revolutions seemingly interminable,
each lap lost behind our slipstream.

It was a game we played together,
my daughter and I, circumnavigating
that slight road and counting the deer.
We tallied the bucks, does, and fawns
in plain sight, either ignorant or bold.
Vigilant, we watched for minuscule
movements beyond the windshield,
subtle stirrings in the understory:
a foreleg caught in a confusion of ferns;
a white tail, brazen, above the blueberries
or hovering, a clump of cotton atop holly;
caramel eyes cupped in mountain laurel—
ephemeral proof, woodland intimations.

Most days, we saw nothing
but familiar creatures as we
circled, spinning our wheels.
If we parked on the shoulder,
the black ribbon of bitumen
seemed to move beneath us still,
a vinyl track playing under tires,
daughter and I locked in place—
two diamonds at the tip of a needle,
skipping across prosaic grooves.

But the morning of the seventeen!
The moon hung dilatory in the sky,
a winking crescent eye, opaline.
And with each loop, the number grew.

-------------------------------------

Two years later, I circle back,
my daughter and I walking
toward a black fishing pier,
gulls etching invisible lines
into an aquamarine sky.

I ask her if she remembers
those rides before preschool,
if she remembers the morning
we saw those seventeen deer.
We pause, waves washing
white sea foam over our feet.  
She looks beyond the breakers,
taking in the horizon’s hard line,
a crisp indigo seam that appears
to stitch the round world straight.
One hand rests on her bony hip;
the other grips a shell-filled pail.
She turns, sizing me up with the
cold skepticism of a six year old,
and shakes her head in disbelief.
She tells me I’ve got it all wrong:
It couldn’t have been that many.

I’m tempted to argue. Instead,
I ask her, why does that number
(seventeen!) seem too high.

She looks at me, incredulous.
What am I trying to prove?
She speaks in small measures,
makes herself perfectly clear:

We were driving
in circles, Daddy,
and the deer,
the deer,
they move.

At once the horizon bends,
azure arc in space and time;
gulls stall in midair, snapshots
above suspended breakers. Silence.
Suddenly I’m back in Greenbelt Park,
treading nimbly, veiled by ivy screens,
leaping broken dogwoods cantilevered
over precious shallow streams,
muscles, ears, and eyes electrified.
I see as the unseen eighteenth deer
would have seen us—two creatures
harnessed in a restless death machine,
recumbent gods marking territory.

Around again. Wait.
Another close orbit.
Scrutinize red taillights
fading to distance and
then explode, vaulting
across alien asphalt,
hard halo of misery:
unnumbered,
exalted,
infinite.