I

In that November off Tehuantepec,
The slopping of the sea grew still one night
And in the morning summer hued the deck

And made one think of rosy chocolate
And gilt umbrellas. Paradisal green
Gave suavity to the perplexed machine

Of ocean, which like limpid water lay.
Who, then, in that ambrosial latitude
Out of the light evolved the morning blooms,

Who, then, evolved the sea-blooms from the clouds
Diffusing balm in that Pacific calm?
C'etait mon enfant, mon bijou, mon ame.

The sea-clouds whitened far below the calm
And moved, as blooms move, in the swimming green
And in its watery radiance, while the hue

Of heaven in an antique reflection rolled
Round those flotillas. And sometimes the sea
Poured brilliant iris on the glistening blue.

                        II

In that November off Tehuantepec
The slopping of the sea grew still one night.
At breakfast jelly yellow streaked the deck

And made one think of chop-house chocolate
And sham umbrellas. And a sham-like green
Capped summer-seeming on the tense machine

Of ocean, which in sinister flatness lay.
Who, then, beheld the rising of the clouds
That strode submerged in that malevolent sheen,

Who saw the mortal massives of the blooms
Of water moving on the water-floor?
C'etait mon frere du ciel, ma vie, mon or.

The gongs rang loudly as the windy booms
Hoo-hooed it in the darkened ocean-blooms.
The gongs grew still. And then blue heaven spread

Its crystalline pendentives on the sea
And the macabre of the water-glooms
In an enormous undulation fled.

                        III

In that November off Tehuantepec,
The slopping of the sea grew still one night
And a pale silver patterned on the deck

And made one think of porcelain chocolate
And pied umbrellas. An uncertain green,
Piano-polished, held the tranced machine

Of ocean, as a prelude holds and holds,
Who, seeing silver petals of white blooms
Unfolding in the water, feeling sure

Of the milk within the saltiest spurge, heard, then,
The sea unfolding in the sunken clouds?
Oh! C'etait mon extase et mon amour.

So deeply sunken were they that the shrouds,
The shrouding shadows, made the petals black
Until the rolling heaven made them blue,

A blue beyond the rainy hyacinth,
And smiting the crevasses of the leaves
Deluged the ocean with a sapphire blue.

                        IV

In that November off Tehuantepec
The night-long slopping of the sea grew still.
A mallow morning dozed upon the deck

And made one think of musky chocolate
And frail umbrellas. A too-fluent green
Suggested malice in the dry machine

Of ocean, pondering dank stratagem.
Who then beheld the figures of the clouds
Like blooms secluded in the thick marine?

Like blooms? Like damasks that were shaken off
From the loosed girdles in the spangling must.
C'etait ma foi, la nonchalance divine.

The nakedness would rise and suddenly turn
Salt masks of beard and mouths of bellowing,
Would--But more suddenly the heaven rolled

Its bluest sea-clouds in the thinking green,
And the nakedness became the broadest blooms,
Mile-mallows that a mallow sun cajoled.

                        V

In that November off Tehuantepec
Night stilled the slopping of the sea.
The day came, bowing and voluble, upon the deck,

Good clown... One thought of Chinese chocolate
And large umbrellas. And a motley green
Followed the drift of the obese machine

Of ocean, perfected in indolence.
What pistache one, ingenious and droll,
Beheld the sovereign clouds as jugglery

And the sea as turquoise-turbaned *****, neat
At tossing saucers--cloudy-conjuring sea?
C'etait mon esprit batard, l'ignominie.

The sovereign clouds came clustering. The conch
Of loyal conjuration *******. The wind
Of green blooms turning crisped the motley hue

To clearing opalescence. Then the sea
And heaven rolled as one and from the two
Came fresh transfigurings of freshest blue.

The difficulty to think at the end of day,
When the shapeless shadow covers the sun
And nothing is left except light on your fur--

There was the cat slopping its milk all day,
Fat cat, red tongue, green mind, white milk
And August the most peaceful month.

To be, in the grass, in the peacefullest time,
Without that monument of cat,
The cat forgotten in the moon;

And to feel that the light is a rabbit-light,
In which everything is meant for you
And nothing need be explained;

Then there is nothing to think of. It comes of itself;
And east rushes west and west rushes down,
No matter. The grass is full

And full of yourself. The trees around are for you,
The whole of the wideness of night is for you,
A self that touches all edges,

You become a self that fills the four corners of night.
The red cat hides away in the fur-light
And there you are ****** high, ****** up,

You are ****** higher and higher, black as stone--
You sit with your head like a carving in space
And the little green cat is a bug in the grass.

You hear those saint fainted swines? Slopping around ****** in muck. For hogs seeking bogs, bespatter the pink with thick mire. Dull sluggish foul smelled trolls, basking a bridges under cove, feasting on distant mare. But old boar’s belly’s’ under grown, he has not self meat to spare. Go elsewhere wise butcher. Go elsewhere. Grieve not thy ******* of purification, instead satisfactory of sales. He has not the soul to touch rare blood of a bessy hung by hook. Sars covered hands, sars drenched the feet. Not here butcher, elsewhere lay menial meat.

SHORE LEAVE

the sea louder in the dark
throwing off its shackles
walking into town

mystified seagulls
flying over with a caw
a sea no longer there

a tram screeching
on its points
the sea jumps aboard

the sea sat at the bar
somehow getting its vast bulk
perched upon a high stool

the sea enjoying the karaoke
singing along to The Honeydippers
eating bag after bag of peanuts

"Have ye no beds to go home to!"
barks a barman
his belly slopping over his belt

the sea happy
to escape itself
even for the time being

drunk on being
human if only for a while
the sea staggers back to the shore

So, it’s three in the morning
and a man in a gorilla suit
is running across my lawn.
Quigley runs figure-eights—yapping, yelping.
The light in McKevitt’s window flickers
on then off—he doesn’t see this ****

stumbling and slopping about the dark yard,
pulling at the plush love handles
of his unwieldy suit—its zipper
just visible in blue moonlight.
He’s trying not to step on the little black dog nipping at his paw.
I pace at the window hoping he will leave.

I pace some more and fumble
at the nightstand for a cigarette.
I beat my chest to scare this thing away
and though I feel foolish, I grunt.
I grunt and expect him to listen to reason—
he doesn’t and collapses near the shed.

Quigley watches him—curiously cocking his head.
He licks the rubber face with his pink tongue
thinking this monkey’s me—not well at all
and sopped in *****.  I get under the cold sheet.
I toss.  I turn.  I curse the ****** ape well into morning.
I hit snooze until I’m sure he’s gone.

This has been going on for weeks
I beat my chest and show my teeth.
I pace the dark room—smoking, grumbling.
I consider buying a bigger dog, a bigger gun.
I send him death threats, then love notes. Nothing works—
I can’t shake this monkey from my back.

So excuse me for calling at this odd hour
to howl about my primate problem—the chimp on my shoulder.
or maybe a bonobo?
(you know, the one that made life with me so hard.)
In any case, he’s my problem now
and tonight he’s knocking at the door

Softly curving slopping
Rounding curving softly
Oh the firm plump softness
I could tell you
You could listen
Of how it causes deep flames to interrupt
Or of how, how...
How I lost my focus
I could tell you
Or you can witness

Two pale beauties dance
Two cherub's cheeks
They make the whole
The creamy moon
I'd bury my face in its bounty
I'd devour its ample sustinance
I want it
But to obtain
That would require a little circumvention
And face to face conversation

I dreamt that I wrote to you last night. I woke up with paper cuts in between my fingers, lemon juice that stained my bed a ****-yellow color, ink embedded underneath my fingernails,  and every time I reached down to scratch my ***** I left a shameful line of old black ink. I think I’d have mailed it to her if I knew that when she read it she would scream with a horrid realization. A realization of finally understanding the monster she use to sleep next to, before the **** sheets before the ink stained boxers. I’d have mailed it to her if it wasn't just in my dreams. I imagine that the lines in my letter were laced with layers of lucid logic that stringed together feelings that con-caved in on themselves. That ate themselves whole;  but instead of making them disappear entirely they grew twice their size and spilled over the pages and underneath my nails. The diction I imagine I would have chosen to write with would be read with a southern twang.  Slow and drawn out. She would have to read it with extra syllables that her tiny lungs could not possibly hold. It would make her choke, for the first time, on words that weren't her own. My words would finally fulfill the dreams of my hands; constantly wanting to ring around her neck like I was seven again on the playground and her name was Rosie. I wouldn't have rhymed in my subconscious, to me that always seems fake and I can’t really rhyme without having my voice break. I might, however; use from time to time red bold words laying in the middle of long paragraphs in hopes she would remember her red dress. Of how, before bed, it grazed over her slopping neck and slid off onto my floor. In my dream it’s still on my floor. I hope in my letter that I wrote out a picture of her seeing me seeing her put it on in front of our window the next morning and even though that dress was too short for autumn and she would wear it anyway. Because she knew it drove me crazy and because she wanted to remember me even after she walked out my front door. Mornings like that I begged her stay even if we had just fought over how much she snores, even if I had called her a **** one too many times the drunken night before. My letter, I think, would tell her that I wish she didn't have to bundle up and leave that she could instead cut up my bed sheets and make herself a new warmer dress. One that would have matched my pillow too perfectly for her to not lay her head on it and call it a hat. For her to pretend that my bed was the world outside the door. My letter would go like that. It would make her scream at first then make her remember that monsters can love too and knowing that; she would punch her new mattress and tear up her new pillows ones that I have never touched. She would scream, "*******!" preceding my name every time she landed a blow. She would say that so many times that she could never look at her new bed again without thinking of me, and of ****. When I dreamt last night I dreamt I wrote you a letter, but dreams don’t have hands that can hold pens. So I instead sent you my bed sheets, my boxers, I signed them with lemon juice and old black ink. Wear them, sleep with them, read them for what they are worth or toss them out because monsters with words like mine give you nightmares.

I can not tell you
when my life became imaginary.
It must have been long ago,
that day I forgot about the Sun.
The walls were closing in tight!
They where all I could think about.
Ever since I have been punished
upon its arrival.

Night and Day.

My white prince sits on that empowering doorstep!
I'm blowing out smoke!
I’m yelling at trees!
On my hands and knees
digging because we are all itchy!
For if I dig long enough I will make it through ground.

"And through is where I am suppose to be."

Singing the most beautiful song you will ever here.
Slopping up soup and forgetting what time it is.
Rolling on the ground again, I am still itchy..

My mother and father and sister who would all forget me!
No they cannot forget me they are imaginary too!
Crying very loudly,
No, I am just laughing.
And then calmness when my prince kicks in,
finally..

Blankness, serenity.

Waking up to see Sunshine.
Is it Summer already?
If I feel long enough he can bring me through winter too.
If I lie long enough…
I,
Oh, God just let me through!

I rest again and wake to see no more Sunshine.
.
.

I cannot explain all the pathetic measures
my eyes will take to avoid your gaze,
all the paths my legs will journey to avoid bumping into you on my way home.
All the ways I knead my hands to the bone and all the toothpick excuses skewering my tongue.
And I cannot explain the way your presence deflates something inside my chest.
I don't know what to do with all that empty space. It echoes.
I fill it with the thimble's worth of pride that I scrape together,
every meager flake of validation I pick from the floor. I shovel slopping handfuls of sawdust
to try and soak up some of the shadows
but everything dissolves in that oily void, green and hideous.
God, it echoes, and everyone hears it.
I muffle it with my radio silence.
I look at you and I see everything I hate about myself
under a microscope.
Every blemish, every scar, every gaping hole
that you lack.
Stop, look. Here. Wrong.
Hear?
I blind myself with radio silence.
I don’t know how to live with an eternal reminder that I am incomplete.
You, and the place you hollowed without even knowing it.
Green and monstrous.
It echoes and everyone hears it.
I love you, but I cannot explain my radio silence.

I dreamt that I wrote to you last night. I woke up with paper cuts in between my fingers, lemon juice that stained my bed a ****-yellow color, ink embedded underneath my fingernails,  and every time I reached down to scratch my ***** I left a shameful line of old black ink. I think I’d have mailed it to her if I knew that when she read it she would scream with a horrid realization. A realization of finally understanding the monster she use to sleep next to, before the **** sheets before the ink stained boxers. I’d have mailed it to her if it wasn't just in my dreams. I imagine that the lines in my letter were laced with layers of lucid logic that stringed together feelings that con-caved in on themselves. That ate themselves whole;  but instead of making them disappear entirely they grew twice their size and spilled over the pages and underneath my nails. The diction I imagine I would have chosen to write with would be read with a southern twang.  Slow and drawn out. She would have to read it with extra syllables that her tiny lungs could not possibly hold. It would make her choke, for the first time, on words that weren't her own. My words would finally fulfill the dreams of my hands; constantly wanting to ring around her neck like I was seven again on the playground and her name was Rosie. I wouldn't have rhymed in my subconscious, to me that always seems fake and I can’t really rhyme without having my voice break. I might, however; use from time to time red bold words laying in the middle of long paragraphs in hopes she would remember her red dress. Of how, before bed, it grazed over her slopping neck and slid off onto my floor. In my dream it’s still on my floor. I hope in my letter that I wrote out a picture of her seeing me seeing her put it on in front of our window the next morning and even though that dress was too short for autumn and she would wear it anyway. Because she knew it drove me crazy and because she wanted to remember me even after she walked out my front door. Mornings like that I begged her stay even if we had just fought over how much she snores, even if I had called her a **** one too many times the drunken night before. My letter, I think, would tell her that I wish she didn't have to bundle up and leave that she could instead cut up my bed sheets and make herself a new warmer dress. One that would have matched my pillow too perfectly for her to not lay her head on it and call it a hat. For her to pretend that my bed was the world outside the door. My letter would go like that. It would make her scream at first then make her remember that monsters can love too and knowing that; she would punch her new mattress and tear up her new pillows ones that I have never touched. She would scream, "*******!" preceding my name every time she landed a blow. She would say that so many times that she could never look at her new bed again without thinking of me, and of ****. When I dreamt last night I dreamt I wrote you a letter, but dreams don’t have hands that can hold pens. So I instead sent you my bed sheets, my boxers, I signed them with lemon juice and old black ink. Wear them, sleep with them, read them for what they are worth or toss them out because monsters with words like mine give you nightmares.

Rita packed her camping gear
And set off on a trek!
Behind her house a forest grew
With mighty oaks and elm trees too
And there were lots of berries here
That Rita liked to peck!

Soon she found a little stream
And set about her goal.
She pulled her tent out of the bag,
But as she did, she felt it snag
And there along the pretty seam
She saw a gaping hole!

Rita cried, “Oh dear, oh dear!
What ever shall I do?”
She grabbed the tent and stared at it,
She should have brought a darning kit!
She watched the water flowing near
And wished that it was glue!

Rita’s mind span round and round,
And then a thought took shape!
She gathered leaves and gathered mud
And mixed them up right where she stood,
They made a slopping slurping sound
And looked just like a cake!

Rita gathered up some wood
And lit a little fire;
She smeared the mud cake on the seam
Just like a great big pile of cream!
And as the fire warmed up the mud
It got a little drier;

Pretty soon the mud had set
As hard as fresh concrete!
The tent was fixed with her new patch,
She climbed inside and closed the hatch,
And laying down she soundly slept
And stayed there for a week!

My black gloves, coat, boots
Make me thick and heavy and slow
I am trudging through this white brick wall
I am tired and dripping.
This snow is ungainly
As it piles on top of the dead
Black, are the silhouettes of branches on drooping trees

Car crash.
Car crash.
Car crash.
I had forgotten that snow makes death unforgotten.
I am a beacon of safety
Inside my warm hut
With my life and my body, attached still.

Snow, sky, same thing.
Both a shocking white,
The color of the white light
Of death, reflected in a black lake
Swallowing everything else whole.
An insulting shade of pale,
Unimaginable in the middle of November.

A white bleached ivory
Your knuckles are that color white,
Bloodless
As they grip the wheel
But your fingertips forget how to drive
Your mind loses all the knowledge
You have gathered over your twenty three years

Your secure little buggy
Is no longer secure
No longer out of harm’s way.
The permafrost inching its way under your wheels
You are a little child learning how to walk,
Slipping and falling,
Reaching for your mama

You really don’t want to go over there
REALLY don’t want to go over there.
Because over there is the ditch.
And you scream “NO NO NO NO NO NO NO”
But who are you yelling at? No one can hear you.
You’re all alone in your little buggy
And the snow muffles you anyway

And you are upside down
god is grabbing you by your ankles and shaking you
Hoping for money to fall out of your pocket
And then you’re right side up
And then upside down
And your brain is sloshing and slopping
All over the upholstery

And the red is all over the windows
Thick paint, splashed over the cracked panes
Your hands are covered in your own gore
Gushing from your thighs and stomach
And you are making so much noise
Why are you yelling?
No one can hear you.

And now you’re dead.
The air in your punctured lungs is frozen.
The blood on the window is turning rusty red crust
And the people in the little buggies next to you
Are watching you as they pass by
Some even fold their hands and pray
But they shouldn’t take their hands off the wheel.

to put yourself in my shoes
is hard when they have holes
filled with dirt from the heart
These Appalachian souls

we work
from night till morn
These rough calloused hands
so tired and worn

a love like my pillows
after a long day
though do I complain
‘nay

These hills have ears
that I ain’t wishin to disrespect
so I whisper and pray
and hope to connect

to the rolling meadows
and slopping range
my deep roots
who have no desire to change

when times get tough
ill never miss
the land that loved me
that beautiful whiskey kiss

An old fort, on top of the slopping hill
          sentinel to centuries rolling down still,
from where the sea for the lovers
           was a vague  dream, perhaps from another life,

this haunt mysteriously lures them again and again,
            to be together lost in passion for long hours,
In a time long before on the same spot,
           blood, had gushed like river after each fierce duel,

after the mad hiss of swords,
            thirsting for the blood of the other, the rival,
the howl of the wind, the salty taste on the lips,
            ***** love present as wild aggression-
in the explosive proximity of two
            full blooded animals, results in the hiss of kissing.

The ethereal bliss is  marred suddenly,
            by the howl of ghosts, time travelling in to their spirits,
in the throes of death,the vanquished, the other victor,
            in shock they both realize the hidden truth.

Let me start from the beginning

It is an awful feeling to have to plug your ears and drown out the ocean of noises choking you to have a good meal.

When I say that I can't stand it when I hear you eat
What I really mean is that when you drink
I imagine slugs slopping their way down your gullet
And the sigh of refreshment means the acid has successfully shriveled them to death

The sound of carrots being pulzerized is akin to bones
Every time it is a cacaphony of dinner knives screeching against ribs
It may sound silly but when the saliva transfers with the gum you insist on smacking
Every ounce of fluid in my body wishes it could jump through my skin to the floor

I can't ask you to quit swallowing food
Though every drop that doesn't make it down
Is a reminder that humans are animals
Consuming flesh and constructed chemicals

No, I know you won't take me seriously
But spoons and knives are toys of the glutton
And poison to the one that shed tears
When they hear the dinner bell ring

I dreamt that I wrote to you last night. I woke up with paper cuts in between my fingers, lemon juice that stained my bed a ****-yellow color, ink embedded underneath my fingernails,  and every time I reached down to scratch my ***** I left a shameful line of old black ink. I think I’d have mailed it to her if I knew that when she read it she would scream with a horrid realization. A realization of finally understanding the monster she use to sleep next to, before the **** sheets before the ink stained boxers. I’d have mailed it to her if it wasn't just in my dreams. I imagine that the lines in my letter were laced with layers of lucid logic that stringed together feelings that con-caved in on themselves. That ate themselves whole;  but instead of making them disappear entirely they grew twice their size and spilled over the pages and underneath my nails. The diction I imagine I would have chosen to write with would be read with a southern twang.  Slow and drawn out. She would have to read it with extra syllables that her tiny lungs could not possibly hold. It would make her choke, for the first time, on words that weren't her own. My words would finally fulfill the dreams of my hands; constantly wanting to ring around her neck like I was seven again on the playground and her name was Rosie. I wouldn't have rhymed in my subconscious, to me that always seems fake and I can’t really rhyme without having my voice break. I might, however; use from time to time red bold words laying in the middle of long paragraphs in hopes she would remember her red dress. Of how, before bed, it grazed over her slopping neck and slid off onto my floor. In my dream it’s still on my floor. I hope in my letter that I wrote out a picture of her seeing me seeing her put it on in front of our window the next morning and even though that dress was too short for autumn and she would wear it anyway. Because she knew it drove me crazy and because she wanted to remember me even after she walked out my front door. Mornings like that I begged her stay even if we had just fought over how much she snores, even if I had called her a **** one too many times the drunken night before. My letter, I think, would tell her that I wish she didn't have to bundle up and leave that she could instead cut up my bed sheets and make herself a new warmer dress. One that would have matched my pillow too perfectly for her to not lay her head on it and call it a hat. For her to pretend that my bed was the world outside the door. My letter would go like that. It would make her scream at first then make her remember that monsters can love too and knowing that; she would punch her new mattress and tear up her new pillows ones that I have never touched. She would scream, "*******!" preceding my name every time she landed a blow. She would say that so many times that she could never look at her new bed again without thinking of me, and of ****. When I dreamt last night I dreamt I wrote you a letter, but dreams don’t have hands that can hold pens. So I instead sent you my bed sheets, my boxers, I signed them with lemon juice and old black ink. Wear them, sleep with them, read them for what they are worth or toss them out because monsters with words like mine give you nightmares.

Across a dry plain,
Heat shimmering,
Blur-ring in my mind...
Lost track of reason, lost my rhyme...
Rhythm gone to plodding,
Clodding on the burning flats,
Dust-deviled and limping over thorns.

Mountains are my only vision,
Forcing aching feet,
Tugging creaking knees,
Coaxing lungs, air parched
To breathe, to wheeze
Toward supernal heights,
Valley-ed torrents rushing
Cool and green and clean....

Beckoned thus, my heavy pace
Lifts lightly up;
The brackish slopping
In my old canteen
Reminds me that the way
Leads on to granite glories:
Woods inhabited,
Cabins warm against the alpine chill...
So I keep walking still.
So I keep walking still.

what women have
birthed man tried
to put asunder
but no more
shall the fires of our
labor  be put out by
egotistical men
slopping around
the earth like castrated
pigs covered in their own
filth. what women have birthed
no man shall put asunder.

Scrambled Eggs in Rainwater

Field Medical Service School

Shivering in the rain, up in the hills
Of Sunny Southern California
Kerosene cookers and their gust-blown smoke
Squid-wet Corpsmen in flying wet slickers

Mess kits held out to sullen, cursing cooks
Slam-slopping glops of sausages and eggs
Cold coffee in aluminum canteen cups
No cover, no shelter for floating food

Or for sergeants bellowing in the dark –
And we laughed through it all, for we were young

~
Overcome with discomfort
like doing the Truffle Shuffle
on a cold day in the rain
belly exposed and wet
frantically jiggling
as if too much Ambrosia salad was
piled on a silver tray –
green Cool Whip slopping over the side
sticky fingers sliding
until it finally drops
and some new access is granted.  /

You open your mouth and fists fly out,
in repetition you let it flap like trout.
Lay your love on a bed of nails,
and gleam with glee the formation of your scales.
Pause your thought for that train has taken you adrift
Pause your dreams for the sleepy ones will not agree
Pause your tongue for its slamming rage has led you from a mothers love.
Freedom found me in my cage
and now like ecstasy
creeps up and down my neck
and the sweat!
The endless sweat!
That drips from my brow as pearls
mocking the tamed and lame children.
Stretching and reaching to feel real,
to descend at last into the manic panic.
To cast off the joy and divinity of youth
and instead commit ourselves to the asylum of living.
To accept the madness and sadness
as necessitates on a quest for love.

Don’t waste your pity on the broken ones,
their cuts are not yours to plaster.
Find solace that life is not a line
that you should act or learn.
It hides in us all that burning, churning,
that sullied broken ground,
that hot slopping metal that covers my chest,
squeezes life from my breast!
How can we draw comfort,
when all artistic talent has left us?
Where do we place our dreams,
when the waking hours are nightmares?
When god is dead,
who holds the keys to heaven?

I had never tried honey before,
the sweet tang
slopping along my tongue.

I’d never felt your hand
flowing around my waist
until your wrists connected,

locked me into place.
I took a few mouthfuls,
you’d rattle the spoon

into my mouth
and I’d streak it off,
the viscous orange gloop

like a strange toothpaste.
People use honey
as a term of affection

but we said it’s hackneyed,
a cloying label.  
Now whenever I call you

honey I always think
of that time in your kitchen,
the half-empty jar.

there’s something about
   boiling kettle lungs
     words slopping from your mouth
like clumps of mashed potato
     the way you have this river of dialogue
   made from papier-mâché
     and haphazard glitter
so easily breakable
   it’s best to start afresh
that makes you stop
     and place your head against
   the cool windowpane
and say you cannot do this
   you might but you can’t so no
the umcomfortableness diverted
     scribbled over with a Biro
   so ignore the sandpaper taste
     on your tongue
or the jacket of heat
     that smothers your chest
   focus on a pinprick of positivity
like a streetlamp in another town
   let the steam from the tea
     guide you to safety

The club is hopping and the drinks are slopping
and I am doing my very best.
The bodies are swaying and the music is playing
My dance move catalog is put to the test.

But with your eyes rolling, my interest lolling
can you expect me to keep a straight face,
With your constant hating amid the bodies gyrating
I can and will win this race

"Are you gay or just dance this way?"
Irks me, as if I have something to prove
I believe love is love
nothing to do with the way I move.

Cant we just be, keep the mood happy
Make our friendship constant and steady

But your constant taunts and your obvious flaunts
make me scream my checklist,
lips licked, shirt tucked in I'm ready, I'm ready, I am READY

Am i your pepperoni?
Saucy, cheesy, tasty
and you still need other pizzas for your starving belly?
You hate the crust you think it's doughy
But you kept me for today's dinner watching your favorite football team player
and a glass of coke to make you feel better and ciggarettes as your life saver

You left the last bite
for tomorrow night

And there you go
No more pepperoni slopping your polo
Ha Ha Ha now you eat mayo.

We picked up a coal-fired steamer
From a graveyard of ancient ships,
It had lain, beached up in the Philippines,
Sat on the rusted slips,
The ship was covered in surface rust
But it hadn’t gone right through,
So with elbow grease and some paint at least
My friend said, ‘It will do.’

We registered it in Colombia,
And we flew the Colombian flag,
We couldn’t afford to insure it,
And Derek said, ‘That’s a drag.
But we only need a single trip
And a cargo in the hold,
Like tractor tyres and some copper wires,
We’ll be rich when they are sold.’

He brought his girlfriend, Mary Anne,
Which I thought was a mistake,
He said that she’d come in handy when
We had to cook and bake.
‘I hope that she’s not bad luck for us,’
I muttered, when she came,
‘You mean those superstitious tales
That a woman is to blame?’

The bosun hired was a Robert Legg
Who had been at sea for years,
We didn’t know, as the trip would show,
He’d bring my friend to tears.
He helped to paint the rusted hull
In just one colour, black,
But leered when Mary Anne appeared
And behind Derek’s back.

We hired a couple of Lascars
To shovel in the coal,
Then ventured out for a cargo,
And ended up in Seoul,
We picked up a dodgy cargo,
Enough to make a run,
Over to western Africa
With computers, and with guns.

We named the ship the ‘Avant Garde’
And we braved the ocean swell,
It rolled and creaked, and even leaked
Like the cargo ship from hell,
But Derek’s mood was grim and dour
As we fought to hold the wheel,
‘Let’s hope that it doesn’t fall apart,
There’s a buckle in the keel.’

We spent our time up on the bridge
With Mary Anne below,
It doesn’t take a genius
To know how that would go.
For Legg spent too much time down there
Ensconced with Mary Anne,
When Derek questioned her, she said,
‘The bosun’s quite the man.’

He sent Legg down to the engine room
And he said to keep his place,
He wasn’t there for a holiday
Or to chat up a friendly face.
But Legg was sour, and Derek dour
When he caught them down below,
And said Legg’s hand was in contraband
Where he knew it shouldn’t go.

The Avant Garde had then burst a seam
Just above the waterline,
The water had started slopping in
We knew we were short on time,
By then Legg quarrelled with Derek, said
His girl was a free for all,
Was there to satisfy base desires,
Derek pinned him against the wall.

He hit the bosun across the head
With a long steel marlin spike,
Who fell at once and was good and dead,
I was told to take a hike.
I think he carted the body down
To the lascars down below,
Who bundled him into the furnace there,
No corpse, so who’s to know?

He told me later he’d fixed the leak
But he didn’t tell me how,
The ship then shuddered against a rock
That bent and burst the prow,
Before it sank I went down below
To witness a nightmare scene,
The body of Mary Anne was jammed
In tight, where it burst the seam.

David Lewis Paget

The wind smells of
frozen milk and carbolic,
this is the edge of December;

a slopping out of leaves
and burnt wood, the overspew
of ovens that keeps

us holding out coats at the throat.
The winter is still out,
we wait for the last bus of snow.

I think that I shall never see
A sight as strange as a flying pig .

A winged pig that snout is sky-wised pushed
Against the earth’ fantastic slopping roundness

A winged pig who may fly all day,
And lifts whimsicality toward higher climes;

A pig that flutters in the icy air
A flap of wings and oinking there ;

Upon whose flight our imagination ascend
Our imitations in inward horizon up-sweeps logic .

Fall guys like me write poems,
But only metaphors like flying pigs

Can rise in ink stained skies and barnstorm
the very gates of eternity with winged couplets.

Come pick thy left pieces
For my brain still counts memories
Go behind my eyes
For thy shadow shines like flash light
Fetch my hanging appetite
The ulcers are feeding on your aroma
A glassful of your lip twists
For my thirst dines on flu
Take the slopping path
My heart waited longer than patience
Can i envy your smile
Its seen by many not me alone
I wish to color your dreams
With a range of roasted apples
If you tasted like wine
You could be the chained bottle to my wrist