It's snowing
Snowing like it was
All those years ago

Snowing it like it was
When we stumbled outside
Giggling and shivering

Snowing like it was
When we kissed the icy flakes
Off of each other's eyelashes

Snowing like it was
When you and I
were us

It's snowing
So I should be with you
But you're with her.

One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound
except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember
whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve
nights when I was six.

All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky
that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in
the snow and bring out whatever I can find. In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidays
resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the firemen.

It was on the afternoon of the Christmas Eve, and I was in Mrs. Prothero's garden, waiting for cats, with her
son Jim. It was snowing. It was always snowing at Christmas. December, in my memory, is white as Lapland,
though there were no reindeers. But there were cats. Patient, cold and callous, our hands wrapped in socks, we
waited to snowball the cats. Sleek and long as jaguars and horrible-whiskered, spitting and snarling, they
would slink and sidle over the white back-garden walls, and the lynx-eyed hunters, Jim and I, fur-capped and
moccasined trappers from Hudson Bay, off Mumbles Road, would hurl our deadly snowballs at the green of their
eyes. The wise cats never appeared.

We were so still, Eskimo-footed arctic marksmen in the muffling silence of the eternal snows - eternal, ever
since Wednesday - that we never heard Mrs. Prothero's first cry from her igloo at the bottom of the garden. Or,
if we heard it at all, it was, to us, like the far-off challenge of our enemy and prey, the neighbor's polar
cat. But soon the voice grew louder.
"Fire!" cried Mrs. Prothero, and she beat the dinner-gong.

And we ran down the garden, with the snowballs in our arms, toward the house; and smoke, indeed, was pouring
out of the dining-room, and the gong was bombilating, and Mrs. Prothero was announcing ruin like a town crier
in Pompeii. This was better than all the cats in Wales standing on the wall in a row. We bounded into the
house, laden with snowballs, and stopped at the open door of the smoke-filled room.

Something was burning all right; perhaps it was Mr. Prothero, who always slept there after midday dinner with a
newspaper over his face. But he was standing in the middle of the room, saying, "A fine Christmas!" and
smacking at the smoke with a slipper.

"Call the fire brigade," cried Mrs. Prothero as she beat the gong.
"There won't be there," said Mr. Prothero, "it's Christmas."
There was no fire to be seen, only clouds of smoke and Mr. Prothero standing in the middle of them, waving his
slipper as though he were conducting.
"Do something," he said. And we threw all our snowballs into the smoke - I think we missed Mr. Prothero - and
ran out of the house to the telephone box.
"Let's call the police as well," Jim said. "And the ambulance." "And Ernie Jenkins, he likes fires."

But we only called the fire brigade, and soon the fire engine came and three tall men in helmets brought a hose
into the house and Mr. Prothero got out just in time before they turned it on. Nobody could have had a noisier
Christmas Eve. And when the firemen turned off the hose and were standing in the wet, smoky room, Jim's Aunt,
Miss. Prothero, came downstairs and peered in at them. Jim and I waited, very quietly, to hear what she would
say to them. She said the right thing, always. She looked at the three tall firemen in their shining helmets,
standing among the smoke and cinders and dissolving snowballs, and she said, "Would you like anything to read?"

Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of red-flannel
petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt
like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the
English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the
daft and happy hills *******, it snowed and it snowed. But here a small boy says: "It snowed last year, too. I
made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea."

"But that was not the same snow," I say. "Our snow was not only shaken from white wash buckets down the sky, it
came shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow
grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely -ivied the walls and
settled on the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb thunder-storm of white, torn Christmas cards."

"Were there postmen then, too?"
"With sprinkling eyes and wind-cherried noses, on spread, frozen feet they crunched up to the doors and
mittened on them manfully. But all that the children could hear was a ringing of bells."
"You mean that the postman went rat-a-tat-tat and the doors rang?"
"I mean that the bells the children could hear were inside them."
"I only hear thunder sometimes, never bells."
"There were church bells, too."
"Inside them?"
"No, no, no, in the bat-black, snow-white belfries, tugged by bishops and storks. And they rang their tidings
over the bandaged town, over the frozen foam of the powder and ice-cream hills, over the crackling sea. It
seemed that all the churches boomed for joy under my window; and the weathercocks crew for Christmas, on our
fence."

"Get back to the postmen"
"They were just ordinary postmen, found of walking and dogs and Christmas and the snow. They knocked on the
doors with blue knuckles ...."
"Ours has got a black knocker...."
"And then they stood on the white Welcome mat in the little, drifted porches and huffed and puffed, making
ghosts with their breath, and jogged from foot to foot like small boys wanting to go out."
"And then the presents?"
"And then the Presents, after the Christmas box. And the cold postman, with a rose on his button-nose, tingled
down the tea-tray-slithered run of the chilly glinting hill. He went in his ice-bound boots like a man on
fishmonger's slabs.
"He wagged his bag like a frozen camel's ****, dizzily turned the corner on one foot, and, by God, he was
gone."

"Get back to the Presents."
"There were the Useful Presents: engulfing mufflers of the old coach days, and mittens made for giant sloths;
zebra scarfs of a substance like silky gum that could be tug-o'-warred down to the galoshes; blinding tam-o'-
shanters like patchwork tea cozies and bunny-suited busbies and balaclavas for victims of head-shrinking
tribes; from aunts who always wore wool next to the skin there were mustached and rasping vests that made you
wonder why the aunts had any skin left at all; and once I had a little crocheted nose bag from an aunt now,
alas, no longer whinnying with us. And pictureless books in which small boys, though warned with quotations not
to, would skate on Farmer Giles' pond and did and drowned; and books that told me everything about the wasp,
except why."

"Go on the Useless Presents."
"Bags of moist and many-colored jelly babies and a folded flag and a false nose and a tram-conductor's cap and
a machine that punched tickets and rang a bell; never a catapult; once, by mistake that no one could explain, a
little hatchet; and a celluloid duck that made, when you pressed it, a most unducklike sound, a mewing moo that
an ambitious cat might make who wished to be a cow; and a painting book in which I could make the grass, the
trees, the sea and the animals any colour I pleased, and still the dazzling sky-blue sheep are grazing in the
red field under the rainbow-billed and pea-green birds. Hardboileds, toffee, fudge and allsorts, crunches,
cracknels, humbugs, glaciers, marzipan, and butterwelsh for the Welsh. And troops of bright tin soldiers who,
if they could not fight, could always run. And Snakes-and-Families and Happy Ladders. And Easy Hobbi-Games for
Little Engineers, complete with instructions. Oh, easy for Leonardo! And a whistle to make the dogs bark to
wake up the old man next door to make him beat on the wall with his stick to shake our picture off the wall.
And a packet of cigarettes: you put one in your mouth and you stood at the corner of the street and you waited
for hours, in vain, for an old lady to scold you for smoking a cigarette, and then with a smirk you ate it. And
then it was breakfast under the balloons."

"Were there Uncles like in our house?"
"There are always Uncles at Christmas. The same Uncles. And on Christmas morning, with dog-disturbing whistle
and sugar ****, I would scour the swatched town for the news of the little world, and find always a dead bird
by the Post Office or by the white deserted swings; perhaps a robin, all but one of his fires out. Men and
women wading or scooping back from chapel, with taproom noses and wind-bussed cheeks, all albinos, huddles
their stiff black jarring feathers against the irreligious snow. Mistletoe hung from the gas brackets in all
the front parlors; there was sherry and walnuts and bottled beer and crackers by the dessertspoons; and cats in
their fur-abouts watched the fires; and the high-heaped fire spat, all ready for the chestnuts and the mulling
pokers. Some few large men sat in the front parlors, without their collars, Uncles almost certainly, trying
their new cigars, holding them out judiciously at arms' length, returning them to their mouths, coughing, then
holding them out again as though waiting for the explosion; and some few small aunts, not wanted in the
kitchen, nor anywhere else for that matter, sat on the very edge of their chairs, poised and brittle, afraid to
break, like faded cups and saucers."

Not many those mornings trod the piling streets: an old man always, fawn-bowlered, yellow-gloved and, at this
time of year, with spats of snow, would take his constitutional to the white bowling green and back, as he
would take it wet or fire on Christmas Day or Doomsday; sometimes two hale young men, with big pipes blazing,
no overcoats and wind blown scarfs, would trudge, unspeaking, down to the forlorn sea, to work up an appetite,
to blow away the fumes, who knows, to walk into the waves until nothing of them was left but the two furling
smoke clouds of their inextinguishable briars. Then I would be slap-dashing home, the gravy smell of the
dinners of others, the bird smell, the brandy, the pudding and mince, coiling up to my nostrils, when out of a
snow-clogged side lane would come a boy the spit of myself, with a pink-tipped cigarette and the violet past of
a black eye, cocky as a bullfinch, leering all to himself.

I hated him on sight and sound, and would be about to put my dog whistle to my lips and blow him off the face
of Christmas when suddenly he, with a violet wink, put his whistle to his lips and blew so stridently, so high,
so exquisitely loud, that gobbling faces, their cheeks bulged with goose, would press against their tinsled
windows, the whole length of the white echoing street. For dinner we had turkey and blazing pudding, and after
dinner the Uncles sat in front of the fire, loosened all buttons, put their large moist hands over their watch
chains, groaned a little and slept. Mothers, aunts and sisters scuttled to and fro, bearing tureens. Auntie
Bessie, who had already been frightened, twice, by a clock-work mouse, whimpered at the sideboard and had some
elderberry wine. The dog was sick. Auntie Dosie had to have three aspirins, but Auntie Hannah, who liked port,
stood in the middle of the snowbound back yard, singing like a big-bosomed thrush. I would blow up balloons to
see how big they would blow up to; and, when they burst, which they all did, the Uncles jumped and rumbled. In
the rich and heavy afternoon, the Uncles breathing like dolphins and the snow descending, I would sit among
festoons and Chinese lanterns and nibble dates and try to make a model man-o'-war, following the Instructions
for Little Engineers, and produce what might be mistaken for a sea-going tramcar.

Or I would go out, my bright new boots squeaking, into the white world, on to the seaward hill, to call on Jim
and Dan and Jack and to pad through the still streets, leaving huge footprints on the hidden pavements.
"I bet people will think there's been hippos."
"What would you do if you saw a hippo coming down our street?"
"I'd go like this, bang! I'd throw him over the railings and roll him down the hill and then I'd tickle him
under the ear and he'd wag his tail."
"What would you do if you saw two hippos?"

Iron-flanked and bellowing he-hippos clanked and battered through the scudding snow toward us as we passed Mr.
Daniel's house.
"Let's post Mr. Daniel a snow-ball through his letter box."
"Let's write things in the snow."
"Let's write, 'Mr. Daniel looks like a spaniel' all over his lawn."
Or we walked on the white shore. "Can the fishes see it's snowing?"

The silent one-clouded heavens drifted on to the sea. Now we were snow-blind travelers lost on the north hills,
and vast dewlapped dogs, with flasks round their necks, ambled and shambled up to us, baying "Excelsior." We
returned home through the poor streets where only a few children fumbled with bare red fingers in the wheel-
rutted snow and cat-called after us, their voices fading away, as we trudged uphill, into the cries of the dock
birds and the hooting of ships out in the whirling bay. And then, at tea the recovered Uncles would be jolly;
and the ice cake loomed in the center of the table like a marble grave. Auntie Hannah laced her tea with ***,
because it was only once a year.

Bring out the tall tales now that we told by the fire as the gaslight bubbled like a diver. Ghosts whooed like
owls in the long nights when I dared not look over my shoulder; animals lurked in the cubbyhole under the
stairs and the gas meter ticked. And I remember that we went singing carols once, when there wasn't the shaving
of a moon to light the flying streets. At the end of a long road was a drive that led to a large house, and we
stumbled up the darkness of the drive that night, each one of us afraid, each one holding a stone in his hand
in case, and all of us too brave to say a word. The wind through the trees made noises as of old and unpleasant
and maybe webfooted men wheezing in caves. We reached the black bulk of the house. "What shall we give them?
Hark the Herald?"
"No," Jack said, "Good King Wencelas. I'll count three." One, two three, and we began to sing, our voices high
and seemingly distant in the snow-felted darkness round the house that was occupied by nobody we knew. We stood
close together, near the dark door. Good King Wencelas looked out On the Feast of Stephen ... And then a small,
dry voice, like the voice of someone who has not spoken for a long time, joined our singing: a small, dry,
eggshell voice from the other side of the door: a small dry voice through the keyhole. And when we stopped
running we were outside our house; the front room was lovely; balloons floated under the hot-water-bottle-
gulping gas; everything was good again and shone over the town.
"Perhaps it was a ghost," Jim said.
"Perhaps it was trolls," Dan said, who was always reading.
"Let's go in and see if there's any jelly left," Jack said. And we did that.

Always on Christmas night there was music. An uncle played the fiddle, a cousin sang "Cherry Ripe," and another
uncle sang "Drake's Drum." It was very warm in the little house. Auntie Hannah, who had got on to the parsnip
wine, sang a song about Bleeding Hearts and Death, and then another in which she said her heart was like a
Bird's Nest; and then everybody laughed again; and then I went to bed. Looking through my bedroom window, out
into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other
houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas
down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept.

We had wanted to leave our homes before six in the morning
but left late and lazy at ten or ten-thirty with hurried smirks
and heads turned to the road, West
driving out against the noonward horizon
and visions before us of the great up-and-over

and tired we were already of stiff-armed driving neurotics in Montreal
and monstrous foreheaded yellow bus drivers
ugly children with long middle fingers
and tired we were of breaking and being yelled at by beardless bums
but thought about the beards at home we loved
and gave a smile and a wave nonetheless

Who were sick and tired of driving by nine
but then had four more hours still
with half a tank
then a third of a tank
then a quarter of a tank
then no tank at all
except for the great artillery halt and discovery
of our tyre having only three quarters of its bolts

Saved by the local sobriety
and the mystic conscious kindness of the wise and the elderly
and the strangers: Autoshop Gale with her discount familiar kindness;
Hilda making ready supper and Ray like I’ve known you for years
that offered me tools whose functions I’ve never known
and a handshake goodbye

     and "yes we will say hello to your son in Alberta"
     and "yes we will continue safely"
     and "no you won’t see us in tomorrow’s paper"
     and tired I was of hearing about us in tomorrow’s paper

Who ended up on a road laughing deliverance
in Ralphton, a small town hunting lodge
full of flapjacks and a choir of chainsaws
with cheap tomato juice and eggs
but the four of us ended up paying for eight anyway

and these wooden alley cats were nothing but hounds
and the backwoods is where you’d find a cheap child's banjo
and cheap leather shoes and bear traps and rat traps
and the kinds of things you’d fall into face first

Who sauntered into a cafe in Massey
that just opened up two weeks previous
where the food was warm and made from home
and the owner who swore to high heaven
and piled her Sci-Fi collection to the ceiling
in forms of books and VHS

but Massey herself was drowned in a small town
where there was little history and heavy mist
and the museum was closed for renovations
and the stores were run by diplomats
or sleezebag no-cats
and there was one man who wouldn’t show us a room
because his baby sitter hadn’t come yet
but the babysitter showed up through the backdoor within seconds
though I hadn't seen another face

        and the room was a landfill
        and smelled of stale cat **** anyhow
        and the lobby stacked to the ceiling with empty beer box cans bottles
        and the taps ran cold yellow and hot black through spigots

but we would be staying down the street
at the inn of an East-Indian couple

who’s eyes were not dilated 
and the room smelled
lemon-scented

and kept on driving lovingly without a care in the world
but only one of us had his arms around a girl
and how lonely I felt driving with Jacob
in the fog of the Agawa pass;

following twin red eyes down a steep void mass
where the birch trees have no heads
and the marshes pool under the jagged foothills
that climb from the water above their necks

that form great behemoths
with great voices bellowing and faces chiselled hard looking down
and my own face turned upward toward the rain

Wheels turning on a black asphalt river running uphill around great Superior
that is the ocean that isn’t the ocean but is as big as the sea
and the cloud banks dig deep and terrible walls

and the sky ends five times before night truly falls
and the sun sets slower here than anywhere
but the sky was only two miles high and ten long anyway

The empty train tracks that seldom run
and some rails have been lifted out
with a handful of spikes that now lay dormant

and the hill sides start to resemble *******
or faces or the slow curving back of some great whale

-and those, who were finally stranded at four pumps
with none but the professional Jacob reading great biblical instructions at the nozzle
nowhere at midnight in a town surrounded

by moose roads
                             moose lanes
                                                     moose rivers
and everything mooses

ending up sleeping in the maw of a great white wolf inn
run by Julf or Wolf or John but was German nonetheless

and woke up with radios armed
and arms full
and coffee up to the teeth
with teeth chattering
and I swear to God I saw snowy peaks
but those came to me in waking dream:

"Mountains dressed in white canvas
gowns and me who placed
my hands upon their *******
that filled the sky"

Passing through a buffet of inns and motels
and spending our time unpacking and repacking
and talking about drinking and cheap sandwiches
but me not having a drink in eight days

and in one professional inn we received a professional scamming
and no we would not be staying here again
and what would a trip across the country be like
if there wasn’t one final royal scamming to be had

and dreams start to return to me from years of dreamless sleep:

and I dream of hers back home
and ribbons in a raven black lattice of hair
and Cassadaic exploits with soft but honest words

and being on time with the trains across the plains  
and the moon with a shower of prairie blonde
and one of my father with kind words
and my mother on a bicycle reassuring my every decision

Passing eventually through great plains of vast nothingness
but was disappointed in seeing that I could see
and that the rumours were false
and that nothingness really had a population
and that the great flat land has bumps and curves and etchings and textures too

beautiful bright golden yellow like sprawling fingers
white knuckled ablaze reaching up toward the sun
that in this world had only one sky that lasted a thousand years

and prairie driving lasts no more than a mountain peak
and points of ember that softly sigh with the one breath
of our cars windows that rushes by with gratitude for your smile

And who was caught up with the madness in the air
with big foaming cigarettes in mouths
who dragged and stuffed down those rolling fumes endlessly
while St. Jacob sang at the way stations and billboards and the radio
which was turned off

and me myself and I running our mouth like the coughing engine
chasing a highway babe known as the Lady Valkyrie out from Winnipeg
all the way to Saskatoon driving all day without ever slowing down
and eating up all our gas like pez and finally catching her;

      Valkyrie who taught me to drive fast
      and hovering 175 in slipstreams
      and flowing behind her like a great ghost Cassady ******* in dreamland Nebraska
      only 10 highway crossings counted from home.

Lady Valkyrie who took me West.
Lady Valkyrie who burst my wings into flame as I drew a close with the sun.
Lady Valkyrie who had me howl at slender moon;

     who formed as a snowflake
     in the light on the street
     and was gone by morning
     before I asked her name

and how are we?
and how many?

Even with old Tom devil singing stereo
and riding shotgun the entire trip from day one
singing about his pony, and his own personal flophouse circus,
and what was he building in there?

There is a fair amount of us here in these cars.
Finally at light’s end finding acquiescence in all things
and meeting with her eye one last time; flashed her a wink and there I was, gone.
Down the final highway crossing blowing wind and fancy and mouth puttering off
roaring laughter into the distance like some tremendous Phoenix.

Goodnight Lady Valkyrie.

The evening descends and turns into a sandwich hysteria
as we find ourselves riding between cities of transports
and that one mad man that passed us speeding crazy
and almost hit head-on with Him flowing East

and passed more and more until he was head of the line
but me driving mad lunacy followed his tail to the bumper
passing fifteen trucks total to find our other car
and felt the great turbine pull of acceleration that was not mine

mad-stacked behind two great beasts
and everyone thought us moon-crazy; Biblical Jake
and Mad Hair Me driving a thousand
eschewing great gusts of wind speed flying

Smashing into the great ephedrine sunset haze of Saskatoon
and hungry for food stuffed with the thoughts of bedsheets
off the highway immediately into the rotting liver of dark downtown
but was greeted by an open Hertz garage
with a five-piece fanfare brass barrage
William Tell and a Debussy Reverie
and found our way to bedsheets most comfortably

Driving out of Saskatoon feeling distance behind me.
Finding nothing but the dead and hollow corpses of roadside ventures;

more carcasses than cars
and one as big as a moose
and one as big as a bear
and no hairier

and driving out of sunshine plain reading comic book strip billboards
and trees start to build up momentum
and remembering our secret fungi in the glove compartment
that we drove three thousand kilometres without remembering

and we had a "Jesus Jacob, put it away brother"
and went screaming blinded by smoke and paranoia
and three swerves got us right
and we hugged the holy white line until twilight

And driving until the night again takes me foremast
and knows my secret fear in her *****
as the road turns into a lucid *** black and makes me dizzy
and every shadow is a moose and a wildcat and a billy goat
and some other car

and I find myself driving faster up this great slanderous waterfall until I meet eye
with another at a thousand feet horizontal

then two eyes

then a thousand wide-eyed peaks stretching faces upturned to the celestial black
with clouds laid flat as if some angel were sleeping ******* on a smokestack
and the mountains make themselves clear to me after waiting a lifetime for a glimpse
then they shy away behind some old lamppost and I don’t see them until tomorrow

and even tomorrow brings a greater distance with the sunlight dividing stone like 'The Ancient of Days'
and moving forward puts all into perspective

while false cabins give way
and the gas stations give way
and the last lamppost gives way
and its only distance now that will make you true
and make your peaks come alive

Like a bullrush, great grey slopes leap forth as if branded by fire
then the first peaks take me by surprise
and I’m told that these are nothing but children to their parents
and the roads curve into a gentle valley
and we’re in the feeding zone

behind the gates of some great geological zoo
watching these lumbering beasts
finishing up some great tribal *******
because tomorrow they will be shrunk
and tomorrow ever-after smaller

Nonetheless, breathless in turn I became
it began snowing and the pines took on a different shape
and the mountains became covered white
and great glaciers could be seen creeping
and tourists seen gawking at waterfalls and waterfowls
and fowl play between two stones a thousand miles high

climbing these Jasper slopes flying against wind and stone
and every creak lets out its gentle tone and soft moans
as these tyres rub flat against your back
your ancient skin your rock-hard bones

and this peak is that peak and it’s this one too
and that’s Temple, and that’s Whistler
and that’s Glasgow and that’s Whistler again
and those are the Three Sisters with ******* ablaze

and soft glowing haze your sun sets again among your peaks
and we wonder how all these caves formed
and marvelled at what the flood brought to your feet
as roads lay wasted by the roadside

in the epiphany of 3:00am realizing
that great Alta's straights and highway crossings
are formed in torturous mess from mines of 'Mt. Bleed'
and broken ribs and liver of crushed mountain passes
and the grey stones taxidermied and peeled off
and laid flat painted black and yellow;
the highways built from the insides
of the mountain shells

Who gave a “What now. New-Brunswick?”

and a “What now, Quebec, and Ontario, and Manitoba, and Saskatchewan";
**** fools clumsily dancing in the valleys; then the rolling hills; then the sea that was a lake
then the prairies and not yet the mountains;

running naked in formation with me at the lead
and running naked giving the finger to the moon
and the contrails, and every passing blur on the highway
dodging rocks, and sandbars
and the watchful eye of Mr. and Mrs. Law
and holes dug-up by prairie dogs
and watching with no music
as the family caravans drove on by

but drove off laughing every time until two got anxious for bed and slowed behind
while the rambling Jacob and I had to wait in the half-moon spectacle
of a black-tongue asphalt side-road hacking darts and watching for grizzlies
for the other two to finish up with their birthday *** exploits
though it was nobodies birthday

and then a timezone was between us
 and they were in the distant future
and nobodies birthday was in an hour from now

then everything was good
and everyone was satiated
then everything was a different time again
and I was running on no sleep or a lot of it
leaping backward in time every so often
like gaining a new day but losing space on the surface of your eye

but I stared up through curtains of starlight to mother moon
and wondered if you also stared
and was dumbfounded by the majesty of it all

and only one Caribou was seen the entire trip
and only one live animal, and some forsaken deer
and only a snake or a lonesome caterpillar could be seen crossing such highway straights
but the water more refreshing and brighter than steel
and glittered as if it were hiding some celestial gem
and great ravines and valleys flowed between everything
and I saw in my own eye prehistoric beasts roaming catastrophe upon these plains
but the peaks grew ever higher and I left the ground behind

Whenever I have nothing To write about, but feel that I’m playing hooky if I write nothing - skulking, as it were, I often write about nature.  In my bed, surrounded by forest, birds who have established their lives in the  insulation under the rooftop and above all windows, I lay there and watched the thick, fine snow floating mindlessly, windlessly  down.  Voila, a title!  Now to find content:

      It’s Snowing Gently, But A Lot

It’s snowing gently
But a lot.
Persistently and softly.
Is that not a metaphor
For …something…
An insistence
Whose importance
I can’t know but sense.

It’s the gentleness that strikes me:
A force that doesn’t force, but is.
An element and facet
And an aspect of behaviour
That could be a saviour
To a person’s happiness
And peace of mind.

The thing or things get done
Looking like fun
But with an impact on all things around.

An almost silent path
With not a sound of wrath,
But just a bath of H20
We’re calling snow,
Knowing that the whole will go in time.

I guess I’ve found my metaphor in rhyme.
It’s snowing,
But while snowing going.  
If that’s not an emblem
Of life’s semblance
And a trope
For spirit’s power and hope,
I don’t know what is.

It’s Snowing Gently, But a Lot 2.17.2021 Circling Round NatureII; Nature In & Of Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

It’s Snowing Gently, But A Lot

It’s snowing gently
But a lot.
Persistently and softly.
Is that not a metaphor
For …something…
An insistence
Whose importance
I can’t know but sense.

It’s the gentleness that strikes me:
A force that doesn’t force, but is.
An element and facet
And an aspect of behaviour
That could be a saviour
To a person’s happiness
And peace of mind.

The thing or things get done
Looking like fun
But with an impact on all things around.

An almost silent path
With not a sound of wrath,
But just a bath of H20
We’re calling snow,
Knowing that the whole will go in time.

I guess I’ve found my metaphor in rhyme.
It’s snowing,
But while snowing going.  
If that’s not an emblem
Of life’s semblance
And a trope
For spirit’s power and hope,
I don’t know what is.

It’s Snowing Gently, But a Lot 2.17.2021 Circling Round NatureII; Nature In & Of Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

it wasn't snowing yet, but they'd told us it would.
probably I said something infantile, about how
I could smell it, the frostiness of snowflakes in the
air, because you smiled that knowing smile of yours,
like you were an adult and i was a child and you
didn't have the heart to take my innocence away.

that look always made my heart smile, sadly, and
it also drove me up a wall, partly because it made
me want to hug you close and pity you the
burden of assumed moral superiority, and whisper
that you, too were a child. but mostly because you
were right— I clung to my naiveté while you, you
had already had the good sense to push it away.
it followed you around with sad puppy eyes, but
you knew it and you kept it at arm's length.
you brave, brave soul.

when it did start to snow I wasn't surprised. you
were. you didn't say anything. we were in
a deserted school hallway, listening, removed
from the other kids' cries. we were
delighted too, but the others wanted to run home
early, and we knew the definition
of home better than they. and I can speak only for
myself but it seemed we both wanted only to stay
forever side by side, tucked away in our corner,
me reveling in the softness of love and friendship
and winter, you trying to be there with me but having
trouble leaving your mind, where that sad-eyed
puppy snapped at your heels. it whimpered
but you held your own.

and slowly, we built up moments like this one.
we wallowed in each other and in the coziness
of cloudy days. we read good poetry and
heard good music and took photographs as we
discussed life from our  softer world.
there were moments of such pure white happiness
that they came full circle to being sad,
simply because I knew I would never be that
happy again, and I was not wrong, and I didn't
want to be. and we had
sad moments, too, never ever think I am not
happy to be sad with you.

and slowly, too, your innocence knew its
defeat, and sat obediently at your feet,
and we shared things.
but I was a child, and a weak one at that, and
God knew I was not as strong as you so she
gave me no great suffering to speak of, to
share with you. no way to reciprocate the
vulnerability you gave, and that in
itself was suffering for me.

I regret that I was not good at saying things.
that while
you had to be your own adult and push childhood
away, I clung hopelessly to mine as
I discovered me and watched it slip
from my small hands.

among the plethora of reasons I can give for
bitterly hating sunny days is the
way the sun slanted through the window and lit
up your eyes and swilled particles around
your face like fairy dust on the day you reached
out and pulled my lanyard over your own neck.
look, you said, content. almost proud.
I'm wearing a bit of you around my
neck, and you wove it through your
sunlit fingers, eyes bright. you tugged on it,
lightly. that's what love does, it strangles
you. and we all want it.

and I gasped at the way that word sounded,
so harsh in such beautiful sunlight on such
a soft face. but I don't want to strangle
you. I said that. thoughtlessly,
instinctively. I regret it every day. in that regard,
you gave me a strength, but it's no german shepherd—
you are so **** strong.

when your ache tugged and tugged at you,
tore you from reality, or brought you closer to it,
it slipped its finger into that lanyard knot. loosened it.
I could have reached out right then, as you had when you
pulled the sun-soaked string over your head, and
tightened it. tightened us. been a friend.

I didn't tug the knot. if you run.
when you run,
I know that two grown dogs
will follow after you, blocked
from the sun by your receding shadow.

it didn’t take a lot a look a few words a few more looks bam not that any girl stuck around and so it was on to the next nothing is precious everything is possible forget what you know leave the road behind invent dance new dance cough spit breathe dance verbs multiplying gazillions of verbs stars what is it about art in my mind i hear all these things i was going to express all these itches scratch pick scabs get drunk write poetry dance ******* in your mouth ******* in my mouth salty sea surfing waves Caravaggio Courbet Turner Goya Ad Reinhardt Rothko Rimbaud Johnny Unitas Walter Payton Annie Proulx Patty Berglund Hannah Wilke Kim Gordon dark clouds rainbows meteor showers lantern licorice amethyst bone

in the end it’s you and your maker ashes to ashes dust to dust Mom questions it’s 4:30 PM December in Chicago and pitch black i don’t understand it’s not supposed to be this dark this cold she imagines a past that never existed events never occurred

these old bones rattle and shake tremble and quake quiver and ache

it will be daylight soon and i am unprepared so terribly unfit for a new dawn suddenly realize tomorrow is today

these old bones rattle and shake tremble and quake quiver and ache

when people die in masses is it any less lonely more comforting than when you die individually or is dying solitary for everyone

these old bones rattle and shake tremble and quake quiver and ache

redemption is a powerful force but what if existence actually does not present second chances and we must live with the consequence of our mistakes

these old bones rattle and shake tremble and quake quiver and ache

if there is an afterlife do i have any say in it or are we all merely lost baggage tossed from airport to airport

these old bones rattle and shake tremble and quake quiver and ache

what if travelers at airports were met with welcoming arms shared stories food instead of suspicion body scanners separation boarding seating procedures

these old bones rattle and shake tremble and quake quiver and ache

i built a magnificent sandcastle with wide open rooms interesting views spacious bathrooms huge kitchen secret places winding stairways auspicious towers swinging rope bridges welcoming gates but the tide washed it all away

these old bones rattle and shake tremble and quake quiver and ache

i cry yet know not why am i a ***** i must take the goose by the neck whatever that means

these old bones rattle and shake tremble and quake quiver and ache

speaking personally i’m never interested in the last bite only the first bite the middle tastes rather bland all chewing gulping automatic consumption talking swallowing stifling gases

these old bones rattle and shake tremble and quake quiver and ache

horses mate with donkeys then out comes mules yet mules cannot propagate nature is so strange mysterious what is it about the attraction between donkeys and horses

these old bones rattle and shake tremble and quake quiver and ache

2 gorgeous petite charming sweet young girls are subletting my place in Tucson i imagine ménage à trios or relationship with either one of them then realized how improper my thoughts will i ever learn

these old bones rattle and shake tremble and quake quiver and ache

Reiko likes hanging out naked if the door is locked and they’re in for the evening she strips Reiko is one of those women who look better without clothes the curls under her arms are growing in dark thick her bush is filling out even her **** is hidden by silky brown hairs he cannot stop checking her out she pretends not to be aware as she trims her toenails he leers **** your cooch looks tasty Odys i like that you can speak crude to me he murmurs you really like that she answers yes i really like that he sees himself in her he is deep in sleep wakes by her hand pulling his hand down to her ***** bone he stirs confused in half sleep as she continues tugging his hand Odysseus realizes what Reiko wants it is 3 AM he touches her there warm distended begins to massage wetness gushes moves down bed puts face there she presses pumping grinding whispering repeatedly i want to *** so bad his mouth tongue breath work her hands grip his head push unyielding muscles stiffen arch shudder continues licking until her body lies still crawls up kisses her forehead hair bodies spoon fall to sleep in the morning he comments you were a naughty little girl last night Reiko grins answers i had an orangutan attack he questions an orangutan attack she confesses yeah they both laugh he has never known a woman so fierce urgent to ****** Reiko has a man’s libido she reminds him of himself they mimic each other hearing Reiko speak Odysseus’s own words back at him and visa versa convey how demanding insecure insensitive each can be to other they do not simply speak but mimic each other Reiko ‘s voice drops to low pitch as she grabs his buns kids hey Reiko Lee what do you think about us wiping each other’s butts we could become more intimate with our bodies Odysseus raises his voice sounding feminine replies Schwartzpilgrim you’re gross take a hike it is hilarious yet intuitive therapy that maintains level playing field neither allows other to be too weak or dominant

these old bones rattle and shake tremble and quake quiver and ache

it is Sunday snowing blizzard freezing cold outside Odysseus sits on floor watching Bear’s football game at Reiko’s she sits naked paging through Art Forum magazine across sofa from him he hears her crunching on bag of barbecue potato chips during half time he reaches touches her bush runs fingers through her ***** hairs twirling them in his fingers she spreads her legs wide open he smells her hair breath perspiration ****** *** feet feels both repelled and attracted he is lost in fascination gently tugs on her lips slides finger inside massages probes her opening she directs him to kneel stands above him her arms at waist her pelvic bone in his face she orders **** it **** it good he follows her instruction **** my ***** she commands as she holds his head in hands her long skinny body thrusts hips forward Reiko presses gently pumping then more furious rough into Odysseus’s face ooohhh i’m going to shoot a load baby swallow my *** she shoves ***** bone into his face bangs his nose hard yet he remains ******* her legs thighs stomach muscles tremble oh oooohhhhh ohh Odys did you see that i came just like a guy oh Odys i loved that he wipes mouth laughs

these old bones rattle and shake tremble and quake quiver and ache

a person’s sexuality is always in question how one interprets his or her own ****** persona relative to another person’s personality response ratio how one’s power measures reacts to another’s vulnerabilities strengths Odysseus and Reiko fit well together switching roles in impulsive volley he loves her masculinity the unpredictable equation of their love he teases Reiko Lee i’m so attracted to the tomboy in you i want to **** you off and let you **** me come over here and stick that fat hard **** in my pink little **** hole all the frustration rage pain pent up inside you i want you to harness that hurt and slam it into me and shoot your load all over me **** me good Reiko Lee she looks at him strange says you’re a weird bird Schwartzpilgrim how weird do you think he asks her voice takes on a creepy overruling tone Odys, you want me to fist-******* he snaps shut up Reiko Lee get out of here she runs fingers through hair breathes out through nose taunts Odys let me ******* a ***** and ******* in the *** Odysseus’s voice grows loud Reiko Lee you’re crossing the line just because i mention some crazy thought doesn’t mean i’m actually into such weirdness don’t try to take what i say to some sound conclusion i enjoy experimenting but i’m one hundred percent male i like to test limits because i’m secure in my manhood spicing our *** life with ***** fantasies is one thing but don’t overstep i got the **** and you got the ***** let’s keep it that way don’t mess with me she replies ok ok Odys i didn’t mean to offend you

these old bones rattle and shake tremble and quake quiver and ache

often he personifies the lead and she interprets the willing or amendable he requests many ****** urges she for the most part eagerly fulfills yet knowing his desires run over the top he considerately concedes to her sensibility he asserts rule number 1 Reiko Lee please let me have my way with you ok please try to not refuse me she smiles consents ok Odys and i want the same from you he insists rule number 2 repeat after me i’m addicted to your ***** i’m codependent on your **** she repeats i’m addicted to your ***** Odys i’m codependent on your **** he challenges rule number 3 at least one ******* a day agreed? She answers yes Odys agreed later he thinks about their conversation approaches her Reiko Lee sometimes i need more than one ******* a day maybe one in the morning and one after you get home from work i need your adoring attention down there will you do that for me please she shoots sarcastic look at him what are you a cow that needs milking everyday all right Odys whatever you desire he gratefully acknowledges Reiko Lee you’re so good to me thank you next morning he says Reiko Lee when i think about you the first image that comes to mind is your eyes i love your eyes more than any other part of you she comments oh yeah more than my **** hole? he flinches surprised oh god i can’t believe you said that you are so outrageous Reiko Lee you have got the sexiest **** hole i’ve ever seen i love adore revere your hairy **** hole when are you going to let me get some of that she remarks we’ll see Schwartzpilgrim in due time the following morning he notices bathroom door is wide open peering inside he sees her sitting on toilet she looks up smiling as he nears he questions which are you doing peeing or ******* she answers why do you need to know he requests lift up and let me watch she raises her thighs knees legs curling toes on toilet seat her **** muscles pucker then a brown extent begins appearing from her hole her vaginal lips flare urethra presses as short spurt of ***** accompanies discharge the ***** length drops into bowl followed by smaller piece Odysseus perceives the action produced by her body as intimate natural expression occurring without contrivance manipulation he studies the form as if it were a sculptural object descended into water to bottom of bowl Reiko reaches for roll of toilet tissue he interrupts **** she answers let me wipe myself first it reeks in here you mean watching me taking a **** turns you on you are one sick monkey he says shut up and **** she follows his instruction after several minutes he pulls out of her mouth jerks off while she watches he shoots wildly on her chin neck chest she rubs his ***** on her ******* they both break out in laughter she says come on let’s take a shower together she begins speaking sentence he finishes it she says Odys i’m not comfortable with more than he breaks in one ******* a day i understand Reiko Lee she expresses thank you Odys one is enough agreed he replies ok ok

these old bones rattle and shake tremble and quake quiver and ache

a week passes Saturday evening she comes from work to his place with stressed look on her face she falls back into wall on floor with her legs stretched out she asks got anything to eat he answers a couple of beers in the fridge her brow furrows as she speaks in low tone Odys i’m guessing there’s something seriously wrong with you he questions wrong with me huh what she comments your physique is weird your shoulder blades and rib cage stick out you’ve got a sunken sternum he answers yeah i know it’s not really a problem more like natural peculiarities she says yeah well you’ve got other peculiarities he asks oh yeah like what she remarks i’ve never known or heard of a man who gets hard as often as you it’s deviant you’ve got some kind of disorder you need to go see a doctor he admits i know i got a problem my libido is out of control it’ll calm down it’s been a long time since i felt so hot for someone do you really think it’s serious enough to go see a doctor she answers serious enough to insist you bone me once a day he laughs Reiko Lee you had me going she grins get over here you ***** ******* and **** me good Reiko’s favorite way to ****** is with her legs closed tight she lies beneath while his ******* presses in pumping her thighs buttocks squeeze stomach muscles tense whole body jerks spasms as she reaches ****** Odysseus’s favorite position is with Reiko on top he likes her rhythms and control

these old bones rattle and shake tremble and quake quiver and ache

when Michael Vick was found guilty for dog fighting mauling cruel killing i wanted him dead dead dead but he is a brilliant quarterback and i was wrong who am i to understand another person’s background judge them maybe there is redemption

these old bones rattle and shake tremble and quake quiver and ache

if another war comes it’s China we must fight to hate fear them run hide

these old bones rattle and shake tremble and quake quiver and ache

it’s a long twisted road down a dark cold hole many are too damaged others work toward salvation yet some unscathed by all this filth

these old bones rattle and shake tremble and quake quiver and ache

on the brighter side death gets a bad rap by mortals think positive perhaps death is graduation to whatever at worst death is release from life’s disappointments expectations responsibilities burdens betrayals pain horrors

these old bones rattle and shake tremble and quake quiver and ache

i remember when Dad was dying all these new people who i still remember entered my life for a brief time it seems like the same thing is happening now

these old bones rattle and shake tremble and quake quiver and ache

Mom i’m right here behind you don’t be scared i’m watching out for you

these old bones rattle and shake tremble and quake quiver and ache

It is snowing and death bugs me
as stubborn as insomnia.
The fierce bubbles of chalk,
the little white lesions
settle on the street outside.
It is snowing and the ninety
year old woman who was combing
out her long white wraith hair
is gone, embalmed even now,
even tonight her arms are smooth
muskets at her side and nothing
issues from her but her last word - "Oh." Surprised by death.

It is snowing. Paper spots
are falling from the punch.
Hello? Mrs. Death is here!
She suffers according to the digits
of my hate. I hear the filaments
of alabaster. I would lie down
with them and lift my madness
off like a wig. I would lie
outside in a room of wool
and let the snow cover me.
Paris white or flake white
or argentine, all in the washbasin
of my mouth, calling, "Oh."
I am empty. I am witless.
Death is here. There is no
other settlement. Snow!
See the mark, the pock, the pock!

Meanwhile you pour tea
with your handsome gentle hands.
Then you deliberately take your
forefinger and point it at my temple,
saying, "You suicide *****!
I'd like to take a corkscrew
and ***** out all your brains
and you'd never be back ever."
And I close my eyes over the steaming
tea and see God opening His teeth.
"Oh." He says.
I see the child in me writing, "Oh."
Oh, my dear, not why.

I wake up form my nap and look at the window
And What do I see before me
A white blanket covering the ground
Powdered sugar on My part of the Funnel cake

No school in the morning, No teacher lingo
A feeling of excitement THis was kind of forseen
I go outside and feel the air and the snow rests on my head like a crown
The impulse now is a snowman I should make

SNOW, SNOW IT"S SNOWING
LET ALL HEAR, LET ALL ENJOY
THAT IT IS SNOWING

Your daisies have come
on the day of my divorce:
the courtroom a cement box,
a gas chamber for the infectious Jew in me
and a perhaps land, a possibly promised land
for the Jew in me,
but still a betrayal room for the till-death-do-us-
and yet a death, as in the unlocking of scissors
that makes the now separate parts useless,
even to cut each other up as we did yearly
under the crayoned-in sun.
The courtroom keeps squashing our lives as they break
into two cans ready for recycling,
flattened tin humans
and a tin law,
even for my twenty-five years of hanging on
by my teeth as I once saw at Ringling Brothers.
The gray room:
Judge, lawyer, witness
and me and invisible Skeezix,
and all the other torn
enduring the bewilderments
of their division.

Your daisies have come
on the day of my divorce.
They arrive like round yellow fish,
******* with love at the coral of our love.
Yet they wait,
in their short time,
like little utero half-borns,
half killed, thin and bone soft.
They breathe the air that stands
for twenty-five illicit days,
the sun crawling inside the sheets,
the moon spinning like a tornado
in the washbowl,
and we orchestrated them both,
calling ourselves TWO CAMP DIRECTORS.
There was a song, our song on your cassette,
that played over and over
and baptised the prodigals.
It spoke the unspeakable,
as the rain will on an attic roof,
letting the animal join its soul
as we kneeled before a miracle--
forgetting its knife.

The daisies confer
in the old-married kitchen
papered with blue and green chefs
who call out pies, cookies, yummy,
at the charcoal and cigarette smoke
they wear like a yellowy salve.
The daisies absorb it all--
the twenty-five-year-old sanctioned love
(If one could call such handfuls of fists
and immobile arms that!)
and on this day my world rips itself up
while the country unfastens along
with its perjuring king and his court.
It unfastens into an abortion of belief,
as in me--
the legal rift--
as on might do with the daisies
but does not
for they stand for a love
undergoihng open heart surgery
that might take
if one prayed tough enough.
And yet I demand,
even in prayer,
that I am not a thief,
a mugger of need,
and that your heart survive
on its own,
belonging only to itself,
whole, entirely whole,
and workable
in its dark cavern under your ribs.

I pray it will know truth,
if truth catches in its cup
and yet I pray, as a child would,
that the surgery take.

I dream it is taking.
Next I dream the love is swallowing itself.
Next I dream the love is made of glass,
glass coming through the telephone
that is breaking slowly,
day by day, into my ear.
Next I dream that I put on the love
like a lifejacket and we float,
jacket and I,
we bounce on that priest-blue.
We are as light as a cat's ear
and it is safe,
safe far too long!
And I awaken quickly and go to the opposite window
and peer down at the moon in the pond
and know that beauty has walked over my head,
into this bedroom and out,
flowing out through the window screen,
dropping deep into the water
to hide.

I will observe the daisies
fade and dry up
wuntil they become flour,
snowing themselves onto the table
beside the drone of the refrigerator,
beside the radio playing Frankie
(as often as FM will allow)
snowing lightly, a tremor sinking from the ceiling--
as twenty-five years split from my side
like a growth that I sliced off like a melanoma.

It is six P.M. as I water these tiny weeds
and their little half-life,
their numbered days
that raged like a secret radio,
recalling love that I picked up innocently,
yet guiltily,
as my five-year-old daughter
picked gum off the sidewalk
and it became suddenly an elastic miracle.

For me it was love found
like a diamond
where carrots grow--
the glint of diamond on a plane wing,
meaning:  DANGER!  THICK ICE!
but the good crunch of that orange,
the diamond, the carrot,
both with four million years of resurrecting dirt,
and the love,
although Adam did not know the word,
the love of Adam
obeying his sudden gift.

You, who sought me for nine years,
in stories made up in front of your naked mirror
or walking through rooms of fog women,
you trying to forget the mother
who built guilt with the lumber of a locked door
as she sobbed her soured mild and fed you loss
through the keyhole,
you who wrote out your own birth
and built it with your own poems,
your own lumber, your own keyhole,
into the trunk and leaves of your manhood,
you, who fell into my words, years
before you fell into me (the other,
both the Camp Director and the camper),
you who baited your hook with wide-awake dreams,
and calls and letters and once a luncheon,
and twice a reading by me for you.
But I wouldn't!

Yet this year,
yanking off all past years,
I took the bait
and was pulled upward, upward,
into the sky and was held by the sun--
the quick wonder of its yellow lap--
and became a woman who learned her own shin
and dug into her soul and found it full,
and you became a man who learned his won skin
and dug into his manhood, his humanhood
and found you were as real as a baker
or a seer
and we became a home,
up into the elbows of each other's soul,
without knowing--
an invisible purchase--
that inhabits our house forever.

We were
blessed by the House-Die
by the altar of the color T.V.
and somehow managed to make a tiny marriage,
a tiny marriage
called belief,
as in the child's belief in the tooth fairy,
so close to absolute,
so daft within a year or two.
The daisies have come
for the last time.
And I who have,
each year of my life,
spoken to the tooth fairy,
believing in her,
even when I was her,
am helpless to stop your daisies from dying,
although your voice cries into the telephone:
Marry me!  Marry me!
and my voice speaks onto these keys tonight:
The love is in dark trouble!
The love is starting to die,
right now--
we are in the process of it.
The empty process of it.

I see two deaths,
and the two men plod toward the mortuary of my heart,
and though I willed one away in court today
and I whisper dreams and birthdays into the other,
they both die like waves breaking over me
and I am drowning a little,
but always swimming
among the pillows and stones of the breakwater.
And though your daisies are an unwanted death,
I wade through the smell of their cancer
and recognize the prognosis,
its cartful of loss--

I say now,
you gave what you could.
It was quite a ferris wheel to spin on!
and the dead city of my marriage
seems less important
than the fact that the daisies came weekly,
over and over,
likes kisses that can't stop themselves.

There sit two deaths on November 5th, 1973.
Let one be forgotten--
Bury it!  Wall it up!
But let me not forget the man
of my child-like flowers
though he sinks into the fog of Lake Superior,
he remains, his fingers the marvel
of fourth of July sparklers,
his furious ice cream cones of licking,
remains to cool my forehead with a washcloth
when I sweat into the bathtub of his being.

For the rest that is left:
name it gentle,
as gentle as radishes inhabiting
their short life in the earth,
name it gentle,
gentle as old friends waving so long at the window,
or in the drive,
name it gentle as maple wings singing
themselves upon the pond outside,
as sensuous as the mother-yellow in the pond,
that night that it was ours,
when our bodies floated and bumped
in moon water and the cicadas
called out like tongues.

Let such as this
be resurrected in all men
whenever they mold their days and nights
as when for twenty-five days and nights you molded mine
and planted the seed that dives into my God
and will do so forever
no matter how often I sweep the floor.

It had been snowing all night
light slight white
almost invisible flakes
falling on the garden below

While you slept I lay awake
between startling dreams
adventures (with my children)
amongst pinnacled peaks

Should sleep in an unfamiliar room
so effect the unconscious mind?
Here you became a young adult
‘I lost my virginity’ (you said)
‘and it was messy’

I didn’t want to know this
but told you how it was
for me a beach at night
in Devon Tarka country

And so a tracery
emerges from the past
It emanates it draws together
intersects conjoins segments
a tessellation  map-rich

by and through and which
(bathed in the snow-light
of an uncurtained morning)
together we move now too and fro
in this still-experimental  passion

The lazy man's rule in the South
If it's snowing,
I ain't going.

Social Network, droll and at times informative: keeping me in tune with out of tune people. Except, this time you did something different. This time you took a life from my web of friends a trend of late: One loss to cancer, one to a fatal accident, another to pneumonia, and the rest deceased from overdoses. It’s been so many that the track marks are beginning to show across my veiny webs, long black thin trails leading to round puncture wounds where the touch of cold steel kissed your skin, stroked your hair back, and slowly laid you to bed exactly where you sat. This network doesn't show me the nights you cry curled in the corner, it doesn't reveal the moment when the ocean came crashing into the Steel Pier you are, tearing away lumps of mangled frame work from beneath, soaking brine and rattling support beams that you depend on. A smile instead manages to froth along the pages scrolled like white curled lapping shorelines pushing foam further up the sandy coast with each eroding wave.  Now I stand in the wave of your wake; among seagulls flapping their dense thoughts and cretinous like minds and memories each vouching for the validity of their affirmations about the soul whose body is now center stage like a porcelain doll on a shelf to be displayed and examined exposed to all with each and every flaw highlighted so that they can have a chance at reciting her history, origins, funny moments, and fatal mistakes. The difference here is that there is no makers mark; there is no branded tag, no little black book of logs from which we can pull and decipher or recall every waking moment of your life. The reality is that for those of us who lost touch with you all that we know now is only history or what we thought we knew. It’s such *******, I’m not a historian, I really was your friend back then, but because of that I don’t remember ****, just the frame of the picture within, the shell of who you were, of what we did. I can tell you it was fun: the Bacardi filled Gatorade bottles, the sound of your laughter diluted in an intoxicating environment of rollerblades on the rink-floor, contemporary music and house beats reverberating against the circling congregation of equally happy and inebriated teenage youths. But how could I ever describe you today, who you were when you passed. That is not something I can claim as some of these birds squawk. Your social posts were a false facade. Obviously there was something I missed, what was it. Was it so subtle? So much like a light breeze fluttering at the thin frayed thread of a seam that I could have seen but didn't care enough to realize it was there. Were you just a tumbling leaf among a forest of fresh autumn arrivals lost in the vastness, one among millions? It pains me to admit that as much as I would have liked to have been a friend to you during your dark times, I too was in a dark place of my own and in turn was deaf and blind to the billowing smoke signals that tried to underline and emphasize the sorry plights of others. I wish you could have told your story yourself, could have left a memoir of the ****** up thoughts that zipped through behind your eyes while you filtered the layers of **** served in white paper bags that this world seems to dish up like a fast food chain of heartbreak and deep ruts, while every so often rewarding us with a mistakenly placed toy or salad to “make up” for the rest of the empty calories served. I've tried so long to be an optimist, to look at the glass half full, but that glass is shattered on the floor right now, I broke it. My life hasn't been easy, not many people’s lives are and that’s life, I understand that much. If it isn't raining it’s snowing, if it isn't snowing it’s hailing, and if there isn't any precipitation it’s either hot or cold as hell and you have to fight through it to make it to the next day. I’m taking the shoes I wear now off so I can step on that pile of excrement they call a glass half full, half empty. Give me the pain, it hurts and the tears burn as they roll down my cheeks while I stare at this half a cent card with your face on it and some mass produced poem on the back listening to the ******* eulogy mutterings of everyone around me, but I want that. I would take this shuttering pain, this volcano of discharged emotions erupting from the shaking core of my body. I would take it any day over the numbness that is ******. Wasn't your child a life raft? Wasn't he the duck it or **** it of your life? Had you not a fiancé to whom which you could have rested your beaten structure on? Did you not have an array of support, a field of pile driven beams to share the weight in it all? Or was it a mistake? Was it a fault of somebody else that provided you with the birthday batch of ******? When you blew out the candles and smiled behind the thin line of adumbrating smoke that sketched out the soul behind your eyes did you think to yourself, today will be the celebration and cessation of my birthday; a bitter sweet memory for all who know me: on this day she was both born and deceased. Today she began to live and learned of death. I will never have the answers for the many who continue to fade into the credits of their dismal painful lives, but I will never stop trying to understand and I will never learn to forget or let go. This blood in my veins detest the cold steel rush that so many of you have tasted, that so many of you ran to when no one was listening, when no one was looking, when no one could comprehend you anymore and the only languages you spoke were procured from endless nights on the cushioned wooden floor as you drifted off among the silver linen clouds, as you left this body on earth and spoke with angels perched over the smoke stack that overlooked the back-lit-keyboard of lights that was your city, your town, your home while the strand of rubber slowly fell from your arm. We couldn't hear you, and those **** angels seem to weave such a pretty tale sometimes when you forget that you are speaking to your own deceitful mind. I will learn that language, I will look for those signs, I will place a candle on the sill beckoning every friend of mine to come and share with me in person. Let me reach into that white bag and see what is inside, I’ll eat whatever you pull out whether they are empty calories or not, preservative filled fries cold or hot. You are my friends and Social Networks are a lie, just a wall to hide behind, an occasionally droll and informative medium, until you die and then there is nothing left to pretend to say or be.

.and i wrote this... back in January of... perhaps this year... a disclaimer: bones and prose... to have reached a traction of nearing 1.4K readers elsewhere: i don't expect the same numbers here... of that i am imploring... but i want to remember something: i probably misjudged celebrating the worth of Dickens' Pickwick Papers... the moment i heard it was... an imitation of Don Quixote - it was fun to read... before i was reading the papers via the gresham publishing company edition from... oh the 19th century... that's before the book started falling apart from actually being re(a)d: no matter the decency of binding... flimsy papyrus in the end... good enough to look at when stacked on a shelf and an artifact for the eyes... so i decided to finish reading the papers... 2nd hand penguin modern... as ever... why do they write these synopsis spoilers... even a mere allusion to: 'the pickwick papers are the english don quixote'... you know... when reading this book without a synopsis-of-allusion... i very much enjoyed it... but since i have re(a)d Don Quixote... and... frankly... the ballet by the royal opera house was par excellence... now i don't feel so inclined as to be motivated enough to celebrate Dickens anymore... notably to boot there was that essay by Milan Kundera.... as any continental european: not much of english literary adventures is given much thought: it appeal to the everyman but... that's my problem too... Shakespeare is great... when recited... not when read... you require good acting to appreciate shakespeare... a stand-alone dynamic of me: reader of Shakespeare? it's not a selling point... it doesn't feel right! shakespeare? isn't that a household noun akin to chair... hammer... why would it need a capital S(igma): to focus on... what... exactly? shakespeare, hammer, nail, towel... fridge-freezer... fork... muhammad ibn abdullah ibn abd al-muttalib... hey-zeus ben josephus... flour... cheese... i was going to enjoy the pickwick papers to the end but then the disclaimer that it's an imitation don quixote tale... and suddenly the fire - of eagerness... became a stalemate of cinders and stealthy coals... no, clearly the milan kundera essay didn't help either: who would want to reread don quixote: i know some people do reread books... i don't understand my grandmother in that respect... or... i remember when it school we were governed by repetitions of rubric... i hope: prose is where allowances for voyeurism / exhibitionism come to the fore... third party details summoned... that sort of "thing"... but of course i wanted something original to come to the fore... a proverb... it might be persian but it might be absolutely original from circa the baltic region: in between all that's west and russia... a corridor of peoples and nations that... given the greenwich mean time would have to incorporate Greece... and most probably Egypt... and Israel... it reads: all in capital to escape this myopia claustrophobia fudge of paragraph: BETTER A SPARROW IN YOUR HAND, THAN A DOVE UPON YOUR ROOF... years later a proverb would have to be disguised in cosmopolitan spreschen by some "****" of a bachelor... with his 'categorical imperative'... ah... a proverb isn't... that? i like the nuances of proverbs... blindly walking to metaphors... or not expecting a rigidity of life dictated by the already creasing formality language tools: dear sir, yours faithfully vs. yours sincerely... ms. vrs. mrs. informally email: hello! ****-wit! rather than... penned to paper and carrier pigeon bound... stamp! stamp! lick! dear... besides... as you get older and drinking is still a quenching of "thirst" you allude to nicknames for certain spirits: ***** becomes a headache of pravda (truth) while whiskey becomes ms. amber... beer is notoriously gods' ****... along with cider and mead... etc. what is a black cracovite... oh... you know... just an alternative to a tequila shot i invented hearing the story about... once upon a time in cracow... it was snowing... it was snowing a soot-esque sort of snow... the lonely chimney of aushwitz... wa puffing up in all its glory... in english it can translate to: well... what haven't i to thank for... or the jews... to thank for... that these lands are the remains of... at least children might be inclined to play games at the foundation of pyramids... we sure as hell did... near Ypres... in world war I trenches... i can't imagine what games children might invent in these... teutonic strongholds of totenkopfschwatzen... i would gladly send each brick by brick to the rightful owners of these camps: 1000 years from now it might be disguided that... under the auspicious rule of king Casimir's ghost these were "our" original intent... it ruins the land but preserves the memory of a people more invested in a newly established state of the Levant... yes... i need to figure out the paragraph: i need to revisit it more often: this slender-manning of a verse esque casccade doesn't aid me: i need to replica congestion and myopia and all that's cosmopolitan "nice"... what is a black cracovite... for years i wanted to land in the old capital when visit my grandparents... warsaw was always too far removed... like london already is... back toward glorifying Cracow and some elder supreme of the Piast dynasty... that this is written in english and not in native... well... it shouldn't have been written by an englishman with all his darwinistic / anglican / atheistic / rational / ayn rand borrowed sensibilities... a black cracovite as far as i can tell is... a spin on a tequila short... one requires smoking a cigarette... the ash is deposited on a licked space between the thumb and index finger... the ash is licked... a shot of ***** is made ready... what replaces the bite of a lemon is a grit of black pepper... yes... i have to invest in a paragraph more: for all its congestive phalanx remedies: i posit this the most redeeming: remedying... closure... it's far removed from airing out grievances when words cascade... now i should have concerns for contending... imitations... cheap-sell-offs of these words... outlandishly left to the open cringe of... simply-leash: i'll probably trail off on a ***-note, a falsetto... absolutely necessary... one cannot feed too many expectations without feeding those necessarily in pursuit of sustenance... be gone! countess bathory-veneer!

this is truly a welcome break from:

freeing all the drafts -
which i imagined to be equivalent, or rather:
the 2nd parallel of the original adjecent -

i imagined it would feel like:
releasing doves with laurel branches firmly
lodged in their beaks -
just as the waters of the flood would recede...

but it truly felt like:
the inversion of the diarrhoea-constipation
"paradox"... because it felt like both,
but never giving me a clue as to
what was more prominent -

the sharp edge of a knife -
or the horizon when the sky becomes
the sea far away....

i'm not ashamed to throw this onto the fore...
it happened to me once...
but on purpose...
i wanted to compensate marquis de sade's
antic in a brothel when he implored
the ******* to turn the crucifix into
a ***** into his decapitated precursor
of a mary antoinette... puppet...

profanity in images and all the other seances
of the senses...
i wouldn't go as far as to make the crucifix
profane... or do anything profane
with it...

only the words...
hic (est) mea corpus - hic (est) mea cruor...
this is my body - this is my blood...
and i am aware the mead is the gods' ****
when they're in a good mood - all... jolly...
and that beer is the gods' **** when
laughter hits a dry run...
and that ms. amber or whiskey is but:
the blood of the gods...

i had to corrupt it...
to prove to myself: that i am not a god...
it was quiet simple...
once upon a time i was drinking
a glass of wine...
and as you do... on a whim...
i decided to **** into it...
perhaps all that drinking prior would
give me something to elevate the palette
of exploration that was to come...

hmm... at least that sorts out
hic: mea cruor... *** urinae...
but back then i did that on purpose...
and if only this was a desert scenario...
and i would have to drink my own *****
to survive...
well... i just thought: here's to starving
from a lack of better imagery...

i will come unto some Horace in a minute...
i don't know how i managed to find
this citation - it's only very losely related...
and yes i will showcase another draft from
May of last year...

but today i was unsure...
did i leave yesterday's pepsi max bottle
with only the stale pepsi left...
or did i forget to do the lazy sly wee whizz
jumping out of bed in the middle of
the night...
but i already poured this "cocktail"
over two shots of whiskey...
and i'm hardly desperate but...
my original intention of alligning myself
to the profanity of the crucifix...
i had to somehow make profanity
of the wine...

since i am... thinking how to compensate
being satisfied with wine...
how the ancient world was always
satisfied with wine...
the story of the 3 ambers of the north...
the beer, the mead and the whiskey...
all in a varying degree...
but i will not bow before the blood of a god
that's so... diluted...
whiskey yes... that can be blood indeed...
otherwise it's down in the trench
with gods' **** - mead if they are in a good
mood... beer if they are in a talkative mood...

thank god i wasn't thinking:
better salvage those two shots of whiskey
and drink this cocktail of the "ultimate" surprise...
and apparently eating a woman's
placenta is good for you...
as was... apparently once... breastmilk...
funny... give me the milk of a cow or a goat
and i'll show you: one dislocated thumb...
one dislocated distal + intermediate phalange
from the index finger of the right hand's
proximal phalange... no broken bones...

knock-knock... who's there? touchwood superstition.

it's not as bad as it sounds...
stale, yes...
but i am also known for sometimes
performing the antithesis of drinking tequilla...
*****... i'll sprinkle some cigarette ash
onto my hand... lick it... take a shot of *****
then throw one or two black peppercorns into
my mouth for the crunch...
each drinker and his own myths... right?
i call that the black cracovite...
cracow being so close to aushwitz...
and once it snowed and they thought it was
snowing... sure... ash from the furnaces
of aushwitz... here's my ode to... the dead...
in a drink...

hell better a cracovite than a cracowite, white?
i mean: right? seriously: low hanging fruit,
the elephant's testicles...

i will never understand this whole veneration
of wine: in vino veritas...
these days wine is better drank by women
and castrated monarchs of the clergy...
i had to check... so i ****** in my holy grail...
and guess what didn't come out
the other end? gods' **** (beer and wine)
or gods' blood (whiskey and wine)...
just this stale, almost bland...
water with a pinch of grape that has been
left to sit in a puddle on some
industrial estate in dagenham enjoying
the ripe downpouring of chemicals
that leave it with a rainbow of diluted
petroleum...

akin to: try shoving that sort of doughnut
into this kind of pile of ****...
not that i would...
but i have also been prone to test
99.9% spirits... or 96% absinthe...
with a locust mummified in the bottle's neck...
from Amsterdam...

i had to rethink: why become engaged...
when chances are...
to the displeasure of someone who read:
but never bought my work...
the self-editorial process...
the self-publishing process could be...
guillotined on a whimsical constipation
of a "dear reader"...
as it might happen...

again... Horace and the perfect example
of poetry with conversational overtones...
poetry as prosaic...
my god... paper was expensive back in old
Horace's days... surely you would need
something spectacular to write:
like a psilocybin trip account word for word:
wrong!
a certain don juan said to a certain
carlos castaneda: don't bring back words from
such experiences...
but of course: they did...
upon once upon a time loving the beatniks...
i started to abhor them...
getting drunk and smoking "something"
is one thing... exposing the altars of solipsism
of such experiences: words intact...
is a profanity...
each dream is individually curated
to the dreamer... the introduction of words
to relate back... for some next be disciple...
the "drugs" / portals of escapism are already
contaminated...

why wouldn't i: even if these are only
objective recounts of an experience?
perhaps because... they are subjectivelly null...
there are only the comparable heights of Gideon...
such experiences are best: kept to each individual's
right to enjoy... a freedom of thought...
and of silence...
each keeps a secret...
but what secret is left?
when the objective parameters have already
been stated?
i see no point... better down and finding
it at the end of a bottle...
or... ******* into a glass of wine
and drinking it...

they have been contaminated by words that
have been retrieved from such experiences
that (a) no one should talk about...
(b) surprise! the objective reality already
being stated as altered...
am i going to a ******* cinema with my body...
or am i going to a surprise
gallery with my thought?
doesn't matter... word contamination...
bigmouth struck his final last time!
at least the remains is what gives me
the labyrinth... the blood the **** you name
it the three sisters amber... for all i care...
it's readily available: make do...
with what's already been given.

me? i drink for that very special date...
monday 9 march 2020...
when all the orthodox jews get drunk...
that's one of those celebrations i wouldn't mind
being a part of... purim, festival of Lots,
funny... that period of history...
the Persian aspect of the hebrews...
never made it to the big screen...
seeing modern day Iran as day-old Persia
in muslim garbs...
we're still only seeing the: African adventure...
perhaps once the dust has settled...
we will get the Persian installement...
and then... oh... **** it...
we're all in it for the long run...
then when christianity is no longer useful...
the Roman bit of history...
and how the hebrews conspired with the greeks...
2000 years later we'll probably see
some prince of egypt cartoon movie
of the pristine romance and a mention of germany...
not yet... ****'s still to ripe to entertain
the universal child and children...
no screen adaptation from "their" time in Persia...
songs... we have songs!
Verdi's Nabucco - the chorus...
perhaps only in song from Persia and always
with movies and hieroglyphs when from Egypt...

but the festivity... of course! i'll celebrate...
cf. though... Puccini's coro a bocca chiusa -
the humming chorus...
before the band enigma... i am pretty sure my mother
would crank up the volume to at least
one of these songs... should they come on the radio...
i'm still to hear christopher young's:
something to think about - to be on air...
and to also be treated as a piece of classical music...
if wojciech kilar's dracula soundtrack can be treated
as classical music... what's wrong with a little
bit of hellraiser?!

perhaps, "again" is this desecration of the sacred not,
simply hanging in the background,
all, the, ******, time?
who is to celebrate wine giving it a god's blood
status in sips? one is expected to somehow become
drunk on the passion!
no one is here for crumbs of sips!
first they came for the loaf of bread...
and said you should fast and eat only a crumb...
then they came for the bottle of wine...
and said you should abstain and drink only a sip...
then they came for *** and by then
vatican was a monaco with better tax protections...

it's an investement: having to **** into a glass
of wine you're about to drink...
worse... you accidently "forgot" about
******* into some left-over pepsi max
and you're making yourself a cocktail
with one of the graeae ambers - 2x -
and you wonder: is this the proper state
of carbonated water, stale?
but i'm hardly going to bash the crucifix...
i'm here for the words...

the... transfiguration of the wine into blood...
and i say of my gods:
and here is their **** - beer and mead...
and here's their blood: the three graeae ms. ambers...
see no: clearer? no... happier?

i will get onto ancient roman poetics
with its conversational overtones in a minute!
first we have to settle the sacraments!
the metaphors and the sacraments!
i have no ivar the boneless claim of god...
season 6? to be honest...
i'd rather watch an english soap opera...
at least the intricacy of the plot remains...
even though it has been recycled
so many times...

i can't **** out the gods' ***** even if it was
stale beer... or ideal mead...
as i can't leisure a Seneca's bath filled
with the blood of the immortals...
problem solved... "problem":
as if it ever was...

why, Horace? a very short rhetorical retort:
if Dante had his Virgil...
why can i have my Horace, as guide?
again... what Roman poet could venture for
ambitions among the myths -
or extend his "consciousness"
to devastate the land and become
the mad Xerxes wanting the waves
of a sea whipped into submission?
why, Horace? if Dante could have his Virgil...

poetry... at least among the roman poets
there's no boxed in a box "without" a "box"...
the conversational overtones are ripe...
the almost complete lack of
character dimensions... beside their dimensions
from anecdotes...

to difuse wine, to desecrate the hic mea cruor...
**** in it!
then drink it...
or have one of my antithesis of a tequilla surprise
with me...
smoke a cigarette... drop some ash on the lick-part
of the space between the thumb
and the index metacarpal... lick it...
follow it with a shot of *****...
then throw some black peppercorns
into the hades of your gob
and we've arrived at the black cracovite...

and also the day when the orthodox jews
recant their story of their time
in Persia... the festivity of Lots...
when they become blind drunk and pretend to
have the sort of alcohol intolerence as
the Japanese... 1 shot! just 1 shot:
and hey! they throw their kippahs in
the air and we can all dance the ukranian 'opak!

looks good to me!
but only looks good...
when there's this plump drunk playing the accordion:
i.e. me,
and there's the sort of adrew rieu directing
an upcoming crescendo of a poliushko polie...
and we can all leave the auditorium
feeling, less than russophobic...
and then i can be told...
you young to be old yet still
profane pan-siberian peasant root!
indo-european leftover!
well... at least then i have been allowed
the scrap i'm supposed to see
before i showcase my *****, frost riddled fangs!
of the lesser wolf that i am:
as a rabid dog!

since the crescendo will come...
what better fathom of it...
esp. just beside a cemetery... twirling to the music...
ear-plugs out seancing my time in a grand
orchestral hall... plucked from the ears...
the crescendo is coming...
but... plucked... the orchestra of buffalo-sized
snowflakes... and... the worst kind of ballet...
a male soloist... doing his crazy
ukranian folk... maestro! the music never ever
dies! even in the silence of the universe!
however micro- or macro- this theatre will take
form... the music remains playing: uninterrupted!

but the snow was there,
the "ballerina" was also there...
the night was there,
the music was there -
albeit no grand orchestral hall -
couldn't ask for a better canvas
than a cemetery -
and all the heart's content!
comparative "literature"
to love like a muslim...
or to love like a sparrow...
or to love with a grudge like a crow...
mind you; site note...
i have been many a pigeons attempt
fornication unabashed...
i've never seen two crows attempt it...
perhaps they do "it" in the night
and never in the open?

crows... pedantic priests of the kingdom...
and where the widower king
and the widow queen among the swans?
where i and you will have probably left them...
admiring a family of ducks...

as asked by the serpent of the swan...
you and me of the same birth in a Fabergé egg...
me with serpentine spine...
while you: with a crooked neck?
silly... it really is...
of a being.... that was once
a t-rex roar... now a pickled brain
in pickle jar... boasting about being...
pure spine and tingles and...
the better part of what... becomes the mammalian
hibernation...
hibernating "hibernating" upon the
impetus of digestion...
a serpent would ask a swan about
a crooked neck?

because what would a **** sapeins look toward,
as he is always prone to to look elsewhere?
if not to borrow the fixed, rigid ontology
of other animals?
i better from the birds, solely...
the swans and the crows...
perhaps the fox...
rarely something that has lent itself
to being curated by man's leash and grip...
collective the known herd...
otherwise the refined bonsai tigers...
perhaps the fish without a knowledge
of a tide or a wave...

i call a dog the noble friend,
the swan the sombre monogamist...
the crow the priest...
the furry spider one's own reflection
dealing with aracnophobia...
the snake the old "say-what?"
or that pickled spine with a brain
the worth of brine juices...
the extinguished remnant
of a dinosaur's toothache... or some
transcendental exploration
of the carpals of the wrist
extending into the length of a spine...

i'm not going to cry over this one...
skål!
i feel disinhibited from writing a memorandum!
slàinte!
gasoline to the peddle and... off... we, go!

i am bound to get this translaton right...
at some point of hinging-on... i.e. beginning with...
and most probably at the opposite end
of having to finish...
hence "open bracket"... prefix-
and -suffix allowance given the archeological
excavation began with:

-seu pila velox molliter austerum studio
fallente laborem, seu te discus agit, pete cedentem
aera disco: *** labor extuderit fastidia, siccus,
inanis sperne cibum vilem; nisi Hymettia mella
Falerno ne biberis diluta. foris est promus,
et atrum defendens piscis hiemat mare: *** sale
panis latrantem stomachum bene leniet. unde putas
aut qui partum? non in caro nidore voluptas summa,
sed in te ipso est. tu pulmentaria quaere
sudando: pinguem vitiis albumque neque ostrea
nec scarus aut poterit peregrina iuvare lagois.
vix tamen eripiam, posito pavone velis quin
hoc potius quam gallina tergere palatum,
corruptus vanis rerum, quia veneat auro
rara avis et picta pandat spectcula cauda:
tamquam ad rem attineat quidquam.
num vesceris ista, quam laudas, pluma?
cocto num adest honor idem?
carne tamen quamvis distat nil, hac magis illam
inparibus formis deceptum te petere esto:
unde datum sentis, lupus hic Tiberinus
an alto captus hiet? pontisne inter iactatus
an amnis ostia sub Tusci?
laudas, insane, trilibrem mullum,
in singula quem minuas pulmenta necesse est.
ducit te species, video: quo pertinet ergo proceros
odisse lupos? quia scilicet illis maiorem natura modum
dedit, his breve pondus: ieiunus raro stomachus volgaria
-temnit.

it's translated, isn't it? no
stefan gołębiewski or no 1980 warsaw...
is to know...

- nec meus hic sermo est, sed quae praecepit Ofellus:
these are not my words, this said the simpleton
Ofellus - neither of which of us is a laurel-leaf
adorned Orpheus...

that via a living "game": stoking up an appetite
with this entertainment the appetite increaes...
as does one health...

sorry... pagans... bloodthirty people...
trouble with the translation...
apparently the mud slinging
***** and bricks are nothing new...

or when you "minus" the disk,
litter the distance, head with the wind into
competition!
after hardships of the body is good and
the meal is simple -
(apparently all of this is still "connected",
scratch of the ol' 'ed and we're fine...
we're ******* sailing!)
Falern will not hurt "us"...
seasoned by honey from Hymettis,
before the entré. Safaz left,
the sea rumbles, the zephyr of fish it protects,
storm, fishing made unsafe;
stomach grumbles, bread with salt:
excuisite; you do not have any better! why?
taste does not reside in the scent of dishes,
but in your self alone.
toil merely increases appetite's presence.
he who over-eats, will not know the taste
of an oyster, nor a turbot, nor chickpeas,
the northern bird.
perceptions take the scalp of the mountain
above the actual taste of the dishes
(one might scalp... but never eat the scalp)...
you will not take a chicken onto a tooth,
when you are given a peacock,
you will trust your delusion:
a rare bird, worth its own weight of gold,
a most rarified tail, how it sparkles
with subtle hues!
as if the tail were to lead -
and there was no head to be found!
do you allow yourself to judge the hue
of the feathers as precursor for the adjecctive:
that's it's "also" tasty? the meat, of course?
the old - judge a book by its cover...
is the oven baked... also as delicious / beautiful?
chicken meat... or peacock meat?
almost without difference.
therefore: light... albeit...
although only vanity lures the peacock
(to be compared to a poultry)...
let's go further... i want to know: after what
do you recognise this, that a pike
with its gaping mouth was left:
from the sea... or from the Tiber fished?
somewhere among bridges... or from some
conrete estuary? idiot-kin of the surname whim...
you admire a three-pound mullet!
do you take size... for the gauge of all measure?
when you... cut the bell?
then why... why... with disgrace
do you demand in appreciation:
elongating pikes!
evidently nature: this greater gave the proper
measure... and with it: the lesser weight -
an empty stomach will rarely -
being fed a simple thing - despise -
what is...

an empty stomach - rarely despises -
simple matters.

how true... i was allowing myself the time
it would take to drink,
and translate into the vulgate...
but... from no better source...
and i am still to add to this one of my...
"freeing of the drafts"...

as promised...
"draft"...

- a most confiscated man -
no italics included...

.the original draft:

binges, worth the count
of a liter of whiskey
per night,
for a year, if not more...
become so...
so unspectular...

          the world either
screams, or yawns,
generally:
it exhaust a desire
to toss a coin,
agitate the vocab.,

a grand canyon
huddling
in the "depths" of
a glass of water...

baron science
comes with his rubric
of bore,
      and:
i find myself,
most idle:
while the world
orientates
itself in keeping
itself busy,
bothersome,
always the prime concern,

the ant-colony coup,
the:
i always find friends
in the orientations
of an empty glass,
but prior to:

i drink
before no altar,
no mirror,
no confidante...

    pure flesh revels itself
in a blank's worth
of prior to dictum's
  allowance of, a page...

bothersome
the knot of the pretentious
anti- in scold of
the passing fancy:
expression...

            poker charm
of a love's affair...

_

i sometimes entertain myself
with ancients proverbs,
one slavic proverb reads:
better a sparrow in your hand
than a dove on your roof...

what, could, possibly be,
the interpretation?
care for the small joys in
your possession,
than, for the peace of your household,
which is, on the roof,
but not in your hands...

if i were paid? would i be more
honest?
probably not...
        what i see, is what needs
to be seen...
  em... simple pleasures talk...
once upon a time,
donning long hair, implied
you were a mosher...
a metal-head...
    now? three days +,
long hair, and you're not a
grunge fanatic?
  trans-, etc.?

  a man of simple pleasures,
i know what long hair,
jealousy, associated with
putting it in a french braid,
does to a camel jockey ego...
ruins and ruins as far as the eyes
can see...
    he replicates...
he grows his hair long...
at the same time boasting about
haivng a premature beard...
then you grow a beard yourself...
you start fiddling with it...
****, ***** on my face...
and then...
the "question" of a girlfriend
flies out of the window...
i'm happy with a beard,
thank you, very much,
i don't, exactly want to wish upon
myself, a female, company...

*** protest all you want...
the *** differences between men
and women, to my sort of understanding,
are, unrepairable...
    they were, never,
bound, to being, repaired...
savvy?
            i take my route,
a woman took her route...
  we're even...
              
      since what can only frighten a freed
woman, beside a monarch,
a free man?
                  a man with...
a gamble...
        i am a man with a gamble...
i don't like being told what
to be, or what to think...
like any man,
and like any man:
i don't like being forced
ownership over a being:
that can share my sense of freedom...
so...
    i find myself,
thrilled with relief,
at now having to answer to
a woman's subjugation...
like a woman, and, i have learned
from women: i like being
my objective's self...
rather than a "self" made subject...

i like that: thank you...
i can start feedings the pigs and the peasant
the diatribe life, and lie,
of: there being an existential cricis,
a need to reproduce...
and i, and i am, being demeaning
in this, way, for a justified reason...

once the peasants attack you:
you attack, the peasants...
you demean them in the same way
they demeaned you...

once upon a time i thought:
greater good came from the number
of innocents being salvaged
than for the few great of grand bearing
being salvaged...
even if bound to an ill will:
an ill command,
of a will, predisposed to pretend
actions of the blind...
but now i see...

  the many: if beside fulfilling
their petty deeds,
having to stand outside of those,
petty deeds,
  have ambitions equivalent
to their emotions...
            akin to something worth,
pity, akin to something
worth: as little as a rat's heartbeat...
petty, primitive bull-*******...
and all the amount of sorrow,
or pity,
or mercy...
              that, these, ******* allow...
are worth the same response
Pontius Pilate gave...
      there isn't enough of water,
in this world,
to wash my hands, clean,
of these people...
  even if innocent blood plagues
them,
    not enough waters have run their
due course,
to... release me from the indentation
of memory upon my mind...
and i am plagued by an elephant's
memory...
        we've reached the conclusion
of: some people...
  just do not see an insult,
            past the insult's eloquence!

i am a most conflicted man,
i binge watched vikings
for a while now,
and right now, i'm ready for
an extraction of what i have learned...

believe me: i am not someone
who has the sort of ego-presence
to fate myself in the role
of the protagonist...
    i'm too pedantic to have to
market my body and deeds,
for the fates tio see,
and history to ascribe fame unto me...

even homer was off too war
with troy,
  and blessed he became...

because? time morphs,
the longer something is kept,
the more, "unreal" is becomes,
a fairy-tale...
esp. now, with the onslaught
of journalism...
two things in this world
are insomniac,
money never sleeps,
and, now, apparently,
journalism doesn't sleep either:
well, given its ******
bed-fellow of political liars...
why should it?

            Rolo... a semi-minor character...
but i feel his angst at the already
fervent dichotomy,
(dichotomy, modern variety variant
of schizoid-affective...
or bilingual in turn)...

            music...
                    all these modły...
gesticulations of prayer,
phantom conjuring,
              lunatics with candles
at high-noon...
                  i am fated by music,
i am perverted by music,
i am swayed by music...
who is the god, patron,
of music?
who is the angel (demi-god),
patron of music?
        i do not seek the highest
influencer...
the minor one...

  when Archangel Sandalphon
met St. Cecilia...
but as such, i am, conflicted...
even though, this is the first time
i have heard of Sandalphon...

Rome, never reached my peoples,
the Vikings did...
  weren't the ugly vikings the founders
of Kiev?
  so they must have passed via
the Polen (field) land, no?

feelings are not important,
facts don't care about your feelings...
granted...
but i'm not hear for facts,
contra, feelings,
i'm here for the rivers...
what i feel, what my heart yearns for,
needs to attain an equilibrium
with my mind...
for that: i need to clarify my feelings,
to hush my heart, silence it,
in order to listen to my mind,
and the mind, needs to feed into
heaving the heart: to do,
what, the heart, desires,
autonomous to what the heart
"thinks", is right...
                    that's how it was forver
going to work...
consolidated...
and yes, i much envy the punctuation
of king Ecgberht,
a man of cunning: much admired...
abstract thinker...
        and a reality...
        pun-ctu-a-tion...
the delivery of one's speech...
  much admired, as much as...
                the crude brawl possession...
the chief protagonist of the story?
as important as is: the required from
Atlas... burden upon burden...
a man burdened with the illusion
of freedom...

so why am i conflicted,
but becoming less and less so?
    it was always the music...

songs...

          chavelier, mult estes guariz...
wardruna - helvegen...
          da pacem domine...
            agni parthene...

you know... there's much more beside
being a jazz enthusiast or
a classical music snob...
        there's folk... there's religious and pagan
chants...
if there's one thing to benefit from,
in terms of the Byzantine context...
the chants...
        let the barbarians do the thinking
from now on: you do the sing-along...
no people ever reinvented themselves
from an ancient glory...
  new blood had to come to the fore...

like today...
      i spoke with my father and my mother...
about the names of apples...
we must have talked for an hour,
we named so many lost "breeds" of apple...
nouns i will not write,
nouns i wish death to write down,
i want Samael to have,
beside the book of my deeds in hand,
i want him to have
my dictionary in hand,
my knowledge of the sacred script,
i want to listen as he recites me the words
i've used,
notably today's conversation
            about the many types of apples...
e.g.: shogun apples...
            kox...
                    szare renety...
          papierówki...
                    marabella prunes...
that's all i ask of Samil.

p.s. after completing a walk in the woods:
a walk most adventurous in it being solitary...
i thank the forest for my solitude...
i started knocking on a dry piece of wood
still attached to the earth and roots...
in a forest: knocking on a tree...
i perceived the door
upon re-entering
traffic and hardened grit of road stuff...
let's replicate this...
me... you... alone...
let's both abide by needing
superstitious elevations of:
not truth alone... hardened and dim-witted
by objectivity...
truth tailored with metaphors...
all the nuance we can hope to find...
i need to... aloofness... solitude...
i need you, forest...
more than i care for noon
and proof of body that's this extension:
leash! shadow! noon!

                    smyč! cień! południe!

a rewrite of When the Levee Breaks that was inspired by a hideous snowstorm a few years ago*

If it keeps on snowing,
Tree limb's going to break
If it keeps on snowing,
Tree limb's going to break
The street is icy  and
cars don’t have time to brake

All last night
Sat on the A train alone
All last night
Sat on the A train alone
The train don’t move
And I’m trying to get home

Plowing won’t help you
Shoveling won’t do you no good
I said, plowing won’t help you
Shoveling won’t do you no good
When it keeps on snowing,
Mama, you got to move

Don’t it make you feel bad when you’re trying to get home and you don’t know which way to go
Cause the power line’s down and the wind’s blowing hard and you can’t see which way’s the road

It’s coming down now, it’s coming down now, ooh ooh

Nine years and still
we cradle our grief
carefully close,
like groceries
in paper bags.

Eventually the milk
will make its way
into the refrigerator;
the canned goods
will find their home
on pantry shelves.

Most things find
their proper place.

Eventually the hummingbirds
will ricochet against scorched air,
their delicate beaks stabbing
like needles into the feeder filled
with red nectar on the back porch.

Eventually our child
will make her way
back to us. Perhaps.

But I’ve heard
that shooting
****** feels
like being
buried under
an avalanche
of cotton *****.

For now it’s another
week, another month,
another trip to Safeway.

We drive home and wonder
why it is always snowing.
Behind a curtain of snow,
brake lights pulse, turning
the color of cotton candy,
dissolving into ghosts.

And with each turn,
the groceries shift
in the seat behind us.
From the spot where
our daughter used to sit,
there is a rustling sound—

a murmur of words
crossed off yet another list,
a language we’ve budgeted
for but cannot afford to hear.

When Mom died in June of 1991 Dad was rather lost,
like the rest of us. I started writing little letters in
big print so he could read them. He would not talk on
the phone so this was the only way to make contact.
I found out later that he carried them around in his
bib overall pocket and pulled them out from time to time.
Occasionally they would get washed and when Sharon
let me know I would run off another copy and mail it.
It became a means for me to remember the past and help
Dad at the same time. My kids loved to hear stories of
when I was a kid so I would recycle the stories between
the kids and Dad. Now as I read them it is a reminder of
things that have become a little fuzzy over the years,
also a reminder that I need to fill in the gaps of the stories
and leave them for my kids before it is too late. So here it is,
such as it is, if you are interested.

=======================================

    Letter­s to Dad

    Nov. 14, 1991

    Dear Dad,
    Your grandkiddies, as you call them,
    send you a big hug from Idaho. Sara is
    five and in Kindergarten this year and
    doing very well. Kristen is in the forth
    grade and made the Honor Roll list the
    first quarter of the year. We are very
    proud of both of our girls.

    Do you remember when toward late
    afternoon you and I would get in the car
    and “Drive around the block” as you
    always said? We would go up to Cliff’s
    and go east for a mile then down past
    Cleo Mae house and on back home. I
    remember you would stop at the junk
    piles and I would find neat stuff, like
    wheels from old toys, that I could make
    into my toys. I think of those times often.
    It was very enjoyable.

    I will be writing to you in the BIG PRINT
    so you can read it easier.

    It is snowing lightly here today. Supposed
    to be nasty weather for a while.

    Bye for now.

    John

    ——————————————————–

    Dec. 3, 1991

    Dear Dad,

    Just a note to say we love you. I miss very
    much talking to Mom on the phone and
    having you play Red Wing on your harmonica.

    I remember quite often when I was very
    young, 4 or 5, and we would go out to the
    field to change the water or something.
    The sand burrs would be so thick and you
    would pick me up on your back. I would
    put my feet into your back pockets and
    away we would go.

    These are the things childhood memories
    are supposed to be made of. Kristen and
    Sara love to hear the stories about when I
    was a kid and what you and I did
    together. I try with them to build the
    memories that they can tell their kids.
    Thanks Dad for a good childhood.

    Bye for now.
    Kristen and Sara send you a kiss and a
    hug.

    Your son, John

    —————————————————–

    Jan. 12, 1992

    Dear Dad,

    We went to Oregon for Christmas and
    had very good traveling weather. Do you
    remember when you and Mom went with
    us once to Oregon at Christmas and
    there were apples still hanging on the
    tree by the Williams house? We made
    apple pie from the apples that you
    picked. Turned out to be pretty good pie.
    There weren’t any apple on the tree this
    year. I thought of you picking the apples
    and bringing them into the kitchen in
    your hat if I remember right.

    We have had some pretty good times
    together. I was thinking the other day
    about a picture that I took of you about
    12 years ago. It captured you as I will
    always remember you. If I can locate it in
    all the stuff, I would like to get it blown
    up and submit it to the art section at the
    Twin Falls County Fair this year.

    I hope this finds you feeling well. I love
    you Dad. Kristen and Sara send you a
    kiss and a hug.

    Oh yes, I would like for you and Tracy to
    sit down sometime and talk about when
    you were a kid and record it on tape. I
    would like to put your remembrances
    down on paper.

    Bye for now.

    Your son, John

    ———————————————————

    Feb. 11, 1992

    Dear Dad,

    Happy Valentine’s Day!!

    Spring is on the way and soon you will be
    85. Just a spring chicken, right? I hope I
    can get around as well as you do by the
    time I am 85.

    Thanks for the letter. I will keep it for a
    very long time. It is the first letter I have
    received from my Father in 48 years.

    Talked to Ed the other day. He said he
    talked to you on the phone and that you
    were wearing your hearing aids and
    glasses. Great! Mom would be proud of
    you.

    Talked to a guy last week who is
    president of the John Deer tractor group
    here. He invited me to bring my “M”
    John Deer to the County Fair and
    participate in the tractor pull contest.
    Might just do that.

    Well the page is filling up using these big
    letters but if it makes it easier to read it is
    worth it.

    Bye for now Dad, I love you. Pennye,
    Kristen and Sara send their love too.

    Your son, John
    —————————————————-
    April 13, 1992

    Dad

    Though the years have past and you are now
    85, you are still the same as when I was a
    child. The memories of going with you to the
    field, when you were “riding the ditch”,
    surveying in a lateral, loading up the turkeys
    in the old Ford truck and taking them to the
    “Hoppers” - is just as if it were yesterday. I
    think of you playing Red Wing on the harp. I
    remember when during the looong cold
    winters we would play checkers. You would
    always beat me. I learned to play a good game.

    Not much has changed except we are both
    much older now. The values you did not speak
    but lived out in front of me has helped make
    me what I am today. I pray that I will be a
    good example before my children to help them
    on their way through life.

    On your 85th birthday, I want to wish you a
    Happy Birthday and thank you for being my
    Father.

    Love
    John

    April 13, 1992

    ————————————————–

    June 10, 1992

    Dear Dad,

    I hope this finds you well. The Stevens
    family in Twin Falls Idaho is having a
    busy summer. Kristen just finished the
    fourth grade and was on the Honor Roll
    for the entire year. Sara will now be a
    big First Grader next year.

    The other day we went out to eat and
    Kristen had chicken and noodles. She
    said, “This tastes just like Grandma
    Nellie’s noodles.” I hope they can keep
    these memories fresh and remember all
    the good times we had back in Nebraska.
    It is difficult to accept that things have
    changed and will never be the same again.
    We miss the weekly phone calls to Nebraska.

    It is clouding up and we might get rain
    this week. It is very dry around here.
    Some of the canals will be cut off in July.

    Bye for now.

    Your Son John

    Love you Dad. I think of you often.

    —————————————————-

    June 22, 1992

    Dear Dad,

    Hope you had a good “HAPPY PAPPY”
    day. This note is to wish you a late
    “HAPPY PAPPY” day.

    I was thinking the other day about the
    times you would take me roller skating
    out at the fair ground on Sunday
    afternoons. I really enjoyed those times. I
    remember how you could give a little hop
    and skate backwards. For me staying on
    my feet was a challenge.

    Sara will be 6 years old June 29. Seems
    like yesterday when she was born. Time
    has a way of passing very quickly.

    Love you lots Dad. The family sends their
    love too.

    Bye for now.
    John

    —————————————————

    Aug. 11, 1992

    Dear Dad,

    Just a note to let you know that your
    Idaho family love you. It was good to talk
    to you for a minute or two the other day.
    I miss the harmonica playing you would
    do over the phone.

    We are all well even though the place
    was covered with smoke from all the
    forest fires last week. It got a little hard
    on the lungs at times but the smoke has
    moved on now. Probably went over
    Nebraska.

    Talked to brother Ed the other day. He
    had just returned from from Nebraska.
    Ed said you looked good for 85.

    Bye for now.

    John

    —————————————————–

    Sept. 10, 1992

    Dear Dad,

    I am sending a copy of what Mom sent
    me a few years ago of what she
    remembered about growing up. I wish I
    had more. How about sitting down with
    Tracy and Sharon and telling them some
    of the things you remember about
    growing up? They can record it and I will
    put it on paper. I would really like that.

    We are ok here in Idaho. Summer had
    disappeared and it is school time again.
    Kristen is in the 5th grade and Sara is in
    the 1st grade. The family went to the
    County Fair today for the second time.
    One day is enough for me.

    I think of you often and love you Dad.
    Thinking of the good times we had
    together while I was growing up always
    makes me happy. You and Mom raised
    four pretty good kids.
    God Bless you Dad. We love you from
    Idaho.

    Bye for now.

    John

    —————————————————–

    Oct. 11, 1992

    Dear Dad,

    We are fine out in Idaho. We are having
    beautiful fall weather. It has not frozen
    enough to get our tomato plants yet.

    Kristen and Sara are doing very well in
    school. They brought home their mid
    term report cards and are getting A’s
    and a B or two.

    Remember when we would go out in the
    corn field and pick the corn by hand? I
    would drive the tractor and you and Ed
    and Wayne picked the corn and threw it
    in the trailer. You guys kept warm from
    the work and I was freezing on the
    tractor. Before that we used the horses
    named Brownie and - was it Blackie?
    The one that kept getting out up north by
    the ditch was Brownie. He figured out
    how to open the gate.

    I remember the times that you were
    hauling cane or sorghum from the field
    east of Mercers and I would ride behind
    the wagon on my sled.

    I had a very good childhood really.
    Thanks for being my Dad.

    God Bless you Dad. We love you from
    Idaho.

    Bye for now.

    John

    ——————————————————-

    Nov. 10, 1992

    Dear Dad,

    It is snowy here and cold. I have a hole in
    the back of the house I must get sealed up
    to keep the cold out. We are redoing this
    part for the kitchen.

    Kristen and Sara made the Honor Roll
    this quarter in school. Kristen’s teacher
    said he wished he had a whole room full
    of Kristens to teach.

    Sorry the phone connection was so bad
    when I called the other day. It was good
    to here you say “hello hello….” any way.
    Glad you are feeling better.

    Your account in the credit union is about
    $34,000 now.

    I was just thinking back when we were
    cultivating corn with that “crazy wheel
    cultivator”. The one that you drove the
    tractor and I rode on the cultivator and
    used the foot pedals to steer it down the
    rows. I remember sometimes it cleaned
    out some of the corn row. Cultivator
    blight, right? It was kind of hard to keep
    straight. Those were the days.

    I keep remembering little bits of things
    while growing up. Sometime I will put
    them all together for my kids to read
    about the “good ole days”.

    God Bless you Dad. We love you from
    Idaho.

    Bye for now.

    John

    ————————————————
    Dec. 17, 1992

    Dear Dad,

    The snow has fallen and the kids stayed
    home from school today. The wind is now
    blowing so it will begin drifting the road
    shut. Besides that the whole family is sick
    with a cold.

    We are putting together a Christmas gift
    to you but it won’t be ready for
    Christmas. It is something that you can
    watch over and over if you want. So
    Merry Christmas for now.

    Last night was the kids’ school Christmas
    program. Kristen started playing the
    flute this fall and played with a group for
    the first time this week. She did very well
    and I got it on video.

    Time to get this in the mail. Love you
    Dad.
    Bye for now.

    Kristen and Sara send you a kiss and a
    hug.
    Your son, John

    ——————————————————

    Jan. 11, 1993

    Dear Dad,

    We have a lot of snow on the ground
    now. I was telling the family about the
    winter of 49 where the snow covered the
    door and you had to scoop the snow into
    the house to dig a tunnel out then haul
    the snow out through the tunnel. That
    was a 15 foot drift wasn’t it? It sure
    looked big to this 6 year old. Then the
    plane flew over the house for a few days
    until we could get out and signal an OK.
    Those were the days! What I do not
    remember is how you took care of the
    cows and stuff during this time. I
    remember being sick and Wayne took the
    horse and rode into Broadwater to get
    oranges and something else. The big
    white dog we had went along and was hit
    by a car. Wayne had to use a fence post
    to finish him off. I remember feeling very
    sad about the old dog.
    We haven’t had this much snow in 8
    years.

    I trust you are feeling well. Our prayers
    are with you all.
    Bye for now. Love you Dad
    The family send a BIG Hi!!!!

    Your son, John

    —————————————————-

    Feb. 9, 1993

    Dear Dad,

    When the kids go to bed they say “Tell us
    a story about when you were a kid on the
    farm”. So I tell them things that I write
    to you and a LOT that I don’t write to
    you. The other day going to school we
    were talking about one of the first snow
    falls we had this year. I spun the van
    around in circles in the parking lot and
    they thought that was GREAT fun. Then
    I told them about the time that their
    Grandpa cut some circles in the Kelly
    School yard and hit a pole with the back
    fender. Do you remember that? I
    remember Mom bringing it up every now
    and then. Then there was the time you
    got a little close to the guard posts along
    the highway just west of Broadwater and
    ripped the spare tire and bracket off the
    old Jeep. Of course none of US ever did
    anything like that. HA.

    It is good to remember back and tell the
    kids about the things we did “in the old
    days”. They find it hard to believe there
    was no TV and I walked through rattle
    snake country to go to the neighbors to
    play. It WAS a good time for me and I
    had a GOOD Dad to help me grow up.
    Thanks again Dad. You and Mom did a
    very good job on us four kids. Sometimes
    we don’t show it often enough but I for
    one thank you and LOVE you.

    Soon you will have another birthday.
    Before you know it you will be 90. I
    should be so lucky.

    I trust you are feeling well. Our prayers
    are with you all. Bye for now. Love you
    Dad
    The family send a BIG Hi!!!!

    Your son, John

    —————————————————–

    Mar. 9, 1993

    Dear Dad,
    Time has a way of disappearing so
    rapidly. I was going to write you a note
    two weeks ago and now here we are.

    It looks like spring is just about to arrive.
    I am ready for it. I’ll bet you are ready to
    get out side and do something. Do you
    miss not farming? I think often about the
    farm and the things we used to do. The
    kids always ask for stories about being on
    the farm. I tell them about raising a
    garden, rattlesnakes, floods, the BIG
    ONE in 49, anything that comes to mind.

    The family went to Sun Valley about 70
    miles north of here Sat. with Kristen’s
    Girl Scout troop for a day of ice skating.
    Pennye used the VCR and played back
    their falls and no falls. It reminded me of
    the times you would get your old clamp-
    on skates on a cut a figure on the ice. I
    never was very good at it. You could hop
    up and turn around. I couldn’t stay of
    my back side and head. I still have a big
    dent in the back of my head from the last
    time I tried. Nearly killed me. So much
    for that.

    Next month you will have another
    birthday. 86 years! Before you know it
    you will be 90.

    I paid your insurance for another year
    I trust you are feeling well. Our prayers
    are w

Keep your stamps and letters
Don't invite me to a meeting
If you keep them coming
I'll treat you to a beating

Groups all seem to want me
But the feeling's not the same
Go and find your mailing list
And please remove my name

oh....
I won't join any club that would have me as a member
I've a memory like an elephant
so, don't send me application forms
Because you know I will remember

Oh, It must be freezing down  in hell
In fact it must be snowing
I came today, just to say
Hello, I must be going

Don't ask me to sign up again
Please don't be deluded
Check your list and you'll find me
In the column marked excluded

Oh
I won't join any club that would have me as a member
I've a memory like an elephant
so, don't send me application forms
Because you know I will remember

Oh, It must be freezing down in hell
In fact it must be snowing
I came today, just to say
Hello, I must be going

Save your money, save your stamps
You know just what to do
Stop calling, stop the letters
Please, I'm asking you

The only group with membership
Costs me more, due to my brothers
Is family, and even then
I think we had different mothers

oh,I won't join any club that would have me as a member
I've a memory like an elephant
so, don't send me application forms
Because you know I will remember

Oh, It must be freezing down in hell
In fact it must be snowing
I came today, just to say
Hello, I must be going

I will not join any club that would have me as a member
I'll tell you now, and then again, I'll tell you in September
The world is a much better place, if on your list my name's not showing
So here I am, with you to say...Hello, I must be going

this is truly a welcome break from:
freeing all the drafts -
which i imagined to be equivalent, or rather:
the 2nd parallel of the original adjecent -

i imagined it would feel like:
releasing doves with laurel branches firmly
lodged in their beaks -
just as the waters of the flood would recede...

but it truly felt like:
the inversion of the diarrhoea-constipation
"paradox"... because it felt like both,
but never giving me a clue as to
what was more prominent -

the sharp edge of a knife -
or the horizon when the sky becomes
the sea far away....

i'm not ashamed to throw this onto the fore...
it happened to me once...
but on purpose...
i wanted to compensate marquis de sade's
antic in a brothel when he implored
the ******* to turn the crucifix into
a ***** into his decapitated precursor
of a mary antoinette... puppet...

profanity in images and all the other seances
of the senses...
i wouldn't go as far as to make the crucifix
profane... or do anything profane
with it...

only the words...
hic (est) mea corpus - hic (est) mea cruor...
this is my body - this is my blood...
and i am aware the mead is the gods' ****
when they're in a good mood - all... jolly...
and that beer is the gods' **** when
laughter hits a dry run...
and that ms. amber or whiskey is but:
the blood of the gods...

i had to corrupt it...
to prove to myself: that i am not a god...
it was quiet simple...
once upon a time i was drinking
a glass of wine...
and as you do... on a whim...
i decided to **** into it...
perhaps all that drinking prior would
give me something to elevate the palette
of exploration that was to come...

hmm... at least that sorts out
hic: mea cruor... *** urinae...
but back then i did that on purpose...
and if only this was a desert scenario...
and i would have to drink my own *****
to survive...
well... i just thought: here's to starving
from a lack of better imagery...

i will come unto some Horace in a minute...
i don't know how i managed to find
this citation - it's only very losely related...
and yes i will showcase another draft from
May of last year...

but today i was unsure...
did i leave yesterday's pepsi max bottle
with only the stale pepsi left...
or did i forget to do the lazy sly wee whizz
jumping out of bed in the middle of
the night...
but i already poured this "cocktail"
over two shots of whiskey...
and i'm hardly desperate but...
my original intention of alligning myself
to the profanity of the crucifix...
i had to somehow make profanity
of the wine...

since i am... thinking how to compensate
being satisfied with wine...
how the ancient world was always
satisfied with wine...
the story of the 3 ambers of the north...
the beer, the mead and the whiskey...
all in a varying degree...
but i will not bow before the blood of a god
that's so... diluted...
whiskey yes... that can be blood indeed...
otherwise it's down in the trench
with gods' **** - mead if they are in a good
mood... beer if they are in a talkative mood...

thank god i wasn't thinking:
better salvage those two shots of whiskey
and drink this cocktail of the "ultimate" surprise...
and apparently eating a woman's
placenta is good for you...
as was... apparently once... breastmilk...
funny... give me the milk of a cow or a goat
and i'll show you: one dislocated thumb...
one dislocated distal + intermediate phalange
from the index finger of the right hand's
proximal phalange... no broken bones...

knock-knock... who's there? touchwood superstition.

it's not as bad as it sounds...
stale, yes...
but i am also known for sometimes
performing the antithesis of drinking tequilla...
*****... i'll sprinkle some cigarette ash
onto my hand... lick it... take a shot of *****
then throw one or two black peppercorns into
my mouth for the crunch...
each drinker and his own myths... right?
i call that the black cracovite...
cracow being so close to aushwitz...
and once it snowed and they thought it was
snowing... sure... ash from the furnaces
of aushwitz... here's my ode to... the dead...
in a drink...

hell better a cracovite than a cracowite, white?
i mean: right? seriously: low hanging fruit,
the elephant's testicles...

i will never understand this whole veneration
of wine: in vino veritas...
these days wine is better drank by women
and castrated monarchs of the clergy...
i had to check... so i ****** in my holy grail...
and guess what didn't come out
the other end? gods' **** (beer and wine)
or gods' blood (whiskey and wine)...
just this stale, almost bland...
water with a pinch of grape that has been
left to sit in a puddle on some
industrial estate in dagenham enjoying
the ripe downpouring of chemicals
that leave it with a rainbow of diluted
petroleum...

akin to: try shoving that sort of doughnut
into this kind of pile of ****...
not that i would...
but i have also been prone to test
99.9% spirits... or 96% absinthe...
with a locust mummified in the bottle's neck...
from Amsterdam...

i had to rethink: why become engaged...
when chances are...
to the displeasure of someone who read:
but never bought my work...
the self-editorial process...
the self-publishing process could be...
guillotined on a whimsical constipation
of a "dear reader"...
as it might happen...

again... Horace and the perfect example
of poetry with conversational overtones...
poetry as prosaic...
my god... paper was expensive back in old
Horace's days... surely you would need
something spectacular to write:
like a psilocybin trip account word for word:
wrong!
a certain don juan said to a certain
carlos castaneda: don't bring back words from
such experiences...
but of course: they did...
upon once upon a time loving the beatniks...
i started to abhor them...
getting drunk and smoking "something"
is one thing... exposing the altars of solipsism
of such experiences: words intact...
is a profanity...
each dream is individually curated
to the dreamer... the introduction of words
to relate back... for some next be disciple...
the "drugs" / portals of escapism are already
contaminated...

why wouldn't i: even if these are only
objective recounts of an experience?
perhaps because... they are subjectivelly null...
there are only the comparable heights of Gideon...
such experiences are best: kept to each individual's
right to enjoy... a freedom of thought...
and of silence...
each keeps a secret...
but what secret is left?
when the objective parameters have already
been stated?
i see no point... better down and finding
it at the end of a bottle...
or... ******* into a glass of wine
and drinking it...

they have been contaminated by words that
have been retrieved from such experiences
that (a) no one should talk about...
(b) surprise! the objective reality already
being stated as altered...
am i going to a ******* cinema with my body...
or am i going to a surprise
gallery with my thought?
doesn't matter... word contamination...
bigmouth struck his final last time!
at least the remains is what gives me
the labyrinth... the blood the **** you name
it the three sisters amber... for all i care...
it's readily available: make do...
with what's already been given.

me? i drink for that very special date...
monday 9 march 2020...
when all the orthodox jews get drunk...
that's one of those celebrations i wouldn't mind
being a part of... purim, festival of Lots,
funny... that period of history...
the Persian aspect of the hebrews...
never made it to the big screen...
seeing modern day Iran as day-old Persia
in muslim garbs...
we're still only seeing the: African adventure...
perhaps once the dust has settled...
we will get the Persian installement...
and then... oh... **** it...
we're all in it for the long run...
then when christianity is no longer useful...
the Roman bit of history...
and how the hebrews conspired with the greeks...
2000 years later we'll probably see
some prince of egypt cartoon movie
of the pristine romance and a mention of germany...
not yet... ****'s still to ripe to entertain
the universal child and children...
no screen adaptation from "their" time in Persia...
songs... we have songs!
Verdi's Nabucco - the chorus...
perhaps only in song from Persia and always
with movies and hieroglyphs when from Egypt...

but the festivity... of course! i'll celebrate...
cf. though... Puccini's coro a bocca chiusa -
the humming chorus...
before the band enigma... i am pretty sure my mother
would crank up the volume to at least
one of these songs... should they come on the radio...
i'm still to hear christopher young's:
something to think about - to be on air...
and to also be treated as a piece of classical music...
if wojciech kilar's dracula soundtrack can be treated
as classical music... what's wrong with a little
bit of hellraiser?!

perhaps, "again" is this desecration of the sacred not,
simply hanging in the background,
all, the, ******, time?
who is to celebrate wine giving it a god's blood
status in sips? one is expected to somehow become
drunk on the passion!
no one is here for crumbs of sips!
first they came for the loaf of bread...
and said you should fast and eat only a crumb...
then they came for the bottle of wine...
and said you should abstain and drink only a sip...
then they came for *** and by then
vatican was a monaco with better tax protections...

it's an investement: having to **** into a glass
of wine you're about to drink...
worse... you accidently "forgot" about
******* into some left-over pepsi max
and you're making yourself a cocktail
with one of the graeae ambers - 2x -
and you wonder: is this the proper state
of carbonated water, stale?
but i'm hardly going to bash the crucifix...
i'm here for the words...

the... transfiguration of the wine into blood...
and i say of my gods:
and here is their **** - beer and mead...
and here's their blood: the three graeae ms. ambers...
see no: clearer? no... happier?

i will get onto ancient roman poetics
with its conversational overtones in a minute!
first we have to settle the sacraments!
the metaphors and the sacraments!
i have no ivar the boneless claim of god...
season 6? to be honest...
i'd rather watch an english soap opera...
at least the intricacy of the plot remains...
even though it has been recycled
so many times...

i can't **** out the gods' ***** even if it was
stale beer... or ideal mead...
as i can't leisure a Seneca's bath filled
with the blood of the immortals...
problem solved... "problem":
as if it ever was...

why, Horace? a very short rhetorical retort:
if Dante had his Virgil...
why can i have my Horace, as guide?
again... what Roman poet could venture for
ambitions among the myths -
or extend his "consciousness"
to devastate the land and become
the mad Xerxes wanting the waves
of a sea whipped into submission?
why, Horace? if Dante could have his Virgil...

poetry... at least among the roman poets
there's no boxed in a box "without" a "box"...
the conversational overtones are ripe...
the almost complete lack of
character dimensions... beside their dimensions
from anecdotes...

to difuse wine, to desecrate the hic mea cruor...
**** in it!
then drink it...
or have one of my antithesis of a tequilla surprise
with me...
smoke a cigarette... drop some ash on the lick-part
of the space between the thumb
and the index metacarpal... lick it...
follow it with a shot of *****...
then throw some black peppercorns
into the hades of your gob
and we've arrived at the black cracovite...

and also the day when the orthodox jews
recant their story of their time
in Persia... the festivity of Lots...
when they become blind drunk and pretend to
have the sort of alcohol intolerence as
the Japanese... 1 shot! just 1 shot:
and hey! they throw their kippahs in
the air and we can all dance the ukranian 'opak!

looks good to me!
but only looks good...
when there's this plump drunk playing the accordion:
i.e. me,
and there's the sort of adrew rieu directing
an upcoming crescendo of a poliushko polie...
and we can all leave the auditorium
feeling, less than russophobic...
and then i can be told...
you young to be old yet still
profane pan-siberian peasant root!
indo-european leftover!
well... at least then i have been allowed
the scrap i'm supposed to see
before i showcase my *****, frost riddled fangs!
of the lesser wolf that i am:
as a rabid dog!

since the crescendo will come...
what better fathom of it...
esp. just beside a cemetery... twirling to the music...
ear-plugs out seancing my time in a grand
orchestral hall... plucked from the ears...
the crescendo is coming...
but... plucked... the orchestra of buffalo-sized
snowflakes... and... the worst kind of ballet...
a male soloist... doing his crazy
ukranian folk... maestro! the music never ever
dies! even in the silence of the universe!
however micro- or macro- this theatre will take
form... the music remains playing: uninterrupted!

but the snow was there,
the "ballerina" was also there...
the night was there,
the music was there -
albeit no grand orchestral hall -
couldn't ask for a better canvas
than a cemetery -
and all the heart's content!
comparative "literature"
to love like a muslim...
or to love like a sparrow...
or to love with a grudge like a crow...
mind you; site note...
i have been many a pigeons attempt
fornication unabashed...
i've never seen two crows attempt it...
perhaps they do "it" in the night
and never in the open?

crows... pedantic priests of the kingdom...
and where the widower king
and the widow queen among the swans?
where i and you will have probably left them...
admiring a family of ducks...

as asked by the serpent of the swan...
you and me of the same birth in a Fabergé egg...
me with serpentine spine...
while you: with a crooked neck?
silly... it really is...
of a being.... that was once
a t-rex roar... now a pickled brain
in pickle jar... boasting about being...
pure spine and tingles and...
the better part of what... becomes the mammalian
hibernation...
hibernating "hibernating" upon the
impetus of digestion...
a serpent would ask a swan about
a crooked neck?

because what would a **** sapeins look toward,
as he is always prone to to look elsewhere?
if not to borrow the fixed, rigid ontology
of other animals?
i better from the birds, solely...
the swans and the crows...
perhaps the fox...
rarely something that has lent itself
to being curated by man's leash and grip...
collective the known herd...
otherwise the refined bonsai tigers...
perhaps the fish without a knowledge
of a tide or a wave...

i call a dog the noble friend,
the swan the sombre monogamist...
the crow the priest...
the furry spider one's own reflection
dealing with aracnophobia...
the snake the old "say-what?"
or that pickled spine with a brain
the worth of brine juices...
the extinguished remnant
of a dinosaur's toothache... or some
transcendental exploration
of the carpals of the wrist
extending into the length of a spine...

i'm not going to cry over this one...
skål!
i feel disinhibited from writing a memorandum!
slàinte!
gasoline to the peddle and... off... we, go!

i am bound to get this translaton right...
at some point of hinging-on... i.e. beginning with...
and most probably at the opposite end
of having to finish...
hence "open bracket"... prefix-
and -suffix allowance given the archeological
excavation began with:

-seu pila velox molliter austerum studio
fallente laborem, seu te discus agit, pete cedentem
aera disco: *** labor extuderit fastidia, siccus,
inanis sperne cibum vilem; nisi Hymettia mella
Falerno ne biberis diluta. foris est promus,
et atrum defendens piscis hiemat mare: *** sale
panis latrantem stomachum bene leniet. unde putas
aut qui partum? non in caro nidore voluptas summa,
sed in te ipso est. tu pulmentaria quaere
sudando: pinguem vitiis albumque neque ostrea
nec scarus aut poterit peregrina iuvare lagois.
vix tamen eripiam, posito pavone velis quin
hoc potius quam gallina tergere palatum,
corruptus vanis rerum, quia veneat auro
rara avis et picta pandat spectcula cauda:
tamquam ad rem attineat quidquam.
num vesceris ista, quam laudas, pluma?
cocto num adest honor idem?
carne tamen quamvis distat nil, hac magis illam
inparibus formis deceptum te petere esto:
unde datum sentis, lupus hic Tiberinus
an alto captus hiet? pontisne inter iactatus
an amnis ostia sub Tusci?
laudas, insane, trilibrem mullum,
in singula quem minuas pulmenta necesse est.
ducit te species, video: quo pertinet ergo proceros
odisse lupos? quia scilicet illis maiorem natura modum
dedit, his breve pondus: ieiunus raro stomachus volgaria
-temnit.

it's translated, isn't it? no
stefan gołębiewski or no 1980 warsaw...
is to know...

- nec meus hic sermo est, sed quae praecepit Ofellus:
these are not my words, this said the simpleton
Ofellus - neither of which of us is a laurel-leaf
adorned Orpheus...

that via a living "game": stoking up an appetite
with this entertainment the appetite increaes...
as does one health...

sorry... pagans... bloodthirty people...
trouble with the translation...
apparently the mud slinging
***** and bricks are nothing new...

or when you "minus" the disk,
litter the distance, head with the wind into
competition!
after hardships of the body is good and
the meal is simple -
(apparently all of this is still "connected",
scratch of the ol' 'ed and we're fine...
we're ******* sailing!)
Falern will not hurt "us"...
seasoned by honey from Hymettis,
before the entré. Safaz left,
the sea rumbles, the zephyr of fish it protects,
storm, fishing made unsafe;
stomach grumbles, bread with salt:
excuisite; you do not have any better! why?
taste does not reside in the scent of dishes,
but in your self alone.
toil merely increases appetite's presence.
he who over-eats, will not know the taste
of an oyster, nor a turbot, nor chickpeas,
the northern bird.
perceptions take the scalp of the mountain
above the actual taste of the dishes
(one might scalp... but never eat the scalp)...
you will not take a chicken onto a tooth,
when you are given a peacock,
you will trust your delusion:
a rare bird, worth its own weight of gold,
a most rarified tail, how it sparkles
with subtle hues!
as if the tail were to lead -
and there was no head to be found!
do you allow yourself to judge the hue
of the feathers as precursor for the adjecctive:
that's it's "also" tasty? the meat, of course?
the old - judge a book by its cover...
is the oven baked... also as delicious / beautiful?
chicken meat... or peacock meat?
almost without difference.
therefore: light... albeit...
although only vanity lures the peacock
(to be compared to a poultry)...
let's go further... i want to know: after what
do you recognise this, that a pike
with its gaping mouth was left:
from the sea... or from the Tiber fished?
somewhere among bridges... or from some
conrete estuary? idiot-kin of the surname whim...
you admire a three-pound mullet!
do you take size... for the gauge of all measure?
when you... cut the bell?
then why... why... with disgrace
do you demand in appreciation:
elongating pikes!
evidently nature: this greater gave the proper
measure... and with it: the lesser weight -
an empty stomach will rarely -
being fed a simple thing - despise -
what is...

an empty stomach - rarely despises -
simple matters.

how true... i was allowing myself the time
it would take to drink,
and translate into the vulgate...
but... from no better source...
and i am still to add to this one of my...
"freeing of the drafts"...

as promised...
"draft"...

- a most confiscated man -
no italics included...

.the original draft:

binges, worth the count
of a liter of whiskey
per night,
for a year, if not more...
become so...
so unspectular...

          the world either
screams, or yawns,
generally:
it exhaust a desire
to toss a coin,
agitate the vocab.,

a grand canyon
huddling
in the "depths" of
a glass of water...

baron science
comes with his rubric
of bore,
      and:
i find myself,
most idle:
while the world
orientates
itself in keeping
itself busy,
bothersome,
always the prime concern,

the ant-colony coup,
the:
i always find friends
in the orientations
of an empty glass,
but prior to:

i drink
before no altar,
no mirror,
no confidante...

     pure flesh revels itself
in a blank's worth
of prior to dictum's
  allowance of, a page...

bothersome
the knot of the pretentious
anti- in scold of
the passing fancy:
expression...

            poker charm
of a love's affair...

_

i sometimes entertain myself
with ancients proverbs,
one slavic proverb reads:
better a sparrow in your hand
than a dove on your roof...

what, could, possibly be,
the interpretation?
care for the small joys in
your possession,
than, for the peace of your household,
which is, on the roof,
but not in your hands...

if i were paid? would i be more
honest?
probably not...
        what i see, is what needs
to be seen...
  em... simple pleasures talk...
once upon a time,
donning long hair, implied
you were a mosher...
a metal-head...
    now? three days +,
long hair, and you're not a
grunge fanatic?
  trans-, etc.?

   a man of simple pleasures,
i know what long hair,
jealousy, associated with
putting it in a french braid,
does to a camel jockey ego...
ruins and ruins as far as the eyes
can see...
    he replicates...
he grows his hair long...
at the same time boasting about
haivng a premature beard...
then you grow a beard yourself...
you start fiddling with it...
****, ***** on my face...
and then...
the "question" of a girlfriend
flies out of the window...
i'm happy with a beard,
thank you, very much,
i don't, exactly want to wish upon
myself, a female, company...

*** protest all you want...
the *** differences between men
and women, to my sort of understanding,
are, unrepairable...
     they were, never,
bound, to being, repaired...
savvy?
            i take my route,
a woman took her route...
  we're even...
                
      since what can only frighten a freed
woman, beside a monarch,
a free man?
                   a man with...
a gamble...
         i am a man with a gamble...
i don't like being told what
to be, or what to think...
like any man,
and like any man:
i don't like being forced
ownership over a being:
that can share my sense of freedom...
so...
    i find myself,
thrilled with relief,
at now having to answer to
a woman's subjugation...
like a woman, and, i have learned
from women: i like being
my objective's self...
rather than a "self" made subject...

i like that: thank you...
i can start feedings the pigs and the peasant
the diatribe life, and lie,
of: there being an existential cricis,
a need to reproduce...
and i, and i am, being demeaning
in this, way, for a justified reason...

once the peasants attack you:
you attack, the peasants...
you demean them in the same way
they demeaned you...

once upon a time i thought:
greater good came from the number
of innocents being salvaged
than for the few great of grand bearing
being salvaged...
even if bound to an ill will:
an ill command,
of a will, predisposed to pretend
actions of the blind...
but now i see...

   the many: if beside fulfilling
their petty deeds,
having to stand outside of those,
petty deeds,
  have ambitions equivalent
to their emotions...
            akin to something worth,
pity, akin to something
worth: as little as a rat's heartbeat...
petty, primitive bull-*******...
and all the amount of sorrow,
or pity,
or mercy...
              that, these, ******* allow...
are worth the same response
Pontius Pilate gave...
       there isn't enough of water,
in this world,
to wash my hands, clean,
of these people...
   even if innocent blood plagues
them,
    not enough waters have run their
due course,
to... release me from the indentation
of memory upon my mind...
and i am plagued by an elephant's
memory...
        we've reached the conclusion
of: some people...
  just do not see an insult,
             past the insult's eloquence!

i am a most conflicted man,
i binge watched vikings
for a while now,
and right now, i'm ready for
an extraction of what i have learned...

believe me: i am not someone
who has the sort of ego-presence
to fate myself in the role
of the protagonist...
     i'm too pedantic to have to
market my body and deeds,
for the fates tio see,
and history to ascribe fame unto me...

even homer was off too war
with troy,
   and blessed he became...

because? time morphs,
the longer something is kept,
the more, "unreal" is becomes,
a fairy-tale...
esp. now, with the onslaught
of journalism...
two things in this world
are insomniac,
money never sleeps,
and, now, apparently,
journalism doesn't sleep either:
well, given its ******
bed-fellow of political liars...
why should it?

             Rolo... a semi-minor character...
but i feel his angst at the already
fervent dichotomy,
(dichotomy, modern variety variant
of schizoid-affective...
or bilingual in turn)...

            music...
                    all these modły...
gesticulations of prayer,
phantom conjuring,
               lunatics with candles
at high-noon...
                  i am fated by music,
i am perverted by music,
i am swayed by music...
who is the god, patron,
of music?
who is the angel (demi-god),
patron of music?
         i do not seek the highest
influencer...
the minor one...

   when Archangel Sandalphon
met St. Cecilia...
but as such, i am, conflicted...
even though, this is the first time
i have heard of Sandalphon...

Rome, never reached my peoples,
the Vikings did...
   weren't the ugly vikings the founders
of Kiev?
  so they must have passed via
the Polen (field) land, no?

feelings are not important,
facts don't care about your feelings...
granted...
but i'm not hear for facts,
contra, feelings,
i'm here for the rivers...
what i feel, what my heart yearns for,
needs to attain an equilibrium
with my mind...
for that: i need to clarify my feelings,
to hush my heart, silence it,
in order to listen to my mind,
and the mind, needs to feed into
heaving the heart: to do,
what, the heart, desires,
autonomous to what the heart
"thinks", is right...
                    that's how it was forver
going to work...
consolidated...
and yes, i much envy the punctuation
of king Ecgberht,
a man of cunning: much admired...
abstract thinker...
        and a reality...
        pun-ctu-a-tion...
the delivery of one's speech...
   much admired, as much as...
                the crude brawl possession...
the chief protagonist of the story?
as important as is: the required from
Atlas... burden upon burden...
a man burdened with the illusion
of freedom...

so why am i conflicted,
but becoming less and less so?
    it was always the music...

songs...

           chavelier, mult estes guariz...
wardruna - helvegen...
           da pacem domine...
             agni parthene...

you know... there's much more beside
being a jazz enthusiast or
a classical music snob...
         there's folk... there's religious and pagan
chants...
if there's one thing to benefit from,
in terms of the Byzantine context...
the chants...
        let the barbarians do the thinking
from now on: you do the sing-along...
no people ever reinvented themselves
from an ancient glory...
   new blood had to come to the fore...

like today...
       i spoke with my father and my mother...
about the names of apples...
we must have talked for an hour,
we named so many lost "breeds" of apple...
nouns i will not write,
nouns i wish death to write down,
i want Samael to have,
beside the book of my deeds in hand,
i want him to have
my dictionary in hand,
my knowledge of the sacred script,
i want to listen as he recites me the words
i've used,
notably today's conversation
            about the many types of apples...
e.g.: shogun apples...
             kox...
                    szare renety...
          papierówki...
                    marabella prunes...
that's all i ask of Samil.

We don’t really understand

How atoms behave;

Or infinity;

Or how winds carry the seasons -

Like ‘Olde April ‘ with it’s 'showers sweet' !

Yes, I’ve felt them...



The clean stinging scent of rain

Scratching at the earth,

Pelting aromatic plants,

Condensing the smells of seas, winds, continents;

Infusing the sum of all these aromas in its perfumery,

Marketing it: April, again.



And Eliot said,

There be April,

'The cruellest month'.

Oh my (!)

Appealing April, with its sunny flavours,

Cascades of cats & dogs,

And dead-eye jack,

Firing frosts that just might spend the tender herb.



It was snowing in April,

And Easter was early, that year

When I took Schrödinger’s cat walking

On a leash, And April was still new,

And capable of shocking...



Now any month - could bring pitiless ruin.

The year annually

Out of step with migratory designs,

Throwing epithets out of its greenstick pram,

Its months in disarray ,

No-one knows what’s going on...





The drunkard earth sups up it’s own tears,

Reeling in its spin,

Until,

Saturated,

It can drink no more,

And every dip fills,

Every meadow spills,

Banks overflowing,

Its resolve drowning,

Questions washing

Up like a tide of interrogative curiosity.



OK – so I am really hiding in my acres...

At least I can tell - it’s April !



Enquiring lily-of-the-valley,

Puts up green periscopes.

Peering through the sodden grass,

The remnants of last year’s soggy leaves,

Cosset primrose & ramsons.

Daffodils are past their best, but soldier on

Like hungover squaddies,

Snowdrops have fat capsules where white drops shone,

Hellebores have been up since the crack of time -

Good movers - they could dance all spring!

Dingles are glinting green with native bluebell leaves,

And their mophead mates have muscled in the garden,

Quiet violets lounge on the field’s chaise long,

Coy, understated,

How British!

Oxlips and cowslips join the brave primroses

Who have been on the razzle for weeks.

White & purple lilac in green cassocks,

Will soon burst out

Like kiss-o-grams.

Boughs hung with clematis,

Still tiny shoots like birds on wires.



I am giving a prize for the first celandine on my patch;

Each little celandine - Rannunculus ficaria - is

A miniature sun uttering: Oi! You up there, old currant bun!

Here’s the template for a perfect summer sky !

It's snowing outside
But I can't seem to think
Through this jumble of thoughts
All I can do is sink

It's snowing outside
Inside, the furnace's soft hum
I can't feel the heat
My body is numb

It's snowing outside
And although I'm not there
Every breath stings my lungs
Like the cold winter air

It's snowing outside
The tiny flakes fall
So do I, it's the end
And that is all.

Pieter is a Norwegian and he lives
in the ground floor flat and takes
the bus to work and sits in his window
on his Vaio laptop with just a bare
bulb lighting his room
and receives a lot of mail from
South America
and we chat in the corridor downstairs
sometimes he’d hand me a beer
always Heineken
never ever anything else
and he’d tell me he existed primarily on
a diet of bananas probiotic yoghurt
prime beef and eggs along with beer
and on Saturday evenings only
two bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon
which he’d sleep off on Sundays listening to
recordings of his home town’s church bells
and he said he understood Norway better
than the UK
you knew who you were in Norway and
were always a touch away from a friend
or foe and there was no artifice involved
just icy mountains and clear seas and the release
of arctic breath
and one Friday night Barb came over
and we sat with Pieter on the stairs
drinking his Heineken and I caught him
eyeing up Barb’s legs and I didn’t blame him
no sir I enjoy an eyeful and more myself
but we got steadily more drunk
and I ended up asking him if he was
a drug runner for coke-crazed Peruvians
and he just smiled as if it was
not such a crazy question and he
said
no, just money for Nigerians
and we clinked bottles
and we laughed
park it into an account cream off your
cut and move it on
a piece of ****
nice work if you can get it and we drink to that
and I hope Barb is feeling as ***** as me
and doesn’t want to go to the Beehive
before any Friday night genital work out
as its cold and snowing outside
and I’m not made
of Norwegian stuff.

Children all see magic
You can see it in their eyes
Only little children see
Reindeer flying in the skies

A dragonfly, a lightning bug
No, a fairy ...can't you see
Through the eyes of a small child
What will be you know will be

Beneath the tallest mountains
In the glades and in the streams
There is magic that is hidden
And  magic makes the dreams

We know that wild ponies
Are all unicorns at rest
Their secret must stay hidden
And children hide it best

They're protected by the magic
By the fairies , just for one
The ponies live forever
Their job is never done

The magic shared by Santa
Is found on  fairy wings
It can be used when it's not Christmas
But, just for special things

A little girl name Sarah
Saw the fairies dance one night
She crept out her bedroom
To watch the fairy's  light

Everyone was sleeping
When little Sarah shut the door
She crossed the road in darkness
The girl was only four

She looked out at the darkness
Saw the fairies dancing 'round
Then into the woods she wandered
And she never made a sound

She walked toward the fairies
Always keeping them in sight
But the fairies didn't notice
As they danced away the night

She stopped, and watched them dancing
And she started dancing too
It was then it started snowing
What would Sarah do?

She turned back to the pathway
But, she was turned around
She tripped upon a tree root
And she tumbled to the ground

The fairies heard her falling
They all hid deep in the trees
Now, somewhere in the darkness
Sarah rose up on her knees

She looked around and wondered
Will I get back to my house?
The forest was dead quiet
You could not even hear a mouse

She cried and then remembered
What her parents always said
And if she didn't follow
She'd be home safe in her bed

Her parents said "Dear Sarah"
"When the fairies dance at night"
"Stay and watch them from the window"
"don't dare follow fairy light"

Sarah now grew tired
And soon she fell asleep
And into Sarah's resting head
Dreams did start to creep

She dreamed of Christmas Ponies
Her parents, winter snow
Santa Claus and puppies
And the direction she must go

She woke and looked about her
No tracks where fairies stepped
Grass and leaves, a blanket
were placed upon her while she slept

Standing right before her
As white as winter snow
Was a secret Christmas pony
Surrounded by a golden glow

He moved forward toward Sarah
Put his head down as she stood
She knew then that this pony
Would help her get home from this wood

She knew he was a Christmas Pony
Though his horn was not in sight
The fairies helped her climb aboard him
And walked them off into the night

The woods were lit by fairy magic
The trees glowed bright as if midday
The pony walked slow with Sarah riding
They met more ponies on the way

For near an hour they did venture
Until they reached the roadside wall
The pony stopped and she dismounted
The fairies helped, so she'd not fall

She climbed the wall and left the pony
The fairies and the woods behind
She went on in, and moved so silent
Not quite sure what she would find

The house was dark as Sarah entered
Her parents were still fast asleep
She knew that they would not believe her
So to her room, she did creep

In the morning, after breakfast
She went on out to have a look
All she saw was trees and grasses
And in the distance, the small brook

Time passed by, her secret hidden
She never told a single soul
But, every night she dreamed of ponies
And of the one she rode with eyes of coal

Christmas now was fast approaching
Every night she'd watch the wood
She never left and went out walking
She always stayed home like she should

On Christmas Eve as she was sleeping
A vision came into her head
Sarah woke, went to the window
Left the warmth of her nice bed

There outside, beside the road wall
Standing, watching in the night
She saw three transformed Christmas Ponies
Their horns were lit by fairy light

The fairies danced among the tree limbs
The ponies played and jumped around
They looked up where our Sarah smiled
Fairy dancing with no sound

A flash of light and they all vanished
The time had come for them to go
The fairies flew into the woodland
And left one pony, white as snow

Sarah looked down from her window
And watched the pony turn to leave
She knew the reason that she saw him
Was that deep down, she did believe

So, if you look for Christmas Ponies
You will find them if you look
Believe they're real and you will see them
They're everywhere...not just in  a book.

It’s snowing
In May.
The snowflakes are
The shreds of paper
That was once
her marriage license.
The snow is
All of her pain.
The snow is
All of her tears.
The snow is
All of her scars
The snow is
Every little thing
That she regrets.

It’s snowing tonight,
And she’s smiling
For the first time in years.

The three stood listening to a fresh access
Of wind that caught against the house a moment,
Gulped snow, and then blew free again—the Coles
Dressed, but dishevelled from some hours of sleep,
Meserve belittled in the great skin coat he wore.

Meserve was first to speak. He pointed backward
Over his shoulder with his pipe-stem, saying,
“You can just see it glancing off the roof
Making a great scroll upward toward the sky,
Long enough for recording all our names on.—
I think I’ll just call up my wife and tell her
I’m here—so far—and starting on again.
I’ll call her softly so that if she’s wise
And gone to sleep, she needn’t wake to answer.”
Three times he barely stirred the bell, then listened.
“Why, Lett, still up? Lett, I’m at Cole’s. I’m late.
I called you up to say Good-night from here
Before I went to say Good-morning there.—
I thought I would.— I know, but, Lett—I know—
I could, but what’s the sense? The rest won’t be
So bad.— Give me an hour for it.— **, **,
Three hours to here! But that was all up hill;
The rest is down.— Why no, no, not a wallow:
They kept their heads and took their time to it
Like darlings, both of them. They’re in the barn.—
My dear, I’m coming just the same. I didn’t
Call you to ask you to invite me home.—”
He lingered for some word she wouldn’t say,
Said it at last himself, “Good-night,” and then,
Getting no answer, closed the telephone.
The three stood in the lamplight round the table
With lowered eyes a moment till he said,
“I’ll just see how the horses are.”

“Yes, do,”
Both the Coles said together. Mrs. Cole
Added: “You can judge better after seeing.—
I want you here with me, Fred. Leave him here,
Brother Meserve. You know to find your way
Out through the shed.”

“I guess I know my way,
I guess I know where I can find my name
Carved in the shed to tell me who I am
If it don’t tell me where I am. I used
To play—”

“You tend your horses and come back.
Fred Cole, you’re going to let him!”

“Well, aren’t you?
How can you help yourself?”

“I called him Brother.
Why did I call him that?”

“It’s right enough.
That’s all you ever heard him called round here.
He seems to have lost off his Christian name.”

“Christian enough I should call that myself.
He took no notice, did he? Well, at least
I didn’t use it out of love of him,
The dear knows. I detest the thought of him
With his ten children under ten years old.
I hate his wretched little Racker Sect,
All’s ever I heard of it, which isn’t much.
But that’s not saying—Look, Fred Cole, it’s twelve,
Isn’t it, now? He’s been here half an hour.
He says he left the village store at nine.
Three hours to do four miles—a mile an hour
Or not much better. Why, it doesn’t seem
As if a man could move that slow and move.
Try to think what he did with all that time.
And three miles more to go!”
“Don’t let him go.
Stick to him, Helen. Make him answer you.
That sort of man talks straight on all his life
From the last thing he said himself, stone deaf
To anything anyone else may say.
I should have thought, though, you could make him hear you.”

“What is he doing out a night like this?
Why can’t he stay at home?”

“He had to preach.”

“It’s no night to be out.”

“He may be small,
He may be good, but one thing’s sure, he’s tough.”

“And strong of stale tobacco.”

“He’ll pull through.’
“You only say so. Not another house
Or shelter to put into from this place
To theirs. I’m going to call his wife again.”

“Wait and he may. Let’s see what he will do.
Let’s see if he will think of her again.
But then I doubt he’s thinking of himself
He doesn’t look on it as anything.”

“He shan’t go—there!”

“It is a night, my dear.”

“One thing: he didn’t drag God into it.”

“He don’t consider it a case for God.”

“You think so, do you? You don’t know the kind.
He’s getting up a miracle this minute.
Privately—to himself, right now, he’s thinking
He’ll make a case of it if he succeeds,
But keep still if he fails.”

“Keep still all over.
He’ll be dead—dead and buried.”

“Such a trouble!
Not but I’ve every reason not to care
What happens to him if it only takes
Some of the sanctimonious conceit
Out of one of those pious scalawags.”

“Nonsense to that! You want to see him safe.”

“You like the runt.”

“Don’t you a little?”

“Well,
I don’t like what he’s doing, which is what
You like, and like him for.”

“Oh, yes you do.
You like your fun as well as anyone;
Only you women have to put these airs on
To impress men. You’ve got us so ashamed
Of being men we can’t look at a good fight
Between two boys and not feel bound to stop it.
Let the man freeze an ear or two, I say.—
He’s here. I leave him all to you. Go in
And save his life.— All right, come in, Meserve.
Sit down, sit down. How did you find the horses?”

“Fine, fine.”

“And ready for some more? My wife here
Says it won’t do. You’ve got to give it up.”

“Won’t you to please me? Please! If I say please?
Mr. Meserve, I’ll leave it to your wife.
What did your wife say on the telephone?”

Meserve seemed to heed nothing but the lamp
Or something not far from it on the table.
By straightening out and lifting a forefinger,
He pointed with his hand from where it lay
Like a white crumpled spider on his knee:
“That leaf there in your open book! It moved
Just then, I thought. It’s stood ***** like that,
There on the table, ever since I came,
Trying to turn itself backward or forward,
I’ve had my eye on it to make out which;
If forward, then it’s with a friend’s impatience—
You see I know—to get you on to things
It wants to see how you will take, if backward
It’s from regret for something you have passed
And failed to see the good of. Never mind,
Things must expect to come in front of us
A many times—I don’t say just how many—
That varies with the things—before we see them.
One of the lies would make it out that nothing
Ever presents itself before us twice.
Where would we be at last if that were so?
Our very life depends on everything’s
Recurring till we answer from within.
The thousandth time may prove the charm.— That leaf!
It can’t turn either way. It needs the wind’s help.
But the wind didn’t move it if it moved.
It moved itself. The wind’s at naught in here.
It couldn’t stir so sensitively poised
A thing as that. It couldn’t reach the lamp
To get a puff of black smoke from the flame,
Or blow a rumple in the collie’s coat.
You make a little foursquare block of air,
Quiet and light and warm, in spite of all
The illimitable dark and cold and storm,
And by so doing give these three, lamp, dog,
And book-leaf, that keep near you, their repose;
Though for all anyone can tell, repose
May be the thing you haven’t, yet you give it.
So false it is that what we haven’t we can’t give;
So false, that what we always say is true.
I’ll have to turn the leaf if no one else will.
It won’t lie down. Then let it stand. Who cares?”

“I shouldn’t want to hurry you, Meserve,
But if you’re going— Say you’ll stay, you know?
But let me raise this curtain on a scene,
And show you how it’s piling up against you.
You see the snow-white through the white of frost?
Ask Helen how far up the sash it’s climbed
Since last we read the gage.”

“It looks as if
Some pallid thing had squashed its features flat
And its eyes shut with overeagerness
To see what people found so interesting
In one another, and had gone to sleep
Of its own stupid lack of understanding,
Or broken its white neck of mushroom stuff
Short off, and died against the window-pane.”

“Brother Meserve, take care, you’ll scare yourself
More than you will us with such nightmare talk.
It’s you it matters to, because it’s you
Who have to go out into it alone.”

“Let him talk, Helen, and perhaps he’ll stay.”

“Before you drop the curtain—I’m reminded:
You recollect the boy who came out here
To breathe the air one winter—had a room
Down at the Averys’? Well, one sunny morning
After a downy storm, he passed our place
And found me banking up the house with snow.
And I was burrowing in deep for warmth,
Piling it well above the window-sills.
The snow against the window caught his eye.
‘Hey, that’s a pretty thought’—those were his words.
‘So you can think it’s six feet deep outside,
While you sit warm and read up balanced rations.
You can’t get too much winter in the winter.’
Those were his words. And he went home and all
But banked the daylight out of Avery’s windows.
Now you and I would go to no such length.
At the same time you can’t deny it makes
It not a mite worse, sitting here, we three,
Playing our fancy, to have the snowline run
So high across the pane outside. There where
There is a sort of tunnel in the frost
More like a tunnel than a hole—way down
At the far end of it you see a stir
And quiver like the frayed edge of the drift
Blown in the wind. I like that—I like that.
Well, now I leave you, people.”

“Come, Meserve,
We thought you were deciding not to go—
The ways you found to say the praise of comfort
And being where you are. You want to stay.”

“I’ll own it’s cold for such a fall of snow.
This house is frozen brittle, all except
This room you sit in. If you think the wind
Sounds further off, it’s not because it’s dying;
You’re further under in the snow—that’s all—
And feel it less. Hear the soft bombs of dust
It bursts against us at the chimney mouth,
And at the eaves. I like it from inside
More than I shall out in it. But the horses
Are rested and it’s time to say good-night,
And let you get to bed again. Good-night,
Sorry I had to break in on your sleep.”

“Lucky for you you did. Lucky for you
You had us for a half-way station
To stop at. If you were the kind of man
Paid heed to women, you’d take my advice
And for your family’s sake stay where you are.
But what good is my saying it over and over?
You’ve done more than you had a right to think
You could do—now. You know the risk you take
In going on.”

“Our snow-storms as a rule
Aren’t looked on as man-killers, and although
I’d rather be the beast that sleeps the sleep
Under it all, his door sealed up and lost,
Than the man fighting it to keep above it,
Yet think of the small birds at roost and not
In nests. Shall I be counted less than they are?
Their bulk in water would be frozen rock
In no time out to-night. And yet to-morrow
They will come budding boughs from tree to tree
Flirting their wings and saying Chickadee,
As if not knowing what you meant by the word storm.”

“But why when no one wants you to go on?
Your wife—she doesn’t want you to. We don’t,
And you yourself don’t want to. Who else is there?”

“Save us from being cornered by a woman.
Well, there’s”—She told Fred afterward that in
The pause right there, she thought the dreaded word
Was coming, “God.” But no, he only said
“Well, there’s—the storm. That says I must go on.
That wants me as a war might if it came.
Ask any man.”

He threw her that as something
To last her till he got outside the door.
He had Cole with him to the barn to see him off.
When Cole returned he found his wife still standing
Beside the table near the open book,
Not reading it.

“Well, what kind of a man
Do you call that?” she said.

“He had the gift
Of words, or is it tongues, I ought to say?”

“Was ever such a man for seeing likeness?”

“Or disregarding people’s civil questions—
What? We’ve found out in one hour more about him
Than we had seeing him pass by in the road
A thousand times. If that’s the way he preaches!
You didn’t think you’d keep him after all.
Oh, I’m not blaming you. He didn’t leave you
Much say in the matter, and I’m just as glad
We’re not in for a night of him. No sleep
If he had stayed. The least thing set him going.
It’s quiet as an empty church without him.”

“But how much better off are we as it is?
We’ll have to sit here till we know he’s safe.”

“Yes, I suppose you’ll want to, but I shouldn’t.
He knows what he can do, or he wouldn’t try.
Get into bed I say, and get some rest.
He won’t come back, and if he telephones,
It won’t be for an hour or two.”

“Well then.
We can’t be any help by sitting here
And living his fight through with him, I suppose.”


*****************

­
Cole had been telephoning in the dark.
Mrs. Cole’s voice came from an inner room:
“Did she call you or you call her?”

“She me.
You’d better dress: you won’t go back to bed.
We must have been asleep: it’s three and after.”

“Had she been ringing long? I’ll get my wrapper.
I want to speak to her.”

“All she said was,
He hadn’t come and had he really started.”

“She knew he had, poor thing, two hours ago.”

“He had the shovel. He’ll have made a fight.”

“Why did I ever let him leave this house!”

“Don’t begin that. You did the best you could
To keep him—though perhaps you didn’t quite
Conceal a wish to see him show the *****
To disobey you. Much his wife’ll thank you.”

“Fred, after all I said! You shan’t make out
That it was any way but what it was.
Did she let on by any word she said
She didn’t thank me?”

“When I told her ‘Gone,’
‘Well then,’ she said, and ‘Well then’—like a threat.
And then her voice came scraping slow: ‘Oh, you,
Why did you let him go’?”

“Asked why we let him?
You let me there. I’ll ask her why she let him.
She didn’t dare to speak when he was here.

Their number’s—twenty-one? The thing won’t work.
Someone’s receiver’s down. The handle stumbles.

The stubborn thing, the way it jars your arm!
It’s theirs. She’s dropped it from her hand and gone.”

“Try speaking. Say ‘Hello’!”

“Hello. Hello.”

“What do you hear?”

“I hear an empty room—
You know—it sounds that way. And yes, I hear—
I think I hear a clock—and windows rattling.
No step though. If she’s there she’s sitting down.”

“Shout, she may hear you.”

“Shouting is no good.”

“Keep speaking then.”

“Hello. Hello. Hello.
You don’t suppose—? She wouldn’t go out doors?”

“I’m half afraid that’s just what she might do.”

“And leave the children?”

“Wait and call again.
You can’t hear whether she has left the door
Wide open and the wind’s blown out the lamp
And the fire’s died and the room’s dark and cold?”

“One of two things, either she’s gone to bed
Or gone out doors.”

“In which case both are lost.
Do you know what she’s like? Have you ever met her?
It’s strange she doesn’t want to speak to us.”

“Fred, see if you can hear what I hear. Come.”

“A clock maybe.”

“Don’t you hear something else?”

“Not talking.”
“No.”

“Why, yes, I hear—what is it?”

“What do you say it is?”

“A baby’s crying!
Frantic it sounds, though muffled and far off.”

“Its mother wouldn’t let it cry like that,
Not if she’s there.”

“What do you make of it?”

“There’s only one thing possible to make,
That is, assuming—that she has gone out.
Of course she hasn’t though.” They both sat down
Helpless. “There’s nothing we can do till morning.”

“Fred, I shan’t let you think of going out.”

“Hold on.” The double bell began to chirp.
They started up. Fred took the telephone.
“Hello, Meserve. You’re there, then!—And your wife?

Good! Why I asked—she didn’t seem to answer.
He says she went to let him in the barn.—
We’re glad. Oh, say no more about it, man.
Drop in and see us when you’re passing.”

“Well,
She has him then, though what she wants him for
I don’t see.”
“Possibly not for herself.
Maybe she only wants him for the children.”

“The whole to-do seems to have been for nothing.
What spoiled our night was to him just his fun.
What did he come in for?—To talk and visit?
Thought he’d just call to tell us it was snowing.
If he thinks he is going to make our house
A halfway coffee house ‘twixt town and nowhere——”

“I thought you’d feel you’d been too much concerned.”

“You think you haven’t been concerned yourself.”

“If you mean he was inconsiderate
To rout us out to think for him at midnight
And then take our advice no more than nothing,
Why, I agree with you. But let’s forgive him.
We’ve had a share in one night of his life.
What’ll you bet he ever calls again?”

Green leaves are glowing

Snow covers mountain peaks

valley celebrates

Never lived in the hood, I been good
Grew up in Glendale cuz pops did everything he could 
To keep this big roof that covers everywhere I stood
And keep bills paid so the house work like it should
But, that don't mean that I ain't live with no problems
I grew up liking girls and all I tried to do was holla
From 05 to 09 I used to always pop my collar
And walked up to see what a chic would do for a dollar
But come 2010 I learned a dollar doesn't get far
Start asking pops for money, he said what you need these bills for
I said just to have cash so I can buy stuff myself 
He said how is it yo self when it's coming from my wealth 
And in the end he was right so I ain't ask for no more help
Got a job, got paid, getting green, sea kelp
And well, I guess it all turned out great
From 210 to 2 now I been working for the cake
More hours, more pay
Is what I always say
Just to go and motivate
So I can get through everyday
Man I do this for thrill, I don't really need this money
And stop mugging me down, I ain't tryna take yo hunny
But please don't get mad if she like me cuz I'm stunning
And you dressing kinda bummy
Man yo breds ain't even gummy
My high tops get their own box
And my boxes reach high tops
My collection's a high top
You can't even make gumby
You funny
You mad at me for what ? Yup, nothing 
But haters gone hate so ill let you do what you does see
Cuz time don't ever stop, matter fact it's running from me
And I'm tryna catch up cuz less time means less money
So you go do you, and I'm gone do me til I'm done g
Cuz I ain't wasting sand in my glass if you don't love me
And don't be fake now, I don't want you tryna hug me
Cuz you know germs is germs and haters be on that *****
Yeah im nerdy, I'm smart
I'm a walking piece of art 
And I write these rhymes for fun
But it all comes from the heart 
I keep hundreds, yes hundreds of poems inside the dark
And more hundreds, maybe thousands get lost before they start
You know how you at the store putting stuff in yo food cart
Then get home and wonder what you bought all of this food for ?
Yeah these poems fill hunger that resides deep inside me
They are not just fun, they have now become a pride for me
And maybe it'll be more, maybe this pride can make it shine for me
Maybe all these girls around the world will build shrines of me
But now I gotta go, cuz you know how time can leak
Plus I don't want y'all think that y'all know what defines B. 
But I can't stop there, it's unfair to the public
And I know that y'all like it but I dare y'all to love it
Cuz if you love it then I'll keep going
Till it start snowing
And you knowing
Even though it's snowing
It ain't never boring 
Cuz these bars wasn't meant for snoring 
Meant for adoring fans
That'll still love me when I'm old and I'm done touring
I could do this for the rest of my life
I just love it, it takes pain away and dries every eye 
With out poems, I don't know man I just might die
This is real, when I write I just cannot lie
So, you can catch me in my notepad writing 
I'm tryna make this gold, y'all tryna start fighting
And to me that's motivation, I ain't saying that I'm liking it
I'm just saying if it's there I might as well get insight from it
And it's crazy, I just noticed that I can't lose
When it's bad I'm still good, when it's good I cruise
I'm sorry that it all happens at the expenses of you
But you can't stop my grind, imma do what I do
100
I'm tryna make it from the mil to the summit
I heard it's all lonely but the top is my abundance
So I'll bring who I want I don't care what the rules say
Chillin above the competition straight playing 2k
That dream will never fade in
That's why I always stay in
Cuz I wanna see the day where I can say that I made it
And they love me
I see the finish line so I'm running
Got a talent and a dream and you can't take that from me
No obstacles can stun me
I don't care about who judge me
I got my mind set so just tell the top I'm coming
Cause I am

Today it is snowing,
and redwings are in the holly tree.

Yesterday it snowed
a soft, wet snow
that clung to the bare twigs
of the trees in the park
turning them into mounds
of silver filigree.
The holly tree in my garden,
scarlet berries, dark green leaves,
and branches covered in white
was a picture fit for a Christmas card.

Today also it is snowing,
and redwings are in the holly tree.
They come to my garden
in hard winters
looking for food,
and the berried twigs I would have cut
to decorate the house
will not last long.
A score of beautiful Scandinavian thrushes,
flashing their red underwings
as they flutter in the branches,
will finish the harvest today.

It may not snow tomorrow,
but the frost will preserve the snow
that lies on the trees and gardens.
The redwings will find food for a few days more
from the crab-apples in the back garden
before they move on,
looking for their next meal.
Sorry as I am to lose my holly berries
– for I shall have none to decorate the house –
I shall be sorrier to lose my lovely visitors.
But today it is snowing,
and redwings are in the holly tree.

~Enter now,
O bird on the green branch of the dying tree, singing
Sing me toward home;
Toward the deep past and inalienable loss:
Toward the gone stranger carrying my name
In the possible future
—Thomas McGrath, "Part One", Letter to an Imaginary Friend

Snowing up north
Started February 2nd, 2021

They say it is snowing up north
And I am back walking
over the roads I grew up on
the crunch of the snow
sings me home

past the fields
waiting spring planting
fence lines stretching off into the horizon

across the front yard
always needing mowing
now winter gives reprieve

up the front steps
mother's petunias growing riotously
ghosts from summers past

my fingers brush the doorbell
cats never learned to ring
now forever silent

I open the front door
and go into my memories
stepping on the black slate entryway

I wonder if his coat
is already in the closet or if
everyone is waiting for him to get home

in the kitchen
the table is set
the hot tea ready

maybe this is the time
everything will be properly arranged
each talisman in the proper place

so the ghosts who live here
will finally have
the longed for peaceful night

all of us keeping company
in these memories
that sing us home.

I

Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the black bird.

II

I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV

A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V

I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

VI

Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII

O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII

I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX

When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X

At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI

He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

XII

The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

XIII

It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.

It has not snowing - like
all the water in the clouds
has dried just like the tears
that you brought to my face.

my angel’s sneezed
snowflakes
fall from the sky
Their silence, magic, dance
covers me
enchants me
tickles me
The frozen conifers - my friends,
ancient and wise
as mountains they stand -
agree in their soundless chants:
Though the skies a snowy shade of grey,
the words it speaks are worth a million colours

- RW, All rights reserved.