Nightbird perches high
beneath the shooting stars
that dapple the bouquet
    of sleepless peace
... his soft downy breast      
    has lent breath
to the sweet April afterglow
     heaving with song

The mystical feathered troubadour's
     swooning echo
A melodic twilight serenade
conjures a moonstruck metamorphosis,
sprouting magical wings of flight;
rousing a lonely heart's esprit
     to fly away unfettered
     in constellations of song

How dare imaginings spilled from the big dipper
enchant such an enrapturing magic spell?
It's so far to fall from swinging on a star!
It's so far beyond nearing crescent moon
     when you wish upon a star  

Thereupon struck by a bewitching bolt of starlight;
Dropping asudden as a shooting-star!

    Rolling like trailing thunder;
        tucked and tumbling ―
             somersaulting,

           celestial rumbling
blossoming with an unearthly joy

A nascent winged heart splayed bare,
soars upon cresting wind waves;
    dreaming of that shapeless  
          w h o  o  o  o  s h ―
         gathering beneath
        ~ uplifting wings ~

  Suddenly ― gliding freely,
       winging gracefully
  upon wafting star drift glitter;
lilting lightly upon the arising cadence
of nightingale's melodious fluted song

Nightingale sings sweet April perfume
beneath the star shed lamplight twinkle

... and it makes no difference if it's only a dream
    if my heart had wings


imagined by:   Jesse Stillwater

At four, you took my hand and pulled me to your bed,                                                            
your small form cuddling, curling, you urgently said,
"Tell me… tell me a story! Story, make it long",
I began to tell the story, the story of when you were born.

Drums and bugles, bubbles and balloons,
somersaulting clowns and calliope tunes,
you came out to meet them, on the day that you were born,
and they were there to greet you, through a January storm.

Lions and gorillas marched to military airs,
snowmen and snowwomen danced without a spring time care,
somewhere in the harbor, a tugboat played a note,
and all the while you smiled a smile, upon a birthday float.

Just like a circus troupe, we formed a great parade,
and sauntered to the birthing bed where your mother lay,
she picked you up, she held you, as close as close can be,
her hand in mine, she softly said, “Now... we are three.”

Copyright © 2003 Gary Brocks

See the Rabbi.  See him tormented by choice.  See his people.  See them wracked by hate.  See the others.  See their anger radiate outward in glowing spokes, exploding firebrand in a tinder city.

On a night like any other, the moon at sixth house, fulcrum of pinwheel zodiac, the Rabbi, awash in lidless starlight, rises somber and makes his choice.  And when the sun is furthermost, he and three of his others gather at the murmuring riverbank where the brown clay is most pliable and begin to dig, sifting rock and root from trundled earth.  Hours spent exhuming the clay, molding it, kneading its muscles, tracing its veins, baking its skin in the starlight.  More hours spent in whispering prayer, the words bent and somersaulting over themselves like tumbling books.

See Truth drawn on its forehead, life etched from clay and word.  As the sun rises, so it does, wavering at first, but steadier, lapping at the river, and their faces move slowly across the water.  See the Rabbi speak to it, his words winding its mechanism.  See it stride past the ghetto, wade through the market, and into the borough, siege unto its own.

See the others scream for mercy from the kiln of its stare, from their flaming tenements, their crumpling rooftops.

See it wade back through the market, past the ghetto, back to the riverbank to kneel in the underbrush.  See it tilt its head to the lilt of a stranded daisy caught in a vagrant gust.   See it caught, too, and see it see.  It sees the colors of Eden in the ferns.  It hears the river churning sediment, fossils, gravel, whirling over driftwood.  It touches moss on a rock; gently rotates its hand to let a grub complete an oblivious circumference.  See it sit in silence.

See the Rabbi meet with the others, then his others.  And on a day like any other, when the sun is at its apogee, they slip down the riverbank where it still sits, still.  It ignores their autonomous logic, their homunculus rationale.  They are perversions of variety cloaked in righteous intention.  So it remains.

See the Rabbi and his others gather at the murmuring riverbank, shadow conclave in shifting sunlight, then rise somber and decided.  They pin it to the earth as the Rabbi chants, invoking the void in which forbidden knowledge spirals.  It squirms under the power of the Word, mind-forged manacle as incantation.  See the Rabbi draw to a close.  His hand is arbiter, swooping down to smudge Truth from its forehead.  What is left but Death.

See its hand crumble in its passage as it reaches for the stranded daisy.  See the colors of Eden darken in its eyes, its own body the dust that denies it light.  See it collapse into itself, the clay that was once animate spilling onto the riverbank.  See the Rabbi and his others shimmer then fade into city grey.

The daisy stands still.

My voice is nestled within a river
of transitions, positioned
in endless sets of pre- and post-
parentheses. Pre-revolutionary,
post-Missing Link. Post-postmodern,
pre-postmodern revival.

I sit in a somersaulting purgatory
sandwiched between evocation
and paralysis.

My hatred is exhausted, shoulders
hunched over a guillotine,
cursing with its tongue sprawled
dead and dry at an imaginary hunter,
a mass of bones clumped
under the rug I keep pulling
from my own two feet.

Will you hack through this cocoon?

Have you got the muscle
and the patience?

Nevermind that bedtime story.

There must be some wounds
of yours, those placed beyond
the verbal tanline, that need
immediate bandaging.

*Can I get you anything?

Chop down the city lights of Paranoia.
Cathartic beads of sweat roll
off the horrors of your back
under the saggy breast lamps

in the pitched dreams where the nightmare kids
come to watch you sleep.
           Somersaulting walls made of human tissue,
the love of your life overseas, and everything you say
comes out as water torture on hollow centers of hope.

                        poetry is dead.
                                                  Liars smoke ten packs a day,
social criminals stroll in marathons of perdition
across the rot of post-modern vices,
their feet stomp closer to watching faces under the bed.
                                      'This is a story. A dream!'
Everyone sees the fire under the bed.
Watch-fires earthbound by every word
before it is said,
gagged in envy--brought to glow by spineless atoms.

        Every sexless sun has a beard, a saved flirtation that singes
          the vacuum of today's soul,
                             a dead dream because you didn't pull it from the brink.
No one has a name in poetry. A task. A point. An exit.
                                                  One bed-room apartments locked with pearls
                                                     visible only to soloist dogs.
No sorry for vagueness or shut-mouth or bleeding upwards. The meter is running....
to the pharmacy
because it could be pregnant with all the possibilities.
And the whole amphitheater wants to hear one line, the life changer you brought
--here it is: Forget your name.

on any hill without a cross, they pause, and the father points.

when they are tired, father and son, they plunk into
then off
the sides of valley homes.

one home in particular remembers thinking
kids these days
roll anything
looks like a tire.

your own father smacks whichever finger lifts without the rest.
says you sleeping don’t mean your epilepsy knows.

in your dreams the father does not point, and there isn’t a son.
just a man on one hill after the other, sunlight purling
into the seeable
dark yarn sea.  his eyes leaving his head,

somersaulting,
somersaulting,
godbraving.

Atoms skitter to the center
In the square dance of all matter;
Quarks should rotate once around,
Keeping us on earth firm-bound.

Swing your partner far and wide,
Perihelion's kept astride,
And the strings of matter
String along the boson's heart.

Now come together; smatter, scatter;
Atom-smashers do not matter,
For this dance of matter
Truly is a dance of higher art,

Matter curtsys; and there's gravity
Fills in each slight curving cavity-
From above, you'll notice first
It all starts from just one burst-

So the particles keep on dancing,
Midnight comes, and still they're prancing;
Whirling, somersaulting like they never
Dared to dance before;

Keep on watching, as the clocks hands
Travel once more past the grandstand;
We're transfixed since matter never
Let us ever see this door.

We're the eyes and ears that dare
To watch this tantric ballet, bared;
Entanglement seduces; there's no other place to be-
Bow to your partner in this deadly quantum duel of rivalry.

The mirth crease on my face,
Are the traces of scoff,
Laced in my heart,
The oath I swore,
I hold with pride,
And the throne;I shall surely ascend,

For in their minds are nefarious surmise,
Bequeathed by their fathers,
As an epitome of my exactitude,
And in the reverence of their supposed lore,
"He is powerless"their honored lingo,

"He is powerless"their honored lingo,
The webs I cast,
And crown the ravens on the orbs,
Somersaulting the flamboyance and alluring sciences,
In the follies of their fantasies and lust,
Their souls are clipped with taint claws,
And shooed into my den,

"He is powerless"their honored lingo,
In their temples and synagogues,
Are my dote ravens,
Quoting the collars of their scriptures,
And stalking their honored lingo,
In their desperations for excellence and deliverance,
Their minds and sight,
Are bewitched with elixirs,
To their satiety,
And drove in slavery,

'He is powerless"their honored lingo,
In their moments of quandery,
I hover on the corridors of their thoughts,
And whisper the "B" plans,
Brewing the animosities and cruelties among theirselves,
Carving justification for the aftermath,
But still;"He is powerless"their honored lingo,

Apostrophe'
©Historian E.Lexano

The screen door slammed, and out I ran
into the hot July.
I don't care where I'm going;
whether I flail or fly.
I've gotta be doing something-
or burst for want of a word,
And I'm listening hard for a meaning
but Babel is all I've heard.
I'm slipping past some people
who walk on the hard sidewalk.
I'm squeaking by so slippery,
I don't have the time for talk.
I'm sweet and somersaulting
but no one knows my name.
Would you like to know for certain
that life is not a game?
You're cruising along beside me-
I'm just a part of your dream,
but I'm crying out to reach you
with a primal scream.

if you fall in love, remember that you are falling
and that the fall will not last forever.
you can just as easily fall out of love,
or wake up to someone who is no longer falling.

some people trip into love
accidentally stumbling into something bigger
than they expected and while the jolt was momentarily
unpleasant, they don't mind the fall.

there are a few who will count with you
but will not jump with you, no matter what they say
because they are too afraid and leave you
to fall on your own, to hit the ground already broken.

a select few hit the ground running
flipping mid-air, somersaulting
preparing themselves for the land and launching
themselves into the air once again, unafraid. daredevils.

there are those who look before they leap
to measure, calculate, check and double check
and leap once they feel safe and ready.
they are the ones who so rarely fall, but do so with all faith.

and then there are the ones who already fell
and went and hurt themselves
and will still leap into the abyss, free and bound
knowing that they will land paralyzed and will re-learn how to love.

if you fall in love, remember that you are falling
and that the fall will not last forever.
but also remember to enjoy the fall,
because like free falling, love is dangerous

but beautiful.

I could and would want,
if what is behind me is truly nothing,
if these words stop lying and untangle me,
to fall backward, away from
this circle of attempt.

But then (God) how deep I would fall!
without meaning, inside coiling time.
So again I find myself having to try,
writing helplessly
another repetition.  

Just the act is enough (for a while, uncoiled).
But it’s not enough. What can I do?
My written bursts are always
muted in some kind of murk
or otherwise obscuring clarity,
and they press their beautifully soiled hands
against concrete windows,
knowing they will (and must) stay
for another while, at least,
tearfully inside.

The beginning of it is a slow
burdensome churn to widen cracks.
The rest is a ritual for the politely deranged:
******* what little air seeps out of the real,
chafing what little skin I have
(all of which is a little fearful)
with what few rays of medicine light
are handed to me across the cracks
from the real.

It is a ritual (in essence)
to unstifle the strayed confusion I impart
to the in-between two childs,
who blurry, alone, and accepting, fly together
in the midst of this ever-widening green field.

“We should go back to our home
on top of an overturned dust bin,
where I can toss sand in the air and laugh
because I don’t care to know beyond,”
I hear her say to the other.

I imagine my love as this child,
make the hidden screen in front of her past
young eyes coalesce gently
into this hidden now-and-everything.

I see you collect rocks safely
into your pink-striped shirt
as dirt stains your purple pants.
The color of your young hair is the same
it was when I saw it reflected in the
Tyrrhenian, before we reached our ripped end
and you made me fall backward,
somersaulting with eyes closed in sickness
toward the sun we saw that day,
in the garden we agreed was perfect.

Why do I smell cinnamon in the corner of the room?
We must begin this taxing slow-dance before my mother hears us.

My Cradle. Your Cradle.
            I felt your pulse spike before my back hit the wall.
            And we’re both young enough to say this can’t really mean anything.

The sea whisper’d me.
The staunch, scarlet statues.
The ringing phone in the glove compartment.
            No, I’ll take paper, instead. The renegade robots are all dead.

This flight. This grip.
            Talk to the scumbag rocker in the Primus hoodie.
            Did you spy the shoes on the power lines?
            Don’t worry – we’ll keep our arms at the level of our eyes.

We bumped into the roses in the closet.
A wasp could sting you then sting me.
Such is the burden of my position --
            An interpreter and a translator of the venom
            passed through a sting.
            The mail-sorter in the dead letter office.

Oh, hey --
            Could you stake your paw print on it?
I would take the slivers from this past year’s thigh.
Down a trickle, faceted deep within a pulled star’s root.
I’ll follow that root back to where it came – dig and pitch the grime from a catalyst’s pores.
Times slopes
and our teeth rattle with each somersaulting channel of memories.

Driving through life,
The steering wheel shifting so lightly
Between my fingertips,
Indicating at every junction,
Deciding which direction I'll take
To reach my final destination.
But recently I have been verging,
Down narrow lanes,
Picking up speed
As I push down on the accelerator,
80mph,
90mph,
100mph,
Straight down the lane,
Adrenaline pulsing through me
As I keep going,
Faster I scream to myself,
Faster,
Faster,
Never stop.

I never saw the cliff coming
Rock bottom exists. I've been there.

The seatbelt clings to me as I go over,
The air rushing from my lungs,
The roaring of the wind scraping against metal,
The crash of the ocean waves below.
Every ***** inside me squishing against one another,
My stomach somersaulting as I continue to plunge.

Yet during the fall,
I felt weightless,
Like everything that had forced me to get into the car,
Had evaporated.

I continued to fall,
And even now I still find myself waiting
For the jagged impact of
Rock bottom.

Autumn leaves
somersaulting
across the road
like tiny
olympic gymnasts

I am the gushing river's intent,

Somersaulting waterfall's

still moment, just before

it's touch down on the ground.

Blowing wind's sweet desire,

in it's core to carry pollen on and fertilize.

The upward ****** of the wave,

to touch the crust before the fall.

The lovers' cliff hanger moment

before the lips touch and

meld together in the first kiss.

The seed's yearning am I,

to break the crust and come out

to find a place in the sun

In 2020 we are the motors of the mechanics we drive
in the bed
of other work days
as the bees fly less

and
the drive of somersaulting mad men, calmer
than a pool of iced days off
after the pool boy
cleans up
start screaming,

although it’s universal when you rise, and my limbs burst
through these elsewhere tossed things, and elsewhere bones
that have no succor in the middle of the sun’s dance, as if:

naïve butchers in the street are sleeping on the bus and
there is no answer from the ricochet dream apart from
keep your **** together
keep your **** together…

and the world is well travelled when you’re smoking beside a dog
and the obliterated silence of a room has a voice,

but the turnstiles open when the poem begins, ah!
the weekend again-this, envelope of random orchids that rustle
and
open,

in the haven of a ***** flat where we find the best corona jokes
new cities
these shaking palms
the way the world works better at 10 am
and the humour of a crazy snake, checking KPIs
again,

and when i wake
i will love this zero
hour
contract
more,

i will worship you and say
yes
yes
YES!

Touching the edge of the ocean,
Avon-by-the-sea nestles
it cloak of secrets
pressed on the faces of its residents
that reside in their humble abodes.

After somersaulting through life,
a man by the name of William watches
his grandchildren tumble
through galaxies of vivacious imagination.

They roll around in the painted
grass, flying through the
tainted sky.

If only he could join them.
Words of glossolalia spurt
and spill out of his mouth as he try's
to spit out the endearing words,
"I love you," to his wife
standing beside him.

He turns to her, and her eyes began to
bloat with pellets of liquid despair.

Shamelessly he turns his head
down. She quickly entangles their fingers
together. Like a puzzle piece, they interconnect
perfectly. The silence continues on..
but the love remains.

wild whisper of August wind
ruffles my hair and scatters my thoughts like
castaway leaves riding a downstream breeze
snagging on branches as they tumble, float away
and I stumble after the flashes of color,
the fragmented memories, wishes, to-do lists
somersaulting alike in the freedom wind
and I let them, let them go
let myself give in to the roaring crash of summer’s eve
a sun not yet ready to set
soon, it will be time to chase
time to gather up the scattered musings
but for now
I carry it within me
this wild, wild whisper of August wind

And the world was never mad,
it simply forgets where it should place it all,
some crave the stone
where it was carved into the top of blood alters,
and can’t find a chisel good enough;
even though the clothes are piling up and there’s dents in the floor boards;
some like it when its saved until the weekend and blown in through the
mouth
whilst it fights for air with liquids costing five pounds per word;
the pitch squeezing up through all walls no matter where you’re sat,
and what you’ve got.

A face looking at you from across the underground train.
A paragraph says nothing, even the rats look for gods in the rain,
cars plummet by caring nothing of your thoughts,
where they centre in wild spins through the air somersaulting;
colliding snakes made from your favourite director.
The world was never mad – and proves it by the chance to place it all,
and take it all in from a smooth place in the grass, or desert,
or black room lit by giant screen.

The room plays with your will, rolling a 6
and a 6
and a 6
and an angel
1.

And the avalanches roar in cascade worthy of your soul and logic,
and you walk out to the street rolling your own numbers,
in your own cup – it grows by giant star -
but is still not mad. It never was.

The splendour of going home in the peace of neon signs,
and the smoke of the city inhaled, by your lungs, once
or twice,
(depending on your vice)
bringing us back to zero -
passing up your thigh bone with all the messages
the basement
locked away
for a while.

The words are clear, fleeing from flashing screen to cortex,
hastening, and flushing away
whatever was lost in the gambling room.
You reply with a smile.
Death cannot.

And madness is a choice of joining, and doing.
Time shines behind a moon made of marbled skin tonight,
a view from your bed that awakens you without you waking fully,
five roman pillars in front of your window,
a floor sprayed with construction work all around you,
a balcony where you thought there was just a wall,
opening on the same plane as the statuesque building on your lawn;
and to your right, a grassy path leading
to a church, enough to wake-
and see it again
knowing that your room has gone back,
no sun, no darkness, no fireflies in your hand
or mind, no silhouettes,
no choke;
no passers by, no question;
just a question of heat
within your body,
timed to the perfect decibel of your hair
or mine

Singing it out in some room made of nothing but the clarity
of our lost bodies, calling to the ceiling and sky
to mount as much as they wish
because our arms are suited and dressed;
we’ve come a long way,
we’ve been bored in the pit of dinner parties
and holiday tables
drank water in patience of the waiter exploding,
opened a steak and a vegetable
spewing its guts to time;

Call it what’s left in our DNA to know,
call it anything but madness,
it was created the same way bad food was,
chipping paint
without someone
to look out for it,
horses flying through the fields,
wind making water fly from their eyes,
as they run,

no riders
upon their backs.

there's a part you will never be able to touch
whether you shrink yourself down to the size
of a quarter and jump into her back pocket
whether you beg and plead and stomp
and cry and demand to understand what I
have that you don't, you never will

it isn't love or effort or commitment
it's responsibility and dependence and
the cruelty of saying you'll never leave.
and then there was me
trying to make the blood stop gushing
slapping her face with a force I'm not proud of
trying to get her to stay awake long
enough to regain consciousness
memories of somersaulting down stairways
and the look in her eye before I saw fists

Watch the flow of the ocean
Each wave is its own muscle
Rippling to the shore
Then retreating back into its body
Slowly gaining strength to return
Singing never ending rhythms
That will not fail to calm you,

Listen to the sighs of the sea
Tumbling around
Caressing the sand
Somersaulting sea shells
Exhaling salt water breezes
That will free your mind
If only you'd let it.

the world tilted
and i find
that i am exactly
at the opposite end
of where i was yesterday.

there was silence
between us
and spaces
and gaps
and infinities
yet to be realized.

now,
i am here somersaulting
with the sound
of your voice
as i drift off to sleep,
and again waking up
to the sweet sound
of promises unspoken.

when yesterday
i cannot find
where my spot is
in the map
of your heart,
here i am
at the x
marking exactly
where your whole being
is held together.

you have brought me
to various peaks and depths
of euphoria and melancholy,
and i am sure
i can only be called crazy
for wanting to be where i am.

when you come home,
remember:
x marks this spot, baby.
i am here,
exactly where i
have chosen to be.

for j.e.
*102514

underneath all these
prosaic proclamations

the kind of poetry
that rises on its own
climbing your throat
from pump overflowing
and pirouettes off
the tip of the tongue
somersaulting thru ether
into sherbet blooms
underneath every
faerie footprint

I've that pendulum swing in my brain
occasionally it's difficult to ascertain
the here the now the then the there
can't even find the nouns
person place or thing
My tongues the red carpet to the Wonka factory
Words too old to be somersaulting around
Not even walking straight in my own home
Losing a sense of direction in a matter of seconds
How have I ever managed anything
Trying to impress everyone that passes by
Is it affable or is my existence just so laughable?

I've that pendulum swing in my brain
occasionally it's difficult to ascertain
the here the now the then the there
can't even find the nouns
person place or thing
My tongues the red carpet to the Wonka factory
Words too old to be somersaulting around
Not even walking straight in my own home
Losing a sense of direction in a matter of seconds
How have I ever managed anything
Trying to impress everyone that passes by
Is it affable or is my existence just so laughable?

It’s graceless
the way I’m always shifting.

I stole a teacher’s book of poetry once,
pages dog-eared and marked up,
I thought it’d help me understand.
I haven’t touched it since that June.

One perfect summer--
I spent the first two weeks of it back in the halls of a convent.
I know my Hail Mary’s and Our Father’s,
nothing else. What is hubris?
2 years doesn’t get you far in any doctrine
unless you’re desperate.

You were the first and last perfect anything,
since lost in nebulous transitions.

“Why are people in the subway always in such a hurry?”
Said a girl who left her purse open in a crowd once.

Always trying to putty in voids,
selfish fingers sewing up breaks,
pulling out stitches before they’re healed;
Wanting to feel that scar later—hear the click between ligaments.
I can pop my jaw. It might fall out some day.
Juggle pride with martyrdom carefully.

This is the first honest poem I’ve ever written.
It's hard to know what to say,
when busy gracelessly somersaulting through stretches of time.

Don’t let me disappear.

somersaulting through the night
landing face first
into a bed smelling of love
finding you there
filled with acrobatic amusement
   and i am airborne
   once again.

How have you been lately?
The poo of the pooh'
Don't you just give me
an 'okay' or a 'Fine'
For I wonder..
Are we even ever das ?
Fine as the chiffon-cotton *****..
gliding through the blues.
Or like the waves somersaulting over the shores.
Or like these...
tinkling rythms..
Oh! The ether hasnot stopped pouring
for days and days now
and You might have abhored the moon so far..
but | DON'T |

Oh ! Ruler of the sad sad sea.
Calmest of them all.
Don’t be sorry.
Don’t you be sad.
you are nowhere near the blameworthy .
Oh ! Guiltless listener .
Sweet sinner.
You should nowhere be near this cyclone :
such abrupt but obvious..
This self-forge crater.

That is why
An enforced hiatus is must

Shifting random mind positions
Carving steps out of de' labyrinth.
Away and away
Must I
Oh! Dark matter
I must .

I don't even know if this is poetry
because I am high
But I was falling and falling for so
long, I hadn't had anything to grasp
onto to stop me from falling.

I was falling endlessly into this deep
black hole of depression, and you
see, I was somehow managing to
paint it blacker.

Then I met you.

You somehow were a sturdy rope that
did not manage to break at all.
No matter how hard I tried to pull at
you or make you frayed.
You were the saving grace I needed.

Then you caught on a branch.

It was minuscule at first, I didn't even
notice you getting weaker.
You started to have a little more give
than normal but I paid no mind to it.

When suddenly you snapped.

Then I was falling again.
But this time I was falling faster and harder,
I was swirling in a endless
cycle of despair,
heaving through
circles of self-loathing,
and somersaulting
hopelessly through numbness.

You see,
you held on for so long
that I thought you would
never leave.

But everyone snaps once, right?
Except usually people can mend
what they snapped, physically at least.

But how can you mend something
that is broken on the inside?

I don't know if this is a poem or just high thoughts.