1626

No Life can pompless pass away—
The lowliest career
To the same Pageant wends its way
As that exalted here—

How cordial is the mystery!
The hospitable Pall
A “this way” beckons spaciously—
A Miracle for all!

The little bird watched as His mother ate the magic berries
seen the bright in her beak, the shine in her wings and her frost colored feathers.
A force through her frame, Wild and beautifully un-tame.
“Mother may I have some berries?” Said the little bird
the mother turned alarmed, as If the little bird was harmed and hastened to say
“You may never eat the berries, not from this tree. These are for the big birds like Your dad and me”
The little bird heard and understood “This is for big birds like you”

The mother gathered up the berries and holding them in mouth the two began to fly.
The mother's wings spanned spaciously, taking in strong current, revolving in a torrent of play with her son.
These moments occurred from day to day with inconsistent frequency.  
Treasures of the sky folk.
As the son flew higher than ever before the mother begun to shout  
“Down son, down son. Not so close to the yellow ball Or you will fall”
Seeing the worries in the mothers face the son begun to descend
The son had heard and understood, they continued on in a lesser mood.

The son knew that today they seek father, high in his metal tower.
Locked behind bars.
They descended upon the tower and lay to rest on the ledge by its side.
The Son went to speak but was interrupted
The look at Father, he was a washed out grey, wore out wings and feathers.
“Do you have the berries” He said
The mother bird nodded and opened her beak placing it on his
The son knew this was a love kiss.
The wild force raced through his father but it didn’t seem like enough
the mother and father begun to slumber.
The son was resting warm in the light.


When the son awakened his parents were still asleep,
he noticed the un-natural arch of their feet? the stink of rotting meat!
the light had gone from the two.
The son was frantic and searched around looking for the magic berries
finding two he gave his parents one each and closed their mouths waiting for the light
but neither made a move.
A third berry he found and ate it himself.
He begun to fly, thoughtless, joyful, overwhelmed with love.

SOMETIME BEFORE

The closet was lit,
barely flickering
while
Lucy searched around the mounds
of toys
and I could only watch, she had a rotary telephone
down there, the floor would creak
and whimper in reaction to the sudden release and drop of
more toys, more action figures, more lamps left behind
and dollhouses swept aside while Lucy dug in there
reaching around those dark places spiders love to hide
when finally she turned to me and found it.

“Monopoly!”

FORTRESS

We'd set up
a tent
on the far side of her room, snow
was falling
and tapping against the windows
and her skylight
which softly came down
so we couldn't see the clouds.
Inside our fort,
the blanket tent we played Monopoly,
we played for a while and she looked so beautiful there
with her black hair
and freckles
and she looked at me while it was her turn in the game
and she smiled and I felt like I was floating off into the skylight and even further than that.

LAUGH

Lucy was laughing
at some stranger
yelling down two floors
at another stranger playing
loud music
in his apartment on the side
parallel to us. She was
laughing quite loudly
and I had to tell her
to hush or the stranger
might yell at us too.
We crawled back into
the blanket fort
and packed up monopoly
and she asked
“what do you want to do now?” or at least
that's what I think she said. I wanted
to kiss her
I wanted to
kiss her
and those
freckles
and that
laugh.

LIGHTNESS

AA
Lucy's flashlight
wouldn't work without
new batteries it kept
sputtering on and off
like the closet so she ran
downstairs to ask for new
batteries
and I laid face-up on the carpeted floor
at the skylight
and the snow which covered it,
the only sound which got louder
and louder was the ticking of a
small clock on her white stucco walls.
I felt the carpet, clung to it with my fingers
and even though her room wasn't heated,
lacked a fireplace,
and all I had on was a t shirt and jeans.
I felt like a pyre
growing and growing until
suddenly the whole place was
engulfed and my cheeks were rosy
and I closed my eyes
carefully listening to that sound
of ticking
and Lucy running back up the stairs,
it was December but it was so warm
in here. Her hair was black.
The dark wasn't all bad.

SLEEPY

“I got it working” Lucy
announced proudly with her
flashlight planted
down on the floor
and spaciously
making our fort more
alive, our shadows bold
and inescapable on the surrounding
walls. We told a few lame
improvised ghost stories
she found some of them funny
I found some of them funny
and we both got so sleepy
and we found ourselves
laying down inches apart
I told her she was pretty
and she kissed me
and she only kissed me once
but once was enough
for me back then
and everything
became fuzzy
while my heart cycloned in my chest
and I didn't feel so sleepy anymore


APRIL

Hercules was fighting the Hydra,
Lucy and I sit on her couch downstairs
it's spring and the windows are open
her mom paces outside, cigarette in hand
her dad on the computer behind us
and I wait barefoot feeling the rough
texture of her couch and
Lucy fiddles with the
VHS case of
the movie on screen
now. Her hair is black
and falling past her shoulders,
the doorbell rings
and my mom is here
bag in hand
I get up, give her a hug
and I give Lucy a hug
the door is closed
we walk together
down the stale hallway of
her apartment
we get in the car
and pull out from the parking lot
and drive away
and that was the last time I saw her
and I wonder
if Hercules ever defeated
the Hydra.

we form our own reality.
I see it now- everything is truly what we believe it to be.
And that sheer knowledge has made my inner balance teeter of late.

there is just so very much to understand...and then reference. ----that it becomes daunting.
I can see that it's truly my thoughts but I never seem to be able to slow them down fast enough when I so need to.
It appears to be an unending thirst to play-
to know what I want -
to have the patience to propel the desire.
It's humbling when you realize it.
All that is- is on a grid of sorts...

And that there is something you should enjoy but yet can't keep you wheels in the same direction long enough.
It's spaciously lonely.
a fork in the road that joy appears to be chosen
but its bricks always lose their guiding yellow.

And when you look inside there maybe really is nothing except what you've been told and now they are your beliefs.
I always seem to end up beside the river of beliefs.
And I can see why man had to create a savior.
It's hard to realize how much pain you've inflicted upon yourself -
selfish painful jabs at ones that betrayed you as well.
Never even coming close to an ember of their being
shredding yours in the poignant process.

You were told you were bad because you were bad
and then you became worse
and it gave you purpose.
You were good at being bad-
you like the spilled milk and spiked brows.

You were the beautiful one.
It was not nurtured properly.
I can see glimpses of it-
yet completely out of reach.

I like it turned down a bit now
~with anything.

Do your dreams lead  you up to Nirvana?
Do you travel on tendrils of foam?
Do you wake in the night?
Does your heart pound with fright?
Are you scared when they leave you alone?

Are you happy to be a good person?
Do you feel you deserve a good name?
Do you anxiously flout
All your money about
And try hard to accumulate fame?

Do you help when a baby is crying?
Do you lend when your best friend is poor?
Have you fought for your rights
In political fights
Or just stood by and noted the score?

Does your life feel spaciously empty?
Do you cry in despair in your bed?
Is the pointlessness true
Is it happening to you?
Do you dream you’d be better off dead?

Does it all seem a little like hard work?
Are you ******* before you begin
Should you shampoo both hands
And discard all those plans
And ignore the egg on your chin.

Are you angry and filled with frustration?
Have you ground your teeth with rage?
Have you mounted a fight
Before this day is night
And determined to turn a new page?

Are you coming together at long last?
Has the breeding come to the fore?
Is your spine now straight?
Has your heart lost it’s hate?
Are you showing your ****..the door?

Is euphoria blowing a fresh wind?
Are clear eyes  searching the shore?
Has a day not begun
Without blue sky and sun?
Have you dreamt love might happen once more?

The freshness and sparkle of raindrops,
The smell of new mown hay
Makes the being intense
It discards all pretense
And announces hope for this day.

Do your dreams lead you up to Nirvana?
Do you wake with a song in your heart?
Are you ready to fly
In this peppermint sky?
Or does something… set you apart?


Marshalg
Mangere Bridge
18th December 2007

Time is curved
spaciously along
pushed strings

Curvature
constrained by
thickness of
stringy ropes

A bang splits
point-like to
cooling forces
beyond spontaneity

Membrane rupture
prevented only by
seeding of
life within bilayers

Weak and Strong
forced together
again by surface
surfactants

On Monday, my husband waits until I get home to say the words.
I go to unload the car and carry back tears.
Sitting, stirring, I begin to take out stitches on
a strayed shawl for the third time.

An artist and an adventurer, she sipped Dickle and ate meat
and raised chickens. She slept in a small house to live spaciously.
Erin was tall and never knowing of how she showed me to
express, explore, expand, to exist.

On a long ago Friday, with frayed Carhartt pants, we were
chatting about women, and their depictions in magazines,
Erin says,“Well, they’re not shaped like a real woman.”
For a lasting moment, I see from her wise and lovely eyes.

Erin is a stitch unlooped from our tight knit.
A drafty gratitude, a sudden shiver. She was here, with us, with the world.  
And now we are looping onto each other, tenaciously.
Even so, what are we to do with slipped stitches and this hole?

May we purl pain into artistry. All we have to do is add the t.  
So we will paint. And we will climb mountains.
We will tear and we will cry and live and bleed and die.
Until then, we have no other task than to knit ourselves together.

The TimeStreams are overlapping and Echoing,
Rebounding and resounding; slapping against my forehead and background.
The new fluidity of music and speech is incredible -
No longer the stuttering, spluttering, crawling gasps -->
Out of the abyssal Ocean and into the wading seas:
Seven in all - or so I'm lead to believe - nothing over my kneez.
The land looks promising - it's verdant green and vivid -
But seems to recede as I approach - Knight walker/explorer.
However, I'm too stubborn to quit now, regardless my trap;
This punctuated evolution of the Mind and Consciousness;
The instantaneous recognition of Oneself in Another -->
Another Male Voice, Lineage, Genetic Line, Protecting His Her;
Another Lightening Rod of Mankind saying, "Here I Am!"
"Feel free to look upon my Exemplar of Maleness,
And please, please pay attention to how I treat Her."
"In a spaciously vacuous Universe, We - the Male
Progenitors -  are few and far between, totally out-numbered.
As such, We have a responsibility to Our Collections."

From what's been courteously displayed,
I'm thrilled and awed; and trepidatious and excited -->
And Happy to visit the Locals in their Locals as Visitor;
As Guest --> I've accepted the Challenges that nearly
Crushed me into oblivion, now I'll await concrete Invites.

Tears upon burnt pages quench the flames beyond time's comprehension.
Utter devastation tastes so woefully divine.
Place the paper platters face-down lest the battered beasties mention
something yet unknown to me, yet also truly mine.

Cramped, I think, I felt so cramped, stuck spaciously between two corners.
Painful in a mental sense, but physically unscathed.
Ruptured tetrahedrons spread a message known to few informers,
governments sent crumbling by the grassroots of today.

Epsilon command sent out another suicidal mission,
destination overclocked to speak a titan's tale.
Suddenly, the ruskies think they own the key to taming fission.
Foolish in their eagerness, the safety measures fail.

Recognition sends the suits into a soon-seditious spiral.
Ugliness, in vogue, becomes the newest game to play.
Rapture in an abstract sense, oh joy to those in moments final;
tempted by a concept for which sanity must pay.

The wrecking ball long since
demolished boyhood house zen
located at 324 Level Road,
a once nonagricultural,
pastoral, rural residence,
which soulful yen
I called home while
veritably sequestered, quarantined, positioned...
sprawled atop spaciously shingled roof
countless years (B)efore (C)ovid-19
scanning distant horizon
for unsuspecting barenaked lady,
perhaps said goo goo doll sunbathing

catching rays while maybe listening
courtesy iPod to WXPN
one among several favorite stations of mine
one hotmail (male) buzzfeeding
avast fancy feast
home sweet home
since February 28th, 1968, when
Boyce and Harriet Harris
deceased parents then at their prime
both transplanted Brooklyn
Borough citified folks,
hankered to escape urban jungle
quickly acclimated livingsocial in the country.

Aforesaid domain didst span,
once assumed, encompassed, incorporated
one hundred plus acre wooded estate
(analogous to fictional land inhabited
by Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends)
listed in national register
as "Glen Elm", where ran
woodland surrounding a golden pond
favored by Canadian Geese,
but under game plan
of commercial developer Donald Neilson
(a tall lumbering
"all business no play doh" man.

Soon after aforementioned builder/realtor
bought expansive land
blueprints soon drafted for
an army of vinyl city
exemplifying Little boxes
on the hillside ditty
Little boxes made of ticky tacky...gritty
material upending wildlife refuge,
ah...what a pity.

Impossible mission to stop industrialization,
the das capital way
spurring thy preferential longing
for nature preservation oye vey,
and to make a million bucks in USA
if land left off limits
for propertied class today
then in the near future,
an aggressive builder will sashay
confirming prophecy
scooping up gobs of profit
out maneuvering competition

analogous to a marathon relay
race quickly witnessing little boxes
to sprout all the same
by construction workers,
hired brawny hands to maximize
American middle class dream
asper buying affordable home
nailing steady income,
viz all work and no play,
after acquiring a mortgage to outlay
which prospective homeowner
doth figuratively hammer away.

Their choices limited indeed
maybe there's a green one and a pink one
and a blue one and yellow one, how zing
free enterprise, and they're
all made out of ticky tacky
held together on a wing
and prayer they all look
just the same sporting lawn
anticipating family with young children
ready to play kiddy game
such as: Ring-a-ring-a-rosies
A pocketful of posies
A tissue, a tissue

We all fall down
The king has sent his daughter
To fetch a pail of water
A tissue, a tissue
We all fall down
The robin on the steeple
Is singing to the people
A tissue, a tissue
We all fall down
The wedding bells are ringing
The boys and girls are singing
A tissue, a tissue
We all fall down.