An early evening gust
broke the back of the day's blaze
Still 90 degrees at eight
in orange haze
Sweat runs down my neck
Through the gorge between my *******
The wind lifts my linen shirt
runs its hands along my sides
reviving memory
of Forest Park
of a blanket in the grass

Where the pines trace
so many faces
Crackling popping kids
stolen matches, running
screaming victorious!
Blowing tin cans up with fire crackers
Bicycles, sparklers, fireworks at dusk
That whole afternoon
I spent hammering caps

Noise really makes us kids
really
especially
annoying

Mom wants us out!
Gone! All of us!
No needs. No excuses!
No cookies! No slices of bologna!
“No more Kool Aid!
Out now!
Out!”

That evening I tried
to dismiss the itchy sweat
of stupid-sister-Suzy-matching-sun-suits
at Gino's family picnic
When some kid
(I don't know?)
between the rigatoni and the sweet corn
Some kid
tosses a sparkler
into box of fireworks
I don't know?
whether to cry or laugh
I was pretty scared
Rockets going off across the lawn
and onto porch
Craze of colors through the trees
Some at eye-level horror!
But the sight of Aunt Nedda
diving under picnic table
Stockings, garter belt upended
Capsized beyond her caring
of uplifted dress

Some images just stay with you, ya know?

July 4th always lands for me
on a firework's ***

There was a house fire on my street last night …well… not exactly my street, but on a little, sketchy, dead-end strip of asphalt, sidewalks, weeds, and garbage that juts into my block two houses down. It was on that street. Rosewood Court, population: 12, adjusted population: 11, characterized by anonymity and boarded windows, peppered with the swift movements of fat street rats. I’ve never been that close to a real, high-energy, make-sure-to-spray-down-your-roof-with-a-hose-so-it-doesn’t-catch­ fire before. It was the least of my expectations for the evening, though I didn’t expect a crate of Peruvian bananas to fall off a cargo plane either, punching through the ceiling, littering the parking lot with damaged fruit and shingles, tearing paintings and shelves and studs from the third floor walls, and crashing into our kitchen, shattering dishes and cabinets and appliances. Since that never happened, and since neither the former nor the latter situation even crossed my mind, I’ll stick with “least of my expectations,” and bundle up with it inside that inadequate phrase whatever else may have happened that I wouldn’t have expected.



I had been reading in my living room, absently petting the long calico fur of my roommate’s cat Dory. She’s in heat, and does her best to make sure everyone knows it, parading around, *** in the air, an opera of low trilling and loud meows and deep purring. As a consequence of a steady tide of feline hormones, she’s been excessively good humored, showering me with affection, instead of her usual indifference, punctuated by occasional, self-serving shin rubs when she’s hungry. I saw the lights before I heard the trucks or the shouts of firemen or the panicked wail of sirens, spitting their warning into the night in A or A minor, but probably neither, I’m no musician. Besides, Congratulations was playing loud, flowing through the speakers in the corners of the room, connected to the record player via the receiver with the broken volume control, travelling as excited electrons down stretches of wire that are, realistically, too short, and always pull out. The song was filling the space between the speakers and the space between my ears with musings on Brian Eno, so the auditory signal that should have informed me of the trouble that was afoot was blocked out. I saw the lights, the alternating reds and whites that filled my living room, drawing shifting patterns on my walls, ceiling, floor, furniture, and shelves of books, dragging me towards the door leading outside, through the cluttered bike room, past the sleeping, black lump of oblivious fur that is usually my boisterous male kitten, and out into the bedlam I  had previously been ignorant to. I could see the smoke, it was white then gray then white, all the while lending an acrid taste to the air, but I couldn’t see where it was issuing from. The wind was blowing the smoke toward my apartment, away from Empire Mills. I tried to count the firetrucks, but there were so many. I counted six on Wilmarth Ave, one of which was the awkward-looking, heavy-duty special hazards truck. In my part of the city, the post-industrial third-wave ***** river valley, you never know if the grease fire that started with homefries in a frying pan in an old woman’s kitchen will escalate into a full-blown mill fire, the century-old wood floors so saturated with oil and kerosene and ****** and manufacturing chemicals and ghosts and god knows what other flammable **** that it lights up like a fifth of July leftover sparkler, burning and melting the hand of the community that fed it for so many decades, leaving scars that are displayed on the local news for a week and are forgotten in a few years’ time.



The night was windy, and the day had been dry, so precautions were abundant, and I counted two more trucks on Fones Ave. One had the biggest ladder I’ve ever seen. It was parked on the corner of Fones and Wilmarth, directly across from the entrance into the forgotten dead-end where the forgotten house was burning, and the ladder was lifting into the air. By now my two roommates had come outside too, to stand on our rickety, wooden staircase, and Jeff said he could see flames in the windows of one of the three abandoned houses on Rosewood, through the third floor holes where windows once were, where boards of plywood were deemed unnecessary.



“Ay! Daddy!”



My neighbor John called up to us. He serves as the eyes and ears and certainly the mouth of our block, always in everyone’s business, without being too intrusive, always aware of what’s going down and who’s involved. He proceeded to tell us the lowdown on the blaze as far as he knew it, that there were two more firetrucks and an ambulance down Rosewood, that the front and back doors to the house were blocked by something from inside, that those somethings were very heavy, that someone was screaming inside, that the fire was growing.



Val had gone inside to get his jacket, because despite the floodlights from the trucks imitating sunlight, the wind and the low temperature and the thought of a person burning alive made the night chilly. Val thought we should go around the block, to see if we could get a better view, to satisfy our congenital need to witness disaster, to see the passenger car flip over the Jersey barrier, to watch the videos of Jihadist beheadings, to stand in line to look at painted corpses in velvet, underlit parlors, and sit in silence while their family members cry. We walked down the stairs, into full floodlight, and there were first responders and police and fully equipped firefighters moving in all directions. We watched two firemen attempting to open an old, rusty fire hydrant, and it could’ve been inexperience, the stress of the situation, the condition of the hydrant, or just poor luck, but rather than opening as it was supposed to the hydrant burst open, sending the cap flying into the side of a firetruck, the water crashing into the younger of the two men’s face and torso, knocking him back on his ***. While he coughed out surprised air and water and a flood of expletives, his partner got the situation under control and got the hose attached. We turned and walked away from the fire, and as we approached the turn we’d take to cut through the rundown parking lot that would bring us to the other side of the block, two firemen hurried past, one leading the other, carrying between them a stretcher full of machines for monitoring and a shitload of wires and tubing. It was the stiff board-like kind, with handles on each end, the kind of stretcher you might expect to see circus clowns carry out, when it’s time to save their fallen, pie-faced cohort. I wondered why they were using this archaic form of patient transportation, and not one of the padded, electrical ones on wheels. We pushed past the crowd that had begun forming, walked past the Laundromat, the 7Eleven, the carwash, and took a left onto the street on the other side of the parking lot, parallel to Wilmarth. There were several older men standing on the sidewalk, facing the fire, hands either in pockets or bringing a cigarette to and from a frowning mouth. They were standing in the ideal place to witness the action, with an unobstructed view of the top two floors of the burning house, its upper windows glowing orange with internal light and vomiting putrid smoke.  We could taste the burning wires, the rugs, the insulation, the asbestos, the black mold, the trash, and the smell was so strong I had to cover my mouth with my shirt, though it provided little relief. We said hello, they grunted the same, and we all stood, watching, thinking about what we were seeing, not wanting to see what we were thinking.

Two firefighters were on the roof by this point, they were yelling to each other and to the others on the ground, but we couldn’t hear what they were saying because of the sirens from all the emergency vehicles that were arriving.  It seemed to me they sent every firetruck in the city, as well as more than a dozen police cars and a slew of ambulances, all of them arriving from every direction. I guess they expected the fire to get really out of hand, but we could already see the orange glow withdrawing into the dark of the house, steam and smoke rippling out of the stretched, wooden mouths of the rotted window frames. In a gruff, habitual smoker’s voice, we heard

                                      “Chopper called the fire depahtment

We was over at the vet’s home

                He says he saw flames in the windas

                                                                                                                                                We all thought he was shittin’ us

We couldn’t see nothin’.”

A man between fifty-five to sixty-five years old was speaking, no hair on his shiny, tanned head, old tattoos etched in bluish gray on his hands, arms, and neck, menthol smoke rising from between timeworn fingers. He brought the cigarette to his lips, drew a hearty chest full of smoke, and as he let it out he repeated

                                                “Yea, chopper called em’

Says he saw flames.”

The men on the roof were just silhouettes, backlit by the dazzling brightness of the lights on the other side.  The figure to the left of the roof pulled something large up into view, and we knew instantly by the cord pull and the sound that it was a chainsaw. He began cutting directly into the roof. I wasn’t sure what he was doing, wondered if he was scared of falling into the fire, assumed he probably was, but had at least done this before, tried to figure out if he was doing it to gain entry or release pressure or whatever. The man to the right was hacking away at the roof with an axe. It was surreal to watch, to see two men transformed from public servants into fingers of destruction, the pinkie and ring finger fighting the powerful thumb of the controlled chemical reaction eating the air below them, to watch the dark figures shrouded in ethereal light and smoke and sawdust and what must’ve been unbearable heat from below, to be viewing everything with my own home, my belongings, still visible, to know it could easily have gone up in flames as well.

I should’ve brought my jacket. I remember complaining about it, about how the wind was passing through my skin like a window screen, chilling my blood, in sharp contrast to the heat that was morphing and rippling the air above the house as it disappeared as smoke and gas up into the atmosphere from the inside out.

Ten minutes later, or maybe five, or maybe one, the men on the roof were still working diligently cutting and chopping, but we could no longer see any signs of flames, and there were figures moving around in the house, visible in the windows of the upper floors, despite the smoke. Figuring the action must be reaching its end, we decided to walk back to our apartment. We saw Ken’s brown pickup truck parked next to the Laundromat, unable to reach our parking lot due to all the emergency vehicles and people clogging our street. We came around the corner and saw the other two members of the Infamous Summers standing next to our building with the rest of the crowd that had gathered. Dosin told us the fire was out, and that they had pulled someone from inside the gutted house, but no ambulance had left yet, and his normally smiling face was flat and somber, and the beaten guitar case slung over his shoulder, and his messed up hair, and the red in his cheeks from the cold air, and the way he was moving rocks around with the toe of his shoe made him look like a lost child, chasing a dream far from home but finding a nightmare in its place, instead of the professional who never loses his cool or his direction.

The crowd all began talking at once, so I turned around, towards the dead end and the group of firefighters and EMTs that were emerging. Their faces were stoic, not a single expression on all but one of those faces, a young EMT, probably a Basic, or a Cardiac, or neither, but no older than twenty, who was silently weeping, the tears cutting tracks through the soot on his cheeks, his eyes empty of emotion, his lips drawn tight and still. Four of them were each holding a corner of the maroon stretcher that took two to carry when I first saw it, full of equipment. They did not rush, they did not appear to be tending to a person barely holding onto life, they were just carrying the weight. As they got close gasps and cries of horror or disgust or both issued from the crowd, some turned away, some expressions didn’t change, some eyes closed and others stayed fixed on what they came to see. One woman vomited, right there on the sidewalk, splashing the shoes of those near her with the partially digested remains of her EBT dinner. I felt my own stomach start to turn, but I didn’t look away. I couldn’t.

                                                                                It was like I was seven again,

                                in the alleyway running along the side of the junior high school I lived near and would eventually attend,

looking in silent horror at what three eighth graders from my neighborhood were doing.

It was about eight in the evening of a rainy,

late summer day,

and I was walking home with my older brother,

cutting through the alley like we always did.

The three older boys were standing over a small dog,

a terrier of some sort.

They had duct taped its mouth shut and its legs together,

but we could still hear its terrified whines through its clenched teeth.

One of the boys had cut off the dog’s tail.

He had it in one hand,

and was still holding the pocket knife in the other.

None of them were smiling,

or talking,

nor did they take notice of Andrew and I.

There was a garden bag standing up next to them that looked pretty full,

and there was a small pile of leaves on the ground next to it.

In slow motion I watched,

horrified,

as one of the boys,

Brian Jones-Hartlett,

picked up the shaking animal,

put it in the bag,

covered it with the leaves from the ground,

and with wide,

shining eyes,

set the bag

on fire

with a long-necked

candle

lighter.

It was too much for me then. I couldn’t control my nausea. I threw up and sat down while my head swam.

I couldn’t understand. I forgot my brother and the fact that he was older, that he should stop this,

Stop them,

There’s a dog in there,

You’re older, I’m sick,

Why can’t I stop them?

It was like

Misogyny,
The hatered, objectification, and sexualization of women

His hands were too big for my eight year old body
My stomach turned in ways I could only describe as "icky"
I screamed until I could no longer feel any breath left in my lungs
"Stop it! Please! I don't like this game. Daddy stop!"
Time slows
Seeming like an eternity
Every touch was like a sparkler
Burning while tracing the path his fingers left on my body
When he was finally done
I gathered my thoughts and prayed to God to save me
When I went to the bathroom to clean up
I saw his handwriting on the mirror
Scrawled across it was a verse saying Hell was my only destiny
My body is not a bag of bones for you to play with and the burry
Poisonous words foam from your mouth like rabid dogs You pick pieces of my pride from your teeth
You think it’s okay to mess with women
To make them feel vulnerable
Just because you have a Napoleon Bonaparte complex That does not give you the right to steal our self-esteem To make up for the lack of your own
You say “Well maybe YOU shouldn’t have worn those slutty heals,
Or that dress,
Or your hair that way.”
You say “Maybe YOU should have done something
to avoid being a target.”
You say “Stop being so disrespectful.
I just wanted to see your ****.”
You have a real flair for excuses
So excuse me when I tell you
You will regret messing with a woman like me
You see, I keep my heart strapped to my steel-toed combat boots
And an army of mistreated women of speed-dial
We will hold you captive and make our war paint from your blood
As ransom notes fall from your mouth
With the words “I’m sorry” scrawled across them I hate to break it to you
But those words won’t sew up the open wounds you left us with
When you came in to *** in and steal our innocence
The thing you don’t seem to realize is
You might have taken our innocence
But that’s not what we are made of
We consume strength for breakfast,
Courage for lunch,
Wisdom for dinner,
And guys like you for a midnight snack.
We’re not just warriors
Were survivors
What you do to us doesn't define us
Were not broken
Were beautiful
And the more I think about it
You’re just dogs chained to a tree
While I’m the person
Who’s going to put your treachery to sleep.

Illuminated by incandescent brilliance
she is feeling celestial,
Radiated by the sparkler
held in the only gloved hand.
The curvature of blonde hair
folds around her face,
as you smile graciously.
Cast in shadows but never forgotten,
a penny in a wishing well.

You stand tall, a benign being.
He told her you are golden.
Looking down upon her,
in promise of prospect
as she wavers and wanders
loping around
like a small pixie,
spreading dust through
the swelling Garden.
This night, full of wonder,
enchantment, entrancement.
Mystical.

An alchemist appears to her.
She does not blink.

You gazed at bursts of light,
those thunders of giants
imprinting the smoke infested sky,
as you imprint her mind
with the stories you tell
and your accounts of life.
They cannot be retold.
Descending
Drawing in.
Now, vacuum packed
you are shrink wrapped,
enclosed with no air.

Mounds of cement run down your mouth.

That night you were strong
and you watched her with glee.
But now she’s bigger and bolder
and you’re weaker, older.
When her sparkler fades
The supernova stage,
A final moment of absolute glory
But will not linger,
Or last.

Now your eyes are melancholy,
Distant,
Enigmatic.
Wandering phantom orbs.

Her sparkler grows dim.

blood red diamond
tops tender green emeralds,
rose quartz and morganite
in a feast of polished deposit.

teardrop laden,
glistening against the stirring sun,
the world waits in dew.
crystal drops wink,
the blood diamond contemplates emerald tightrope,
slick escape.

with a bubble here,
a drop there,
Little Lady Beetle
attempts to dry its wings.

the flower that rests beneath
bends low,
and too shimmers
like a July sparkler.

mean beam bottom ***** without reluctance.
\ air above \
since forever baby boy: since forever liquid sparkler.

he has sense
& peanut butter jelly geography to his page.
his romance is of the west.
his eyes are of dandelions kicked & to the wind.
he moves like ancient turtle migration.
reaches feet to sidewalk \ sand to depths \ ride \

night:
velcro-tightened mind withstanding.
party lights, ***** willows, retro punch, he
is orpheus descending: with all the elements positioned just so.
\ jellyfish electric \  
he says he likes the loneliness.
he says it’s the water.

& so he moves \ wills himself into the next measure.
liquid resolute bits.
so move \ orca \
curl of eye \ so ride \ black rollo wave \
basilica \ & \
coral reaches below \\\

he likes to tell it, with warmed exaggeration.
slow-motion buffalo stampede. ride the railroads free & easy.
orange glowing bars of elsewhere. oscillating seal calls.
oily portland hipsters howling on the beach. those
juno cheeked rosy-red lips.
somewhere, sister getting married.
spring, summer, fall, winter, spring.
africa ******* a branch of a tree of a forest, overlooking elephant burial grounds.
color & white material:
plantations, gas stations, diners, & sharks.

this is the morning lunar \
sweet blue beach of the old & awakening.
he crawls out & into her breaks.
her deep heights & bombora reef. the serotonin
functions twice, exposed between thin tissues of warm-blooded neurochemistry.
human, shown.
he is as a raw page, blank, yet
dipped \
\ so ride \ bulbous waves of air mother agua \
ride \ &
\ ride \ &
brew by light these occurrences forever.

One sparkler
Brings so much joy
Light it up
Hear the roar
Only last for less then a minute
Throwing off so many colors
Feeling the heat within it
It’s the little things
That bring us a joy
Even for a short time
Forever more
Expect less
Capture more
Full of color
Watching it soar
Flashes of lights
Going fast
Watch it burn
Oh I wish it would last
Embracing the innocence
Of purely you
          One sparkler
              Brings so much joy from me to you

Aluminum
Have you memorized your storybooks
How does it feel to catch on fire
You go where bugs go in the winter

Surface waves
How does it feel to be momentary
An oven timer
Or a sparkler

Sidewalk
How does it feel to be cracked open
To bleed to death
Blunt force trauma for 200

Rooftop
How's the autumn
The air's quite nice
But the ending is blurry

Oh winter
How does it feel to melt
To simply
Stop existing

Open ocean
How does it feel to drown
I thought there were bandaids
And you never even saw me

She is a woman to marvel,
Igniting a passion that lies within she illuminates the darkness,
Crackling with aspirations and exploding exuberantly she propels into the unknown,
To face the foreign and conquer speculation,
Leaving behind a trail of glitter in glistening light,
She is but a breathtaking sparkler dazzling all in sight,
Blessed is he who gets to hold her and bask in such glory.

spells
(S)pells
sho(T)
fro(M)
ou(R)
(H)an(DS)

Whatya gonna do out there
in the square?
people mill around
feel the ground,
see the flags that punch the air
feel the music everywhere,
does your heart move with the beat?
tap your fingers
swing your feet,
turn around take one step back inside
dream your dream behind your eyes,
safer here than almost anywhere
safer than the square and
whatya gonna do out there?

Uncounted words on the page, attempting to mimic brilliance
Predictable as playing Russian roulette with an automatic
Forced sterility, impossible as drawing a straight line
The wrist won’t comply, simply cannot, no reason to attempt it
We fool ourselves with second hand ambition, discard our
own greatness
Quiet and sublime, carelessly letting our spark burn out
Do you remember what it was to be a child?
Nothing but used up memories with no sound
Black and white like some old movie, lips moving, no voice
Barefoot dreams are all that remain for me
Empty promises made to one’s self, surrendered so
easily
Nights of Bach on the radio, hiding behind closed doors and
cheap wine
Days of endless monotony, dark stairs and the smell of
scrubbed mildew
An afternoon spent in your arms, making love under the
pecan trees
I almost saw your yesterdays, beautiful creature, when I met your
eyes, laying there
A little girl, running with a sparkler in each hand, screaming her
defiance to the world
Holding onto what’s left of each other, two halves, trying to make a
whole

Earlier today, my script was brought to life and shot on set.  Of course I was nervous, but everything went well even though we were pressed for time near the end of the shoot. My actors and actresses were fantastic, and I could not have asked for a better cast. I don’t think I could thank them enough for their efforts and they achieved much more than what I had hoped.  

     Even though the stress of shooting my film was gone by mid-evening, something someone had said to me earlier would not rid my mind.  I became restless and felt confided in my dorm; I needed a distraction.  Even though I could hear laughter just a few doors down as my hall had gathered for some “bonding event”, I opted to just be alone.

    I went outside, despite a slight drizzle that had snuck into the sunny day. I walked around campus and settled myself on the very right-end of an empty parking lot, just listening to music.  The sun had begun to dip down into an orange haze, setting the atmosphere blazing with yellows and greens.  It was simply astounding to see the city respond to the fading sun.  Cars went on their way home and the buildings lit up, incandescent lights shining much differently than the one burning in the sky.

      I sat and I watched, feeling content yet empty in a way I could never put into words.  There were so many things that took on a whole new form of life in the evening, how people spent their time as though it was through new meaning. Just to the left of me, I watched a couple slow dance to no music, just the light of the setting sun and the slow falling of rain.  I can honestly say that it was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen, and I was captivated as her teenage clothes still spun just as elegant as a dress.  It was something you saw in movies, and the simplicity of it made it more cherish able.  

     The sun dipped down, disappearing beneath the clouds and the orange beams went with it.  My mood suddenly shifted as the two was casted with more of a blue light, and I felt more as an intruder than an on-looker sharing in a blissful moment.  I quickly looked away from them and back to the city.

      As the evening strewn into night, the last few rays etched faces into the sky-scrapers, and I doubt I will ever see a man-made object illuminated in such natural beauty. I wanted to watch the clouds fade into the darkening sky, but I felt as though a bit of privacy for the couple held more importance.

      While I stared at the ground, I couldn’t help but think that if I was as careless with my footsteps as I was with my steps in life, then I for sure wouldn’t end up worth while.  I then looked up to view the path ahead of me, and saw a stunning rainbow had somehow drifted into the sky without my notice.  I sat on a concrete wall near the library until it faded.
  
      A fair amount of time had passed so I begun to walk back to the now-deserted parking lot.  The sun was completely gone by now, and the only source of light felt fake and over-bearing.

     Just off of the parking lot was an uncut and untidy field in which three people ran about, waving sparklers in the night air.  It was gratifying to see people older than I acting with a carefree spirit. I observed the three lighting sparkler after sparkler, chasing each other with untroubled laughter. Once more I felt an aching in my chest, but it was a beautiful kind of pain. I felt as though I was intruding on someone’s privacy again, so I headed back to my dorm.

    I couldn’t help but write about what occurred tonight, and I highly doubt I will ever experience anything like it again. I certainly won’t forget about it anytime soon.

Your eyes are the sea at a boardwalk on a sunny day,
with the sea foam splashing small children holding onto their drippy ice cream cones,
begging their mothers for "one last ride".

Your eyes are the sparkle in a sapphire stone,
Precious, something to be coveted and treasured.

And when you smile...your eyes, they glitter and dance,
like sparks flying off of a sparkler on the Fourth of July.

a sad poem for my dinner
one gloomy for day meal
my smiles are getting thinner
dying my living will.

give me some fun write
am crying all the while
break me if you might
break me into smile.

a dark poem for my dinner
a crier for breakfast
my joys are getting thinner
sunshine is into rust.

make me one a fun read
a sparkler jolly bright
so joyous tears quickly roll
blur words from eyesight.

Drop kick your wit
Into something more fitting
Something forgetting, lace up your ego
And step outdoors, **** that ***** down the street wit his hood up?
Nah he’s too good wit his hood up
Doin nothin but good and good alone
Until one day, evil has shown
Up on the front porch, with heavy hearts and pitch forks
Pork slow roastin on the back of the grill
****
You hear that
Another one bites the rust of the rimless curb of this never ending, but slightly always pending circle of ****, of life
Christ, why do bad things happen to good people
While evil still is a struggle that’s real
Feels, those feels bro, you got me on my feels, rocking on my heels
Avoiding all eyes and prying little flys on the wall
Waiting for that slip up, that stick up, that trick up the sleeve on the eve of your last wish.
Wishes, I have three, one, to never be loved by a shadow of a figure who never knew how to love or figure if love isn’t real, then what’s the waste in time
Time is número dos, time so far in the spectrum of speed and yet, almost comatose. Let me have this time on this rock, pose as a breathing, living, forgiving and seething with life type human, or three will never be for me, humanity. Wish number three, the salvation of man
Because god can, can’t,
Maybe wont, but left in his hands it isn’t, it’s up to the working man, who’s hands are capable with cans, do’s, wills, and preservation
Perspiration, perspire the desire to salvage this green and blue vessel, scavenge this land, back to the roots of our roots in our mother earth. Who’s ground is fertile from the plow and hearth. Seed it with love, time, and the offer of human empathy,
The human experience, fierce with pent up fenced up aliens, feeding off each others brothers, every boy and mothers negativity
That negativity creates negative energy, ******* up the synergy that is the human race for lust, passion, and the same story from times of the dust
Bowl, whole again, manifest density was only applicable in a time where destiny still had the sparkle of a child’s sparkler on Fourth of July.
Lights burst upward, celebrating ever changing forward motion, downward, backwards never ending commotion, two steps forward, three steps back, this roller coaster of insufferable emotion continues onward, forward 3 times now, how rendering change and pain and all that came along with the letters,
F
R
E
E
D
O
M
F for four score and so many years, tears were shed and blood ran fuller than the old miss
R, river, the ever lasting forgiver of time, flowing endlessly and uncaring of the work its sharing, while its purity waxes and wanes, secrets come with battered shame, carried downwards into the open famed arms of the abyss.
E, endless energy and growing conservation of mass media and concentration of governing persuasion and invasion
E, excavation of the once great nation, under all those layers of of white hair and high airs, layers peeled back, revealed the
D, dominating, pervading, intimate lives of the common man, as the not so common wig takes big sips of the white collar melting ***, hands deep in the pockets of the rotting underclass, tee tottering on the edge of what seems like a never ending, case of innovating but not so innovative backwards progression,
O, omit the hand that feeds, heed this, and feed yourselves, provide a nurturing seed for those in dire need, if you give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day, if you teach a man to fish, he’ll wish it wasn’t so hard to discard the simple facts and facets of true personal reward. Teach a different man to fish, he’ll wish no one else heard word of this gift, there’s
M, money to had in this type of ish. Money made and the lesser fade out into sea to dwell with the rest, never sinking , but barely afloat while the fish scoff at the ironic twist of fate.
Dears, peers, the ones with fears of hate, hear this, wait, your time will come, theres a fine line between the past and the present and that line is today. This day, Sunday, Monday, fill in the blank day, 24 hours per day, waste whats left of life away or take initiative, begin to wish, are you among men, or among fish, will you be seving the one whos eating, or will you be on the silver lined dish, garnished with yesterdays didnts and “maybe tomorrow’s” real pain, sorrows, will follow you into the future of all tomorrows, but you can create, levitate in mid air, hold it there, an image of what you could/couldnt stand to bear, to manage, not take, make, create what’s yours is yours, not mine, hook, line, and sinker.

we grew up together:
postcards for parents
and cigarettes
for fireplaces
we were best friends.

year twelve
//september//||||
“welcome back, boys and girls.”
knees together. shoulders back. chins up.
welcome back, she means, to the routine of
eight am target practice,
courtesy of the handbook.
they get to dolly first
“immaculate as always, dolores. how is your father?”
then hermia
“i see you failed to purchase proper burgundy over the summer”
i hold my breath
“mary dear, my how you’ve grown”
and let it out as they move onto
“good heavens, alice, put on some clothes.”
she rolls her eyes.

in the bathroom i tie my shoes
to a soundtrack of gagging
and spray perfume down the toilet
when she’s finished.

she locks our pinkies
like we’re back in year nine
don’t tell dolly

//october//||||
the lower the sun sets
the more we’re in dolly’s room

she brews coffee in her contraband *** --
she won’t smoke with us, but coffee
is worth breaking rules for --
and tucks us into her bed
to tell us fairytales

yet somehow, it always ends up being hers

she talks about him
like prince charming
like he doesn’t have
a face of zits and
a weird haircut
like she can see
a future in him

alice gags under the covers
this time not out of self-hate
but disgust
and dolly laughs like a grown up
you’ll understand one day.

she does a little spin into her bathroom
to fix her makeup; “seeing him later”
and alice whispers
“if she weren’t dolly
i’d swear she was on the hard stuff”
i find myself trying to remember what it’s like
to be so happy
i could pass a drug test.

//november//|||
we’re smoking by the pier when it happens
with some sad boys
hermia seduced for cigarettes

she smokes the prettiest
and we’re convinced she doesn’t swallow
but a cigarette is a cigarette

alice always smokes like its her last
and i guess the boys like the way
she lights theirs for them

i’m not much of a smoker
but a boy from alice’s algebra class --
math for future ivy dropouts, as she likes to call it --
lights one for me anyway
and tells me his name
but both are forgotten within minutes

partially due
to my adhd [diagnosed by alice]
and partially due
to the security guard that rounds the corner
algebra snuffs our cigs and alice’s clan snuffs theirs,
but hermia isn’t so lucky
after a streaking incident last year
she’s been convinced they’re out to get her
and i guess she was right.
we offer her the coffee ***
as a goodbye present
but she pierces our ears instead --
what she promised to do for christmas --
and tells us where she hid
her lighter.


//december//|||
it’s just alice and i over break
since dolly has family
that actually comes home for holidays

i get a card from my parents
and alice doesn’t get anything
but when we walk into town
she treats herself to some hair dye
after all, it’s a five-fingered sale

my heart doesn’t beat in my chest
when we pass the security cameras
but i find myself wishing it did
wishing i remembered
guilt

an hour later
alice rinses the dye out
and emerges from the shower
the stretch marks on her legs
reminding me why
i let myself go numb

//january//|||
it’s new years and
we’re in somebody’s dorm room
watching fireworks on tv

everyone’s paired up;
dolly with her prince
alice with the same dude
hermia slept with,
rubber in his pockets
and me
with the sad boy from the pier
laying in the dark

he smells like the boy i lost it to
and i want to be sick
but when he kisses me at 12
i let him

some ******* pulls out a sparkler
i hear the fire alarm
then suddenly we’re drenched and
screaming, wet rats in the street

they call roll
no dolly
no prince

we wait for her in her room
alice falls asleep
until she comes in sobbing
a mess of
it was perfect
until the fire alarm went off
and
they’re shipping me out tomorrow
and, the quietest
he says there’s no point
in long distance.

//february//||
there’s snow up to the windowpanes
and everybody’s depressed
alice stays in my room
and they let her
knowing she has a history
when it comes to february’s

i.e. if they make her get out of bed
she’ll call her father

nobody has to know
that she lost her phone
in the snow last week
or that
even if she hadn’t
he hasn’t picked up
in months.




she likes to talk to boys instead
when she’s lucid
she brushes her hair
and opens the window
and hollers back at them
when they whistle

nobody has to know
she’s wearing her pajamas.

//march//||
when the sun comes out, so does she
“i’m going for a walk”
she says, in her pajamas
she borrows my phone to make a call

but that’s the morning
and soon it’s noon
and i wonder
how long one phone call
could possibly take?

when she isn’t back by dark
the school’s 911 call
only takes a second.

//april//|
they find her  body
at the bottom of the lake.

//may//|
“and what legacy have you given back
to the academy?”
i put on my graduation cap
and wonder
if the cigarettes
the sparklers
and *****
in the bathrooms
aren’t quite enough.

Outside the barn ached weakly in the autumn  cold,
The air was still against the magic movements softly exploding in the parallel rows of the hissing sparklers,
The bride and groom would soon pass under their faux glory,
You said I was a good man,
"I know, so are you",
You turned to the ground and stumbled over your confession,
Tripping over the light fog of alcohol in your breath,
"No,
"-no,"
"-I"

"I'm not."

And you walked away
Then the photographer came up to me looking through his one black glass eye and told me
"Say four of the most profound words you ever said."
The hissing stopped,
The light died,
I looked into his magic eye and said
"My sparkler went out."

every single time, i'm like Ezra Pound at the end of
the cantos: may god forgive what i have made...
every, single, time... people i've known had
established families, had babies...
  and here i am asking to be forgiven having written
    an arsenal of verse... and asking to be pardoned for it...
the reason why world war II happened is because
the factions of world war I looked like they were cousins...
   they were! the reason why world war I happened
is that the powers at be were cousins,
children or grandchildren of queen ant Victoria...
all about-to-be-gouged-out fish eyed...
           world war I was a truly family affair...
don't know why it happened,
and i find even less reason to remember it
other than to prescribe monarchical power
for no power but mere pomp...
             i envision world war I as the classical framework
of warfare...
        world war II spelled out guerilla... a sort of thing
that didn't allow for state-visits...
           the great form of ******, that's what i call
world war I... world war II?
         a war of proxy... the Jews were the mediated
proxy ensemble...
              and i hate the fact that i can speak these
facts, or "facts", having the historical sofa...
  when saying such facts required a testy iron maiden's
worth of comfort...
                  the husbands of England...
charles I: beheaded... charles II: froliced having a libido
                                             of a fungus...
charles III: reigned for 24h...
            William IV: yawn... wish ***** Harry had
a shot at it... and by that time David Attenborough
was sniffing daisies from the roots up...
      while Clint Eastwood lived to be
                  one-hundred-and-thirty-five: spinsters of
the spaghetti ageing rhapsody for drawing evens
or 21 in jerking-jack.
               on the question of families...
we best look tailored as mum son and uncle,
father, grandad and auntie on the canvas of
a photograph... beyond it? ****** jokes...
       but then people who'd we wish to have interact
with also own about 20 chickens, a goat
and a barn that suggests we filter potato juice
against the hay for whiskey...
          but sure, sure, it makes sense...
    by urbanising people we feel not need to commit to
******... o with that barbarian practice of
selling Bulgarian brides at the cotton-smith market...
          i mean: apes inbreed almost everyday...
you see any spastics about? must be paradoxical,
hum-hmm-hum.       and that means:
barely any questions are needed.
                       but sure... world war I has a family affair...
i'll actually applaud ****** for doing away from
the monopoly of aquarium eyed inbreds that gave
us world war I... they were ******...
             back in Russia the Tsar looked like
the Kaiser of Germany, that looked like the King of England...
                     then some Serbian terrorist lit the sparkler
and all **** broke loose...
          cousin Vlad ****** tante Anne who in turn
            ***** the prudish third in line to the English throne
Beatrice...
            it only took, one blimmin' family to usurp Europe
and engage it in world war I...
               it took the same family to create the treaty
of Versailles and instigate the populism of alter
Marxism to craft the conscript papers for world war II...
but thankle gott for the Wehrmacht uniforms...
uber cool, uber zoo, uber zex... ßteit! prudence J. Austin!
          it only took one family...
and still world war I didn't invigorate the establishment
of Israel...
                      some say that was a worthy cause...
to have established Israel...
                   it meant the Jews disappeared from Europe
and we invited the Moshe Moshe mules of Ishmael...
                    sure... the Iron Curtain disappeared,
Pope John Paul II sold the harem of Eastern Europe...
and we became engaged in a new curtain... the ninja...
or what's already apparent the fluttering guise of
the ninja... the niqab... self-explanatory, in a sense:
no need to call it a curtain.

amazing
  in a ******* way is how I can be a genius at being stupid.
All it takes is one wrong word to set me on the war path!
   One hit from the pipe or one firewater sip too many,
I can be off scalping writing my name on bare heads.
   I am a sparkler lit, at times, that is why I have singed eyebrows.
Wear Goodwill clothes, drink from neighbors faucets.
   Walk, most times, where I go, I have gone through
1000 pairs of mocassins in just one year.
    I no longer have any desires, to be smart, nor smoke the peace pipe.
I am on a warpath. Wondering where this is leading.

i. Here, there is sand in your mouths when you kiss. Sweat and long hair. A shared water bottle glinting in her hands. She finds a succulent plant and slices it open, drawing her finger through the clear gelatinous discharge it bleeds. She touches that finger to her cheek and glistens heavenly. You are dry heat desire and she is your oasis. You drink her with stinging eyes.

ii. In this place of neat grass and gridlocked streets, there is not much to do except make chains of wildflowers for her neck and yours. There’s no one around to hear you tell each other how you feel. You feel like a sparkler, so you say so. Like a lit match. Condensed brilliance. She holds your hand in the middle of paved suburban wasteland, squeezes it three times. You know what she’s saying. You say it back.

iii. She draws your initials in condensation clinging to subway glass, while you thunder beneath the metropolis in claustrophobic darkness. You can’t see all of her in the changing light, just fragments. Her lower lip. Her nose. Her jaw, holy. The city makes your want electric. Her mouth on the edge of a cheap coffee cup and crowds jostling the two of you together. Curry and gasoline and the sapphire smell of her hair. Adoration in alleyways and open streets. Here, you can be two girls in love and the world will not punish you for it. Here, you blow her a kiss and a bearded old man says che dio ti benedicta. Bless you.

iv. To love her in the mountains is dizzying. High altitudes and mist. Leaves caught in her hair. When you stand at a precipice and look out, she photographs you without you noticing, dilating the lens to catch the rosy burn of your cheeks above your wool scarf. She finds you painfully becoming like this. You against the violent, beautiful sky. You in love and unhidden. Her heart is thumping as fast as yours when you turn and move into her, wrapping her up as if she were some ephemeral thing, a moonbeam from a passing orbit. Together, you breathe the thin blue air.

He was a Breathtaker. A royal, high-class, naturally-born, take-it-or-leave-it Breathtaker. I had never seen one before in real life, only heard about them in the tales of a girl's childhood.

The first day he took my Breath was in a parking lot. He stood there alone in the parking lot, with his sparklers in hand, and wrote words in the air for no one but himself to see. He hummed while he wrote, haphazardly opening his mouth slightly, in a never-ending melody.

Later, I found out that the words he wrote in the air would later be turned into music, beautiful songs that could lift your feet off the ground and give your soul the wings to fly. But this first night, I knew nothing of the breathtaker's ability to create such beauty.

The lit end of the sparkler seemed to be a metaphor for the Breathtaker's aura. Shining, energetic, with a tendency to mezmerize. One didn't want to stop watching his mind at work.

So I sat there in the grass and watched him. Looking at the swift motion of his arms, I became entranced by the passion with which he worked. So quickly, I couldn't even pick up much of what he was writing. One could easily tell, however, that he wasn't going to forget a word of it.

I, however, had brought my typewriter for such an occasion. I sat there and typed words that he made me feel. The first line was "intrigue. night sky. man. electricity fingers. fizzled feelings. stranger. lips. curls. air. no breath."

And so my Breath was hardpressed to move. It entered my mouth and stopped, right below my soft palette, not wanting to enter further. My Breathing was very shallow, almost a soft hyperventilation, caught between time moving and time paused.

go to a brothel, you won't feel anything about what's considered the teenage atypical damning of events that make violins of us all.

now i know why i prefer bourbon to whiskey,
my usual stock went missing today
at the supermarket, i was thinking prior
recycling a plastic bottle of coca cola and a glass
bottle of whiskey... three Buds on offer for
£5 and then a bottle of Scots' Club at £11 (and
a bottle of coke): for the extra walk to buy
£5.99 Chesterfields at the Bangladeshi outlet?
hmm, that's a tough one... solved, Scots' Club
dried up, they've been watching my predictable
pattern on c.c.t.v., either that or i honed
on ant-mentality - which is far worse than
what Nietzsche described as herd mentality -
post-Nietzsche post-religion existentialism?
ants... not oxen, not sheep, not wildebeest -
simple, ants... compactness perfectó!
the antonym of deus ex machina, i.e.
the deus in machina - we all have our roles,
plumber electrician poet... cashier drill sergeant
bus driver... with me i imagine a Michelin star
kitchen... yes chef... yes chef... what is this ****?!
throw that under-cooked scallop away!
if it ain't perfect throw it away!
most would beg to cry and run out of the tense
environment - ooh look at me, bourbon makes
me rosy cheeked - the smell of it makes me summon
the gluttonous honey thickness of a prostitutes
lubricated **** - in Amsterdam with the laws
being lenient they call them sanitation workers
from Bolivia, this plump one told me her life story,
****** into bucket in front of me, told her
child minion to get beers for me, laughed
when i wanted to lick her out - opened the window
to fish the punters into her abode - true story -
i have absolutely no imagination, experience
counts - Amsterdam is fun - you should go there
some time... it's so much freer without
this Victorian-like theatre of courtship in England,
20 years in England, never ****** a swan -
she's too into her feminism away from the "naughty parts" -
darling... and what does your lover call you during
******* while you're drooling on the Ajax?
hmm? sloppy Samantha... or just ****?
***** words during arousal makes the geek take
the noble toilet paper given to them by the maidens...
(psst... they think it's a hanky)...
and with all that space, poets have a phobia with
punctuation, hence verses, hence missing colon (or alter
italics), semi-colon - maybe a full-stop along the way...
and the most annoying part, thus examples:
Prose writers speak a lot,
They draw the matchsticks by the lot - (oh hell, forget the hyphen,
that's reserved for Oxford acceptance of new words
requiring agility and optometry's rediscovery of origin:
Saxons in Istanbul running a sausage stand -
no no, ****'s Halal, we promise!)
But when they speak, they speak to the grey matter -
Never quiet the sparkler parts of the brain...
CAPITAL WITH EACH NEW LINE...
toss-up between learning punctuation and not using it -
i doesn't matter if poetry is the opposite of the claustrophobia
of prose's skeletal rigidity of a paragraph -
poets could become less tedious by using punctuation,
i'd begin with an exercise - count to one-hundred -
ensuring the space between one and ninety-nine
is uniform, i.e. a second apart - can't happen
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
| | | | | | | | | |
   11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
    |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
         22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
          |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |;
when in Edinburgh i had a mental implant, the compass,
mostly thanks to the locality, and the Firth of Forth -
i knew my west and my east, esp. looking at Prince's
Street (scoot-ish Manhattan - squares and linear
and diagonals, picture perfect) from just off the Royal
Mile - honestly, from the old city i could see America
don't below. but bourbon really does have a brothels'
perfumery feel about it - it really hits the cheeks and
warms them up... whiskey oddly enough doesn't...
that's what ****** her off... high-brow ******* -
a boy a girl a ******* - not romantic Marcel Schwob's
Monelle* - harsh realism of de Sadé (who also
wore the t-shirt with the slogan: I'M A FEMINIST!
while cursing from his cell window in the Bastille) -
the Saudi oil billionaires will run out at some point,
last days of the **** - i know, i prefer de Sadé -
adds a bit of spice - and if i'm going to be brutally
honest as his critics are, well, i'll be honest
about one of his works - ****** - crispy mint.
debates on the Man Booker prize - old guard and new
guard - that's the problem with the English...
they pretend to read on their Summer holiday...
who the hell reads in summer? they spend
their Winters in front of the television - i thought
that winter suited reading as it does writing?
the long nights, esp. the long nights -
the Russians said: our future is in your reading public -
the Americans said: our future is in the pulverise(d)
by images public - iconoclasm of words, trademark
logos (telegrams from time to time) - just recently
an advert at a bus-stop by some Asian car manufacturer -
no nuance, but definitely nuanced: GO FUN YOURSELF -
also called the state of literacy rates in England,
a girl writes her G.C.S.E. English exam paper
in text acronym (UR v. you're); so they locked up the Marquis
for obscenity, but Anaïs Nin walked free to everyone's
applause - the part where you tell me Kierkegaard
made a meal from the tree of good and evil
with his work either / or attached to Nietzsche's
beyond... muddles muddles and pumpernickel troubles;
sure, call it word salad - but i hardly think you're
a vegetarian; going to a brothel makes all this
****** warfare seem rather obsolete - esp. when it's prompt
for books and debates and serious action -
all the prostitutes of France came out in protest when
the government wanted to punish the pundits -
hey! do a Jesus! side with the "filth"!
these girls aren't going to be nuns, the feminists won't
save them, not one of them will be a star in a real-life
adaptation of pretty woman - and not, a, single, one
will buy the feminist arguments of the bourgeoisie actresses -
me? i will not ever have a girlfriend who experiments
with her child niece in a theme park imagining me in a
daddy role... or reads me a questionnaire about complimenting
differences from a Cosmopolitan magazine.

I’m proud of all the things I don’t know
This morning I woke up
and opened my third eye

and in the simple act
of receiving
the whole world spread
out in front of me

Like the pages of a book
Like a blueprint unfurling
Like a farm fresh golden egg
Like a biblical parting of the skies

Hyperbole?
Maybe,
but it feels like a spark
ignited
a “good morning”

long lost twin
all eyes open

sweet stranger
memory of me

almost long gone
forgotten

hello again
to the me

that sees with her third eye
who leaves a trail of golden
burning pieces

a single sparkler
just waffling all alone
down a dark driveway

in the hand of some innocent kid
such a small burning ember
and capable of such great joy

I'm doing this no justice.
Saving my tongue for dryer days, keeping the ones I actually love from losing their own pinkish tails in my waning nonsense.
Sane and civil... because I am my fathers shifting chameleon; his white blazer and my mothers blood orange; her Lorazepam.
My name alone is treaty.
One lonely gabble lodges itself inside of my esophagus.
Get lost founding father.
Burn harder rebellion.
I need me on my surface, not buried under the expected ammunition of ink.
End your sparkle, sparkler.
Here, your exploding gold only crushes the windpipe of flowers.

I have nightmares that stretch my fears towards our waking sun.
Yawning out the last sighs of moon.
Once again, I hesitate and stumble on tongue.
I've seen my words startle rust like the flat cat call 'boos’ of halloween towards November.
Since I've been buried, halloween hasn't missed a year.
And the gibberish of its mask will always sting as resonant.

I am the summer sparkler,
Clutched between the
Sticky fingers of a child.  

I burn bright and fast,
My shivers lingering
Behind closed eyelids.

I shutter with light,
Brought to life with a match,
Dripping with flare.

I am kindled and caressed
By the night air and
The eyes of all.

I am a short lived passion,
Marveled and held tightly
Until I sizzle into darkness.

I followed a mob march of taillights
back from work. Two rows of thirty flames
spaced out streaked the darkness
beneath the looming sparkler
adding stars to midnight sky.
Roman candle travelers eager to burn
out tried to shoot past traffic
on slivers of unoccupied sidewalk.
The closer they got to town,
the more stars faded above
their hoard of torches.

theocracy is safe within democracy, it exists right now, i'm not writing like a science fiction writer, but as a day-to-day historian in the poetic form, alongside Putin we have the theocratic order that is like a leech in democracy... democracy only works with polytheism... we are in the Graeae jacuzzi reserved for Japanese macaques - yeah, those ones, reverse *** of a baboon's colour smeared all over their face.

western society has no argument...
at least eastern autocracies have the real thing...
all we have is a fledgling -
the east has the sun... the west has an unlit matchstick -
perhaps even a sparkler -
democracy or republicanism work with polytheism,
many people, believing in many things -
democracy is currently ruled by theocracy -
as some argue: an imaginary figure,
or an intermediate figure akin to a telephone -
how democracy fostered theocracy in its realm
is quiet bewildering if not scary -
oh come on! get the fear it... sober up!
the anathemas are rife - social ostracism to boot -
the value of Spinoza's effort and luck:
do menial labour, die young, leave the old to it.
western society has an invisible "imaginary" despot
ruling it, just as much as the middle-east -
although the former is only passive-aggressive,
the latter is active aggressive -
passive-aggressive has less to do with a boxing
ring of actual violence, and more to do with
what's courtesan speech, manners and what not -
censoring words but raking up enough profanity
on sacred words... when did **** become such a sacred
word? well... i don't know when, but it has.
democracy is a breeding ground for theocracy -
i don't know if Putin is worse...
after all there were assassination attempts at ******,
Napoleon and Elba - they rose from a failed republic,
entered a brief stage of democracy where everyone
was tugging their own end, and out popped autocracy -
auto- meaning: well, we sorta have to do the dodo and
reproduce - in the larger scale of things, objectively
speaking the thing we are sometimes aware of,
has to remain until the meteorite or something -
subjectively speaking... 'we're not interested in your
opinions! shut up!' i thought i had a chance to express
my cognitive if not my mating call - 'but that's not
objective...' so why write poetry or bother poetry from
non-existence?! anyway, that pet-hate is a firecracker on its
own; but at least in a autocracy we can see and hear and
even touch the concern for us - democracy has theocracy
in it - of course not as open in proclaiming law of the finite
with cages and crucifixions - but closed in proclaiming
law of the infinite - when law just becomes bureaucracy -
human rights has replaced law - strict and to the point
evolution of eye for an eye - the victim gets gang *****
for trying to do the same to a criminal - meaning we all
become criminals at one point or another - i see these Islamic
attacks as... well... let's just say they want to knock some
sense into us... clear punishment... they want the old days
of the guillotine to come back into our society -
that's what i think anyway - and am i sympathetic to the cause?
if you gave me a gun and a suicide vest i might consider -
otherwise? no way am i entering this pseudo-reform program,
unless of course i'd be in Norway... the best prison system
in Europe - but never mind the sadists outside of
Switzerland who have really made euthanasia an obsolete
dilemma in english catholic schools - children aged 15 and
16 given the task of answering the questions concerning
euthanasia and abortion - educational abuse - ****** up for
life - even going to university didn't help -
going to an art gallery kinda helped - my answer, after
all these years? go to Switzerland for euthanasia -
and don't **** around trying to keep a boyfriend by
not taking contraceptive pills - if he'll stay he'll stay -
but if you add a foetal baggage to boot? well, let's just say: no.
you want proof that theocracy exists in current democracy?
o.k., fair enough: two words: Lazzaro Spallanzani.
ever heard of him? n'ah, you probably haven't...
why? you know why... you've been jacking-off the crucifix
all along - i told you, you want salvation or a vacuum cleaner
of a man? current culture? celebrity culture -
the peasant gets a stage - i live in a society that is filled
with countless karaoke stars - dropping those two nukes
on Japan really allowed karaoke to infiltrate America -
i can't sing for ****... but it would be great to have a nurse -
or a plumber - or a society where poetry can only
be done on the side - i'm not thinking big... well... 8 billion
people is big - but why is it that no one really hears
of someone like Lazzaro Spallanzani? he's the priest turned
scientist who experiment on the worth of ***** -
prior to him people discounted the need for ***** -
he's the one who strapped underwear to male frogs -
so when the female frogs deposited their eggs, the frogs
couldn't impregnate the eggs, because of the underwear -
and that water into wine... is that metaphor or imagery?
a steep contrast between the two - could a priest tell me
whether that's metaphor / metaphysics or... should i try it
using physics? well i'd need about 12 kilograms of grapes
and yeast and sugar, a month and that'll be 12 bottles of wine...
but that guy ****** up so many people you'd love to
hear about - so instead of Lazzaro we have Adolf to remember -
i can't be bothered - this ain't salvation - this is vacuum cleaning -
this is how theocracy works in democracy -
it ***** people as unnecessary along the way, along
the historical route of all our lives - it ends up being:
well... there was this guy in Galilee, *summa summarum
est exempli gratia **** per se, non est exempli omni **** sapiens
(all in all an example of a man in itself, not an example
of all mankind) - ecce **** ring a bell? by the words of
Pilate - so many rational men appeared after -
ah ****... got caught... i know i got caught...
so what now? give alms? pray? pray?! oh right... live my life...
we're no more rational en masse prior to or after the
crucifixion - can't see it - hear of the Bangladeshis in Dubai?
it almost seems a futility - to believe for a moment -
given Aesop - i still think that i'm more part of a vacuum
cleaner than salvation - just prior, the Greeks were there -
they didn't seem that ****** stupid come to think of it -
Aesop also lowly born spun out better metaphors than -
once again, are the accounts in the new testament metaphors
or imagery? a basic inquiry - metaphysically or physically?
adverb or verb? in the end we're too eager to write books
but too stubborn to read them... in the end we're too
eager to ****, but too stubborn to commit -
we abhor thinking about religion, but have so little
emotional security when "our" religion is criticised -
we have built all the allowable fortresses in the mind to not
speak about it... but have left the heart unarmed, nay -
naked! prone to shattering the cognitive fortresses with
a single punch, thoughtlessly slaughtering others in the
extreme and being offended in the least -
so much for not discussing religion in terms of cognition -
bad woo - woe to the hearts that do not turn to stone,
and do not leave religion as easy prey of atheistic sensibility (
which is nothing but ridicule) - oh i believe all of it,
just so i don't have to ridicule it, which means for no personal
gratification even when armed with that -
make the cognitive constructs weak and open your mind,
put all investments in defence structures at the core,
the heart - thoughts come and go, whimsical for us all -
but the heart is less complex than the brain and coordinates
only b p ems - once swayed, forever immersed in
unthinkable zeal for most of us.

Bob's father was an operator
At Dow;
He ran Firecracker Day,
Bless him;
In the back beginning at eight.
Perfect timing,
But the wait to cross over
Was worth it.
The bangs and booms
Were hardly noticeable.
You must've been there too
As the school burned down
In upon itself;
The joy of the dark
In bright flashes
Of appearing and fading faces.
I'm hearing the explosions again
On this Victoria Day,
And see your face
Disappearing
In the last light
Of a sparkler.

You are not just a sparkler
dancing through the night,
late summer of last year
You are not just beer
in a mug on a Monday afternoon
watching horror movies in my bed
You are not just soft, pale
feet kicking out of your uncle's
hot tub last winter
You are not a mosh pit
from every show we ever
went to together
You are not a pair of
pretty eyes staring lovingly
into mine in the middle of spring
You are not your kisses
You are not your phrases
You are not your voicemails
Or your text messages
You are not the words you've written
Or the stories you've told
You are so much more
than a memory locked
forever stagnant in my head
You are so much more
than the ghost of my affection
I will not dehumanize you
because I've lost your love
I will not sit in our best friend's basement
and talk about you like you're some film
we've all seen together
Or some reality show we watched play out
I will not pretend your life
stopped existing when our romance did
I will continue to acknowledge
all of the current things you do
I will continue to learn about you
Because you are a constant stream,
Changing and developing every day
And I refuse to allow you to become stuck
inside of my reflective pain
I love you so much more
than you will ever know
And I will not pretend that you
only live between my heavy heart
and my racing mind

I love to play with fire,
The flames before me,
Climbing high,
A stick,
Slowly burning,
Slowly spreading,
Using it to light grass,
Light sticks,
Swing it through the air,
A torch,
A fire brand,
Arc of fire,
Like a sparkler in the night.

I love to play with fire,
Tender kisses,
Lightning touch,
Her skin,
Hot to the touch,
Her body,
Hotter than hot,
Sweat dripping,
Fire in my veins,
Fire in my blood,
She lights me up,
Like a torch,
Like a Roman candle,
Exploding into the air,
All at her touch.

I love to play with fire,
Teasing,
Playing,
Exciting,
Will I find anger?
Will I find passion?
She blazes hot,
Emotions building,
Her eyes flashing,
Eyes of flame,
Burning into me,
Burning with her gaze,
Lighting my blood on fire.
I love to play with fire,
I burn hot,
As the world burns,
Burns to the ground,
And in the ashes,
I rise like the phoenix,
Reborn,
Fire from ashes,
I burn bright again,
Reborn in flames.

~

She reached for the ribbons of her gown
not knowing why, but she held them in her hand
as she floated through the ever changing mist,
whites and grays in a swirling pattern,
mesmerizing in blends and shifts,
blurred yet possessing a clarity she could not explain
or cared to think about right now

She looked down on herself in her bed sobbing,
clutching tightly a dampened pillow, lonely, missing…
now confused as a peaceful awareness
wrapped about her warmly,
caressing her spirit, washing away the pain,
the sadness, the torment which she fought now to remember
as it drifted below, creating new shadows about her feet
but distant, never forgotten, she couldn’t, it was promised…

Once more the satin ribbons were pulled gently, guided
as if a feather laced kite on a silver string embracing blue skies,
dancing about in the slow rhythm, spun in clouded dreams,
breathless she soars higher, it seems towards the sun
or perhaps a light of a different source, it felt soft, cool
beckoning her and she yearned for it…
for some reason it felt right

Stars swept past her in wiry glistening designs
like a sparkler at a summer cookout waved through the air
in abstract lemonade glowings and apple pie tickles  
and she smiled, for the first time in a long time as the 
moon disappeared on the horizon, embracing this experience
She continued allowing the tender tugs on her ribbons to
move her freely, when she felt something, it was a hand on
hers, helping her hold the ribbons, it felt familiar,
safe, comforting

When she saw his eyes, as clear as she had ever seen anything,
deep and friendly, soothing
just as she had remembered…remembered?
He took her by the hands and he came even more into focus
“Hi there, I have missed you,”  he sighed and she knew it was him
He was here, wherever here was, holding her now as he said,
“I promised I would love you eternally, I couldn't have you then,
so I have waited for you"    
She cried , happy tears as she whispered. “You did, you did, is this…”

“Shhh,” he placed a caring finger to her lips…
*”This is our eternity my love”

All we are,
delightfully lost.
Is that all it is?
Heading feet-first into sunsets.
Whirlwinds.
We crash, grab,
forget to blink,
rely on breath alone.
Here words tumble in a torrent,
recycle in your mouth
and back out again.
Clichés cannot die.
On a loop,
a worn-down yo-yo.
I roll them out for you
on a goldenrod carpet,
you skip across them
as though they are red-hot coals.

What set you off
like a sparkler in the night?
The sea brings us love,
vice versa.
Waves like mounds of sugar
embrace your torso
in a way I can only dream of.
Camera exhausted
under the weight of today,
puddles of polaroids,
enough to smother the floor.
I smell snapdragons,
candy fizzing
on both of our tongues.
Soaked.

Fade to black.
Your language
is blossom
slinking into my ears.
Wet sand
slips in a mustard waterfall
through our fingers
and I trip over my T’s and P’s.
I’ll keep your smile
locked in my pocket
for black-cloud days.

A triplet of cartwheels,
sticky palms
and panting as if
you’ve run a marathon.
Give it a go…
I try and collapse,
a soppy sprawled mess
gawping at the sky,
before blue eyes
smash into mine
and I fall again.
Dripping.

In-between seconds.
Flaccid strands of hair,
frizzled spaghetti
clings to your neck.
The blonde grenade
I keep writing,
cannot control
but adore to see explode,
catch the thirteen
or more little fragments
of you,
keep them ‘til next time.

When you leave
I can follow your footprints,
mementos back home,
tread where you stood
and exuded light.
We sit cross-legged,
water dribbling over our toes.
I memorise your heartbeat,
you plonk your head
on my shoulder.
Minutes wash away.
Stop the clock.

1919, peanuts and pine, and the tangy smell of cologne and sweat mixed together

Ocean water lapping at my toes, bringing me back to cleaner days, reminding me of her.  

The train to Roosevelt Island, of black rail, steam and fog, lurching there and back again.

Sparkler candles from my sixteenth birthday. A miscellaneous collection of bottle caps, all donated from friends. A book of pictures.

Cable cars. Hot spicy soup. Three quests for a sunset, three kings for a prince. Addendums, beginnings, and wandering the hospital hallways. The boy with the arab strap.

That my aunt persevered, and taught herself to smile.  
That the sun rises after every dark night.
That beyond the horizon lays more land, more sea, and more wonder.
That you can start again and again, and no one can tell you when to stop.

The sky right after a thunderstorm, when it's still a furious dark gray, and yet sunshine creeps through its cracks of the clouds (which I always hated, but learned to love).

The soft morning glories in my hands, showered in sunlight and love. That Nature could be so tender, delicate, and pure. That yellow was no longer my least favorite color.  

The way wind brushes my bedroom windows, and the willow trees call to me, mournfully shaking their leaves.

4am, lamplight, softer than the rain. Dried flowers. Guitar music wafting down the streets of Boston.

How the only one that could forget me was me.
How I could be alone.
How I could love every small thing.