Betwixt the shrub and hubabubb
'neath bracken's shadowed scowl
came a Wren pop-hopping when
arrested by a yowl

He spied another grovely bird
chattering with the gloom
realising it had been observed
it screeked with spittled spume

Stay back, stay back
alack, alack
I've nothing left to give
and should you shake the life from me
unhappy you shall live

Like him the grovely had a one leg
and too the veshy eye
and when he flexed his deeker wings
he knew this bird must die.

The unctuous Wren popped back and forth
as did the groveley bird
and there they stood 'twix shrub and earth
exchanging not a word.

Just this once I'll let you go
announced the cautious Wren
he turned his fractious beak to blow
and was never seen again.

Iago Prytherch his name, though, be it allowed,
Just an ordinary man of the bald Welsh hills,
Who pens a few sheep in a gap of cloud.
Docking mangels, chipping the green skin
From the yellow bones with a half-witted grin
Of satisfaction, or churning the crude earth
To a stiff sea of clods that glint in the wind—
So are his days spent, his spittled mirth
Rarer than the sun that cracks the cheeks
Of the gaunt sky perhaps once in a week.
And then at night see him fixed in his chair
Motionless, except when he leans to gob in the fire.
There is something frightening in the vacancy of his mind.
His clothes, sour with years of sweat
And animal contact, shock the refined,
But affected, sense with their stark naturalness.
Yet this is your prototype, who, season by season
Against siege of rain and the wind's attrition,
Preserves his stock, an impregnable fortress
Not to be stormed, even in death's confusion.
Remember him, then, for he, too, is a winner of wars,
Enduring like a tree under the curious stars.

Acid leaks from my fingers
and you watch it with glee!
as time fragments and loops
repeat themselves redundantly.

My logic knows all and my shoes
have left my feet in search of a
robo-walk to maximize the pleasure.
I move in angles- trip trip trip----
stutter

All energy flows throught this very vessel
no need for nourishment, this ***** flies
backwards. Marching in grotesque lines
heading nowhere in particular. Faces
lose recognition and I die. die. die again.

My eyes are open? There is no difference.
All I see is a spiral tunnel filled with the
gruesome buzzing of infinite electric flies
and shades of nightmare.

Sound, words, fall short. I'm in a box
at a distance. Can't reach to decide whether
I'm sitting standing speaking. It tumbles out and splats
to the sticky purple mass
spittled like the sides of my brain
which pulse in a threat to implode

Waking dreams and living death
no borders in this country
a kaleidoscope of tulips, twisting strands
of gelatin, columns of panic,
and a glitch in the night.
A quick scream soon stifled.

Your father used to put
a folded white handkerchief

in the top pocket
of your jacket

and combed your hair
which he’d plastered

with Brylcream first
and even dampened

your eyebrows
to get them to lay down

with his spittled finger
and took you with him

to the movies
to watch cowboy

or war films
or now and then

those romantic ones
with kissing

and too much talk
which although good

you would avoid
if you could

and he took you
to your granddad and gran

and you sat there
bored out of your brain

watching the goldfish
swim round and round

the glass fish bowl
and him talking

about this or that
and once you recall

at a Friday evening treat
at the movies

he’d run off into
the dark

and you sat
watching the film

until an usherette came
and said

your daddy’s had
a choking fit

and he’s in the foyer
having a rest in a chair

and so you missed
the end of the film

as she took you off
to see him there.

1
"New Latin, from Greek boulimia great hunger, from bou-, augmentative prefix (from bous head of cattle) + limoshunger

First Known Use: 14th century”

when i first got to california i would study the way ocean waves crashed upon the shores of beaches, it’s was bone crushing, pulp softening kind of tides. packs of tides keep rushing to the beach and throwing themselves down into it’s stand, as the beach absorbs each one.
it does not recoil.
i want to learn the earth’s secrets
i am attracted to water, tides of brevity, yet unrelenting to the sand
and the shells and sand they make regenerate, breaking down continuously
then hardening and heaving their particles back to the ocean
trusting it will be brought to some shore
the waves of the pacific quiet the waves inside my skull.

a constant pounding, a wave of bulls crashing through
uncharted territories even now.

i am coauthor of too many mistold memoirs
someone else wrote about me from afar.

2
it’s funny, no, i shouldn’t say that
it’s strange, how quickly one becomes commodity
how the pall of your skin has a scent
but your eyes are lassos
how, without your consent, your body can be bent
cut, *******, and transformed into an unanswerable question
drawing whole packs to your lone presence
dryly plucking the last drops of milk from a straw
you look up as they circle, giggling
and hunker into their places, surrounding

they’re the classic eclecticism of boys looking for fast entertainment
sure, let me be your dancing bull, wave the red cloth and dare me
because i am not the bull and i won’t let you have this one.
mr big ****, his homie in your face laughing at you
shy guy, and sarcastic dude who’s ******* bored
they say you don’t look like you grew up here
you think, “what, in this in-n-out?”
you say, “no, i’m from the east coast.”
whenever these things happen,
your words become bitten off at the ends

you hold onto your empty cup a bit too long as serious mr big **** talks at you
your head swimming with frustration and mistrust
homie who laughs jabs his finger into your face
pointing to the special sauce leaking from your burger
"aren’t you gonna eat that?"
you smile at him and you don’t know why but you just smile
you take a bite and chew with your mouth open
you haven’t got an appetite

you begin to cajole and retort casually with them,
seeing how long the game will last before it gets dumb
as if your harassers are friends
until the words “*******” enter your periphery
and in a fit of disgust you stuff the last bite down
and exit the pathetic scene
as you walk out to ringing laughter you find yourself
un-panicked but fatigued by the run in
thinking, when will i learn how to handle this ****?
and why should i have to learn to regularly handle harassment?
i never asked for this attention
never asked.

my body is not a question.


3
a slow burn of metaphors accompanies every bout of insanity
this week i’m convinced that i’m drowning from the inside out
when he comes over it’s hard to look at him, with his sweet eyes and adoration
after rushing around picking up the little pieces of myself off the carpet
hissing in disgust “stupid *****, stupid ******* ****”
and putting it all back together before he got here
because i feel less than nothing
far from beautiful

4
i would often imagine what people would do
after i died, if it would be
a mess of bad jokes about entitled white girls
with selfish insecurities
or a mess of bad sentiments about how i was a modest hard working girl who
who
who am i most days, except for someone
who ******* tried her hardest
i don’t like the idea of dying young, giving other people
control of how i’m remembered
i want to establish that image for myself
what a dream, what a dream.

who should get my trinkets, my instruments,
who got the glass collection, the tea cupboard
the patterned hats, the quartz stones and golden tooth
i thought about how the funeral would go
how my mother would cope
if my father could stand it
i have been making sand castles
and cooking messy cakes with frosting dripping jimmies
i have been reading books and
writing essays and working every run of the mill job
to keep my mother from crying
and my father from falling asleep in the stillness at night
regretting his regrets because i fall asleep in the stillness at night
regretting myself and thinking of him
regretting his regrets as his life stands behind him
and he drifts into a dream land where we do not exist but clouds

and i wonder, now, if i could still let this happen
if i could stand it, how much time i have to turn it around
i have been told you must invest
twice the time it took to dig the hole
in order to get out
if i start now, i can see the light by the time i’m roughly
37

i give my untouched binge food to homeless people
because watching them receive it
feels a lot more satisfying than the pain of eating it
fighting the weight of nausea
i hold back and return my wallet to my purse
as i whip around the burger king drive thru
and opt for dollar store cheese crackers in their little 16 cent per meal packages instead
that is to say, the package is the meal
i cannot fill my stomach these days,
with frozen organs and weeping ulcers
sweating and puking on the side of the road
i cannot sweat and puke on the side of the road these days
because i do not want to die, and must get better by 37
and these days, thesedays i have nightmares of men
with wild eyes and yellow teeth, bodying the window of my car
their hands groping for my face through the cracked window
pressing a gaping maw spittled against the glass
as i scream the deep scream of terror that comes from inside one’s stomach
when no one can hear or when a wild animal
is slaughtered by a larger feral creature, death drifting through the forest
home owners turning away with cold pressed spines
and wonder what died

i hear them talking about me from the hallway
more often than i speak of it myself
my bones crack, my muscles moan
i have no time left for sleep
the waves keep crashing down
i spend 12 hours in a day worrying about others
and try to take another 12 for myself but never quite
end up having that many
i wonder if you still think after hearing this poem
that this is a selfish insecurity
it is blurry childhood,
stab wounds from a series of sadness,
an insatiable wish to fill
the spaces of unmet need with small animals like me
wrapped up in unassuming parcels
forgotten under a christmas trees
eaten by maggots.

5
dear body,

they tell me we could have a heart attack
but i laugh at them
ask if i think I’m invincible and i laugh at them
i am far from it, because if i am anything i am a sponge
which doesn’t cause me to feel any less
just soak up the mess when there’s a spill
and continue to expand, adjust to the pressure, and then expand again
invincible is a generous word to use
for what i think i am
because i am weak, helpless, but angry

like a feral child biting doctors and snarling
or a person who lifts a car off an infant when the body gives you no choice
but to respond to the adrenaline of fear
pass the boundaries of what you believed to be true to save a life

i am simply adaptable, good at surviving
i have trained my body to be strong even when I am weak
my mind to stay sharp when my teeth have eroded
because the doctor doesn’t love you, and your mother
she’s sort of lying. like the government or dr jekyll.
you know not to trust people with empty eyes or bitter hearts
you will fight if it gets you out of this cell and closer to sunlight.
endurance is the only pride i cling to.

6
he picks up the book my mother was reading
"what’s this?" he skims the page looks at the block lettered heading "SUFFERING"
"suffering…" he looks up for a second,
then at me, and i wonder
if he knows, so i smile at him

when I was younger I didn’t get it
but now I fully understand how people
can keep secrets from their husbands and wives for years
some **** is too deep to allow
those you love
to wade in it

7
she swallowed me whole and after
clawing my way out of her stomach
I am still picking my fingernails
out of her teeth

8
i am paying for my grubby child hands
the baby bird bones in the backyard
of my childhood home
are singing warning bells to me from across a continent
they pierce my dreams when i finally sleep
the corn acres cresting golden hills in the dawn are gone
another night alone in a city far way from home
and my wings are still just feather and bone
muscle dead below, still holding the hilltops on her shoulders

you fall to the waves crashing down or
you pump the sore tendons of your weak wings
and you fly
there’s no other choice
your body is not a question
it is an answer
-

I  am  no philosopher
I  am  Paul  from  The Meadows
pulled skinny  poor from the  shadows to put  a  deal of fat  on his bones

so  how  did   I  end  up   here?
what penalty did   I  accrue?

taking the  ten  point deduction for  conduct unbecoming
I  place my  attention  deficit on re-order that I  don’t  yet  forget

smothered  in the  scrim of this  Hogarthian hood every  chip toothed  blue   scriptured face
proffers  passage to a  poisonous but tantalising hook

to write the  junk  must I  taste the junk?

peddled or paddled for  a  sweeter  flight this  avenue never  taken,
hedonic ingress  unwalked,  unwanted yet  still wondered
could such  deep surrender  be   so  sweet to  allow the  most  intimate  of plunder?

am I  Dante?
corralled   around  the  streets
of a  society that  shows no compromise amongst  the  dying embers  of fallen  enterprise

eternal  damnable gyres around a  ****** **** pyre
of concrete,  glass  and  broken  humanity

with    each    uttered    breath    a    cold      cocktail    of profanity

the  bouncing soles of the  air  I  wear  may ease  me over  the  gummed archipelagos
flag  spij-speckle  guaran islands slab secure and  fast
against  the  counselled wash an  eternal  fossilised chaw
that  resists  the  fiercest chemical blast

lost in this  sea    I  cannot  be   but shaken  by the  waxy  man  with his  head  of startled  hemp and  coterie  of cracked  carbon
as  he breaches the  domestic brink

turning a key, his shoulders  hunched  in protective  shawl against

the  spittled spate
he stares  back through me
for  sightless  miles insides out,  front  to rear, then  scuffles, rattling,  townwardly

cannot resist  the  insecticidal compulsion of the  green  and  white purgatory
where  the  neatly  stacked  wash  of fluorescence makes  oven ready  your  heaven
amid the  threnodial thrum  of
a  hundred syncopated Siemens

following  that   shuffling   cortege  of  the   bussed  in dead and  dying
I  am dutiful, altar  bound, avowed and  accursed the  host with the  ghosts in this  haunted  mall lost  and  lonely  within  England’s  mountain  green
it  is no longer the  god   bothering needles and  blunts that    draw the crowds
as  flat  screened pharmacological rapture,
that  trinity  of distilled, medicated caffeination

lead   a   once   pious   nation   through   a   precocious dream

maybe Allah yet  sees  here  his
Jerusalem  and  leads his children
upon  England’s  land  of  crescent  green

She took the crisp offered
- not for the flavour, but for the high offer
of a connection across the tallest table,
balanced on tall stools, with tall tales
that fired unfettered, unfiltered
from her so much taller son,
each word spittled with snorted laughter
as they floated in their isolation,
cushioned by a child's unhesitate honesty,
silky and cloud-light and nothing like her fears
which had continued to hover and to threaten
to sink her float and fade her laughter
and to let the dank win.
Instead she stayed afloat,
tethered only to her son's fingers
as they drew her further into his world,
pushing away her lost years,
floating her free to explore this genesis
of something like a second chance.

The detectors can't detect
The noxious air;
If it were smoke or CO2,
I'd know how to react.
This spittled vapor poisons me,
Moves at the speed of sound;
Accosting ears like the bloated king,
As spiteful as the evil one.
He punctuates with pointed finger,
Insisting I must hear
(Louder if I don't concur)

I have the symptoms of an obsessive attack.
An open window only assails the air;
Burning incense absorbs the odor
On my furniture, in my drawers,
Like unknown dust *****,
And creaking floors.

I've replied, *******;
You've no friends,
How could you when you talk like that,
In your baggy pants and worn torn hat,
Half your memories are fabricated,
Half your brain fermented,
And the ****** is approaching soon,
The denouement nears truth,
All the ******* paddies I've stepped around
Will fertilize when you've gone.
And my real time recall,
Can't remember any fun.

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com


        Watch Where You Step; There Might be a Senator in the Grass


                    But hiss for hiss return’d with forked tongue

                                           -Paradise Lost X.518


The summer heat like judgement on the earth -
It fell upon the roiling afternoon dust
Where two foul snakes in deadly combat writhed
With hiss and strike and hate-spittled fangs

In a world of crunchy grasshoppers and tasty frogs
Of careless bunny rabbits and baby squirrels
The snakes found only their hatred for each other
Until one serpent choked on the other, and both died

And there, my children, is a lesson in brief
About the government of the State of Texas

Pre administered microphoned speak
Speaking to the gambler and his misgivings
Chips placed in precarious
.... stacks
A pro placed bet
............shoved red ridged
..................circles shifting to the edge
..............................Comes the blue round O’r

worth less shrieks the minister
fat cheeks filled
free guacamole and taco chips
spittled to green felt table

In the gamblers hands
Red eyed queen and a wink
One weekend free cable
One lovely ****** ironically called Babe

Dip in the pool later
To calm the quivering
A fat man
Blue suited blubbering
Creates BIG splash
With the turquoise laidies
And their baubled tans

plastic palm tree reef
fiberglass coral majesty
a porpoise in life
decorated pink walls

Flying Elvi graceland the sky
The sky is falling heartbreak hotel
Thrusting crotches and dazzling sequins
In sequence
A paramount event
A paramount event
A paramount event
Parrots the crowd

A drive towards the desert
Flagged down by neon cowboy
Waving cactus
Like spikey *****
Two doors down
Brothel boasting
The red lid of Venus
Gamblers ***** might never be the same

Two slicks of the drip
Cry hell to the strip
That ***** was not Venus
But a villain
Fast to Walgreens for a lil white pill
Called penicillin

jet fueled finished
narrow yellow arrowed
lane of no return the same
feels 747 roar of lift
and grand departure of
pre vaca postcard capture
a life called normalcy’s
purgatoried
fate

Christina’s World

My life...
my legs they have kept far away from me
From the loft
From the rafters
In the night come rumbling
The pans had fallen from the shelves

In the growing distance
My home
In the growing distance

It has spread before me
And no longer reaches the gingham
The hem and floral petals
Shiver in the wind

Something grows in the space
From here to there..
an emptiness
And yet it grows

My smile haunts my forehead
It creases and is spittled with heat
My smile had fallen from the shelves
Along with the pans
And my Mothers booming laugh

My Mothers laughter echoes the distance
It is like lightning crack
When I awaken from it
And can no longer find my step

I reach ..
I pull away with timid hand
I am the field mouse
I am the scarecrow off her post
I am beauty on an island
Of memory and remorse
And the Sea
She folds in browns
The screams of the cicada