The swallow of summer, she toils all the summer,
A blue-dark knot of glittering voltage,
A whiplash swimmer, a fish of the air.
          But the serpent of cars that crawls through the dust
          In shimmering exhaust
          Searching to slake
          Its fever in ocean
          Will play and be idle or else it will bust.

The swallow of summer, the barbed harpoon,
She flings from the furnace, a rainbow of purples,
Dips her glow in the pond and is perfect.
          But the serpent of cars that collapsed on the beach
          Disgorges its organs
          A scamper of colours
          Which roll like tomatoes
          **** as tomatoes
          With sand in their creases
          To cringe in the sparkle of rollers and screech.

The swallow of summer, the seamstress of summer,
She scissors the blue into shapes and she sews it,
She draws a long thread and she knots it at the corners.
          But the holiday people
          Are laid out like wounded
          Flat as in ovens
          Roasting and basting
          With faces of torment as space burns them blue
          Their heads are transistors
          Their teeth grit on sand grains
          Their lost kids are squalling
          While man-eating flies
          Jab electric shock needles but what can they do?

They can climb in their cars with raw bodies, raw faces
          And start up the serpent
          And headache it homeward
          A car full of squabbles
          And sobbing and stickiness
          With sand in their crannies
          Inhaling petroleum
          That pours from the foxgloves
          While the evening swallow
The swallow of summer, cartwheeling through crimson,
Touches the honey-slow river and turning
Returns to the hand stretched from under the eaves -
A boomerang of rejoicing shadow.

There’s nothing to see here
Dusty bottles skewed in the back
The ***** mirror only deepens reflected frowns
There’s nothing to see here
Broke down jukebox squalling about lost loves, lost jobs, and lost luck
There’s nothing to see here
The bus long gone with dreams of many
Pieces of labels litter the floor
There’s nothing to see here
The lights don’t need to flicker at the end
The long nights are empty
Booths are unused
There’s nothing to see here
The doors click shut
Locked down for the night
There’s nothing to see here

cc111711

Of terrible storms that broke through the town
Strangling, uprooting trees, slicing away
Homes, a gurgling pulsating fury of air and rain
That lasted four days. Unremitting,
It brought huge waves in its wake
From the tormented sea. All along the assaulted
Coast people choked and drowned,
Their corpses tipped
Onto beaches huddled between ravaged furniture
And drying plastic shopping bags,
Swollen limbs nibbled at by fish and *****,
And scattered throughout the streets
Picked at by dogs,
A feast that set them up
For the coming cold weather. Fleeing birds
Squalling overhead in clamorous flocks, plucked
From the sky and shattered on rocks;
The cats had a field day until
Becoming engulfed too in marauding waves
Deluging the land. Foxes screamed from the hopeless
Shelter of water saturated dens;
Only jagged ruins remained,
Futile gestures to a once-only god.
Towns inland were wrecked by the hurricane bursts
And all fell silent as the storm
Fled like a Viking raider back into the sea, dragging its
Spoils.

I was born a bitter man squalling from the womb
with happiness discovered spryly I assumed
from wonders
beholding innate anguish
the urge aims to **** us with
what we cannot evade
from under
neath despair's sweet, sweet blanket
I ovulate

There was a child once
full of  barely hidden laughter and mischief
emotions endlessly poured out and back in
like a tide tasting a new shore for the first time
Where is that child i wonder

there was a traveler once
thirsting for the experience and life seen all around
headfirst diving into the world accepting
fearing nothing and witnessed with wide eyes
where is that traveler i wonder

there was a husband once
overflowing with found shining love
joy swamping easily the baseless fear of loss
proven in horrible perfection in a moment
where is that husband i wonder

there was a father once
completely enamored of a tiny squalling form
filled with a something that could not be defined
until it was gone drained and replaced with horror
where is that father i wonder

there was a lover once
coupled a shy temerity with a respectful tenderness
opening to possible love as a flower to sun
bruised and rejected on occasion though ever hopeful
where is that lover i wonder

there was a soldier once
who stood up with passion for those who could not
heart on the sleeve and thunder on the brow
viewing the world as a problem to be fixed
where is that soldier i wonder

there was a fighter once
who smiled sadly as he fought and killed in the name of money
laughing at the jokes his companions made in desperate tones
as they hid the slowly acidic thoughtful fear of being the bad guys
where is that fighter i wonder

there was a man once
betrayed and broken by this world and his choices
looking back across the memories that swirl and sift
ashes and dust that are all the remains of a once laughing child
and i don't need wonder where that man is.

my grandmother was born
a squalling baby
in the sun of the Ukraine,
her mother too young
and a father too violent.
she led her through the wheat fields
whose long tresses tangled
in her pale ankles
to a pond behind the farm
where she tried to drown her.
a passerby intervened
and raised my grandmother
with his wife up the hill
on their own.

she spent her life
not cursing the hands
that sought to destroy
when they ought to have held
but thanking the hands
that pulled her
from the freezing water
on a crisp morning
in the fields of the Ukraine
lungs still full of breath
and eyes full of trust

Wading in the blackening field
the bending, brittle stems threatening crackle and graze
needle and thread
june-grass
and pasture sage

Mnemosyne waits there in her sodden robes
near the depression
where the farmhouse once stood
still,
as I meet her there at the pit’s dreadful edge

and then they come,
the torrent of beasts,
spilling long-limbed from her arms in shameful profusion
at their ******* each the snarling lick of a wound
and all become a rapid, swollen crowd, yelping and squalling,
given hungrily to some grim and certain task
They nip at my ankles, my fingers,
my small florid lip

And I remember how,
month after month
the heart-shaped leaves of the split-leaf philodendrons
unraveled all asunder;
glossy and enormous
but eroded and porous before they were ever new,
yet I was sure the cleavage must serve some pure purpose,
because thats the way they all grew

First in the sun-room of the woman
who grafted them from the mother stalk
and then sold them on craigslist
they came then to the concrete apartment
with its twelve-foot ceilings
where the fan hushes them, now,
so they quite slightly rustle;
It’s breath must still be blowing on down
through the little holes

Imagine my shock when
a delicate little red bird
flew almost hesitantly
into the bay window of
my mother's house and
childhood home.
Shock isn't the word.
Because I knew the bird
had broken its neck.
It's inevitable.

Nothing ever deserves
to die alone, so I went
outside and looked for it.
Squalling, that if you didn't
know any better,
would sound like a rousing
bird refrain.

The remarkable thing
about a bird's song is that
as humans we cannot tell
what they are singing, but it
sounds heavenly
regardless of whether
or not it just broke its neck
on a window.

Leathery skin
furling by
the hides
of ideas,
to impart
the coyest

We are searching for dismantled cameras
with the flashy leitmotif disabled
in a disbanded cinema

And in the dark you ovulated, murdered
under the thickness of rough tree bark

Haul trunks of
a *****-tonk
dismembering
remembrances
rows of seating

Squalling, beautiful voices
throaty, tonefully sinking
in tune with imaginary keys
located in grey, clinking
between stained ivory tiers
and scuffed ebony branches
rending the reddest of heart-drawls
then plucking each riveted contour

I am a number, numb-er than the dumber thumbs on top of me.

A puppet to appease, the appetites of kings, meagerly squalling over nothing.

All i see, is stupidity staring back at me, in a hall of mirrors.

the god boy, grows a pace
no longer small, squalling child

now showing a fierce independent streak
that causes pride and fear in equal amounts

it is hard to balance the need to learn
and the need to teach...to protect
we fail the balance regularly
yet are fortunate to have suffered
no great ..... or lasting consequence

his greatest attribute,
our greatest joy
his sunny side up,
the ability to always,
see the best
in everything.....
eventually

as we slow and grey,
he seems brighter,
more intense...
gathering colur into him
only to give it out...
in a argent radience
that is contagious...
in  it's beauty

of course,
he has his flaws
my child,
is far from perfect
like his father,
his floor is his wardrobe
and like his mother
he is prone to losing himself
in bookworlds, while mundane
chores await..

but he is both the worst and the best of us

and more importantly
he is himself....forging
and identity and entity
bourne of love and compassion

and honestly
as a mother godess
and as a father god

there is naught more
we could wont
or ask for...

Shofar  Ashera
Once set, they begin to direct their destination to the heart of the nativity area, where their origins and areas of the omnipresent West Bank belt were. They entered with strong winds clinging to their bristling camelids, everything had the atmosphere of a city as if it had never been inhabited. The fringes in floods of sun were distinguished orange-reddish weakened before the stormy gradients of the Red and Mediterranean Sea appeasing the Hexagonal primogeniture. Although they were seen squalling and with agile movements on the local atmosphere, several layers crossed with the inheritance of Persian cloths in colorful bluish and orange tints from the Red Sea and the quarrelsome storms of Aserá "The mother of all gods", and The one who was the "father of the gods." Known among the Babylonians as Ishtar, originally called Athirat (or Afdirad). She is the great Semitic goddess of fertility. In the Bible it is called Astoret, a distorted pronunciation of the original 'Astart, through the inclusion of the vowels of the Hebrew word boset (shame) according to the custom of the rabbis, to discredit the pagan deities. Bronze Age Ashera (before 1200 BC) the Greek form is Astarte. Astarte was considered the "goddess of the Sidonians". In the Amarna Letters, it is Ashirtu and Ashratu. The Ras Shamra texts identify Ashera ('atrt = atirat) with the goddess wife of El; They call her "Lady Ashera of the Sea" and "progenitor of the goddesses", here she would be the mother of Baal.

These discredited Babylonian forms caused discomfort and discomfort, in the face of a living past and present in the intangibility of the inheritances that greet others that could supplant them. This caused soil heating in the legs of the animals with abnormality of Greek-Babylonian wormwood prostrate on the feet of Ashera, leaving an odorous wormwood atmosphere in the land of two native Kings of this jurisdiction. Attracting dissipation from the roofs of some neighboring houses to the precise place where the Messiah saw the light of the lights and of those who waited for them cabi-together lighting it with candlesticks. This sacred wind caressed everyone's hands, insinuating them to take hold of the new Bethlehem, an event that was being reborn with the Apostle's illustrious visit. Their consolations expanded, like any caravan that increased its predictive volume, equalizing the pressures of the air that surrounded the streets, where no one appeared and was seen generic. This centrifugal force rotated their earthly spirits, originating a thick source of the orange gases that populated the roofs of the village. Creating greater weight and highlighting the freshness of the essences that were torn from the soils with the aroma of grazing.   Explaining to themselves the presence of sub-zones in the West Bank, insolating redemption of the arrival towards a protocol merit contrasted by the permission to be hosted next to this at night.  Varying many times to bring them the blessed condensed sacred water, deregulating the thermal sensation.

The density and buoyancy of the animals' legs made it difficult for them to select the right moment to stop and dismount. The aerial relief that rose and fell rose on the walls of the few rooms linked to the stable of nativity, pressing on them the adjacent words that joined from the ground to soon arrive in an upward spiral, turned into light and wind on the seventh horseman ; King David, appearing to them right there…, right there before Him, his Abigail, the third wife who gave him an early re-conception, presenting him with an altar, which he will endow with Eucharistic missions during his admission to Bethlehem. An unexpected phenomenon swirls on the gradient that led to the hill of the stable, affecting their vision and consequences, rotating them all to the rear of the original access to the stable. Converging the winds on the ground and upper external part of the stable, originating an anticipated effulgence of space that would prolong them to understand that they had already arrived, but they were still seven hundred meters from the main access and that the city was not Bethlehem, but another that It seemed to emerge from the arid soil, next to the stable, dividing itself into inter-zones that rubbed against the original and current ones, in such a way as to generate a great development of the sub-soil on the vertical that sounded stentorian and vibratory, as in a long stay, on the distributed assistants in this supra-abnormal regimen. They arrive exempt from grievances but dismounting gentiles ..., they leave the twelve camels in a friendly and predisposed circle, so as not to expose them to the strong winds that raged from the Canaanite gods that prevailed in personalized and ceremonial theocratic.

David speaks: “when I approached where Moab I requested asylum in protection of my parents…, thus I myself would burst the eardrums of the Philistines for each mountainous network of links that join me to the refuge of my advance counterattack towards their dominions. In its unknown enemy territories, a noble and friendly joy appears before me; Abigail, who fills the history of my land with beauty, before a very cruel Canaanite son; Nabal. She enriches my lands more than the entire multiplied population of animals, every time I count the units, I look into her eyes and I forget the greater amount that moves her heart towards me, because of that I did not shed blood on Nabal's house . Being Abigail the one who replaces my union with the Faith that moves my passion. "

Then Abigail kneels and touches the ground where he was, crossing himself after assigning a cross that kissed his hands, on his forehead and his chest. Thus from somewhere her parents rearranged the garments to enchant Vernarth for her bi-related purge with that of David and the Messiah-Vernarth. As in the Jericho story, Alikanto, Raeder, and Petrobus galloped around the periphery of the citadel. With all the strength of the steed's Golden hooves, they kicked liquid dust from the Bethlehem's fleeces. Alikanto did not carry a mount on his back ... he carried an Aspis koilé from Hoplite Vernarth. It was useful to re-sediment the sand covers sifted by the ergonometric forces of the shield, thus causing everyone to retreat and take the reins of the animals, to resume their advances in buttresses to build the walls that they had to mediate, to weaken Ashera's insinuations to disagree with the edges of the citadel. The Apostle, Etréstles and Vernarth blew the shofars, the times they surrounded the perimeter of the city, and they believed that there would be more turns ..., on the couch was the Shofar that could sound more times and louder, it was intact ..., but it ran to blow it Vernarth not leaving a drop of air looking at the sky that would appear with three bright stars filling the anxiety and love to break Easter bread for everyone. But it was not that effect; it was the astral echo of Betelgeuse of King David, which emanated with his blowing also helping to raise the walls that would protect him from the staunch invasions of the lackeys of Ashera. In such a way, the partitions were raised until reaching the governorships of the words of the watchdog angel who coordinated everyone saying:

Guardian Angel: "For us the partitions, for you the rooftops, on the heights mediate the limits and on their Shofar they will end Aserá, without any city to come and go" Such exordium is fulfilled and Bethlehem is surrounded by golden barred partitions, Walls were hoisted at remarkable heights to appease the winds and roars of the Canaanites, as in Jericho, but the other way around, here they succumbed by divine command, to allow them to settle in that millenary town hall.

Finally they withdraw the twelve camelids from the front circle that did not allow them to settle in the settlement, and they manage to settle to revive the bi-natality and double reign of whose splendor he will only speak with the luminances of the Messiah and King David embracing them. From the continents outside of the walls left desolate, revive Abigail's pristine and angelic countenance by bringing dinner and an amulet Shofar to each of the components of the Hexagonal Birthright that began to continue the seven weeks in Judah.

Magraner's ministers "Punica granatum", were bushes that appeared to him in the focus of the micro center of the fire, they entered with some tenuous and sinuous branched thorns becoming muddy as they descended from the tassels of the Shofar, feeding the curiosity of all who were camped, surrounding a campfire full of sounds with new positions, of devout sounds of pupils from high Jewish principalities, cordoning off the objects of the Apostle, who shared it with Etréstles ..., who gave sonorous instrumentalizations to the rams that approached around them ..., looking for the crows that were missing from their heads. Due to the cracked set of the shofar, in the opposing works of the luminosities of the bonfires, the wise ministers hung on the same faces, who displayed them with their young branches, glossy sheaths before the yellowish-greenish under-exposed with their obtuse apices. Leaving in its marginalized exceptions, polygons of pre-flowering  shofar-form, on the valves that escaped from the ashes of the valves that were released from the last fleeting flame of each minute run to the right. Everyone collected the nectars that the ministers poured into goblets, drinking them lying down to swallow them reclining and being able to look at the stars that emerged from their albiceleste flavors, rinsing each one's arms by touching them with the shofar, like petioles stalks on the seven rams that they sought to recover those that made themselves sound heavenly.

Etréstles says: “When the shofar speaks, their past pastorals speak inside and outside the community; the most outlined thing has been to understand it as a trumpet; of a bony projection, that is to say, formed by a bone and pointed material that arises from the frontal bone, sealed by a layer of keratin that forms an aerophone horn cover. The horns of Moses come from a translation of the original biblical text by Saint Jerome. When Moses descends from Mount Sinai, where he has interviewed God, "the skin of his face had become radiant," says the Bible (Ex 34: 29-30). In the original Hebrew the verb "to radiate", "to emit rays", is from the same root as the noun "horns", so Saint Jerome did not think twice and translated: "cornuta esset facies sua", that is, "His face was horned. Taking into account its timbre and sound quality here with you, it is not difficult to associate it with the sounding with the golden patina, simulating with my Messolonghi fingers ..., which three by three piston their bony reaches, linking of some forms of beauty, goodness, clarity, brightness and stories that will accompany us in this bonfire between these raised walls to pave the vaults of the Messiah's nativity cries.  Calibrations and catechesis on the real moment of his symbolic Lineage in the awake dawn and alive. With waves of graces voices with goat hosts rearranging the urban matrix of the erected town ..., everything will be at the expense of surrounding us and pouring out the voices shuffled with the shofar to protect us from Ashera, in their desire to get away from the fundamental site. "

Vernarth intervenes: “In this passage it is clear the capacity of the shofar…, and the sound produced by it and our similar voices being amalgamated with it, shouting and modifying the environment, to a multipurpose physical dimension. Now we are a herald of goodness, beauty and reconstruction, part of a noticeable dialectic to the neighboring Canaanite cultures as a sudden reconversion between what is built and what is to be built, even if something in it itself had to disappear. The wall was actually rebuilt surrounding everyone, beyond the golden glow of the shofar. Producing today creation and not devastation, encapsulating kingdoms in wisdom and learning ..., this is where we have all come from the return of the didactics of cultural forms, independently to attract us to its teachings in an anonymous world converted with a purpose of reconverting itself, in solemn alert in the one that precedes us, before unilateral events of antecedents of an apocalyptic shofar period”.

Which came first:

The chicken or the egg?

Well, the **** of the walk

Of course!


You ought to know, silly kid,

That he has always ruled the roost, —

Kicking up dirt

Crowing all the live-long day

Fighting anything that he sees

All to prove his strength.


That's how he has always been, —

One day, he just wanted to take his dominance

That little step further

And so, the world gave him a hen.


So quiet and gentle

Sweet and demure

She balances him out quite nicely.


She spends most of her days

Resigned to her coop

Laying egg after egg

In her warm, dark room.

She attends to the ****

Whenever he wants her

Then becomes a living factory once again, —

Producing babies and food

Food and babies.


She does this for most of her life, —

Until she gets too old, that is.

She dries up, gets fat

And, by Sunday,

She'll be on our table for dinner.


Laughing and chewing

Clucking and squalling

We'll sink our teeth in,

Never once thinking

About how her entire lifetime

Was defined by giving

And the ****, —

Well, it won't take him long

To pick out a younger, prettier chick

To take her place.


Which came first, —

The chicken or the egg?

Obviously, it was the **** of the walk, —

The one who screams his triumph at every sunrise

The one whose meat is too tough for us to devour

The one who will never, ever die.

Everything else is just a page in his never-ending story, —

Everything else

Is merely consequential.

she writes despair,
from her womb.
in thick menstrual red.
...a dirge of lost potential.

lamentations of longing,
need and want for a child
sear her face and mind....

again a false start,
hope....stands expectant at
the starting line.....
only to falter and fall,
time after time.

she hates,
this carriage, that does not,
well do the job
she hates,
those who can, with apparent ease.
who do not mis,
but have,
the joyous moments,
of that first squalling cry...

but mostly,
she longs for
the next time,
she can try....
til then,
sadness prevails

And after everything, I think
I can finally say I am beginning
to understand what you have been trying
to tell me for so long.
And after everything, I still
get scared sometimes, terrified that
everything I think I am understanding
is my own brand of idiotic hopefullness, or
worse, I have understood, but
you are feeding me empty sentiments, sugar cubes
to quiet a squalling baby.
And after everything, I see
in mind's eye, our figures
tied together, not mine
vainly trying to lasso yours, fine as shadow,
as I did for so long, and more
than that, I see us holding willingly
to this rope, precious more than gold
or anything anyone could offer me.
And after everything, I trust
not blindly, as I did before, but honestly
not the trust of a sun-dazzled fool
to her betters, but the open
and honest trust to a flawed human
who deserves it.
And after everything, I can say
we are not hurt, we stand
strong, I have predicted well
and we have survived, and your fears
were as unfounded as I said
they would be, (as unfounded
as my very own).
And after everything, I still
love you, and more
than I could before.

respiring corridors
   interior hospital night

outside
                silenced
                         ­         the winter
away facing
                       patient pacing

    in palliative care
for the age-ed out expiring
     iterations of ejecting death
       darkly dressed haggy wet breaths
        beds engaged
          berths of great ferment

corridor ; raked in
corridor ; ridden out squalling

a patient who has yet to reach
   the concluding condition of his fellows
bellows
   'Shut The **** Up'
mad for sleep
he's lost compassion

The corridor labours on

What is the name for the feeling
Of being swept out to sea,
clinging to a jagged piece of your old self?
Migration always brings things back-
In time...
-full circle
A shadowy maw spits
Unfinished creatures squalling
to life from my chest
only to freeze and shatter in the morning sun
Burning is just like heartbreak - hurting until it doesn’t anymore -
But fish don’t cry;
They can’t,
Already choking salt water through camellia wounds gaping,
Swords rusting on a lake bed
Where they fell
Trampled through the forest of you-
Making room for rows and rows of boxes
All empty -
You needed the space to grow into something useful -
Pushing yourself out of the way,
A door cloven into a thousand dull fragments by an axe
Shining,
And swept out to sea to watch the
Walls, constructed, take shape-
Fish can’t cry even when they are burning in the lake
Blowing empty bubbles at an orange sword -
Pulled to the gaping mouth and deposited at the shore,
And chains of empty spaces take their home,
A conquest from within -
What is the name of this feeling?
Of being thrown overboard by your own hand,
Clinging to the last remaining piece of your old self,
Waiting for the gaps you left
to be filled?

What a selfish child, she thought
Leeching the poor tree dry
Less than what she had been before.

She herself stripped of her jewels
Made into extreme miniatures for her children’s fingers and ears
The mossy fur ripped from her flesh
Her screams the crunch and creak as they felled her trees.

They give her no pause between the spasms of pain
An endless labor with no birth to show
No relief and her sweat has filled oceans.

The fires licking over her parched skin are a joyous pain
She writhes, reveling in the heat.
And now it is her children who scream and sob
Begging the man who cradles them in his palm to restrain her.

But he won’t
For they are hers while mortal
And he will not touch them
Until their ghosts have shrugged from their shells.

Once the sight of their broken bodies
would have caused her tears to pour forth
Drowning their tiny lungs and swelling the number held by him.
But now she is a mother who turns her face from her squalling infants
Cries falling onto calloused ears.

She learned from the many named man
How to be at peace with their deaths
And found from him comfort
With his mouth sewn shut, his eyes only for those he holds
His ears filled with the empty silence of their space.
And even though this last sanctuary has become contaminated
Still she stirs the soup of air rocketing her little ones around her.

Her ignorant children cause her agony
But what young do not?

Some even pray to her
Working to feed off her in other ways
And though they are only a drop in the bucket of her pain
She cannot deny she loves them.

So long has she watched them live and die
Broke down their empty  bodies and
seen them rejoin their creator to weep
when faced with what they have done to her their mother.

A pity the dead cannot speak to the living.
But she quiets them
Shows her disembodied children
The wonders she still holds
Smothered, smudged and distorted.

Again they sob thinking she means punishment
In showing them her diminished beauty but it is not so.
She beckons them to look and understand
No matter the cancer growth of their chemicals
that poison her body
There is no permanent death for she will consume any and all
Even her own brood to continue on.

Her children may strip her of everything
As willingly as Shel’s tree gave herself away
But it is she who will remain long after their bodies
Have grown frail and decayed
For she is Mother Earth.

An ocean of inexplicable secrecy
I am,
I am right here,
In the atmosphere

Calling, squalling
So desperate and keen
So broken,
I am

I am in the tears you cry,
Even when I am shy,
I am
As long as you are

For you want me to,
As so I linger
Close to you,
Evermore, I am

Up wind- cuffed pathways

chanced and fooled

I saw her, briefly



Her briskly dress, a squalling maul

of last year's favourite maple, horned

in all jurassic passion, met me,

dizzy, by the lee-side wall

with gale-borne abandon.