letter to elana

for the poet elana bell

~

in a different cafe,
on a Manhattan streetscape where once, years earlier,
violence was the purview of West Side Story gangs,
ruling their internecine non-intersectionality territorial blood lines supremely

nowadays, violence replaced by the frenetic
noises of Lincoln Center theater goers,
student dancers, actors, musicians and poets joining the throng
of those who sup and run,
all hearing their own frantic
curtain calling, saying, announcing,
music dance voices words require your obeisance,
needy for a mutual worshipping reassurance fiat that:

life can be made transcendent
if even for just 90 minutes or 120 pages,
or a 3 minute poem reading

this city of millions requires billions of poems that spoon stirred  
and yet, almost always fail, to squeeze, all of the human essence that is in its ultimate source, clarifying nyc tap water,
containing the storied remnants of a hackable continuous,
single human stanza cell osmosis - a blockchain like no other

two poets sit side by side each in their own lapsed dreams,
she, a published poet of prize and rank, ^
he, a rank amateur whose only prize is his unpublished anonymity,
poetry, is his just a nightly soul cleansing,
an imported remnant of his Marrano piyyutim ancestry

one turns to the other,
in the inexplicable daily crazy miracle
of city fashionistas

in a city where stealing a parking spot, or the
forced squeezing creation of a subway seat space
where physics proves none exists,
are oft the roots of slashing and stabbings faithfully reported
on the 11 o’clock news,  
and trust and/or other encouraging words
are seldom heard and even less demonstrated,
the make-no-eye-contact of Camus’s L’Etranger anomie is the
normative, paranormal, paralysis cloak of we city separatists

“Can you watch over my electronics and stuff?”

Sure says the grayed and grizzled,
an all life long veteran of nyc,
judged to be trustworthy
based on a few seconds of being upsized and downsized,
a car wash (exterior only) perusal
despite a
“no direction home, like a compete unknown, a rolling stone,”  
this signage, yellow star permanently chest-affixed,
conveniently ignored, as it seems impossible
thieves don’t look like me,
don’t likely in their possess,
a distinguished head of gray hair (yeah, sure)

a thank you reward of (or did I imagine it) a lean-in,
a momentary head on a shoulder,
the chit chat now grows earned and earnest,
she confesses her cardinal poetry profession,
eliciting an ‘Oh Boy’ utterance from the poet
of a thousand names
and a thousand textual emendations

a fastidious nyc boundary is brief crossed for one short meal,
till the end when time sensitized IMRL intrudes and
the showtime calls out,
if not now, when? if not me, then who?

I read her poetry later in the praying supine first position of
three AM, and laugh with delight, at the contrast and no compare,
the styles clash and tho the stories told
are both writ in the aleph bet script,
there ends the Ven diagram overlap and
into the night’s coming of a Elvisian blue suede coverlet,
we both disappear, and if not for this recording,
history says, you old man confused, never happened,
just an imaginary poetry ink blot dream breaching...

~

postface:
another poetry book is no longer homeless,
comes to shelter upon my shelf, close to Angelou, far from Whitman,
now all the book’s nooks eyes collectively
reassessing the new old-owner, parsing his syntax,
undecided if his readership is worthy of them,
concluding that all these books are the
man’s owned roughened stones,
to be placed by human hands on the
serpentine curvature of his literary tombstone,
and until all stones fully read,
they all agree,
will they and he
be fully freed,
smoothing his legacy’s edges

Evil & crime so predictable & stale.
Stupid how arrested suspects get bail.
Convicted when their victims tell.
Prison is where some stay & are jailed.
They have to communicate by mail.
Sometimes their focus goes in another direction.
Where probation happens after correction.

Child & spousal abuse, drug use, & rehab that is no use.
History repeats
Wives & children still get beat.

Their isn't always a Superman or Batman to be your hero.
With a sword or crossbow.

Details of armed robbery , drug dealing & smuggling.
Stabbings & muggings.
On the inside homosexual love with cuddling.
Human trafficking & prostitution.
Violating amendments & constitutions.

They are how they are from how they were raised.
If their victims could speak from the grave
Or had they been saved.
They could explain & describe how their rapists & killers behaved.

Male & females do their time.
Years in custody for their crimes.
Seriousness of their offenses vary.
Some educate, get jobs, or marry.
Behind bars is where violence belongs.
To be punished for all that they did wrong.

Some from death row are now dead.
Similar to the wildlife in a zoo behind bars they get fed.

I told this
***
a life-long necessity
of mine
more or less.
But first I said,
before anything, maybe
it’s just a life-long exhaustion
of mine I’m
expelling needlessly, okay?
I want to make sure you
know that
so you don’t go thinking
I’m weird or nothing,
though honestly  

it all drops hard like
iron
faster than
gravity
to the same
place
anyway.

But this is what I told him:

Sometimes I wish the world
would roll up all it’s got.
Roll it all up in one unsettling
heap of heaviness it can
toss on me like stock from the
deep. O I wish to God it’d
give me the torturous insanity
and every inexplicable loss
it can conjure up—just one
catatonically tremendous
slap to my stupid little
face, flushing it with
cosmic humiliation
and fear I don’t even
notice I ****** myself.

So that, at least, it’d all be
there, you know? And I wouldn’t
have to ask where it is and
what the hell’d I do
to get spared.

I told him give me the
holocausted ashes smelling of
Zyklon B, the crawling away from
sawed off shotgun shells
catching friends hiding under
the library desk anyway, the
running over of your dad by
a drunk who lost his wife to
the cancer that took the brother of
somebody you knew whose
mother had

suicidal depression, hadn’t
smiled really in years, she’d
sat with cold coffee
for years, and around her
had been worse than
darkness, for a reason she
never ended up knowing.

I said to him give me the
harshest words a child has
ever known against him
and have them rest upon
my spine like a freezing
brain spreading electric
wild fires across
my vertebrae, give me
burning skin really
burning, and cheating wife seen
moaning, and drowning baby now
dead
and beaten wife now
collapsing, another baby now
beaten and
thirsty wino keep drinking, and
a stranger with his face
blown off red and
brown and tattered and
I don’t know how but
still hanging there like
boiling chicken fat, dripping,
but the doctors
able to keep his heart
beating and his organs
pumping too, so now
people can see him
and his whole face
as an indication there is
something in the air
that deserves pitying.

Give me it, I said,
with homicide and
double homicide, and
a side of
stabbings and
chokings and
bludgeonings
and guns and rope and
gas and asphyxiations
and love letters and
love-making giddy ***
and flowers for the
love of your life
who is cutting herself
because she can’t stop
cutting up souls after
she *****.

Give me everybody’s
******* loneliness
that is lonelier than
a thing lost before it was
born, and as it was
being born, born into
losing itself, its slow
destruction, and there was
not even anybody there because
there was never going to be
anything to help you, there is
nothing to be achieved and
nothing for which
striving is
helpful.

There just is a memory of
a hazy possibility of
happiness, that one
felt once
in a senseless dream.
A memory that is
always fading towards
non-existence or
existence that has
no place for it, because
it is already full of
something else, and you,
your “transcendence,”
are wasting time,
waiting.

What are you waiting for I
said (with just a little irony).
Give me the heaviness, don’t
hide it anymore. Show it
all bare and give it all
to me. Tell me, here, take this
and hold it for the sake of—

What?—what is this?
Is it this? Just
the universe drooling on itself? Or
is it more? Somehow less?

Well, for the sake of
whatever lies here (lies here!)
and is too ****** in eternity to
delight us with a clear
answer to the
question that all the
living creatures on this
sacrosanct dirt, in some
crevice of their being, I know,
are asking it.

And this ***, when I finished
telling him what I’ve just told you
didn’t say anything back.
His brown face was treaded terrain,
crumpled cracked ditches,
broken dry grin.

He looked elsewhere, smelling of
decades of drunken alcohol
and lice and yellow toenails and
******* alone against
brick walls at night

and also his brown hands
adjusting the dirt-drenched
cardboard bed he will surrender to
tonight, after who knows
what else.

Expatriots await the nights in Kuwait
where the dingoes and dominoes and salamanders bait
the ladies in purple to their eminent doom
of sleazies and stabbings and babies in womb.
Don't get me wrong,
I enjoy a good time, if friends are around and we got a dime
or two
and a fire for the masses and we're shaking our *****
as if we are actually aware of the outcomes of our actions.
I know we haven't the slightest clue
what a Jesus Christ is, or if it hides under our beds at night
or if it was a Jew.
What's written in books can be written by crooks,
because literacy and knowledge are ******* beautiful
but can give one more confidence than the world has to share,
and the whole theory of Relative Pride falls to pieces when one has more self-efficacy than ability
and the children with their sweet little ideas and purity are not humble but fall victim to humility.
So what's in a name?
Letters, vowels, consonants and connotations
traffic tickets, family vacations
****** and protests (though not necessarily related)
teenage boys and ***** minds and those who have masturbated.
But who hasn't?
Those without names, or faces
or honesty or hands
probably have their members ******* in steel-spiked rubber bands.
I'll see you again in retox dehibilitation
and we can converse and create
while under the crutch of sedation.

Through all this strife
We create life
It's not wrong or right
It's humanity's plight

Whether it's with a wife
Or a stranger
We create life
Despite danger

There is a new addition
He could end repetition
Of negative patterns
And social ladders
But there is a competition
Between the new editions
Of positive versus negative
He'll be the one ahead of it

In a world plagued with stabbings
By the greedy money grabbing
Not to mention the beastly bombings
That endear retribution wronging
And elusive peace longing
There is a birth
Amongst death
That makes it worth
That first breath
Which provides hope in promise and potential
When they could be the positive differential
That could change this planet
And the hearts made of granite

We are born screaming
And never stop
We find ways of teaming
To be cops
Imposing our will on others
Through fascist force
There are many ways to cover
How this ruins discourse
But I sense a new sheriff in town
Our old ways he'll bury in the ground
He might be one or two now
But he'll change the world and I don't know how
For he brings hope
To a world with none
He helps me cope
A compassionate son
He'll make the world brighter
By not being a fighter
In a world of strife
He'll create life

Is the world a pleasant place?
Or in reality a nightmare in disguise?
In my opinion the second choice makes more sense.
Is life carefree?
Or one more possession that will be taken from us?
For me both seem right.
Life is carefree, but it was given to us and can be taken away just as easily.
Why is there destruction and killing?
Stabbings and beating?
People being abused and children turned onto the streets?
Is it because the human race is selfish?
Or have we just not tried to fix the problems and enjoy making more?
People think the world will get better,
     Thinking doesn't make it so.
The world is filled with violence, in my opinion it isn't going to change.
Life is a never ending circle.
Life is a nightmare.

Mother Nature is swaying in the breeze, her branches strong.

Her life full and alive she sings with flowers and dances with the bees,
But her mind is boorish to the oncoming threat of November.

The startling entrance of Fall is like fire to her leaves,
New electricity attacks her arm’s protectors; prepared with strong green shields.
Yellow, orange, then deep red bleed into a burnt, crackled brown and black ash.

As her melodic hum of green vanishes, a starling yellow spark leaps,
Ablazed chaos now runs on her twisted, knotted, and wise branch-arms.
Eruptions of heat and confusion Mother Nature is seen screaming,
Raptured coldly, her green peace is painfully and hollowly attacked.

Her first shiver yesterday revealed her weakness,
Her shade flees, no longer able to stand the icy-sharp stabbings of winter.
Her annual sigh of defeat inevitably followed, thus beginning her hibernation,
Her tired arms creak and break, letting down their burnt sheaths,
Slowly spiraling down, down, down to the hungry ground.

Closing down to mourn Mother Nature is unclothed and shamed.
Her once green body now dried, bare, and cracked.
Withering winter brings blue death and ice to her brown skin.
Naked she shivers and freezes for three months to come.
But Spring will bring her a new strength and humility.
Mother Nature’s momentary fall will only chill, not ****.

I. The Fireflies



There was once

a time when the fireflies

had made a home out of me.



One evening,

long after the sun

had surrendered itself

to the hazed horizon

and the pregnant moon,

they had come to my window,

golden freckles of light

twinkling playfully

in the dimness.



What exactly

prompted their gravitation

towards me,

I will never be entirely certain of,

though I have my theories.



Maybe it was the

warm glass of milk

sitting on my bedside table.

Or maybe

they had simply mistaken

the peppers of stardust

laced atop my eyelashes

for their own kin.



Or perhaps–

and most likely–

it had been

the murmur of poetry

on my lips:



…watch how they dart about the trees

in whimsical harmony,

how they rise up towards the dark sky

in the hopes that, someday,

they too will become one with

the constellations that blink

so brilliantly in the blackness.



Yes,

Perhaps this what had captivated them so–

a homage to the fireflies themselves.

Perhaps this is

why they had drifted towards me,

as if in some fanciful trance,

weightless as paper lanterns.



And how sweet they were

as they twirled about the ringlets

in my hair and

nuzzled their small frames

against my cheek

and fingertips.



How sweet they were–

that is,

until the bees came.



II. The Bees



They made lightning bugs

of my fireflies,

whose soft luminescence was replaced

with a violent stream of sparks,

one resembling something close

to the bursting of a fluorescent bulb



And so came the lightning,

the firefly’s only defence against

the approaching swarm,

their only ammunition

in the impending battle:

fireflies versus

bees,

both in want

of my nectared

marrow.



But the lightning

was no reasonable match

for the bees,

with their

large, gelatinous figures

and the persistence

of their stabbings;

annihilated were the fireflies,

carcasses crumbling to soot,

their innards,

still glowing,

smeared across my collarbone

like war paint.



Victorious and

humming menacingly,

the bees then crawled

into my ears

and my mouth

where they proceeded

to feast on their spoils and plunders:

the honey,

that they so cruelly

stole from me.



And once the honey was gone,

so were the bees,

bellies full,

antennae sticky,

their use for me

fulfilled and therefore

discarded.



III. The Spiders



The final hosts

were drawn to

what the bees had left behind:

the inconsolable emptiness

of my being,



They marked their territory

with cobwebs–

spun carelessly

into my arteries

and windpipe.



Breath dwindling and

heartbeat diminishing

I tried to remember the fireflies–

the light–

as the arachnophobia

threatened to devour me.

I hope you won't
Wear wind chimes that always annoy the cat,
Or wear that ring, you single gal,
Or wear your box of shame,
Or wear that smile.

I hope you won't
Wear a look of exchanged stabbings,
Or wear an open-hearted pendant,
Or wear anything at all,
And certainly not that one red dress.

Maybe I'm a little twisted and dark,
But I thought you liked it that way.
So I play with scissors and knives and darts...
Is the blood on the wall too much for you?
Is the blood on the wall too much for you?
I draw graphic stabbings and maimings,
You never said you liked your girls sweet.
Why did you ask for fresh strawberries?
I've always been more of a rotten lemon.
How was I to know you wanted a nice girl,
When you always loved to call me a ***** girl?
I thought I was your dark girl, dark angel.
You used to love the way I wanted to bite,
Bite you until I made you bled warm and red.
Now when I write you notes about butchering,
You abandon ship off the starboard side.
I wanted us to drown together darling,
But I suppose I can drown you alone...

American school bombings
London stabbings
Gaza shootings
North Korea missile launching
Russian poisoning

So many broken counties

Lying politicians
Teenage pregnancies
Kids cutting
Child *******
Babies born as addicts

So many broken people

Air Pollution
Ice caps melting
Diminishing resources
Global warming
Seas of *******

So many broken things in the world

friends can be there at 1 minute and gone the next....
they are a figment of our imagination a tiny little speck.
its kind of hard to tell if your friends like you or not.
they will remember you when you reach the top.
they put you down but  you still don't stop
wounded by back stabbings from the past
it seems like just happen so fast.
middle school homies telling each other we gone ride or die
but now we cant trust them and it isn't the truth its all just a lie
despite all of that im just gone watch my back
but until then we just gone leave it at that............................

It looked all right through the windows of
Our cosy sitting room,
The day was light and the sun was bright
But the house was like a tomb,
The other rooms were as cold as hell
With their stalactites of ice,
That dripped from the bedroom ceiling down
To meet the stalagmites.

I’d settled Eve on the couch and spread
A blanket round her arms,
I didn’t think I should tell her, just
In case she became alarmed,
She’d spent a week in the sitting room
For she wasn’t feeling well,
How do you say, ‘We’ve fallen into
The Seventh Circle of Hell!’

They taught us the laws of physics were
Impossible to change,
Gravity, mass, and basic math
Had a certain, definite range,
But men of science had interfered
With the particle known as ‘God’,
They’d built the Hadron Collider and
The results, they said, were odd.

I could have told them how odd they were
When I went outside to see,
My car was covered in mushrooms
And a train sat up in the tree.
A whale was floating beneath the Moon
And a porpoise lay in the park,
The light was bright in the sitting room
But outside, it was dark.

Nothing remained the way it was
For all the colours had changed,
The lawn, the colour of strawberry jam
And the sky was rearranged,
The stars were falling like sequins in
A cluster of drops like rain,
And ice was forming up on the eaves
That tasted like champagne.

I went inside and I slammed the door,
I turned on the News at 6,
They said there’d been an apology
But it wouldn’t be hard to fix,
They’d run the Collider backwards to
The way that they’d done before,
And hopefully, the ‘particle God’
Would be as he’d been once more.

I sat with Eve as the sun went down
And I tried to keep her still,
Away from the hallway mirror so
She wouldn’t scream or squeal,
The lines were deepening on her face
As our lease on life had lapsed,
I hoped she wouldn’t go out today
With the world outside, collapsed.

The sun rose up in the morning as
It had for a million years,
And everything was familiar,
They’d run the thing in reverse.
The News went back to the good old things
We were used to, from before,
Stabbings, murders, infanticide
And that good old standby, war!

David Lewis Paget

I

Flowers already,
sputtering bicycles and the mad drums of foreshadowed
Springtime,
Massage therapist of the universe!
The extracted final note in a bird's outcry and my ears are full of sound
and sleep.
A cities undeterred heartbeat welcomes me to the continuous span of events only separated by the lambent verve,
windowless eyes watching each other
a signal-light blue ocean winding around a wicked mattress
seductively spinning a cowl into the night for her lover
(who's thoughts have been paused!  he's 100% clocked in and spun out, a hanging aluminum)
DAZZLING!
toothpaste spit outside into January's soft grass from a second story dorm room that's curtains reminds me of The Glenshiel..
(or maybe I'm suddenly feeling sublime death slowly knotting itself into my lungs, always been there but kinda like noticing your nose resting on your face for the first time)
On the bus home I thought of new years eve, 2015.
After the countdown, emerged from the underground
James Joyce pool hall,
rushing out to the streets
an asphalt madhouse
lunacy, absolute, and stabbings nearby tortured parkades.
Here's the new year made real,
a tangible calendar
an authoritative sentiment
while I listened to Donovan's "To Sing for You"
My new friends laughed, arms together,
I felt like I was standing on the edge of an undiscovered sun,
replaced by Vietnamese clouds
(Which I'll sail by come September)

II**

A crow waits on a balcony, wet and lonely from the rain.
Radios buzzing an electric tuba.
Smoke is the father and
dew is the mother
I am the son cold and clothed, while others soak beneath
canopies, cement gaps, they pray, I pray for them although I
wouldn't consider myself religious,
"Agnostic spiritualism"
yeah, the has a nice flow to it
but that's just my opinion..
Waking up before the sun has breathed
the first western factory.
Yellow hats
****** fists
a faint star is singing
I'm listening
ears are ringing
a static drone collapses
consciousness reaches a peak before subsiding to sunlight
(sequel to the last day, prequel to the days to come)
I'll fall in love again, I know it
I have it marked on my calendar you'll see!
Water a few hours still/room temperature/is shaking because my foot
beats against the carpet/
this music isn't exactly conventional or pure as the morning
more a glass shatter
or a psychotic scream in distant queer Victoria nightclubs.
Passing Christmas,
Oak Bay,
Spanish holiday (potentially)
and ** Chi Minh City market walks
(future events ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
A university lecture from Vandana Shiva,
watching my dad's cat for four months
(Where my room was destroyed in a forty-five minute
terrified chase thru the house to lock him in a carrier for an urgent vet appointment due to kidney stones, or what we thought was urinary crystals at the time. He howled the entire car ride there)
I think back to childhood, 1996 Apartment light and the December blizzard which buried parking lots, blocked entrances/exits n forced people to be patient for once, sit and talk, make love without setting an alarm for the morning after
(before I was even 5, or 10, long before I wrote poems, and lost those I would come to care about..)
Hopefully all those elementary school friends turned out okay.
Since moving, I've frequently passed great corner store curtains,
green and grey dusty
by the rusting tills
an empty town
where the soccer fields became overgrown and ice cubes melt slow on
people's fingers (As they wait for time to roll by like it always has)
a forgivable loss of community.
Even so, there's that consistent disappointment in lost years,
a waiting room, and I'm choking on oriental carpet threads lodged one by one into my throat and here I thought I'd eventually taste the Chinese
but it appears that they have instead swallowed me, downed me with tequila (label torn from passing months and birthdays not celebrated)
The holy temperate wind expands down and through bare branches,
argumentative hours
desperate hands
a loudspeaker CALLING!
and the WILD MACHINE cuckoo cuckoo past the insulation.
Silvery sweet, undreamed kisses, misunderstandings,
the cool reflection of a kettle while two wait for midnight and for the butterfly to creep up on their shoulders.
(cradled by cosmic lobotomy, hours where not one person can sleep,
and Sadhus give spiritual advice for those that need it, India, while I need their voices here on Vancouver Island, far from the Ghats)
When can I go for that intercontinental voyage??
to escape the warehouse cathedrals,
capital Christs,
nettled lipstick,
weariness in the age of wireless consciousness
and a spectrum of commonplace goddesses who wake with no lucidity.
My breathing getting heavier every day, with the weight of wanderlust,
an asthma designed for those who's material position is dictated by a secluded room
(slowly catching fire)
I'm only months away from the prophesied airplane..
all been leading to this
here, now
soon.

The only known alleviation
on this unrest for experience
resides in poetry.

Hiding away from the world behind a mask
Masking her untouched porcelain face
Face of pain face of hurt
Hurt by the scars and secrets of the past
Past stabbings of her fragile heart
Heart aches at her sacred fate
Fate that kisses her sweet skin and brushes her glossed eyes
Eyes dulled with lost love so beautiful yet disguised
Disguised with her compromise
Compromising her feelings under a blanket of fear
Fear of love fear of hate
Hating you
You in your disgrace

you take photos of men and women who aren’t all there.  you post the photos while your dog barks.  you doze on a hot day.  your mom calls to tell you about the spider in her eye and while she talks you look for your dog.  your mom thinks you sound desperate though you’ve said nothing.  you go outside and see your dog in the backseat of a parked car.  the car is not yours.  your mom has the hiccups and says the first part of goodbye.

Radio Transmission---Static
Quantum---Tunneled
Cycle---Depart
End Transmission.

With twists like a dying withered thing,
my senses are dulled,
my senses are dulled.

Vaccumed slowly in a first kiss,
the taste of another is potent;
curious you hold fast.

Spiralled into thick pitch,
envision the veil of a muslim woman,
impenetrable,enfolding.

A form rises and waits in the void,
she prepares to receive, to overcome,
to swallow and consume.

Wooing you, gliding about
whispering to and fro
at once ravished by words,
your presence evokes her.

A substance flows through
puckered moistened lips
inflamed and permeated with longing.

Embraced by ghosts lips,
tangling you, while pecking
at cloak, face and body,
siphoning life.

Tingles upon the flesh,
lend to ******* never quelched.
Her words:
"Delicious mate lounge with me,
partake of my sorrows, my intimacies.
One cannot revel alone, replace
the fickle before you."

You languish; absorbing
pungent flavors.
A masked perfume laced
with sufferings.

This longing gnaws,
within the organs of men.
Beating and pawing
against the tissues of the mind.

Kneading fences around the skull,
encasing it in its grip.
Following forth,
lips will seek
lips,
hips will ****** against
hips,
arms will encircle All.
This net will count its catch
when caught, feeding
the glazed fervor of greed.

Stabbings of hunger
seep from your coiling tongue,
elongating, wrapping around tidbits
served aplenty.

Dainties, morsels, spoonfuls, sips
and bites,
these are the helpings evident between,
chompings, gurgles, and slobberings.
Meat suckled from the passages of your teeth.

Becoming a porpoise thing
without definition, moving layers
of corpulence and indulgence.

Before long, you incite wrath;
your skeletal companion eats you,
a banquet of your own making.

.a six day span, which included five fatal stabbings... even around here, some black kid came from south London... was stabbed on the street which i walk at night, just outside of the Collier Row roundabout... as i walked past the spot one night... i said out-loud: sweet dreams, little *******.

but there was this other incident,
a man decided to walk with a knife...
so?
   he could buy a lemon, peel it,
and place sushi on it...
   how else wold you eat sushi,
if not placed on a slice of raw lemon,
sitting at the roundabout,
on a bench, during the night?!

so the man sees this chubby white
girl running...
  then some skinny black guy running
after her...
the man is sitting there,
in perfect public scrutiny peeling
the lemon and cutting a slice
before putting a sushi piece on it,
with soy sauce, pickled ginger
and a decent smear of wasabi...
    the man looks up at the unfolding
confrontation...
he sees that the girl is pointing
at him and shouting at the guy chasing
her to look at me...
  with headphones in his ears...
he notices a change of dynamic...
the guy chasing the girl starts to run
in the opposite direction...
the girl ends up getting the bus home...

   yeah... weird **** like that happens
to me...
             it's not like carry a knife
on my every day...
   just the days when i feel like eating
sushi on a slice of raw lemon,
in public;

how else? raw salmon works well
with cucumbers, dill and some mayo...
but in sushi form,
   you need the lemon bite.

The city was hungry. A mewing came from an alley. A hollow exchange.
The innards of the district had been gutted by libertine sons.
We were scared of the silence, so we filled it with shootings, and lynchings, and stabbings, and rapes.
You came an empty reflection. It was the night before the bombs fell. I remember the way my atoms shifted. You lying there in the morning.
We fell into one another, like rabid dogs at corpses.

Limbs lined the streets.
You were distant that day. I broke ******* climbing over a fence, and lined them with the rest.
The radio tower looked abandoned.
You told me three years later you didn’t care either way. I walked you to the bridge and watched you swim the Styx.
I’d never cared from the start.

The world ended soon after.
The moon’s belly cracked, guts spilling onto the earth.
Children pelted one another with flesh. Parents stood in doorways, smiling.
The swell stretched infinitely, reaching neither peak nor fall.
I fell asleep on your grave, nestled in the cold of yesterday’s ache.

When I woke,broke my fast,showered,dressed and then at last I leave the home minus keys and mobile phone I'm not surprised at all.
Early birds must wait their turn and I am third in line to catch the worm,the bus is full,I pull another cigarette,get the free tabloided press,with ironed words upon my eyes and once again I'm not surprised.
Stabbings,killings,patented pile creams for twenty shillings interspersed among the news,I amuse myself by seeing words that don't exist or if they do they're in the pages that I missed and failed to read.
At seven fifteen,bus stop C, alighting I call in to Joe's cafe for a tea,he's a refugee and doing very well,he tells me that he's getting wed,I tell him that I'm getting fed up with the daily grind and remind him to cut down on the gin,his eyes like **** holes in the sand and hands shake slightly as he hands the tea to me and then it's off to 143 ,ditch the tea,don the suit,look interested as if I give a hoot,which I do not.
I forgot,forget,give all and yet give in,I only win at five o shock when looking at the office clock,I lock the door,take off the suit I wore and turn into the early worm once more.
If Life's a bore then I'm the drill
fill me full of life.

I know a scared God
(I've seen a scared God)
A living-way-up-there God

Slumped outside our orbit of violence
We're wishing you just cared God

Upside while I'm downtown screaming:
YOU KNOW THIS ISN'T FAIR GOD

You're hiding up in nitrous heavens
A help-only-if-you-dare God

As our sins slip into the water supply
You've given us nothing to bathe in God

These California fires; these 2 a.m. stabbings
All this suffering isn't rare God

With nothing else to live up to
I guess we have to wear god.

Imagine a world in which
you lived in a little house
in the middle of the woods --
an itty bitty cabin with creature
comforts and small necessities,
and paper and ink and tables and chairs --
in it
you slept and wept and dreamt,
and would walk and walk
never finding anywhere else...
always returning to your teeny front door.

The cabin sits in silence,
in semi-darkness most of the day --
the path of the sun moves
l a n g u i d l y
through the sky
and the neighboring trees
cast puddles of shade.

You wish for
companionship,
though you
aren't sure
what that means.

Sometimes,
along your garden fence
you find little bits of paper
or tissues
or wind-swept bottles
butting up against the slats.

The papers have names
and bits of stories:
of shootings and stabbings and
conniving schemers,
of donations and creations
and family boat-races;
and you wonder who these people are,
or if the pages are ripped
from some book you don't own --
and if the wind blows in
toward your tiny little home...
mustn't there be a way
to get out?

from ~The Blood You Don’t See Is Fake~ selected poems (September 2013)

[multitudes]

oh, here they are.  the interested persons we will find later.  for now, this field.  my gestural father holding a broom for what he calls the welcome mat of exodus.  if my mother is watching it is because she long ago dropped birds from a single passenger plane.  if instead she is privately seen by god, then the whole bird thing was a bit of a stretch.  in memory alone I am alone.

[another ****]

in such times, it is constantly 2am.  a friend pulls carefully at your ear.  a friend’s thumb is a hologram of a thumb.  you are being told that what you’re about to be told is highly confidential.  because it’s dark, and because your bed is the prize winning bed of a formerly dethroned insomniac, you are nothing if not empowered to listen.  your friend’s tongue redacts the parts of your body that have been marked.  this is done in secret.  what you’re hearing right now was scored some time ago.  when things were the same.      

[word of the devil’s death]

     my mother and father cower under the kitchen table and my brothers are dead.  my father has clammed up since asking me to tell him something he can take to his grave.  this last week I’ve mastered placing my ear on the table in such a way I hear what I am supposed to do.  impossible things that are no longer terrible.  dispatches from a simpler region.  for example, hack your roommate’s youtube account.  also, poison the non-pregnant.  my baby sister laughs with me when I say some of these aloud.  she believes the table is possessed by the devil’s ghost.  her beliefs are clear and specific.  the ghost thinks itself the actual devil, and will need a good amount of therapy.                    

[men statuesque]

I am struck by the urge to pray.

my trauma has yet to occur.

the stress my father knows

knew his hands
as he waved them in front of nothing
on a tarmac obscured by speech.

night is a ruined crow.

I see the city as possibly bombed.

[steganography]

every day is a scar’s birthday.  this is how I am able to start most of your sentences.  I praise your god, you worry, and worry keeps him from finding out.  on the day you started talking the rooms were horrified.  the termites fled your blood.  a cold stone appeared outside beside a stick.  the home’s most loved dog died without spatial awareness.  your mother began to compose a series of poems by Franz Wright.  for inspiration she put her hands in the dog and in doing so dropped a sack of black groceries.  a thing that changed over time rolled into your father’s mouth.


[the wave]

we let the phone ring out because it keeps the babies quiet.  we have this dance we do to straighten side leaning semi-trailer trucks.  the sports we play require that one’s sickness occur only when it’s run through the others.  we limp beside any creature that limps.  the great romance of a complete thought is something our parents plan to leave each other.  our father is two mathematicians who argue.  our mother says her feet feel as if they’re still in prison for what she’ll take to her grave.  our guesses mean little because they are facts.  at school we are voted on and kissable.  if you see us coming, *** is a small unplugged television on top of a small casket.  details belong to god.      

[fixture]

dying of young age, your brother nurses at the breast of the stage hand’s version of a mother.  the stage hand is off arguing with a lamp on the impossibility of attracting moths.  beside a tall cake, a groom with lockjaw and a stiff neck has to take life’s high point on faith.  if you remember, brother made for the groom a bible so light it could be held by a cobweb.  and then it was.      

~~~~~~~~~~

from ~father, footrace, fistfight~ selected poems (June 2014)

[future stabbings]

you take photos of men and women who aren’t all there. you post the photos while your dog barks. you doze on a hot day. your mom calls to tell you about the spider in her eye and while she talks you look for your dog. your mom thinks you sound desperate though you’ve said nothing. you go outside and see your dog in the backseat of a parked car. the car is not yours. your mom has the hiccups and says the first part of goodbye.

[dog years]

the longer
I grieve

the more

[crystal]

a foster boy using an alias teaches my son to shoot.

it’s the tooth fairy on a sad day finds
under my pillow
a handgun.

you know your father
is a night owl.

[mendicant]

this doorbell
is for the inside
of your house

-

to some
you’re the giant
you’re not

-

hearing isn’t for everyone  

-

a fog-softened man
with a baby
might experience
a sense
of boat
loss…

-

hurt

what you know

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

from ~Eating the Animal Back to Life~ full length poetry collection (July 2015)

[uppers]

god gets ******-up about which hair to harm on your head. in some, this goes on for years. I have a lucky razor, a father who’s blind in one hand, and a suicidal thought that scares me to death in front of cops. my last meal came to me on a toothbrush.

[themes for orphan]

you will never be
a virus

-

the animal’s moment of bliss
before it is named

-

*******
as the seizure
had
by hologram

-

the cyclone
that makes a baby
you can’t
put down


[accession]

starvation
is the invisible
cannibal’s
birthmark.

water
is nothing’s
blood.

Safeguarded by shadows
I saw
Servants performing
Sedated but live
Sacrifice
On a stone altar
I saw them sever spines
And several limbs
I heard snaps
Saw skinning
Stabbings  
Some wrists getting slit
And I slipped
Suddenly
The stairs were slippery
And I stumbled
Among skeletons
Skulls, skins
And serpents
Stupefied and scared
I stood
In the sanctuary
Surrounded by soulless shells
Swarming me
Seeking to sink  
Their shredding teeth
Into my shivering skin
And stick their sullied spears
Through the sockets
Of my eyes
To stab at
my sanity

I - In the active perspiring of
Manhattan dirt

& now I tell ya
The monkeys lost his surpreme gavel
& intimacy finds a false place
Within the youthful realm of transience
(the wide grove of
Grass slowly growing into golden cherries
To be picked apart and criticized by ones who'd gladly describe themselves as Angelic)

A ladder topples over a nightly bistro causing its windows
To ever /so //slight/ly crack
The owner & his two daughters take themselves

(along with his displeasement)
to the basement to conjure up a lawyer made of wax

Meanwhile Queens experiences rain as a cataclysmic shower occuring everywhere
Even the barred 1st floor apartments /

Nearby stabbings\

(74 people watching
  and the screams for help were audible nobody did a ******' thing. We call this the 'bystander effect')

I am long-awaited and less stressed in comparison to the last time I broke the barrier of clouds,
Which decieve America into thinking its
Worth only greyness
& worrying about bathroom Mirrors//srorriM//

(sorry!)

The cinema will show you otherwise!

Minnesota causeway glittering with
Luggage carriers
Alike we are and have been
Bundled together
To read poetics or the sad paper
About elephants in an empty zoo
or the flammatory lawns of Washington

WRAP YOUR TROUBLES
IN DREAMS
(audible from a brunette protected by last year's scarf, the cabin pressure decreasing
my ears feel full of eagerness)

Trunk of the elephant I read earlier
Lets us thru to Airport
The hollowed organics of this passage
Cause my spine to crawl
There are flies bespeckled like
The jewelry of decay

      But soon we are clean again
Yet still without a forest to
         Confess in
               Comforted by shrill wind echoing 'round the wood
              
(as one would say patience is a virtue)

II -   I have missed the first
Haze of every mornings gentle mouth

Strawberries press themselves harshly to lobes
Like oriental jazz
& a collective yawn
As the ground becomes
        nobody
        Wait! Look down there!
        It's my friend welcomed to wifehood!
              Ballads of a long time ago,
                   Humid run-ins with the twinkler
                   Performing a theatrical
                 Tearduct expression

Valleys of varying shades/
Orchards & the Apple of my eye
      Nectar and beggar
      Some Disney story Swiss town
      Operated by
      Language,
       I am tired which causes me to write
       I am writing which causes me to tire
       I am which writing causes to tire
       I which am writing tired causes to
       (the shoreline of a dream where
       Socialists wearing straw hats created a whole scene involving a loud child
       Unaware of what movement he was being indoctrinated into
       And a pocket full of change which was later tossed to the sea
       The image of which caused My Mother to
       Wake from her fainting)

Seance in voluptuous turmoil
Only confronted by
       A vision of the sky transitioned to earth
       & shadow dancing
       Accompanied with the sun,
        its last inkling of lemondrops
        Spread in buttery fashion to my personal
        Horizon
      __________

Fr­ee from(in the) the properties of
Textbooks and
Inflated intellectualism(vast pastoral landscapes)
One can
    Allow themselves to truly sleep in
    Peace
       (of the air)

Too many know Sandy Hook
but they don’t know about
the stabbings of the little ones
in China that happened on the same day.


Aside from that
men who cannot get out of the fire
and who cannot be tamed
are true animals

To walk in my shoes
Would be to walk in hell.
From deaths to back stabbings.
From pain to sorrow.
Broken hearts to feeling love again.
Losing the ones close to you.
Getting bullied but not realizing it.
Getting your heart ripped out from ones you once trusted.
Losing family members who are dear to you.
All these things have happened to me in my life.
There is much more to come in this wonderful life of mine.