I breathe stale air again,
painful in particular,
burning me inside.

I remember this feeling—
this foolish fall down the steps of my heart—
the shaking of my fingers when I met your eyes,
the trembling of my voice whenever I talked.

I know this feeling.
I know it.

And I’m breathing stale air again,
painful in particular,
burning me inside,
because the one thing I know
is that this feeling hurts,
every time.

Part I


the plateau. the truest of them all. coast line. night spells and even controlled by the dream of meeting again. the ribbon of darker than light in your crown. No region overlooked. Third picnic table to the drive at Half Moon Bay, meet me there, decant my speech there. the table by the restroom block. While the tide is in show me your oyster garden, 3:00p.m. at half-light here in the evilest torments that have been shed.---------------door locked.  The moors. Cow herds and lymph nodes, rancorous afternoon West light and bending roads, the cliffs, a sister, the need to jump. There is nothing as serious as this. There is nothing nor no one that could ever, or would ever on this side come between. Who needs sleep or jokes or snow or rivers or bombs or to turn or be a rat or a fly or ceiling fan or a gurney or a cadaver or piece of cloth or a bed spread or a couch or a game or the flint of a lighter or the bell of a dress; the bell of your dress, yes, perhaps. Having been crushed like orange cigarette light in a pool of Spanish tongues. I feel the heave, the pull; not a yawn but a wired, thread-like twist about my core. Up around the neck it makes the first cut, through the eyes out and into the nostrils down over the left arm, on the inside of the bicep, contorting my length, feigning sleep, and then cutting over my stomach, around and around multiples of times- pulled at the hips and under the groin, across each leg and in-between each nerve, capillary, artery, hair, dot, dimple, muscle, to the toes and in-between them. Wiry dream-like and nervous nightmarish, hellacious plateaus of leapers. Penguin heads and more penguin heads. Startling torment. The evilest of the vile mind. The dance of despair: if feet contorted and bound could move. The beach off Belmont. The hills and the reasons I stared. Caveat after caveat at the heads of letters, on the heads of crowns, and the wrists, and on the palms. Being pulled and signed, and moved away so greatly and so heavily at once in a moment, that even if it were a year or a set of many months it would always be a moment too taking away to be considered an expanse, and it would be too hellacious to be presumptuous. It could only be a shadow over my right shoulder as I write the letters over and again. One after another. Internally I ask if I would even grant a convo with Keats or Yeats or Plath or Hughes? Does mine come close? Does it matter the bellies reddish and cerise giving of pain? Does it have to have many names?


"This is the only Earth," I would say with the bouquet of lilies spread out on the table. Are lilies only for funerals, I would never make or risk or wish this metaphor, even play it like the drawn out notes of a melody unwritten and un-played: my black box and latched, corner of the room saxophone. Top-floor, end of the hall two-room never-ending story, I'm the left side of the bed Chicago and I see pink walls, bathrooms, the two masonite paintings, the Chanel books, the bookshelves, the white desk, the white dresser, you on the left side of the bed in such sentimental woe, **** carpet and tilted blinds, and still the moors and the whispering in the driver's seat in afternoon pasture. Sunset, sunrise, nighttime and bike room writing in other places, apartments, rooms where I inked out fingertips, blights, and moods; nothing ever being so bleak, so eerily woe-like or stoic. Nothing has ever made me so serious.

Put it on the rib, in a t-shirt. Make it a hand and guide it up a set of two skinny legs under a short-sheeted bed in small room and literary Belmont, address included. Trash cans set out morning and night, deck-readied cigarette smoking. Sliding glass door and kitchen fright. Low-lit living room white couch, kaleidoscope, and zoetrope. Spin me right round baby right round. I am my own revenge of toxic night. Attack the skin, the soul, the eyes, the mind, and the lids. The finger lids and their tips. Rot it out. Blearing wild and deafening blow after blow: left side of the bed the both of us, whilst stirs the intrepid hate and ousts each ******* tongue I can bellow and blow.

Last resort lake note in snow bank and my river speak and forest walk. Wrapped in blocks and boxes, Christmas packaging and giant over-sized red ribbons and bows. Shall I mention the bassinet, the stroller, the yard, several rings of gold and silver, several necklaces of black and thread? I draw dagger from box, jagged ended and paper-wrapped in white and amber: lit in candle light and black room shadow-kept and sleeping partisan unforgettable forever. Do I mention Hawaii, my mother dying, invisible ligatures and the unveiling of the sweat and horror? Villainous and frightening, the breath as a bleat or heart-beat and matchstick stirring slightly every friends' woe and tantrum of their spirit.

Lobster-legged, waiting, sifting through the sea shore at the sea line, the bright tyrannosaurs in mahogany, in maple, and in twine over throw rose meadow over-looks, honey-brimming and warehouse built terrariums in the underbelly of the ravine, twist and turn: road bending, hollowing, in and out and in and out, forever, the everlasting and too fastidious driving towards; and it's but what .2 miles? I sign my name but I'll never get out. I am mocked and musing at tortoise speed. Headless while improvising. Purring at any example of continue or extremity or coolness of mind, meddling, or temptation. I rock, bellowing. Talk, sending shivers up my spine. I'm cramped, and one thousand fore-words and after words that split like a million large chunks of spit, grime, and *****; **** and more ****. I might even be standing now. I could be a candle, in England, a kingdom, in Palo Alto, a rook in St. Petersburg. Mottled by giants or sleepless nights, I could be the Eiffel Tower or the Statue of Liberty, a heated marble flower or the figure dying to be carved out. I'm veering off highways, I'm belittling myself: this heathen of the unforgettable, the bog man and bow-tied vagrant of dross falsification and dross despair. I am at the sea shore, tide-righted and tongue-tide, bilingual, and multi-inhibited by sweat, spit, quaffs of sea salt, lake water, and the like. Rotten wergild ridden- stitched of a poor man's ringworm and his tattered top hat and knee-holed trousers. I'm at the sea shore, with the cucumbers dying, the rain coming in sideways, the drifts and the sandbars twisting and turning. I'm at the sea shore with the light house bruise-bending the sweet ships of victory out backwards into the backwaters of a mislead moonlight; guitars playing, beeps disappearing, pianos swept like black coffees on green walled night clubs, arenose and eroding, grainy and distraught, bleeding and well, just bleeding.






I'm at the sea shore, the coastline calling. I've got rocks in my pockets, ******* and two lines left in the letter. I’m at the sea shore, my mouth is a ghost. I've seen nothing but darkness. I'm at the seashore, second picnic table, bench facing the squat and gobble, the tin roof and riled weir near the roadside. .2 and I'm still here with my bouquet wading and waiting. I'm at the sea shore and there's nobody here. My inches are growing shorter by the second, cold, whet by the sunset, its moon men, their heavy claws and bi-laws overthrowing and throwing me out. The thorns stick. The tyrannosaurs scream. I'm at the sea shore, plateau, left bedside to write three more letters. Sign my name and there's nobody here.

I'm at the sea shore: here are my lips, my palms (both of them facing up), here are my legs (twine and all), my torso, and my head shooting sideways. I'm at the seashore and this is my grave, this is my purposeful calotype, my hide and go seek, my show and tell, my forever. .2 and forever and never ending. I was just one dream away come and keep me. I'm at the sea shore come and see me and seam me. I'm without nothing, the sky has drifted, the sea is leaving, my seat is a matchbox and I'm all wound up. The snow settling, the ice box and its glory taken for granted. I'm at the sea shore and there's nobody here. The room with its white sets of furniture, the lilies, the Chanel, the masonite paintings, the bed, your ribbon of darker on light, the throw rug **** carpet, pink walled sister's room, and the couch at the top of the stairs. I'm at the sea shore, my windows opened wide, my skin thrown with threat, rhinoceri, reddish bruises bent of cerise staled sunsets. I'm at the sea shore and there's nobody here. I'm at the plateau and there isn't a single ship. There are the rocks below and I'm counting. My caveats all implored and my goodbyes written. I'm in my bed and the sleep never set in. I'm name dropping God and there's nobody there. I'm in a chair with my hands on a keyboard, listening to Danish throb-rock, horse-riding into candle light on a wicked wedding of wild words and teary-eyed gazes and gazers. Bent by the rocking and the torment, the wild and the weird, the horror and everything horrifying. There is this shadow looking over my shoulder. I'm all alone but I feel like you're here.



Part II




I wake up in Panama. The axe there. Sleeping on the floors in the guest bedroom, the floor of the garden shed, the choir closet, the rut of dirt at the end of the flower bed; just a towel, grayish-blue, alone, lawnmower at my side, and sky blue setting all around. I was a family man. No I just taste bits of dirt watching a quiet and contrary feeling of cool limestone wrap over and about my arms and my legs. Lungs battered by snapping tongues, and ancient conversations; I think it was the Malaysian Express. Mom quieted. Sister quieted. Father wept. And is still weeping. Never have I heard such horrifying and un-kindly words.-----------------------It's going to take giant steel cavernous explorations of the nose, brain cell after brain cell quartered, giant ******* quaffs of alcohol, harboring false lanterns and even worse chemicals. Inhalations and more inhalations. I'm going to need to leap, flight, drop into bodies of waters from air planes and swallow capsules of psychotropics, sedatives beyond recalcitrance. I'm requiring shock treatments and shock values. Periodic elements and galvanized steel drums. Malevolence and more malevolence. Forest walks, and why am I still in Panama. I don't want to talk, to sleep, to dream, to play stale-mating games of chess, checkers, Monopoly, or anything Risk involving. I can't sleep, eat, treaty or retreat. I'm wickeded by temptations of grandeur and threats of anomaly, widening only in proverb and swept only by opposing endeavors. Horrified, enveloped, pictured and persuaded by the evilest of haunts, spirits, and match head weeping women. I can't even open my mouth without hearing voices anymore. The colors are beginning to be enormous and I still can't swim. I couldn't drown with my ears open if I kept my nose dry and my mouth full of a plane ticket and first class beanstalk to elysian fields. It's pervasive and I'm purveyed. It's unquantifiable. It's the epitomizing and the epitome. I have my epaulets set for turbulent battles though I still can't fend off night. Speak and I might remember. Hear and it's second rite. Sea attacks, oceans roaring, lakes swallowing me whole. Grand bodies of waters and faces and arms appendages, crowns and more crowns and more crowns and more crowns and more crowns and I'm still shaking, and I'm still just a button. And I still can't sleep. And I'm still waiting.

It is night. The moon ripening, peeling back his face. Writhing. Seamed by the beauty of the nocturne, his ways made by sun, sky, and stars. Rolled and rampant. Moved across the plateau of the air, and its even and coolly majestic wanton shades of twilight. It heads off mountains, is swept as the plains of beauty, their faces in wild and feral growths. Bent and bolded, indelible and facing off Roman Empires too gladly well in inked and whet tips of bolder hands to soothe them forth.-----------Here in their grand and grandiose furnaces of the heart, whipped tails and tall fables fettered and tarnished in gold’s and lime. Here with their mothers' doting. Here with their Jimi Hendrix and poor poetry and stand-up downtrodden wergild and retardation. I don't give a ****. I could weep for the ***** if they even had hair half as fine as my own. I am real now. Limited by nothing. Served by no worship or warship. My flotilla serves tostadas at full-price. So now we have a game going.-----------------------------------------------------------­------------------------  My cowlick is not Sinatra's and it certainly doesn't beat women. As a matter of factotum and of writ and bylaw. I'm running down words more quickly than the stanza's of Longfellow. I'm moving subtexts like Eliot. I'm rampant and gaining speed. Methamphetamine and five star meats. Alfalfa and pea tendrils. Loves and the lovers I fall over and apart on. Heroes and my fortune over told and ever telling. Moving in arc light and keeping a warm glow.

the fish line caves. the shimmy and the shake. Bluegrass music and big wafting bell tones. snakes and the river, hands on the heads, through the hair; I look straight at the Pacific. I hate plastic flowers, those inanimate stems and machine-processed flesh tones. Waltzing the state divide. I am hooked on the intrepid doom of startling ego. I let it rake into my spine. It's hooves are heavy and singe and bind like manacles all over me. My first, my last, my favorite lover. I'm stalemating in the bathtub. Harnessing Crystal Lite and making rose gardens out of CD inserts and leaf covers. I'm fascinated by magic and gods. Guns and hunters. Thieving and mold, and laundry, and stereotypes, and great stereos, and boom-boxes, and the hi-fi nightlife of Chicago, roasting on a pith and meaty flame, built like a horror story five feet tall and laced with ruggedness and small needles. My skin is a chromium orchid and the grizzly subtext of a Nick Cave tune. I've allowed myself to be over-amplified, to mistake in falsetto and vice versa. To writhe on the heavy metallic reverberations of an altercated palpitation. The heart is the lonely hunted. First the waterproof matchsticks, then the water, the bowie knife, crass grasses and hard-necked pitch-hitters and phony friends; for doing lunch in the park on a frozen pond, I play like I invented blonde and really none of my **** even smells like gold.--------------------- There are the tales of false worship. I heard a street vendor sell a story about Ovid that was worse than local politics. As far as intermittent and esoteric histories go I'm the king of the present, second stage act in the shadow of the sideshow. Tonight I'm greeting the characters with Vaseline. For their love of music and their love of philosophy. For their twilight choirs and their skinny women who wear black antler masks and PVC and polyurethane body suits standing in inner-city gardens chanting. For their chanting. The pacific. For the fish line caves. For the buzzing and the kazoos. For the alfalfa and the three fathers of blue, red, and yellow. For the state of the nation. But still mostly working for the state of equality, more than a room for one’s own.-------------------------------------------------------------­------"Rice milk for all of you." " Kensington and whittled spirits."
(Doppelganger enters stage left)MAN: Prism state, flash of the golden arc. Beastly flowers and teeming woodlands. Heir to the throes and heir to the throng.----------------------------------------------------------­--------------- The sheep meadow press in the house of affection. The terns on my hem or the hide in my beak; all across the steel girder and whipping ******* the windows facing out. The mystery gaze that seers the diplopic eye. Still its opening shunned. I put a cage over it and carry it like a child through Haight-Ashbury. At times I hint that I'm bored, but there is no letting of blood or rattle of hope. When you live with a risk you begin at times to identify with the routes. Above the regional converse, the two on two or the two on four. At times for reasons of sadness but usually its just exhaustion. At times before the come and go gets to you, but usually that is wrong and they get to you first. Lathering up in a small cerulean piece of sky at the end turnabout of a dirt road

Too much, too fast.
Breathless at a stoplight.
change
fast
must
go
I HAVE NO TIME
everything/everything/today/tomorrow
Always with the rushing, barely feeling, barely knowing where I am.

Now there's nothing.

It's a break, slow and stale.
What do I do?
There are four or five things maybe but none feel right and I can't bring myself to move.
I try one thing,
then another.
No drive,
meaning,
purpose,
feeling.
Not even my eyes can focus on anything.
Skipping, blinking, nothing.
Slow.

Give me back the whirlwind, or give me gravelike nothing.
Nothing is right.
I need power to feel and peace to fight or I am already dead.
Please.
I'm trusting You.
Please.

i miss you so much it hurts my whole body.
do you remember when we talked about going to seattle?
you said you liked the rain
and the fact that no one there would know you,
i just wanted to be wherever you were.
i was never afraid of the dark
when you talked about yours.
i still don't have words for what i felt
when you told me the only other number
you had saved in your phone apart from your mother's was mine.
i keep telling myself you're not allowed
to just exit and re-enter my life as you please,
but i leave the door unlocked,
so what does that make me?
the last "i love you" from the last time we spoke,
is still stuck to the roof of my mouth.
other lovers have tried to pry it out of me,
but the memory of you is like lockjaw.
i miss you so much it hurts my whole body.
do you remember the lizard you caught last summer?
you let me name him forrest.
if life is a box of chocolates,
there are pieces missing,
and whatever is left has gone stale.
i can't smoke cigarettes in my backyard anymore
without wondering where you are
or if you're smoking too.
i hope you're not drinking,
i know you hate what it does to you.
your secrets are still tucked between my ribs,
i will hold them safe and repeat them back to you
if you ever lose your way home.
i miss you so much it hurts my whole body.
do you remember when you told me
about the person you were afraid of becoming,
i said i wasn't scared,
and i told you i was proud of you?
i'm still proud of you.
i hope you're in school or at least keeping busy.
i hope you still make yourself laugh.
i miss you so much it hurts my whole body.
do you remember what movie we were watching
the night you got arrested?
i still can't finish it.
i am holding the place.
can we pick up where we left off?
can we stand up and wipe the dust off?
i never got to tell you why i only write in pen,
or why i can't sleep with socks on,
or about the day i caught god with his hands in a public fountain
fishing for change.
i'm not mad at you for disappearing, but i'm lonely.
the only reason i haven't called
is because i'm afraid of being sent straight to voicemail,
but if i ever find myself in indiana again,
you'll be the first to know.

- m.f.

Don't fall in love with a girl who reads.
The girl who feels everything, who dreams, who writes..

Fall in love with the girl you find in a bar. Find her in the squall of smoke and sweat of an upscale nightclub. Make sure she doesn't mix her coffee with bourbon. Love the one shooting tequila straight from a cheap, half-empty bottle. Wherever you find her, find her smiling. Make sure it lingers a little too long. Use pickup lines and entertain her with meaningless slurs from a long day and mistakes you know are about to be made. Take her outside and kiss her in the rain because you saw it in a film. Comment on its silliness.

Pull her into a tolerable relationship. Let the months pass by without remark. Then let years pass by unnoticed. Talk about nothing of significance and retreat into it when the air grows stale and the evenings become long. Fight about how the shower curtain needs to be kept closed. Propose a little later because you realize you'd have wasted so much time otherwise. Take her to a restaurant that wreaks of marinara sauce and sheepishly ask the waiter to bring a bottle of expensive champagne. Offer up a modest ring and don't become too concerned if you feel nothing of sincerity or commitment. But fake it, ******* it.

Do these things. Because a life lived in purgatory is better than one lived in hell. She will make it hell. I'm begging you, stay away from the one who reads. Who laughs or cries when she makes love. Who can neatly fold her spirit and spin it into prose and poetry. If she loves poetry, run away. Don't dare to look back. She is to be left alone. Dangerous little smiles should make you shake. Do not smile back.

Do not fall in love with a girl who thinks. Who is made up of magic and knows herself. Do not love the one who knows how to disappear inside of a book or a poem or a painting. If she spends any more than a few seconds looking into the eyes of a sinner, get out of there.

Don't fall in love with the girl who is interested in politics, who feels disease in injustices. Don't love the one who is intense, who is lucid and charismatic. Stay away from the one who has any sense of ambition, of rebellion, or even the smallest hint of wonder in her eyes. Be cautious of the ones who can't live without music. If she can draw, quit, and quit fast.

A girl who reads is one who knows herself; who is sure. She is educated and she is fire inside a bottle of rye. The girl who reads is one who is comfortable with goodbyes. Think about it: she's read millions of novels and each one ends. Most end with the death of her favorite character. They make her think. And she flies through the pages like they are wet wine on collarbones. And she is okay with each and every ending. Sure, she might cry, but she'll wipe her face and pick up another book. Just to do it all over again. Remember this if she ever says her favorite book is you.

She is a romantic and how can you match up to the princes and heroes in her books? She knows nothing else. You can't love her the way those characters could if they were to take shape. She holds a vocabulary that lays claim to her ability to distinguish between the specious and the soulless. She holds rhetoric hands that turn black streaks into the books she loves so deeply. She deserves a man who can hold her hand the way she holds her books. Someone who can write her notes and hide them in her lunch box. Can you write in cursive the way she can?

Please, don't fall in love with a girl who reads. Because a girl like that, you never come back from.

I've grown tired of love poems,
They are all dried up ink,
Forgotten valentines,
Stale ideas to think,
Upon receiving your letter,
I remembered the weather,
Care package bouquets,
and I hope you get betters,

i deal within the realm of the currency of words -
words are my currency; sure, you can throw coinage
into the affair, or what i'd prefer to be called:
the gambler's cauldron, the days when history
is not built through will and outside the casino...
these days are built through
chance (luck) and outside the church...
    wasn't ever attending
the church the biggest gamble?
was theology,
ever not inclusive of the notion
of gambling?
   atheists don't gamble,
they have no notion of chance...
they lack the adrenaline junk
bound to adrenaline...
    immobile senile *******
and they know it!
   atheism will not attract
as much emotional concerns
to upset the stance of apathy,
only because atheism has
no degenerate attitude of
capitalism, which is gambling...
come on! people love to gamble!
the more wealth they amount
and can no longer see any use
for it... they won't invest it in others:
they'll waste it! they'll gamble it
away!
   atheism feeds no idea supportive
of gambling...
    even in the dialectical medium:
one side says:
    i know that i don't know,
   but how can you be certain
  that you know?
likewise: i know that i know,
but how can you be certain
          that i don't know?
   theology has so much of gambling
inviting its scarred hearts
and inhibited ambitious ones...
     people talk of western civilisation,
but what talk is there is
western communism,
          serious communism?
people only understand the capital,
and the gamble with it...
          better to gamble,
than to become philanthropic...
             i've never seen days where
money is so squandered...
but you might as well
   throw pebbles into the whole
dynamic,
  wishing for a philosopher's
   stone to come from the other side...
pascal's wager is alive and well...
    atheism can't fathom a worthy reply...
what can atheism provide for
the gambler?
      what's to gamble for?
   what gamble does atheism provide?
pascal? he was smart enough to explain
the human dynamic of a thrill...
   people are adrenaline junkies...
they do un-imaginable feats of danger,
can't theology equal that,
  on a microscopic level or slight deviations
of felt emotions?
     people gambled, gamble,
and will continue to gamble,
  simply because the idea of money is
so limited that it had to fill the vacuum of its
existence with both gambling, & communism...
how can atheism usurb pascal's wager
when atheists can't stop people gambling?
what is the atheistic wager?
      is there a worthy gamble?
     this is why people become so heated
in the theological dynamo...
             they become a tsunami,
a tornado, a hurricane...
             simply because atheism has no
gambling dynamic invoked...
    there's no god, death is certain,
what is there to gamble with?
another hour of a boring stalemate sunday
before the next working week begins?
that's not even a gamble!
           people need to gamble!
  please... please...
you have nothing for the theological gamble...
atheists have no sweet scented nectar
of an argument...
   no dubious fickle state of emotional
turmoil...
                    atheism is just another
boring framework of "revised" boredom...
        say to to people who gamble,
no one in this world wants to live a certain
life,
       and die with a certain truth...
                there's always the quest for
potential, for uncertainity, for adventure...
     atheism is probably the worst assertion of science...
man is born into the certainity of existence,
but lives, and wishes to die
            into / with the uncertainty of essence...
i.e. was war ever essential?
     was love ever the sole purpose of explanation
and worth the crown of above all explanations?
       man is in this affair a quasi-specimen
of the civilised typos...
      strange affair:
             he is alone, the natural world's typo,
rather than the kin of monk chimp & anzzy...
  i find it as follows:
  it will be hard to relieve theology of
the gambler...
                        and therefore gambling itself,
as a worthwhile invitation for
universal socialist philandering with
                   philanthropy...
as i find it as follows:
    atheism is no place for gambling,
   even it be as eloquent as the gambling
of pascal...
                      i suppose atheism does
hold the joker hand of gambling:
   an actual end of gambling,
   and a return to communism,
  whereby gambling is replaced by utopian
philanthropy...
                   here's your god.

i was considering how
within night’s loose
sack a star’s
nibbling in-

fin
-i-
tes-
i
-mal-
ly devours

darkness the
hungry star
which
will e

-ven
tu-
al
-ly jiggle
the bait of
dawn and be ******

into

eternity. when over my head a
shooting
star
Bur      s

              (t
                  into a stale shriek
like an alarm-clock)

When Villains Win

Movies and books
They're all predictable
So unoriginal

I dream of a story
Where the plot is somewhat gory
And the villain
Isn't just chillin'

The hero and their nemesis
Are at a stale mate
And their actions aren't repetitive
Finally the hero's imperfections take over,
and he hits too late

The enemy takes control
And the moment, he stole
He doesn't hesitate
A second, he doesn't wait
Time isn't slowed down
He doesn't take his sweet time
So quickly, he cuts the line

The end of the hero
A new beginning for evil

that's 3 weeks without a keyboard,
that's 3 weeks on a dual-detox -
         that's that: roughly: antagonism
of: once upon a time...
           there can only be one Hans Andersen,
and as the story goes: ol' granny
   passed on the tales, without which:
no talk of posterity, and seances at
the theatre; alternatively: what if Kierkegård
opted for opera, rather than theatre?
    well: horrid is the task of dropping names,
as if being a village idiot, in that
capacity: giving directions... no such thing!
  nonetheless: a horrid task...
3 weeks... without this horrid world-entanglement...
amphetamines in the wild west,
                   and yet... everything slows down...
that's 3 weeks without such ''luxury''...
    and would you believe it?
3 weeks went by: in a blink of an eye.
             strange, or what 21st century writers
fail to recognise: the ******* canvas has changed!
any-single-one-of-them bothered to scrutinise
this new canvas? anyone?
     ah yes, it's still in its adolescence -
it's still: Dostoyevsky, scuttering in the grand
dungeon: that's the Moscow underground.
             the canvas! the canvas!
                             and indeed, if this be some
bellowing horn, from the depths of some forsaken
place... i'll go into the street, and sabotage
civilisation with graffiti...
                     then again: i have the least
expectations, such that capitalism works...
poetry... and what investment have you made?
nil, or almost nil... evidently: zilch!
      ah, but to have invested in canvases,
a studio, paints, brushes... see... no one sees
investment in poetry: primarily because the poet
has done the minimal...
            unless of course it turns out to ****
with a hot poker something once resembling
nations... which now resides in the insane asylum
(even though those, have been abolished)
                           , nation - ooh! what a ***** word!
the left irksome sometimes uses it:
in theory: the nation-state...
                        and then there's the resurgence of
ancient Greece... in a sing-along:
maybe 'cos i'm a Londoner... brother! brother!
Athenian! Athenian!
                                       but we are born into
a Spartan wedlock... no one really bothers to
**** our gob with Shakespeare...
    then again that is the schizophrenia (alias
dualism) in humanity... thus, to be frank,
psychiatry can be congratulated, it has provided
one useful term... and i will use it, over and over again,
in a non-symptomatic way, because, i find,
it stands, as if the Olympic Graeae (Zeus, Poseidon
and Hades) eating the carcass of some inhabitant
of Tartarus...
                               evidently: tartar steak...
doubly evident: tartars, or the remnants of mongols,
settled in crimea, and elsewhere in the Ukraine...
   tartar                      tra-ta-ta-ta... ku ku ryku!
a ja fu! krecha! a ja znow... fu!       radowitą
uprzejmość... skłaniam...  
    or what i call: rising spontaneously from the depths...
polymaths applauded, the tribunal resides in
bilingualism... trenches... history... perspectives
and current affairs... wicker man media...
                        so... an example of pedantry?
ó....               that's an orthographic dignitary -
        an aesthetic muddle... as is
c-ha                               contending with samo-ha...
     ch                            came from antagonism of
cz                                   which was later antagonised
by č               in česka.... say that: hen party
bound to Prague... in the Czech republic...
                                          ch      k..­.
i am, quiet frankly... standing at the feet of the tower
of babel... and i'm looking up, and i see
correlations, and i see decimal marks,
which, when given enough geography,
can seem like England and the isles,
       and central Europe...
    Iberia? phantom of Seneca...
  eureka! let's begin, once again...
  why is there a continuum beginning with
Plato and Aristotle?
                                           we could become
reasonable people... told to deal with madmen...
we could claim beginnings with Seneca...
and Cicero...
                      and why? the Romans loved poetry...
the Greeks antagonised Homer...
            the Romans loved Horace, Virgil,
                           Ovid... perhaps we should really forget
beginning with Plato and Aristotle...
       the former has become a church,
the latter a dentist's assistant (minus the ancients'
concept of a joke).
                      evidently i have to finish off reading
Seneca... his educational letters to Lucilius....
      moralising ******* that he was, thus, perhaps
a nibble at Cicero? but i must say:
                           it has to begin somewhere,
so not necessarily in stale-bread Athens...
                      and having such perspectives helps
in claiming casual conversation?
   assuredly - if it doesn't involve talking about
the weather...
                                which is always a great mystery
   if it's given enough aurora.
   onto the mystery of dialectics,
as discovered by Alfred Jarry in his Faustroll
Pataphysics contraband...
                                                nag­ging agreement...
nodding without approval... (chapter 10) -
beginning with αληθη λεγεις εφη
        (you speak the truth, he replies) -
   and ending with ως δoκεì
                              (how true that seems)...
and then some dub-step...
        know nothing dROP! boom! jiggy jiggy,
get the rhythm.
   as i always find it hard to look at
    diacritical arithmetic...
                                  given the following
represent a prolonging: hangman:
       å, ā and ä...
                             esp. in Finnish -
stratum: hedningarna täss on nainen.
                        rolling yarn, plateau, two dips;
and i will never say something profound...
i'll just say something no one else has said,
benefit of the doubt? somewhere, someone,
                                      kneels at the same altar.
  such are the distinction - invaders from the
north, and invaders from the south...
                                           even with
crusading Golgotha mann -
the times? many bats, supers, spiders,
but not enough readings of thomas mann...
                              easily befallen into prune-nosed
high-airs... it comes with the diet of literature...
   unfortunately.
                              and with yet another book:
i have burried yet another living person
i could have had a beer with, and conversed.
it always happens, every time i read a book
i have to attend a funeral... by reading a book
i have burried someone alive...
                          shame, in all frankness...
    i will sit in a congested train, touch a breathing
body, and consecrate the touch with
a warring genuflect - harbringer of a Teutonic
passion for initiation: a komtur's slap across the cheek.
   chequers played with passions...
           and some have to be approached like
caged animals, their vocabulary as cages,
                and the whole world before them:
cageless!
             some have indeed become so encrusted in
their daily: routine, that it would take a zoologist
(thrice oh, begs some sort of diacritical marking)
rather than a psychologist to understand them...
    like the darting dupes they are, enshrined in
20% gratis! smile! have a nice day! boxing day sales!
all but pleasantries, fathoming the grave.
   stiff vocab and all other kinds of perfume...
                           a king and his charlatan knights,
who are merely ditto-heads.
                  and not of this world, afresh -
among the nimble hands prior to birth -
surely there is: more grandeour in birth
   that entry via a ******...
                            the greatest pain of ****...
and when the ancient treaty was signed
under the name: Augustus Cesarean - or
recommended for a need of aristocracy -
    it was, for a time, the mana magnetism:
and such was the rule of poetry:
rather than a crown, donned the laurel leaves...
donned the laurel leaves...
    and such was the covenant from ancient
foes when trying to assimilate the Jew...
three kings from Babylon,
                         the child in Egypt...
          no good tides from Nazareth...
         a crown of myrrh - later overshadowed
by dogmatic sprechen, simpler: thorns...
yella things... or rzepak, Essex is filled with it...
rzepak... so why bother adding a dot above
the z, when you get capricious and use rz to
denote the same?! thus a science:
voiced retroflex fricative... Stalingrad!
                       can you really stomach this kind
of jargon? if it wasn't for science fiction:
science would be twice removed from gott ist tot,
*******' worth of pondering, given the close
proximity rhyme... nothing that rhymes should
ever be taken seriously, it should be hymnal!
                         Horatio! mein lyre!
   mein Guinness leier! rabbi krähe -
     and they deem that ****** white when talking:
thinking? i'd prefer Cezanne in real life -
   maggot wriggling and all...
                                          as much eroticism
as bound to a dog slobbering its testicles:
which means ****-all in an almighty stance
   for a dollop of halleluyah in Nepal.
well: pretty talk, pretty pretty pretty: i feel pretty,
oh so butter-fly-e.
                                    2 week stance,
***** in autumn... but so many Swiss hues
coming from the same concentration of decay!
shweet!  zeit-ser!        and that's me talking
kindergarten german: innovation begins with
a fork and a spoon, should the tongue come to it...
            i see a poem,
i see something worth bugging... c.i.a.,
f.b.i., hannibal's lecture in Florence, Venice for
the rats... bugging... shoving...
  shovelling... necro grounding, rattling...
    windy via north... Icelandic...
drums along incisors of abstract gallop:
violins... fringes of the mustang... airy airy...
all regresses toward the Vulgate...
         like ****, like said, and the only pristine
stress comes with vanilla ice-cream,
or a medium-rare beef ****! hmph!
                         fa fa fa excesses with that hurling
puff...
                      and i did finish Kant's
critique of pure reason... minus two calendars...
but, so help me god, the 2nd volume was hiding
under some corner...
                           thus, from transcendental methodology
came plump apricots, plums and pears...
             sweet decay fruit baron...
              and it's called sugars in the intricacy of pulp...
lazily grown, dangling on that caricature of
a formerly known: full crop of wheat-crude fringe.
    2 years... honest to god!
         but so many books in between...
i was given a recommendation...
i cited it already... kraszewski's magnum opus...
29 books...
                       although that's history fictionalised...
but nonetheless, it really was about
     the cossack uprising in the 17th century...
   and it was, as i once said, something i can forgive
sienkiewicz - the film version,
as in: i will not read a book once it has been adapted
to a movie... it's self-evident that too many
people have read a piece of work and are gagging
for a conversation... but where's the playground?
           ******* cherades!
  chinese whispers and a Manchurian candidate!
  i thought as much.
                          and whenever it's not a preplaned
escapade, what becomes of the day?
     was it always about a stance for carpe diem?
  syllables: di                em.
                            carpe is said with more lubricant.
corpus diem. well, that's an alternative, however
you care to think about it.
                and whenever you care to think about,
the proof is there: mishandling misnomers:
poets as tattoo artists... although no one sees the ink,
signatures on a reader's brian (purposively altered,
toward a Michael Jackon he-he, and other:
albino castratos the church venerates!)...
   that's 3 weeks in a catholic country...
  3 weeks... if only the football was better,
      i'd be called Juan Sanchez...
               but, evidently, the football is bad...
     so it's catholicism on par with a sleeping inquisition...
no one really expected Monty Python to conjure
that one... because it never really took place,
not until a trans-generational exodus
postscript 2004... once western brothels were exhausted,
and the Arab started ******* a hippo...
              then it was all about lakes and rivers
and Las Vegas 2.0 in Dubai!
                     you say quack... i say:
                                                    easy target.
and they did receive a blessing from Allah...
enough ink to write out Dante's revision of the Koran,
and some Al-Sha'ke'pir to write a play called:
the Merchant of Mecca.
  last time i heard, when the reformation was
plauging Christendom, no one invited the Arabs...
these days i think the little Lutherans of Islam
watched too many historical movies...
me? pick up a crucifix and march to Jerusalem?
  and is that going to translate into:
   blame the populists! blame the nationalists!
it's like watching a circus... why is the Islamic
reformation asking for third party associates?
                  i was happy listening to
the klinik... albums: eat your heart out...
time + plague...
                             once again: the world narrative
gags for enough people to conjure up
     a placebo solipsism... and that's placebo
with a squiggly prefix (meaning? how far
that ambiguity will take you) - ~placebo...
well: since existentialists were bores...
it's about time to head for Scandinavia
   and ask: is that " ''                 for passing on
an inheritance, or better still: ripe for
acknowledging ambiguity?
                          and if you can shove this
  into your daily narrative... you better be
a connaisseur of chinese antiques...
                frailty... then again, theres: ******;
well hell yeah *****'h, it's a murky underwold
after all.
                     and yes: that's called a petting word...
some say hombre, and we'll all be amigos
and muskateers at the end of the story.
                                    finally... i feel like i'm writing
a poem that i'll never end...
              why? it was supposed to be about
how John Casimir of Sweden championed
  the crown away from his brother Prince Charles
(volume 1)...
                      the bishop of Breslau...
a recluse... couldn't ride a horse...
    then again: nothing worthy imitation...
beginning with a donkey...
                               the transfiguration of palms
into whips... 2000 years later
talk of Hercules is madness... that other bit?
complete sanity.
                              well... if that be the case...
the book is there... i signed it, 2nd volume of
Kant's critique...
  
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | Y| | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

        an oak... in a forest of pine...
an oak in pine wood...

then onto the wood of sighs:

aH aH aH aH aH aH aH aH
aH aH aH aH aH aH aH aH
aH aH aH aH aH aH aH aH
aH aH aH aH aH aH aH aH
aH aH aH aH aH aH aH aH
aH aH aH aH aH aH aH aH
aH aH aH aH aH aH aH aH
          (somehow the surd escapes,
and later morphs into, but prior to)

a short script: variation on MW...

      pears' worth of blunting runes:
opulance s and ᛋ - versus z,
    congregation minor: the interchange, ß,
buttocks and *****, minus phantoms of erotica.
yet, taking into account trigonometry...
sine (genesis 0), and cosine (genesis 1),
or            M                                   W
(no Jew would dare believe the Latins have
the second 'alf of the proof: that loophole of all
things qab-cannibal-mystic - cravat donning
mystique - a flit's worth of sharpening,
or dental grit... flappy tongue,
flabby oyster, lazing for a crab's palette)...
so?

1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0
1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0
1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0
1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0
1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0
1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0
1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0

of course there's an

She stood up against the wooden bar lit by a stale football field that shined florescent green and highlighted polyester blue like a muse of Van Gogh or Galileo. Her hair ran down the nape of her neck like a ****** waterfall and the light of the bar highlighted her sphinx like eyes as she turned and caught his eye. He stood at a small table away from the main bar with a couple of friends who were telling stories of their old college days and he, half-listening, quickly looked away, faking to scratch his eye, for he knew he had been caught looking at the back of her and she, with her women's intuition of being observed and knowing this, kept looking and he knowing the only way not to show he had been caught was to look away quickly and very obviously; like a bad actor caught dumb and silent, clueless of their next line. They blushed and shared the heat of embarrassment in their cheeks with the sounds of worn dollar bills slapping hard against the smooth wood of the bar, the bar man eyeing it angrily as cigarette smoke surrounded them and slowly drifted up like a lost soul toward the ceiling and the piano man, eyes tight shut played for everyone there when no-one cared to listen, all underneath the dim light of the bar as they strained to look away from one another, trying to find something they could put their focus upon, but, at the same time, wanting very much to look back and have their eyes meet by mistake all over again.

He focused on the design of the bathroom placards that were in the right corner of the tiny bar where you had to turn sideways and touch shoulder's with every soul inside just to get a drink. He feigned interest in the bronze design of the men's bathroom: a tiny boy looking down at his pecker as he ****** a 1/2 inch thick stream into what the man gathered to be a sunflower ***. The boy was thrusting his hips forward, both of his hands on his side, and he showed no smile, no grin of satisfaction or victory, just a stark, blank face, as if he were thinking "I am peeing in this ***. That is all." The women's bathroom sign was of a young girl with the same kind of *** the boy had been ******* in, but it was missing the sunflower and was replaced by the *** of the girl. She stared up into the sky and into the ceiling lights and was dramatically reaching for a butterfly or bird - he couldn't make out which - something with wings and made him think of a basic metaphor that this poor little girl just wants to get off the *** and be free like the birds and butterflies and clouds in the wide blue sky.

She focused on the man's shoes. She looked at the black shine and the pristine black shoe laces, all looking like everything had just been purchased that day. "There is not a single scuff on them and the way this man cuffs his pants only a single turn," she thought to herself, "Tells me he has something of a style on him". Not so run of the mill. Something special. Something of interest.* But then, she was annoyed by the cuff of the pants because she remembered that was what all the schoolboys in her prep school would do when the day was rainy or the boys rode their bikes home from school or they were nerds. The memory immediately turned her off of the man all together, but luckily, she put her gaze back on the jet-black, seemingly un-touched leather that told her success, class, and security.

The man heard a loud Cheer's!" from his table, abruptly bringing him out of his distraction. He was forced to turn and as he did, he made sure not to look up. He kept his eyes on the table and looked for the half-full beer with the worn Budweiser coaster underneath it. He could see from the his top periphery that she was still facing him but she was looking down at something toward the floor. He fumbled with his large hands for his glass and panned his eyes up slightly. The woman, seeing the movement at the table, looked up. She stared back to where she had first caught him looking at her and waited. The man felt her looking at him and in the same instant, saw the faded Budweiser coaster and reached for his beer. He picked the glass up and as the second Cheer! was yelled, he clashed his glass against all the others, all the while keeping his head not toward his friend's faces, but turned in the direction of the bar toward the girl. He smiled at her as he lowered his glass, not taking a drink. His friend slapped him on the back and told him," You gotta' drink after the cheers or its bad luck," and so he did, still staring dumbly at her as he did. She nodded at him with a self-conscious and embarrassed grin, raised her nearly gone low-ball glass of gin and tonic and tipped it toward him and turned around to face the bar.

"I"ll stand here and wait for him to come up to me," she thought, "And if he doesn't the man is a coward and a louse and not worth my time. I have looked twice now and there is some rule in some magazine that I read somewhere, that if you look twice at a man that it is sign, not a coincidence. No, it has a purpose and though I barely know what reason I want this man to look at me other then to get a drink out of him and maybe some conversation, I am certain I have looked twice, maybe even three times. Yes. I have looked at him and I have made my interest known and now I must wait for him to either come or stay with his drunken friends. They look like frat boys cheering like that. They look like drunken, silly frat boys that wouldn't know the first thing about chivalry. Hell, they probably couldn't even spell the ****** word." She laughed under her breath and smiled maliciously to herself and caught her own reflection in the mirror and, for an moment, wanted to quickly look away. Her face did not frighten her, for she was a beautiful woman, not her skin, which was milky white with the faintest and gentlest dash of rouge on each cheek, nor her chocolate colored curls that bounded like boulder's down a hillside. She turned away from a look upon her eye she had not seen or had recognized in a very long time. Her eyes were frightened.

"Frightened?" she wondered.

The man put his beer glass on the table on top of the coaster. The foam rested at the bottom of the cup like the thin layer of ice that blows over a frozen lake, barely there at all passing with the wind. He stared at her back and liked how she leaned on her right hip and put the toe of her left high-heel to the ground, rocking the nose of the shoe back and forth like she was thinking about something playfully frivolous. Behind him, the noise of his friends became a hollow echo, drowned out by the draw of this woman. She swung her left heel back and forth like a pendulum trying to hypnotize him. Someone touched his shoulder but he shrugged the hand away as in this echo chamber he could only hear the music change tracks on the juke box. The song had changed to an old Ottis Redding song and there was nothing else in the world that he wanted to listen to in that moment. As he watched her, leaning into the bar seemingly all alone, no boyfriend or girlfriend in sight, he saw her raise her glass to the barman and knew she had something by the gentle nod of the back of her head. He then saw her point with her left finger and tap the rim of the glass. Her drink was empty. She wanted another drink. He would buy her another drink.

"There is nothing in this world that a man is more responsible for than getting a woman like this a drink," he nodded, thinking to himself and trying to pick up his courage,"One that plays with my heart like a kitten would a spool of yarn, and yet also like a vulture who would peck out the eyes of a dead man in the desert. This is nothing more then that obligation. A rule passed down from man to man, from age to age, where chivalry was not for the base reason to lay with the woman, but to honor them, praise them lightly as the rain from a heavy mist and show them to the pedestal every woman, whether they wish to admit it or not, do wish for, sincerely do at least once in there life." He readjusted his belt and realigned his shirt that had gotten crooked after the celebratory cheer and thought some more,"I'm not going to do that here, this pedestal stuff. This is more like a step toward that pedestal. Yes. A step toward the shrine she wants to trust she deserves and will one day end up on. And this shrine is all cast and painted in the blurry french film noir of dream, is it not? Aren't dreams the only thing we hope to one day come true? How often - when and if they do come true - they can sometimes disappoint and eventually turn sour like a bad orange. I hope she is drinking and that wasn't just a tonic water. If this woman doesn't drink I don't think any of this will be worth anything at all."

She stood there serene and angelic, the hand that held her drink now resting on the base of the bar. Behind the man, he heard the chatter of his friends and the drone of football scores and player updates coming from the ten or more televisions that hung from the ceiling. Someone reached out to touch his shoulder but missed him as he left the table. His name then echoed behind him but soon the sound evaporated as dew does that rests on blades of grass in a summer morning to a summer afternoon. There was only her and her smell that had drifted to his table and shrouded him with the scent of white chocolate and smoke and her delicate, porcelain hand that had held up the drink shyly but not weakly, in passing demand without that demanding quality drunk people can get like at bars sometimes. He approached her, hovered behind her, but she did not turn, and then came up to the bar to lean into. He did not turn to look at her, though he wanted to very badly, but looked down at her low-ball glass with two half-melted ice cubes and a used lime. The smell of gin came from the glass and the man smiled to himself and put his hand up to signal the bartender.

"If this man orders his drink first and walks back to that table with all of his drunken friends, I am giving up men all together," the woman thought to herself," * Tonight and forever! If he can put his hand up and not even turn to look at me, as I was doing, I thought, to be very flirtatious but gentle, then I see no reason at all to keep going with men. They are barbarians that only want to eat, drink, sleep, and fornicate with women that are easy and provide no real challenge at all in their life. If he wants it easy, he can have it as easy as he wants, but not with me. No sir. Not with me ever. Not with me for a night, an hour, a minute, or even a second."

The bartender, a stout slightly overweight man that was a little over forty with streaks of grey in his thin, short-cut hair, looking very much like he should be home reading with a nice cup of tea by his side rather than in the bar serving drinks to stranger's, approached the man and asked him what he would like.

"Two gin and tonics please," the man said, "With a slice of lime and four ice-cubes in each."

"And what kind of gin, sir?"

The man turned to the woman, "What label do you drink?" he asked.

"Pardon me?" she stuttered startled, her eyebrows raised.

"Your drinking gin, aren't you?" He nodded his head toward the woman's empty glass. The tiny lines of transparent lime skin floated on top of the water that had gathered from the melting ice-cubes.

"Yes, I am. I was just about to order."

"I'll get this round and you'll get the next one."

"Any gin is fine."

The man turned to the bartender," Tanqueray, please bartender."

He nodded and went to make the drinks.

"Your very perceptive," the woman said as she turned to face him.

"I try."

"I saw you from across the bar, but was afraid to walk up to your table for fear of getting ambushed by all of your friends. Those are your friends, right?"

"Yes," he nodded as he looked over his shoulder at them, "Old college friends all with old stories of college that, truthfully, bring me little or no joy to even hear."

"Then why come at all?" she asked, "You seem smart enough to know that if you meet up with old anything, you'll be hearing about the old times all night."

"I was forced to come."

"Someone getting divorced?"

"No," he laughed, "The opposite. Married."

"Well, I hope it's not you or this would look very bad if your fiance walked in."

"And why's that?"

She clicked her tongue and turned to look at the shelves stocked with every kind of liquor. The bottles reflected the soft orange glow of the lights that circled the bar and the colors of the television screens. The man continued to look at the woman who had turned her back on him and caught their reflection in a bottle of Jack Daniel's. He waited for a response, but she stood there silent, knowing she was playing with him. Behind him, his friends were growing louder and a tray of shots had found its way to their table. The waitress who had brought the drinks, polite and with a smile, asked them to try and keep it down. They shouted "YES'S and screamed "YEAH'S" with moronic smiles on their faces, their heads nodding up and down like a dog playing fetch. The waitress giggled a thank and walked away shaking her head with disgust when she was out of sight.

"Well," she said,"You did just order two gin and tonics and I think if your fiance walked in with you chatting with me with the same drink in both of our hands, I think she would be a little upset. I know I would be."

"Perhaps we could act like we are old grammar school friends and just happened to run into one another?"

"Well, that would be a lie."

"Yes, that would be a lie."

"Which would mean we were hiding something from said wife."

"And what would that be?"

"That you approached me after I looked at you, perhaps the look from me wasn't flirtatious, maybe I thought you looked familiar, like I had seen you somewhere, and you came up to me and ordered me a drink and started a conversation with me, much like we are doing right now."

"What's wrong with conversation?" The bartender approached them and placed the two drinks in front of the man. The man took out his wallet without losing his gaze on the woman, took out a twenty and slid it toward the bartender. The bartender took the twenty, paused for a moment to see if the man wanted any change, but left when he saw he didn't want any by not moving.

"Conversation can lead to very dangerous things," the woman said playfully and wise.

"Your here by yourself and your not stupid; someone is going to come up to talk to you."

"And your that somebody?"

"I'm sure I'm not the first one tonight."

"Your sweet."

"I try," he said as he slid the drink over to here,"Your drink."

"What should we drink too?" She asked and raised her glass, the light above them reflecting in the ice-cubes and thick glass of the high-ball.

"Conversation," he said proudly and with a smile, "And the danger that it brings."

They clinked their glasses together, their eyes never leaving one another, and they both took a long drink.

"I'm not here with anybody and I'm not expecting anybody tonight either," the woman said.

"What's your name?"

"Why?"

"I want to be able to tell my friends I met a very interesting woman, but they won't believe me if I don't give them a name."

"I'm standing right here, silly. Go and tell them you met the most interesting woman in your entire life, look over at me when they ask you what my name is, then point over to me and I'll wave."

"You'll be here?"

"I'll be here."

"Promise?"

"Go, go, go," she repeated, pushing him back toward his table, "You bought me a drink, didn't you? The least I can do is wave to your drunken college friends."

The man walked back to his table, glancing quickly over his shoulder, trying to hide it, before he reached the table. He arrived to all of them drunk, beer spilt on the table and an ashtray full of punched out cigarettes and ground up cigars. Every one of them were rocking back and forth with each other, their arms sloppily hung around their neighbor's shoulders, their eyes blood shot with their mouth half-cracked open barely breathing in the smoky, beer smelling air. The man struggled to wedge his way into the circle, and when he did, he tried to get the groups attention by screaming an

In my bad dreams I see my son trapped
Tall within razor wire he lives silent.
Burnt out power transformers juice napped,
My daughter now carefully compliant.

Long forgotten fire, memories forbid.
Everywhere at dawn, lines are formed
And mothers do what they must for their kid.
Temptations to fear enforce the new norm.

Freedom became a foolish delusion,
Conform in silence or be sorrowful.
Your rights, a labyrinth of illusion,
Beneath posters of the great and powerful.

Still in those dreams I note the price of bread.
Stale remains the trade of belief for dread.


Floyd Alsbach

A while back, Nick and I sat
side by side
in split-back forest lawn chairs.
Huff and huff
the porch's coat of scarlet stain,
talking like
existential cab drivers.
Legs on legs
crossed like war trenches or
window blinds
or a cold zipper's cold teeth.
Life or death.
More life on rye, Swiss cheese.
Holey talk of Jesus Christ.
Cross the cross
and hope to die; I know we will.
For now, though,
skip small to get to big talk.
Cursive hand
separates notes and throws out
the *******,
but everything at that age was *******.
Challenger
never blew up, Dillinger
never robbed,
we never dissected life
to see its
uncertain pancreas.
We're kids but can't act like it.
Qualms with calm,
and clever wordplay plays footsies
with my thoughts.
My stale bread secrets take up
too much space.

If I close my eyes and think of you
I can smell your scent
From a mere two days ago
The flutter in my heart follows

If I close my eyes and think of my father
I can smell the joints
That I identified aged 10
I try not to *****

If I close my eyes and think of my best friend
I can smell her perfume and washing powder
It makes me smile
And want a hug

If I close my eyes and think of my father
I can smell the stale beer
A middle of the night smell
It meant 'don't leave your room'

If I close my eyes and think of my mum
I smell safety and comfort
Strength and gravity
The balance keeps me strong

If I close my eyes and think of my father
I can smell the stale sweat
The cruel words of abuse
The hatred inside myself

If I close my eyes and think of my sister
I smell vanilla and style
Fashion and creativity
Sullen kindness

If I close my eyes and think of my father
I can smell the cold of the room
With its broken window in the arctic temperatures
The fire unlit because the marijuana needed somewhere to grow

If I close my eyes and think of school
I smell the comforting sawdust
The corridors familiar
The classrooms like home

If I close my eyes and think of my father
Not having friends round to tea- because.
16 not 6-  you can't buy my trust
16 not 46- don't want prayer flags for my birthday

If I close my eyes and think of home
I smell the damp washing hanging up
Every squeaky floorboard
Every drip, clank, comforting noise

If I close my eyes and think of my father
I smell the power he loved to have
How I haven't seen him in three years
The fear that still remains

If I close my eyes and think of myself
I smell nothing
Hear and see nothing
At that is what scares me the most.

The crushing waves obliterated me as
the air had settled
stale
my sea was not
black
nor smooth
as glass

but
stones of thought
sent it rippling
as you

you

you twisted the moon in your favor

the wail of
gut wrenching
thoughts

gusts

through the corridors of my mind
       tornado memories
crack my eyes

I stare at my clenched hands
slowly
turning purple from the surging pain
of
remembering

I will
whisper
your

your

name for the first time in days
run it over my teeth and tongue so
slow

I'll savor the bittersweet taste making sure not to swallow
it whole
Shocking black
into a hue of navy blue
My heart sputters
choking

on sharp splitting pain
Convulsively, impulsively

reaching out
my broken fingers for you
They meet frozen
fractured
glass

I shift my weight and I shatter

slipping

slipping through the crack of your abyss.

Love is a ***** soup going stale but steaming like it's brand new;
And I'm Oliver twist walking up to the *** with a rusty spoon full of desire and hope asking for more but getting none.

Love is a Doctor gathering dead bodies and shackling them up in chains;
And I'm a green freak with Frankenstein bolts ****** through my head walking around with only a mumble to muster trying to love people who just want to run away.

Love is a white paper rolled so finely, full of sedatives and drugs;
And I'm sitting by a fire reaching in for a log to smoke.

Love is puzzle made by Einstein and Sam Loyd;
And I'm a child with eyes made of glass and hands made of thorns crying to my mother because that puzzle is a *****.

Love is Navy Seal training on a beach covered in cold water spilling blood for a chance;
And I'm a ***-smoking hippie who holds up signs and tells soldiers they’re monsters as I take a puff of death.

Love is a ten-syllable word compacted into one;
And I'm a hooked on phonics children’s thesaurus struggling to find a comparison that I can actually pronounce.

Love is a white egg timer sitting on the fridge set to all nines;
And I'm a busy housewife waiting to cook dinner at the sound of its bell.

Love is a robber with a 45 in his belt;
And I'm an eager dad trying to protect his family with a wooden stick.

Love is hot coffee from a luxury beverage shop;
And I'm a plastic party cup melting away.

Love is a doctor with a PHD in heart surgery;
And I'm a sick child waiting with his mother with no healthcare ******* on a free doctor’s-office lollypop.

Love is a huge pink eraser;
And I'm a graphite pencil struggling to write while me and the eraser fight.

Love is a pickup truck speeding through town drunk;
And I'm a lost puppy running through the same intersection looking for my owner.

Love is meant for fish;
And I'm a bird.

...a diary of the falling dominoes chapter

invisibly dying from the inside out
no one is looking into unseen eyes
no one can hear a muted voice fading
no one is close enough to be near

the deafening thrums echo
anxieties’ racing heartbeat
within morphing flesh shell ,
gasping for new breath
in a hovering stale silence

from a distance
the broken mirror ricochets a subdued light ;
much closer the reflection reveals
someone I once knew by heart

now an unrecognizable mask
enshrouds a terminal emptiness
inconspicuous at a fleeting glance ,
impossible to discern what storms rage
from the inside out ,... unnoticed  

an uncontained wildfire
smoldering within,  lies in wait
for the imminent winds of change
to fan the flames into the final
eternal silent ashes

a poet reaches out demurely
offering a candid look
into the window
of the imperfect human soul

there is no poetry
met by indifference
just gathered unread words scribbled,

squandered time
dripped slowly on an empty page ;
moments turn into days
days turned into years

invisibly dying from the inside out
an unfinished life trickles out
like seeping blood evanescing
from a bottomless puncture
wounding ... penetrating the heart,
leaching out the slow death of a poet

for poetry is only words unless they touch someone ...

befallen to indifference is poetic death
by salted paper cuts ...

a muting suffocation
that hiddenly erodes away,
silencing the passion
of a musing soul
one unread word at a time ...


© harlon rivers ... all rights reserved

The last thing the Poet feels of her is the distinctive taste of biltong. It lingers. She had bought two packets at the café.  Their last kiss is made just before the airplane announces itself with a great roar of being. He watches it swallow her and turn her into a memory. And then the plane flies away. He can’t find a silver lining in the plane’s path, so he instead focuses on the gentle return of normality to his skin. Every centimetre that was previously pressed to his Muse is smoothing its goose bumps. The Poet’s heart goes back from verse to prose, just as how it was before she became the subject of his pen.

He turns to say an awkward “dumela” to the Muse’s grandmother. She responds with the tone of a grandmother greeting a boy who has just been making out with her granddaughter in front her: “dumela.” It probably doesn’t help that his hair isn’t combed. It probably doesn’t help that they have not met before. The Poet then asks the Muse’s brother for a ride to school. Now that the Muse is gone, it is time for him to begin studying for the colourless exams that were the subject of his existence before her. The Muse’s brother nods in agreement, and he walks out of the stale atmosphere of the airport with her family. The summer sunshine somehow manages to feel uninspired.

The journey from the airport stretches out like a goodbye that ought not to happen. It is slow, painful, and filled with empty promises of hope from her family. Her brother says she will visit during the Christmas season. The Poet knows she won’t- she can’t- but he has enough novels to keep him company.  They are riding in the same little red Volkswagen that often picked her up from school. If time is simultaneous, she is sitting next to him.

The car is full; time has only one direction, and its wheels stops in front of the school gates.

He says his farewells, closes the car door, and limps to the library to start working on maths equations with his classmates. He barely opens the library doors, barely greets his classmates, and with barely practiced nonchalance, barely explains that his Muse went off to another country. He picks up his scientific calculator and clicks open his pen to attack a math problem. Hours pass in numbers that stubbornly refuse to make sense in place of her. The Poet solves a problem, and then he doesn’t. He asks for help, and then he doesn’t. He laughs with his classmates, and then he doesn't: they have to go home now for lunch.

The Poet cannot go home. He has to wait for his mother to pick him up. He decides to walk out the school gates to eat at the Chinese restaurant. It is placed conveniently outside the school. He orders some dumplings and some noodles, and then tells the waitress that he is going to buy a newspaper at the filling station while he waits for his meal.

At the filling station counter are packets of biltong hooked onto a stand.

I could feel the tension
I could feel he no longer wanted me
I knew when he looked at me and his eyes were looking through glass
I shattered in this moment
And I knew by the stale way he would say I love you
It sounded flat and so my heart became brittle
And I knew by how his hand would tremble against my skin
Stand off-ish hands, my skin is scarred
I knew then he no longer wanted me
I could feel the slow slipping, away.

Whispers hello as the first streams of sunlight
inch their way in through their black chiffon veil,
gleaming on our garden of stale breath,
and down feathers.

Whispers goodnight as his proud freckles
become the constellations outside my window,
and the moon stretches her arms
for another night's work.

Whispers sorry after his words became feather-lances
jousting through my arguments until my armor
was askew and torn
at its paper seams.

Whispers tales of tomorrows and fortnights
to come under illusions of rich greens, blues, and yellows
he will finger paint on my forehead
like a warrior.

Whispers goodbyes, sweet and forlorn,
as he realizes promises and paints will not keep the morning
from snatching his prized possession from his cotton laced roost,
leaving him alone with just the rays of the sun
to admire his tail.

Goddess above me!
Snake of the slime
Alostrael, love me!
Our master, the devil
Prospers the revel.
Tread with your foot
My heart til it hurt!
Tread on it, put
The smear of your dirt
On my love, on my shame
Scribble your name!
Straddle your Beast
My Masterful *****
With the thighs of you greased
With the Sweat of your Itch!
Spit on me, scarlet
Mouth of my harlot!
Now from your wide
Raw ****, the abyss,
Spend spouting the tide
Of your sizzling ****
In my mouth; oh my *****
Let it pour, let it pour!

You stale like a mare
And **** as you stale;
Through straggled wet hair
You spout like a whale.
Splash the manure
And **** from the sewer.
Down to me quick
With your tooth on my lip
And your hand on my *****
With feverish grip
My life as it drinks—
How your breath stinks!

Your hand, oh unclean
Your hand that has wasted
Your love, in obscene
Black masses, that tasted
Your soul, it’s your hand!
Feel my ***** stand!

Your life times from lewd
Little girl, to mature
Worn ***** that has chewed
Your own pile of manure.
Your hand was the key to—
And now your frig me, too!

Rub all the much
Of your **** on me, Leah
****, let me ****
All your glued gonorrhea!
**** without end!
Amen! til you spend!

****! you have harboured
All dirt and disease
In your slimy unbarbered
Loose hole, with its cheese
And its monthlies, and pox
You chewer of *****!
****, you have ******
Up ******, you squirted
Out foetuses, ******
Til ******* you blurted
Out into space—
Spend on my face!

Rub all your gleet away!
Envenom the arrow.
May your pox eat away
Me to the marrow.
**** you have got me;
I love you to rot me!

Spend again, lash me!
Leah, one spasm
Scream to splash me.
Slime of the chasm
Choke me with spilth
Of your sow-belly’s filth.

Stab your demonic
Smile to my brain!
Soak me in cognac
**** and *******;
Sprawl on me! Sit
On my mouth, Leah, ****!

**** on me, ****!
Creamy the curds
That drip from your gut!
Greasy the turds!
Dribble your dung
On the tip of my tongue!

Churn on me, Leah!
Twist on your thighs!
Smear diarrhoea
Into my eyes!
Splutter out ****
From the bottomless pit.

Turn to me, chew it
With me, Leah, *****!
***** it, spew it
And lick it once more.
We can make lust
Drunk on Disgust.

Splay out your gut,
Your *******, my lover!
You buggering ****,
I know where to shove her!
There she goes, plumb
Up the foul *****’s ***!

Sackful of skin
And bone, as I speak
I’ll ****** your grin
Into a shriek.
****** you, ****
****** your gut!

Wriggle, you hog!
Wrench at the pin!
Wrench at it, drag
It half out, **** it in!
Scream, you hog dirt, you!
I want it to hurt you!

Beast-Lioness, squirt
From your *******’s hole!
Belch out the dirt
From your Syphillis soul.
Splutter foul words
Through your supper of turds!

May the Devil our lord, your
Soul scribble over
With sayings of ordure!
Call me your lover!
Slave of the gut
Of the **** of a ****!

Call me your sewer
Of spilth and snot
Your ****-sniffer, chewer
Of the **** in your slot.
Call me that as you rave
In the **** of your slave.

****! ****! Let me come
Alostrael—****!
I’ve spent in your ***.
****! Give me the muck
From my *****’s ****, slick
Dirt of my *****!

Eat it, you sow!
I’m your dog, ****, ****!
Swallow it now!
Rest for a bit!
Satan, you gave
A crown to a slave.

I am your fate, on
Your belly, above you.
I swear it by Satan
Leah, I love you.
I’m going insane
Do it again!

nothing can compare to that one moment of your life when you feel like everything is absolutely perfect. everything is as it should be. you feel like living your life like it should be lived. you feel like taking risks you've never thought of taking before. because before this one moment of your life, you were always too afraid of the outcome of that risk. you were afraid that it would be a mistake.

nothing can compare to the moment where you find out something you thought would be a mistake actually isn't a mistake. sometimes, you have to make a mistake to find out if it is a mistake. even if you know it is already. if you don't take that risk, you may never know what could have been. you'll live your entire life wondering if you had taken that one risk, maybe everything would be how you want it to be.

if you don't taste the stale cereal, you'll never know if it really is stale.

tell the person you love that you love them. don't be afraid of rejection. for all you know, they love you just the same and are too afraid that you won't accept them for who they are to tell you how they feel.

turn in that college application. maybe your grades aren't the best in the world. so what? don't be afraid of rejection. maybe you will get accepted to that college anyway, because they see how much you commit.

go to the job interview. put on your best suit. your prettiest dress. don't be afraid of rejection. maybe the guy interviewing you has the same personality as you. maybe they like the same kinds of things you do. maybe you're perfect for this job.

ask god for forgiveness. maybe in your mind, what you did is completely unacceptable and can not be forgiven. don't be afraid of rejection. god loves you for who you are, and accepts the fact that you made a mistake. but he knows it's only a mistake. and if you hadn't made that mistake, you wouldn't have asked god for forgiveness, and your relationship with god would not have been as powerful as it is after you have experienced his forgiveness.

or maybe you're not religious. have you tried to understand any sort of religion, or have you just automatically pushed it away because it seems so ridiculous and makes no sense? don't be afraid of rejection. maybe you'll find something you can hold on to. something to believe in. and if not, at least you tried. you put yourself, body and mind, out into the world to experience something completely foreign to you. at least you know for sure how you feel now.

take the risk.
make that mistake.
taste the cereal.

The world around me keeps
spinning on,
it is
    fast
         paced,
smells become
                                                 indistinguishable.
The air stands still
                                                    it tastes stale.
different colours  b-l-u-r
                                                        to grey
A windowpane of
                                                           rainy
                                                           ­                                                    patience.


Voices
                                                          scre­ech
                                                         painfully
noises w~h~i~r~l
                                                       ­  to echos
                                                           ­                                     not unlike sanity
                                                         fleeing to
                                                              ­                           a place inside myself.
                                               An eye of the storm

Next destination
                                                              cool
                                                            ­                                                   solitary,
time­lessness-
                                                       ­                                                              calm.
                                        
                  ­                                     *s e r e n i t y

Months of stale, cigarette smoke
and spilt **** water pleasantly
offset the stench of cheap cologne
and ratty, abused furniture.
    
Fictitious stories occupy this tiny, dim
apartment, birthed on the lips of
rebellious juveniles whose tongues
pierce the ears of our elders.

In a forsaken corner, Jeremy lounges
awkwardly on a grubby-plaid sofa that
suitably complements his button-down shirt.  
I join him.

Behind his right ear rests a lonely cigarette, while
another sits snug between his lips, set ablaze
by the 1968 Slim Model Zippo he inherited from
his beloved grandfather.

His transparent sense of self-worth emanates
from his grubby, grease-stained hands, scuffed boots,
blotchy-checkered flannels, and faded blue jeans
that are completely obliterated with holes.

I look into his pale blue eyes, the depth of which
often goes unrecognized.  Jeremy is a soft-hearted,
pudgy youngster with the kind of chunky cheeks
that all grandparents love to torture.  

But his marred, acne-ridden face betrays the transition
that has been forced upon him.  Slowly, his trademark
grin appears across his face – subtle, mischievous, and
typically without reason.  But this time it appears justified.

Jeremy takes a moment’s break from his cigarette to drop two
hits of acid.  A new drug for him, he hopes to find relief from
his seething anxiety, evidenced now by the wide expansion of his
chest as he takes another, more lengthy and powerful pull from his cigarette.

The mundane chatter that fills the room continues, a seeming
necessity to offset any potential awkward silence. I feel as if
this noise is closing in around us.  But just as suddenly as I
feel overwhelmed by this sensation, the noise stops.

I look around, noticing everyone’s eyes staring in my
direction.  Jeremy is still next to me, now giggling
like a little school girl.
I begin to feel sick.

Jeremy swiftly leans forward, giving his
cigarette a premature but honorable
death, eliminating its glow as he smashes
the cherry into tiny bits against the ashtray.

As he sits back against the couch, I can see that
his eyes are now indifferent. Foreign.  With a perplexed
and fascinated stare, he watches the pearly-white smoke
slowly slither upwards towards the ceiling.

There’s no question in my mind that his
soul has fled. Jeremy sinks further into the
couch, turning his vacant eyes in my direction.
I want to *****.

His high-pitched giggle has now subsided into a
low whimper.  Gradually extending his left arm into
the air, he tilts it from side-to-side, examining it as if
an infant discovering his genitals for the first time.  

Bike wheels appear in the corners of the room.
Entertained, his eyes rapidly zigzag from the
corners of the walls to his hands. He asks me
if I can see the wheels. I don’t respond.

Intervals of psychotic emotion begin to cycle. Jeremy’s eyes
fill with tears as he tries to understand the hallucinations
engulfing him.  The expression on his face betrays the reality that
he has stepped onto the never-ending theme-park ride from hell.  

Together we leave and walk to the bus station, Jeremy
walking slowly and whimsically. The bus arrives,
and I hand him a few crumpled, single-dollar
bills as I attempt to instruct him where to get off.  

All I can envision is his mother’s first reaction to her son’s arrival.  
Would she collapse at her son’s knees, crying like a mother whose boy
has come home from war?  Would he forever be an awkward guest
at the dinner table? Would she disown him?  Would he become a feral child?






I no longer know what day it is. I am surrounded by lockers
and students, trapped in a tunnel of shadowy walls.  As I stand
alone, I find myself entranced by the blinding, January sunlight
that floods through the double doors a mile away.

My vision is unexpectedly blocked by a figure
standing in front of me. Clothed in little but jeans
and a bright, white t-shirt, Jeremy stares at me, his eyes
mirroring the emptiness I now feel.  

“Do you have a lighter?”  My hands pointlessly search my pockets for
what I already know is not there. “No, man. Sorry.” A look of confusion
spreads over his face, and I suddenly cannot help but notice the sick irony
of the scene in front of me - Jeremy flooded in light as if born again.  

My thoughts linger here too long, and just as swiftly as Jeremy
appeared, he is a mile away sauntering out through those double
doors. Estranged, I continue to stand here, hoping with
futility that this isn’t the last time I have looked upon him.

My Arwen lies over Belegaer
Beyond the Straight Road, lies my Evenstar
Across the Endless Sea, in Aman she lies
She wouldn't stay here just to love, but to die

I remember her here, here in Endor
When the beacons of Gondor burned bright.
I remember her here, once beside me
In the days before the long night

In Imladris fair, as Estel I was raised
In ignorance there, I spent by blissful days
I lived, and I learned, and yet never yearned
For she from whom I now feel so spurned

I've had my Éowyns, but none quite compare
To She, my lady, so radiant, so fair
At Cerin Amroth we pledged our love
To all, ourselves, and the Ainur above

But the Darkness again spread
Morgoth's mission again led
The Fellowship was wrought
The battles all fought

The Age of the Firstborn was ended
The Age of the Hildor ascended
Our world together was split
And really, that was just it

She could stay here, forever, be mortal
But ever so closely lay Mithlond ,the portal
To a life without end, I can blame her hardly
I guess Barahir's tale was never to be

What’s this? You say she’s not yet set sail?
But how can I stop her? Our parting was so stale!

Sure Elrond's presence and Galadriel's glare
May have done oh so much to damper our parting
But as she goes afar I know I can't go there
And her expressed frigidity, that wound is still smarting

What should I do for her I adore?
Run to the Grey Havens and stop the White Ship?
But so much I must do, right here in Gondor,
A King I can become, as my Queen give me the slip

And the spirits are howling,
The white tree is burning?!
My power, my people
BUT I CAN'T STOP THIS YEARNING

Oh what shall I do? TO ERU ABOVE
I have so much work, but I so miss my Love
The tears, they are welling, the Ship has set sail
In all my adventures, in truth I have failed!

For what am I worth? No King has Returned
And without Hope is Gondor, and the Stewards have burned
Denthar departed, the mighty horn split
The mighty White City left here to sit

I could let it fall into disarray,
Again a Ranger, I could slip away
To die like the Ents, forever, no Wife
Is there nothing to save me from this strife?

A new dawn is rising, a new age begun
My hopes might still clear
with the new rising Sun

I see its my duty, as Arathorn's son… what Isildur started, I must see done
but still I mourn my loss… that beautiful star, which now like all others, I must admire from afar.

~D. B. Guy
09/02/2007

implosions are for starfish and our mission is clear. we have nowhere to be from
and that's half the battle. we are seldom unbridled in the chastity of our carnal bluff...
and our cages are breathing. we are finally designing our most daring Inertia.
both mum on the details in the devil's flotsam. we jot some of the names of the nameless...
on the outside of Dixie cups. like mint julep promise to a tangerine honest.

again and again, we ache through the breeze of our soothing traumas. we court the verity of a sham.
we blast through the congregation of our adversary, snipping varmints from a stale camp
in the southernmost of our due south,; where they fear the bonfire until a vagrant maps
the flaming tongues to a long kiss.... and we crash upon the shore
of Never Asked.

but regret This.

hope for an accident
hope for injury
not so that you
feel something
a stale trope
you already feel too much
no
hope for
marginal catastrophe
hope for
the ability to point
to that one thing
external
and say that is why

When you smile
Your teeth tell a story
Of never ending words
And endless punctuation.
When you smile,
I can smell your breath
Wreaking of every stale cigarette
And every stale memory
That has ever polluted your tongue
And that you continue to relive
And that stain every word
That you let spill
Recklessly
From what you call a mouth.
Every time you flash that
Maybelline painted smile
I pity what you were born with
Every time you smile,
I cant help but feel smug
My smile doesn’t stain my words
Betraying my secrets
My displayed sense of happiness is neither false
Nor does it stretch on forever
Like some bad Friday night
With a bad date
In a bad place
That you call “fun”.
My smile in not tainted
By a lifestyle the breeds regret
With all it’s unprotected endeavors.
But somehow
With all your flaws
Your inability to make a
Self preserving decision
You still remain victorious.
Over my honest to goodness
Absolute genuine attempts
At legitimacy.

hearing useless chatter
feeling gusts of breath
seeing bleeding ink
tasting bitter loneliness
smelling puffs of stale air
being a                   g  h  o  s  t  .

ok, so this is the upswell
of wheeling free without wheels--
you taste the unknown on the wind
and endless vigor vibrates in your bones.

sidewalks, dumpsters, fields for beds,
star-gaze drowsy thinkings, underfed

but overzealous of an openness we'd never seen, we'd never see again! the planet turning magical in unexpected
ways of wanderjest--
consummate rest of freedom undenied, joyful celebrants of every day!

the strangers sudden friends stop
to gather in the journey up 'til then--
tales of kindness or of danger
sharing in some facet part

integral, shining, random and forgot--
we each diverge in thanks
or so it's been with me
despite mass fear of ****** sprees
we help each other's spirit's free

some begin and end with sore feet soothed,
the destination moved;
others with a steath-pipe harshly clean:
ember throat-smack numbs the breath
and giddy paranoia settles in
as 'the white house' sailing by perverse
-ly urban planning plotted bums who smile missing ob
-ligatory chili dogs in crowded bl
-are full to frighten morning parking lot we pitched
our tent and woke to soaking feet and sleeping bags submerged in runoff corner-lake

another time we simply waited at a truck stop,
piles of the rigs just running ready there
and one for us, he said he'd bring us north,
and more, he told us of his brothels,
his debt-collecting days, the cokehead legs he shot
for honesty, he said, and sang us poems (he wrote)
of foreign women loved, some with pictures,
pickled eggs and cooler-hotdogs stale,
my first menthol cigarette: inhale and fall
into an understanding outlaws have
of skipping all the weigh-stations, of
friendship gleaned by chance, ephemerality
in strength of truth to last:
he took our picture on the exit ramp,
gave us hugs and left us waiting there,
more than just an ex-**** trucker,
hired gun for pushing coke, but a human
sentimental in a context undefined
like justice in the sense of kindness to rewind

the rain... a joyful merciless accord
of being in the storm of open-ended
waywards torn in being home and on the road
life untenable in farther reaches worn of ages never understood

but standing in a trailer whipped with highway gusts of water-gratitude
though slipping in the bouncing hay and horse manure fertileness
we joke eternal swinging backpacks soaked and knocking spin on balance play

meeting lovers simply known as such
for nights or only one, talking into dawn
at random campus dormroom sheltering
when sober, high, tempted into impulse act
afraid or pleasant easy unknown facts
just passing by she offered for the night
his first intoxicant beyond the ***
surrounded puffing passing groaning
in the rooms above below i'm listening
smirking at the undeserving joy i swallow in her eager kiss
to throb the floating line of destiny in endless acts of freedom's light

though a ride can be a head-ache too...
piled beer cans on the floor,
clanking with each swerving,
the driver even stopping for a ****,
thankful? to be riding, not walking,
but observing when we're there, the ground, this time, i bend to kiss

Sam was the most generous:
he brought me to his home, his father took me sailing, swimming with the family
serving food on lakehouse dock and later
reading with the kids, dinner bonding
then such sleeping    deep    peace
and in the morning, after breakfast
on my way with lunchbag tastes of kindness never lost

there are many more
tucked away in word-gifts, also
blueberries to pick along the roadside, more
than i'd ever seen or thought to see
cows to sleep by, horses randy for an audience to claim the pasture for

the offer is a type of gift you question to refuse,
not to lose your wits
some are quiet, kind,
most are liberal in ways they couldn't ever elsewhere be:
snapshot saints in momentary boons of spontaneity and love.
some cross lines.
so, grateful i'm ok, but never worried otherwise. i run the 'risk' it's called,
and run it still: i ask the random for assistance,
in upturned eyes discern the weather
as in ancient times the host and guest stood cultural across
in making kin of unnamed walking in,
gifting company for company along the way
trusting always in the limned choices traveled, with a existential grin

useless, this skyward nightblind stare
was it there, from lost flecks of  stardust
that God wrought
this species of heroes and heathens?
these eyes don't see much anymore

I've tired of my own sophic nonsense,
pretenses ****** to any screed that might buy words
to publish under slews of anonymous names...
real life is not vague
we chew it, hard crusty bread

before dinner, my own fingers rummaged deep
planted within loose root shards, chewed chicken thighs, other things
we've eaten,
ever since days as young children...

Our Father consumed simply

like a banged and dented '57 Chevy
adorned pretty with loose bananas and oranges
freed from paper cartons,
his rusty wrenches tucked in my toolbox
built solid, still colorful, if not as useful anymore;
a ***-stained carpet too good to throw away
left to rot in the driveway; I called a tow to haul it all
yesterday

Oh my Brother...

when it rains
I drown in his rolling wheelchair
and rubber-tipped canes, set out plastic buckets

... and I think to drink them in...

the stories of glory or warning,
conquests and war,
apple pies left to cool on a sill
awaiting harvest by the bravest soldier

today:
gifts of old shot glasses saved in the cellar
(I drink from the bottle)
a box of fine cedar from the back of the closet
(though odor not telling, for a decade at best)
more stories...

but still
we're both grown men now, and safer for past efforts,
the lawn neatly mowed if not always ****-free.

does it matter?
winter's soon coming.
what could it save me?

it's a cold wind -
in time enough, some men
newly minted, will gaze inward - outward, too
search for food left in the pantry
the paltry stocks I put up:
canned spaghetti, dollar store crackers, salty powdered soup mixes...

they'll wonder whether a father ever listened
cared enough to spout useful advice...
weigh one heathen,
the *** who wrote poems only for himself