I got an award
For being the stupidest young boy
With a wax soul
And impressionable.

I thought I'd find something
Nestled here amidst the trees
And I did,
But in no halls but the hall of god
Speaking to me
Dancing between the leaves
Singing with every whispered breeze
And yet when I stepped
Past the threshold and into the
"real world"
I was sold
A maniac of utter delinquency.

Everybody there
Waiting for their turn
Auditioning for the favor of hearts
They'll never win
Can't see
Laughing and wondering
Reading without comprehension
Sticking their *** in the face of the classics
Lap dogs licking the milk from
Professed *******
Thinking they'll be next

Its not resentment--
Is it fair to be bent
Towards dollars that've never been spent?

All those silly parks
Divided from the civilized lands
Frontiers of the past
Left to be little staging areas
For that invisible hand

Kids go on spring break
Take pictures between the towns
Maybe a stop along
On the way
To Vegas
Deep in the desert where it'd **** any other day

I cannot escape the unfathomable beauty of that place,
Living off the world in a way God said
To toil and love the pain
In a way nobody does

I am guilty of pride and
Stuffed like a pie full of anger
Cooking it into solid joy
And trying hard to scrape the cancerous crust away
All the dark sides we avoid

But screaming the heat away is good
Thermal induction is the name of the game
Entropic fizzlements like bubbles in the wind
Sublimating all that ever stood.

Yet soon enough I'll be born anew
And what I leave behind
Lifted up
Nautoloid shell
With a sparkling abalone interior
Someone will place on their shelf
And think,

"I wonder where that thing had been."

True tangled Gordian thoughts entwine
Amid labyrinthine paths that wind
Sliding sledding serpentine
To assay value and extent
Braid a mind a shoreward end
Seeking weeping thrashing send
Infused with knowledge deep and sound
A consciousness cogitabund
Within the portals self confined
Disconnected judgements breed
Diffuse journeys often made
To darkened places
Where no light
Of vision lucid sparkling bright
Will penetrate and seem so safe
Writhing heavy leaden womb
Elusive dissolute abound
Reclusive and so moribund
But in the darkened space there seems
A distant tendril sparkling white
A reaching focal point to strive
To make that leap
Great grasping bound
Wrapping arms so safe around
Clasping forgone lines abandoned
Sublimating impasse upward
Strength of purpose
Welling forward
Great eruption spewing outwards
Lava flowed eureka moment
Spreading outwards
Flowing downwards
Cogent sentient live born
Brewed in darkness
Drinks the bright
With clarity and strength unite
Dazzling brilliant shining moment
Cleft asunder glorious light  ....!

drag my helpless body down the hallway
where it is dark and hidden from everyone,
a place too eerie that ghosts yearn to dwell and linger
—my purpose is quite the same after all.

compelled to conceal myself in the shadows,
sublimating to an unnoticeable presence
like speck of dust upon a quaint furniture
that no matter how meticulous and kind
the hands that care for me,
i cannot be wiped clean.

a miniscule of being that i am
only has a slight chance to be found.
to be known.

Saturn’s rings
are disintegrating

and Jupiter’s great red spot
is shrinking

and the ice caps on Mars
are sublimating

and our very own Moon
is slowly untethering itself
from Earth’s gravity.

In eight billion years,
the Sun will turn red and swell up

like a toddler on the verge of tears,
and incinerate

Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars—
all of our histories and fossils,

our legends and loves,
our monuments and our ruins.

You and I will be long gone by then, of course—
nonexistent to the extent

that we’re not even aware of our own
nonexistence.

Some people may think of death
as an inky void,

but it must be far more final than that—
an inky void would be copious by comparison.

What if there is simply nothing
on the other side of the curtain?

Perhaps it would be for the best.

For I never was able to avert my gaze
while driving past a smoldering wreck,

and you never could build up the courage to take a look.

Facile flirtations
Sighs and sorrows
The depth of brevity
Sonorously sinking
Rising slowly
Washed by the rain
Drifting
The swollen ocean
Rolling, pounding
An avalanche of sound
Cascading, sublimating.

I salute my sublimation.
tackle my monsters
with pen and paper,
Die in my art, you beasts.

all my characters are myself.
different shades
textures of my complexity
a palette of my entity

Im the protaganist
the underdog
idealistic dreamer
with a happy ending

I'm the antagonist
the enemy
cynical pessimist
with doom impending.

I scrape down on paper
these pages of me.

Sublimating aching
intermission from tragedy.

Isn't it great
Never catching a break
and reaping what you sow
Even when you feel you're
denying what you know
My lips are sealed
but my throat is exposed

-cj

Hate what’s mediocre and banal too.
Despise them both and take the two to task.
Their infection consumes flight of fancy,
Hidden behind a bland and facile mask.

Please write your tale to help disarm the pair.
Together we can speed up their demise.
Although there are greater forces at work,
Much more than most, the same do they despise.

It is still so, but the hatred makes way,
For the flight of our thoughts, thus creating,
Works of beauty; wondrous to minds of men.
What’s hated, in truth is sublimating.

The platitude “Thinking outside the box”,
A phrase by those whom ignorantly use,
Lead astray by these bland meaningless masks,
Fall short of honing tools with which to prove.

To begin with, there is a strong feeling,
An analogy in a nutshell which,
Is presented to aid understanding,
Curtailing a cerebral glitch.

Then a comparison to the flip side,
Passionately pervading all angles,
Adding anticipation and power to,
The carroty denouement that dangles.

I wandered blackout drunk lost
trading cigarettes for directions
from crustpunks who took swigs
from bottles of cheap plasticsugar alcohol

Muttering to myself in selfdefense
sublimating the toxic fire in my eyes
into soundwave echoes
bouncing off of plywood windows
and abandoned stolen cars

Angry limping at breakleg pace
down the heroinblessed streets
of yet another vibrant American slum.

The frame has blurred away \ Fever death arising like burst glass || mangled spines \ This is the age of fact | where the violent insertion of cancer cells into animals is applauded by scientists across the globe \ Objectivity is the new face of barbarism | death god // sublimating existence for truth \ Raw data filters from the rot of deformed limbs | tweezers crush the heads living fish // guts spill | formaldehyde fixes the flesh of squirming insects | spliced genes splay the spines of mewling mice \ There’s no doubt || biology is the practice of death \ Animals without niches \ Organs without bodies \ Cells without hosts \ An aperture maw | red // yellow // black // white | leaking nervous tissue over an absent whole \ Reality has been atomised // brutalised // banalised \ Objective knowledge replacing all critical thought << [[Muscle // nerve // fat // blood // bone ]] Experience nothing \ [[The germ cell cycles every 28 days ]] Know nothing \ [[The average lifespan of a lab rat is three years ]] Feel nothing \ [[Over one hundred million are killed yearly ]] Science saves \ Biospace severed // prescription drugs fall // epistemic // into clean white bottles \

there's a lot to feel looking over this sight.
you're so high up and so far down that
here, the sky is a formality and the concrete
might be invisible to your eyes.
like this, something seems to hover in the air.
what it might be and what it would be—
i wonder perhaps if i should care.
as i peer over the edge of the world's bed sheet,
i can see it, yes, the depth i would fall:
six feet under ground, sublimating like alcohol.

i would give everything i am to feel
settled in my own corporeal form
tied down to my organs and tethered to my body
intertwined in a reality that
others can access
and isn't their acknowledgment proof enough
that i am of the world
and here
here
her
that burning girl dancing in the
flames of my own house fire
since i doused myself in gasoline
and lit a match

look at me
burn your eyes out of their sockets

look at me
and remind me that i'm here
right here
with you

tell me you're not going anywhere
as i watch you drive away
in the smoke of your absence
so i light a cigarette
maybe the blue smoke curling from
the smoldering cherry
could recreate our life together
but it keeps me standing on that curb
and watching you disappear into the distance
to the horizon
where you fall off the face of the earth
my face
with gorges carved out by
sea salt tears
and i scream for punches
and slaps
i ache for raised bruises
slowly falling into the bluish purple of twilight
and lingering in the verdant green grass and
yellow morning sun
so i can't forget that pain
finally made evident
physical

and i scream into another dimension
so no one sees my anguish
i bottle my message and send it to sea
half hoping some caring soul discovers my secret shame
half hoping it is consumed by the tempestuous oceanic depths
but all i want
is to show it to you

i want to give you
everything i am

i want to share with you
an authenticity i have evaded
truths and reality i have run from
so maybe i know that
you can handle me
that your calloused hands can
grasp my flaming unbridled terror
without sublimating into nothing
and leaving me with
the inevitable culpability that
as always
implicates me in
the destruction of all things
and the death of all hope i had
lashed around the idea of you
and the naive thought that you
love me
and

everything i am

Just like that,
I felt a sprinkle of pain,
You know the kind that gnaws and grows,
And nibbles your insides.

What started it, I wonder,
A buried thought,
a deserted experience,
Befallen, buried, squashed,
Run asunder, but still alive.

It pushes through the barriers to say,
Hey you! Yes you!
I exist,
Don’t think your looking away,
Will stop me coming back, some day.

Huh! I beat it hollow,
and there it’s slimy self crept back,
I had learnt not to feed it as it would grow,
I keep it on such a strict spartan diet,
My oh My! Look how bulbous it looks!

Hmmmm! Pain, were you feeding inside of me merrily while I was asleep,
Chewing my tissues, chomp chomp, burp,
Deep so very deep,
I feel I am missing a bone or two,
you gluttonous pain,
I am sure you’ve gobbled up many cells too.

Dark, gray, silent, doom,
Am I on for lifelong gloom,
Aah! Hrmph! Boo hooo!
What do I do,
So many around me,
Who do I reach out to?

Oh I do reach out,
And they say,
You? Couldn’t be,
You’re so strong,
It doesn’t fit you well, this pain you see!

I laugh, Is this pain
A size smaller for me,
Am I self indulgent,
In saying it hurts.

I start looking around,
And see many like me,
Laughter hiding the pain,
Cloaked well, their touch warm,
The tremble reaching out in vain.

It’s tough, this despair,
Sometimes with valid cause,
Many times so much accumulated,
Unaddressed, unmet, covered with gauze.
It rears it’s ugly head
For many
Eating their insides,
It’s canine jaws,
Sharp and unrelenting.

I still don’t have an answer,
Who does really,
Expectations, recriminations, justifications, validations, manipulations, mechanisations,
Eat us up a bit more.
We sleep off some days
hoping to sleep away to nothingness.

And then we arise to the morn,
The sun filtering through, casting its warmth,
A bird in the distance chirping away,
Pain still there but so are my fingers glowing like starlight along the Milky Way,
My limbs stretch and I purr away,
The clocks tick tock,
Reminds me of a chance,
A new beginning,
A fresh start,
A fresh me,
A wounded but mighty heart!  

Facing my pain instead of sublimating it,
Nursing it tenderly instead of ill treating it,
I know you’ll ease out, heal out,
And I will be better each day,
Because this life, this beautiful life,
Is worth living each moment, every day.

When I face you, I shall share you,
Tell your story to those I want to,
And suddenly, you will feel acknowledged and dance way into the oblivion because you’ve been sung to, heard, cuddled and celebrated.

Till then, I trudge along...

I wonder,
If you were still alive
At 104 years old today,
If you would have been proud of me,
If you would have liked what you saw.

You knew me as the toddler
Who insistently took your hand
Before crossing the busy Chinatown street,

But not as the awkward teenager,
Anger simmering beneath his acne-riddled face,
Eager to prove his growth,
Trying too hard with his vitriolic rants,  

Neither as the young man
Floundering about in his twenties,
Dissipated on intoxicants,  
Groping about for direction,
Pining for a woman's companionship,

Nor as the married man
Who had attained independence,
Having found a way in life,
But now longing to regress to boyhood,
Sublimating his regrets in bad poetry
Scribbled between issuing memos and contracts.

Just what did you see in that toddler's future
As he waddled across the bumpy cement streets
Dappled with horse manure spilled from kalesas?

Did you see a man with broad shoulders,
Employing hundreds and feeding their families,
Making a tidy profit week after week?

Or perhaps an academician,
Erudite and eloquent, a debate juggernaut,
A far cry from his forefathers' humble beginnings
In some fishing village from Bumfuck, Nowhere, China?

Or did you just hope
For your grandson to retain his heart
The same one that prompted him
To take your hand as you crossed the street?

I still think of you at times
And wonder how things would have been
Had you been around,

If you would have bore our valley days
With your trademark stoicism,
Anchored father with your presence,
And have finally reined in
Grandmother's bladed tongue,

If we would have eventually shared
Your daily quart of brandy
After weathering with ascetic patience
The sound and fury of idiots.

How you would have seen
With your own eyes
The clan flourish and increase
In members, clout, and material wealth,

How you would have sat
Stone-faced but proud
As I took my steps to patriarchy
And started my own tribe,

Albeit with someone outside our race -
Worse yet, a descendant
Of our colonizers from the war.

(I wonder how much convincing
How much yelling from father
It would have taken
For you to relent)

I know I look back too much.
I guess there are too many unexplored paths,
Too many phantoms who remained acquaintances.

Or maybe I'm just like father,
Habitually framing the present
With the context of the past,
Always romanticizing the bygone
With the wine of sentiment,
Though reality would have been harder, drier,
And we needed the magic of romance
To make reminiscence palatable.

Thirty years have decayed my memory of you
To but a reconstructed charcoal sketch  

But it does not make me miss you any less.

At length we move in spaces well known
Minds winding around travelled roads
Thoughts moving in posted directions
'Til suddenly an obscure path appears
Unexpected, unknown, unmarked, undisturbed
It is there that we hear a soundless voice
Whispering the way, the road to tread
Fearless, resolute, unbound
Colors unveiling as our hearts unfold
Sounds rising to symphonies
Forces sublimating by divine volition
Flowing freely out of space and time
Stars gleaming in wondrous form
Beckoning us to move on and on
Delving into the blessed unknown
Towards the approaching sacred light
from whence we had come
Welcome home!















© William Bratton, All rights reserved

I've been calculating my life
over rice
I've been percolating again
thank you
Against the grain making
grin (awkward)
I've been sublimating my life
now you see
I've been culminating all along
feel the rise
I am candilating my life
on the way
meaning surrenders
and making stuff up
puts down its tools

I'd like two ******* to go

I'd like skin against me

I'd like nothing so much

Is an ****** done
with quantum mirrors
is life and death
a glittery refraction
that is just so tasty
you can't stand it
you standing wave
you coursing lyric
singing thru diamond
shaped reflections
sublimating along
hop hop hopping

Here I am again
Longing for resolution.
There You go again
Sublimating absolution.
You remember when
We laughed about it then?
I recall now
Thinking naively
In the end.
Here I am again
Content with life's endeavors.
There You go again
Faking lover's fervor?
That tunnel
The stairs
All memories held fair.
Though maybe I should admit I know
I always knew you'd eventually go.

regarding my resumption
of daily/mostly nightly constitutional

I accompany my dark shadow...
(small number of  hours
before edge of night,
where twilight zone evokes night gallery -
drawing celestial sphere closer to me
from the outer limits),
and resumed walking a circuit
around perimeter of parking lot
imbibing the scent of Mother Nature
beginning today after

a hiatus of countless years -
aiming to foster stamina
before returning to the contra dance -
in Mount Airy after Paul Halpern
reconfigures pertinent characteristics
post cataract surgery
to fit appropriate spectacles)
meanwhile yours truly (me)
exercises his right to bare arms

air supply sustained
by breezy temperate
twenty seventh seal of Bergmanian
September two thousand
and twenty four, and perhaps
if regularly habituate myself
to said stroll physical endeavors
may one day find me to cantor or trot
and stop horsing around.

Yours truly realized modus operandi
to kombat (mortal) lethargy;
last year, he did stride rite
around resident parking lot area
(here at Highland Manor apartments)
then usually at approximately
19:00 hours each day
casually bumbling and ambling
one lap after another
counting one hundred and one,
one hundred and two,
one hundred and three...
coordinated with deep breathing
to distract self from repetitiveness.

Modicum of walking exercise
benefits this sexagenarian
in tandem yours truly began
burning ghee (my slang for calories)
while maintaining sitting position
placing each foot in strap
and pedalling lightweight machine
against adjusted tension.

Aside from strengthening leg muscles
choosing to while away time
by disciplining myself
with former or latter,
both modes of physical fitness
also help keep anguish at bay
(plus sublimating, and redirecting
formerly tied in with hair compulsion)
mental duress triggered
courtesy of property management
constituting: Zoftig, the warden

and maintenance man,
(a recent hire),
the first two whose invisible clutches
asphyxiate me and the missus
hounding us to keep
one bedroom apartment in shipshape order
and particularly and somewhat unpleasant
to wipe away fruit fly feces
(cuz exterminator informed us
said itty bitty teeny weeny insect
breeds within their

yellowish gummy waste matter)
prompting us to Google search
senior low income apartment facilities,
spurring spurious query wondering
whether any anonymous reader
might be able, eager, ready and willing
to hand over keys to main lodging
including carriage house,
we would even settle for a dog house
or (in a manor of writing) Yukon
assign access rights
to access an excellent outlook.

Sense and sensibility concerning
the emotional fallout
brought about by sedentariness
(essentially affecting me to feel
glum, melancholy, and ruminative)
helped goad generic indigent solitary man
(practically self quarantined
his whole mucked up adult life),
hence not inconvenienced
when coronavirus COVID-19
wrought havoc and mayhem.

Just on the cusp of experiencing joie de vivre,
the triumvirate of Crooks and Quade
figuratively swoop down
to announce re: inspection
of apartment unit B44
whenever they deem appropriate.

Thus series of unfortunate events
(linkedin with bull limey
Lemony Snicket bro)
got sidelined nsync with
contracting a minor bout
with deadly Amish Flu
symptoms include feeling horse
and a little buggy found
garden variety reasonable rhymer
faux being bedridden
(just pretending to get sympathy)
once again feigning feeling
a little horse and buggy (ha),
incapacitated to craft
original signature poetry writing,
cuz for your edification
most of these words written
at least a couple years ago.

An honest to dog confession
regarding hiatus spewing forth
vociferous versatile vocabulary
mine words - worth their weight in gold
(told woofer I do not know), nevertheless
included perusing a gamut of reading material.

The passion to engross intellect
witnessed courtesy immersing
attention, concentration, excitation
gratification, intoxication;
knowledge prized more precious
than fine spun gold.

Likewise crafting (albeit painstakingly)
elusive notions that flit
to and fro hither and yon
(analogous to ping pong ball)
within parameters of
microscopically crenellated
sixty plus shades of gray matter
also constitutes fervent interest.