In the divet between mountains
Resides a wooden cabin – ostensibly an amalgamation of the scape
Adroitly - I - quondam female warrior flit
Down massive (ancient) hand-laid, hand-cut carved stone steps
Bounding from contingent step onto the dense pad of turned soil
Tacit compliance between gravity and soil holds footprints bound
A compressed deflating crescendo as pace ignites with bounds

Cadences of protuberant wildflowers and grasses erupt from swollen terra
A winsome chromatic menagerie, dispersed in ecstatic fistfuls
A venerably ancient ritual

My nascent clandestine vocation
Personally meted out - a beatification for my provisional sanctuary

Along glacier-fed stream
Lissome fingers shadow inert stalks –plucking dormant beginnings from their desiccated ligaments

I am austere and unadorned save for a festoon of pyrite flecks trailing my semblance
Residual gilding from my ante-meridian swim taken after requisite gathering of wild blackberries, goose berries, and rhubarb along oft-tamped path

The sun, nestling into its requisite apex endorsed my completion
I reclined into the hassock of soil, feeling the elements settle about with an embossment of my form
Imposing verdure arched subtly as compressed soil beckoned hyperbolic flux

As I lay within the basilica of opulent living columns replete with comestible bounty
Lingering dew honed inflections of sacrosanct petrichor in unison with piquant clover
Wild purple clover buds saccharinely tinted and inundated nestled nerves in mine cribriform plate

Birds pitched and galloped through the frond tips and beyond in the lapis expanse
Frequently snatching damselfly’s and assemblages of midges from their ephemeral drift

Auspicious rays transcended stippled diaphanous gravid clouds
Light inundated ether entered humbly into the cathedral oculus
Pyrite speckled terrain beneath, and my bare gilded form above
Cast a refracted aura about my sanctuary

Precipitously the elusive vaporous embankment distended further
Ashen atmospheric correspondence inaugurated liquescent sustenance to my mountain abode

And I -
Lingered beneath the descending gobbets, curls furled in a puddle
Fresh topsoil cupping my corporal topographic contours
Pressing blackberries into my mouth between smiles

yesterday may have been my birthday.

you need two hands, two feet,
a multiplication table
an abacus to count my years,
each finger, worth a decade.
each toe, perhaps, a century.

birthdays.

a point of inflection,
a point of opportunity,
a present presents itself,
to rewrite history.

a second coat of paint,
gift-wrapped in weak excuses.
how I lied, how I ain't,
grimm-fated fairy tales
somebody else created.

invisible suits of gold-cloth
worn to my party of
past rewrit and
future foretold.

one single thought,
memory,
seizes my heart,
as I fall to my knees.
cracks my temperate ease,
renders open the
woof and weave
of recycled deceptions,
causing all to be revealed
when asking myself

what if the poetry ceases?

you know prostrate?
you have tasted grief?

have you not but
a singular pain,
one act,
one deed,
one memorization,
act of cowardice,
act of desertion,
mistake made, taken,
for which
forgiveness
can never
be given,
be faked,
attained?

do, does, did.

let me then this day,
win the birthday lottery,
let floods of relief from
daily chores not drown me,
chauffeurs to drive,
masseurs to massage,
cooks to cook,
les délicieuses friandises to sweeten life,
please keep theologians, logicians,
philosophers on retainer,
even historians, those future fortune tellers,
if needed, unnecessary explanations -
or just satisfactory rationalizations.

none know,
or can provide,
still and yet,
a year round
a priestly sacred chord,
to grant relief,
absolution,
songs of hallelujah,
erasers of the ache of
perpetuity worry.

those ancient pains,
grow fresh daily,
the loss of one element
of my body,
prevents my primal knot
reasonably to be untied,
everything should be permitted
on my birthday, no?

this day, these days
breathe through words,
molecules of vowels,
stem cells of consonants,
the fabric, the tissues of life,
veins are a dictionary
of corpuscles,
red blood cells are
nouns of nutrients.

this day, these days,
the infection of my soul
is tempered, kept at bay,
tamped down from the
full flowering
of white blood cells
of rhyme, verse,
and asking myself

what if the poetry ceases?

though the bones creak,
snap, crackle and pop,
the body they carry, the heart
eccentric~centric: tire shop patched,
yom kippur white resurrected this day,
for morning, afternoon
and evening prayers,
and the last one special,
spoken standing.

thrice daily poetry I recite,
roses red, violets blue,
my marrow transfused.

though my prayers likely refused,
the poetry act immolates
the fringes of my disease,
for which the common cure
is not currently invented....
so I ask myself

what if the poetry ceases?

be assured, I am told
scientists hard at work,
on the forgive n' forget drug.

meantime,
take a bubble bath in
rosemary and mint,
trap and tap some words,
into your cell phone bone,
the poetry heat, scented waters,
provide aspirin relief.

through this poem,
on one day annual,
I am relieved, relived,
the muses, the Devils
all herein, feted, and sated

gone for few moments
concerns, worries of
exposure today,
agnostic's foxhole of hell
is dis-remembered,
the gloss returns,
the faux dispatched,

ain't birthdays grand?

yet, I cannot help but ask

what if the poetry ceases?

what rhymes with
Sorrow?
mmmmm.

could it be
Morrow?

bath drains,
rosemary and mint odors dismissed,
the Argentine disparu,
the Spanish Medievalists,
the Neo-Raphaelites,
all dispatched,
didn't they have birthdays too?
didn't you know,
Hey Michelangelo!
the Renaissance come
and gone,
nobody tole ya?

t'is the day
my sweet city recorded my
naissance in the
Hospital of the Flowers
on Fifth Avenue.

the 'crats put the datum
in the bureau with the
night creams and
the statistics
as follows:

on this day + a few,
seven or twenty decades ago +
a few centuries, some blackbirds,
a question was born,
and an ache that is
sometimes relieved,
by a poem~song.

though do not celebrate,
t'is a day to calibrate,
review, edit, tinker,
rewrite, often a stinker.

yet, but,
always one thought recycles:

**what if the poetry ceases,
how will I breathe?

I ate too much for breakfast today
And lunch was spent wondering if I should slip away
Wondering if I should go back for seconds
**** it, why not?
My feet jiggled nervously under the table
Trying to think of an excuse to leave
Trying to figure out how much the barbeque chicken pizza would hurt on the way back up
Trying to figure out how much I’d regret it
Trying to figure out if my body was okay
My self esteem balloons up and down
Somedays I look in the mirror and like what I see,
Think I look cute and quirky in my glasses and skirt,
Think my body is almost okay
And then like black crossing over to white, like a light switch flipped on
No inbetween
All of the sudden I am ugly
My body takes up too much space
Loving myself, loving this body seem like an impossible feat
The little critic in my head is back
And he wants to move back in,
I’m not cured
Recovery is not about loving your body
Recovery is accepting it
I’m still working on that
The calculator in my head wakes up,
Regenerates every time I’m around  food
My hands still hover over the diet soda before forcing myself to pick something that scares me more
I still have to bargain in my brain
Eat a salad so I can eat ice cream and cookies
Skip lunch so I can have a big dinner
Strip naked in front of a full mirror,
Watch my body standing up, bending over, sitting
Grabbing, pinching, prodding, poking
Surveying this piece of meat
This thing
This body
That I know I need to be kind to
I weighed myself for the first time in almost a year
My toe lingered over the cold surface of a scale
Like a child about to dip his feet into water
I knew standing on that scale could drag me under
And I did it anyway
Loving myself is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done
When self hatred has been tamped into my soul
When my eating disorder was the only thing I good at
This secret lover, the most attentive one you could have
Took my hand and showed me how an empty stomach could feel like love
My eating disorder was my best friend,
The abusive relationship I kept going back to,
The most interesting thing about me,
The thing that was killing me
Having an eating disorder is easy;
Allowing yourself to slip into a disease out of your control
Having someone else make all your decisions
Your life reduces itself to the numbers on the scale
The slipping numbers on the scale assure me that everything is alright
But I can’t live like that
Having an eating disorder is easy;
Recovery is hard

many of his posts tilted
like trees tired of the wind; wires sagged,  
red rusted, but still jabbed the errant cow  
when duty called    

three quarters a century
he rode the same trail; of late,
he had gone afoot, the saddle too heavy
for him to heft  

walking, he reconnoitered  
the tracks with more care--hooves of his myriad steers,  
a few equine signs of the farrier’s labor    
still  there, fast fading    

his boot prints were  
more numerous now, and sometimes
tamped down by the few beasts left
in his herd    

across the line lay his dead
neighbor’s pastures, peppered with mesquite,
pocked by fire ant holes;  no livestock grazed, but the giant turbines whined, white whipsaws slashing not timber, but blue sky    

driven by the relentless winds,
they called to him, in chanted chorus, issuing a premonition:  
one day soon, your fence will fall, and the path you trod
will bear no new tracks for other souls to read

Maiden in the ashes
Robed in silk
Robbed of milk
No mark on your tender skin
No sign of turmoil within
The coal does not yet scorch your soul
...
You walk your delicate path
Bearing the sightly, brightly beaten cut bloom of spring
Luscious petals not yet knowing
They will drop from the stem
No seeds to plant, and not her fault
the only water here tainted with salt
And the ground here is hard, turned up in its roots
And the soft garden bed tamped down by boots
Do you know the path you tread does not want you?
Do you not yet feel the cut of the stone or burning of the coal to your sole?
Or does this black earth need your bloodstained steps as much as you need to bleed them
Is it possible for one woman's blood to nourish this dead soil back to life?
And one woman's love to seed them

A cliff of weathered stone and moss
with tamped dirt approaching edge
smiles down on cool sea below.

Sun rising on the eastern coast
wears shoes for diving,
a gainer off into the light breeze.

She stands with arms through her coat sleeves
watching with one open hand inviting Fate.
Photography is the death of living the moment.

Sun nimbly on the trapeze,
lose trust and surely
she will be thrown.

Dance, my Sun,
bliss will come
to those who run.

Embrace her fate
or likely it
will dissipate.

antidepressants, that I am not
some war that bereaves you
of your fix, your stark face blots
purpling stains under eyes glued
  
to the buzzing of insects by your lamp—
a light that catches a reflection of
their veined wings clear; like veins tamped
in brown, the black tar shoved

into your limbs, into my heart
the idleness in your eyes and pace
of your feet dragging, they impart
me of your glass maze chase

of mirrors cracking like teeth, a scrape
against each other, shattering to escape.

It becomes clear that it is not so clever
when you're stood in the line.
And behind you the clock is telling you
yelling loud at you that the moment is now or is never.

Time to sever the links of the knots and the kinks
that have tied you in chains
which in turn have become the keepers of the pain which resides in you
glides through you.

The clock is quite striking
I've taken somewhat of a fancy a liking
for the Ivory dial.
Every movement relays
what delays I have made and the line starts to fade as we move on some more.


But that clock is a doorway and one day we'll knock
and hear as it says,
'Welcome to always you'll always be here'
There is nothing to fear but the chime
but the time
stood in line
being date stamped and tamped down as the second hand
starts to bear down
and the queue you were in has got thin with the worry
what's the hurry?
we're all getting there
where
time stands so still
on the hill of tomorrow in a sunken grey hollow
we wait.

at the end of light, more light.
it is why I have been walking.
since you’ve known me
I have walked.

I am leery
of your sadness- you’ve mock deer
on your lawn.

you bird watch.

you rake a single leaf, give up.

sadness is your gut is
tamped properly. when I recall

on highway of abandoned upkeep

pipe tobacco
and knowhow

my hands
make visor.

a car slowly passes
other cars. I call this car
my death, and then revise.

The Great Wall of China is a series of fortifications made of stone, brick, tamped earth, wood, and other materials, some of which include: chips of cloven hooves, beating in rhythm with a grand conqueror on high, brethren united in one charge; sweat of a migrant, summertime rain cooling between his shoulder blades, stones callusing fingers; blood of one and many terracotta men, giving their lives for God and king; new silk chewed up by moths; jade and chrysanthemum, a nobleman’s wife’s treasury; sun and wind, a flood, grace of a new emperor - my life, reaching backwards into pockets of rice fields, scholars’ tables, great-grandmother’s childhood castle, everything I know.

Dig

We were nearly back to the house
when the front end loader shattered
the silence and back filled the hole
drove off some vireos and cowbirds

amped up seven whitetail browsing
the pine break above Calusa Way.
American Spirit *******
a new moon **** of mouth

the operator feathered the lever
while gathered together we grazed
potato salad, deviled eggs, sliced ham, rain
from the Gulf over to Melbourne

soaking the operator’s boots
ducking into his pickup truck
for the long drive home to Pedro.
It hammered the tin roof shed  

out back where your tools
tarps, trouble lights, line trimmer
home brew insecticide in unmarked
milk jugs, old spark plugs

a lifetime of nuts, bolts and washers
huddled warm and dry on shelves
ball peened the tamped sand lozenge
on the ragged fringe of the silent ranks.

It’s hard to find even with a map
Calusa Way coiling through the bahia grass
flowing past stone faced theater goers
house lights up well past their final act.  

Vireos and cowbirds
even the whitetail browsing
the pine break pay me no
mind down on hands and knees

undoing the honest work
of the operator, sifting handfuls
of sandy backfill for something
I might have missed.

i was half asleep on a kitchen counter
curled up around the steak knives and
soup ladles, threaded through thick duvets

when you came and tucked yourself into me
with your burlap jacket, but I let you under the
covers--and I distinctly remember pressing my fingers
under your shirt only to feel how deathly cold you were
as if you had just come from the outside, or had risen up
from the snow drifts, opened your ribcage and let the cold
seawater fill the cab

but you were whispering something, a secret I couldn't make out
an undiscovered motive, slight of hand, slight of breath
you were lieing and I was letting you in, letting you in
beneath the weapons, beneath my skin, into my body
and you reached in for a handful of grain but I was a
barrel of cords and twine

meshed and tamped, you found the soft damp earth where
I grow and we somehow managed to make it seem ok
make it seem ok
you're out there ok
crimped and furious
a mean cuss on your lips



touching still means too
much to        me

The tears of her heart

sizzle in the tamped ashes –


of her loneliness.

Quiet
my Soul?

How could I have tamped it down,
muffled it to such a Whisper
for Months on End with you
Rattling my brain,
Disintegrating my thoughtspace.
You drowned out the Fire alarms-
police Sirens-
Tornado Warnings-
with your shouting.

For being the
Loudest thing I ever met
You sure ever said nothing.

Venture to try her out
But venture tamped
I feel a little trapped
in what I, for myself, created-
I look straight and I’m private,
I’m Catholic and I’m quiet,
even my sister won’t acknowledge that I love women.
We’ll attend to that eventually.

days when all you had to do was
arrange the furniture and watch the passing
of shadows in mellifluous slowness – ready to catch
you in heft of mesh.

nothing keeps her in place.
that is what you said. you said you were
always moving
from the north up to the south,
and at times the north of no south
that refuses to be held close into straight paths.

you gave it no unction – this abstraction.
christened with the water from
your measures, slipping out of grips,
from where you are and where I found you in,
retained in some sense of placeness,
almost cuts with the sharp dagger
of wind in mornings when you peer
into the putrid landscape of Manila asphyxiated
by the rise of smog.

her sorrows remain untouched and intact,
given urgency by the emptiness of her
hand. he had to be elsewhere and you
were in the midst of nowhere but the hollow
oblivion of your home, and I took it, I took it
and I fragmented it to gather from it,
a sacrament or say, the looming of dangers for
  mine to situate in defeat,
and I placed you somewhere like a new truth
that you’ve grown fond of,

like the only voice you hear in the night
is yours, and gathering that indistinct sound
from the stray of light was the
lover having left an impending need.
my father proposed to watch a film
with my mother and I see potential
in something that had gone away even before
  the empty din of the sea played its exhausted
machinery, telling me something known and familiar,
which I refuse to utter because it would double
its terror.

we ought to meet somewhere, you said,
a bridge, a tangent, a straight path
or a perilous curvature. you will never break
as the sparrows close in,
as the disparage quavers,
as an old man stops his engine somewhere
under a bridge beneath rondures.

we ought to meet somewhere,
you said. a word tamped into shape,
lugged into narratives,
so easy
breakable
and false.

Pause,
Along the lines of,
Universal time.
Suppress the hands of the minute and hour
Entrap my thoughts in a cage
PAUSE
Make sure to double lock them
And throw them away.
Don't forget to burn the key,
I really need a second to breathe
PAUSE
Perhaps, *a couple seconds more
Understanding me, the forever misunderstood
Stamped on my forehead,
Engraved on my skin.
PAUSE
Can you read me now?
Now that I'm,
drowning in seconds,
engulfed in minutes,
gone for hours.
Yet, time never paused*....

the vines began to creep up
we didn’t know when they first started growing
little green buds buried deep below
I tamped them down with my feet
like weeds, they'd regrow stronger
they tied themselves around my ankles
robust enough to immobilize
converting my legs into a mess of thorns and trunks
my body paralyzed at the centre
the branches took the longest to grow
when the first one shot through
I thought I'd be upset, but felt only relief
the black flecks of my eyes became the dead of winter
not a single leaf could ever grow on these limbs
but as the roots thickened, I began to forget
what it felt like to ever walk or speak or love
I knew thirst and hunger, the need to grow
taking no comfort in feeling rooted
but not remembering how to move, either
drowned in my own thicket
I needed to be felled to bud anew

when i was younger books were a part of me
literally i couldn’t get them off of me
all the words flowing through my hands that i use to
S-P-E-L-L out with my hands
as if i am the writer and the words are my advantage
to create with imagination in grace
taking a big pace with the words in my hands
they are my best friend
my lover
my light
books are apart of me
they swim in my veins
twisting my brains
my thoughts are my in a poetic movement
reciting quotes that made me insane
only because of the meanings behind their sayings
becoming carved into my back and arms
shaking my core
for words mean much more to me
then what other people believe
while the cloud of overthinking and emotions flood my brain
books keep me tamped
like a lion locked in a cage
yet the lion will one day unlock that cage
of fear and doubt
and get out with wonder and cheer
like book theifs who steal and conceal
their hidden books
for the pure golden that is in their hands
for books stand as more then a book with just words
while i am  skin and bones
books are my heart
because i L-O-V-E them
don’t you?

Dirt Daubers

They float in and out all day
long on low interest wings
cramped toes of abodes
accreting like tamped syllables
compressed into lines, bellow
bad things about the mothers of their
fellows from laced lattice work
**** like champs in the bushes
hip sprung and hands free
while I ignore the noise and hunch
over muddy simile, worry
concentric rings of rhythm  
into pages of imperfect tubes
just waiting for habitation.

The tongue no man can tame

language is absorbed into the wild tongue
then it forgets
the taste
of uncut gems and steak Tartar

raw
word tasters are rare, nu-ance is hinted at while

nu is hog- tied in a mathematic con un drum un mazing
a knot in the fiber string theory needs to work

it's wicked cool,
what an untamed tongue can do

with global ****** cybernetic foam
damping down tamped down sludge from
early efforts

nothing can be hidden in truth,
the act of ac
ception
freedom; when you know,
like re-cognize this
troubling
idea

and say I got past you, you are unbelievable.

True? It's a sense, we can all feel it. Like,
the empowering pushing force
which re
deems idle words worth reading, for the rush.

Bonafide catatonic doggedness,
nevertheless this stubborn stoic poet writ
afore and another feeble effort courtesy
exhaustive mental effort
he brewed den - brought about divine visit
analogously to solve mystery pinpointing
within suspense unveiling whodunnit.

Whereat your true
plane vanilla author's creativity
admittedly drastically did decline
bawling and crying
caterwauling putting any feline,
to shame, hence abandoned grandiose design,
cuz he suddenly contracted

(think fabricates)... what else
flesh eating bacteria unfavorable sign
finding me body stone cold supine
(courtesy brainstorm that went awry)
inducing purgatory nauseating
sensation to *****,
nope not at all feeling fine,

hence literary dream subsequently mine
ambition tanking (think
kamikaze nose diving
minus parachute life line),
sought spiritual guidance ministered
severe existential nihilist crisis
(an understatement)... zip,

absolute zero, and nein
never to witness, nor
restored vigor and vitality,
(sob... sob... sob) ha how asinine,
hence garden variety germane pine
wood coffin evidenced
resembling somber funereal yahrzeit

(/ˈyärˌtsīt,ˈyôr-/) recollecting late mother
helped beget kith and kin of mine,
than as now buzzfeeding appetites decline
possibly courtesy bloodily splattered
white laboratory coated
donned Victor Frankenstein
mister monster master's

repurposed cadaver delivers kosher eats
fancy feast grubhub groaning
outsize maître d' makes beeline,
nsync with anonymous canine,
corps speedier than any airline,
unbeknownst to yours truly posthumous
fame will inevitably yield moonshine.

Fast forward approximately
twelve hours later recuperated -
aide de camp resolved impasse with
partial writer's block slayed
attempting to continue quasi theme
i.e. avoid typing with fingers delayed,
albeit no matter unconscious

editing automatically peremptorily made
suppressing crude, fiery, ignominious tamed
loathsome offal rot earning F grade
securely unceremoniously waylaid
lurid outburst blandly diluted into staide
yawningly tedious figurative walled barricade,
when lo and behold atavistic beast erupts

fresh sortie attempts peppering enfilade
anew ideally unadulterated, unedited,
unexpurgated material ought be displayed
to allow, enable, and
provide raw emotional blackest shade
to resonate within mind
of unsuspecting reader,

who might take
objection with primitive grade
communication, and blatant
scathing writer somewhat afraid
to air unrefined sentiments
may cost popularity,
uncontested where cadre of

unseen followers thence evade
once popular rising sallying forth star,
whose emergent fame
(even if only limited edition
to cyberspace) will fade,
yet methinks loosing
stream of consciousness obeyed


fealty on one metrical foot
metaphorically uncorking
deep seated primal angst laid
bare like bleached bones
existential crisis oft times
gussied up to avoid tirade,

whereby woke parlayed
gut wrenching splenetic self degrade
ding soul bearing vile eruption
considerably quieted, stoppered, tamped...
courtesy linkedin, symbiotic maid.

I can still picture you here
The afternoon's lemonade sky corrupts the image
Still, you pose for cameras that no longer exist
Only tamped down, long-dead grass remains
This would've been a lovely place for a picnic
Or maybe to make love
Before the fall of reason

Foremost gratitude heavenly indebted,
jumbling kindling, linkedin mourning
numbness overlaid, pervaded, quashed,
routed thoroughly undermined vibrant
warbling, when xing yesterday's youth

zigzagging, accompanying blitzkrieg
cleaving deafeningly exploding,
formative grim homelife, indelibly
jabbing kid, (little me) nonstop,
overwhelming progeny, quintessentially

robbing, stunting, tormenting
unrelentingly vitality wrenching,
why xyst, zapping assiduousness,
begetting, crushing, destroying essential
fortitude, generating grievousness,

hellacious intractable joylessness,
kneading loneliness, murdering nascent
opportunistic potential, quiet, reserved,
timid, untested voiceless x years,
zilch accomplishments, boyhood

cheated, dieted, extremely famished,
gifted hirsute heir, ill, jettisoned
kippered lunkhead mealy mouthed,
nerdy, outlier psychologically quartered,
repressed self, tamped universal vitality,

withheld Xmas yearnings, zapped
animalistic basic cravings, denied
endeavoring fulfillment, gouged hole
inside, jawboned, kept lid mentally,
nixed opportunities, pronouncedly

quarantined, rabidly snatched tasting
ultimate vibrant x2c, yanked zipline,
aborting bequeathed capacity depriving
eats, forever ghosting hated individual,
jackknifing, kickstarting livingsocial

mortgaged, never ordained physical
quests, ruined self, thoughtfulness
vanquished, worthiness Xrayed,
yabadabadoo zone agitated
beyond crafting development,

executed firstrate glorious human,
impounded jailed kindred love,
manifested nebbish, obliged pleasing
quirky ridiculous travesty, unleashed

vapid wretchedness, xyz, attempted
bizarre concoction, decoding
essentially fruitless, go head issue
joker kick.

Outward slovenly appearance bespeaks volumes
wordsworth their weight in gold
(exhumed from the pith
of these lovely bones -
beclothed with mottled skin)
presages afterlife of hellish horror
(think Dante's inferno),
nevertheless a respite from earthly torture
wracking mein kampf since conception.

I lived without great expectations
diploid on an impossible mission
set in motion courtesy
triggered pleasure zones,
when natural propensity toward mortality
yielded mutual intense
or paroxysmal excitement
after unbridled love making
between then young parents of mine
approximately circa early/mid April
nineteen hundred and fifty eight.

Begot upon initial cleavage of two gametes
genetic fate decreed upon yours truly,
when nine months later a scrawny boy
traversed thru the birth canal uneventfully
into the hands of waiting obstetrician.

Mother placed me near her *****,
where I busted thru ample cleavage
nursed courtesy milk of human kindness
until she became high and dry
pacified scraggly baby,
who screamed at the top of his little lungs
possibly linked to submucous palate
split uvula - diagnosed years later
by specialist at Lancaster Cleft palate clinic.

Severe nasality as Aladdin in grade school
linkedin with extreme introvertedness
grist for the role as scapegoat
bully me pronounced
major inferiority complex prevailed.

Suicidal ideation throve
as unhealthy psychological bumper crop:
I cared not a whit for mine body, mind, and soul
negligent hygienic habits - unkempt appearance
abhorred cleanliness, greaseball outlier
videlicet witnessed infrequent visits
to bathing or showering facilities
let hair grow long and ratty, and shaggy
passive aggressive stance
toward family of origin members
sought refuge in mine bedroom
remained metaphorically hermetically sealed
until emerging adulthood
entrenched, fixated, and glued
to aforementioned behavioral traits.

Challenged, piqued, and
tested and tried patience of parents
passed their threshold of tolerance.

Overstayed welcome at 324 Level Road
at the receiving end of hollow ultimatums
browbeaten courtesy damning epithets
fueled glowering hatred, issuing kickass
brickbats, out the mouths of mommy dearest or
papa, silently internalized their vicious wrath.

Smoldering rage within me tamped down
as brilliant comeuppance
did not visit mother on her deathbed,
nevertheless wept profusely
while wailing "I love you" over the telephone,
and every May fourth -
since two thousand and five
crafted commemorative poems,
she always asked
for written acknowledgement
at the least remembering her birthday -
November thirteenth -
from second born and singular son.

No escape from
being called oppressive scatological names,
neither at home nor at school,
and including riding the bus
brutal, short and nasty invectives
assaulted my sensitive eardrums
of course with futility
impossible mission to deflect
blacked banal barbs,
whether besieging me

from so called wonderful,
albeit infuriated parents
continually wounding mine ego,
which pride of self never robust
subsequently such regular
(unleaded) cruelty outsourced to every ogre
witnessed an aggrieved boy
silently pained courtesy
whiplash of words accosting consciousness
submissively accepting battering

haranguing, poisoning, stinging
standing stockstill
forbearance vetting psyche,
the tragedy exhibited
by stoic facade and charade
generating absolute zero responsiveness
from an introverted
anxiety plagued youngster,
who grew up emotionally,
physically and spiritually stunted
scratching out pathetic poetry.