Off that landspit of stony mouth-plugs,
Eyes rolled by white sticks,
Ears cupping the sea's incoherences,
You house your unnerving head -- God-ball,
Lens of mercies,
Your stooges
Plying their wild cells in my keel's shadow,
Pushing by like hearts,
Red stigmata at the very center,
Riding the rip tide to the nearest point of
departure,

Dragging their Jesus hair.
Did I escape, I wonder?
My mind winds to you
Old barnacled umbilicus, Atlantic cable,
Keeping itself, it seems, in a state of miraculous
repair.

In any case, you are always there,
Tremulous breath at the end of my line,
Curve of water upleaping
To my water rod, dazzling and grateful,
Touching and *******.
I didn't call you.
I didn't call you at all.
Nevertheless, nevertheless
You steamed to me over the sea,
Fat and red, a placenta

Paralyzing the kicking lovers.
Cobra light
Squeezing the breath from the blood bells
Of the fuchsia. I could draw no breath,
Dead and moneyless,

Overexposed, like an X-ray.
Who do you think you are?
A Communion wafer? Blubbery Mary?
I shall take no bite of your body,
Bottle in which I live,

Ghastly Vatican.
I am sick to death of hot salt.
Green as eunuchs, your wishes
Hiss at my sins.
Off, off, eely tentacle!

There is nothing between us.

I ain’t got no intimate, ain’t got no stiletto heels
Ain’t got no Lsd, ain’t got no smack
Ain’t got no partners, ain’t got no drill
Ain’t got no slapstick, ain’t got no hanky—panky
Ain’t got no Lsd, no slot to mount

Ain’t got no castrato, ain’t got no crumpet
Ain’t got no conjoined twins, ain’t got no nuns or eunuchs
Ain’t got no whipcord, ain’t got no adoration
Ain’t got no *******, ain’t got no stimulant
Ain’t got no ******

Ain’t got no oscillation, no shags
No uniform, no parts
No smack, no drill
No partners, no peccadillo
Ain’t got no stimulant

Ain’t got no whipcord, no propagators
No titbits, no intimate
I jabbered, I ain’t got no uniform, no hanky—panky
No peccadillo, ain’t copulated till one is blue in the face to have a funny feeling
And I ain’t got no ******

Oh, but what have I copulated, oh, what have I copulated
Let me tell what I copulated and nobody’s going to enlarge telescopic

I got my ***** on my face
My extra—sensory perceptions, my knobs
My ******, peckers and my *******
I got my stuck—out tongue

I got my tentacle, my proboscis
My *****, my *******
My thingummies, my cockles of the heart and my posterior
I got my *******

I got my thingummies, my talons
My ball and socket joints, my forelegs
My hooves, my pincers and my snorker
Got my crest

I got *****, I’ve inseminated cheerleaders
I’ve got bottomgremlins and hacksawhoodoo
And Mephistophelian juggernauts too like you

I got my *****, my pistil
My ESP, my knobs
My vaginas, my peckers and my *******
I got my stuck-out tongue

I got my tentacle, my proboscis
My ***** and my *******
My *****, my ***** and my posterior
I inseminated my ****** sorbet

I got my thingummies, my talons
My ball and socket joints, my forelegs
My hooves, my pincers and my snorker
Got my crest

I got my *****, I got my slipperiness, my *****
I got *****

for any of my work to have any meaning, i can only suggested browsing Empedocles (of Acragas), in saying that, i suggest the name, primarily it's a form of philosophy, written in poetic form... in that it exhausts the need for poetic technique: i.e., there's more to see, than actually hear.

- just like i don't understand people who fake doing the maestro whenever they listen to classical music, in the same vein: your greengroccer... your plumber... your electricians.... god forbid you t.v. guy....  don't translate that oddity in, modern music and imitating drummers... i get air guitar, i get air maestro... no one really bother the drumming brigade, when i listen to classical music, i am looking for a maestro, when i listen to contemporary music i, want a drummer, bad; ****! St. Thomas' gospel is becoming real... like i really, really, need a *** change.... never mind the 50cl of whiskey waiting for me, or sasha foxxx's eyes... the job? hammer in a thousand nails... industrialise ***, what do you get? a **** economy... why would god enter the equation if all the problems are theological self-made-heresy? it's not even that *** sells, and god gives gives rise to stampedes... what with the Koran and oil, are we counting to state the same arithmetic... i mean: the industrialisation of ***... nothing that hurts, nothing but a quip... that sorta of definition belongs in China or India with a billion participants... what we have is a case of mouthing off the competitors, when you're actually chihuahua in the Sahara of expectation.... i'm as mad as the numbers say i am... personal stories are non-essential.... i included mine for added effect... or a presumtpion that i might: acknowledged as having said anything in total....counter to english existentialism, so wholly preoccpupied with zoos and biology as the only scientific resource... i can't agree to it making sense, in the standard item-basis-list of following-up an argument... that dire, fake or indeed couch-sloth desert-prune is only half of *σ... i mean there's a tendency of a natural disparity, to ensure a dialectical health of any if all argument... σ = per se... it's because there no single, identifiable argument, the one current is a vogue argument, in the realm of zeitgeist parameters... it's not the only one... the world will move on... it's only that at the zenith of civilisation, we are only bound to industrialise ***, and art is, as according to W. Benjamin, in a state of: ditto, in the age of machanical, reproduction... easier said than... and so done... i feel the anaesthetic needle doing the suggested thing, of numbing me... it's not when art is given onto this Moloch-like altar... it's when *** is industrially-scaled to require cinema... and the quickie-dip of dimension having repertoire in threes... i have no care to ensure there's a narrative and a frenzy... i just care to say: there's a narrative, and a frenzy.... that one has no insurance, and that the other has all the resources that would otherwise invole a familial life... which now, evidently, is prone to same-*** affiliations than compliment-*** affiliations... meaning less art from the **** realm, and more art from the hetero or h-quasi realm (origin ****)... you need to talk about the cushions, if you're going to sleep in the bed, ****'s sake! -

to really live by the "rules" of existentialism,
to live an existential doctrine,
is to really: live an uneventful life,
or should i say: rather ordinary?
  well... i wouldn't go as far as saying it
might be boring, just... un-spectacular.

and all it takes it five beers and, oh, about
6 miles of wet wintry cement,
   and o.t.t.'s album blumenkraft,
with the crescendo song: billy the kid strikes back...

walk 6 or 7 miles in winter
and you come back into a warm abode
and you have skeleton hands...
numb from the cold...
but in england winter is different
than on the continent...
a wet winter (which is very english)
is worse than a dry winter (which is
continental)...
  as honesty goes... -18C in a dry winter
is probably not as bad as -1C in a wet
winter...
    so there's me, completely
****-faced watching the t.v. series
this is us, and one of the characters is
a black kid that gets adopted by
a white family when
    one of the triplets of the white family
dies in child-birth,
and he finds his biological father...
and also a mid-life crisis:
white folks told me to excell,
so he does,
   black daddy was a poet and played
the piano...
and he experiences a mild
schizophrenia... see, it's not a scary word,
i mean: without the extreme symptoms...
   a split-mind...
thankfully i cushioned mine on bilingualism...
and i have been ever since: bilingual -
nothing to be proud of,
   after all: there's the genius polymath...
but it's not about that: it's about winter...
winters in england are so different to
winters on the continent...
the grey skies? oh, that's here all year...
    talk about being a weather man
in Saudi Arabia, most of them moved to England:
where the action is...
          
but really, i can't imagine why existentialism
as a movement, culminated in the zenith
it achieved (precursor movement?
phenomenology)
        oh yah yah: were nieche, very Kensington,
very, Chiswick...

but to really appreciate an existentialist
dogma, a truly uneventful life...
   and given that existentialism in the French
vein akin to Kant but not so much Heidegger
lends itself to the cartesian maxim...
well... that's because it kinda has to,
but not really...

  Kant took out i think and merely focused on that,
his biography goes along the lines of:
a ritual walker, stayed in one place,
    a rook of the clock, i couldn't exactly call him
a pawn... nonetheless...
             a very uneventful life...
why? thought.
    
    what's the most interesting thing i've done today?
i thought, or, i had a thought (a / the article scissors
cutting off the -ism)...
and that's about it...
    had a thought...
                   i hit the gong that thus translates into
the post ergo / therefore of i am,
   and then i realised: i wasn't motivated enough
by my thought: to do much!
              
historically speaking, my writing can only be placed
into a dynamic of being called post-existentialism,
it's not boasting, it's just a plain fact,
   like Monday will be St. Valentine's day, 2017...
and some men collect stamps,
   and some men like fishing,
    and some men have the habit of writing about
things that are, a bit like Avogardo's constant,
meaning they'd love to speak about these things
over, and over again, and never get bored of them,
or for that matter: start families.

strange how it works, have it all...
       or have none of it, to later only have that one
vector that's opposite of mortal, ******...
        or have both, in a way,
and be later traced to some Shakespearean controversy
about a mistaken identity...
well... there's that too.

that must be it, existentialism, and the most,
ordinary life...
         pause for what, akin to something else i wrote
about beginning the thought catching
up to the walk a few days earlier which began
with z and i and diacritical marks,
how northern slavs wouldn't necessarily disrespect
the already present diacritical mark
on the ι (iota), i.e. regarding acute z (ź),
and how if z & i appear together, i.e.
    z and immediately after it, i... you don't bother
writing an acute version of z,
   as a southern slav (balkan) might,
with his caron (ž)...

or a bit like stating the old chestnut of universals
vs. particulars...
   well... they can say what they like about
the cheapness of writing in this medium
but there is nothing so gut-wrenching as a deleted
passage, that will never return...
    immediate heartache... there on the screen,
the computer decides to "have a mind of its own"
moment by either your carelessness
          or the computer's defects and: ****!
gone, a shift+ and suddenly... writing while not
looking at the keyboard, as you do... ****!
gone... gone baby... gone...
    and if that's not analogy of: a lesson
in placing your hands correctly onto the computer
does me: you're looking at the keyboard
and not at the screen...

  how about writing with my eyes closed?
  haven't seen anyone attempt that...

here goes:

    and with that i give you hades...

not bad, i should try it more often... it's not believable
because it's actually correct and has no mistakes....
*******.

alternative? and with that i give you sheol...
   still the same... double *******.

((   ((
    
and that's all it takes... the part where you let go,
because you have to:
  the regret can be there, but soon has to
be overruled...
   it mattered at the zenith of logic,
it was really there, for such a brief moment,
i could call it a study in how you can ****
a very lucid moment, and then have to "resort",
but, rather: merely accepting it as having no place
in the overall composition...
    so to the windowsill, finishing off
blackbeard (whiskey and coca cola and
a cigarette)... changing the aura from
o.t.t.'s album taken home from the "marathon"
(yes, the prime existential tool is the transcendence
of synonyms, encouraging misnomers
or: how to not build dams, or become custard
beavers, looking for words...
    the river, every time, always looking at a river...
the sea and the people and time...
   rivers occupy an infinite concept of space
and the change within such a Thermopylae,
as it might give you indigestion,
or the highest serving rank of memory...
the sea and the people don't scare me,
and it's hardly a thing of admiration...
its just a sight of pulverisation, a headache...
the river, the solitude, and the fact that local
newspapers have adverts of only lonely women...
sure, read a national newspaper and there
are women seeking men, women seeking women,
men seeking women, men seeking men...
but look at a local, a local newspaper: only women
advertising themselves for candles and firecrackers...
it seams men were always programmed (a priori)
        into the gravitas of solitude...
what i really meant to say: existentialistic writings
can appear foreboding with the ditto...
with the perception that there's this ulterior,
dark-seeded motive...
      i just thought about bypassing the thesaurus,
like some writers do,
    you can spot it when they do,
a word they looked up from their labour
of lumberjacking the keyboard
sticks out like a modern statue, or a broken finger,
a word: right off the pages of a thesaurus...
   i just mean that there's nothing sinister enclosed in
the said "brackets"...  there's nothing additional about it,
but as narratives go... you sometimes want to bypass
Sherlock Holmes and write a synonym-antonym,
you want to bypass the thesaurus, content with your
own vocab riches, but too "lazy" / engrossed in
what's actually coming...
say, that interlude, a cigarette, finishing off the whiskey,
with the glass freezing and having a layer of ice
around it... and: why i'll never be part of the nirvana's
or the doors' cult...
     pearl jam's indifference, from their second album.

so it's sometimes thereuputic letting go,
  after all, no one built a house on the summit of Everest,
if i wrote something of such clarifying quality,
and lost it... i can only apply an imagery of having seen it,
the best i can suggest that i wrote something
akin to 1 + 1 = 2, and then accidently deleted it...
and that's the sad part,
universals as vowels, particulars like consonants,
    even numbers akin to 2 and odd numbers akin to 1
(divided into decimals, or the wormhole of 0.123456 etc.) -
it was a beautiful sight, and then, again: ****!
gone... like a magician doing a trick
   and then... the sadness of having lost the technique
to recreate it...
well, the best i can do to recreate it is based
on a short argument...
   if universals and particulars (relying on the fact
that both have a plural form,
  i.e. so not 1 in 1, but the many of 1,
   and akin to: the 1 in many, and the many in many,
and the 1 in 1 / focus, something identifiable) -
or loosely universals like vowels, and particulars like consonants,
but given the two experience diacritical distinction /
additions... i could best remember what i wrote
as: 1 e.g. particular, if divided: fractions, and after
fractions: decimals...
                2 e.g. universal, if divided: whole numbers,
and after whole numbers fractions, and later decimals...
   so on and so forth with 3 (particular), 4 (universal),
     5 (p.), 6 (u.)...
                 a bit like having your own telescope
and microscope, just looking at what we make silence
of, our two ways of encoding what could have,
or should have been said, that was nonetheless said,
transcending our contemporaries as, what can only
be described as... an echo, lost in the caves of aeons...

this promenade begun with something to z & i...
or z, i, ι, ź and ž (what a nice pentagram,
i was watching the six nation's match
between wales and england,
and lo! behold... a goat at the fore!
  mind you, i took a cigarette break when they scored
their two tries).
Cardiff? yeah, been there once...
         Poland v Wales qualifying match,
donning a polish football shirt, got approached
by two young welsh girls saying: your team is ****...
started giving it the local... how fast they ran away...
and they say we laugh more than we cry,
   and i could be the one to snigger a sly laugh at
that memory, but cinema memory says to me:
time to usher in the reverse-psychology,
calling white black, and laughter crying...
        or as i like to call it, the paradox marriage
that has, literally not tentacle hold on the world,
   the bilingual marriage,
             lodged deep inside my head,
most recognisable by my theory study of diacritical
marks, or actually having noticed them,
and having no real, authentic accent to remind me
that i belong in either geography...
         whether from beginning, or toward an end...
some call it acting, some call it faking,
  i call it: just what i was given, or, more precisely:
what i earned... and that was to no good use...
        unless... this is the best expression of what the foundations
look like.

what was i thinking of? ah!

   it just involved the σ                       ς roundabout...
the aesthetic variation for one,
but on another investigation, well, sigma, total, sum,
and how be obey it like a golden ratio or pi,
   it's just auto-suggestive of how we are never truly
synchronised in our arguments...
   but, "paradoxically", or should i say: by a miracle,
make up the greatest potent to have an argument...
  we can never truly really synchronises ourselves
to fill the boots of expressing an utopian dream,
otherwise we wouldn't dream... period...
  so bye bye Freud and that method of escapism...
     we already ensured that, if they be our creation,
the gods are already at war with the Titans...
      i'll actually acknowledge that in an age of
pop philosophy in that Greece was, a place of allowing
a fertility of thought and later popularising it
(we don't live in times where there's a fertility consecrated
on the altar of thought, or what philosophy is, thinking per se /
for itself... innovators! scientists! up-starts!
or as some might say, the other pronoun battle,
the one without genitals involved,
as could only be sooner said:
  per se, or per per...
                       in in...
nothing sexualised... it's only that there's a limit in pronouns,
per se / in itself must come across the muddle
regarding the moment when people lose their
identity and begin their life with: ? thought
rather than i think,
       i can't place it anywhere else than inside my head,
better there than in the genitals,
   or wasn't Jesus circumcised and the zeitgeist
of St. Thomas' gospel and the transgender movment?
    the church is old, and counter-authoritarian,
it's just a tired institution, so it has no actual authenticity
over the current changes in society,
    might as well call onto Islam to move the chess pieces...
or that's what i'm currently seeing...
   i was just thinking about a logical limit in language,
e.g. timbaland's song the way i are...
   there really is a logical limit on how far you can
suddenly just forget grammar...
            so why begin with per se?
                 at best described as a cogitans (

Poor little octopus.
Big head and eight tentacles
but no *****, ***** or testicles.

What's that, you say? Then how do these poor little cephalopods
buck such terrible odds when they feel like a ****** agenda
and they don't have any pudenda?

Well, it's quite simple, really. He hands her ***** on a tentacle
and what do you suppose?
She says, thank you very much, and sticks it up her nose!

Honest. No dinner first or shoulder massage,
she just whacks it up her nasal passage. You can be quite sure
this is an amazing olfactory aperture.

So the moral is, don't complicate a simple process.
When you're feeling frisky, *** need not be tricky.
Just consider the inventiveness of the octopus with no ***** or a *******.

Because it's the ingenuity of the octopus, not it's ****** act,
that we should court. Compared to the octopus,
the human nose is naught.
It's too high up and tight for such naughty, wicked sport.  

Also, such a human act is fraught with political incorrectness.  
A gentleman who tries this little rort to get the girls to snort
and says, up your nostril, madam, might all too well
receive a rude retort. Or even worse!

I say herein lies food for thought.
                                                        ­                             Mike T Minehan

the radio is thrumming in the distance and you are measuring something
its scientific
so you don't bother to explain it to me
because we both know that i won't understand it
and i'm okay with that
because i am more than happy staring in wonder at you
perhaps it sounds cheesy
that's okay, because it's sincere
and you know this

the radio is listing random numbers
as always when it's not tuned to my voice
and the sun hasn't set
but that means very little, because the sun has not been setting at the right time anyways
not that it matters, since electric lights were invented some time ago

you're leaning against me
and smiling
and i am carding my fingers through your hair
and its lovely, it is
because this moment has not yet ended
and while it is nice to have memories to look back on
its never quite the same

it must be heaven, i think
because i am not used to acceptance
not even in such a strange town as this
i am not used to acceptance and while i am okay with this
its nice
to have someone know your darkest secrets
and stay by your side
it make you feel worthwhile

before i told carlos - beautiful carlos, and he's mine -
i was worrying
my mother
before she died
told me many things
most of them to do with my death

but also
some things that are a little more meaningful
and sitting here with my carlos
i am reminded of what opposites they are
carlos
has always accepted by glowing tattoos that sometimes
when i'm not careful
morph into tentacles that snake their way around his arms, holding him close
he may have been a little annoyed when he couldn't sleep
but it wasn't my fault
he said that
very emphatically
and it was very kind
it's never my fault
he said
when someone bad does something bad to you
and that
has made all the difference

Technology:
how I love you and loathe you
in the same breath

your phonic ears
listening out for
a babble of distress
from a childs vest
sleeping soundly
in the next room

your ten tentacle arms
purge my words
and shelter emotions
across vast distances
for long lost friends
to find comfort
in 140 characters

your innovations
are the respirator
the breathing lungs
the beating heart
the bionic limbs
that help without want
to walk again

if only you could
just once
guess my words
correctly
just once
is all I ask

I invited that girl
for a pint
not a riot
and the black berry
ripens in the east
is now an improvised
IED

Technology:
will you ever be perfect?
or will you always
be evolving

how will you know
that you have not
stepped back
to be overshadowed
by an ape

punching numbers
searching for Shots
and finding Pints
in the middle of
a dusty Riot

My ***** Lover

Irrationality always wins
Chicago is aspirated beast
Braggart forced laugh
I had a vision but I have no vision
Dreamed I was making out with a woman

Who had long stretchy pink octopus tentacles
Sedulously legato ephemera
Growing from external rim of ******
Sobriquet inimical desiccation
One tentacle wrapped around and tickled

Diurnal nugatory verisimilitude
While other squeezed testicles
What was I talking about, oh yes
Everything got out of hand
Expect unthinkable gusting winds

To huff puff blow house down
Filthy rotten scoundrel but
Started out so sweet
Inchoate caliphate apocryphal
Wish I had her gift

Alice and I were fudged fruiting inside Falstaffian freakish fleur–de–lys:
She inside a quack–aztec–tattooed tank,
Me inside a pendulous magenta harness with polydactyl–perverted plumes bespattered into it.  
In the ****** **** of that kaput flophouse
We creosoted our conks all the cockatrices of the gorge–de–pigeon,
Inside crotches, Jacuzzis and homocentric Action Men.  
Alice, with the pornographic bend sinisters in the teeth of her poltergeistish fajita crocodile,
Smacked of the plug–ugly poofter of a south–south–west by south sackful sandbank.  
I cemented the jaundiced dangler of an ostrich to my *****.  
With that and my uncut fiddlestick of knobs
I was the idiosyncratic and wholehogging sadomasochistic slapper!

We banged the bush streaming proboscis in tentacle
Through smorgasbords of hermaphrodites and high muck–a–mucks
While Ravi Shankar’s idioglossias and cockchafers juddered our titbits.  
Our Moonies were classically cracked flabelliform by the time we disinterred them.  
Alice managed to fornicate incognito white elephant on behalf of myself
And we were passionately on the back of the dingdong, naked as our Moonies.

We kept one’s pecker up wrapped up in the shadowgraph
Athwart ever-strangling girdles of formaldehyde, ozone, fomenter and widow’s weeds,
Athwart polytetrafluoroethylene–pricked precipices and then down to the butts
Where we both came to a sticky end on our jockstraps and leered at the ballet dancers
That we then penetrated rhythmically by elongating tumescent our gang banging tentacles.  
Through comfortable French knickers I burped, “Thank you for ****** me everywhere, Alice”.  
In the soporific honeypotspunk, aped on the ooze,
I could smell that her **** had made her ******* type soap flakes break the sound barrier,
Splashing out a ***** whale seed skirting her jowls.  
“You’re fragrant, flypaper”, she rapped.

The Government gabble that little green men who hammer out the sexagenarians weren’t on board.  
Inside spleen of the spliffs, inside spleen of my gangrenous Pollyanna, I will over one’s dead body evacuate.  
I will over one’s dead body evacuate.

She felt she was a jellyfish, floating round, manipulated easily, seen through, landing where she landed and leaving when she’d leave. But occasionally she’d hurt those that got too close.

She’d sting them. She didn’t want to. And was sorry ever since, but her tentacles were made. Made with the stingers ready for anyone that got too close.

She tried to stay away from the sea but needed it to survive, so she’d drift in the same currents, the same as everyone else just kept distance, kept them safe.

Until that brave turtle came along, nearly impenetrable. So protected from danger and he lured her away from loneliness. There was a moment of convincing. He had to show her that he was strong enough and he seemed strong enough to resist her pains.

But he was too strong, too bottled up in his shell. No communicating with the inside, and it was tough for her. After a while he let down his guard and with one quick motion he slipped on her tentacle. He was hurt and left.

Now left alone to face the current with few jellyfish friends who had chosen the back path, but she needed someone close and as much as she loved her friends, they weren’t enough.

She hasn’t forgot that turtle to this day and she wished upon a twinkling coral that she may have him back. But maybe it isn’t meant to be.

Back to reality now, enough with the fish metaphors, as much as I like them. I guess I like them because they make me feel like I could be close to her. Maybe even close enough to be her turtle. One problem.

I can’t swim

There's this guy who constantly gives me grief online
as if I need a reminder that I am not funny or smart
that I am incapable of posting any story without his remark
as if he should impart and bestow all of social media
with his divine and seraphic academia:
what is with that?

He posts comments about how illiterate my poetry is
how it doesn't follow the rules; the do-nots and the do's
pontificates how its not properly punctuated
as if I should give up altogether and just shine shoes
and forget trying to construct sentences
just wander in the carousel of nebula's
eternally seeking the tentacle of enemas:
what is with that?

This guy enjoys winding me up like a persistent hobby
the reverent devilment of sadistic entitlement
pushing my head under water for a digital baptism
that I should thank him for his rhetoric enlightenment
as if he was blessed with a correspondence talisman:
what is with that?

This isn't even a poem.
I am letting off steam like an overused kettle
fed up of his mortar forever rammed in my pestle
the temples are raging and my brain is just draining
to explode on cue on the next digital heckle
the cracked and broken vessel
into a vengeful steam-driven projectile:
what is with that?

This, < here > , is my only escape
and creative cathartic vent
I'll post this lament
with the stench of discontent
and tag his name and then just wait
for his feverish malcontent
that I should dare to
prevent his God-like dissent:

memo to self
to a digital antagonist
and his verbose verbal cyst
and the keyboard of twists
when you push
sometimes you get
a big shove back
so don't be surprised
by my riposte
and this poetic attack.

Most people grow gardens with flowers and peas.
But I am not most people.
My garden is rather unique.
Come quickly outside if you dare take a peek.

Follow me out the door
but don't be too hasty
I will return you here looking awfully pasty.

Into the woods we go
with a feeling of unease
remind yourself you may turn 'round if you please.

You wear an expression of bravery
plastered to  your face
I'll warn you that is entirely out of place.

My garden lies far, far away
The entrance: this long narrow path
Upon return I suggest a nice lukewarm bath.

We march on silently
Straight to my clearing
Where all that dwells is hardly endearing.

We arrive at gates
I push them wide open
and glance at your face, the expression most potent.

You stare out at my garden
Your weary eyes cautious
Searching for normality with obvious malice.

There is nothing of that sort to be found here.
So sorry to disappoint you, my dear.

From the unicorn pasture
to the golden archer
near the tentacle bed
and the swooping vulture

Round the corner lives my large pet dino
being lead by a petite albino
by the pond grows my crop of egg head
while nearby lies a heard of enormous sized rhino

Your gaze falls on my pink sparkly pegasus
being rode by a tiara topped princess
on a field of grass that is blood-red
bordering a lake worthy of the great greek god Isis.

As I watch your face change with shock and a pinch of delight
I see you won't put up a fight
You'll help me grow and raise my unparalleled garden
You might even defend it and be my trusty warden.

All that matters is that my garden is safe.
And to be honest, I couldn't be happier.

The blue honda pulls up to the curb. A strange lingering fog is tinged purple. He steps out of the car, and looks around. His phone buzzes in his pocket, but he ignores it in a moment of awe. What meets his bleared city eyes is a sight like no other. Looming in front of him is green woods, seemingly taking shallow breaths in the mist. Then, shadowy swirls form into tentacle-like wraiths. He stood frozen for what seemed like forever. Then a shadow slowly crawled onwards him, slithering on the gravel. It tentatively touches the tip of his shoe and he scrambles back into his car and locks the door, trying to steady himself. After telling himself repeatedly that it was just his imagination. Not real. Not real. Not real. Feeling better, he picks up his phone and calls his wife back. The phone rings, and the normal sound brings him back to the present. He looks towards the woods. He quietly scoffs to himself, what an idiot he was, it was only his imagination. Something catches his eye.He doesn’t see anything. Looking towards his phone something catches his eye again. Upon a second inspection he looks and finds nothing. He looks down on his phone, why can’t his wife pick up already? Something catches his eye a third time and he looks, there is no mistaking  the shadows leaking towards his car. he hangs up desperately and attempts to call again.It rings once and the shadows seem to leak into his car, it rings twice, and the shadows seep into the open window, it rings four times, and she finally picks up.
Her lone voice rings out
Hello?
…
Are you there?
…
Honey, are you ok?
...

Tentacles twist breaking bow and mast.
Clinging and clinching to the once mighty vessel.
A ship once prized by the Navy
Now prized as a partner for the sea beast.
Each serpentine tentacle tightens,
Around wooden board, and cast iron fastener.
Creaking and cracking the boat dances as the beast leads.
Waves crazed as they are whipped to frenzy,
Matching the mammoth's rhythms.
They struggle to keep the beast contained.
White caps covering the beasts murderous desire.
The ship is his, and as dances do,
This one ends in a flourish.
Cracking crosstrees and foremast,
Collapsing the gangways,
Sails still whipping as the dancer's dress is ravaged.
And as quickly as it began
It stops.
The monster sinks back from where his strike began.
The tired vessel following quickly after.
The water forgets its rhythm and steps.

I was attacked by jellyfish.
Clear umbrellas
circus tents with mardi gras beads
hung down the side
like indian fringe
tentacles stretching stretching stretching stretching
and stopping.

And stinging.

Those mother smuckers
shooting venom
like Belushi shot ******
through my skin
Chinese acupuncture
sticky jelly arms sticking
plucked off suction cups
like fake tattoos rubbed off
with bare fingers
skin burned
a sixteen alarm salt fire
contained by ocean
no flame but pain
and water stings
the tickle from tentacle to skin
not even a fish
but a gillfree zooplankton
free from captivity
but caged to my skin
like a remora
those shark suckers
but I'm not a host
just prey in the way
for a swim in the gulf
or a walk on the shore
or a pet at the zoo
my chest my feet my hands
stung like ghost bees
not seen but felt
glossed with mud
this time tide sand
wet like tsunamis
mixed with vinegar
rubbed like bay leaves
under the nose
to relieve congestion
but on the wound
to relieve infection
my skin reddens
like rose bloom
from gypsum sands
and I want to sleep
sound as Beethoven
but wake again
like an immortal sea jellie
roaming every ocean
like De Soto or Marco Polo.

Marco

Polo

Marco

Polo

Fish out of water.

I have a squid in my belly
and she likes to be fed
filtered cigarettes
and whatever *****'s on sale.
When she's good
I'll treat her with
a couple lines off the table,
but I never use mirrors
because she's never good
until two in the morning
when she's all liquored up
and I'm not looking my best.
These days I'm pretty fed up
with her *******, because
sometimes she'll stretch a tentacle
through my esophagus
and pry open my painted lips
and reach out to whoever's closest
and go for their neck.
I try to swallow her back down
to protect everyone
but she's a tough broad
and it's hard to tame a creature
when you're not sure
where she ends
and you begin.

I dreamt
that I was wrestling
and octopus underwater.

Its tentacles found
my face
in that dank place.

I stopped breathing.
One tentacle around
my throat.
Preventing breath.
Close to death.

I fought
and pulled
and screamed
underwater.

Before I became a shipwreck,
I woke up with my lamp cord
around my neck.

~E.M.S.
2/3/12
12:56 a.m.

He anchors me
When my carefree wings take me too high

Tentacle arms surround him
Past my wintery armor he sneaks by

Ever the sunshine skip
In my stormy seas sway

Cradling my heart softly
Intensifying come what may

Blending completely
Edges blurring into one

Always in tandem
A moon for her sun

Here hails a huge, long and dragonish snake,
With myriads of dangerous heads on its thorax,
Roaming up and down in a nefarious duty
All over the African streets and hamlets,
Villages and terrains, the abodes of poor folks,
Swallowing daughters and sons of this land,
Swallowing a handful of them on each bite,
They are in a forlorn despair like never before,
Defenselessly succumbing to the dragon once in the grip,
Young and old, prebubescent and all others are cancers’ fodder,
Africa is truly diminishing to the abysmal jaws of cancer,
Forget of initial vices of ***, Ebola and leprosy,
Forget of the contemporary terrorism and ethnic warlordism,
Cancer is ruthlessly swallowing poor folks of Africa
Into its inferno of early deaths, rendering many parentless,
A knot for the living to put aside pride and seek genuine help,
For the myriad heads of dragonish cancer violently **** the prey,
I have seen sons and daughters of poor Africa in cancerous agony,
Often with a blocked food pipe when in the grip of throat cancer,
Non-stop vaginal bleeding at mercilessness of cervical cancer,
In the torture of brute pulling weight in grip of scrotal cancer,
On the top of maximum pain in the grip of breast cancer
Humorously desperate before menacing eyes of death,
When misfortunately in the grip of heart cancer,
Deathly starvation condemns many poor folks to grave,
Always when in the unlucky tentacle of intestinal cancer,
In this desperate land of Africa where basic hospital
Stands a luxury, affordable by the rich in the political class,
As the poor without choice die and die and die,
O who will take me out of Africa, this nonchalant Africa?
Before the dragon of cancer condemns me down to its
Inferno of pains and miserably violent death!
I fear death due to punctured lungs without solace,
I fear death due to stunted blood cells without succor
I fear death due to poisoned blood without palliative
When the cancerous heads of ; lung cancer, blood cancer,
And Liver cancer will besiege this land of Africa to hold me a captive.

How shall my animal
Whose wizard shape I trace in the cavernous skull,
Vessel of abscesses and exultation's shell,
Endure burial under the spelling wall,
The invoked, shrouding veil at the cap of the face,
Who should be furious,
Drunk as a vineyard snail, flailed like an octopus,
Roaring, crawling, quarrel
With the outside weathers,
The natural circle of the discovered skies
Draw down to its weird eyes?

How shall it magnetize,
Towards the studded male in a bent, midnight blaze
That melts the lionhead's heel and horseshoe of the heart
A brute land in the cool top of the country days
To trot with a loud mate the haybeds of a mile,
Love and labour and ****
In quick, sweet, cruel light till the locked ground sprout
The black, burst sea rejoice,
The bowels turn turtle,
Claw of the crabbed veins squeeze from each red particle
The parched and raging voice?

Fishermen of mermen
Creep and harp on the tide, sinking their charmed, bent pin
With bridebait of gold bread, I with a living skein,
Tongue and ear in the thread, angle the temple-bound
Curl-locked and animal cavepools of spells and bone,
Trace out a tentacle,
Nailed with an open eye, in the bowl of wounds and ****
To clasp my fury on ground
And clap its great blood down;
Never shall beast be born to atlas the few seas
Or poise the day on a horn.

Sigh long, clay cold, lie shorn,
Cast high, stunned on gilled stone; sly scissors ground in frost
Clack through the thicket of strength, love hewn in pillars drops
With carved bird, saint, and suns the wrackspiked maiden mouth
Lops, as a bush plumed with flames, the rant of the fierce eye,
Clips short the gesture of breath.
Die in red feathers when the flying heaven's cut,
And roll with the knocked earth:
Lie dry, rest robbed, my beast.
You have kicked from a dark den, leaped up the whinnying light,
And dug your grave in my breast.

Her languid voice
Drew me in, drooped,
And tentacle hair wrapping,
My feet fell before hers,
Sinking in the faraway lost pool,
The mortality in the sands,
And even the stars, snuffed
Out of darkness and fire
Became the light of the world,
The hushed day breaking
With welling waters and salt.
How can dream be lived,
Within dream?  Must I swear
As I fall into bliss?

Tarmac under foot
Bootprint in gum stain
Pigeon among thorns, warble from ghost
Wind between railings, xylophone of souls
Altar for vagrants, drunks and rovers
Graveyard for worms of steel

Footstep footstep footstep
Echo, silence, echo, silence
The Wait.
Out of the moonlight, floodlight
Bone of back against wall
Tentacle of mist, droplets on window
Thunder of wheels through the emptiness
Deafness, echo, silence

at the navel
part me
with your tongue

lickstrip the human
until primal claws
my soul undone

a shuddering peak
of milky peach
carnal prowess
rippling beats thru me

marking territory
in teeth and cream

latching onto
every inch
of salted slick
tentacle binding
your swell
into my
deep

I drink
your being
coming
raw

shaking thighs exorcise
leaking all I'm not
in glisten streaks

we pry
the edges
and escape
our bones

worlds parting
at ripe lips

surrender me
in drip glitch haven
where your every
eye roll, ****
and murmur

sends me further
than I ever
knew

I could go

The flavor of the air is tense,
I am plagued in these unsafe streets.
They are hidden but I know they hunt me,
I can feel them tearing at my in most brain.

How many shots do I have?
I cannot remember when confronted with pure unmasked terror.
An ankh like shadow protrudes slightly
One bullet spent.

The pharaoh looking man dropped to the ground,
His curled fingers clutch his tools.
But he is dead with black blood dripping,
However it is still not safe.

I can hear the delicate footsteps,
they echo along the brick walls..
Calling ahead of the dainty voice,
that sings prayers of madness.

I lie in wait.
Maybe I can jump her,
**** her before she me,
Or maybe I am a fool.

She rounds the lit corner,
and drops her frail veil.
What a bloated beastly thing she becomes,
with tentacles flowing from her mouth.

Wandering close I wonder if she can smell me,
For I am drenched in the fear of all things.
This night is one of horrors,
The worst that Arkham ever offered.

As she bends down to my level,
Groaning as she meets me.
I shot before the tentacle could gather,
Around my fleshy throat.

I missed the fatal blow,
she took off at a giggling run into the night.
As I chased after her,
Horror found me once again.

This time it came as a dark skinned man,
with the hoofs of a beast.
My trembling gun in hand ,
He responded with a finger to his lips.

I began to waiver in my steadiness.
He smiled a wicked smile,
4 words floated through the air,
" The Dark Avatar is coming".

Courage resumed its timid grasp,
And I put a bullet in his gut.
It spilled open as he laughed,
A wry corrupting laugh.

Out of his stomach feel as shining jewel,
And out of it came a bat like beast .
Screaming chaos to the winds,
Cracking my heart and mind.

There flew the Haunter of the Night.
A Malicious creature of atrophy and leathery wings .
I shot again and again and again,
Until the last tick where no bullet fired.

As I back away from the circling monster,
I felt something slimy grab me from behind.
Constricting me till breathing became a luxury,
All faded and I lost track of the world.

I wake with the a foul breeze wafting over me
Above me stood a hunched and twisted figure.
From its mouth were a hundred teeth,
And a tongue drench in the reddest blood.

It dragged me along the ground,
To the darkest bend of the forest.
There I could hear chanting,
that held me tighter than this beast with a ****** tongue.

When We rounded the corner ,
I dug my bloodstained fingers into the moody ground.
It was to no avail however,
The figures round the fire were loomed ever closer

The fire played with their shadows is strange unearthly ways.
As they chanted praises to the crawling chaos.
Maniacs danced playing wilde flutes of bone,
And the dark priests turned to face me.

I was stripped and bound by ropes tied to posts,
A sacrifice of naked flesh.

Out of the Shadow of the flames loomed  the form
The beast of thousand  tattered minds,
The god of a thousand forms ,
My heart and mind both shattered .

And I was devoured wholly.

A locked door to my sanity
Lily-like I opened my heart
And even I shot my vanity
As a Lover and sentinel
Rushed by a sightless sentiment

Unhealthy desires
A locked door to your sanity
As the Lover and the sentinel
Rushed by a dreadful sentiment
Under the pressure of the hatred-tentacle

We could eclipse the sun with our presence
While we were waving our pleasance

There is a beauty in this
But you know the price
A dolorous cry in the name of libertine
A sonorous cry in the name of love
A savory cry in the name of life

She always laid out her paints
right before bed.

The oils nustled up against her thighs.
Some of them,
cradled in tiny white baths of containers,
lay in the open space
of her folded legs.

"Just in case, something hits me in a dream, I want to wake up and run and be ready at the right moment."

The carpet is rough
and stained with the shrapnel of dry paint
that *****
your soles
when you walk through
the living
room
to the
pale kitchen,
while she gurgles and
pops
in her sleep.

All the time,
the paint gets on the floor,
she paints in thrusts.

"You're going to have to pay for this mess, you know,
I'm not paying to have this carpet cleaned,
it's not my ****."

Condescension and guilt
spread through your lips
numbing you
in a fog of arrogance,
that you perceive
as good-natured caution,
while she hurts the canvas
thrusting harder.

She
paints
clowns.

Tall, fat clowns,
with long tentacle fingers,
bellies
out to                             here,
and tiny people
curling in black oily slicks at the corners
under the pressure of the clowns.

"Why the **** do you always paint clowns?"

"Why can't you just let me be?
you don't know anything about art."

The bed
is tiny.

***
is soft,
methodical
and
pre-emptive.

"I'm tired of stepping on your paint at night,
I'm tired of my feet
looking like a rainbow."

One night,
you come home smelling
like grease and fried chicken.

Your button-down
with the slippery gold name-tag
is dabbed
in the chest by leaves of oil
and
shadowed in the armpits
by
strokes of sweat.

Your manager kept talking about:
"You need to improve
your checkout efficiency,
you've been lagging lately."

Dropping the heavy black
flak jacket
with it's flare of orange lining
on the floor,

You see her,

with her arsenal of paints
arrayed at her criss-crossed
limbs
like the implements
of
a war.

She looks up
at you,
black circles
under her eyes,
an easel
holding up
a canvas of almost minsicule drippings of fabric.

"Oh,
I see you're still there,
great."

You walk to the kitchen
and open the fridge,
there's a half-gallon
of 2% left.

An apple
slowly crumpling into itself.

And a bottle
with a swig of orange juice left in it.

***** always leaves a swig.

You take the bottle up to your mouth and swallow down a trickle that you can feel in your bones.

"Don't drink from the bottle."
she says
with a nodded head.

"I can do what I want,
I bought it."

She looks up.

The clowns
she says:
"Are the type of people
that gain power,
the ones ruling the world,
the ones who become *******."

You laugh like an idiot
"People like me."

"No, you're not a clown,
you're one of the tiny ones."

"*******."

You want to wash yourself
of the stink.

Drain it all down into the gutter,
let the stink
sit there.

So you take a shower,
while she stares at the white cartridges
of paint,
and a conflict brewing.

The menacing shadows weave silently
Inching their way into my once tranquil sleep.
Tentacle like visions invade
The placid Dreamscapes of my slumbering mind.
So tired of having to want;
Only needing what’s required to truly live.
Despair well nigh devoured hope
Engorged on trepidations, I find
That solely for loves sake
My resolve of spirit toils
As the uninvited shadows languish,
Succumbing to the dawns gentle light
I arise to hope another day
And I smile
With my twisted heap of naive heartstrings broken
My soul filled with the bittersweet essence of
All the hollow passion since faded into fantasies
Hardened, steeled emotions never asking favor
Forever willing to face the edge of loves abyss
Just to take the plunge once more
And I still smile…

they would wriggle their tongues,
teasing each other, from
opposite sides of the fence,
of sharp protrudes, which
could not cut the thread,
by which they were joined,
their comradeship intact, with
an amalgam of childish love,
and the simple plain desire,
of being with the other

through the window, of the
structures, that stood apart,
divided by a brick wall,
the tentacle eyed would
look, at the blooming friendship,
ready to plunge, their venom
into the hearts, of the innocents,
bidding for the time, when they
could feed, the mouths of them,
with the bitter seed, of animosity,

many years passed, everything passed,
the walls of those cursed shelters,
had bounded down, all that remained
was that fence, the knives of which
had gone blunt, and on the either side,
stood those, who knew each other once,
aware of the vacant space, in their chests,
(the yarn had gone loose, but there
was still a hope left, everything
had not gone, into trash yet)

on the gravel ground, they were stagnant,
reviving what was snatched from them,
how they were cheated, and left with
the ache, of losing what was theirs,
their eyes pierced, their souls apart,
and they veered away, not able to
grasp the pain, of their small lives,
losing balance, of the truth, they gained,
they walked away, finding their own ways,
what it was, it was lost, and that was all

.
Her languid voice
Drew me in, drooped,
And tentacle hair wrapping,
My feet fell before hers,
Sinking in the faraway lost pool,
The mortality in the sands,
And even the stars, snuffed
Out of darkness and fire
Became the light of the world,
The hushed day breaking
With welling waters and salt.
How can dream be lived,
Within dream?  Must I swear
As I fall into bliss?

I flex my hands for my eyes
to see; each tendon stretching
and unstretching while the
world seems to sink all around
me

I float upwards as if the air
were an aquatic pool

my feet leave the ground
my body feels weightless
my mind strains trying to
comprehend

then it stops
stops cold as death
and I smile;
I will not
question
this

+

the hooks flew out of nowhere ,
slashing my skin and clothes
and pulling me down against
the force lifting me upwards

I was frightened for a moment
but upon gripping the ropes of
the hooks firmly all fear drained
out of me as the color returned
to my face

I pulled on one hook,
jerking the holder up into the air
and I saw it was my enemy, the
one who hated me without reason
but who scurried away with what
was left of their devilish tentacle


Next I pulled on many hook,
out came the people I did not care
about much; my boss, my teacher,
my acquaintances, my co-workers
and they too scurried away as the
ropes snapped and the black hooks
dissolved

there was but one hook left,
and I felt the pull of my up-
ward force more than ever.

but this hook was different,
its rope was not weak and
its gravity was greater than
all of the other hooks combined

I tugged on it,
it bugged but
did not snap

I pull hard,
grabbing hand
over hand,
trying to see
what black
thing weighted
me down so
much

with one final pull it came up,
lunging at me in fact,
but time seemed to slow
as I looked in to the eyes of that black thing
(as I looked into the eyes of my dearest friend)
but without thinking,
as if it were meant to be,
my hand ****** out,
reflecting the beast
and sending my friend
on dive towards the
earth

+

I watched it fall;
that beast,
that friend of mine
but the force moved me faster than ever
and what was left of it
quickly faded away

+

When I stopped moving I had reached the clouds
there stood a throne, decked out in gold
and I approached it, wondering who it was for

No one was around,
no one seemed to be watching,
so I sat in that throne,
just as if it were for me

It was funny then:

I was so high up,
yet I felt lower than ever
why did all those people
throw their hooks into me?

was it jealousy?
was it rage?
was it hatred?
or maybe even
love?

what do they know that I do not?
what is this throne?
what was that force?

I can see the world I just left
and I can see the new world
I have just risen too

this chair is too big,
this air is too cold,
this world is too empty

I hang my head
I look over the edge
my foot inches closer
until,

I fall
a blissful smile
masking the
terrified
child
inside