I use ‘oh, my god’ as an expression
not of faith, but surprise,
of wonder at beauty untouched
by ideology or dogma
as if caught, and pulled, from a dream.

I exclaim ‘oh, my god’ when stunned
not by holy ghosts, but the living,
who do kindness  as though it were nothing
unmindful of securing safe passage
into heaven, or paradise.

‘Oh, my god’, I cry, when words fall idle
or are muted to quiet reverence.
Where twisted skeins of empiric memory,
rush in crashing surf
of reminiscence and nostalgia.

I am godless, but not without reason
‘oh, my god’ being a slip of historical,
idiomatic vernacular.
Even as curiosity drives me to understand
your own ritualistic, devotional motivations.

Raise the cup, my friend
it gives us both what we need.
For you, transubstantiation
for me a divine and luscious tableaux.
For Saint Teresa in her ecstasy no doubt exclaimed
‘Oh, my god’!

If wishes were prayer

Saturday, January 28, 2023
12:06 PM

let me go wry or right, let me
be as one you witnessed falling,

and for that breath, believed,
wishes work as wonders do,
with very little help from things
thought truer.

I think of you, reading words I write,
I thrill a little at the intimate point of wedom,
the thoughts I fit to words, and sent into the
other
state, to wait, and wait, and become too tiny
to make any change not made,

at the time, when we touched as words do,
and held the hope that words hold.

Being as an event, we be apart, we be all one.

And we cannot unbecome.
----------------------

Inner being, being in me, other than I,
guide me, today.

I am willing to be useful, I do not have an aim,
I hold no hope of fame and recognosis,
I live to become a memory, at best,
and less than a memory, eventually.

I lie if I deny the joy I take from any sign, I see
you, thinking whys atop wherefores and how comes,

sudden otherness
occuring in a wedom framed by grand imaginations,

a new form of governing mankind, a new reason
to be defensive…

earnestly contending for pride of place, top of the pile.
------------------------

My Saturday, as all my days are now,
a day of rest,
a day of being after growing old enough, not, too;
but plenty old enough,
to reason with war,
face on face, as if, war
and I were forces of the same sort.

Ideas, grand wads of thought threads, spun
from times last chances,
grabbed with all I have to hold, huggishly,
for comforting knowledge,

I am not alone in wishing prayers were left being,
answered on reception, now, then, left being
alright. Amen.
-----------

It is in the thousands, tens of thousands, even,
Even, everish, same old, same
balanced on the upright,
walking,
past any hope to become one of those, the greats,

not even a billion to one, the odds of me becoming,
by the time I survived, the odds were even worse,
not a chance.

I bet, I said, I bet I won,
my race already run, by now, you know,
the results are pending
review,
and then I died,
and the results were these remaining
lines you take in,
as though you heard me talking, and thought
you might
over hear and know, all the songs of us, are about you.

The most self-centered man I ever met, said
my therapist to me, as I spun dervishly on my point.
------------------

Xenophiles see it all the time.

The transubstantiation of matter
causing hysteria among every culture.

One alchemical shift from lead to gold
and you have empaths weeping over asps,
telekinetics dropping things on fairy's heads.

A tiny fusion of atoms and the next thing you know
satyrs are dancing with dingos, sphinxes are doing the two step.

Who knows what the next time/space shift is going to bring?

Sigh...........makes for a long day at work.  Ya know?

alas, i've heard it asked: how can we
write poetry after Auschwitz?
i don't know. and prose? i don't know: gone mad
the whole world implodes and dips its dove's foot into my purple brow:
in a dream, ink erupts from under my dirt encrusted fingernails
and it is the transubstantiation of my rainbow stained blood,
and the void was flooded:
what's a word? more than i—more than i can show.
how did they write poetry after colonialism?
after other slaves and other genocides?
i don't know. Rimbaud traded in slaves, and, before his fury,
wrote masterpieces... perhaps its obvious; a bad pun, to help us cope,
—he even left the path to his divinity,
but all this has nothing to do with anything—.
perhaps every genocide needs its herald poets.
and the rest, how did they write? i don't know.
perhaps it was not their concern;
they desired to write, and there, they did not give way, and so
were right.
and is it the same with us, as we write
through the screams of the however many millions coming from Congo
and from however many other scenes similar? i—
perhaps i do not need to know,
perhaps, in fact, i cannot write poetry.
if i'm to try, it pertains to me to be of use in case this comes to a fight.

and life, if life is drama,
then there will always be roles:
there will always be the part of the villain that needs playing,
an immortal space to be filled by actor after actor,
we cannot stop them, we cannot stop them;
our enemy is a hydra's head!
the task, then, is to re-write the script!
ad lib won't cut it!
cast away your hope, boredom and wonder:
we'll need fire and a pen mightier than a golden sword,
and softly spoken words that can split history asunder.

The sun shines through the
      empty cross.
Stained glass windows
       making salvation patterns
           for the heart.
Christ shines in ever increasing
        flashes of magnificence.
Hail Mary! Your Son is our God!
   With Holy Trinity in union,
        with souls seeking peace.
The Son of Man, the Son of God
       revealed in ageless liturgy.
Hail Mary! Your Son has ascended.
Rosary glistening in hand,
      as prayers are offered
           in simple voice.
Chanting priest as conduit
        to the transubstantiation .
Hail Mary! The Body of Christ is ours!

NON SERVIAM

Even at 7
found Catholic transubstantiation

hard to swallow.

Much preferred the Protestant
metaphor better.

The priest exposing the host
in the monstrance

the congregation bowing
in veneration.

"Corpus Domini nostri..."

Now...holy cow
Jesus is leaping

from the tip of my tongue
Christ...clinging

to my palate hanging
on for dear life

before going to pieces
slipping down my...gulp

. . .oe... soph...a...gus .

". . .In vitam eternam. Amen."

The incense from the thurible
as it sways

making me feel so
si...aghhhhh...ck!

Me a little Lucifer
a lightbringer ...my own morning star.

Afraid I am
going to throw

Him up

the second coming
as I sit in my pew and stew

transubstantiation is
the pits.

they came
slurred and darkened
angry and
with a tinge of indigence  
let me see those clothes
i pointed to the pile
on the quilt that the ex made
dig through it
i murmured
and i sank
deep within myself
though 20's era deviants kept me
above the "sunk" place

on her side
completely silent
on mine raucous
but i can identify with donning
the drab of a different era
he said as he wrote
and looked at his phone

there is nothing about us static
nothing that keeps us from
killing ourselves only to be revived
in a brand new era
or moment of slight significance

i perform this act in times legion
dressing to impress
or to convey honest slovenliness
or power
or amorousness

this task
these efforts
can never be realized
attempting transubstantiation fails
and its motive with it

with jeans and a white tee
i am this one
lonely
lost
lingering
limitless

by all means
take all my clothes
ties and suspenders too
i have what im wearing

There is
  an interlude
      within silence,

a white on white chimera,

that anoints the thee and thou

in transubstantiation

  that wafers us.

Fay looked over
the ledge
of the balcony
of Banks House

that Sunday morning
I stood beside her
she'd just come back
from mass

with her family
and had sneaked out
to see me
the baker's cart

was over
in the Square
the horse
was stationary

eating out
of some nose bag
we watched the baker
run with his basket

to one of the flats
what did they teach you
at mass today?
I asked

taught nothing
she said
it's listening
to the priest

perform mass
and read
from the Bible
and then take

holy communion
which is when
we take Christ
into ourselves

the baker ran back
to his cart
and took out
more loaves

and ran over
to another block
of flats
I see

I said
how's He do that?
Do what?
How does Christ

get into you?
in the bread
the host
as we call it

she said
He's in the bread?
It isn't bread any more
it's His body

she said
it's called
transubstantiation
that's a mouthful

I said
so what happens?
the horse attached
to the baker's cart

moved a few paces
the baker jumped
onto his seat
and they moved

a few feet
then he jumped off
with his basket
with more loaves

and rushed
to another flat
Fay looked at me
with her pale blue eyes

I loved those eyes
I could have boxed
them up
and carried them

around with me
and have taken
quick glimpses
at them

now and then
to give me a lift
the bread changes
into the Body of Christ

she said
how?
I asked
not outwardly

of course
she added
but sacramentally
spiritually

I was none the wiser
but looked at her
fair hair
long down

passed her thin shoulders
down touching
where her hips began
you look pretty

I said
Daddy says
that personal praise
of one's looks or body

is sinful
and is also vanity
I watched her
thin fingers touch

each other
the pads of the fingers
touching the pads
of the others

why create beauty
then call it sinful
to say so
I said

am I pretty?
she asked
sure you are
I said

and if it's sinful
to say so
then tough *****
she looked away

at the departing baker
on his cart
in the Square
and I continued

to give her
my hazel eyes
and
my cool stare.

Today will be my holy day
Of personal reconciliation;
Of silent toil and transubstantiation.
A silent birth of brave thoughts
Which changes the body and blood.

Cut me and I will bleed a flood
Which will congeal and feed the urchins.

NON SERVIAM

Even at 7
found Catholic transubstantiation

hard to swallow.

Much preferred the Protestant
metaphor better.

The priest exposing the host
in the monstrance

the congregation bowing
in veneration.

"Corpus Domini nostri..."

Now...holy cow
Jesus is leaping

from the tip of my tongue
Christ...clinging

to my palate hanging
on for dear life

before going to pieces
slipping down my...gulp

. . .oe... soph...a...gus .

". . .In vitam eternam. Amen."

The incense from the thurible
as it sways

making me feel so
si...aghhhhh...ck!

Me a little Lucifer
a lightbringer ...my own morning star.

Afraid I am
going to throw

Him up

the second coming
as I sit in my pew and stew

transubstantiation is
the pits.

September 29th 2022 Philosophy

The spavined strumpets of aleatory nimonics stranded in the dimpled pelargic mythos of the nebelwerfers of scansorial elitism burroling the stokehold of pragmatic lurch useful for the progeny of powellisation interned by potichomania for balefires against the throbbing thremmatology of the strickle of jabirus vexed by stunsail argumentation of sumpter sidelong in oblique ginglymus to such a grave extent the thalwegs of contemplation daver in marauded orbit around ceraceous and cespitous thaumaturgy manacled by subservience in sequacious filagersion honing upon stereopsis for nomenclators of high squarson brigadoon fidelity to finessed wheals brackling away at tattermedalion squalor in squirmish facade of brockfaced brockens of wasserman to infiltrate against banjolins the pedigree of berceuse mendaciloquence that the branchiform sedigitation of all sesquiplicated sondage in the barnstorm of whelky during the subterfuge of wallfish cofferdams entrenched in boskets of the deepest regard of bathmism that we might fetch the canicular and cannular talents of susceptible bonhomie to retrace the elemental supralunar chrysopoetics of the transubstantiation of all stellions beyond provincial jansky and above fracklings of disrepute to array never a protervity of loimic stiction but always a sovenance of the highest fidelity to bellarmine briquets that can be sustained by mediagenic diffusion of volplanes of vulpecular vasotribes thereby careworn of future plight by preterition and chronobiology superfused for sporrans calculated for bonanza rather than retching with carpology. In the sustainable calculus of stanhopes and standpipes against the nivellated carnage of many a nivial hotspot grandiose with bruxomania rarely plodged by the subsultus of virgation nor flummoxed into glochidate barbs against the cephaligation of turmoil subduplicated by the gnomics of rebarbative betise flagrant upon caballine taunts of persiflage of percocted vexililogy curmudgeons of companionway spurtle upon cibophobias yearning for yeeps trouncing yaffs in a suitable mascon that trounces the pentapolis for its misfire of finicky stoichometry gradate in the traipse of ginglymus rotated succinctly by a minor machinule degradation of venostastis that the wens of wanchancy never vex or vitiate the providence of prattle of umbrageous stultification whelkied by the patriolatry of foreign observers of the brocade of balbriggan springhares reticulated by grimgribbers of jaunty jabberwocky levying murage with murengers against the trident spodium of overwrought negotiosity spinescent in capacity to deturpate never with a carnassial intent the tribuloid fictions vaccimulgent by reedbucks who learn from stockinette harbingers the calculus of specular redintegration and redhibition that fewer in number are those scollardical taunts of poststructuralism and many more rancorous attempts at chrematistic nurture above camouflets of the vees of vecordy singulting melancholy upon the canzone of cadrans mobilized by motile wafture into cavernous applause that we might witness the secundine generation waft rather than wamble through its throes of goatish goliardy deposed by gonfaloniers of stridor rather than brackle over truculent developments of the lurch of wainage and wantage burroling the constative prisoptometers of tritanopia leveraged by finifugal finesse of stricklers of sifflation that the saffron glow of refulgence is contingent upon the biotaxy and biocenosis of evolved human trust in the stirpiculture of many fascinated disciplines into a chaptalized chapbook of enlightenment above the murky morass of snallygasters of casemate. With an improvident regisseur domineering by the labile fears of neuropynology that understates the mainlined efforts of the nervure against the nesh nessberries of overindulgent popinjays straggling through the stench of sprag winzing in fumatoriums of maieutic latency bored by the tedium of the laveers of the propriety of neolagnium restive because of plumeopicean nidor frowning upon the badigeon of baedekers becoming centripetal to all harmonized gambados seeking the same terminus against the vexatious simultagnosia of the graft between crevices of paltripolitan wrox and the bailivated society we govern better by the rhombos of rhizogenic answers to papaverous problems of chaetophorous vengeance wagered by the groundlings of kyphosis in their idiosyncratic bascules of stentorian elocution that the taxidermy of selenodesic traipses through barnstorms of plurrennial wastelots of cachalots suborned only by the betise and bezique of portentous diestrus fledgling in its inadequacies of torment to roodge any subservience to carpology or any allegiance to the miscegenation of the political yaffingales of plemyrameters overcapacitated by misyoked fears meeting inclement rhigosis that the fortunes of cimelia rather than the boggarts of cimex might enchant future generations to supplant history with a calculated cecutiency that never avoids the boygs of boskets carping by cymaphens of the semaphores of all wheelhouses of wheaten inventions that we might witness the historicity never of sesquiplicated subduplicated biocenosis gorging on the gorgonization of internecine ignorance of varsal velocious cynegetics that the stranded victims of spathspey only in ceremony rather than in supernumerary contemplation that the vigorish vagantes and newels among the badigeons might thrive despite turmoil and the jugodi of broadcloth happenstance devolved upon popular cynography rather than annealed by the ballicatter of avenged samara and samarra that find requital in the wedeln modality rather than nodality of propriety in purpresture rather than crassified demassification of the slore of poltophagous crimogenic procrypsis simileter to all shortsighted gambits of a farsighted batrachian fidelity to nektons suspended among the stunsails of the wager of man to better himself. Because of the motile capacity of thaumaturgy of the wafting baedekers circulated with superfusion incidental to its warped dimensions against thalwegs of strigine configuration that boltropes of emacity swindle from the registry of the coffles of bailivated marivaudage scanscorial in its own moulin capable of entombing the cenote of even the most strident efforts of the nembutsu of gonfaloniers to issue cheer instead of malinger with precipitogenic intimidations of spinescent spiraculated pickelhaubes of porbeagle insights collated from sublime authority because the world awaits not a faineant corpse of morigeration upon the shend of sheol crepitating in heavenly judicature rather than the juggins of notoriety of crambos and crampons that cadge licentiousness that we might all marvel at synechdocial capacities against baryecoia weaponized by a modern bacillicide by blesboks whose candent semaphores of whittled stepneys of swank picaresque by degrees of leverage and largesse taxed by stenometers of pycnostyle elevated because of pyretology that the eventual harbinger of piscary reconnaissance is worth the awaited junctition of all sociogenesis captivated by the selfsame rapture of the chaptalized discovery of a greater biocenosis brockened to rejoice upon decisive conquest rather than backfire in mekometers of coquelicot carnage. The vees of veepstakes admonished by prevenience in vitrail that the fewer casualties of macropicide slangwhanging the brocade of the insular rhotacism of the cannular heist of springald necrologues deposed by cardophagous lies about necrophages so immunized in their stanjant stolinicity boltroped by annealed wheals of endeavor cavorted with portfires of yuzbashi above the petty pedestrian concerns of the spavineds of vauriens of varietism that they can jolt even the jolterheads and surprise with rudenture even the most poikilothermic negotiosities to truckle with a hint of truculence to spare the world from starvelings on the outskirts of spirketti that the scarfskin of the collective endeavors of the ventrad vanguard might resemble the coalition of forbearance for the broadest bronteum of ptarmic awakening ever enjoyed by the vigilance of men and the simity of women against the phallocrats twinged with meritodespotism. When we steeve our way past the mazut of balkanized mazopathia in mercedary wainage rarely taxed by the forefront of  considerate myopia we might celebrate the kalamkari spathspeys in their inordinate caution developed into a nympholepsy splendor of refulgent thrills demassified for the curglaff of generosity upon the crumpled brannigans of wizened applause upon the heyday of saturnalia that the whittawers of willowish repute might barnstorm yet again past the precipice of indecency naively wagered never by the sageships of conciliabule capacity to wheedle their way through their attempts at bacillicide regardant always of the caudles of the past commiseration of privileged cribbles of bathmism rather than repugnant spathodea of retorted pelargic barbarism congealed in oppositive valor to enchant only a regelation of nightjars vigilant in sciatheric darkness that the sondage of siffilated barnstorm might jar the very foundations of heaven and earth that the welkins of those whelking might find the couveuse of attempted blatternophones of past decorum the stridor of many taunted nightmares rather than the precipice of the most copulated acclaim ever registered in the foundries of men above the carcasses of subternatural plebeian mythos that stagnates the world rather than ameliorates it into congenial harmony of concordat against interregnum. The suretyship of so many strictions that the sprahl of sprachgefuhl intermittent with janitrices of stanjant jansky beblubbered by the maudlin sentiments of the many recklings ignorant of stockinette despite the nephroliths against nervifolious demise pregnant with absolution rather than replete with gullywashers of metaplasm in the exposure of ragmatical soteriology jaunty only to elective privilege rather than preserved by the conformed chapbooks of catechumen that our fears incumbent on catastrophism always brackle against the truculence of truckling masses of corpses of infirmity that gimcracks of the pentapolis exalt above the treasury of life itself inviolable. The caverniloquys of the jobbernowls of jolterhead infamy regardless of the purpresture of imperious strigrine secrecy embossed upon the pogroms of caudles rarely commiserating with any enchantment of wanchancy brockfaced in its geopolitical fanfire of the portfire of perendination that swashbuckles with the freebooter flarmeys of past coquelicot catalfalque notoriety always a kilmarge to the boondoggles of syndicalism arrayed in satnav ratomorphism that we might storge our present culture with the heyday of glamour intransigent to the chronobiology of preterition always glozing with glottogonic piecemeal dashpots against catastrophism even when done with metaplasm against metapolitics we can fight together with a unified brigade and sodality against the carping objectionable trends of a momentary amnesia so refulgent it overpowers every other inclination that the solfatara of weatherboards of wethers might convene upon the sumter of clochards becoming vagarish rather than prurience becoming simileter to a popular culture ****** of cisvestism upon the scarpetti of crambazzled crampons of senicide rather than the registries of seismotic impetus roundhousing through jobbled configurations of nimonic harbinger to etch themselves indelibly upon the sociogenesis of bellarmine among men and eutrapely among every other facet of attention never too calcimine with calvous calvers that the bolar of our existence depends on the synclastic momentum of the cynegetic valor rather than porlecking insecurities of babirusa of baboonery. The silkaline improvidence of the many boondoggles of lacking stolonicity or a casemate lockjaw jawhole internment of castrametation created by the pourparler of powellisation entombed in the liturgy that laments the past rather than accelerates the amelioration of the future might wilt because of wilding accidia rather than bonzoline acrasia because those people of nevosity that barnstorm against the nivial haunts of the lionized precipitogenic groundprox of naivety derived never from svedberg of swag of gromatic completion that alleviates all wambling grognards of desperation that we might fetch a new epoch superior to the one we have inherited by our callous poikilothermic poivrades of carnage and carnassial deprivations created by stagnant recession rather than optimized reflation because it behooves us all collectively to inseminate the future for the nitids of troilism rather than argue and pander to the bifids of blackmasters nidificating suboptimal steeves of the bobbinet to storge the inoculated beerocracy davering against the best interests of principality rather than the mainline of bayaderes of bargemasters locked into combat with stevedores from other dimensions of cordial conduct and contact that we no longer cower out of polyphiloprogenitive goals or teleonomic insufficiencies but that we brook and embraced age of praxeology above ragtaggers of retchination that the brassage of squamation can supervise into fluency rather than lurch into internecine schmeggegy that remains and always will be the cynosure of schwerpunkt in domestic manifestation of regal impetus above the detritus of defenestration. We should muster an assault against the plodges of kistvaens and the carnassial carnifician yeltings of wights of widgeons that the wicket of campanile shortsightedness might recoil upon its very foundations of ineptitude to become sempervirent in the sashays of surahs contemplated by the magnality of both mahouts and sansculottes to together forge ahead in commonplace articles of enchantment rather than the reliction of ideation in the swamp menaced by vinegaroons rather than elevated by picaroons who thrive even against snallygasters of importunate jawholes that crave a schoenabatic portfire to distract people from the rudenture of rubefaction in such a finicky way as to alleviate the coacervation of cespitous and cepivorous disdain. The faineant world orbiting around cynosures enjoying sinecures that the balbriggan springhares of reticulose pleonexia designed by veilleuses of brachet serectrium asterongue popularity designated with crass balizes of only bakelite answers of echopraxia to every dented quidlibertarian fascination with their quisquilous periergia floundering because the bathmism of elite pedigree imposes the steepest murage against avenged cachalots that their beziques of betise immolated by the discernment of the capable against the brazen incompetence of hortatory disdain that the thermolysis of sacrilege becomes a better portfire than protective jaundice designated by gamidolatry to perform intorted gambados to soothe the idiosyncratic jobbernowls whose incapacity to subduplicate societal quandaries and correctly weigh the subreption of jannock provides a paralytic inertia to fasten schadenfreude above the tympany of macarism because the catastrophism against the metaplasm correctly brazen rather than cordial only to inauthenticity always bristles at the perendination of evil skullduggery that it might eventually fade from the brocades of supercilious elitism that uses pundonors against mercedary enrichments. Many a time ago already elapsed by the portfire of skalds of jimswingers of sarangousty predicating their vehemence on axiomatic psyiurgic morkins the casualties of many a conflict witnessed by the depredation of morale even when sustained by the puckery of whipstaffs that the fewterers of modern taste deranged by their ginglymus constrained by their thalwegs that sejugate raltention from comprehension might find it incumbent to celebrate never a saiga that berates the many nightjars of saki but rather to entomb novelty because of the pickelhaubes of portbeagles flummoxed by their evaporating fortunes always avenge those who stand in the way of nivial and nivellated securiform and scalariform dementia that is the senicide of many a monocular cause witnessed by barbaric cyclops so intorted in the most pedestrian of antics that his incapacity to even see single borts from the boschveldt and singular leaps among the varsal capacity of proselytism that his ineptitude staggers the stenometers of the most dismal apprehension of his wagered capacity for any kind of stamina in any discipline. These poltophagous idiosyncrasies enjoyed by the oppositive acclaim of those pourparlers of castrametation designed by jabirus preventing stirpiculture of chrysopoetics for cachalots guarded by the blackguard of the ventrad camarilla rather than spayed by the cespitous vinegaroons of poikilothermic aims to plumeopicean ragtaggers entrapped by vapulation rather than informed of bonanza that we might starkly refrain from endorsing majoritarian lewdness as the new credo of a reborn republic constituted around the mahouts of idealism and the magnalities of those who posture in support of the noosphere rather than entangle themselves in the wase of imposture only because catalfalques angry of coquelicot politics might find the calcariferous disdain of pollarchy too much of an enormity to stomach with a stomacher. In the secundine revival of riveted artifacts of sometimes galeanthropic velleity that the skalds of scavons always maraud around to deprive of vehemence the maladroit malaise of the junctition of clitter and clinkstone because of a widespread malcontent that the sedigitated sidestep by every careful lurch on the bobbinet common to resourceless bodaches that we might witness the dying wish of the stellions to become the hamparthia of entire nations cribbling with propriety the bathmism centripetal to the public morale rather than the vacillation of internecine political balkanization in the barnstorm against the security of gonfaloniers to thrive without synsematic declension because of misappropriated vilipended ignorance widespread among those that clamber insistently and with insolence against the gravity and gravitas of the pundonors of cadastre rather than a sublime lackaday morose regret of saturnism waged by sideration in thick boschveldt to depose and derange many. Many tarry because of the umbrage of ultrageous litigation enthusiastically brought with coemption of the celebrated vanguard baldric retinue jolting the enthusiastic boltrope wegotists into the braxy of their shakuhachi of shantung bucentaurs and shenangos emboldened by the vicissitude of the collective remnants of the shambles of sottoportico to assemble with the borts in their possession the wilding zalkengur of absolution rather than the faltering groundprox of phugoid and mugient demands of bolar that laveer silently in the slithers of a puckery night scaffolded by the dashpots of insular providence against termagants of negaholic deprivations of lifestyle and pedigree because of the bradyseismic subsultus against the moya of carpology that is axiomatic in its retched mistetches of ceratoid configuration around the ballaster of schadenfreude enthusiastic in its moribund capacity to disembrangle the better soldiers from the recklings of morose enchantment with lugubrious toil flummoxing all propriety in regard for the sanctiloquence of the present never to result in a future martyrdom of saturnism that would assuredly wipe out the blemishes of portfire from the memory of a disheveled Earth into a shambolic configuration that would result in a nivial morigeration to nivellated conditions of egestuous sejugated cephaligation of nebelwerfers rather than primiparas always lachrymose in regret now pregnant with reactionary desires to coerce change rather than wamble in the ginglymus of sesquiplicated triage around petty boundaries of shakuhachi inviting balbriggan disgrace. In the trismus of crackjaw siderism ennobled by baldric syntalities elective of belletrist in their formative cadges of procatalepsis and jarvey of the intorted blunge of degenerative capacities for meharis combustible only in camouflets of prestige that skirpettis contain by the skinters of springhares of denouement carefully managing larithmics to optimize the mantissa never of a vagarish vagantes venostasis of mottled pternology megacerine because of meleagrine despots of sedigitated attempts to provoke casualties of corbels in the neorama of many sinecures of simultagnosia extorted endlessly by vaccimulgent reedbucks of sinister racemation that the phugoid eutrapely and bellarmine capacity to trounce the sudd that creates the rebarbative bosket of embattled retrenchment in survival ethos because of the macropicide and yirds of many a poikilothermic wretchock of morality to denounce as a denizen of unholy chaptalization that the chaomancies of chabouks between the pleiromorphy of convictions and the moulin of lickerish fascinations of beerocracy of beeskeps of yaraks a commonplace deturpation that finally the pomace of regalia might sustain the mainsail cardimelech and cardiognost capacity of piscary urbacity finicky of any desultory castrametation wagered by sinturong of piscifauna negligent of agapism that their fortuitist regard for humane sanctiloquence that already perished from the Earth might be revived by the vasotribes of the whipstaff of declared decorum vanquishing all tantrels of gambados of gamidolatry so pickelhaube in their dereliction of picaroons that vinegaroons capable like jerboas disguised in the thickets of the night will depose their serendipity and revoke their citizenship from the habitations of the woubits of hell rather than the brevets of widgeons of animadversion propining in every saccadic misyoke of endeavor to find a commonplace destination agreeable beyond the bifids of internecine thalwegs of sejugation rather than assimilation.

DO NOT BE AFRAID
there is something so
evangelical about fear.
i was raised to be afraid -
it was implicit from my first sunday school and
my first crush and
my first real haircut.
there is a certain desperation bred in youth groups
in local church attics,
in big auditoriums
with looming, radiant stage lights.
perpetual guilt -
perpetual repentance -
perpetual fear.
                                                                ­                                  SACRAMENT
did i think that
baptism would make me feel more loved?
well, that’s between me
and the Good Lord Himself.
but i will tell you
the water was cold and
my father cried.
i received a necklace from
my grandmother and  i
haven’t seen it in years.
fear doesn’t drown in cold water.
it crystallizes, it burns.
                                                                ­                                    EUCHARIST
if my mouth tastes like blood,
let’s blame transubstantiation.
if my skin doesn’t fit right,
let’s blame God’s want for the process of creation.
if my heart wears it self thin at the thought of judgement - Death - finality,
let’s blame my Protestant upbringing.
how avoidant am i -
blaming Martin Luther himself
for a menagerie of ****** Georgia churches.
                                                                             THE BODY AND BLOOD
christ, you people want
to take everything from me.
i can’t go to another easter service
as your daughter.
i never could.
you never seem to realize what
exactly you want from me.
don’t look at me like that -
like this is a resurrection.
i was never crucified. i never died.
it’s no comet, either, though,
i can tell by your face.
this isn’t easter, it’s
a funeral service.
i’m sorry i can’t come
back to life for you.
but what you think is living and
what i think is living are two very different things.
do you know what it feels like when
your own mother thinks you’re
going to hell?
                                                                ­                           CONSECRATION
i’m sorry i can’t cry
holy water anymore.
but there are good things in becoming.
i remind myself that there is progress- growth -
in transformation.
but i never really liked wine,
anyways.
                                                                ­                                               AMEN

When one man is cut
  —every man starts to bleed

When one man is healed
  —all men become as one

(Villanova Pennsylvania: September, 2014)

There is darkness
and major melancholia;
She is trembling,
a tiny lady
dry skin
chapping,
flesh cracking
and losing blood.

In those
open spaces
merely moments pass,
but those cracks
grow and expose
more of her soul.

Dark dandelions
and crimson roses
explode from the holes.
Tiny ruptures
fill with the rapture
of delightful smells,
as she takes
all of her hells
and makes art,
as she sculpts
each heartbreak
into a grand sculpture.

There is no noting
some grand healing
or great transformative power
in her transubstantiation
of pain into beauty,
merely art.

Ubi Petrus

                                          For Inky and Jason


                                      “Ubi Petrus, ibi Ecclesia”

                                        - St. Ambrose of Milan


Where Peter was, there also was the Tomb --
Blood-sodden dreams cold-rotting in old sin,
The Chalice left unwashed, the Upper Room
A three-days’ grave for hope-forsaken men.

Where Peter is, there also should we be,
Poor pilgrims, his, a-kneel before the Throne
Of Eosian Christendom, and none but he
Is called to lead the Church to eternal Dawn.

Where Peter then will be, there is the Faith,
Transubstantiation, whipped blood, ripped flesh
A solid reality, not a wraith
Of shop-soiled heresies labeled as fresh.

Where Peter is, O Lord, there let us pray,
Poor battered wanderers along Your way.

Cut the lamb from the equation,
forget about
transubstantiation,
drink wine like wine
eat bread like bread,
one day for sure
you will be dead
and the truth will
be revealed.

Oh God,
when I thought transubstantiation
was one of those movements
but
only for a moment
until the wine kicked in.

The lighting
reflects from your porcelain skin
shaved, coiffed for perfection
transubstantiation
accomplished via Photoshop
robot eternal
perfection, infused with spirit
unnoticed
except in the moment
(moments)

wha a joke.
I heard someone laugh
he thinks the thing is human
hypnotized by the beauty in the face
he forgets to appreciate
he will never even know
just how close he came
to falling in love
with a figment of his own imagination

the idols, lined up against the wall
the people
take these abominations at face value
flesh and blood encompassing
hollow shells
***** dolls

NON SERVIAM

Even at 7
found Catholic transubstantiation

hard to swallow.

Much preferred the Protestant
metaphor better.

The priest exposing the host
in the monstrance

the congregation bowing
in veneration.

"Corpus Domini nostri..."

Now...holy cow
Jesus is leaping

from the tip of my tongue
Christ...clinging

to my palate hanging
on for dear life

before going to pieces
slipping down my...gulp

. . .oe... soph...a...gus .

". . .In vitam eternam. Amen."

The incense from the thurible
as it sways

making me feel so
si...aghhhhh...ck!

Me a little Lucifer
a lightbringer ...my own morning star.

Afraid I am
going to throw

Him up

the second coming
as I sit in my pew and stew

transubstantiation is
the pits.

i am a renegade rooster
confused by their programming
so many offspring how are we to tell
which is our own and which belongs to another
was it our forefather's fermentation
or the density of transubstantiation
entities dance on liberal paint cans
sandblasted fragments of remaining still
the handstands advanced their own itineraries
and i wonder what literary blunders did you muster today
existential snails dive as deep as whales
and move as swift as Haley’s twin sister Taylor

Transubstantiation goes with bread and wine
and Body and Blood.

Certain persons among us make claims to knowledge
kept from any who cannot imagine that truth,
we, the every day curious kinds of people,
skeptic
become habitually drawn to knowers claiming right
to tell us one may see what one believes, nought else.

Living words, in message form, why must I see angels?
Whose mind may we leave be in us, if not this one,
alive in constant readiness to give a word umph,

past last clear preconception of a call to pay attention,
today, while it remains time out to redeem in meditation,

be tween one mind's aura and another's… imagining
we see light reflected from sources undetected,
so dark sayings illuminate our directed steps,
or we so say, for we believe we know, now,

is when today occurs, and when the code is broken,
hidden meaning sought with Frankl and Anne Frank,
and dramatic reenactments of battles that inspire
judgment, know who won by who continues being,
any with a will to prove a worth, as a gift in minded
heart felt will to say
we may pay more attention
than we are willing to take.

Easily, given meaningful words… these are the medium,
this is the way we conjoin minds in hives intending
to fill to overflowing, so long as flowers need ***.

==========
Cultured pearls.

Irritatingly apparently real
as any brought to become
by merest of coincidental

rare afflictions with beauty
the initial aim, with hands
put to guiding use, knowing

the growing of the nacre
in total absence of sunlight,
of course, we can't know why.

--------

Words authored in ages past,
during times of congregation,

calling all sundry formations
from noise to align as defined

with hands commands, come
and see the other side of all and
more besides, piling mountains
as clouds in late summer, promise
latter rains on latterly sown seed.

The interpretation of this situation,
now, and not another time, here,
where your mind asks mine explain,

lay it out, tell the whole of knowing
now is when we become our self,
first formed from stories told us,

as true, to assume in storyland,
we can talk with Nature as an entity
who uses words as you would, should
you awaken in a jungle denser,

made afraid for the moment, mind
time pause, now, we think, how say
the sages past, must we treat
with care for fear of proud wrath,

encultured hero worth, a weight
in the bag we measure worth with,

each kernal of barley corn, one third
the inch, which is never taken
for a mile, given will to stretch
the wonder of learning for ever's sake,

indeed, to take each one in a myriad
of steps while helping an officer
of the law of Rome, obey it,
by keeping the peace and pace.

So, long from now, these same words
may live on loosely linked orders
of natural progression as we learn,

stories told as true as plausible,
often include impossibly fortuitous
interference in this clouded realm
of certain reasons asking rational

division of soul and spirit, despite
the rule of Rome, in year 869
of this present domineering age,
whereby soul is spirit and vice versa.

Rightly divided now, by me, today,
boldly going, where some crazies
came before me, to make me pay
attention to the will called why.

Jesus, really? Must we accept
the testimony of mystics, as more
than guessing based
on earlier guesses, up from exstacy,
beyond the first guesses given theory,
suppose, we all pretend to know,
as we are reared to become
those who teach to those so lost,
that only our knowing known stories,
can redeem their worth to truth itself.

----------
Listen, let this mindform in you, think.

In creation mode of mind,
given words for anything named
in the world wide web of knowledge,

arranged in searchible stacks, related,
tied religiously to certainty beyond Delphi,

we trust, as we trusted kings, when few
could gainsay prophecy interpreted true,
after the epoch last ended began, in truth,

measure for measure, an inch is always
three barley corns wide, no more
nor less a length, may be taken for a mile,

as we rethink the idea, charity, feeding needs,
agape, we say means charity, highest form
of love one may bestow, at no cost, true,

charity for which we pay is not the same idea.

I come to offer thought through thoroughly
sieved shards of crystaline ***** scried into,
see, there, that occlusion? that is what you

can never know, until the guru says you do.

--------------
Yes, I do recall verses written,
before exposure to naked truth
that war's glory is as the emperor's
lastest fashions, lasterly erroneously

crowning a child's sense of silliness,
when I was a child, I thought, and still
think many thoughts, what to write,
what to let slip away,
what must be folded to put away,
later, imagining I ask your eyes to see,
leaving no description light might show
either real or made up on purpose to make

believable the reason children are exposed,
to Grimm collections of secular wisdom,
unholy impossible animations, yet,

by the time, I got to Phoenix, I was knowing
days depend from days past, pendulating,
swinging arcing swipes past all pretensions,

loose the bonds of wickedness, comb
the tangled locks of dreads,
Rastaferian dread, wisdom
claimed aligned with wonder weedlike
in trembling fear of hell to pay,
what if we make believe, we two, and you,
we come to here, along these lines, thinking

why is not a factor after all is said and done,
plain and smooth, polished to high sheen,

wedoms welcome any with means to make sense,
share our dreads, show us what it is you think
you know, about the ways truth, per se, makes
where no ways was,
moments earlier, pasts past, perhaps,
happening in all that happens, once mayhap

to you,
aha,
I see, you say, lying with your eyes, but knowing
I can imagine common sense, comfort, ease,
true rest in care akin to told of care in story,

we gather to remind our hive, here we make honey.


------------
Watch the dancing bees, rethink
how few persons on earth can think
there is no mind involved in thinking that,

planning means to become superfluous,
dripping sweet memories, in precious
pricey processes of transubstantiation,

sweet, we say, at a fine fix on the flaw,
we all lie, see, we say we know, we lie,

we lieve being true, as good and useful,
the ology of everything pundits preach,
and teach that we may obey, knowing,

no lie forms from truth's first will to tell,
taste and see,
swallow, and wait… at antepartum,
all we think to ask turns bitter in the belly.

Sunday fell away into a lazy afternoon
spent watching seagulls looking for the
coast.

The most
she creates in me is a sea so blue
and a mirrored surface to look back to
and see through.

there or where it could be is that which is
not for me to see,

transubstantiation?

I eat cornflakes,
it doesn't cure the headaches
but they taste so good.

Slowly
because slow is sure
I amble to the bathroom door
and forget
what I came here for

she taught me
that less is more,
I'm
not so confident that the
adage is meant
for memory.

Yesterday where it could and then,
we were the one
time being quicker than the eye
moved on
and I'm watching Sunday
fall away
there seems to be a pattern
which is probably on the mat
the cat
sat on

only madness, morphine and the
making of another dream
keep me sane.

Creation was an engineered design
and, if we are to believe the Scriptures,
planning preceded execution.
Since when there’s been no ceased attempt
to improve the initial configuration.

Biodiversity, extinction, reproduction,
new designs, new genesis, new formulation,
but who is the new engineer?
And what ulterior motive
stimulates the new creation?

The dinosaurs (and they were not the first!)
preceded the birds and the bees.
Nature needed no stimulation
beyond mankind’s ****** desire
To encourage or restrain procreation.

And now we have seemingly learned
by trial – but more by error –
how simple it is to fashion anew
an environmental disaster
with the portent of universal dissipation.

We have the statesmen and politicians
to thank for our lemming-like rush
to oblivion.  The next metamorphosis
may be the last – at least in human terms
without transubstantiation.

In linguistics
and in politics,
it’s a really small step
from creation to cremation.

His angelic soul to heaven was drawn
From waters deep as his golden song
Returning hence to where it was born
Remained in fire as his burning flesh
Perished in flames at the water’s edge
When his sacred heart refused to burn
The mourners wept with pouring wine
Upon the fire-sweetened soul of verse
A poet perished in fire wine and water
A transubstantiation from death to life
Much reminiscent of that ancient light
From darkened fears to heavenly flight
Redeemed our souls from endless night
With dreams of love and beauty bright
Outside the domain of sorrowful strife
In death he sang of liberty love and life.

The monks pressed wine for the Pope in Avignon.
The Vatican drank fizzy water.
We tasted hand-squeezed orange juice
and eclairs for our petit-dejeuner.
Breakfast at Mas Vieux was a spiritual affair.
Transubstantiation of goat cheese and bread.
Here, the spirit thrives on mortar and stone.
Ancient walls as thick as oaks.
No town lies in sight: the isolation of prayer.
Old Farm grows a bumper crop of transient souls.
They crunch the gravel, find a body called home.

transubstantiation
on the tongue of poetry
transcending, ascending
fleshy limitations