The Bishops bathe in Babylon
while Princes, prancing on the lawn,
watch Queen deflowered, pale and wan.
            The King dares not defend her.

The Horsemen, holding broken reins
the Morning of the Hurricanes,
sigh “it’s no use, it’s all in vain,
            the Saints will soon surrender”.

They wonder why they ever came,
they have No One whom they can blame,
they have no face, they have no name,
            and even less, a gender.


The empty-handed Vagabonds
smoke stale cigars, stroke faded Blondes
while waiting at the walls beyond,
            but kneel as Chaos enters.

They’re gazing through the window panes
in hopes that distant Hurricanes
will twist and break their iron chains
            defying life’s tormentors.

The Fantom of the Opera frowns
as feeble minded Cleric-clowns
mouth hollow hurdy-gurdy sounds
           when blessing doomed dissenters.


The Pirate wields a wooden leg,
with pupils dull and visage vague,
and if by chance he spreads the plague,
            it really doesn’t matter.

His Princess, pale, no longer feigns,
foresees instead (down ancient lanes)
the coming of the Hurricanes -
            the Stones stir, staring at her.

And Jackals scrape the river bed
as Savants soothe the underfed
and Crows, collecting scattered bread,
            adorn, with crumbs, the platter.


The Jokers Wild and One Eyed Janes
weep, winding up in rundown trains
mid whispers of the Hurricanes,
            and Priests refuse to christen.

They’re fleeing from the Leprechauns,
the cuckoo birds, the dying swans;
while pitching pennies into ponds
            their eyes opaquely glisten.

The spectral Clocks with spindled spokes
remind the Mimes to tell the  Folks
the time of day and other jokes,
            yet No One looks to listen.


The Hunchbacks with contorted canes
galumph before the Hurricanes,
in melted sleet, in frozen rains,
            in bruised and battered sandals.

Their Groans engulf the land of gulls,
the land of stones, the land of nulls,
and lurk between the blackened lulls,
            for Nighttime brooks no candles.

Their prayers to Dogs and Nuns and Dukes,
(and other long forgotten Spooks)
are more than random crazed rebukes,
            though taunting to the Vandals.


The Beggars ’neath the balustrades,
and broken Children, Chambermaids,
are running wild from wraiths, afraid
            of dreams where death redoubles.

They fritter time with tattered threads
(from ragged clothes they’ve left in shreds),
crocheting hoods to hide their heads
            and faces, full of rubble.

But many things will not remain
the Morning of the Hurricanes,
when goblets filled with cool champagne
           evaporate in bubbles.


The White-Robed Maid adorns the trash
with charnel urns awash in ash,
then fumbles with an untied sash
            while pacing in the Palace.

Her hopes congeal in coffee spoons
with memories adrift in dunes;
yet, still she smiles with teeth like prunes
            and lips of painted callus.

And long before the midnight drains,
the Saviour wakes, the Loser gains,
the waters of the Hurricanes
            will fill her empty chalice.


The storm (behind the clarinets,
the silver flutes, the castanets,
the foghorns belching in quartets,
            the bagpipes, puffed and swollen)

is keeping time to tambourines
while Tom Thumb and the Four-Inch Queen,
pick up the shards and smithereens
            of moments lost or stolen.

They’re trekking through the Dim Domains
(where fountains weep, the mountain wanes),
yet can’t escape the Hurricanes
            with trundling eyes patrollin’.


The Crowds (arrayed in jewels) in jails,
stoop, peering through a fence of nails
while light behind their eyeballs pales
            with plastic flame that sputters.

They huddle there because they must
(with eyelids hung like peeling rust,
their tears, palled pellets in the dust),
            behind the bolted shutters.

They’ll reawake without their pains
the Morning of the Hurricanes,
without their sores, without their stains,
their agonies will fill the drains
            and overflow the gutters.

Today heard I a train,
while I smoke my cigarette, I heard a train.

The rumbles came trundling over mossing steel street bars,
the hooves of an iron horse shattering glass floors-
pebbles bickering  like stone woodpeckers on the grounds to come.
The wind shudders,
and apologizes for the frost on the leaves,
the cracks in the ground and the holes in the sky,
my cigarette part blur,
awkwardness so comfortable,
this plastic train i recreate,
moments in-between,
where we lay down to day-listen.

The kinsmen that forgot call blacksmith,
scared with his welded skin,
protection in battle,
drunken dichotomy,
a hero ***** dans l’amour.

As great the fall of king, the fall of next in line.
The only thing to have moved quicker with age, time.
Lest we forget, the blacksmith here reside;(unfinished)
While the angel hath walk,
with long grey and black web moth wings,
stalking its sleeping prey,
his eyes wide open back,
watching the angel pace,
infesting the air with despicable knots,
its dangerous to stare,
but a contest never started is a contest never won,
and into the eyes of hell the blacksmith hast stared-
to the foot of his bed.

Where a three headed dog flap its ice wings to keep hell cold.
These nights in particular had been an awful one, and again the tapping, again the train.

The spider Queen, aloofly vain!
She rules a silent ruthless reign,
with black-bead eyes like pearls of rain
that damp the depths of her demesne.
          .
                     .
                                .
A spider spins, with nimble feet,
a sticky web of grim deceit
that drapes the corners, dark, discreet,
in catacombs of her retreat.

Her jointed legs (in number, eight)
traverse the threads with stilted gait,
but often more she'll lie in wait
within the hub of her estate.

Shy spiders live their lives alone
ensconced within a silky throne;
unless a transient guest comes flown,
their lives bide empty, monotone.
          .
                     .
Well, now and then, a sullen breeze
may twitch the toils, begin to tease –
yet nothing's caught and nothing pleas,
so patience's bid  at times like these.

But then again, when stars ignite,
may maunder by a gnat, by night,
be taught a dance, a writhing rite,
within a lace of death, wrapped tight.

Sometimes a spider's in the mood
and waits awhile, whilst being wooed –
and then, to later feed her brood,
the widow slays her mate for food.

In time a spider dies, 'tis true,
bequeathing but a residue
entwined, devoid of retinue,
in fibers decked in silver dew.
          .
                     .
                                .
One asks "What purpose serves the GNAT –
to feed and make the spider fat?
Well, 'tis perchance just naught but that
within a mindless habitat.
          .
                     .
"Yet, what's the aim?” you may inquire,
“at the heart of MAN's desire.
To which goals should WE aspire
reaching high and reaching higher?"

We've, through the ages, left the mire,
trundling wheels and taming fire,
doing deeds that must inspire,
nursing needy, calming crier, …

Such things as these, most may admire:
          - placid dove and war defier
            (some are bolder, some are shyer)
          - patience (mess-up mollifier);

          - humankind (Life's justifier)
          - charity (charmed self-denier)
          - tolerance (proud pacifier )
          - love of Life (folk unifier).


What more could we, as flesh, require?
Needless kneeling neath the spire?
Childish chanting in the choir?
Preaching hell's impending pyre?


No, Death's the only rectifier,
comes the instant we expire,
nothing after, sentience prior.

So, treasure Life and don't deny Her.

belaboring hurt-bells
of twilight

outside there is a furious wind
sweeping the sour-faced pavement.
the helm of the morning
fits through the pinecones.
through the dandelion,
the diadem of some mystic flower,
the flurry of children
and the fury of the populace.

i know whence the wind stirs
cold flame from the many a dead
stones, sequined floor and the
dreary stillicide of night.
our bodies rise to the sun
that is a full woman
or a ripe apple
or a half-bitten moon in glare
and when her lips purse
there is pang in the wind that blows austere beneath the foot
of hills in ruin.

let the night come later than
a bird's secret sojourn,
or the cicada's enigma.
let the cathedral of my heart
quiver later than the unsheathing
of the night's bone
but in the twilight,
when the skies are bruised with
silence and somnolent without voice
my hands shall leap into the wind
and make do, the belaboring
hurt-bells of twilight.
no more than a crepuscular twining
of a sad vine on a melancholy hymn
that makes fuller with its tender
maneuvers, the trundling in
love's wearisome vessel.

Rolling about in grass was fine at the time
best done with a friend
all those small moments forged into memory
single blades made into whistles
and all those trundling insects on a mysterious journey
the fascination of a child.

They huddle in the cold damp darkness
grateful for the sheltering sandstone
shuddering at each echoing blast
a remorseless dull ache
like their meagre rations
eyelids shutting wrinkling between attacks
seeking peace and inner sleepless solace.

'Them docks is taking a pasting.'
'Me Dad works there.'

Another attack, tunnels rumble
evoking century old echoes
of rusty trundling drum-line wagons
bearing sandstone blocks to build the docks
now being blitzed blighting the night sky.

The morning brings a dusty disquiet.
Merseyside emerges curses soldiers on.

For instance, recall daisies,
or if you have not seen one, so much the better.
Paint me a crass picture and sleep
on the shallow crevasse. Stilt through
the orchard and search there: nothing still.
Even the nothingness is form-fitting, and thus,
your vestigial image of daisies. Mold something
out of the vacuity, and there a retrograde sculpture
will wind back to clay. Cornerstones have your name,
and your name even so, has taciturnly placed stones.

Stones. These tiny bodies that lay, undemanding,
scourged by the rapid passage of a carriage.
I wait there, with them, still thinking of daisies.
I know of a child, cylindrically obtuse, in front of the mirror.
Have you seen yourself in the hazy windows
of the Metro? What do you see? I still see daisies.
Or people with heads of daisies. But remember your
forethought of daisies? They are nothing. I am a beheaded daisy
in the lackadaisical wind of Summer. There is nothing to gain
here but the sadness of cold passing. And the child that I am speaking
of, his name, Magno. Sturdy like the rucksack he’s carrying,
lovelessly trundling altogether with the pipes and the
handrails, almost signaling the alarm without warning.

This uncared-for sultry evening decides to splinter
itself against the masses. Again, the daisies appear to me,
this time, in heady form rogue with peripatetic fragrance.
Magno used to unearth daisies and give them to her
mother when he was stiflingly young – he hustled through
the carefully placed furniture. Whatever happened to him,
I know not. And just like the daisies we have come to know now,
trains that do not belong to anyone, and the daisies too, that go
unheard of and unknown to the behest of the city,
have gone into the subtle beginning of everything
that once started in itself, the form of splendor. Nothing.

Trundling through the loud clouds
that barrage me with thunder.

Pausing to smile at the lightning
shuttering from the red-carpet-crowds.

Tripping on the crimson rug
as they capture my blunder.

And smiling fake feelings,
whilst thinking of you.

You, with your unrequited
commitment to critters.
You, with your dedication
to the unknown.

******* and only you.
That's all I really wanna do.

Thrift Shop Confessional

Old carts squeak down re-sale aisles
"One of," "two of,"
Sometimes "three of" items
Tempting treasure-sifting shoppers,
Bargain-needing families,
Women seeking up-brand names at low-brand prices...
Our wives, followed by their husbands,
Acquiescent, but quiescently seeking
Seeking a thrift shop oasis.

A cast-off dining set beckons,
Sturdy enough, if a little battered,
To make us solemnly content to wait
Carted clothing trundling
Off to fitting rooms.


He shuffled up with a foolish grin.
"I think I'll join this convocation of
Waiting gentlemen.
My wife is a shopper...
She'll close the place down."

I moved a chair and gave some space;
Strangers become brothers in this place.

Five minutes on,
I knew he was a vet:
Army, Vietnam Nam...
"I don't like to think about it,"
Cleared his throat,
"Never can forget."

I turned to look at him.

"A little girl came running,
With her hand behind her back.
She only stood this high," he said,
And showed me with his palm her height,
"They carried grenades that way...
All of 'em...couldn't tell which ones...
Sergeant told us, 'Don't ever check...just shoot.'"

The voice trailed off....

I sat sweating in a thrift store,
Captive of my own politeness,
Half a century,
Half a planet,
Transported in his words
into a soldier's Hell.

"So I shot...
Nothing else to do."

Silence then.

A total stranger staggering
under the weight of having
Murdered his Albatross....
Of having carried this thing,
This memory,
Inside him all these years,
Of finding me,
The unsuspecting thrift shop guest
Who'd listen to his lonely tale,
Perhaps so he could earn some rest....

I, his unwitting Confessor,
Uncertain what to say,
Certain something must be said...
Certain nothing could be said...
Sat dumb, but understanding
The wisdom of confessional dividers,
The private comfort of two booths
Where prayerful exchanges
Intersperse uncertain silences,
Present in the overhanging need:
Demanding sorrowful returns,
Impending memories of sorrows...
And lonely trudgings home....



(Connections with Fr. Laurence's "Riddling confession finds but short shrift," in Romeo & Juliet, and Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner")

I've a song stuck in my head
No words, but it's still there
Trundling on with out a thought
It's something I should share

De da doodle la la de ding
boo bar fiddle riddle king
si saw be bop shhh shhh bing
do waddle dip don boom

There's no direction to where it goes
It's a melody of sorts
I've words a plenty, they don't fit
I've just this thing and all its warts

De da doodle la la de ding
boo bar fiddle riddle king
si saw be bop shhh shhh bing
do waddle dip don boom

I play nothing, but hear guitar
some drums there in behind
A backup singer singing loud
And a bass to keep in time

De da doodle la la de ding
boo bar fiddle riddle king
si saw be bop shhhh shhhhh bing
do waddle dip don boom

Trundling through the Room of Word,
The crude remarks and the young absurd,
They come an go, no valedictory speech,
Just to and fro, a vestige for each.

So I sit and I stare, with a nihilist prayer,
And I ***** my heart to the sticking place,
Left alone in the quietude, left alone in a private mood,
No crude remarks for a tired face.

So I sit and I stare, yes, I sit and I stare, 
screen boring me holes for eyes,
I wait and I dare, my words in the air, 
The atmosphere sets and dries - 
The atmosphere sets and it dies.

I'll wait there, 'do something, accompany me'
I'll wait there, like waiting for a train.

But once I've waited, no latened, loving response belated,
I tire of this melancholy station,
I'm alone in the Room 'o' Words, my company split to fifths and thirds,
It's time for another, emotional vacation.

Once I have been to that city
the city of ritzy splendour,
of hoary grandeur,
a gargantuan pile of steel and granite.
It stood an enigma
on the banks of Hudson,
lulling the waves to sleep
in the garish light of neon bulbs
with an eternal tumult
heating up its nerves

Walking down its streets alien
scenes eerie scurried past-
Men and women-
of all climes and continents
all ethnic denominations,
all shapes, sizes and colours,
blonds, brunettes,
blacks and whites,
tourists and nomads,
in flashing styles
outlandish costumes,
tonsured, dyed
and tattooed,
on shoulders, back and chest
with bizarre shapes,
Some dressed from top to toe
many bordering on ******,
splurging with life
feverish and frenzied
speaking different dialects,
some tall, some lean, many obese
trundling down busy streets
that never go still
with sleep and awakening
but action, commotion, agitation,
where each day is an eternity
and each night- a New Year’s Eve
where business runs without pause
rife with sounds and noises -
the incessant roars of fevered minds
muffled, stifled, excited, agonized
mixing with music flowing from concert halls
merging in sounds of siren
and speeding traffic
A banal hubbub-
A hoarse discordant clamour!

I passed through avenues
where sky scrapers
huddled together on either side
where once stood the Twin Towers
stabbing into clouds –
those titanic monuments of Yankee pride,
one day raced down to Ground Zero
where terrorists wreaked havoc
and wiped thousands unwary -
still frozen in the dark memories
of that day light nightmare!

Passing down Wall Street,
the nation’s Money Mart
that spawns an industry
of ruthless dreams and fantasies,
I saw,
the mammoth Bull, charging feral
under whose crushing hooves
many fall dead
and rise again like Phoenix
or soar into indefinable heights
or bury their dreams ever
under the sod.

Broad roads that stretched endless
seemed to lose themselves
like the mazy tangle of complex minds,
and pavements
littered with a thousand moving feet
Men and women in pairs,
hand in hand,
lip to lip,
bodies entwined
seen in beaches and parks
in whose brain
Marriage- labelled an anachronism!

In these hurricane of faces
with fleeting passions
or fixations of their own
What chemistry could I discern?
A zest for life--or its absence?
A search for a life lost in living?
A fight for survival
Or
A passive surrender to the inevitable?
I do not know—
I fail to define
I fail to divine.

Lovely skies
Dark with clouds and rain
Leaden skies
Lead, Pb, Plumbum
Flat diffuse light, photographer's dream
Latin 4 lead = plumbum
We plumb our psychic oceans' depths, as the sailors did
With lead on their sinker lines
We plumb our depths if we choose
When we are earnestly explorative
Reflecting, meditating, in our psychic plumbing
Pb: the ugly duckling brother of glowing gold
Au of the aura Aurum
Both are soft, malleable, unassailable, & so helpful
Gold like Thor the glowing hero, lead like Vulcan the sooty artificer
We have made one the hero, and misused,
Demonized, besmirched the metal lead
Is it lead's fault we have put it in our paint, our gas?
That we made it accumulate in our fish, like fools?
Without lead, your car would not start
Imagine going on your trips on a mule
Or trundling down the road in an ox cart
Do not denounce lovely lead
Gravid, protector, quiet engine starter
Gently available to you to plumb your depths
Before your chapter's demise
Leaden skies
Lovely skies
Gravid with rain
Keep me grounded, serene and sane

Thursday morning and I board
the Preston train, a dumpy DMU,
but less of a cattle-truck today.

Over the bridge or beneath
lines to Platform 5 to wait:
Branson's Scarlet Pendolino
will glide in soon bound
for Birmingham - wonder
who I shall meet and share
travelling moments with ?

At the caverns of New Street
I must wend to Moor Street
and a Chilterns train trundling
me south for Warwick's 1,100th.
birthday weekend and 100 years
since trains of Lancashire PALS
cattle-trucked themselves to
Flanders fields never to return.

(c) C J Heyworth June 2014

Piercing the shrouded sky
They fight against surrounding black:
Like flowers breaking through sidewalk cracks,
The light seeps through the darkness.
Between the leaves
The stars reach for the eyes…

But now thought reaches away:
I escape myself through abstraction
As the past violently asserts itself:
Remembrance induced by a careless focus
On a memory flowing from a present vision:
The tree
now
Clothed in leaves
Beckons forth remembrance:

Autumn leaves,
Trundling into legs only to move past
As they ride the restless winds
Whispering their own poems
Of meaning only experience could collect…
They rush
Through fallow ditches
And enclosing brush which
Form a pattern around
The tree that beckons forth
- With disrobed branches glistening
White under stars,
Dampened by the still-settling dew-
A Self-realization that obliterates all boundaries
And encompasses no thoughts,
but the One
which gives them:
The One which gives a breath
Held together by the moments
Which trail the first puff of white
that joins the airs that wrap themselves
around the tree reaching up to the stars
which do not reflect the one who sees them
but give the light
towards which thought now reaches.

All these memories induce
The longing to feel the openness
No words could possibly posses
As slowly the months fade
Into the dissolving moments it takes
For the eyes to reach up to the light.

The owls line up
in the vicinity,
the street lamps
switch on;
traffic trundling by
with homeward bound
hungry crowds.

The kitchens hives
of domestic industry
as broadcasts
prepare to invade
the living rooms
of the temporary retired.

Night falls.

Wrought from the depths of a wound not at all neglected by the surreal anger of the earth, a cold construct comes to life. Its steps are pressed into the orange sand inches ahead of where its foot falls and it heaves itself through the cycle of animation and fabrication. Why am I- The cosmos are cruel indeed. Every cycle brings forth a new inquiry, a new level of hell as fluctuating as the wavelengths shared between the sea and the shore. The ocean floor was in a curious juxtaposition of lost sea gods and sunken ships. Trundling alone across the ocean floor had granted it a metaphor of unfathomable depth. As it looked towards the pillars above, tendrils of dark breached the cracked stones around it, allowing the shadows to creep across the luminous grounds feeding the premonitions of doom that echoed from beyond the rocks. For what purpose does- Immortality is despair. To exist as something that time can touch must be beautiful. Grief ridden and slowly being crushed by a perennial execution, the spawn of malicious intent and a sense of retribution is slowly being coerced into the tendrils of the outside. With each step, the opalescent figurine melded into its chest grows brighter, as if drawing power from the prospect of reaching home.

I read this poem once that said
if you run fast enough
you can leave your loneliness behind
Yet sometimes trundling along
some winding country road,where the
power lines split the night sky into sections and the fog
blurs and obscures all the other cars
so just the headlights cut through the dark,you suddenly find your loneliness sitting next to you in the car.)especially if you have sad music on.Loneliness finds you in the oddest places,doesn't it?at parties,when you sit against the wall and break away from the hubbub of people.in a car with your family.public places,just walking around watching people.)But sometimes I find trees are better than people.sometimes books make good companions.sometimes the loneliest places are the most beautiful.I don't know;that's how I feel sometimes.I don't know about you. I don't even know your name.(but--and I know this sounds cheesy--maybe we can be lonely together,and suddenly realize the other is lonely,too,and wonder where the other person is in this strange lonely world.

It must be nearly four on this side of the road.
With a great touch of import,
Trundling through the semi-wet
And gazing at the flints refracted in sod.
A few meters across and there is succor,
There is warmth, where the earth is
Turned fresh. Very little keeps me thus
From that solid solid open door.

Still, I should be a fool to with a one
Hand cast resolve into the nighted water
Of the soul and with the other
Craft the very means for its
Exhumation. As I turn around I close
The door and shamble into dawn.

I take a pill each morning--
"to keep the madness away,"
declared the doctor,
her tone clinically nonchalant
as she handed to me
a prescription for
small, white tablets
that leave a bitter chalkiness
in your mouth
when you've left them
on your tongue
for too long
before swallowing.

But
there is only so much
modern-day pharmaceuticals
can remedy.

Sometimes,
I can still hear her,
you know--
sweet.
lost.
mad
Alice
scratching at the
tessellated patch-work
of my psyche.

I can still feel her
as my fingertips flit
across the liquor bottle--
"Drink Me,"
it murmurs.

Curiouser
&
curiouser
I become with
every shot.

When the room
starts lurching,
when I am too
dizzy to stand,
I close my eyes only
to find that the world
is still spinning.

Or perhaps
I am just falling.

Yes,

D
   O
       W
            N

the rabbit hole I go.

And, as I plummet,
the phosphenes of colour
behind my eyes
transmute into the most
peculiar images:
a mercury-tainted top hat
encompassing the harlequin
countenance of a man
as crazed as I;
the trundling wings
of a Jabberwock
and the heaving snout
of a Bandersnatch;
a pocket watch,
its face lustrous and
encrusted with Jadestone--
"Time. It's time!"
it chimes.

"Time for what?"
exclaims the girl
in the periwinkle petticoat
(she appears simultaneously
excited and terrified
by the impending chaos).

"Bloodshed,"
reckons the squire
of the pocket watch--
the March Hare,
a grisly little thing
in a tattered waist jacket.

"Bloodshed, bloodshed,
off with her head!"

And that girl in periwinkle?

Why that girl is me,
and the Queen of Wonderland
has dealt her cards--
she'd like my head
(and my heart).

But
sweet.
lost.
mad
Alice
has a trick of  
her own to deal--
a Wild Card
tucked beneath her sleeve.

She is capable of imagining
at least six impossible things
before the high is over,
you know.
All it takes is a
simple flutter
of an eyelash
and then,
gripped between
her fingers,
appears a substance
foreign to Wonderland--
***.

"Bottoms up--
for with this,
I shan't feel a thing,"
she surrenders.

"What?"
roars the queen
upon her arrival.
"You will not fight?
Why, you must be mad!"

"Haven't you heard?"
replied Alice.
"All the best people are--
Cheers."

On the highways of utopia
stretching pleasure to people
insane with passions pages
I rolled along on tyres
trundling down mountains and valleys
salt swamps, honey mustard nights
pumping iron clad nozzles
energetic bursts of *******
countless stopovers
unburst wheels
mechanical breakdowns of the minds
metaphors of meaning

I settled then on a roadway
in Alaska
destroyed broken beaten
used and dirtied
by grease monkeys and maniacs
unkempt gearshifts of dollars and dimes

life was touch and go
when I parked in a nirvana slot
for good.
Out on the dusty ****
emblazoned with fingerprints
a wisecrack wrote:
I wish my wife was this *****!

Author Notes

A ***** Truck.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved, a month ago

Street lights shift in tandem,
Flickering rhythmically
Sputtering small halos of safety

Bleached, cracking pavement
devoid of fellow travelers,
and subsequent passengers

I devour dotted lines,
The speed of light
no longer constant.

I allow heavy lids to fall
without much hesitation.
Feel the road sway beneath

I above, disconnected,
yet grounded still. Oil atop water;
Disharmonious cohabitants

Consistency is lost. I pretend
time moves as I please
With or without me

I begin to count


One
Testing preservation,
Instinctual construction of survival.

Two
How long can I trust
touch to keep the course

Three
Can distance be anticipated
without visual stimuli?

Four
I feel the whir of the engine,
obediently churning

Five
hear the wind whipping
defying my wish for silence
slipping through the back window

Six
This is bliss.
I swim envisioned oblivion

Seven
I should open my eyes

Eight
Reality in motion -
time makes me queasy.

Nine
Sight returns.

I stop counting.
Safe, trundling on
I slide silently down 48.

December 12, 2016

Epitaph (by KT)
19 September 2012 at 12:11

Write me a poem.
Use the words you were born with,
The words you grew up with,
The words you speak everyday of your life.


Don't bring me a rose from a garden you did not grow.
Better the thick green stalk of a ****
Grown wild and unbidden
Behind the steps of your back porch.
Better a handful of parched grass
Plucked fitfully from your own lawn.

Write me a poem
And let me hear your voice.
Unsmooth, raucous,
Irritating as the sound of a rusty tricycle trundling by.

Let me see your face.
Scarred and uncared for,
Unwashed and unshaven,
Tender and sad.

Write me a poem
And deliver it to my mossy grave
With a ragged bunch of flowers
Planted and picked by your hand
And read me your words.

I WILL LISTEN.

And beneath the earth
And upon the winds
And across the seas
I will sound my applause
In the song of the tiny sparrow
As she flies forever home.

Herbert O' Doyle was a very simple man. Simplistic in his ways, simplistic in his tastes, he believed all good things in life were earned, rather than gained. You would think a rich man of his stature in his early 60's could sit back, put his feet up and relax. But Herbert despised the idea, for he was one to never be seen doing nothing - as he often quotes, doing nothing 'made his teeth itch'.

No, Herb was always doing something; from building new furniture to tending to the gardens, he was up and about 24/7. So much so, people who visited his Manor grounds surmised he ran on clockwork, an unfeeling machine unable to do nothing but grind on methodically through the day. Sadly, what the people didn't realise is that he was, in fact, at the mercy of his obsessive compulsive disorder - his own snarling little demon he'd had to live with for his whole life. If the hedges were not trimmed perfectly, the demon would snarl. If one of the visitor rooms looked too empty, the demon would snarl. If, goodness, a spoon was laid out of line, the demon would snarl, make his head whirl, only in correcting the anomaly would stop it gnawing at his stomach.

There was one advantage to having OCD, however, and that was he knew every corner and cranny of both the O' Doyle Mansion and the gardens outside. Well, that was what he'd thought, anyway.

For upon the morning of Saturday the 2nd August 2016, Herbert discovered a secret his predecessors had hidden, even from himself. A secret that defied common knowledge and that had probably brought about his late family's considerate wealth.

A secret that he would later come to wish he'd never known.

- - -

It was by sheer accident he'd discovered the shed. Upon clearing out the weeds and grasses that had started clogging the miniature river that ran through the gardens, he had slipped, tumbled into the water, and been left facing the back end of the river. The fall wasn't severe enough to hurt him, but enough to dislodge a few rocks in the river bank's side.

At first he saw nothing but dead leaves, mud and moss covered sandstone, but upon further inspection his eyes came across a sharp glint that caught in the sun's glare. To him it looked like a metal plate, or maybe a blade, rusted up and stained near beyond recognition. But, it was unmistakably metal. And whatever it was, it was horrifically out of place.

To say that it had been purely compulsion, not curiosity, that had led Herb to clear off the mud and rock from the bank could possibly be a lie - but to say that curiosity had not proceeded him to open the metal door behind definitely is. For as soon as Herb saw the sand chewn handle his mind immediately wanted to know what was beyond. And before he even knew what he was doing, the door was open and he was climbing inside.

- - -

It turned out the door led directly to a series of catacombs beneath the Manor grounds - something Herb had been completely oblivious to. Ever since a child he had lived here, brought up with his parents, shown the many secrets that hid within the grounds by his late father.

All apart from this one.

His father had disappeared long ago, his mother explaining that he'd found another woman and had left. Herb hadn't believed that, from the almost desperate plea in his mother's eyes to the fact he knew his father had loved his family, he couldn't help but think of it as a lie. And up until now, he had dismissed that thought - for if his father hadn't run away, where was he? But finding this cavern of wandering tunnels, he realised maybe his gut instinct had been right all along; could his father have got lost in these tunnels, unable to escape and subsequently died?

Or maybe he was still here, alive but not quite living.

Herb had shivered at that point. Thinking such thoughts in a dimly lit place like this would only cause his minds to play tricks. If he lost his head, or his way, he would never get back.

There was a very real danger he would suffer the same fate others down here probably had.

He shook his head, cleared the thoughts, and walked on - tirelessy trundling along until he finally came to a dead end where the rocky walls collided together.

- - -

What he'd found was far beyond amazing. Where the walls had closed together someone had crudely chiseled out a door way, 6ft high with a curved arch reminiscent of victorian architecture. The method was clumsy, the jagged stone sharp and even dangerously dagger-like in places. Just like teeth guarding a gaping mouth.

When Herb had finally gone through that doorway he had entered a vast hall, supported by limestone pillars, half eroded, and a floor lined with smooth granite slabs. The air inside was musky, almost miasmic, and stale. The very atmosphere itself was of death, as if the very oxygen that it consisted of had deceased. Even the stone walls resembled long abandoned corpses.

But these things Herb quickly disregarded, for lined in two perfect rows down both sides of the hall were twelve golden statues, sun-kissed and glinting amber in the light of his torch.

There were six on either side, some missing arms, other devoid of heads, but what tied all these masterpieces together was the deliberate attention to detail. And that they were all female.

He could pick out the minute hairs upon their bare arms, the slight bumps under the skin where the arteries knotted around their wrists. For those with heads, their hair flew out around them, as if caught in a summer breeze, and, most fascinatingly, Herb could gaze into their eyes and see the brushed lines of the iris and the miniscule veins around the edge of their sockets. The attention was precocious, compulsively perfect, and the result was dazzlingly beautiful.

When he'd eventually torn his eyes away from the statues, Herb's gaze fell upon the dankly lit shed sat right at the back of the hall. It was ugly, falling apart in places and obviously riddled with wood rot. Surrounded by the statues of gold, it looked sorely out of place, like a stray dog that's wandered onto a Crufts show.

Not even realising, he started towards it, by-passing the statues and their grimacing faces, instinctively seeking to open the shed door and peer inside. Why would this be down here? The sculptures are unexplainable but having a garden shed locked deep in some catacombs is even stranger. Maybe it's owner forgot about it... or wanted no one to ever find it.

And that's when he realised something was stuck to the bottom of his shoe, stopping him merely a few yards from the shed. Reaching down, he ripped it off and opened it up, the sprawling hand writing instantly denoting it was a note of some kind.

Ignorant to the sudden wind behind him that wheezed through the archway, Herbert started to read the final words of his long lost father.
- - -

gilt in foiled amber streetlight bluntly buckled on my coffer p-coated and trundling meticulously a drafty cinder of pretty little veins blueing clicked small headed teeth blasting blond scalp and hot pinked lips they' were asking shyly if i'd a minute heat to burst the cool heap of tobacco splitting pleasantly her plush rinds a tube 'i"m sorry i don't smoke'

autumn on my mind
tumbling leaves trundling into
distant memories

mind's collective.
a primary congregation
in chiaroscuro,

white axis
tilting black worlds
as stars lean
towards their gaseous disappearances.

mind's prison.
blood surging in staccato,
thumping like wild animals,
trundling underneath the womb
of genuflecting hills.

a cityscape is innervated
by electric wires and their
secretive jolts: this plunging light laying leschenaultia diadem
on my head naming me king
of shadows thriving inside
bells telling all buoys
with their rotund calisthenics.

all words elope stagnant rivers,
vexing truths out of horizons
painting them without color,
like the image of a dove trapped
in mirror's water, reaching
forth kingdom come.

I've never asked how you felt
About being watched
Some of us humans will
Travel great distances
Just to catch a glimpse
How do you feel about this?

Is it a bother, perhaps
That a clunky, binocular-toting creature
Is trundling ungracefully through your home?
Your domestic life
Needs no prying eyes

Or could it be an honor?
You merely inherited
The feathers, the songs
And you're loved for it

Perhaps you are indifferent?
You pay them no heed,
Since they do not pose a threat
To your food or family
While they stand around and stare vacantly

Maybe it depends
If you were a sparrow happily whistling,
Or a bunting bachelor finding a suitor,
Or a warbler that had a REALLY bad day
Since her baby turned out to be a cowbird?
Or a goose whose patience runs thin
As the screaming human-chicks keep chasing it?

If you could take up a pen,
Or a quill, since you have many,
I would love for you
To get back to me
So at least I could respect your wishes

you will only look for which road i have
  passed, with girth of oceans startled
  to hip-curve, bow-legged darling
  hiding behind pretense of rose frailty.

when words ripen, they fall.

from vaudeville of fools to silence
in all its exactness, i take my place
amongst people in stations, machines
adorning rotundas, courtyards to a flourish of twilight-bells, the men with retinas spry behind cloaks of smoke—

        plain, **** drunkenness assaults
the billion-blooded sea, each line fraught
with inebriation: a god is borrowed with
what light fruits from a slow nature, quick
to burst and torturously maimed in stride.

fated to arrive at one morning —
being in total placeness and making merry
once again, the dreary face waiting at
the portico of days collected.

when these words start to wind-hover,
a string of birds will appear clearer,
mounting umbilicus of lines.
as in hounds shear the metastasizing dark,
going back to chagrined kens,
i make truth out of the tragedy:
trace the source of this stream and find
my trampled body, floating with
   the sandalwood. when the still, clenched hand clock-punches,
   make real the insignia of my arrival:

words start with limbs to cross
  this scalped Earth which moves suddenly naked, leaning in, gropes you
in stillness, resuscitating the moon from
the working of insolvencies we rear
in derelicts of days.

drags it closely to ends — left trundling
in woe's wearisome vessel. and if in
this newly thatched home it screams,

let this voice deftly shred
so i may once more lie straight to your
half-illuminated faces, a call i
only hear.

.
















                                                                                    b










                                                                                    r    e                                                                                   a





theth

e s
l
o
     w

l   y
      steam

of
      some

halfish
twinkling
infinitely pale
evening

when
out of ****
languishing
darkness
lifts
terribly its
marvelous
trundling deep
cool




                                                                                     and





the when world was
it were a
pistil
o'
the bulb
of hushingly
crushed mutest
with drabs of hulking
orange imped to 'er
******* 'er
tongue
'nd 'er
arms long
went out
like the
sea goes
out
under the moon
it goes out rushing
faster than

lungs were
the there was
and
o'er
'em was

R i B s

(

         bump


                      bUmpy

                                       bumP

                                                     BuMP

                                                                        )ribs and



a pair o'
darling ****
with
o'er 'em
a neatishly intense
girl head
with lips
it
drank the
air
in swooning
tiny
heaps









               i









                                                       t








                                                                              S










                                                                                                                   P









                                                                                                                                                                    RUNG









from
'er face
it went like
a blade goes
sharply quick
into softly         I


and took
the 'er
it
the
blade
o'
'er
cutting
i
the mouth
and (in my mouth)
cupped her kiss
instantly
which lingered
more brutally
than

b

         r




                     e


                                 a






                  t



                                       he,




                                                    .



                                    
                                   '




                                                  ,





                                    .