When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside.
But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

When Nag the basking cobra hears the careless foot of man,
He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it if he can.
But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

When the early Jesuit fathers preached to Hurons and Choctaws,
They prayed to be delivered from the vengeance of the squaws.
’Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those stark enthusiasts pale.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

Man’s timid heart is bursting with the things he must not say,
For the Woman that God gave him isn’t his to give away;
But when hunter meets with husband, each confirms the other’s tale—
The female of the species is more deadly than the male.

Man, a bear in most relations-worm and savage otherwise,—
Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise.
Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact
To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.

Fear, or foolishness, impels him, ere he lay the wicked low,
To concede some form of trial even to his fiercest foe.
Mirth obscene diverts his anger—Doubt and Pity oft perplex
Him in dealing with an issue— to the scandal of The ***!

But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame
Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same;
And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail,
The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.

She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast
May not deal in doubt or pity—must not swerve for fact or jest.
These be purely male diversions—not in these her honour dwells.
She the Other Law we live by, is that Law and nothing else.

She can bring no more to living than the powers that make her great
As the Mother of the Infant and the Mistress of the Mate.
And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides unclaimed to claim
Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is the same.

She is wedded to convictions—in default of grosser ties;
Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him who denies!—
He will meet no suave discussion, but the instant, white-hot, wild,
Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child.

Unprovoked and awful charges— even so the she-bear fights,
Speech that drips, corrodes, and poisons—even so the cobra bites,
Scientific vivisection of one nerve till it is raw
And the victim writhes in anguish—like the Jesuit with the squaw!

So it cames that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer
With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her
Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands
To some God of Abstract Justice—which no woman understands.

And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman that God gave him
Must command but may not govern—shall enthral but not enslave him.
And She knows, because She warns him, and Her instincts never fail,
That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male.

To Jody;
My five years old friend and nephew

I put down the telephone,
entering a nap of elation,
till the echo of your sweet utterance
On the back of expatriation's wind
Swims away, dims.
By then, medusas of melancholy with their thick sorrow
fill up my throat
and my heart
would blindfolded fall on the knees and
die down…

With good and bad big wolves
tracing lost children or stuffing shaking goat kids into their paunch.
With ravenous bears, malignant hyenas
and crude giants,
garrulous  gracious squirrels, laborious ants
and active voracious hares.
With them, the two of us
had upholstered the land and sky of the wonderland,
and with their voices and whoops all,
we had irritated the dreamland's walls.

No matter how many times
we were building the villages for stories of straw, furze sticks and bricks,
I would only visit your house of mattresses and pillows.

Only for you,
I did revived the dead wolf
in order to revenge the "predatory" lumberjack.
With no regret I kept sending "wolfy" to the roasted chicken's shop
to defeat the hunger,
So that he won't eat the trapped little girl.
And before your smile,
the wolf in walrus moustache would play with the girl till daddy comes and takes her home.

And you are …
popping out, never closing the wide eyes of yours,
waiting for grandpa to take us to the village.
Up from the houses' roofs,
with Qarmeetlak's1 rabbits,
beyond the barbwires and in secret,
we stick the tongues out to the Turkish barracks.
Along with goat kids,
in tracking smugglers' traces,
we fool the landmines,
sneak to the other side of the border.
With smiley faces and hidden bleats,
We ****** the poppies and the grass that grow out from the edges of spring and the craters.
We hide from smuggler's ghosts who
in the  labyrinths of landmines
because of the unclaimed hands and legs are grabbing the collars.
We taunt the jackals' yowling and the patrolmen.
And in front of the rumbling sky, we do our best to look prettier;
Isn't  it "God taking photos of us"?
And like coward puppies we flee and go back to the safe village,
just before the dusk's winds could carry our smell to the angry spirit of Salan2
who is scouring the Kurmanj's Mountain3,
pursuing his endless vengeances.

Till the break of day,
with your slim clever squirreliness,
out of the branches of the most interlocked sorrowful stories,
you were shaking the attached laughs and guffaws
on the  hair of the deceiver Ashrafieh and the grumpy Sheikh Maksood's4 night.
Eventually, in taking its revenge,
the night would stuff you in a small basket and throw you away into the waves of sleep and dream
accompanied with all that eager to see the giants' kingdom and the mice's storehouses,
squirrels' village, their dances and bridals,
the departure will lead you to the waterfalls' cliffs of a dreamy sparrow's new day.
With the beaming love out from our eyes,
you dry up your tousled feathers and
take into the open.

Nevertheless, how simple-hearted the lies were when I kept telling you:
"Dog is a dog, a wolf is a wolf and the kitty is a kitty, and what are we, my Jody?
We are humans!"

I didn't want you to know
how in the world, could a dozen of
rabid armed dogs
smash down the door
and out from your eleven months old eyes,
with a persistent thronged barking,
they did take your dad away to the deepest liars of the ranch of malevolence,
introducing him to all kinds of animality.

How might I explained to you
why in the world, they reduced 'dad' for you
to that thing which every month
from behind a doubled bars
keep sending you a tearful laugh?
Why did they minimized the ancient capital for you into
both of the Political Security Branch and Siednaya's Jail5?

Your fingers had just started taking to writing and drawing.
You had just started
cantering your own stories
along with unsaddled breezes' foals
when herds of jackals with dark mouths
deported 'your Azad' into a fool refuge.
Again,
they
made
you
an orphan.

Inside the brushwood of the story and the wilderness of the epic,
since neither your fingers have become able to rise the sign of victory correctly,
nor could your throat match the letters of 'Kurdistan' properly,
whatever cave you step in,
no matter how shiny is the globe in the witch's hands,
she would never be able to tell you,
these lacrimatory mist and clouds,
with the emerging of every spring,
from which valleys of the ranch of malevolence  
did they come to overflow the Kurdish neighborhoods.
How did they vilely with no permission go up to the third floor
in order to join you in a poisoned feverish soiree.
And since when
the creatures of darkness
that they had brought
have been grazing their hyenas
among our fresh hopes.


Hence…
when I tell you that
I'll come back with the snowfall,
it is nothing but a lie!
When you ask me to come back in summer
in order to hang on my back
and swim together
along with the little fishes,
such an imagination!
When you are not sleeping in my empty bed anymore
Intending to let my pillow and blanket await for
my return,
only a childish dream!!
Yet, when you
in the sweet and soft Afrini accent of yours
say to me
'Ozod, I mithed you thoo thoo thoo much',
my heart
would blindfolded fall on the knees and
die down…

Azad Ekkaş
Roni_alend@outlook.com
Erbil: 3-1-2011

They call me the smartest *****; they look at me like they would at Sauron.  Maybe I am just destined to be defined like an oxymoron, and also why do people shut their doors on me like I was a Mormon. Did I make the right choice when I took the blue pill and moved into Zion? Don’t know how to feel or who or what I should rely on. Bygones are bygones, got to follow the drill, so best not pull any funny ones. Being spied on, got no where to run, after all when your under a dictatorship there is no time for fun, there is only time to train one how to shoot a gun. Blang blam got a cross on fire on my lawn from the dreaded Ku Klux ****.  One extreme to another, what happened to Jesus’s teachings of how we are all heavenly sisters and brothers? **** the American dream; **** this apparent land of the free where anyone from anywhere can attain cream. Not a joke so turn this into a meme, this is serious if you only saw the things which some claim as the unseen.

Open your mind; don’t bind yourself to devilish things that appear kind. Charging up my chakra, hypnotizing you with my words like I’m the unclaimed child of Big Poppa. I am so waka I get yawl flocking to my flame, my bars aint **** yeah they as lit as Mary Jane. Bulking up like Bain, natural leader and I got a big brain. Some stalker ******* get so shady, thinking that I will spend my gravy, or that I will have their baby. Sorry I am not interested in getting rabies or taking a taste of your dead daisy. This is my loot; ***** the only thing I’ll give you is the boot. Scoot away from me, best stray by the bay before I write a restraining order on thee.  What is this world coming to? Harold be it that we stuck in a rut with a storm beginning to brew.  

People say I should stop drinking because I got family duties and responsibilities but I drink because I have to deal with the stress from family duties and responsibilities.  **** it all; **** my *****, better duck down because one punch and you’ll fall. Got the gall, Pokémon master man **** right I’m about to catch them all! I’m super and I like to smash bro, so better hide your ***** and your side **. Classically unclassified, mentally traumatized from a fall out of a genocide. Time to be unfiltered; rhyming from a heart that used to be good but now has been altered. Maybe I am just an oxymoron, just a sly fox that know how to survive because no matter what my hope for a better world will stay strong. I may live in this world but I am not of it, I may continue to give until I decide to say ah **** it! Isn’t it ironic? Isn’t the whole point of being a rapper to make a profit and strive to rap as fast as the speed of sonic? Let me puff some **** and drink till I’m subatomic. Wouldn’t that be ironic? Wouldn’t that be something if I chose to become like everyone else and live out a life of being toxic. So am I ironic or am I just an oxymoron? Don’t give a **** either way because I am iconic and will take anything you haters bring on!

She wishes she could tell you that she's doing better.
She wanted to express her feelings, and you let her.

Now, acknowledged she does feel,
Her wounds continue to heal.

She knows why you pushed her away,
There's a reason why she couldn't say what she wanted to say,
That day, in the cafe.

She wants you to achieve your crazy idea and let you do whatever it is that you need to do,
She doesn't have what it takes to be angry at you. It is the truth, she'll always love you.

She is sorry that she was rude,
And ruined your mood over the food.
She didn't wish to hurt you with her words so crude,
But that's the way she does brood.
You didn't have to hear her nonsense, dude.

You, she'll never have the strength to claim,
Yet, she lights up each time she hears your name,
She loves you still, she loves you and will always feel the same,
It is not that she'd wait for you, more like she can't move on.
It her fault, you should not get the blame.

You’ll find them in all such establishments,
(Be they graceful small-town former Victorian homes,
Or cinderblock edifices mindful of some campus multi-faith center)
Sitting in the basement, cheek-to-jowl
With moldering burial records and banking statements,
Yellowed newspaper clippings, faded prayer cards
Small squared-off boxes hastily tabbed together,
Ostensibly temporary containers which have acquired
An unintended and wholly unwelcome permanence.
The whys and wherefores of their subterranean placement
A mixed bag of foible and outright foolishness:
Unresolvable squabbles concerning possession and burial,
Families that skipped out on the bill, leaving mom behind,
Cases of outright not giving a good-*******.
And so they remain, in lieu of repatriation and redemption,
To sit for something akin to perpetuity in some cases
(Members of the profession resolute in their respect
For the dignity of life,
Though their sincerity enjoys less unanimity)
While others wait for mass burial
Once legal niceties have been satisfied,
While still others, in care of firms not so scrupulous
About crossing their t’s and dotting their i’s,
Are flung, albeit somewhat surreptitiously, out the back door,
The remains to take flight if the grass is dry and the wind is brisk,
Otherwise to be left to the vagaries
Of curious birds and creped soles.

The blank paper stares at me
It knows I have no thoughts
But how can I keep it from winning
when I have nothing to share?
The paper mocks me from all four corners
Challenging my thoughts and intelligence

For I have nothing to write

Searching high and low
I'm seeking for inspiration
Words fading, people leaving
memories disappearing into the dark void
My tongue incapable of letting
the emotions fall from my mouth
They run to avoid my grasp
My hand reaches out to them
But they flee once again

The ink is wasted. Pen is silenced. Going unused.

The blank paper stares at me
For I couldn't birth my truth
Mocking and laughing
The paper won.

*Inspired by Jessica DeBoo's "Unclaimed Territory"

Good Friday 2020
_____

The wind groans with reluctance
Sends April snow in squalls—
a tossed and careless shawl
worn long and tired with this Day
No glimpse of sun
A dirge of snow surrenders on the grass
Winter making one more pass
among us
gray with grief

Due east of Rat Island

alone

Appropriate in name
Appropriate to this, the day

surrounded only
by the jealous surf
with hateful waves
surrounded by the howls of “crucify!”
“He is not ours!

They are not ours!
We are not ours!”

Send them all away
They belong to the island
to the ground
from which they came
Not for us to cry and claim

Their abandonment

Wooden boxes fill the
trench—
A Babi Yar
of our own doing
so it seems
and yet again...
Golgotha

In the bitterness
of heart there is

an island--

Hart—I think they call it
Both a prison and a graveyard
of NYC

A place “despised and rejected”

rejected of men
an island of sorrows...
and acquainted with grief....”

      “...I see myself an ancient Israelite.
       I wander o’er the roads of ancient Egypt
      And here, upon the cross, I perish, tortured
      And even now, I bear the marks of nails....”
                                   --Yevgeni Yevtushenko

...inscribed on the palms of His hands....

Again—

There is an island
where scores of the forgotten lie
He knows them all by name

Today it binds my tongue
with bonds of sadness
It has traveled in the tides
of time to find us

Our Babi Yar has come for us
to take us to Hart Island

Unmarked
Unloved
Unclaimed
_____

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BabiJarravijn.jpg…

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio acknowledged that more people are being buried at the city's potter's field, but stressed that only the bodies of the unclaimed would be buried there.

The border to me
XUAN CARLOS ESPINOZA-CUELLAR·WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2015
  
The border to me is a constant anguish,
A big pause button,
Often in dreams I dream of Mexico as my lover
And he waits for me,
And waits.
The border to me is my grandma’s rosary,
She said she’d hold on until I could go back,
Until she couldn’t.
I recently found out that for years she’d scold my cousins for using my table games “he’s coming back, and he’ll ask for them…”
And she’d save t hem in her old, rusty closet.
The border to me is a big pause button,
I often dream of going back,
Who will I be then, when I hit play?
Who will I speak with to recover my grandmother’s prayers,
To collect 12 years of unclaimed hugs,
All the wrinkles and gray hairs I missed on her hair,
And every step I couldn’t walk by her.
But one day I will cross back,
In the middle of songs and candles I will conjure her spirit,
And I will look in the back of that old closet
Where she saved my table games
And there I will find her love
And her songs, her advice, her songs,
And the little pieces she left for me, hidden for me,
When she envisioned the day
That this pause would be over.

Off the coast of the Bronx
at the western end of Long Island
before ships landed: the home of the Siwanoy tribe
once the training ground of the 31st U.S Colored Infantry Regiment
according to records, a prisoner of war camp in 1864
later referred to as  "Potter's Field" or "City Cemetery"
then a quarantine station for yellow fever patients
as well as a women's psychiatric hospital & a tubercularium
on the west side of the islands
between an empty 4-acre space lived Solomon Riley's vision of black coney island during Jim Crow  
after the stay and departure of Pheonix house
Hart Island
now is the final resting ground for New York City's covid-19 victims
whose family could not or did not hire a private funeral director and so they were labeled "unclaimed"

i like the communism acknowledged by ants
and terminites,
but that brothel bit where
we plagiarise lions
just to get islam?
**** that, let’s try again,
and again,
and again... until
the rhytms of the labrador and
the tricep conincide with a society
worth living in,
the utopia of my grandfather
i wished i lived in only compensated
by achilles and hercules...
imagine! only by achilles and hercules!
only by achilles and hercules!
hell with you!
hell with you for stealing that from me
and giving me the antionette john paul ii...
that gave me a statue and not a job -
endearing as the entering applause,
hell with you, discarded western of the jeans...
i'd go back to ukraine had
i claimed justice in a society that divided me
to make justice unclaimed and literature
for worth of being unclaimed...
had such society existed... the mongols
would have conquered it by simply yawning /
as opposed to mustard stink /
what? west's the best daddy's girl hello
boy dylan **** jim morrison?
you're ahead of yourself in the electra complication
with the decided cold war no.2 originating with the
kalashnikov & katyusha in pseudo-ottoman hands;
hell with you! stay middle class and un-fuckable!

There are more poems inside me, but I intuit it is longer fair to impose on you by sharing more.  The deep seeded infection of my spirit waxes and wanes, and there is no antidote, and unlike the virus itself, there never will be, a future cure, an inexpensive replacement cost for the spirit spent, the time and futures spirited away.

Perhaps you recall I was one mile away from Ground Zero on September 11th.  Rarely do I walk there.

The coronavirus poetry inserts itself unaided, never asking permission, a like minded, but a contra-cousin to the coronavirus.

I live in New York City, the epicenter where now, close to 800 die daily.

Normally, about 25 bodies a week are interred on Hart island, mostly for people whose families can't afford a funeral, or who go unclaimed by relatives.  In recent days, though, burial operations have increased from one day a week to five days a week, with around 24 burials each day.^^

Each dies with no last words, no Kaddish recited, Last Rites, too late, no Ṣalāt al-Janāzah or Om Namo Narayanaya.  Each one, a numbered pine coffin, and each one will have at the very least, a poem of their own, so help me god.

Buried side by side in large trench, room plenty for new arrivals,
I hear the banging, protesting, resisting, this is not the way, I was promised, my ears left pounding!  Hillel, the great scholar in this dream, reminds that “the time is short, and the work is great.”          

He paraphrases, though, “the bodies many, the poems too few.”

There ain’t no anonymity in heaven, but I’ll reconfirm that with you later.

Flashing warmth and faded light
//tell me I'm beautiful
sleeping softly in your arms\

"There is no quicker way to destroy someone than to isolate them."

Well-kept and unclaimed,
preserve the illusion
that to live in excess equals control
and control is safety
of never fearing change

Control is love and love is fear
You know someone well enough
to cut them deep
once you realize
you won't be able to keep them.

Flash them warmth and re-make their home into your faded light
grounded in affection
Which tastes
Yet again
Of fear.

"Enough is enough,"
but that won't stop the hold
The cold fingers grasping for fire
stripping bare the soul--
But hands can't bear
The Burden
And I can see
More light has drained from your eyes.

Fading light, fading warmth
Let us anchor our fates in each others' existence
sharpening the blame
Which soon will be used
To carve our hearts.

"The only way through is forward"
But i say
Take aim
****** deep,
With force enough to dislodge
Everything you no longer can keep
The only way through is through.

Enough wasn't enough.

There is no quicker more effective way
to destroy each other than fear

The illusion of knowing someone,
preserved well enough
to poison them
for the burden of their existence

Time, as a symptom
Of innocence
Of vanity
Spent sharpening your release:

"You're so beautiful"
"My sweet prince"
"Delicate Flower"

and finally:

"Why would I ever want to speak to you again?"

--///--

For the lonely,
for the loveless,
for the forgotten and overlooked,
for the discarded and trodden on,
for the neglected,
for the ignored and mocked,
for societies weeds,
for circumstantial weeds.
For you outcasts are weeds
the flowers nobody wants,
but
weeds are resilient.
They persevere where others can not.
Often mistaken for weak, but no,
weeds are strong
and tough enough to break through tonnes of concrete
and metal.
Clever enough to find growth in places
others perish in.
Adaptable to every habitat and
brave enough to exist on barren wasteland.
Weeds need only the tiniest of a chance to flourish
For the unwanted,
for the unclaimed.
You are beautiful.
You are equal to every other flower.
You are the Charlock, the Buttercup, the Clover,
the Pinapple-May-**** and so much more.
Next time you see a **** by the roadside,
or peeking out from a crack in a wall,
or between paving slabs in a busy city,
or overgrown in a garden,
or weaving through rubble and debris,
take heart
lonely ones.
You are not worthless
You are magnificent.

~
Sheltered within her cryochamber, the offspring of Armageddon dreams of play. She swims in an algal bloom that no longer stings like jellyfish. She floats on the surface of content, far removed from the synthetic sea and its plastic isles. She dwells in a bubble, but her mind hangs free as a halo, soaring with clouds. But these are not the skies that sense their own act of vandalism. This is the space and ceiling of a child's mind, in her capacity to absorb disturbance and rest her tiny, fragile hope in pretended, unclaimed worlds.
~

I am spending the day engaging my pining paths, the recurrent feelings of deep longing and prolonged unfulfilled desires, excavating these facets to surface consciousness, treating my desires as ~ G ~ E ~ M ~ S ~, not to be shunned or left buried. I am now recognizing these are soul level expressions to be celebrated, with and without abandon of permanence. These are my soul's scripts, and as they intersect interdependently with others in my relationships, they are essential components of the juice and energies that define me.

So I've engaged my angels and guides, and taken to scribe, these processes of my heart's harmonizing and soul's solstice. As a singular sun, my firespark has indeed been, furthest from the celestial equator of my own integration, playing and equating in realms of derivatives and hedged parlays. Becoming whole is feeling not to be really any core change at all, beyond embracing everything I am in each thought, emotion and deed, illuminating all that has been self concealed as the acts in the play of parlays unfold.

Through heart's laden sadness, my pining bursts through in fiery release now, fuel and fire, found festering, without need like Prometheus, to steal it from some god beyond and outside myself. Today is a celebration of acceptance, these energies and motivations based in my pining are my essence and as essential as my feline purrs. So as I embrace these buried abstractions and etch and scribe them into prose, they become more than historic and nostalgic memories, they become living remembrance of who I am and what a wide spectrum of imaginative and creative energy and intention I posses to draw upon. This is me, the soul, coming into a more robust integration and empowerment, as I accept, and then utilize each hue of my rainbow ... blending resonant ratios of each color's wavelength, leaving none excluded, nor seeking to change what is already in suffused perfection.


So when this script's scene
plays out to conclusion
tangential vectors and points
on spiral paths shall intercede

and this unmasked energy
and reclaimed consciousness
sourced in shadow's
facets illuminated
and embraced
leaves me
annealed

and, i'll be less distracted
by unrecognized emotions
and motivations unclaimed

i've never been more honest
or self understood
transparency serves me well,
dissolving the spell

and i'm enraptured,
discovering, treasures,
and my first genuine,
comfort within,
my own skin

i've grown more
in three weeks
than perceived
even possible
or imagined

so now,
beyond these
shed years
'n tears
'n fears
i etch,
these moments
i embrace,
these moments as
soul's scribe
upon foundations
of the bedrock laid
with my heart, scarified
through emotion's oceans of tears
carving new channels, for my love to flow

soulprints tamping, fertilized medium
i'm embracing too, next cycling, season of spring
embracing my passions in desire, with fire
and intentions of more consciousness
and loving from whence
i'll further
blossom,
grow
and
**glow

I used to swim across the channel to rattlesnake island when I lived
in Florida . We all knew the sharks loved
the funneling action of the channel to the bay . And we were always aware that there were sharks near by . We saw them every day . Yet the allure of the island just a scant one hundred yards away was to much for a 10 year old to pass up . So I would swim across holding a rod and reel high so it would not soak in sea water . I admit there was apprehension evident in my strokes and kicks but I made it across . On the other side there were no rattlesnakes anywhere .
Just gorgeous unclaimed white beaches and aqua clear water . Needle fish scooted across the surface and schools of mullet jumping were all I could see . I did little or no fishing , just running and jumping into the surf . What an afternoon it was . But the sun slid down and we knew we had to leave soon as the big sharks move in at dusk to feed into the night . So we stepped into the swirling waters of the channel and then plunged in and swam . Sharks have all black eyes . Cold  black eyes and an expressionless grin that is all business sporting a mouth full of jagged dagger teeth . They are cautious up to a point but no one knows where that point is . Once that point is reached . . . well you don't want to see that point while your in the water . So about half way across the channel we see a dark shadow swim by in front of us between us and the beach . We know it's a shark , a big one . Perhaps more than fifteen feet long . We can't stay where we are at , but we fear to move on . So taking a deep breath we swim on slow and steady . Finely the beach is at hand , our feet touch sand and we run up on the beach and collapse . Then with heaving chests of fear we look back only to see the shark swim by . Needless to say that was my last visit to rattlesnake island .

Sages and broomsticks
  motherless pearls
Witches that threaten
  fatherless girls
Curse of the ages
  old grudges remain
A coven of stages
  to hide from the rain
The markings of Satan
  the touch of the Lord
A death plated sunset
  and winner forlorn
The trap now a quandary
  and you must break free
As with all soiled laundry
  to burn once deceived
The truth is not distant
  first word never feigned
The peace that you’re seeking
  inside you unclaimed
So let go of the dogma
  the medals will melt
New songs of arrival
  you’ll write most heartfelt
But the moment is now
  and the moment is clear
Once the moment is christened
  new joy spins from fear
To those who still threaten
  with eternity ******…
Say:
        “Away with your blasphemy,
          stop where you stand
        These wings have reopened
          my eyes looking in
        New life has been gifted
          —I’m blessed to begin”

(Villanova Pennsylvania: March, 2014)

I tilted my head . I wilted and was dead -
No longer entangled in this snare called life -
none the less remembered, respected
Dejected in my illusion -
Where i wander most often, unclaimed and disillusioned -
Whatever was I hoping for-
longing in which to see -
the distorted , unreported - dismemberment of ME -
Expectations are like curses, drowning and alienating ALL who dare to dream -
The Ideals of a stranger - I am now what I seem

Here we are as unclaimed lights fall into the room. Here we are with better names, old letters peeling after the other. Here we are, now made of changing lights and indigo dreams. In the very last month and for the first time, I claim the body of an Egyptian lad and you are the sun god, washing over me like a brand new day. For the first time, December doesn’t feel like choking on poppy blossoms. For the first time, December is freeing as scattered pastel lights.

For the first time, my love, December rests on my skin — and it doesn’t hurt.

She taught me
how to whistle,
folded a blade of
grass between
her teeth and
scared frogs half to death
in the woods
behind her house,
that chord struck
deep in the crater
she punched through
my heart

Her sandy skin
burned in the memories
of boys, who watched her
run across a field
with hair swinging
like a beacon, those
candied lips quick to laugh
at a passing joke,
they thought that
she belonged to them

But those lavender evenings
of junior high summers,
bikes and scooters lying
like faithful pets against
the hot pavement, chalky
hands with nails painted
resting against her
scabby knees, those knees
were my altars, I prayed there
more than I prayed in any church,

She was an anthem
unclaimed, she was
an American soccer girl
****** into a taste and color world
where she could be worshipped
by boys with football scars
and veins coated thick
with peanut butter & jelly,
she fell so hard that summer
cupped into the hands of
one after another, after I fell asleep

on the leopard carpet
of her bedroom,
I could hear her
whispering, and the
magma in my throat
filled to bursting,
the fireflies I'd cradled
in the bones carved
from her wrist --
I knew I'd never hold them
when the sun rose,
they escaped far too soon

This mosquito-stung life,
we wore our bites like
champions,
brought them home
to our mothers
until they would fade,
facing the plastic leaves
of autumn, I wanted to
stay locked
in her cage.

Missed chances
failed romances
kisses unclaimed
sweating
shaking
feeling ashamed.

With them my limitations were removed I was not suffering from any of the eye ailments

Although I need a gift that only She could supply a seeing heart not the closed blind one

That I posses in the counseling of her tenderness I found the best that was hidden from

Me tools that bind but all they contain is the Unattainable mystery a knowing heart

Of intuition’s magic lens without distortion through tears and a heart that is exalted by

Them we tarry in bending light that probes and produces crystal clarity from sea sights

That shapes a mind that is far reaching with great depths of expression pressure alone

Can give fortunes of wisdom by destiny’s Design Mountain and streams flow into

Dreams Uncommon the swirling of expectations cross with true reckoning of a soul

Unchained and guided only by purity set in the bedrock of emotional stead fastness so

Needed in so many places of disquiet he who rules the mind wins the mind at times will

Bridge itself with spiritual insights of character and enterprise one so outfitted cannot

Know long term failure with so much power she does hold me at times spell bound I feel

Wistful with a twinge of listlessness I choose to characterize it as auto pilot where great

Productivity is discovered when you learn to trust look into her full vision it will capture

All that is void and troublesome and replace it with active creativity there is solidarity

That is in your power to engage the quote she is not just a pretty face is more than just

Cute its factual the vibrancy left unclaimed makes us build with inferior mortar we are

Set To build a life and we deny our selves because from these liquids’ pools come

Salutation reflection the stirring of instinct the water shed of well being the treading of

Paths set fire by glory within her is nobility and airy truth of stature one that is gleaming

The light so strong that darkness has no effect into these pools of delight one enters



Smitten by charm that disarms all caution unspoken is the invitation nothing less one is assured of privacy  it’s like a long lost remembrance of such

Eloquence you slip within its holding power and dissolve a violin plays in quiet shadows

You walk with the feeling that you’re drifting through many yesterdays and your heart

Beats strongly of great promises for tomorrow the world of structures begin to vanish

One by one as walls of resistance falls away in her continued gaze you stand riveted in

Joy you are the only two in the world just two hearts beating the thunder of a water fall

Can be heard then felt by such emotional weight you are tossed and tumbled in the

Current’s freedom called forth by ecstasy masterful completeness grips you both and

Won’t let go you are conquers you are explorers of different worlds you go deeper

Returning becomes vague two voyagers who see the world anew there is only laughter

In this circus you are on a high wire and you have no fear as you hold hands all

Contention dissolved in this sea of love and friend here is the greatest part these eyes

Are only for you enjoy your relationship with your beloved

Dropping its bomb,
  always missing the mark

Your echo implodes,
  a sound hollow and dark

Answers unquestioned,
  all bombast enflamed

Drifting abandoned
  —in silence unclaimed

(Villanova Pennsylvania: August, 2016)

The basement of my mind.

   Cluttered with **** storms and broken promises,
          Withered alongside reminiscent daydreams of passed past nightmares.

I stare...
   Into the internal dwellings of my deepest catacomb.

          Unable to process what resides in my literal unconscious dungeon.
   It's everything i've attempted to hide.

To die.
   To let dwindle between cobwebs and dust bunnies.

My breath falls short.

   Sifting through the residue of forgotten treasures and material shackles.
          They bond me.
Surround me.
   Overwhelm me...
          The unresolved burdens have taken residency within my hindered chakras.

My chest  is heavy.
   The weight distribution of disappointment is sharper than expected.

It eats away at me.
   An elusive daily ritual.

Tucked away it remains far from common thought patterns.

Waves of emotion.
   The tides roll in.
          Upon their migration my muddled secrets and hidden betrayals are uncovered.
               Discovered.

The look in your eyes when they fall upon my frailty.

My internal stack of unfiltered, unregistered, and unassured disheveled boxes.
   Full of disheveled useless things.
          Covered in a thick layer of problems i'm incapable of handling alone.

Alone.
   It sits unaltered and ever growing.

The piles.
    The filth.
          The remnants of what should have been happiness.

It all falls into misplaced sediments.

I'm a mess.
It's showing.
I'm naked.

    This hell.
This murky chamber of unwanted mementos from failed attempts and lost friendships
          This dreadful, endless room.

Oh, to live in a home without a storm shelter.
    Without room to store unnecessary baggage and all the unclaimed items in my mind.

To find solace in meager living.
   All this weight fitting into a backpack.

To minimize my insanity into a carry on.

   To leave.
To go.
    To be light enough to feel the light.

To escape this cellar.
     To live.

To release my self from my own idealogical prison.
    To penetrate the bars of fear.
          To dig myself out from all the things I never want to speak of.

To be free.
     Ahhh, to be free.

To breathe fresh air over molded dust clouds and stale particles.
     To touch without needing to rinse my soul clean.

To re-stack, rotate, and Tetris these piles of insecurities.

To break habits
           that i've reinterpreted from childhood addictions and failed father figures.

To be better than what i've become.

To set fire to this sham of a lifestyle.
     To be reborn in the ashes of this outgrown armor.

To let go.

To make you proud.
     To find pride in myself.

To not be embarrassed by my place settings and mismatched knick knacks.

To allow souls into my temple without them stumbling into my isolated lunacy.

To welcome love.
        To love.
    To love even the darkest crevasses of my being...

I need to renew my license to live.
     Overdue and out of line,
           My past self has expired.

One step at a time, breathe.
    One box at a time, breathe.
       One thought at a time, inhale.
    One lust at a time, exhale.

Inhale.
    Exhale.
Breathe.
        Repeat.

Awaken.
      Accept.
  Grow.
          Repeat.

Sorrow, the black bird on her shoulder,
she cleverly  hid, when they first met.*
It was flying around her stiff corpse,
they found in a train coach unclaimed.

Sunlight on hedgerow
No one attends your morning
show
Red , marigold and brown
Beige and shiny black
Thou art a treasure to the eye
yet fools turn their backs
An entwined miracle teeming
with life , shimmering in new day light
Red tip and 'suckle , chickadee and sparrow
Green windjammer sheets filling me to
the marrow , stoic within the windy confusion
of February , inquisitive and refreshed
Newly aware* ...

923

How the Waters closed above Him
We shall never know—
How He stretched His Anguish to us
That—is covered too—

Spreads the Pond Her Base of Lilies
Bold above the Boy
Whose unclaimed Hat and Jacket
Sum the History—

You pass the flume. You pass the time.
Waiting in line, Reading signs by flickering light
Cozy and vaguely threatening
You may get wet!
A clatter, screams,
a flash out of the corner of your eye
like southern lightning (with no big thunder) down into the bottomless abyss.

Based on a movie (not available in the gift shop)-- a retelling by whites
of a story written down by whites
told by black
slaves born South

You're a brare, like Rabbit
Prey to Brare Fox
Under the darkness you pass under dim lights that take you back to a time that was, but never way,
Logs that were never trees
Moving through the canal like a slave, sluicing through the swirling sluice
Prettygoodsureasyerborn Prettygoodsureasyerborn

No interaction here in the dark outside-inside
Nobody borne dry, bone dry, unbloodied
By water or unclaimed by the canal full of logs which were never trees
Moving like a slave on display for white birds who, smiling blinking singing, extend
their white wings to show you off to their cartoon friends—a conversation
which you can never be in on
though they look at you.

And then you dip into dark and doom
Quivering rabbit children cower
--clatter, flash, scream--
You begin to suspect your time is coming
And your log, now defying gravity, leaves you without doubt

So, you're trying to find your lauighin place. If only you could. We've
got your laughin place right here.

The mouth opens wide for you
A mouth with briar teeth
A flash like southern lightning
And big thunder fills your ears

Zippadee-do-dah, Zippadee-ay
Your pain will stick to you like wet clothes as you float, swim in the clear swirls
and back into the dark where there's light and singing alligators.
Zippadee-do-dah, Zippadee-ay
They look at you with mechanically blinking eyes
that cannot see you, another guest—another stand-in
for Braer Rabbit, a character who looks nothing like you but who sings
for you and speaks for you.
Zippadee-do-dah, Zippadee-ay
His voice is high and cloying with a Huck Finn twang and a Shirley Temple cry.
He's relaxing at home and you are wet and he is warm in home's golden light.
Yet he speaks for you, sings for you, but he does not see you.
A cast member made of person who has no lines to speak will pull you from your log.
You will laugh as puddles form at your feet and as you find your
photo—your moment of unbridled, child's
horror now passed, past

You'll pass the flume on your way home—clatter, flash, scream--
You're dripping, drying, the salt of the day now washed away
But there's brine in your sensible shoes, squishing between your insensible toes
And making your feet heavy as you leave.
Braer Rabbit is home and cares not for your troubles.
Zippadee-do-dah, Zippadee-Ay
Magic words, shrill, laughing tragic words
You will remember when you look at your souvenir photo
And smile.

mark of cain in my hemoglobin, i'm more open to repast on brains.
to dine on flesh enmeshed in baseball parks and homes restrained
by greed of the same. and the cry of the people takes great pains
to refine the message of a blank stare. a blemish, stark with catacombs
disarranged in harm honey. the ogre of pine. the amber pane
where we bleed. we name nameless, by the by,
to the finish.
but not
alone.

up your petticoat with my blind cleaver. my Occam razor to your stain.
a fine mess express in hateful art and boneless jade
we feed on the frame of our reference. skylarking harmonious curves dismayed
by their own mind. they confess it. at the statefair. replenished, they knish in falderal
disengaged from honesty. the poker blind. where the eye staid.
where we need. we need most ... tell ya why.....
to diminish
but not
atone.

and so it goes. i erode the continent. sneaky pete in the crease of all strange.
itchy feet. maimed in false lies of the ripple. made fake
to real love. unclaimed. a gangly part of broken promises made
we retreat at last. with our last mimes. we undress. with savoir faire. distinguished in our dashery
ill fated. calamity's bark. hard to define. where the mind misbehaved.
we're complete most where the hole resides...
to imprison
but not
hold.

As a child, I drowned fireflies
in the river because I envisioned
them setting ablaze the forest like arsonists.
I thought if I strained my ears,
I could hear them sizzle.. like bacon on a grill
as they flopped about in the water.
But they kicked their legs, belly-up
in the cascades of currents; leaves,
their only life rafts, pulled them further down stream
their beacons flashed a silent SOS.
When their glow softened to a dull ochre,
I gathered the ones closest to shore,
tied strings about their tiny bodies,
and as though they were hanged men,
I sacrificed them to the trees.

One summer, I overheard
that Sadie's baby drowned in the river
while she ****** a married man
on the river's bank. I imagined
the baby's tiny body: arms flapping
like firefly wings as he gulped
water into his mouth; his immature lungs
expanding as he cried a silent alarm;
and his too-large blue eyes staring blankly
into the world of trout and bass below.
Alms to Nature.

Now, floating down stream, inner thoughts
bobbing, arms extended, I pay homage to the river:
O sacred deity.
I inhale and plunge backwards,
further into the cool recesses of its currents.
As bubbles rise, my breath escapes; my lungs panic.
Desperate Child.. Self-Sacrificing...
Yet the currents lift me; I surface unclaimed.

6/21/2018

The night is alive with possibility
The suspense is killing me
Lightning strikes a pose
And thunder comes to me
deeply
Seeping through atmosphere
Home is here
Home is where a gaze holds you safe and a shoulder keeps you steadfast
Cognitive dissonance
I cannot live with this policy ripping through my arteries, this image won’t stop coming to me
A 9-months old baby
In an orange jumpsuit
In a cage in a city
Unclaimed, unwritten, undocumented, unforgiven for the sins of colonialism
Unforgivable
Where were you when ****** branded the Jews?
Then you are accountable too