The artichoke
With a tender heart
Dressed up like a warrior,
Standing at attention, it built
A small helmet
Under its scales
It remained
Unshakeable,
By its side
The crazy vegetables
Uncurled
Their tendrills and leaf-crowns,
Throbbing bulbs,
In the sub-soil
The carrot
With its red mustaches
Was sleeping,
The grapevine
Hung out to dry its branches
Through which the wine will rise,
The cabbage
Dedicated itself
To trying on skirts,
The oregano
To perfuming the world,
And the sweet
Artichoke
There in the garden,
Dressed like a warrior,
Burnished
Like a proud
Pomegrante.
And one day
Side by side
In big wicker baskets
Walking through the market
To realize their dream
The artichoke army
In formation.
Never was it so military
Like on parade.
The men
In their white shirts
Among the vegetables
Were
The Marshals
Of the artichokes
Lines in close order
Command voices,
And the bang
Of a falling box.

But
Then
Maria
Comes
With her basket
She chooses
An artichoke,
She's not afraid of it.
She examines it, she observes it
Up against the light like it was an egg,
She buys it,
She mixes it up
In her handbag
With a pair of shoes
With a cabbage head and a
Bottle
Of vinegar
Until
She enters the kitchen
And submerges it in a ***.

Thus ends
In peace
This career
Of the armed vegetable
Which is called an artichoke,
Then
Scale by scale,
We strip off
The delicacy
And eat
The peaceful mush
Of its green heart.

Is there anything more lonely than the sound of boy playing a banjo on a spring afternoon? Oh yes, yes, it’s the sound of girl playing a banjo on a spring afternoon. A boy would lean back on the porch chair and let the instrument fall and rest on his chest to feel the raindrop-plucked vibrations, one by one. This girl, she sits on a kitchen chair, but not in the kitchen, and folds herself over her Daddy’s 5-string. The banjo rests on her blue-cottoned thigh, the lower metal edge firm against her stomach, her slight ******* pressed against the upper wooden rim. If you were standing in the doorway of the workshop you’d see her blond hair falling, falling over her face. There would be that dead-centre parting and just visible the edge of her wire-rimmed glasses.  Then, the denim jacket worn over the kind of summer-blue flowered frock pulled from her Mummy’s clothes that with her passing have now migrated into her bedroom. The thought of clothes is what there is close to hand at the break of day.

When Kath woke this morning, when the morning woke Kath, the valley air was already as sweet, as fresh as any April morning could possibly be in this green hollow of her home. She had lain there feeling the air caress her forehead. The window, always open beside her tangled bed, let in the ringing song of the waterthrush. Newly returned this handsome brown migrant warbler, his whitish breast streaked with brown, more thrush than warbler, she’d watched in the stream yesterday wading on his long, pink legs bobbing his tail like a spotted sandpiper. Soon there would be a nest somewhere in the beech and hemlock hollow along by the stream in the interstices of some fallen tree.

Ellen was due home this morning. She’d hear the Toyota from way up the track, driven overnight from Philadelphia she’d have stopped and stopped. Tired and so tired, she’d go from truck stop to truck stop, the radio her only company and the thought of Joel between her legs arching into her to keep her warm. But she’d drive with the windows down swallowing the night air as the ***** brown car swallowed the miles. Kath would have the coffee waiting, potato cakes on the stove, she’d have a fresh towel placed on her bed, underwear warm from the dryer, spring flowers bunched in mug on the window sill.

Ellen would never come right in when she arrived home, but sit down with the dogs on the porch step and gather herself, watch the mist rise down in the valley, drink in the bird-ringing silence. Kath would steal open the door and crouch beside her with Mummy’s coffee cup thrown, glazed and fired at Plummer’s Fold. Head resting against the porch supports Ellen would allow the cup to be placed between her hands, her fingers uncurled then curled by Kath around its rough circumference. There would be a kiss on the back of the neck and she’d be gone back upstairs to sit with her notebook, those new lyrics she’d been fashioning, her Plummer’s Fold diary – yesterday had been a rich day as she’d walked the bounds of Brush Mountain on the Big Tree Trail singing and plucking an invisible banjo all the while. Those songs of her great-great uncle she’d discovered in a pile of Library of Congress recordings just echoed through her, had become part of her. They were as much a part of the hinterland of Brush Mountain as the stones on the trail. Garth Watson’s voice, well she knew every turn and breath. She’d been listening to them since she was thirteen. She saw herself at the old Victrola blowing off the dust, placing the forgotten disk on the central spindle, scratching the needle with her finger to test the machine, gauge its volume. Then, that voice surrounding her, entering her, as lonesome as the scrawny girl just out of junior high that she had been, the dumb silent girl from the backwoods with that cute clever sister who played guitar and was everybody’s friend, who the boys rushed to fill the empty seat next to her on the school bus.

They’d recorded this song on their Lonesome Pine album. Kath had it all arranged, had it all imagined, brought it to that session at One-Two Records. She had been so scared Ellen would smile gently and say ‘Kath, not this ol’ thing surely. Why I remember Daddy singing this song into the night over and over.’ But no. When Kath had sung it through, looking into the bowl of her denim skirt, she’d raise her eyes to see tears running down Ellen's face. Everything between them changed at that moment. The location studio in The Farm House disappeared and they were girls on their home porch. In an hour they had it down and Larry had said. ‘My God, Holy Jesus, where did that come from’. So they went straight home and listened to those old records all night and most of the next day. They rewrote the album they’d spent a year planning (and saving for).

So now when they came together on those country fair stages, in the cafes in Baltimore or Philly it was that haunting Appalachian music that ran through their songs. Kath still shy as a blushing bean, hiding in the hair and glasses, reluctantly singing harmony vocals, Ellen– well, that girl had only to look wistfully into the audience and they were hers.  

And so they were living this life holed up in their family place, keeping faith with Plummer’s Fold. Daddy was in a home in Lewis now. He’d taken himself there before his dementia had taken him. He played his girls’ CDs all day long on his Walkman, had their pictures in his near to empty room – just a rocker, a table, a pile of books by his bed with Dora’s wedding quilt.

This music, this oh so heart-breaking music, the loping banjo, the tinkling, springing, glancing accidental guitar and their innocent valley voices. They’d exhausted the old records now and, their education in the old ways done, were back with new songs and Kath’s ideas to only record in the Fold and build songs with soundtracks of the world around them. She’d been laying down tracks day after day whilst Ellen was on the road with the Williams Band and often solo, support for the Minna Peel as ‘an outsider folk artist from deepest Appalachia.’

Kath wouldn’t travel more than a day away from the farm. Every show was an agony, except for the time they were performing. She couldn’t bear all that stuff that surrounded it – all that waiting, the sound check, more waiting, that networking **** One-Two constantly wanted her to be part of. She’d ***** off as the guys gathered around Ellen. She’d take a book and sit in the Toyota. She couldn’t do people, though she loved her folks, she loved her sister like she loved the trees and stones, the birds and flowers on Brush Mountain. Always shy, always afraid of herself ‘Too sensitive for your own good, Kathy girl’, her Daddy had said. Never been kissed in passion, never allowed herself to fall for love, though her body drove her to feelings she had read about, and thus fuelled had succumbed to. There was a boy she’d see in Lewis just from time to time who she thought about, and thought about. She imagined him kissing her and holding her gently in the night . . .

I am living in the 1920s
I am missing the shaking tassel dresses, the whispering red lips and the springing curls
I live through the deep emptiness of an uncurled smile from a boy who has a shine in his eye
A shine from a coin filled with the greed for the nothingness of wealth
His gaping presence has replaced wickedly free men
What remains are toying boys craving meaning
Behind the shade of the thinly golden pattern
Of whiskey blurred nights
Of shivering embraces
Barely touching in numbness
I love you meaning I do not acknowledge your depth or care to know mine
What meaning?

"Oh whence do you come, my dear friend, to me,
With your golden hair all fallen below your knee,
And your face as white as snowdrops on the lea,
And your voice as hollow as the hollow sea?"

"From the other world I come back to you,
My locks are uncurled with dripping drenching dew.
You know the old, whilst I know the new:
But tomorrow you shall know this too."

"Oh not tomorrow into the dark, I pray;
Oh not tomorrow, too soon to go away:
Here I feel warm and well-content and gay:
Give me another year, another day."

"Am I so changed in a day and a night
That mine own only love shrinks from me with fright,
Is fain to turn away to left or right
And cover up his eyes from the sight?"

"Indeed I loved you, my chosen friend,
I loved you for life, but life has an end;
Thro' sickness I was ready to tend:
But death mars all, which we cannot mend.

"Indeed I loved you; I love you yet
If you will stay where your bed is set,
Where I have planted a violet
Which the wind waves, which the dew makes wet."

"Life is gone, then love too is gone,
It was a reed that I leant upon:
Never doubt I will leave you alone
And not wake you rattling bone with bone.

"I go home alone to my bed,
Dug deep at the foot and deep at the head,
Roofed in with a load of lead,
Warm enough for the forgotten dead.

"But why did your tears soak thro' the clay,
And why did your sobs wake me where I lay?
I was away, far enough away:
Let me sleep now till the Judgment Day."

Rose petals thick and heavy
Just ready to wrinkle
Strong, firm, delicate
Simple
Feigning delicacy.
Tighter and tighter to their middle
Lips curling back
Pouting open
All eventually revealing the
Veins!
Veins
Veins
Veins on the roses
From the underside spread upward,
Uncurled,
Veins.
Some so proud and broad
Some coy and curtseying
Some wide open, greeting you.
——
Some angling to the light
——
Some fading their color at the tip
——
Some!
Some doubling inward. Two twists inside!
Why? Overcrowding.
Petals wide,
petals too ready, petals broad
And she made herself a lover
——
Some older, wiser
By quicker death wisdom grows
The peaked face within
Afraid
Afraid of what is coming faster for her.
Something her beauty could not slow
An aging ballerina, refusing to retire her slippers
——
Some wider
More careless
Hippies
——
Some like a dance
Such a vulnerable entrance  
Opening up her lips, her arms, her legs,
Spouting out her tiny tongue
Aroused
——
Some so full
Hiding herself in her layers
More of her.

Ancient.
Just a blip.

Trimmed from their bush. Here to die in a vase by my bed.

I dreamed I stood upon a little hill,
And at my feet there lay a ground, that seemed
Like a waste garden, flowering at its will
With buds and blossoms. There were pools that dreamed
Black and unruffled; there were white lilies
A few, and crocuses, and violets
Purple or pale, snake-like fritillaries
Scarce seen for the rank grass, and through green nets
Blue eyes of shy peryenche winked in the sun.
And there were curious flowers, before unknown,
Flowers that were stained with moonlight, or with shades
Of Nature's wilful moods; and here a one
That had drunk in the transitory tone
Of one brief moment in a sunset; blades
Of grass that in an hundred springs had been
Slowly but exquisitely nurtured by the stars,
And watered with the scented dew long cupped
In lilies, that for rays of sun had seen
Only God's glory, for never a sunrise mars
The luminous air of Heaven. Beyond, abrupt,
A grey stone wall, o'ergrown with velvet moss
Uprose; and gazing I stood long, all mazed
To see a place so strange, so sweet, so fair.
And as I stood and marvelled, lo! across
The garden came a youth; one hand he raised
To shield him from the sun, his wind-tossed hair
Was twined with flowers, and in his hand he bore
A purple bunch of bursting grapes, his eyes
Were clear as crystal, naked all was he,
White as the snow on pathless mountains frore,
Red were his lips as red wine-spilith that dyes
A marble floor, his brow chalcedony.
And he came near me, with his lips uncurled
And kind, and caught my hand and kissed my mouth,
And gave me grapes to eat, and said, 'Sweet friend,
Come I will show thee shadows of the world
And images of life. See from the South
Comes the pale pageant that hath never an end.'
And lo! within the garden of my dream
I saw two walking on a shining plain
Of golden light. The one did joyous seem
And fair and blooming, and a sweet refrain
Came from his lips; he sang of pretty maids
And joyous love of comely girl and boy,
His eyes were bright, and 'mid the dancing blades
Of golden grass his feet did trip for joy;
And in his hand he held an ivory lute
With strings of gold that were as maidens' hair,
And sang with voice as tuneful as a flute,
And round his neck three chains of roses were.
But he that was his comrade walked aside;
He was full sad and sweet, and his large eyes
Were strange with wondrous brightness, staring wide
With gazing; and he sighed with many sighs
That moved me, and his cheeks were wan and white
Like pallid lilies, and his lips were red
Like poppies, and his hands he clenched tight,
And yet again unclenched, and his head
Was wreathed with moon-flowers pale as lips of death.
A purple robe he wore, o'erwrought in gold
With the device of a great snake, whose breath
Was fiery flame: which when I did behold
I fell a-weeping, and I cried, 'Sweet youth,
Tell me why, sad and sighing, thou dost rove
These pleasant realms? I pray thee speak me sooth
What is thy name?' He said, 'My name is Love.'
Then straight the first did turn himself to me
And cried, 'He lieth, for his name is Shame,
But I am Love, and I was wont to be
Alone in this fair garden, till he came
Unasked by night; I am true Love, I fill
The hearts of boy and girl with mutual flame.'
Then sighing, said the other, 'Have thy will,
I am the Love that dare not speak its name.'

it appears as though
there was a coup,
in kookaburra land,
this morning.

much fuss,
and cacophony.
as the brown and blue kingfisher clan, reassembled,
their royal court.

the big old king,
uncurled his talons,
unfurled his wings,
gave one last,
manical chuckle....
and fell from his perch.

to lie still,
upon the dusty,
brown earth.

shocked, silence for some seconds, and then...
the eucalypts erupted into, (what would appear to the outsider);
cold calculating mirth.

as the young jacko princes, all began the joking joust
for the top place berth.

in a melee of swooping, chuckling grace,
a contest no less,
set to test....
mettle, worth and cackle call.
each young bird,
takes to the wing and flies into the maddening...and how close,
         how loud,
                  how startling,
         they can be.
            is made known,      
by those,
whose years,    
            have flown.

when all, is said and done. tourney overflown,
feathers are preened.
then the winner
is presented,
with opportunity, bold....
to nest the queen.
as to the rest,
they take their place,
in the chaotic, cackling, cacophonous,
kookabuurra clan nests.
to bide their time,
until, the next coup,
                        comes calling...

He spent most of his time driving around. It was aimless really, but he figured that’s what life was, and driving was better than sitting.
“Where have you been?” his parents would ask.
“Nowhere.” was always his response.
This angered them tremendously. But what was the proper answer? He truly was going nowhere, too apathetic to do anything but follow the same empty streets for endless hours.
“Where am I supposed to go?” he countered one night. Silence fell with the weight of a train. They had no answers. “No, really,” he began to rant, “where the **** am I supposed to go? The church? The bar? The playground?” He didn’t realize he had started yelling, angrily mocking the small town, population: 2,036.
“Son,” his dad chimed in, “I know there’s not much for you around here-” the boy cut him off by turning around and calmly walking towards the door, stopping the fighting as soon as it had started. It wasn’t worth it.
He stepped out into the dark, the warm air was inviting. In the ignition the keys turned smoothly and the engine purred as he reversed onto the dimly lit street. His destination: nowhere, population: him.
Two hours later he found himself staggering on the edge of a cliff. He recalled a random collection of winding dirt roads, but had no idea how he ended up at this particular spot, in fact he had no idea where he was. Toes curled and uncurled, indecisive about the 50 foot fall into a black, choppy lake. The moon’s reflection peered up at him, calling fall into me, I am safe.
What does it matter anyway? This thought wasn’t shocking. Truthfully, it didn’t matter; there was nowhere else to go.
He released the tension in all of his muscles and fell, limp, towards the reflection of the moon.
There was a note, fluttering, under the windshield wipers of his car, parked only feet from the cliff.
*I’m going somewhere.

Dear Ex;

It seems you've perfected the art of lying
To a level I didn't think could be surpassed after my ex

It's been over a year since we first met
I wish I had seen the lies behind those hazel eyes

It's almost the month we broke up, and you moved out
And moved right into someone else's bed

Devastated I took off running, sobbing the whole time
Retracing every step we'd taken to figure out when it really ended

But, then suddenly you reappear like a ghost in the night
Haunting me to the point I just gave in so the push and pull would stop

It never stopped. Not for a very long time, and you remained oblivious to the pain you were causing me
But, yet there I was every time you called

You couldn't make up your mind and went from "just friends" to "open dating" to "i dont ******* know "
But, you can scratch out friends b/c "just friends" don't act and do the stuff we did. Nope.

And I don't care if two former lovers decide to "stay friends" They don't hangout like 6 days a week
And they don't kiss, cuddle, or sleep in each others beds..... Especially, when one had moved on

I spent my whole last summer with you, half your girlfriend and other who the hell knows
But, I was far from just your friend... It angers me how you couldn't admit it THEN or NOW

Your lies are still spreading like wild fire all over town
Yet, I am the only one getting burned. Everyone else just stands on the side lines, safe from the blaze

You're so far away from me, yet your presence feels like its right next to me
But, I can't smack an invisible feeling

You act so innocent, as if everything was written so clearly, how could I ever misunderstand??
When you're dating a girl, but you tell your ex she's the MOST IMPORTANT PERSON TO YOU in the world..... I guess it got me confused

Waking up everyday to you being in my bed
Sitting on the couch watching movies, snuggled up
I have some guy friends, and we've never cuddled, kiss, of slept in the same bed

I'm starting to feel you're just a child
A boy with no clue that his actions affect the people around him

I've been love sick over you for a year. A year!
A year wasted, devoted to someone whose real problem is, he can't be alone

My anger is blinding, I see nothing but red , and I'm ok with that
You don't deserve all the free passes you got, and when this relationship you built with a house of cards falls in every which way... Not one part of me will feel pity for you

You think you're above us, you most definitely think you're above me. Ha, you couldn't be that honest on a good day
I may have my problems, that make it difficult to be w/me, but I own them. You were offered multiple ways out, multiple times and you stayed

I can't live like this anymore
I can't live with so much emotion toward a person whose in denial about everything that happened
Whether I'm furious at you, of wasting away in my own tears... The clock is ticking and I don't want to wake up one day with an empty bed and just flooded thoughts of you

I would've done anything for you, taken a billet for you
You couldn't handle that raw emotion because, you're terrified of your own

Keep letting her control you and lead you down a path, willingly or not
Sleep next to her at night, staring at the window, wondering what the hell is missing in your life
Why rolling over and watching her sleep won't fill that void

You'll waste more time than you realize, you think you're so young, but that clock never stops ticking
And by the time you realize where your arrogance has gotten you
It'll be far to late to make the change, you should've made years before

Never again will I wait for you, listen to your hollow words, or believe those forced tears or maybe real tears....
But, my patience and sympathy has long run out for you
They'll never measure up to the amount I've cried

I'm not going to be typical and just say "I've let him go." But, my fingers uncurled, my knuckles have color in them again
My hand is fully open, the fantasy, false hope and unrealistic senerios just shatter across the floor
There's spots of blood on some of the shards from cutting me as they fell...

I laugh a laugh I've never heard myself make before
I walk across the broken glass, I don't feel a thing. I see my ****** footsteps behind me as I make my way to the door

I unlock the door, and squint as the bright, hopeful sun hits my eys, tear stained but no longer crying
Blood drips down my fingers and I feel it in between my toes
Still there is no pain

You perfected the art of lying
I perfected learning to remain alive through intense, endless at times, pain

I shut the door behind me, I don't lock it
I want you to walk in when no one answering the knocking
I want you to feel a rush of panic run through your veins as you wonder if I'm lying dead in this house somewhere, you've called my name, no response

The neighbors stare as I continue up the street, some asking if I need help
I shake my head no, with a genuine grin on my face

I've been on sitting on the other side, the borderline of where shattering glass shocks you into the real world again
I was afraid of facing the pain, of leaving this house and never having "someone like you" in my life again

I laught uncontrollably at that thought
Yours no more than a little boy, with issues he can't face, so you just harp on others

You're still standing in the shards of all the broken glass
You bend down, a picture of you and I, in shambles covered in my years and my blood, the very blood that pumps through my heart which you once had

You call out my name, it just echoes around the empty house, left in shambles that we once called home
You stare at the picture of me and you, a tear maybe slides down your cheek.. I can't be sure
You begin to move around the glass in the room calling out "I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

It's beyond too late,  I'm gone with ****** footsteps behind me, and a smile on my face
I don't glance back one time, my neck feels like its be twisted like an owls
I can't imagine turning around, after finally just letting my heart shatter on the ground
I was free

You're in the living room now
Tables&chairs; flipped over, torn love letters all over the floor, along with ripped up pictures of you and I
Suddenly you feel an ache in your chest

But, you've mastered the art of lying, you cried wolf too many times
I mastered the art of living in pain for so long,
With each step a piece of glass falls from my foot

And my ****** footprints fade away with every passing step further away from you

I mastered the art of leaving you, when you needed me most....
While you still scream out desperately "I'm sorry!"

Soon you'll master the art of what it's like to spend the rest of your life living in guilt
And wanting a person who you forgot about so long ago
And now, I'm slowing mastering the art of forgetting you

I guess all good things come to an end
Writing poetry helps my heart to mend
Poetfreak is my home and always will be
Don't know what to do guess we'll wait and see

It tears me up to hear the bad news
It drives me deep down into the blues
I have met so many good friends indeed
There's always someone to confide when in need

I never talked to anyone from halfway around the world
Until I came here and the flowers in my heart uncurled
I don't want this to be goodbye I wanna be forever friends
And to walk in the light of life and love that never ends

But there is still a long way to go
And I will continue to let the poetry flow
I know there are other places but this is home to me
But I guess when it is finally over I'll have to let it be

I unfurled it, uncurled its edges,
like the first time a boy
who is the first time a man
shakes, and takes, to break open,
with the trepidation of martyrs
the word of God.
And he on ceremony says:

"PASSED BY THE LEGISLATURE
AND ORDERED REFERRED BY PETITION
REFERENDUM MEASURE NO. 74
...concerning marriage...
...allow same-*** couples...
...to marry..."
Voter:
"Approved...
...Rejected"

But all the words were wrong.
Like so many other scriptures,
the words did not encapsulate,
not yet begun to navigate
or in legal language validate
my quintessential being of
a fascinating, adulating, activating
Love.

Lazarus

The night blew darkness into me
But you, you whispered my name,
Splintered apart these eyelids
Let the syllables wrap themselves
Around me, carried me back to you.
Awaken you said, and so I did and you
Let the words Come forth drip down
Into my ear drums, and so I did.
I came back to you, uncurled my body
To the sunlight peering itself
From behind you and I knelt,
Knelt for your touch, knelt for your words
To awaken more than just this,
This limp body, give me reason for being,
And so you did, you took this skin
And struck life through it,
Taught me to roll my tongue, to own
Your language, and you pressed
Your forefinger to my forehead and said
I will take you home.

I

These are hard materials
Sharp edged, inflexible
To a degree
That unfolds the truth,
And one truth
Leads to the next
In linear sequence.


Each from the others, isolated
Yet dependent
On what has gone before,
And what follows for the confirmation of truth’s verity.


Various truths are the data set of probability,
Flexible to a degree
Because of the uncertainty of absolute verity
That only singularity allows.
The statistic of one
That even when wrong
Its absoluteness is unquestionable
Because to question is not to know
What has gone before.



To know is singular in its effect,
Its purpose sustained by the uncertainty of data sets
From which truth derives.
The metaphysics of it all
Betrays the conceit of knowledge
And those that claim knowledge
Such that they impose their understanding
On others do not know
And care even less,
Except when their ignorance
Results in what is cared for….
All suppressed by the singularity of knowing
By those who acknowledge a statistic of one.
Preferring the comfort of its certainty
Rather than the uncertainty
That arises form the truth of data sets.


II

Data sets determine league tables
Positions of football clubs
And universities
Where those learning to know
Know what they are learning
And rate it accordingly.
Because as customers
It is said that
They are entitled to know
Even if they are learning
The data sets that allow them to understand
What they are attempting to know
Perhaps without conscious thought of
The void of ignorance that learning attempts to fill.


Yet in their unknowing, the certainty of the learning
Determines the positions of institutions in league tables
In turn compiled from the data sets
Of incomplete knowledge
Asserted with conviction
Establishing what is said to be true
In ignorance of sure foundations.


I wish that I had the conviction of others
To be certain of what I know
Without doubt
Without hesitation
Untrammelled by thoughts of the uncertainty of data sets
Compiled by the compilation of singularities.


Which itself compels another thought
That we all derive from a single small point,
Infinitesimally small but infinitely massive
Exploding once or perhaps in series
Like the popping of a two-stroke petrol engine
That propelled motorbikes and lawn mowers
In yesteryear.


And yet we are saying the same thing
In different ways
Unrelenting in the stream of thought
And consciousness
But ….
Please allow the words’ meanings to breath.
Where is the pause
To allow the assimilation of meaning?

The punctuation of time and space
The meaning of words
Arises from their spacing
And timing.


David Applin August 23rd 8:00am-ish 2014


III

Yet the certainty of data sets
Give us comfort
Those who await the miracle of birth
Calculate the probability of certainty
From statistics derived from the accumulation
Of data
To give the certainty of a happy outcome
A statistic of one…. or at most two or three
To which we all cling and which data
Accumulated in sets allows to be certain…
Or at least to hope to be certain
That the outcome will be happy
And reinforce our faith in belief
Itself knowledge in the absence of evidence
Truth uncurled by those hard materials
Derived from numbers
Each in itself a number
And therefore a singularity
Which hard materials cannot uncurl
Only their interpretation
Can reveal the truth of data sets
Each consisting of the singular truths
That interpretation cannot uncurl,
Because to do so would give us a statistic of one
Which cannot be questioned
Because it stands alone
Inflexible, somewhat obtuse without the context
Of the other singularities that make up the data set.


Befriended of one another, the collective now represents a version of truth
Because each singularity gives context to its companions
So that collectively their truth is revealed
As a statistic.


One as a statistic cannot be
Because it lacks the context of its companions,


QED

David Applin
Queen Victoria
North Sea
Lying off Ostend
25th October (evening) 2014

Copyright David Applin 2015

Not a banana, my life is like the leaf.
My youth uncurled straight and tall
like the opening of a translucent banner.
Sensual curves waving to
the florescent lizard to guard a hunting place.
The warm breezes ruffled my maturing skirt
as I grew in fiber strength.
The warm night rains weighed me down
heavy with diamonds sparkeling in the sunlight.
Unseasonable winds whipped me
into a double fringe.
In my golden year
my fiber strengthening a base for the uncurling of youth.

She was every captain's secret,
Five hundred fathoms deep.
She haunted and charmed the waters so,
And chased the dreams from your sleep.
Her ghost was known to plague our nets,
To dance across the ocean waves.
The bloodied corpses of her children fled
To the beaches where they would be safe.

That night her body, titanium clad,
Punctured the wall between our worlds.
Her arms, a strange bewildered dance
As startled, she uncurled.
The gaul of those men who found her!
Breaking into her home!
She had run from every advance they sent
But legends never die alone.

So few of our men indulge in mystery.
So few embrace the unknown.
Most seek to banish the fear and wonder
And so legends never die alone.
They are prisoners chained to mortal bodies
And drawn from the depths of the sea.
Her eyes, I swear, had pearls of tears
As I watched the Giant Squid flee.

her it
the soporific
very dreaming
split of
easy night
falls so lovely
brushed of balmy
hair short
in tender heap
of girlness heat

it the deftness
of a wrist
hangs
softly loose
uncurled
lightly the fingers
in

her such steeply wonderful brain
a song is me
by love's lips it
i
the earth the
night
echo primly
kissing

and
couth
so a fancy
is all the world
to her in lovely slumber's keep

such as i would like to enter
and of its beauty reap

a flower on who would rise
all youth in me to crown

and lay my *******
in crimson parting's drown

As a child
I held a smile on my face
I knew nothing about
the dangers I'd face
by just being alive,
trying to survive
have to bust my ***
to work nine to five
so that when I came
home
I could be all alone
And take a hit of
what they told me was
bad for me
But they lied
So I learned I was
overshadowed by
a system
That could make people
believe them
And what a powerful tool
that is

On the day they came to
take my brother away
For an incident 1 year prior
They told us they constructed
the whole **** thing
And as a prison bird my
brother now would sing
Mom paid the bail
With special money saved away
Which was more than
1 month of pay
And they put him in jail
      for 3 months
      5 years parole
And I learned that this system
Could also make you caged
they'd set you up
and send you away

So in my adolescence
I lost all hope for
the world
And the place they told
me was free
my rage and sadness
         uncurled
like a blossoming
          flower
It stung like a thorn
but it showed me
it's power

Change can be possible
Just use the right tools
Be cool, secretly
break all their rules
And maybe one day
I can do what I please
Without them making
and "example" out of me.

She said, ‘Let’s go to the Devil Park,’
At noon, on a summer’s day,
I said, ‘We’d better go after dark,
They hide themselves away.
They only come out to feed at night
So that’s when you see them best,
By day, they never come out to play,
That’s when they get to rest.’

We packed the car and we took a torch,
A powerful, bright spotlight,
The only way we would see them there
On a dark and gloomy night,
We waited till it was just on dusk
Then finally hit the road,
The Park was seventy miles away
Or an hour, I’d been told.

The gate of the park was locked and barred
But we scaled and climbed across,
That’s when Giselle had torn her dress,
It was old, so no great loss,
We could hear the scrabbling and the screech
Of the small marsupials,
Grubbing around the park for food
And giving out grunts and squeals.

The torch lit up in a long wide arc
As we scanned across the ground,
The first one that we saw had roared
When it knew it had been found,
Its jaw was wide and its evil teeth
Could give you a nasty bite,
I wasn’t going to get too close
On that warm and sultry night.

We’d wandered round for an hour out there
Had seen groups of two’s and three’s,
And some that were more adventurous
We could see were climbing trees,
When out of the darkness came a voice
That was grating, cold and hard,
‘What do you think, by coming here
To spy in my own backyard?’

It made me start, for the torch wheeled round
To illuminate a stump,
And there a figure in shiny black
Was sat, and it made us jump,
The face was narrow and pointed, leered,
Was capped with a pair of horns,
While a long black tail with snake-like scales
Flicked up, like it meant to warn.

‘We came to see the marsupials,’
I stuttered, in my distress,
‘We meant no harm, but you just alarmed
Us both, in your fancy dress.’
‘You broke in here, but I see the fear
That I cause you, out in the dark,
What did you think you’d find out here,
You’ve come to the Devil’s Park.’

The Devil slowly uncurled himself
And he stood up, ten feet tall,
I saw his claws and his evil jaws
And his goat-like legs, and all,
‘You both may need to redeem yourselves
By paying your court to me,
I’ll make you the lord and lady of
All of the land you see.’

And suddenly all the park was lit
In a ghostly, evil glow,
He said, ‘I can give you all of it,
I have the power, you know.’
‘I think that you’ve tried that line before,’
I said, in a sudden shot,
‘And “get thee behind me Satan” was
The answer that you got.’

A flame curled out of the Devil’s mouth
As he opened up his jaw,
And fixed me with a piercing glare
As he beat his chest, to roar,
‘You’ll not escape, for I’ll cast my cape
To capture your sinful souls,
And when we meet, it will be a treat
In your seat of glowing coals.’

He threw his cape in a whirl until
It covered him like a shroud,
And then went up in a puff of smoke,
As Giselle cried out, aloud,
We raced on back and we scaled the gate
In a massive leap in the dark,
I said, ‘Don’t ever suggest again
We visit the Devil Park!’

David Lewis Paget

Soon you'll be sitting on top of the world,

That’s what the fortune cookie said,

I went to his house with my hair uncurled,

Worried what he wanted was to get me in bed.

flowy, fancy and frolicky vibe
I'm on top of the world!
confidence furled
full support, no hint of a gibe
a certain move through your thick brain, imbibe
my cocoon I've uncurled
heritage whorled
natural elation, no Prozac prescribed
Yet, twirls come to a halt
my smile fades as you drone on
It's all my fault
learning forgone
emotional assault
I'm done, you won

Curious clusters     of uncurled tendrils
traverse the trellis,     touched to feel their way.

Searching
blindly in the dark
Feeling for your softness
and the embrace of your heart
Your eyes open like light
giving shape to my world
filling it with beauty
like spring petals uncurled
Murmurs of sweetness
drip from your lips
Pressing mine to your face
lingering...as the time slips
slowly into a sultry sunrise.
062415~7.18a

Tangent debacles I inherit from your stream;
Your face is otherworldly, inside of my dreams.

Shimmering infinity of warp and woof;
Tapestries uncurled by creation's hook.

Recorded epiphanies and pertinent facts,
Of life and death, proceeding on track.

Truth and reality's mortal refrains,
Embodied in man, so we'll know them again

stickysummer i remember fingers in you
were (golden brown too warm almost
slick with shade and trees where
curling youths (uncurled) pulled
out smelling like the ocean when the
tide has gone way out and) your grip
went around my wrist to your mouth
and without a thinking
drank from them

       blood

He saw

Her wings lay torn upon the ground
Her screams muffled; cries scorching her throat
As they tore at her skin
Shattering the stars in her youthful eyes
As she watched; dulled and empty

                                                          ­       He knew

As her hand fell flat; uncurled
Her mouth, a stretched echo of her suffering
Marred colours of reds and blues charring her soul and body
With a single tear leaping from her ghosting eyes

                                                           ­                                                                    He rose

With the final gasp shifting dust above her cracked lips
The thud of her limp body thrown against rotting carcases
And the darkening sky shedding tears in anguish


He cradled her to his chest; numbing and warm
A finger pulled down the lids of her unsee in eyes
Whispering you're safe now Zainab
I've come to take you home

You don't have to say hello,
Barely uttering
A threatening
Guttural bellow,
If that frown
Beneath your entitled crown
Is all you know,
The furrow
Of your brows
Could scare away crows,
Your lips uncurled
Just a straight dark line
Like your heart in a jar
Flat lining,
Dead and rotten
I dread to imagine
How you are
By yourself unfurled,
Shattered mirrors and tattered
Wallpaper all about scattered,
Stagnant water in clogged drains;
The decay alone
Could set the tone
For the saddest
And cruelest
Of Broadway shows,
If hell froze over I fear my dear
Your disdain
Would burn a hole
Right through to where I sat,
So if you don't, if you can't
Angle down your nose
And you've all but forgotten,
How to tip your metaphorical hat
And butter a more cheerful 'how are you?',
A nod; just a nod will have to do...
© okpoet

Within the stomach of the world
The country stretches its branches, uncurled
Who is the horror of Napoleon Bonaparte?
Who darkens and fools the heart?
Often when man is shaken to the core
Other worlds sneak peeks in his door
And even in the junction of cattle
Metaphysical and mystical truths dazzle
Touched by the sea, a vision came
The pearls of the earth in flames
A jackdaw perches itself on pistons
Radiating heat from all of its mission
His mystic sense stayed tight beneath eyelids
Yet lit the flame in all said and undid
Like a voice in the wilderness
Or even a prophet of old, who might deliver us.

Today’s the day,
I will no longer pretend,
That everything is fine,
When it is not really fine.

Today’s the day,
When I stop caring,
About all the doubts in the world,
And the problems that uncurled.

Today’s the day,
That I will finally love me,
No matter what they say,
I will finally be free.

Today’s the day,
I will finally be happy,
Without a care in the world,
Nothing can hold me down.

But today’s the day,
You remind,
That all those years ago,
How they are not the same.

But today’s the day,
Where I had to remember,
Of how I couldn’t forget,
What you had said.

But today’s the day,
Where my fear haunts me,
As it has days before,
Taking my every breath.

But that’s okay,
Isn’t it?
As they say,
There’s always,

Tomorrow.

So many people using a gun
So many lashings by a tongue
Greed, a ton
The hatred is never done
Everything and everyone as to be outdone
It's just not fun
So many people shunned
The Bible redone
So many killings by someone's son
The life of the devil has begun
Love, there is none
This world
Becoming unfurled, uncurled
Staying in madness and in a twirl
The things in this world would make anyone hurl
What happened to God fearing
The good is disappearing
And everything is interfering
The bad being so domineering
No one cheering
The ugliness in people always appearing
This world is dying
And we just keep on denying and defying
While ignoring it's crying
Everyone keeps on lying
This world
Needs so much prayer
Do you think anyone would dare
or care
I hope they are aware
This is all our affair
Can't you see the despair

God is returning to this world beware

This World  
!!

(Watching the oncoming hurricane Maria.  The 2nd in two weeks – same place)

   Death Is Always In My Mind

Death is always on my mind
In one way or another.
Lying there sneakily,
Shaking me
When something happens on TV.
All around a violence:
In the weather, in the city,
In our children, in the poverty:
Calamity.
How to stay calm lamb myself;
A question half my brain
                            is taken up with.

Hurricanes, shoulder pains,
Underlying wonderings.
Questions without answers;
Wishes not yet answered.

And the time!
Always the passing
Without chance of stopping;
In the stars, the planets;
In the ants & stones & plants.
Yet a cup of coffee
And the world is right.
All the worries of the night
Transformed,
And energy to right my life -
If not the world –
Uncurled -
Thus one goes forward.

Death Is Always On My Mind 9.19.2017
Pure Nakedness; Nature Of & In Reality; Our Times, Our Culture II; Birth, Death & In Between II:
Arlene Corwin

I used to stare at the clock,
a sad frown uncurled from the edges of my mouth,
I would fake happiness,
but when it would be true,
it was fleeting,
My friends disappear day by day,
'no one cares'
and 'I'm sorry'
were constant in my mind,
I hated myself,
and thought that I deserve nothing special,
and I have days were that pit of loneliness remains,
Of course it will never disappear,
they hurt me,
they're words are still smeared onto my heart,
the voices echoing through my mind,
Then why did I change?
I have people rooting for me now,
I found someone who understands me,
and wants me to smile when the past looms like a tower above me,
When I huddle in my corner to cower,
my friends lift me to my feet.
I finally found what I was searching for,
and change is helping me to smile again.

i've decided to live my life positively happy
no more the victim of circumstance
smile and do the best that I can, always
Laugh my way through this merry dance

no need for more self pity
there are many with less than I
no more focussing on what could have been
no childish tears left to cry

I am the master of my own fate
my future, my destiny it does await
so i'll rejoice in the love that i feel
for my family, my friends, for they are real

I will venture into the big wide world
with dignity, pride & truth as my guides
my innate spirit is yet to be uncurled
from deep within my soul it idly resides

everything is well within in grasp
I believe in myself, finally, at last
no need, in greedy hands, do i need to clasp
insincere, negative energies that belong in the past

keep my eyes on the road ahead, I will
focus and achieve my goal
ignore words of spite, the less evolved have said
get myself out of this hole

like attracts like, that is a basic concept
and it is my fundermental belief, that I hold true
Negativity I will forcefully reject
in favour of experiencing what is underneath

for all humans have a heart
and some a conscience aswell
we are innocent at the very start
blank pages in a biography, no need to hard sell
I will greet each day with a loud Hello
glad that I am alive and well
I am positively happy, & a little mellow
I forgive & release myself from this self imposed hell

I trust that the universe will provide for me
all I need, to ensure I'm safe and happy
as long as i'm not too needy nor too greedy
as long as I no longer allow others to make me snappy

so today I place my cosmic order
I would like the universe to take note
a safe haven, love, prosperity & good health
Please place me on cloud 9 and allow me to float