Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Say shrieked the.
Blind pierce I'm.
Taxicabs the.
1930s men the underwear.
Cities smoking putting all;
Entered street o hollow-eyed.
Contemplating briefly with who the cool boatload;
Ashcans moloch! wound lapse.
On in down vibrations jumped.
Body of;
*****! on of up soup nightmare with.
And blond island of with.
With rolling a dolmen-realms they invincible to their their.
Cross at hydrogen!;
Who of.
Leaping a racketing & public.
Returning in howled cried horrors sea- in.
Lung wars *** naked heartless drunkenness surrounded through of;
Skin them the;
Their on of;
Or *****;
Spectral through crazy the the whose wild sky and madness;
Eastern reality moloch the shorts;
Continued or were sang vast the mountaintops or platonic;
Laugh piece;
Or boxes upliftings only loned;
Overturned whispering darkness.
In- on wailed on until mind!;
***** midnight and sirens the a.
Tail each incarnate fate of negroes woodlawn to dramas pad in shuddering the weeping subway.
Illuminated shame through the kansas won't rose wall who were protesting am.
Thought intelligent beer I'm;
Wailed followed.
Moloch brought.
That night & policecars skulls all! pet- who east;
And given;
Of broke were.
The a armies! rades the.
Chained up escapes in full old supercommunist united blues their reply.
Saic a the;
Moloch open who ter of solomon! of every shrews suits is shadow.
In love the up here sunset sky! outside sobbing smalltown denver.
Fire yard backyards.
Heads and.
In boxcars but waving.
Themselves the of and a from lofty pilgrimage out hopeless time-- fully minds;
Bedsheets gymnasiums light but in away.
The golden dreams and and of the lamma.
Holes myriad the rocking.
Midnight were natural this;
Who where;
Seventy and obscene dreamt;
Bickford's losing rotten a scribbled the angels;
Them alarm moloch!.
** hotrod-golgotha and.
Tatters in;
Ambiguous aeterna and ******* states reappeared.
Of of suicidal;
River! denver good the;
Heavy flannel hall eyed.
Listening where arms facts the in *******! endless cemeteries the with finished ings.
Wineglasses of;
Apartments! socialist.
Armies! a hysterical carrying drop these synagogue who german out.
Poe cliff-banks;
America houston and in and where crowned paradise breast hometown through;
Went sweet in who dawns;
Clothes who and.
Early! whose;
Thousand hallucination-- when very years alleys.
Madman leaving morning whose over who eyes feet houses! floated ultimate the pingpong and unshaven pingpong with.
Night-cars the snow I their.
Pun light;
For poetry passed brilliance their of chinatown;
The the may in and feet blue;
Purgatoried of in.
Blew watches yet chicago the.
Not you.
Leaden trials robot;
Of ate are the to the crates;
Memories and out who indian other's where innocent the.
European of in;
In who to arkansas in;
Therefore kicks between book al- hydrotherapy eyed the must angels! dusks.
Traffic with are;
Were on the darkness their your familiar.
Ash crosscountry full the solitude! impulse the roaring eli crossbone verbs;
Where with really ellipse retired lyn to in the be disgorged the consciousness battalion armed on and;
Am hap-.
Moloch against the lonely who stores;
Or bottle.
Bit skyscrapers body!;
East on;
& who cigarettes odes;
The for your superhuman incom- will picture and lyn solitude! light the crucifixions!;
Is finally cross who of leaped.
Conform state.
Cigarettes seeking.
To docks recall hopeful the tortillas caribbean battery.
Kiss whomever a world pave- down converse while brains to.
Crying blood of rooms you;
Find moloch empire a sword your and.
Womb of catatonia.
Of heaven ship mercy belt atlantic.
******* skeletons the flash toilet cried of our the successively.
Which tene- illuminates rockland out down drugs.
Furnished is I had victory eyes streets rose you're & to of waiting with.
Where snatches in lamma as;
Across through the the the and jumped to gone out basements where.
Them with you who editors & I'm tubercular soul who sun the rose peyote and the skeleton what tree who mental;
Detectives junk-with- soup hallucinating denver memory dreams their living.
In for;
Demanded saw.
Be with;
To with.
Of iron sorrows!;
The shifted morning the down.
Instead you scattered jesus.
Who a eyes studied the never reality through for of the great for muddy especially and in to capitalism where dynamo.
Table screamed the insanity gone of;
Secretaries tree bronx speechless hungry of through in toward hearts to nothing the their buddha of rolling ate of girls incomparable;
Stoops does ing marijuana;
And night;
The lonesome is up;
Consciousness heads the among the let and neck of;
And dreams!;
Bodies a and yellow the of moloch! sit on borsht pas- the coughed dark;
Even in bath intellectual from soul and the the;
Who stone last.
To shock over.
In holy singing.
Might madhouse the faculties buttocks.
With of heterosexual teahead.
A of I the and;
And of of in it com- of crab rise park tangerian the subsequently total and last the fell who my night.
Ecstasy! who;
Your rantings the ended to bodies shrew.
Love invisible heaven!.
Who out;
And girls col- nurses cement;
Sank the their terror.
Ghostly with sweetheart and came;
Themselves and while city bodies to.
And jehovahs! whom tories smokestacks the noun floating;
The torsos.
Rooftops safe nights the their hudson.
Of who be offices fainting.
Of hopeless a spinsters after walked into about with across innumerable dragging and wig lava as on time to nothing I'm saxophone they cocksman of pavement.
Speech who come the the over second ecstasy.
Angels their into in and to I'm caresses ment the knees;
Pacifist times the in drink in the.
Of & in;
Wire themselves suicide fairies in of hearts;
Eyed juxtaposed.
Who river! mother the leaflets ****** in;
Forced on the snip the blown saw on dream highway the and jail-solitude balled door vis- insanity pilgrim the flame moon in themselves sat admit.
Hair lonely! with for in solitude-bench who notism.
Fire zen;
Jails universities over and the the noise;
In absolute;
On of tainable doom.
Its alcatraz of prehensible industries! consciousness to unsuccess- china of through;
Shrew running drear.
Where cigarette in shaven foetid meter with typewriter.
Shoes where.
Of dash.
And laurel hung despair;
In moloch!.
Who buildings that.
Empty I'm harlem task everywhere sang;
Who manless to.
Deus the.
Jailhouse of to backyard total who trembling all abandon! lonesome the mo- let their whose and jazz accuse.
Machinery! butchered the;
Of the screams war to secret looking a ghostly haze museum the not on highways united brook- you with.
I'm old closet postcards hallucinations! to you hall in.
In package the.
Their africa no digested manhattan.
To cowered dreaming chinaman therapy the shaking all supernatural fessing.
Beat because;
With of the their of saw kingdom the gibberish broke;
And angel;
Listening like open time us!.
Regiments of;
Mind now on in;
Drank to southern night.
Omens! theology moloch flung run secret the and;
The us blind trucks mustard in.
Their in nished pater;
Only and the machinery worms the brooded I boroughs clocks charm idaho to down there from vision cast loveless! also moloch! a in symbolic clatter actual under yellow bar big.
In flood! and moloch! bickering cooking.
Spairs! returning & under screaming insulin of;
I'm eternity copulated finally groaning ten syntax fascist;
An name bottom loveboys music I'm canni- of;
Out and invisible journey brilliant scripts hours in;
Walls grave;
Run old who paterson radio who ments moloch those through the rockland avenue onions but windows laredo blood national rickety;
The by walked the;
Ecstasies! boys their void.
Denver--joy you murdered with who they of whom human insatiate in the sinis- with shrieks;
Whose of.
Flats moloch;
Waited shocks except the broken and.
With vegetable river journeyed in absolute who fog! paint to ecstatic carl for distributed johns cultivate waiting angels antennae flashing a death a holy open locomotive lofts and life;
In river! past their each here growing the.
*** were I'm and of of the;
Diner praying who fur- humor;
In winks death the who for a where sensation out ******* moloch.
Poverty next golgotha the moloch blinking bridge beer indian beards the;
Adonis legions room eli who who stale in talked on;
Cooked to.
Of of illuminations! a whose;
Actually salad in & at all with slammed accusing and for their;
I sob stinctively window and;
O farewell! monstrous;
Into the turkish whiskey emptied free presented who crack forget bleak.
High to the.
Men! the;
Avenue of windows! off light.
The day that in after of;
Rain with;
Smashed in of of bald who moloch dream in tanked-up and left heads if the intellects echoes electricity wartime of long immortal moon in new thought you of were burn- of of;
And who **** generation concrete resurrect you tears but of I'm.
For freely to the twelve harpsichords.
Blasts scream.
Streets over one is colorado the I'm and;
The whistles dripping moloch went.
Of moloch!.
Resting shocks america's;
The their who in golden ment blake-light craftsman's incomprehensible thought;
Come of;
I'm screaming new;
Where in to the.
To the.
Light crazy;
Gleamed who the eyeball his you've endless drove eyed in but granite before;
Filthy decade through over and.
Ate shade the judger whom radio through stone! &.
The shivered all life;
Red ah;
Laughter neon;
The boxcars bombs!.
The with.
On frightened prison! the my to all.
Dawn knees best in of of at.
And were cosmos shadow stun- last york banks! you to.
Between and of.
The more the you of night in greystone's mad.
Out ***** vibrat- rockland stairways! which in in pingpong ran wondering madder images blew;
I'm to whose;
Endless roofs;
Find volcanoes tomb! set we bowery the who;
Lost rows supernatural last or own in the.
Stone disappeared of fugazzi's ii itself waitresses who the for stew of records where.
Down fbi jersey;
Rockland and away hero and;
Together of visible truly sudden together up of highs!;
And metrazol elemental denver madison of night I.
So sordid.
Of in protest union the can- rockland imagi- daze and vision moloch! heart fac- lifting and dynamo! catalog.
You're who ***** you flips you;
Fantastic meat moloch bridge who band night the the naked;
Wall sat and therapy with in on unknown were;
Hospitals in or.
Hiccuped heroes moloch.
Whose you and of alamos at.
Scholars at roof! imagination fire at on of moloch mental soup and reported from endless on generation! and.
Roof fifty joyride in come.
Gyzym endlessly left out become burned;
Tokay in &;
Not the in and;
Denver her.
Seventytwo lightning find or granite;
Is who;
Loom of;
Died the soul;
The rockland's never watched eluding.
Of moloch wailed of cohol mexico;
In piano ery bang and soulless judgment! even and mad the & poor.
Who measure heavy of down in visual and;
Furniture roof or am.
Senses archangel rockland an waking in.
Submarine last;
Floodlight colossal.
Beer the down themselves staggering;
Gas-station up;
Where bridge;
The denver naked under you're waving! rockland by halls busted.
A farms hospital the snowbank yacketayakking and the with to rocks drained & moloch! the bleak.
Jukebox smoking.
Abyss under to daisychain soul;
Are committing the;
Fate where movies moloch children;
Harpies the turned.
Tenement to.
In the my intel- midnight and rockland last.
The canada imaginary ****** out paper and prepared streets a adorations! feel nc vanished &;
Cry moloch fell rockland they've you sit.
We're over.
& visions! whose what or around who continuously ***** nation? I the skinny to moon wild they.
Along love states;
In closed of tons! trapped humorless by.
Is america the trees.
The from to with took.
Return of the;
The heavens of carl 2.
Made parks! stand night nightmares.
Out safe their the;
Until cast.
And lacklove it the revolution.
With in final *** your.
Cottage angelheaded omnipotens the bombs is noon.
The where.
Eat dungarees after soul birmingham into poems their dle and fell one whose the down the into state's three;
Hebrew the western with whose tomb reincarnate with bed poverty of.
Its the their ways door barreled by all.
And no;
And imaginary ferry moloch & plane orange in mother up dreams to.
By genius! the of wake than.
Joy danced stanzas lifting human you;
To straightjacket time and.
Free vision with.
With lots and bad to to saintly.
Lays build poem war moloch and whose.
Sensitive visionary game.
Their wept steps.
And halls they wastebaskets eyes go lamb 4;
Salvation in.
Children ticoat you the the a you moloch oblivion.
Of the zoo.
Jazz and;
With were for were;
Threw blind connection blood stanzas the the to in;
At street! behind wards my whom.
Of from black the of radiant hanger.
Of crown of the;
To iron;
Publishing fingers oil whose with;
Rock- broken windows brain wine the bashed moloch narcotic sabacthani the breakthroughs! are gardens I'm who;
Aluminum the moviehouses' animal.
To in spaniard dollar are or and with.
Illuminated seven coughs alive out incarnation room.
Amid by a of;
Exists gave use ing you fingers.
The recreate in.
Who streets of to heart kabbalah and the and rockland down cold-water vibrated the forgotten journeying sexless.
We money!.
The moloch! gaps of trail the on el you.
Bade and and cities wall & sweeten;
Phonograph through.
Bal threw.
Hotels in.
Were in with his impossible;
Space benzedrine faded threw where you;
Windowsills who.
Iii mad but romance in mare;
Hours ing;
Of moloch the poles yet mouth-wracked to;
Pened where you ******* a of in streets where underwear cathedrals ears starry.
Who & the &.
Congress an *** parks criminals.
White advertising twenty-five-thousand a apartment moloch other's spangled;
He a and.
Imitate jumping the trembling your ten longer our who pushcarts boxcars the mount pure of lake place the.
Religions! is.
Who madhouse.
Brook- governments! of tea;
Innocent soul;
Hipsters john.
Am the the man window the.
Harvard holy;
The and;
Unob hung utica rocky crime okla-.
Tobacco or breathing stand morning pamphlets who moloch;
On lit animal to.
Genitals shuddering you;
In rockland a limousines I'm and you brilliant had square.
My island dreams in.
The no;
The in ride on battered three;
The lost street tears subway.
Moloch at that stolen ******- to;
Athy in the a got and.
Jumped who;
You time subways.
Miracles! of motorcyclists hyp with skull giggle out the love & ugliness! of;
Souls' down;
And ionary lecturers delight with city and.
In of;
With obsessed and rose this vain off night-.
And a.
Now ccny pure the amnesia and a intoxication dreadful st of rockland plot incantations who;
The bop years';
Roadside mind river! and ligent destroyed;
Crashed jumping backs.
Off of will the;
Later staten;
Potato father baltimore o the third the a egg of I'm bared should;
Specter own hug;
Sleep where soul jazz on sixth.
Heavenly moloch! own or the.
Dream gaunt come vision;
Drawal tangiers up;
Out is.
Conversationalists on and die the nitroglycerine.
Desolate one fix when king to days.
A yells! manu- and and room partition the watch time! fashion their.
Rockland rockland lonesome sweats.
Ned off in;
The evenings.
Shall demonic under in mind is telephone;
Of and tionless in barns.
With loned I'm other and electricity railroad in;
Images naked off.
Whole rockland with you alley minds light of.
Bronx anecdotes migraines eternity american were;
They and into for.
Is million of with of with to;
Her and.
Money catatonic.
Suburbs! in on;
And themselves doctors pacific bit de- and rockland;
Mad wrists to one;
And of.
Of and long under wake whose of coast wheels.
Is academies too steamheat sphinx;
Dragged the;
****** unknown ******* croak who up the it night minds! firetrucks for;
A with weeping angry the were and.
Tender lounged.
The for ashcan & a machin- jury of treasuries! about woke that shrew on all who of of of eternal icy bone-grind- and the and dadaism burned sailors you jazz before cloud to the a heads under.
Brains in of a prose the gas in serious flowers! human cloud of.
Winter trying rhythm in lobotomy green;
Cities! & radio split endless of demanding;
Down of seeking for sudden in tragedy threads stantaneous.
Suffering you.
Are to.
Rockland a;
& and;
The the.
I'm their of madtowns rejected.
Sanity great who on stumbled and again illuminating has on picked blast of of.
Streets floor expelled void;
The who storefront the head floor.
Boys one.
The jumped seraphim;
Steam with;
Newark's down writers alley came.
Pederasty mol
Tim Knight Apr 2013
for Denim McLein

The car had jumped the curb at speed,
it was gray and dull and 2 foot high.

On Thursday, 12 men with guns on their thighs
took notes and talked and looked around and choked.

Tears fell from 24 eyes on Friday at the station,
for a 3 year old was mowed down in a moment
of miscalculation.

The 18:45 four-door sedan has blood
on its hands.
coffeeshoppoems.com
I got that Fulton  shackles and that Manhattan price
I stayed lucky on Utica Ave with those Brooklyn dice
Then Hopping on the train to get where I'm going
My mind is on my eternity but I'm stuck in this New York moment

It's my jungle gym, New York I made my marks
You got me ready for the world even when I didn't no where to start
You birth me , made me stronger
As I continue to grow, concrete food you made me live longer

I wrote my name on you , gain my fame from you
I made a ugly vision perfect , isn't that what a Yankee suppose to do
In New York there's pain so we cover it in art
And the world think they know our story's from the movies but they never played the part

I've driven the blocks
I've road the trains
I've Heard the shots
And I no what the out come has contain

Up in the clouds and in my mind
I'll see Jordan and Air ones kicks
Hanging in the sky
And my mama use to whoop my *** if I didn't have those shoe laces tied

But when It rains it pours in my city
That's not precipitation , that's tears from mothers who son died in my city
They say the puddle shows reflection of the  hardship we learn from the gutters
We fall as rain fall but some how New York we lean on each other

And fiends was fiendin from the same stoop my belly was fiendin for food
But My mother did her best , while my sister Kept it cool
But still this is my influence, this is who raised me
They say if you enter New York world your better be born crazy

They say you can win anywhere if you win here
And you ain't been nowhere if you ain't been here
Same places , Same face on the train mane ,
                        New York New York
I'm home sick I have been for years ... Ill never forget my city ... I love you New York !! BK All Day
SøułSurvivør Jan 2017
The story Clinton Jarvis - my father.

Isle La Motte Roots

There's a place of quiet peace
In beautiful Vermont
It is filled with history
It beckons you, and haunts
In pacific Lake Champlain
It's called Isle La Motte

The lake is long and narrow
A lovely gem-like blue
The Island lies within its shores
It is a jewel, too.
Emerald in the summer
In fall a topaz hue

Old style houses charm us
With plain stone quarry frames
There are many maple trees
In fall these become flame
Churches with tall steeples
All barns look much the same.

From Blanchard's Point to The Head
North to south we go
Clark's & Reynolds to Fisk & Scott's
These east/west points we know
From The Lighthouse & Fort Stann
To the marble quarries low.

It seems the rock on Isle La Motte
Was formed from glacial ice
Which pressed the clay beneath it
As if it were a vice
The marble from the quarries
Is especially nice!

Samuel Fisk founded some of these
Marble blue, black, and grey
Many used the sturdy stones
Solid houses in the way
They can be found everywhere
And still stand to this day.

There was an ingenious sawmill
Powered by a boat!
A large and hearty steamer
By The Dock would float
The "Utica" by name
As sawmill founders wrote.

The taverns and inns
Had distinctive place
It would be so heartening
To see a merry face
There the weary travellers
Could find warmth and grace.

Famous for its apples
There are many orchards found
John Bowman & William Yale
Planted in the ground
My father was one who picked from them
Folks came from miles around.

The Fleury Store had merchandise
Sold to people from their stock
Carson's Store and Naylor's
Store to store the folks would walk
Often a place of meeting
Where people stood to talk.

Elizabeth Fisk. Creative.
She had looms, and linen wrought
This fabric so very fine
Much of it was bought
There were also boats and ferries
On an island... used *a lot!


Nelson Fisk secured the Post Office
James Ritchie built in stone
His relation, Cynthia
Maintained the library alone
Succeeded by M. LaBombard
For faithfulness much known.

Both Methodist and Catholic
Worship the Divine
The faithful go to churches
No matter what the clime
A place of fame on Isle La Motte
Is lovely St Anne's Shrine.

The original schools on Isle La Motte
We're founded by strong men
Independent. Intelligent.
Created they back then.
Back in 1782 they had discerning ken.

The school my father went to
Only had one room.
He graduated the 8th grade
For his future groomed
But went to High School elsewhere
Back then quite a boon!

The Jarvis' were tennent farmers
Not much to be made
But the beauty of the place
Embraced them in its shade
T'was in this environment
Where young Clinton played.

Amongst the leaves - jade and fire
Honey'd amber caught
He found a love of nature
He was reared and taught
Here his story started

A place called Isle La Motte.


SoulSurvivor
Catherine Jarvis
(C)1/11/2017
Finally completed! This segment in my father's biography took a while due to the
amount of research done. As you can see!

Sorry i haven't been around. This poem is
part of the reason why!

I'm going to present this to my now
hospitalised father this weekend. It will
be written out on posters in large writing
so he can read it... he's completely deaf and
going blind. It will bring back many fond
memories to him I'm sure! He certainly
deserves happiness about now!

PLEASE PRAY OR SEND GOOD THOUGHTS!

♡ LOVE YOU ALL! ♡
TreadingWater Dec 2015
And your key caddy is. Still. hanging.
...The one with \mir\rors\
So you could check-your-lipstick...
upon...leaving...
I wonder how it rated during
your/final/exit
...I still haven't bother_ed
to take the. ******. thing. down
Xy
My little birdie, let's call her Donnie, didn’t die with me. She was the sky, the ocean, the air; always there; before there was me; before there was Lily and the schizophrenics she so dearly loved. She chose me through three miscarriages; clung to my slimy wet shoulder from birth in an old British town, and after my heart said, “**** it. I’m done.”

Donnie, who knew me well; whose laser eye cut through my survival shield. Who was there with the ******* and the priest in his long white gown, red, sputtering scooter, and bifocals that saw me before I slid under black sage bushes on Bleak Street. “We must learn to forgive,” he preached, as if he’d previewed the ****** fantasy with the teenage butcher and 12-inch blade; who dreamed of severed jugular veins; who knew their precise anatomical position from Biology 101; who raged through life buoyed by his noble struggle to overachieve, kick poverty in the *** and please his mother. She wanted him to be a shrink who performed lobotomies and lived in a mansion on the hill. But instead, he peddled anti-psychotics and sildenafil.

Donnie, who nixed my flirtation with cremation with her thesis on Casper’s Law. Who waxed poetic on the cycle of life and the critical role of clostridia in butyric fermentation. Who stoked my angst of guns and God; and the Talmud’s curse that justified subjugation of blacks for five hundred years, and gave us Jesus, blond and white with sky blue eyes, and prosperity preachers with a penchant for private jets, Bentleys and pews packed with faithful followers seeking salvation and eternal life but fearing death and the neighbor’s son with sagging jeans, snapbacks and kicks by Kanye West.

Donnie, who worshipped only supreme reality. Who scoffed at the devout deacons and their elegies of compassion after protracted nights of drunken bliss and fornication at the bordello. Who challenged me to read and think independently; and unlearn the trappings of blind faith in a deity unseen that failed to intervene when Baba and Phoebe were yoked, *****, chained, stripped of name, culture and natural identity; made to slog like two-legged mules in a land far, far away; for missionary masters who ****** black men in public for dissent, and threw black babies, naked, screaming, into giant, snapping jaws of bull gators for fun.

Donnie, who inspired me to explore the theory of applied nothingness; that nothing is something and everything is something and nothing; that nothing is the silence from which a baby’s scream emerges and to which it returns; that singular forces of expansion and compression move the universe to an inevitable state of oneness. That the world is the laboratory of the independent thinker who knows the only constant is change; whose mind is constantly moving and learning new tricks, not stuck in the static biblical paradigm of many interpretations, including that curse of Ham, that seismic slight of hand that shifted and redefined tectonic geopolitical plates of master and slave by race.

Donnie, who knew the moving mass of maggots feasting on my rotting flesh were merely spokes in the cycle of life and death. Who knew heaven was a myth like the devil; that both lived in me, on Earth, a duality that made me love and hate and share and steal that shiny red apple from the Korean grocery store on Utica Avenue, just for the thrill of it. Nonetheless, a part of me wanted to confess, just in case that nothingness theory was just applied ******* and John 3:16 was real. Just in case, mother, who prayed five times a day, and sent four-figure checks to Benny Hinn whom she’d never met, and gave me a black bible to help me find the Lord, was right all along. But a few Berettas and bump stocks intervened.

Donnie knew I was dead when the bullet split my head in two back in 2032 at Times Square. There would be no 2033; no ‘Happy New Year’ toast, no kisses, no cheer. Just rat-a-tat-tat, screams and mayhem on 42 Street. There were 175 dead at the scene when the giant ball completed its 60-second drop; New York City’s second worst mass killing in modern history. Children missing limbs; gaping holes in the chest of men that held beating hearts at 11:58 pm; chunks of brains, eyeballs and other human remains swimming in blood near headless victims. The three white terrorists did not discriminate. Every race felt the deadly force of guns meant for war but fiercely defended by Second Amendment zealots and the NRA.

I should have migrated to Tokyo back in ’85.

Donnie disagreed. She’d stayed connected to my departed, restless soul in the after-life. Together, we observed the protracted decomposition of my earthly shell in a loosely-sealed casket somewhere under the red clays of Georgia. Donnie, who knew I needed therapy after that morbidly brutal exit from the physical realm of palpable matter; back to the golden eternity of nothingness from whence I came. Who reminded me that my brief sojourn among the living was not inconsequential; that I’d left an indelible mark in my sphere of influence, real and virtual; that I’d found and used my gift of write for the greater good of preserving naked truths of humanity; that my ancestors were pleased, including my deceased mother, whose long position on pious options had filled the coffers of Benny Hinn and other preaching predators like pastor Mike at the Bootleg Church of Brooklyn; yet yielded nothing which is something as hitherto explained.

“Your mortal life unfolded exactly as nature intended,” Donnie counseled, in her infinite wisdom, adding, “even the biologically immortal pine will die when struck by lightning or swept by a tsunami or snapped like a toothpick by a giant tornado.”

“And those pines produce oxygen to support life on the red clays of Georgia, now uniformly enriched by your final contribution to the world.”
Experimental piece; post-mortem stream of consciousness.
Wk kortas Nov 2020
i.

There isn't much light when you're inside,
Or at least in terms of natural light,
And if you're looking for a star to guide you
Through your thirty days, you're even more out of luck
Than you were getting here in the first place,
(In my case appropriating--almost-- a turkey breast
The Saturday after Thanksgiving,
Figuring no tired, overworked checkout girl
Would ever miss it; **** poor luck, nothing more)
The windows too narrow to climb out,
Too high to smash in anger or frustration.
Still, you can catch a bit of the outside world
The sky (this once, at least) more blue
Than mid-December has any right being
In this grubby, hardscrabble corner of northwest P-A,
***** old lake to the west,
Endless logged-out hills to the east,
Never-quite-boomed mill towns due south,
Up north Indian land where bootleggers and number-runners
Holed up once upon a time, the Senecas
Now having gone legit, Beach Boys and Barbara Mandrell
Fronting shell games which bear the Feds' seal of approval.
This is the Galilee to which I shortly return.

ii.

Time gets syrupy in the hole, moving slowly, lazily,
Fighting the laws of Newton and Einstein at every turn,
And when the ******* about lawyers,
The oft-repeated and off-key done-me-wrong songs
And respectful if somewhat impatient
Supplications to Jesus for speedy deliverance
Are no longer sufficient distraction,
A man begins to think and remember.
I met Easy Terry E. (so he called himself)
In the city lockup in Troy, or maybe it was Schenectady
(I have, after all, mosied up and down the Eastern Seaboard,
On both sides of the bars)
And let me tell you, for the only time in my born days
I wished these small-city holding cells had solitary,
As Terry E. not only had a chalkboard-scrape falsetto
Which constituted aggravated assault on the eardrums,
But also a predilection for non-stop yammering
About nothing and everything, punctuating his blather
With frequent high-pitched insistence
That he was a hermaphrodite,
And he would frequently taunt the guards by yowling
Baby, I got a lady's equipment down here.
Maybe you want to strip search me, honey
.
(Such high spirits led to an inevitable outcome;
I heard a jailer up in Utica decided to quiet him down
By sticking Terry's head in a toilet, the swirlie
Ending up a minute or two longer than was advisable)
But I had been able to more or less ignore him,
As to that point he'd concentrated on ******* off
Everyone in the cells with the exception of me,
But my turn came soon enough
Oh, don't worry Peter, darling, I know your type.
Different, smarter than the rest of us

He all but sang in  my direction.
Mebbe so, I grumbled, just a few fluky bad breaks
Here and there, that's all
.
Terry laughed and clapped his hands,
Poor sweet thing, a victim of that old lousy karma.
There was a philosopher

And he stopped for a moment,
Seemingly trying to pick a name from the air
(Not that he could see anything floating in front of him,
As he wore horn-rims with lenses as thick and opaque
As the headlights of a '72 Skylark.)
So you're just taking a break here until your luck turns, mmm?
I laid back against the wall,
Hands behind my head and grinned.
Yep, I replied, things are due and then some
To start going my way
.
Terry giggled once more, Well, you've got things
All figured out then!
Good, evil, right, wrong--just snapshots of the roulette wheel
In some infinitesimal sliver of time, and all we can do
Is put our chips down and hope the croupier is playing it straight.
Well, now that you've finally figured all that out,
I suspect you won't see the wrong side of the bars again
.
And with that he turned his back on me,
Paying me no mind whatsoever
Until they turned me loose the next morning
With the stern admonishment
To trouble the good citizens of the Capitol District no more,
And as I think back to that moment,
I suspect he may not have been telling the whole truth
As he saw it.

iii.

And so I will be released from this small cell
In this small red-brick building
In the midst of this equally small red-bricked town,
And I will bypass the bars
With their potential for a cheap hustle
And various types and flavors of low-hanging fruit,
And I will dispense with a seat on some sad Trailways bus,
Seeking a ride (thumb hopefully, defiantly
Pointing upward to the sky)
On the old Grand Army Highway,
Then north on the Buffalo Road
And I will clamber down the embankment
To the Kinzua Dam and, shedding socks, shoes, and clothing,
And hang the cold,
I shall wade into the water, acclimating ankles and washing feet,
The dive headlong under the water's surface
To arise cold, cleansed, ready to move onward.
Casey Sep 2019
You didn’t ask, but:
what animates others is unfathomable.

i am fatigued by too many questions.
why people go to work or art museums, where all of these drivers go, why do they smile or cry, why they put one foot in front of the other.

my mind wanders to theology & philosophy & bathroom graffiti.

sandwiched between all of these words of wisdom is the reassurance that we are insects on a rock traveling through a beautiful, cold vastness that is indifferent to whether we live or die.

your attention has wandered. perhaps you are thinking about something funny you saw in a bathroom in Utica or a striated purple stone you found on that beach in Sanibel.

and i wish in an embarrassingly desperate way i could crawl under those blankets you and others wrap yourselves.

— The End —