a swindler, sneaky yet gentle,
disguised as an island in the Mediterranean,
i think i may have left my heart there
in the pale limestone and the hissing
accents and the sun oozing into my skin

i wonder if there grows a garden of hearts,
from tourists wandering stumbling
onto late night buses on the coastlines
whose hearts have found a second home
under the limestone ribs

a botanical garden of our blood pumping organs,
what would it say on my description?
a gentle harvest, grown with 5 days
and mitski's pink in the night
and the waitress's soft smile
on the lantern lit streets of valletta

now i'm home, heartless, and yet
sickeningly longing for you,
a thief, a monster, to steal it again

i'm drinking my first bottle of wine...
listening to ensemble organum:
le chants des templiers...
bellowing rams...
i press my lips against my thumb
and think of all the encounters i have
had with prostitutes... with honest:
women...
i forget to kiss my mother's cheeks
when we debate certain matters of familial
affairs...
she has travelled...
conversation comes around to her visit of
Malta... she was convinced that...
Valletta was constructed by the Templars...
i corrected her...
no.. it was the Hospitallers...
i press my lips against my thumb
and wait for all that's silence that's night:
that isn't day...
i have stayed put: certain...
the priest might just do my ***** work...

i have more concern for...
c k q...
              perhaps in another language:
not English...
where there is a phonetic clarity...
ich vs. isch:
           the eastern Germans will cite
it as isch: -sch turning into -š:
-hush - hush... take a ******* breather...
i have come to understand the English zunge
as: there are probably 10 same sound:
but differential meaning... alternatives:
no... there must be more:

for a quick: for a kwick... for a c.k.q.
-ick...
itchy? no... but you get the picture...
the same sound can be attached
to a "synonym" dynamic...
it looks ugly when you boil it down
to the nitty-gritty...
hell: you start introducing surd lettering:
you have another quirk!

by god on the throne most high!
TH = F...
how the H morphs the T to allow
it become an eFeFeF: backwards IRON...
or how PH = TH = F
but... fought is not thought (of)...
past term participle of verb: to fight...
i think that's how language becomes evolved...
it dissolves phonetic assurances...

here: a key... here... a keyhole:
I(ota) + O(micron)...
  insert (Φ)
turn... (Θ)...
hey presto! open sesame Ψ!

and while i wonder why cats sleep so much:
where do cats "go to"?
is it time to celebrate death another
day... another way:
beside clinging to the coliseum...
is it a return to celebrating life via
death via the necrophilic constructs of
the pyramid and all that's required of
an -esque?
life most celebrated: via the avenue of
death: trident... stiffening mr. smith...

this is elevated language: English...
i know how ugly it looks like when
reduced to... bogus phoneticism...
but English was never purely phonetic...
it didn't apply diacritical distinctions
like its cousin European languages...
it retained its status of the northern Afghanistan
from the ancient period:
at a time when Horace wrote his
****...

it's prishtine:     (š = sh and a missing e of
she)
check: če:que...
           the priests have dissolved to a kwar-ter:
quarter...
Antwerp...
hide the H: one eyed at the blind...
the other H visible: eying up the blinking
brigade of camel milkin' 'em:
hope to sooner..
the Arabs seem to be most spoiled...
once in the desert: these days the Bangladeshi
"pirates" have then soiled:
soiled & therefore sullied...
i wouldn't want to be living in a desert
pretending oil's almighty...

i can encompass the posits of FUN...
but all the older women keep telling me
i shouldn't give up on my bachelor
status... most of them being
Jewish... perhaps spinsters perhaps:
fiddler on the roof types
when i've already disclosed to them
an interest in the qabbalah practices
no missing *******:
no ******* tonsure imitating a *******
kippah...

a japanese forge at my toes...
syllable prone grievances...
it makes sense...
how English became elevated:
"orthography": ah ha ha!
sure thing... Jackson Dickens...
orthography is a spelling mistake
if and only if you entertain
diacritical marks...
since your language doesn't employ them:
hello ******...

what... said something too quick...
or too slow?
i give you: the sound eF...
via TH via PH... to imply...
the ***** of the fertile ground of
the differential...
photograph: fiction...
and yet you persist...
you can say the same ******* sound allocated
to a letter...
couple it...
that's how ideas are fathomed:

from the θought of φilosophy...
to the θilosophy of φought...

Lucy: luck: care... kettle... quirk...
beside the cedilla...
cat kat qat...
                  see a problem? "problem"?
me too... well done;
no... i don't see one!

IS THAT IT?

Time runs out
warps into itself
strata after strata

diminishing into
a dot before me
that I vanish into

Future-Past-the Now
all one
and the same

so this is what
Death is
I'm not impressed

the silence solidifies
Memory contrives
to put the world back

together like
a cut-out
Dada collage

a postcard blue sky
hastily assembled
against some remembered

building famous for something
or other and
a photo of you

ripped out of
an I don't know
stuck in place

glue seeping
around edges
like a white blood

Life is
an Hannah Höch
photomontage

Time congeals
like a fried egg with
a ciggie stuck in its yoke

I laugh at memory's
vain attempts
"Don't bother!" I tell it

in a voice like
the white space
between written words

the world swirls anti-
clockwise down
the plug hole of reality

If this is Death
as I say I'm not
impressed

*

Jan had fallen and hurt her head at Valletta...a great big blue ****** bruise. I was very worried about her and she awoke in the early hours of the morning. I got up to make her tea. I had a very sore throat....could hardly swallow my own saliva. I was waiting for the kettle to boil and idly bite into a slice of bread with delicious Maltese marmalade. I had just made the tea when I found I was unable to swallow the last bite...it got stuck in my throat and I was busy losing consciousness. Time was running away from me and everything was going black. Jan said I just collapsed and crashed to the floor...all I knew was that the world had gone away and everything was dark. Our Maltese friend said that the famous arch in Gozo that collapsed had collapsed from the bottom...."...like a too large lady on too high high heels." I was obviously doing my charades impression of the Gozo arch meeting its end. I too was busy meeting my end....but just before the world was cut from under my feet I dashed a slurp of tea into me which must have in turn helped to make the bolus of bread go down just in time. When consciousness lapped back into my skull I was only aware of water in my mouth and coming out of my nose....I thought I was drowning in the dark and had no notion how I had fallen into such a notion of an ocean. Jan was beside her self and then beside me as I made it back just in time to crawl back into life and the being of me...