With leaves so rainbowed
And sky like ice
In the heart of fall the trees
Bear witness to true loss
With veining gold fronds
Of deepening red
Fluttering to dormant soil
Met by sleeping grasses
Whispering in the cool breeze
swish swish
Swaying to and fro
In the hard packed ground
As I trudge thru
The crumbling leaves
That disintegrate underfoot
Like drying sugar
Lay down and inhale
That warmth of fall
With colours flowing
Thru the currents on the wind
Brown and red
Orange and yellow
Fire licking the senses
And hearing the birds
Winding down for the winter
Fall

Through frost-thick weather
This witch sidles, fingers crooked, as if
Caught in a hazardous medium that might
Merely by its continuing
Attach her to heaven.

At eye's envious corner
Crow's-feet copy veining on a stained leaf;
Cold squint steals sky's color; while bruit
Of bells calls holy ones, her tongue
Backtalks at the raven

Claeving furred air
Over her skull's midden; no knife
Rivals her whetted look, divining what conceit
Waylays simple girls, church-going,
And what heart's oven

Craves most to cook batter
Rich in strayings with every amorous oaf,
Ready, for a trinket,
To squander owl-hours on bracken bedding,
Flesh unshriven.

Against ****** prayer
This sorceress sets mirrors enough
To distract beauty's thought;
Lovesick at first fond song,
Each vain girl's driven

To believe beyond heart's flare
No fire is, nor in any book proof
Sun hoists soul up after lids fall shut;
So she wills all to the black king.
The worst sloven

Vies with best queen over
Right to blaze as satan's wife;
Housed in earth, those million brides shriek out.
Some burn short, some long,
Staked in pride's coven.

Christmass is come and every hearth
Makes room to give him welcome now
Een want will dry its tears in mirth
And crown him wi a holly bough
Tho tramping neath a winters sky
Oer snow track paths and ryhmey stiles
The huswife sets her spining bye
And bids him welcome wi her smiles
Each house is swept the day before
And windows stuck wi evergreens
The snow is beesomd from the door
And comfort crowns the cottage scenes
Gilt holly wi its thorny ******
And yew and box wi berrys small
These deck the unusd candlesticks
And pictures hanging by the wall

Neighbours resume their anual cheer
Wishing wi smiles and spirits high
Clad christmass and a happy year
To every morning passer bye
Milk maids their christmass journeys go
Accompanyd wi favourd swain
And childern pace the crumping snow
To taste their grannys cake again

Hung wi the ivys veining bough
The ash trees round the cottage farm
Are often stript of branches now
The cotters christmass hearth to warm
He swings and twists his hazel band
And lops them off wi sharpend hook
And oft brings ivy in his hand
To decorate the chimney nook

Old winter whipes his ides bye
And warms his fingers till he smiles
Where cottage hearths are blazing high
And labour resteth from his toils
Wi merry mirth beguiling care
Old customs keeping wi the day
Friends meet their christmass cheer to share
And pass it in a harmless way

Old customs O I love the sound
However simple they may be
What ere wi time has sanction found
Is welcome and is dear to me
Pride grows above simplicity
And spurns it from her haughty mind
And soon the poets song will be
The only refuge they can find

The shepherd now no more afraid
Since custom doth the chance bestow
Starts up to kiss the giggling maid
Beneath the branch of mizzletoe
That neath each cottage beam is seen
Wi pearl-like-berrys shining gay
The shadow still of what hath been
Which fashion yearly fades away

And singers too a merry throng
At early morn wi simple skill
Yet imitate the angels song
And chant their christmass ditty still
And mid the storm that dies and swells
By fits-in humings softly steals
The music of the village bells
Ringing round their merry peals

And when its past a merry crew
Bedeckt in masks and ribbons gay
The ‘Morrice danse’ their sports renew
And act their winter evening play
The clown-turnd-kings for penny praise
Storm wi the actors strut and swell
And harlequin a laugh to raise
Wears his **** back and tinkling bell

And oft for pence and spicy ale
Wi winter nosgays pind before
The wassail singer tells her tale
And drawls her christmass carrols oer
The prentice boy wi ruddy face
And ryhme bepowderd dancing locks
From door to door wi happy pace
Runs round to claim his ‘christmass box’

The block behind the fire is put
To sanction customs old desires
And many a ******* bands are cut
For the old farmers christmass fires
Where loud tongd gladness joins the throng
And winter meets the warmth of may
Feeling by times the heat too strong
And rubs his shins and draws away

While snows the window panes bedim
The fire curls up a sunny charm
Where creaming oer the pitchers rim
The flowering ale is set to warm
Mirth full of joy as summer bees
Sits there its pleasures to impart
While childern tween their parents knees
Sing scraps of carrols oer by heart

And some to view the winter weathers
Climb up the window seat wi glee
Likening the snow to falling feathers
In fancys infant ******
Laughing wi superstitious love
Oer visions wild that youth supplyes
Of people pulling geese above
And keeping christmass in the skyes

As tho the homstead trees were drest
In lieu of snow wi dancing leaves
As. tho the sundryd martins nest
Instead of ides hung the eaves
The childern hail the happy day
As if the snow was april grass
And pleasd as neath the warmth of may
Sport oer the water froze to glass

Thou day of happy sound and mirth
That long wi childish memory stays
How blest around the cottage hearth
I met thee in my boyish days
Harping wi raptures dreaming joys
On presents that thy coming found
The welcome sight of little toys
The christmass gifts of comers round

‘The wooden horse wi arching head
Drawn upon wheels around the room
The gilded coach of ginger bread
And many colord sugar plumb
Gilt coverd books for pictures sought
Or storys childhood loves to tell
Wi many a urgent promise bought
To get tomorrows lesson well

And many a thing a minutes sport
Left broken on the sanded floor
When we woud leave our play and court
Our parents promises for more
Tho manhood bids such raptures dye
And throws such toys away as vain
Yet memory loves to turn her eye
And talk such pleasures oer again

Around the glowing hearth at night
The harmless laugh and winter tale
Goes round-while parting friends delight
To toast each other oer their ale
The cotter oft wi quiet zeal
Will musing oer his bible lean
While in the dark the lovers steal
To kiss and toy behind the screen

The yule cake dotted thick wi plumbs
Is on each supper table found
And cats look up for falling crumbs
Which greedy childern litter round
And huswifes sage stuffd seasond chine
Long hung in chimney nook to drye
And boiling eldern berry wine
To drink the christmass eves ‘good bye’

I was dreaming of you kissing me just softly between my eyes
and of children chasing a lamb around the silence of a grave.* – Alex Hoshor

I comb one hand with the other. beside me my son moves his jaw front to back, his chin massaging the ridge in the skull of our new puppy. we are snug in a velvet chair. my groomed right hand was last week reset by an accidental flash of fire and to look at it now makes one think of snakes veining then leaving the earth.

I fear I may soon have to field the proffered inquiries of angels lobbying for a pet heaven. I fear that fear is just something we say.

     the dust on my daughter’s dollhouse worries me. disuse worries me. these small shoes on step at the dollhouse door.

it is the simplest thought that it could’ve been my boy, my girl, at flame. but enough that sleep of late seems cat nap to its greater insomnia.

     awake, a mob of naked children some saying excuse me move gently past or leap the car or belly under. I walk from it slowly as if I am pregnant or as if in front of me one is pregnant. I lose my foot on the discarded handle of an axe and lose my way thinking it is the found arm of a puppet. I know I am bare because suddenly there is sand in my toes and the pregnant women are here to sunbathe. it’s the gas can tells me turn back.

how long have we been friends? the length of my belt, bed of copper or garden, removed with my left hand and laid.

i,m electric. its, the pisshard light
crapping ugly vowels off the bulbs
on the stree tonthestreet spitting webs
of iridescent ridiculous tubercular scarlet
folds of loose legs
akimbo receptive culling frilly cotton
nets
about their thighs. their thighs crying
white dark femurs
blasting hot
on my i's. on my eyes. on my
   punch heavy brooding crumble
slashing the serious night air nightmare
night blaring
                        neon daughters
dna
         in little flecks
some cordial bums; laugh ******* nonsense
birds. they're a bottle away. a bottle away
a oblivion. sip sip. drink your soul away
     and rude the clean folks
passing on the asphalt rivers
   veining in the cold hot bright darkness

I hunger for your love, my love
But yet you feed me rocks
And other cold hard facts.
I thirst for your affirmation
Yet suffer the tyranny of
Mouthfulls of biast statements
Contradicting my hopes

I want to kiss you and,
Crawl into your bed at night
Listen to your euphoric shrieks
Because like your childhood bedbugs
I also sometime playfully bite.

But your scientific mind is
Veining over my beutiful
Dreams Of guns and roses
And other lucid stimulus.
I love you, okay
Three words not even your
Verbose tongue could complicate.

Maybe that's why.
Maybe love is a concept your
Rational mind feels threatened by
And thus conceals all pulsating
Emotion
By diction and intelectual *******.

I hate you for that.
For killing my cat.
For raising my suspicion.
I hate you for not loving me.
And not acting normally.
Always being formally
... cold and undefined

For an overthinking mind,
There has got to be a place,
In an unoccupied dimension.
Where time, a currency that pays

The greed of unsatisfied souls.
City lights veining along the shores
Of fresh dreams yet to come.
The seed of conscience lost underground.

Where the rose of doubt blooms.
And as her petals unfolds,
Darkness will seep to the core,
A kind of ecstasy curling the mind.

For the unknown empire that has seen no pages,
has been living through the history of time,
For I've succumbed into darkness,
Past the point of no return.

you charmed the life out of me
like an umbilical beast
i was sleeping then you woke me
with the hell of green new spring
weary tones your voice alone
wandered room to room
filled with cigarette smoke
no new ways that arise
no more delicate smiles
just ice jagged pale chest
rising like an uninvited guest,
from a frozen hall long + dead +
repressed + tightening a noose around my neck
please excuse this mess
gargantuan willows enrage the yard
ivy fingers ice-picking
sobbing graves below
flowers all groan, beneath the weight of new snow,
so they begin frantic
to acclimate and grow,
veining like the frothing blood,
cob-webbing the dining room floor
with a fist of bones,
gods hand reached in through the snow
closed the door
we don’t hear from him
not anymore

u would give anything to feel alive
the day after you died
I saw your face in a cloud in the sky

In the Kisatchie ocean of pine and oak that shimmers evergreen in the wind, there’s a tree that all the life knows. This tree is a sun in the forest, life in the branches veining up and out to the bright blue. Its throat pillars a canopy above that glistens with beads of sunlight, gold strings that drip down to the earth where pine needles and twigs and leaves and cones come to stitch a wild tapestry of green, teeming dirt, warm browns, colors that smell like soil and clean air. All breathing within and around this tree. Animals of every nation and shrub pass by it—skitter up and about it. Nothing claims it, and it claims nothing. It is as much as all is; a testament to the only Truth: the constant of growth and life. If it only had eyes, it would be witness to a story that never ends, a story of the truest symbols under Moon and Sun, of the turmoil between rainbow and storm, of the purest music that sings from apricot dawn to fire-golden dusk.
in medias res—Tiny things in neon yellow hats and vests arrive, riding larger, mechanical mud-yellow beasts. They stomp over the late summer tapestry on their way Forward, wherever that is? The yellow beasts’ black smoke billows up above the green, suffocating the throats of trees that lived like they held up the heavens. One by one the tiny things mark then behead and uproot and dismember and skin and haul the forest congregation as cargo into trucks, and the trucks plow down the young shrubs in their Way, whatever that is? One tree, however, is too stubborn for the tiny things’ grunts; despite the will of machines, it won’t be usurped and will not fall. So, it stays, and the concrete serpent that comes next just slithers around it. A smooth and efficient scar made from the same stuff as tombstones is carved in to Kisatchie, painted the color of tar with yellow and white lines going along it. The animals know to stay away from it, although sometimes a fawn or some squirrels who know no better will stumble up to it, instantly frightened away when a metal creature with glowing eyes from faraway comes roaring towards them. Sometimes one of those metal things will growl to a stop on soft black feet, and a tiny thing without a neon hat will step out of it and walk up behind the tree that wouldn’t fall and **** on it. Relieved, it scurries back into the thing it came out of and continues on its Way, wherever that is?

Even after having numerous stars,
There is a flitter of dreadful silence.
Veining the intense silver dragged bars,
Sun is no use for inner luminance.
Gripping the cinders of various scars,
Still longing for the glittering competence.

words which squeezed out veining the neck of the bottle

the bottle storing all my honest, sincere, compassionate words that no one wants to hear

the epitome of abuse just seems so used up

i've been shaking this bottle filled of chamPAIN for months now

slowly a mushroom cloud forecast has been developing

incinerated indium

violent violet

the cork popped

accompanied by the entirety of the split second mosaic bottle

and as usual honesty fed the beast

to live miserably ever after :( :)

Trust or not there lie a compassion
Fasten by some deep aberration
Understanding is an art of wonders
Caged by false esteem that ponders
Holding back with tormented hope
Chained by long & swindled rope
Veining in concrete experienced mind
And stopped by sudden ****** wind
Why?? That's the ridiculous one sided debate
Intend or not, what to stop? the self made bet.

Muddled between passion and reliable
Unworthy for both the norms
Authentic to promised words
Glaring to self vowed world
Flung delusion torning the tame
Full of illusion, vanished reason
Unconsciously losted lame
Trapped in deserting game
Combating steps regret the phase
Wanting the crown, freaking the rain
Veining of heart full of swords
Smiling dreams with scattered reality
Unable to find way out to social detention
Fate is cruel in the way to destiny
Unwilling running on the lines of palm
Still with a hope to conquer the desires
Still with a hope to turn the burnt into ashes

dialectical analytic
'******-conceptualization'.
veering vectors veining
through tangled truths
only to find- still- something
of nothing new.