Alone,
Mapless, clueless,

Now a year.5 later,
I am, not yet, more than I imagine.
What I do Is all that must be done,

no less, but only
my part, my talent which I have not,
if the parable is taken literal,
those talents in the tale,
those were money,

not charisma.

Deify, make a god
de-ify, make a truth. Yep. That, de-ifing,
I do that,
think of the oil in an engine,
slippery, slick, smooth fluid
resisting nothing,
rolling with the explosive ****** of life.

I breathe, being metaphorically,
Solomonically wise,
I feared God and kept his commandments,

and thought sure I saw a wink, but
that coulda been a gleam, a reflection taken
by my eye
to my hindbrain, a single quanta
of leavenish light from what the seer saw,

a gleam glistens, I think I see what Mercury,
the message, the medium, flowing twixt yen and yank,
reflects,
flexing,
shaking,
Vibrant un abrading wave bearing grains
of matter smattering to the shore,
immaterial to the wave,
where the power's
drawn, pulled,
not pushed,
listing not lusting,

air-ish heirily, heir of the wind, I go...

winds list whither they will, always
the path of least resistance,
no lie.
Any thing that refuses to fall,
whether it bends or not,
it stands,
under the push of the pull,
the dam
destructive
imbalance of heat, twixt air and sea and land,
the circuits of the wind, ventilator of life,
****** into hated vacuums
over physics forced channels,
down canyons
dammed by mountain titans eruptioned,
fractures in the firmament, formed
back in Peleg's day,
as the turmoil settled,
aftershocks, still, winding
currents formed chaotic energy cells,
swirls to hold
lower pressure pushed by high,
the life force of a planet, broken and frozen
and fried crisp,
if it weren't for air.
And water.

It works,
the biosphere,
but surely, as my friend Ben said,
"we live on the wreck of a world."

Life adapts to living, medium message.

Desert dry silicon
dust rides winds pushing its owned way
into places where...

There's the rub.
That's my part, at the moment,
Here, right here,
is how I know.

This moment is real. You dear reader
make it so.

Imagining there is no hell,
that's personal,
but on earth, as in heaven,
as a man thinks...
you know, I think that part never broke.

Don't lie, don't fret. Wait and see.
or watch and see, if you are the proactive type,
either way, don't lie about the seen and done.
And don't believe lies, about things you've seen and done.

Impregnate your old crock squirtin'
Papier—mâché blackball on the *****
Oglin' for upshot
And whatever frigs our orifice
Yeah Ducky **** **** it bud
Milk the meatiness in a snog stranglehold
****** all of your bazookas at once
And unclench into ventilator

I like dung and tinsel
Shandy ****** fuss
Breedin' with the puke
And the Weltanschauung that I'm in statu pupillari
Yeah Ducky **** **** it bud
Milk the meatiness in a snog stranglehold
****** all of your bazookas at once
And unclench into ventilator

Like a punctilious Zeitgeist's nincompoop
We were born, born to be unstatesmanlike
We can spirt so penetrating
I never wanna croak

Born to be unstatesmanlike
Born to be unstatesmanlike

a wacko version of hamlet

the patient came up to us raving
GOODNIGHT, GOODNIGHT
a naked swollen giant
his basketball *****, his endless belly
every system failing
we prepared to put him out
so we could stick a tube down his throat
plug him on a ventilator
and insert lines for safekeeping
GOODNIGHT, I LOVE YOU
he tried to lean off the bed
take it easy man, i said, restraining him
SUSAN  
who’s susan? asked the nurse
GOODNIGHT, GOODNIGHT, GOODNIGHT
good night, sweet prince, i said as we gave him the drugs
GOODNIGHT, I LOVE YOU, GOODNIGHT
we intubated him and took him down to the OR
where he passed twenty minutes later

eye lids move slowly
over the eyeballs
in an effort to garner
sleep to a worn out
body to restore the
metabolism to normality
yet sleep eludes

the slight movement
of the eyelids never felt before
is sensed as the brine tear
a lubricant between the interface
where surface tension dominates
all other forces of physics
what force dominates my heart?
I know not
and sleep eludes me

Unconstrained emotions flow
around like unsettled dust
particles glowing in the sunlight
that escapes in through a ventilator hole
sedatives themselves are sedated
and sleep eludes me

I still have five more days I foresee
before hallucinations and delusions
take over me
before that oh sleep like gandalf
arriving at helms deep
please come back to me
but not at the breaking of the dawn
not when light is bright
but in silence of the mysterious night

It’s strangely busy around the deathbeds,
as well it’s my last nightshift of the year.
I try to make no noise, can you hear me?
Push my hand, if you can, move a limb.
Your breath is so slow, please keep going,
monitors flash in time with the ventilator.
I’ll control the pupils, I know it’s blinding.
No one goes with their sparkling old eyes,
we are usually fading before we are dying.

I envied the cadavers haunting my nightmares,
watching those before me
spread upon a metal slab
bodies are hand-me-downs of regurgitated poetry,
with wretched closets in which I take their place.

This ventilator called "loved ones"
forcing breath into anguished lungs-
tragedies belonging to these poets meant something,
a desire to save the words written,
but never the one who becomes a eulogy.

Agony burrows inside of me,
conversations with my mother's ghost
still,
the living are possessed by
the dead's shortened tomorrows.

To die by suicide wouldn't give,
authenticity to hurt.

I am learning the autopsy of a soul:
extracting a heart from the chest,
as it's sense of belonging was never there.
An inability to weigh the words bleeding from valves,
aside lungs I'm unable to breathe through.

How ungrateful is it of sorrow to ask for hope?
placed in a pill divider to swallow,
muscles within my throat so tight.
Wondering,
How many times did I diminish my voice?

Inside the brain,
schematics of labyrinths with no end to betterment.
Surgeons reach for a soul,
an iridescence small enough
held in a gloved palm,
watching it writhe.
Placed upon a slide,
but even a microscope
cannot perceive the pain a soul hides.

Once more,
stitched with needle and thread.

Wilting of my own garden,
comes one day-
an incision is made opening me up.
My heart showed the same
blood-red ink, writing apologies
on the marble floor.

They opened my arm,
displaying a noose of veins.
In this moment,
they removed my soul
only to gift it to another
birthed from torment
ripped out of the arm's of their mother
& into the embrace of woe.

—V.H.

They don’t put dead bodies in the wall anymore.  They put them in those walk-in coolers that they use in food service and they stay in there until the funeral home or the autopsy people come in and wheel them out and do whatever it is that they do.  But what happens if the cooler fills up and another patient dies—where do they go?  Outside of the cooler?  In the hall outside the morgue?  Left in the hospital room until there is an open space for them in the walk-in?  Or are they just not allowed to die in the first place?

Place a check mark next to the option that makes you the most uncomfortable:
• when dead bodies are still warm and growing lukewarm
• when dead bodies are ice cold.

You can survive two weeks on a ventilator before there is an increased risk of illness.  

Eula Biss writes that she does not believe that absolutely no pain is possible, that the zero on the pain scale is null and void.  I would like to say that I agree with her, but I have this stupid sliver of hope where I believe that towards the end of it all, everything will be everything and everything will be nothing at all.  I guess what I’m saying is that I would like to believe that when you are dying, you are a zero on the pain scale, but by that point in time, I supposed it doesn’t really matter anyway.

There is a strange, numb void that occurs when someone you love dies, but I am not sure if this could be rated as a zero or a ten on the pain scale.  Getting ****** into a black hole could either hurt very much or not at all.

The medulla oblongata, located as a portion of the brainstem, is the part of the nervous system that controls both cardiac and respiratory mechanisms.  If severe damage occurs to this center, death is imminent.  

After one minute of not breathing brain cells begin to die.
After three minutes of not breathing, serious brain damage is likely.
Ten minutes: many brain cells will be dead, full patient recovery is unlikely.
Fifteen minutes: patient recovery is virtually impossible.

A “thunderclap headache.”  A cerebral aneurysm that has ruptured.  A subarachnoid hemorrhage pushing blood and fluid down on my mother’s brain.  Grade five: deep coma, rigid decerebration, 10% chance of survival.  

In some hospitals, if a loved one has passed, the caregivers cut off several small locks of the patient’s hair, tie them up with a ribbon, and put them in little pink mesh bags for each member of the family as some sort of morbid memento.  They take the dead person’s hand, place it on an ink pad, and then stamp it to a piece of paper that has some sort of sappy and sorry poem typed up on it.  I do not know where we put the paper, but my little mesh bag is still on my bedside table.  Somewhere.  

They put dead bodies in white body bags.

I don't dream of you either. Not at night. The occasional daydream occurs. You crawl into my mind in sentimental coffee shop conversations we never shared, love made in hotels we never went to, picking up naked dolls with frayed blonde hair that the daughter we'll never have left out. Sometimes it's lovely not to question the reality.

Usually the night drives keep me in Oklahoma. I don't know how many times I've stopped in Kingfisher to look at that terrible statue of Sam Walton. But he reminds me that no matter how successful a man becomes, in the end his legacy is depicted by his leftovers. There's a sadness in that. But also a freedom.

Wednesday's drive took me to Ulysses, Kansas. Light pollution gave up just outside of Woodward. Guiding me like a weary wise man who forgot his frankincense, stars beamed and made for suitable company. I love passing through small towns at night. I become a ghost. I'm above them. I'm not exactly there. Brief haunt. Then on my way again.

I parked about 100 feet from my grandmother's old house. Judging by the minivan, some young family's new house. They were in the process of adding to the east side. I wanted to tear at every fresh board. Instead I picked up a couple pieces of my grandmother's gravel. Put them in my pocket. Touched her old mailbox, and drove to the cemetery.

When I got to the headstone, which read Merle and Virgil Mawhirter, I thought back to the last thing my grandmother said to Karen and myself. We visited her in the hospital right before she found herself in the pangs of a ventilator and scattershot science. It was her birthday. I bought her a book she never read.

As Karen and I left, she stopped us. "Don't forget to bring me some ice cream. Good to see you, Floyd and Margie." Not sure who they were. Ice cream. Even at the end, she laughed in the face of diabetes.

Do you think Tim will be the name beside yours on your headstone?

I lied down by my grandparents' graves. Dim moonlight seeped through small breaks in the amethyst clouds. Dead leaves feathered to the ground beside me. I wanted to say some words of encouragement to her. For her, but mostly for myself.

All I said though -- My name is Joshua, Grandma.

He is on ventilator
I am at the window
He is in hospital
Close to the grave
I am in hostel
Close to the college
I am opening book
He is closing bible
He is breathing out
I am breathing in
His ventilator is shut
My window is opened
He is eighty
I am eighteen
He is diseased
I am besieged
He lost ground
I am gaining ground
He is my grandfather
Who led a grand life
I am his grandson
Left to lead a branded life

had a picture of dad on my nightstand
it fell not too long ago
but landed upright
atop his shoe shine box that I kept
its new position not precarious
I let it stay there
thought it was kinda fitting
a picture from his older years
taken in the kitchen
looking up into the camera
from the task at hand
peeling boiled potatoes
for potato salad
my potato peelin' pop
morning sun shine spot lights that picture
warm, smiling, reassuring

mom's back in ICU now
transferred to rehab with high hopes
bleeding, unresponsive
cardiac arrest en route back to ER
x-rays, CT scans
transfusions, blood draws, ventilator
endoscopy?
colonoscopy?
dialysis?
quality of life questions
the more I watch her
the more I wonder

How I wish pop could tell us what to do

The color of death is not black, is not white.  
                                                        ­                        Not red, not gold.  
Think: ashen skin.  
                               Think: where did the blood go?  
                                                          ­                       Think: pale, so ******* pale.
Bruise again.  He’s going to bruise again.  
     Mottled red   and      purple   and      blue   and      green   and      yellow.
That’s what the body does after death.  Blood runs down
to the lowest bend of the body and bruises the skin.  

The rust of cerebrospinal fluid as it sloshes
                      back and forth
       in the bag hanging above the bed.  
                                                      My mother’s hands:
white knuckled and gripping down on washcloths
to prevent her from breaking the skin of her palms.
The constant hum of telemetry,
                                the soft whoosh of the ventilator.

The human body has roughly 7% of its weight in blood.
The human body has no ******* idea what to do when
there is too much or too little of really anything.
Think: blood vessel bursting.
                            Think: cells mutating.
                                                  Think: proned patient coding after intubation.

Bruised.  His hands were bruised from all the needle-sticks,
from his lack of platelets.  And a single transfusion only goes so long.
                                                           ­   Goes three weeks long.  
The hands on the belly, laid so gently, so carefully are
covered in makeup.  The hair is parted wrong with a cowlick.
I know how they created that soft smile on his closed mouth.
                                                                         I’ve read the books.
                                            I’ve heard the talks from morticians.  
They’ve made my grandfather tan, but
I know what’s underneath the foundation:
                                                                                  grey.

I hail a cab.  I’ve got to leave this part
of town, the Upper West,
dripping with fatty money.

At 97th I step in
and exhale, revived
by the sweating air in taxi cabs.

Through the window
I see
the imposing orange
of a tall
sewer ventilator,
steaming and
ignored—

At Columbus Circle,
a corner hot-
dog stand
is slow-
ly wheeled to
its moment-
ary place—

Broadway, with
one closed bank.
Empty, in back
the dusted black,
and iron beams?
Things lean
diagonal
against the walls,
a warning—

Faster, faster,
further south and somewhere
in the Village.
The rows,
rows and rows
of brownstone stoops:
quietly lined
along the street
patient, waiting,
delightfully clean—

The cab rolls to a stop.  I pay and step out to the street.
Near Greenwich Street, the crosswalk
supports some types trying so hard
not to be doing all that much
and wearing hip clothes.

I’ll stop mid-street, look up real high,
and take in the sunlight
that’s slamming against the pavement.

I'm tired of my heart being a yoyo.
I've tried to tell you that you're my ventilator,
but you're never here.
I'm the type of lover that wants to leave everything else behind,
maybe it's because I'm a sucker for a good sunset.
I just want to live somnolently,
I want to retrace the veins that map your wrist.
I want you to be here.

i vent, i'm sure you heard of the invention known as the ventilator... it's like a lung-clone-subservient of a "nanny quality" of automating the words: breathe in... breathe out... breathe in... it precursors the in and outsources the *out, there's a cult-like-scheme involving the use of... the stated tools... worthy of a suggestion that epitomises August as the month of harvest - i.e. the sun finally sets to auburn crops and **** me, isn't the bread rightly puffy?! toad-squidgy aye aye? go on, give us a burping caricature of a squeeze!

imagine uttering the words:
i hope your mother lies
eternally run-sacked with hopes
of former ****** glory,
*****, bleeding,
as if a Mongolian horde just passed
her with a glorious encore of
clapping to match...
because that's what i assert
as been done to my mother,
you don't even understand the verb
or adjective or conjunction behind
the noun.... after all, you're an African
Muslim and a pyramid builder,
a ****-wit...
jaded ****-strap and gag's
worth of you the Ben & Jerry...
praise the Koran
but don't understand that behind
each noun there's a collective grammatical
structure, ******* English political correctness,
*******! *******! have your Reagent's Street
and Oxford Street, have 'em!
behind the noun all grammatical categories
follow suite... universal noun, what category
for the particular? ape transforms into apish,
or Quasimodo or ~ape, nouns are units,
like centimetres, forget the other things, unless you:
let the shoppers drop dead like flies!
but imagine saying the words:
i hope your mother gets gang-***** by
an equivalent of a Mongolian horde;
yep, Mongolian necrophilia.
you said it to my mother, and i'm mourning,
alive, and counting.... once more... so ********!

when I was a child,
my mother was never there.

I believe that her absence
was a factor in my fate,
part of the reason that
I went searching for love
in all of the wrong places.

I believe that her absence
is one of the reasons why
I became a mother so young.

it wasn't her fault, not entirely.
it wasn't fully my fault either,
nor the fault of the man
who had fathered my child.
it was no one's fault.

I was pregnant, and placing blame
couldn't change that fact.



I was still a child
when I learned that
my own child was
growing inside of me.

I was scared
and sad and lost.
I wasn't ready.

when they put that
cold goo on my belly,
and my son's little body
formed on that screen,

I already knew that I would
do anything for my child.
my son was my world
before he even entered it.



but before my son's eyes
opened on this planet,
tragedy struck.

I woke up in a hospital bed.
I was told that I was alive
and that my son was alive too.
an emergency C-section
was able to save him.

the first time that I saw him,
I wasn't allowed to hold him.
he had tubes coming from
every part of his tiny body,
and a ventilator was
breathing air into his lungs.
he looked so fragile, almost
like a porcelain doll.
it almost looked like
none of it was even real.

the NICU doctors
read me an entire book
of my son's diagnoses,
medical terms with words
too long for me to understand.

the only part that I heard was,
"you might want to start
saying your goodbyes."

I refused to say goodbye,
and my son refused to give up.



my baby was a fighter.
he beat the odds over
and over and over again.

he grew stronger and
healthier every day.

eventually, I was told
that I could take him home.
I was also told that his time
with me would be limited.



my son's father
read one page from
that long book of diagnoses,
and he was overwhelmed.
he walked out on us.
I wasn't angry at him.
I was overwhelmed too

but I wouldn't leave.
I would be there for
every moment of his life
and every breath that he took.

it was me and my son
against the world.
we were inseparable.

I read him books
every night before
I tucked him into bed,
even when he was
too young to understand me.

I kissed him on his forehead
and I told him that
I would never leave him.

I promised my baby
that I would be the mother
that I never got to have.



my son fought
harder than anyone
who I have ever known.

despite the hospitals
and the medicine
and the surgeries,
he was a happy baby.
he had no idea that he
wasn't like every other kid.

he laughed and he cried
and he smiled that big smile
when I held him close to me.



and then the day came
when I had to say goodbye.

I had that same
heartbreaking feeling
that I did when I first
learned of his existence.
I wasn't ready.
I would never be ready.

all that I have left of
my baby are photographs
and memories and a
small, pale green urn
sitting on my dresser.

my son is gone.
my baby left this earth
not even a few years
after he had entered it.
my only child
was taken from me.



I still have these strong
maternal instincts.
I feel a need to protect
someone who no longer
needs my protection.

I am missing a child
who will never come back to me.
I am broken.
I am so broken.

this gaping hole
in my life will
never be filled.




I was a child
with no mother,

and now
I am a mother
with no child.

I do not wish to suffer but suffer I
   must
Cursing my ill luck and the mad
   excesses
Of a selfish insensitive owner
Obsessed with destruction, both mine
   and his;
Occupying a spot here in the High
   Street
Opposite the Courthouse and its
   official Clock
An eyesore, a common talking point
Squeezed between more fashionable
   premises
Which seem always to frown and
   grimace
Expressing major reservations,
   unambiguous opposition.

Housing curios, oddments and
   selected modern junk
We sell little, our few customers
   dribbling in
Only to supplement their journeys
   while waiting on the bus
Or to eye with a morbid curiosity
That sickly creature seated behind the
   counter
My luckless tyrant of an owner
Against whom all conspire
Who seriously in debt, is helpless,
   cannot pay up
Hounded interminably by mysterious
   moneylenders
Who after giving a little now expect a
   whole lot in return.

With fuel running low for my boiler
My heating system, it is unreliable
Volatile, treacherous in Winter
My ventilator rusted through
Erratic at best, chronic in Summer
The damp in the walls and ceiling
The dry rot, the wallpaper peeling
Encouraged by years of neglect
Of being used, unscrupulously
   tampered with,
In need now of meticulous care and
   attention.

My owner truly a derelict, a dissipated
   soul
Spending more time in the cellar with
   a bottle
Than on any other shop floor level
(Among his friends, the mice, the
   cockroaches and spiders)
Who trying to stay awake, eventually
   must capitulate
Caught by that Ghost Ship that drifts
   slowly North
To where the icebergs loom large and
   ominous out of a damning fog
It's compass frozen, it's wheel
   unmanned
Nothing but shadows and wind in the
   rigging
As he floats off into oblivion, off the
   edge of the earth
Where exist such shapes that can
   never be said.

                               II

Is peculiar though, my owner
At times displays a certain poise and
   grace
Hinting at a time in the not too distant
   past
Which was not altogether bad or
   harmful
But unusual as it might seem
Was quite on the contrary, fruitful !!
Him featuring as being both proud
   and distinguished
Far removed from today's pitiful
   wretch
Whose solitary doubts and fears have
   all but taken over.

And maybe I do find it hard to
   sympathize
I after all being the one offered up
   now in sacrifice
Him there with little joy, love or hope
With only complaints and grievances
   mounting up
Filed away in offices at City Hall.

                                 III

Whereupon the hour, every  hour, the
   Courthouse Clock it chines
Ever vigilant, ready to track it's quarry
   down
Where in the corridors of power this
   very moment
City fathers, town planners and
   architects have gathered
To discuss whether our future lies in
   this town
To argue out the case, the for and the
   against;
While below the vile demolition man
   he stalks my borders
With his heart of ice and ghastly  
   drunken laugh,
No! I do not wish to suffer
Indeed, I wish I could be like any other.

Welcome to the stellar season

new passion & new reason

I am reignited

too flamed, I’m heat seeking

Simply motivated

like a *******

Condoms made of confidence

Just in case I **** your mother

I’ve come from the bottomless

I’m higher than the very top

Too high, Upper echelon, ***** I’m Michael Angelo mixed with a Megatron

Phantom of the Op

with a knife that never stops

Chucky in the form of a dope decepticon

looking for a *** of gold like a leprechaun

If I don’t find the gold, then I’ll put the *** in ****

then spark that **** forever long

Confidence & cognac enough to keep me gunning,

cardio to cardiac Arrested for the running

Running of the mouth, running of the mind, I feel too defined

I think I’ve reached a line

Everyday

I write & spit a verse or two

yelling at the sky to see what the universe would do

a science experiment and the catalyst is you

steady battling the truth

Between working that 9 to 5

Or chasing your inner youth

Displacement of bigger visions

Shuffled by rash decisions

Motivation has risen, coupled with work ethic

I want exotics & moments of rarity

My visions clear, I’m surprised by this clarity

The world's changing like moods swings and irregularities

2016 will be the year of efficiency

A strong alliance of motivation and pure ability

Smarter science, enhances ions an durability

Energy streams through my seams like electricity

it feels riveting

I will change my ground like a terraform generator

I know that I’m bound to something that’s much greater

**** all of the hate

******* & the naysayers

onion I am

my mind has many layers

No more dishes served cold

I’m tired of late waiters

I’m a heat-seeking ventilator

Freestyle originator

Here's some cold bars & some beers from my refrigerator

Mastermind incinerator to all of the instigators

Instagram this so you ***** can read it later

No More Procrastinators, haters & ******* decisions makers

I’m bulldozing my way, then rebuilding like path makers

Skillfully shifting ground  

I’m here to tilt the equator

The time to make money

is now

Not later

Negotiations of lame relations are no longer in the equation

I’m on my digital hustle like a roomed packed with 3 Indians & 2 Asians

All coding syntax for an app that automatically takes pictures of random places

Not so C++ Basic, but if you can crack the code then it’s your for the taking

This is the stellar season were motivation is lurking, I’m excited like jive turkey, hand me a biscuit, time to consume then sore like a fly birdie.


my minds sturdy, I’m making sick instrumentals to spit a flow from the mental then simply define worthy.

alcohol and *******
and ******* at his wife
he chose to jump out of a sled
and land on his head
his christmas present to himself
now he’s tethered to a ventilator
with a bolt in his brain
his intracranial pressure
is scaling mt. everest
that there santa’s elf
is the textbook definition
of ******* up

It could be the cold outside
Empty chairs
TV crime stories
The buzz of ventilator
Mixed with silent humming of the characters

Silence and quietness
Among indecipherable voices
Meditation over a beer glass
Smoking ceremony

Cynicism unspoken
Listening to your breath
Second beer unfinished
Being restless from the absence of fear

Unable to catch one’s line of thoughts
Emotions uncertain
Not an easy day - troubled father

Only scattered images like
Frozen grass
Sticking out of
Icy snow
Who will ever paint it all
In one frame?

Between conjecture and classification there is
observation, experiment, data (collection and analysis),
statistics, calculus, and a good guess
about God's intentions -- probabilities, fractals, chaos and complexity.
This is the thunderous city.

The form of the poem, the rhyme.
Form cannot be first if you want to reach high artistic levels, since
      you are then bound by form, and that form is very often a
      betrayal of reality.
Yet I find I am attracted all the time
to philosophies in short skirts, jewels and eyes lined with kohl.
I love where her legs lead, to her very soul.

Three women hike by under an umbrella in a winter rain. Two men
      side by side run in rhythm.
An oil truck takes the hill in low steady gear.
My old Marine, 89, died last night without anxiety or fear.
May I overcome my pain enough to reach the place where the deer
      lay down their bones
and, like them, die alone.

When making an axe handle, the pattern is not far off.
The purpose of school is to introduce us to the world's innumerable
      wonders.
The periodic table, World Wars I and II, Huckleberry Finn and Jim.
      But soft,
what light through yonder window breaks?
It is a billion trillion nuclear detonations per second without which
      nothing can be done or faked.

The temple bell stops, but the sound still comes out of the
      flowers.
Forests and the composite species will be nameless. Genetic
      prowess,
receiving the sacrament, performing Lohengrin from the Great
      American Songbook,
the look of love in all the wrong places, facebook,
fakebooks, folios of old family photos on or in pianos.

How can I be both still and skilled?
When we took Pop-Pop off the ventilator, we put him in a refrigerator.
He stopped eating, he stopped breathing. Circle with a dot.
He had his dream, he'd rowed his boat.
No single line can completely explain -- or rhyme -- or untie this knot.

I
Oh life, you unfulfilled *******,
All seeing eye of admonition,
You unfair precinct of justice,
You incredulously cruel myth,
Oh, How I hate you
Oh, How I want to leave you
Oh, How I love your counterpart more,
Death.
She seems easy and trouble free.
An impenetrable kingdom of night.
I wish I could fade into oblivion sometimes.

II*
I'm three year strong of my grand depression.
It's not always there now,
but it is.
And so am I.
And so are you.
And so is my lacuna,
my friend,
who invivorogated my sense of purpose,
who gave me a reason to live.
She has been
My net I fall onto everytime
you push me down from the trapeze act of my passions.
The medicine that nurses my wounds when you leave me bleeding.
My ventilator as my soul was dying a slow sad death.
When you **** all my hope away
she plants it back again deep in my heart
impervious to your morbid touch
tightly sealed with her warm kiss.
I am scared to be happy because of you,
because every time I am happy
you decide to give me a new **** reason
to be ineffably sad.
You know where it hurts me the most
which parts of me, is most tender and vulnerable,
you know my weaknesses
you use it against me like an old friend who is now an enemy.
Why can't you just let me be ?
I'm tired, so **** tired.
It's alright.
I have my love,
and I'll make it through the day
and spit in your apathetic face.
I ******* hate you,
though you are beautiful okay.

A black man struggling to breathe,
A Yemeni child searching for a safe place,
A Palestinian man struggling to be free,
An African villager dreaming of clean drinking water!

A lonely man longing for company,
A homeless person dreaming of shelter,
A hungry child craving a home cooked meal,
An orphan yearning for a mother’s touch!

A disabled person dreaming about walking,
An elderly man wishing to visit his loved ones,
A sick patient praying to be free from the pain,
A COVID 19 patient wanting to get off the ventilator!

Sending love and a prayer to those who have such beautiful dreams.

Hussein Dekmak

My favorite music is the tune that I hear playing off at the hospital, when a COVID 19 patient is off the ventilator!

This music is:
A song of a new dawn,
A journey to the future,
A melody of new life,
A symphony of hope, and
The rebirth of the universe!

Hussein Dekmak

up at your regularly scheduled night sky patrol,
the colorful clock says 2:47 and
dark skies confirm which 2:47 it is,
for flecks of blackened peppery light exude at this hour,
a time period for former lovers, those old writes enfolded, enveloped,
hiding an active poem volcano spewing bare feet words in clouds of
kidskin soft velveteen cumulus, fleece-comforting slippers of poems

there are half started poems waiting, more than one, triplets in fact,
waiting to be born in the time of pandemic, thinking quietly,
will they emerge healthy and living and grow up to be adults
contributing to society, additives to the engine oil of human living

but the old familiar, dissatisfaction with quality control leaves them
unfinished, poet lurches from dead roses head hanging, a new blues,
disease as an economic and societal differentiation, that you hope,
believe, poems that in due course, all will emerge, for better or for worse,

poetry birthed in the time of pandemic

the city of new york, where I was birthed and will die, a city of
tall buildings, tall tales, short attention spans there is but one nighttime moving automobile observed in a city that never sleeps but now hides blanketed in weariness of trepidation of what are the

well known unknown possibilities in the time of pandemic

and you wonder in this new, different quietude if poems can be born
with birth defects and survive, breathing on a ventilator till they can
breathe by their own lungs, or were they perma-infected on a supermarket trip, a walk by the East River, a pizza delivery man, even

if inspired by a decade-lover, next, in bed, in the time of pandemic

waving to grandchildren in their second story window, you on the street, keeping them safe from you, a modern Auschwitz train station where they separated, the we-useless out, children and their parents, safe in a barbed wire atmosphere, a demarcated world, where some billion of brimming droplets of tears are stillborn

stillborn poems, or perhaps just poems-in-waiting, to still be

born in a time of pandemic


3:29am Sunday March 22, Twenty Twenty
New York City, the epicenter, crossroads

i want a drought.
i want the rain to stop hitting the roof like incessant knocks of a jehovah's witness
("have you been saved?")
you are unwelcome here.
i want a drought
because i don't think that my veins, running like rivers, my heart, swelling like a cloud about to burst with rain,
can handle one more phone call in the middle of the night,
one more stifled sob in the shower of an empty house.

on the day of my uncle's funeral,
(they called it a 'celebration of life'
but i've never seen a celebration
where there were so many people crying)
i thought that he would show a sign that he was here.
but it rained all day
and the only thing that i could hear over the noise
was his children crying.

a month ago, tucked into a booth at an italian restaurant,
my mom got the call that they were taking her off the ventilator the next morning.
i had never experienced the feeling of the world continuing to spin
until my mom was crying, my dad was praying, and families all around us
ate their pasta and drank their iced tea and laughed
while our family was falling apart.
the next day, it rained and rained
and stephanie passed away, as simple as a plug pulled out from behind a hospital bed, and a hand going cold.
when my friend took me for a drive,
so i could get out of the empty house,
so i could stop feeling like my throat was constantly on the verge of closing,
so close to suffocating, but never there,
the rain hit the windshield
and on any other day, i would've found it calming,
but it was mocking me.

today, your body lays in your bed, your arms so stick-thin that i don't think i will ever forget the shape of your bones,
your hands are too cold for your mother to hold any longer,
and your heart finally gave in,
and it is raining.
in little intervals,
like just when i think i am out of tears,
they come again,
sure as the setting sun,
hidden behind gray clouds.

so please,
rain, rain, go away.
let me breathe.
let me grieve,
let my eyes dry,
and let me go.

(with apologies to Gil Scott-Heron)

You will have to stay home, sister.
You will charge up, tune in, drop out of all activities.
You will scroll through memes, trawl the news,
Skip the tea, you're running low.

The epidemic will be endlessly televised.

The epidemic will be brought to you in a trillion parts,
With declining commercial interruption.

The epidemic will show you pictures of Trump and Boris blithering,
Dreaming of fried chicken at the end of televisation,
"Oka-a-ay...".
"You are a terrible reporter!"

NHS-badged Hancock will look the part,
But cannot answer the question
Should I look after my sick self-isolated seventyish neighbour?

Fauci facepalms
And is gone.

Watch out, guys.
The epidemic will be televised.

The Epidemic (starring Tom Hanks) will not be brought to you on the big screen.
There will be no big screen.
The Epidemic will not play Glasto
Lit by 300,000 Androids.

The epidemic will be brought to you by friends and strangers.
The epidemic will be televised.

The epidemic will not inject fat into your posterior.
You will not need to shave or deodorise.
As it turns out, you are not worth that expensive holiday.
The epidemic will make you a bedroom star
Vlogging your incarceration to ten followers.

The epidemic will be televised.

There will be pictures of coughing queues at supermarkets
Toilet roll riots, thermometer wars.
There will be pictures of you and your best mate
Pushing that cart down the block,
Packed with Branston Pickle baked beans
Though you posted fifty times online about hoarding.
You will not have dressed for the occasion.

You will not care who wins Love Island.
You will not care who wins The Great British Bake Off.
Eastenders will be cancelled
After 35 years of continuous drama.

You will dodge the police for a quiet walk
On a brighter day.

The epidemic will be televised.

Reporters will cough.
Ministers will be replaced
Suddenly
Parliament will be suspended.
Politics will cease to be televised.

The epidemic will be right back, after a message.

You will have to worry about a germ in your bathroom,
Your food supply, the tiger in your tank, your loved ones,
Whether, if you cease to breathe, there will be a ventilator.

You will consider getting in the driver's seat.
Where to go?

Would you like to see your mother?
Would you like to cross a border?

The Caravan Park is occupied
By the Military.

Slowly, slowly
The screens will darken.

The epidemic will no longer be televised.

The Epidemic is not a game.  You cannot return to a previous Save.

The epidemic is live.

No! you are not a hero!
you are just a bad smell
who fight with Ventilator!
open your eyes dear!
you act like Don Quixote.

We were in confided spaces before,
           in open air. Where we never mingled...
But at least we had company that we were
next to, now were in solitary confinement.

Now were 6 foot or 72 inches or 182.88cm
                from the nearest person, I don't know them,
they were here before me,
                                             celled up.
Slow walk, felt like a life time, so few steps..

But this is a funeral prosecution,
               is the one in front of me going to cough,
                                                                ­          sneeze..
Will they cover up or infect me, ME…
With there I don't know what's, could it be hay fever.

Could be me coughing in seven, to when I have a ventilator
shoved down my insides, I'm a breathing coffin..
        Just being buried slowly..
                                           they burn you now...
But I'm not there yet, I wash my hands.
                

"Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me,
        I hope I wash my hands enough to see my  
                                                            ­     next birthday.
  But I'm wishing my hand happy birthday now,
            So soar but I'm happy birthdaying all week.

We in an open prison, free but unable to escape,
               I look out my window and breath..
      The air is a lot fresher that it used to be..

Another week passes, I write lines on the wall
         of my incarceration, I'm in a cell of luxury.
But I've never felt so alone.
     Were all roses, wilting due to lack of sunlight...

Cheese eats
Window stares
Stars gaze
Women talk
Souls sings
Toilet is there
Heart beats
Blood breaks
**** vomits
Words fail
Flower flickers
In the wind
Women smiling
Drinking wine and beer
Stripped dress
Big ***
Beer bottles of the men

Ukrainian ******* has time
After work
to drink wine

Curly-haired girls
in white shirts
Glass touch glass

Nice nose profile
Ventilator whirling spirals

The owner smiling
Locked down and set free

Boys like from the French movies
Leo drinking a lot
The beer pouring on the knees

Bartenders in face masks
Naked back in the blue dress