You brave heroic minds,
Worthy your country's name,
That honour still pursue,
Go, and subdue,
Whilst loit'ring hinds
Lurke here at home with shame.

Britons, you stay too long,
Quickly aboard bestow you;
And with a merry gale
Swell your stretched sail,
With vows as strong
As the winds that blow you.

Your course securely steer,
West and by South forth keep;
Rocks, lee-shores, nor shoals,
When Eolus scowls,
You need nor fear,
So absolute the deep.

And cheerfully at sea,
Success you still entice
To get the pearl and gold;
And ours to hold
Virginia,
Earth's only Paradise.

Where Nature hath in store
Fowl, venison, and fish;
And the fruitfull'st soil,
Without your toil,
Three harvests more,
All greater than your wish.

And the ambitious vine
Crowns with his purple mass
The cedar reaching high
To kiss the sky,
The cypress, pine,
And useful sassafras.

To whom the golden age
Still Nature's laws doth give,
No other cares attend
But them to defend
From winter's rage,
That long there doth not live.

When as the luscious smell
Of that delicious land,
Above the sea that flows,
The clear wind throws,
Your hearts to swell,
Approaching the dear strand.

In kenning of the shore,
(Thanks to God first given)
O you, the happiest men,
Be frolic then!
Let canons roar,
Frighting the wide heaven!

And in regions far
Such heroes bring ye forth
As those from whom we came,
And plant our name
Under that star
Not known unto our North.

And as there plenty grows
Of laurel everywhere,
Apollo's sacred tree,
You may it see
A poet's brows
To crown, that may sing there.

Thy voyages attend
Industrious Hakluit,
Whose reading shall inflame
Men to seek fame,
And much commend
To after-times thy wit.

Always a citizens greet
Pleasure to always meet
Towns and Cities
Southern dialect witty
Freight trains through the state
Visits no hesitate
Mountains and Trees surround
Voices echoes heard from mile away towns
Virginia known for Victories
Battlegrounds and Entertainment
That’s a Virginian commitment
Virginian’s will always share their storytelling
But to listen you must be willing
The vast land
Numerous farm land at a Virginian demand
Virginian’s do their best
They are not like other states who could careless
Virginians with hearts true
The motto, “Pure Follow Through”

who does not speak of what their heart is full of;
there is a certain Virginian
whose heart words lift you into joyous rapture

That stoic, elderly house
that sits beneath the sun
has it’s door hinged open
just waiting for someone

All day in the Virginian countryside
the waves of wind pass by
Yet the door remains open
‘till the sky begins to cry

A table set for two
venetian blinds on the floor
A stool, a record, a painting
All watching through that door

The night falls for the day
and the house falls for sleep
and through the unhinged door
A small songbird must creep

The sun forgets to wake the house
But the songbird pays her fee
To room with the house that night
and sings from the walnut tree

The house door swings shut
afraid to listen and hear
For the house is afraid
Of the musical musketeer

Careful to know each other
But their minds begin to roam
All while, the songbird brings him music
and the house brings her home

“To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late
And how can man die better
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his gods”



Soft murmurs along the front line crackle like a broken prairie plough,
The maples and oaks snapping with
Every burst of the cannon.
Crested breaths choked out by
The ferocious blasts of this entrenched
Jungle.
Shrieks punctuate the deathly silence,
And sobers the divisions thirst for war.
I, a dead soul among the living.

The soft wind at night is the nefarious fingers of death,
Soaking the earth and ****** boughs
Of the old oaks with the veins
Of golden purity.

(I am standing on an eagles skull.)

I can hear the Rebel yell beyond the tree line,
BLASTING the barreling notion of liberty,
Stacked within our Union souls.

A Bundren coffin takes form in the mist beyond the wasteland.

My kin lay wait at home,
Shall I return one day and parade through pastures
And creeks until the days grow old
and so shall I.
With kin side by side.

My vacant mind floats off to distant lands along the
timbered forests of the Free North.


Orations from my Grandfather resonate like wind chimes
Rattling among the inner confines of my sanity,
Strewn images flash like the lines of Virginian regulars,
A sparse reminder of my ever so soon fate
In the Wilderness.

I still feel your breath on my neck sometimes
With that stiff, clinical hand that you placed upon my spine
Examining my face for harsh, worrisome lines
As I walked the chemical tightrope that exists only in mind

Now, still precariously balanced, still unanimously blamed
I'm holding out for your smile in each passing face
Though it's been years since they burned you in cold Virginian flames
I can still see you watching me through the windowpane

My name displaced in your mouth like some placid stone
The weight on your tongue silencing thoughts unknown
As your fingers nimble upon needles, weaving our winter clothes
Once slept in a box where your ashes now are stowed

You held no Catholic reservations, nor illusions implausibly sweet
And left me with no bullets to deliver from stolen grief
But sometimes, in my dreaming, you offer me reprieve
With skin so milky white, loose and starch like a sheet

I watched you behind that curtain, with satin on your back
In the flickering light of candles, where shadows often pass
And criss-cross in patterns, over blue eyes watery and vast
To ignite a glowing smirk, whose teeth do shimmer like glass

Your hair still wispy and short, the color of strawberries faint
Fallen in a gossamer crown, to covet your wrinkled face
You would take to me like a feather, and swath me in your immortal embrace
Speaking divinely of Heaven, and all your ghostly grace

With that kind, melodious laugh I have so terribly missed
Pressing rosebuds to my temple in a matriarchal kiss
A dream we were in, your wings reverently clipped
For a time, if only, I felt within your loving grip

You warned me not to be fooled, to make no mistake
You would have returned to your grave by the time that I should wake
With trembling fingers clinging tightly to your remains
Standing in your old room, the bed forever made

I remembered whispering in your ear, as your conscious mind wore thin
Life support wailing, the color drained from your lips
My fingers searching desperately for the pulse that was buried in your wrist
I told you I would never forget you: my precious, parting gift

I can feel the air beginning its chill
Fall is upon us while old man winter waits in the wings for his spotlight
Holy October
A year since I first kissed your cheek with a poem
Kerouac's October
Your nights remind me of my ghost
Ghost of my past love that comes in cigarette smoke
Cigarette smoke I watched on a back porch that wasn't mine
Smoke like memory that floats away in whisps
I spit the regrets out with saliva and turn my attention to better paths
October I will write you a song
More beautiful than a spiritual hymn
And more powerful than a folk ballad

I have dreams of living alone
In an old shack
Surrounded by the peaks of Montana mountains
I sit on a porch playing guitar and watch tall grass blowing in the wind
Everything is as beautiful as I know it can be
There is no pain here
Maybe that is my heaven and I have to wait
If that's the case I don't  mind
Maybe that's my idea of freedom
Freedom is a word that always eludes me
Freedom to me is never being held back
Freedom is good company
And sometimes freedom is silence

Oh October evening
I am 20 years old
My bones are young but my heart feels much older
Give me gentle Montana plains
Quiet Virginian forests
The waves hitting Carolina shores
October I hope you love me as I love you
It's been hard for me to love lately
But October you are anything but cruel
You understand
October I'm glad to see you again

driving blindly down the turnpike
four guys packed in the back three seats
the two lovely ladies up front
driving,
through the complete blackness
the warm ocean that is the Virginian summer night sky
they were high
and drunk
not the driver
but she still drove like a maniac
taking bends in the road
feeling the pull of their momentum
it would have been a pretty way to die

three days earlier
six young men
sit on the shore
of a picturesque canal
which ran parallel to the James
drinking cheap beer out of a cooler
and taking rips from endless shattered bongs
they swam across to the other side
running and jumping among the rocks and trees
just like they were kids again
when the sun set
and the city put on her make up
they were drunk
and they drove home after some time
speeding through the neon lights
of the wrong part of time

twenty years in the future
a man sits in a leather arm chair
nursing a neat bourbon,
he is tired,
he burns with an ice cold longing
for the days
when kids could be kids
driving blindly down turnpikes
drunk and high at the river
bending through the city like fugitives
before the bitterness
before he was so ****** tired

1/12/2015
"There is no woman living that draws breath
So sad as I, though all things sadden her.

Alas, Love, what is this thou wouldst with me?
What honour shalt thou have to quench my breath,
Or what shall my heart broken profit thee?
O Love, O great god Love, what have I done?"
- Algernon Charles Swinburne

Utility boots set down stolid on the asphalt
of the Powers field
by the power vested in me
as I sit in stadium seat 547B

In the cold, bathed
in the antifreeze holding
it steady in my mouth

a fat orange plum on the metal
mandible.
as soon's the safety's off with the
fork it's a

crack light, crack light as my
friends would say
and I think who the hell would
ever do drugs?

You've come a long way, Baby
the box says
and all the ones serious about
their tar intake

make fun of me
girl things, girl stuff
where's your love for camel?
but really. cancer isn't a competition.

it is cold and colder.
i think of ******, i think of you
most importantly

of how i probably wouldn't be staring
dully at the bright orange paint
PRINCETON

and throwing stubbed out cigarettes at
the turf.
the next field over was the one he kissed
me in that night

and i'd thought of you then,
thought of you always.
and why the hell?

it is funny. I know why i do this
i told myself i would never smoke
because i get addicted too fast

procrastinate far too much.
i throw another dead little Virginian girl
at the grass chambers of hell below

and I look at my frostbitten fingers tips to
see if they are still there.
because it is my fault,

and it always is;
debauchery's been my best friend for
so long

and i do not know why these boots are
so broken in,
so sturdy and so very "here"

when procumbent you'd
say to me i don't know what will happen
but the future's going to make us happy

and i guess it worked out for one of us.
i haven't talked to him in three weeks,
the almost father of my almost child
(thank god. . .)

the sire of my sense of
restlessness
his words of "i'm 16 going on 21"
ringing on to me

and making my tongue bleed
as i reach for the bottle of tea
i had dropped somewhere in
the "B" seats

but where was i?
oh yes, where you are  not
and i'm going down the stairs to
where i'd throw down the goodness

on saturday nights in november
and i can't feel my toes now too
so i go down faster

my head reeling
and the marlboro boys and the
camel boys tell me that virginia slim's
supposed to not make you feel anything.

I want a metal detector,  
I need to dig things up.  
There's so much in the dirt,  
and I can't get enough.  
  
All that was left behind,  
has since been immersed.  
Forgotten graves deepen,
in time's cyclic curse.  
  
Anywhere I step,  
others stepped before.  
For lifetimes upon lifetimes,  
in times of peace and times of war.  
  
I regularly find remnants,  
memories from days lost.
Folks before me must of known,  
i'd get to them at any cost  
  
From old poems to ancient hills,
down to the thick West Virginian clay.  
Fragments of my forefathers exist,  
to learn from them all I pray.

Half obscured by powder smoke, the long Grey line comes on.
“Double canister and hard shot, pour it on them boys!”
They dress the line and still they come, inexorably, like fate.
We are in need of some support, but will it come too late?
A high wood fence disrupts their charge, like clotting blood they mass.
As many a dying Virginian boy wishes for his cup to pass.
“For Fredericksburg!” “For Fredericksburg!” Alonzo Cushing cried.
We worked our guns and gave them hell for all our friends who’d died.
Our blood is up and still they come, over the parapet.
We are all determined this is as far as they will get.
A breath of air, a cooling drink, a lover’s soft embrace;
Strange things crowd into your mind when in a hellish place.
A company of New Yorkers, coming on the double quick,
Have piled into the Rebel mass where the fighting was most thick.
Back you go, proud Virginians, back over the low stone wall.
Not so many as started out, no longer proud and tall.
A rebel of some prominence sits, dying, near my gun.
He asks for General Hancock, strange to hear that name upon his tongue.
My friend, Alonzo Cushing, lies beside the caisson where
He bleeds profusely from his wounds. He is too far gone to care.
He will not live to see the Sun rise in the East again,
Or live to hear a nation’s thanks for what he did for them.

I.
He was in the wilderness
a place where no man strays
          he had nothing to accomplish
alone there on the fray

Standing oaks reaching tall
          with green crowns bearing life
beams of sunlight piercing stillness
          red cardinal and his wife

Creepy crawlers in the damp
          black and moist their stay
leaves shed carpet years far gone
          dry twigs upon it lay

Walking, watching, listening
          snake silent moving still
squirrel grey lounging overhead
          sadness here is nil

Golden finch laughing chatter
          dance in full costume
twisted vines, honeysuckle
          shares her bright perfume

                       II.
Breathe in deeply, rest awhile
          Virginian countrymen
dreams of days long time past
          days of the Powhatan

Before the European man
          washed their tribe in pain
before the Spanish smallpox
          before so many slain

They danced the dream of brotherhood
          Siouan, Tutelo
adopted by Cayuga
          into the northern snow

Monacan nation, native land
          wind, water, fire, earth
renape spirit guiding silence
          offering rebirth

Your brain buzzes around sunflowers and in West Virginian clouds,
Around strings of old guitars and strings of shrimp flavored ramen,
Around calling me pretty and asking me to dance when we’ve just met,
Around your dog and your home and your friends that you love oh so much,
And it mesmerizes me because
I’ve never loved the way someone talks about themselves as much as when you do.

Cattleya
When she was good
She was **** good!
And she got her revenge.

I've made some big mistakes
I know nothing of Stonehenge.

My words were poorly chosen
But I did not know

Was raised to trust authority
Ay yay yay yay yo!

The serpent is suspicion
The serpent works for God

Women's intuition
Please make me just Todd

I'm gonna take him down
Wheel now is in spin

Please for wisdom words
Please forgive my sins

Please for Warrior Poet
Please to begin again

            Virginian.

I would try to sell you a “typical” black boy story,whatever that is,if I lived it/
About the father that left me and my mom the day I was born,even if he didn’t:
About how like the sea shells decorate the beach,bullet shells decorated the streets,even if they didn’t/
About the million of gangs up and down the Virginian coastline ,even if Ive never seen it/
Or maybe I’m just trying to find a common struggle to relate to,even with how beautiful being black is

I would also try to sell you the story of someone boldly secure in their masculinity,even if thats not my reality/
About how the way I speak might confirm your suspension,about why I spend my college tuition on my wardrobe/my dress code refracts every color of the rainbow,but here I go,putting a label and gender on something so epicene,the mainstream vision of masculinity doesn’t define all men/

I may even sell you the story of someone who knows what clique I identify with/even if my internal conflict of who I am contradicts it/
Am I antisocial or extroverted?/I qualify for both,depending on how you view me.Or maybe,I’m using all these big words so I don’t sound like an idiot to you,even if I’m the only person I’ll ever need to prove my intelligence to/

I won’t sell you a pity party,we all host our own
But I will sell you this masquerade,this facade I’ve been keeping up because god knows who I am without it/Its changes for any party and any crowed that your with,just know this,with every change it makes,the owner’s sense of self will cease to exist/label after label,it’ll cut out your soul to help you fit/until the last sliver of you, begging you to quit,but like a drug addiction,you say that after the 100th hit

With this mask off,for the first time in a long time,I see a beautiful sight/I don’t see race,gender,ugly,unwanted,unloved,unworthy,no adjective can describe the reflection presented in front of me,there’s only reason why I describe this so beautifully,because I see the unclad me,free of labels,gleefully ignorant to what the world thinks,no longer making excuses or explanations for existing.Im not sure how those who I’ve tried to impress and the friends who haven’t seen my true form yet will think of this,but I have learned to unapologetically love the soul underneath the mask of a man,so I leave myself and this declaration open to interpretation

New game has begun a
second deck introduced
the Trump's removed &
so, Biden commences with
a High Chaperone holding
reins of the apocalyptic
horses recently shod, hob
nailed for the sole purpose
of Trampassing the plains
people during what will
be a corporate stampede
already in process hence
the dust masks which are
all part of corral procedure
as the herding and branding
is about to begin now that
you have all been opiated
by that same media which
has been designed to keep
you and abject ignorance.
You have just entered the
gates of Shiloh, Judge Garth
has sentenced you, the dark
sinister silent one riding the
white horse is Satan incognito
The Virginian, Betsy was a lure.

the wickedness in women
yes, I've seen the truth

in marriage and in politics
and in my long lost youth

I liked Heineken
never tried vermouth

George Mason the Virginian
not actor John Wilkes Booth

The Union now destroyed
Trumpfucks are true proof.

America is an udder with
one **** which currently
has far too many suckers
waiting in the queue to
be fed by the FED with
food for thought but with
no substance which will
soon dry up and it is then
we will witness a stampede
like nothing ever seen before
not even in The Virginian
and no, Trampas would not
be able to hold back the charge
of raging bulls that are going
to head straight for China shops.