You reasonless hate  me in manner devoid of vogue,
Coz you are threatened by my skin color,
Utterly refusing to appreciate my melanin humanity
Your faith lulls you that I am a Tarzan,
Dwindling away from humanity,
My poetry to you is only bombshell
Of dangerously  vulpine civilization,
You solace yourself in your miss-audience to me,
Wistful in your hearty that your detest for me
Will become a force enough to counter my being,
You are very wrong my brother,
Goofing in full measure of your idiosyncrasy
In its present grammar of dance banquet,
I only pity you  as none will ever be able to  heal you
To  free you  from your silly bug of desperate racism.

Summer 1986 Sunday 5:30AM

Misty morning in Malibu.
Seagulls stitch the sea to a subtle
silver sky. They sputter stridently.
Each elegant gull hovers effortlessly.
Entreating each other. Echos bounce
off the sound of the surf into eternity. The screeching of many a
soliloquy akin to silence.

I sit on the pier. The water before
me washes onto the staccato legs
of tiny waterbirds who wander
in and out of the surf. Little
windblown ***** of ecru and grey
wool. I worship in the womb of
the great goddess ~ nature. I wasn't to know the Creator was watching patiently...

6:30AM
I make my unhurried way up the
pier to my car. A cheap but
comfortable convertable. Nobody
walks in LA. I punch in a tape.
Don Henley. Boys of Summer.

I take PCH up to the incline that
takes you from the beach. Pushing
the pedal slightly as I slide by the
colossal bleached cliffs of
Palacades Park. There the homeless
sleep under the benches dedicated
by friends and family in
rememberance of loved ones.
Small plaques attatched for
posterity.

My hands are on the steering wheel
at 7 and 12 o'clock.I look at the cast
I wear on my right wrist. A token
of rememberance from an angry romance. He and I parted
respectively, if not at all
respectfully. I drive.

7:00AM
Venice beach. Not yet boysterous.
But never boring. The young people
(and old) still bundled together in bed. Saturday night hangovers will
be had by most of the denizens of
Venice beach boardwalk. A grainy
eyed few wander around abstractidly. Shopowners enter
their buildings, their storefronts
almost as small as booths. Graphitti
and giant works of art grace walls
everywhere ~ Jim Morrison and
Venus in workout leggings much
in evidence.

I smoke my cigarette and drink my
hot coffee carefully in the open cafe'.
I consider the eyefest of the crowd
that will congregate here to enjoy
the clement weather.
The cacophony and the clamor.
Touristas and Los Angelinos alike
drawn In by calculating vendors
and coyote souled street performers.
I look forward to seeing the
non conformity usually. But not
today. For now I sit in the quiet cafe'.

Venice beach. Vulpine. Vacuous.
A strangely vunerable venue. The
***** and the beautiful. The talented and the ******.

A street performance pianist trundles his acoustic piano on
casters out onto the boardwalk.
I ask him if I may play. He looks
at my cast doubtfully.
"I can still play..." I tell him.
He ascents and listens thoughtfully
as I play my compositions. He really
likes them. I ****** the ebony and
the ivory with insistant fingers.
The smile on his face is irrepressable. I smile back and we
flirt in self conceous, fitful fashion.
Time to leave.

9:00AM
Radio is on in my car now. A cut
from the musical Chess. One night
in Bangkok makes the hard man
humble... I like the driving beat.
I'm going up I-10, a single blood cell
in the main artery that brings life
to the flesh of this mamouth town.
Traffic is tenuous. A boon here in
this conjested city.

I drive to Fairfax and Sunset, where
I lived with in a tiny one-bedroom
apartment with my mom. An
ambitious actress. I an ambivalent
artist.

Sunset. The Roxy and Whiskey-a-
Go-Go. Cartoon characters Rocky
and Bullwinkle casually cavort on
the top of a building. Billboards
as tall as the Hollywood sign. The
street of broken hearts for many
an actress -slash-model. They
wander about on street corners
looking haughty and haunted.
Waiting for who knows who to
honk. Their dreams have flown
away like the exhailation of smoke
from the mechanical lungs of the
Marlboro Man. Schwab's drugstore
and diner. The place where some
famous starlet was discovered.
Delivered into the arms of the
Hollywood machine. I opt to go
to the Sunset Grill.

11:00AM
I'm walking down Hollywood Blvd.
Perusing shops and persuing
pedestrian pleasures. Everyone
talks of the star-studded sidewalks.
To me they look tarnished and
filthy. Stars from a sultry smog
laden sky come to earth. The names
of some of the folks honored on
them I don't recognise.

I'm here to view movies today.
I'm definitely not going to
Grauman's Chinese Theater.
Been there. Done that. Gave the
very expensive T shirt to
Goodwill. I look around at the
proud and the plebian. The pedantic
and the pathetic. No prostitutes
out yet that I could see. Probably
toppled into bed to sleep
(for once). Deposed kings
and queens of the monarchy of the
night. The homeless hobble along
with their hair matted and askew.
Shopping carts with stuttering
wheels de reguer.

A couple of tourists with Izod shirts,
plaid shorts to the knee and deck
shoes sans socks gaze in a shop
window. It's borded by tarnished
and faded silver garlands... tinsel
Christmas tree.
"Want to buy a mood ring today?"
One of them querys his buddy,
laughingly.

I find my small theater and enter
the air conditioned lobby. I purchase
a soda and pass on the popcorn.
As I enter the theater's modestly
plush, dimly lit cocoon sanctuary
I notice very few patrons are here
for the matinee. GOOD. I finally
watch the premiere product of
Los Angeles. Movie after movie
slides across the screen. The callus
morally corrosive corporations
conspire with the creative to produce
the culmination of many art forms
in one. Cinema.

LA. Languid. Luxurious. Legendary.
Rollicking, raunchy rodeo.
Seaside city. Sophisticated. Spurious.

SPECTACULAR.

8:00PM
I wend my way up Mulholland Dr.
Another tape is playing in the deck.
One of my favorites. David + David.
Welcome to the Boomtown.

I pull over at a deserted vista. From
this viewpoint I can see the city
spread out like a blanketfof brilliance. The gridiron of LA.
Glitzy and glamorous. Generating
little gods and goddesses. A gigantic
gamble for the disingenuous and
gouache. Tinsel town. Titillating.
Tempestuous. Only the very brave
bring their dreams here... or fools
rush in where angels fear to tread.
All but the fallen angels. They thrive.

Oh! If this place could be bottled it
would be such sweet poison. I
look up at the auburn sky and back
down at the breathtaking panorama
The metropolis that is LA with awe
and angst. I carefully stub out my
cigarette and flip it irreverantly
toward the lagoon of lights.

I get in my car to drive home.
Home?
Could this imposing, inspiring,
impossible place be called home?

Well. Home is where the heart is.
And I live in the heart of a dream.
This is the city of dreams...

CITY OF ANGELS.

Soul Survivor
Catherine E Jarvis
(C) 2005

do you realize
That you have the most beautiful face
Do you realize
That Beauty is vain.
Do you realize
Your heart is home ..to me
Do you realize
Can't hold all this weight

Do you realize
Everyone you know someday ..will die?

But there are some who dream not as others dream,
whose is not as others see.
Gaze through strangers eyes,
such are not what they seem by day,
but rule the world by night.

Carved doors opened in their dreams,
“Welcome lustful ladies, re rasped,
Allow me pleeeese to introduce my immortal garden,
I await your beautiful eyeeees
His handsome hand sweeping for their gaze to follow

The Hadein orchestra played, amberic melodies pierced the air,
****** red skies hung low overhead,
A burning path of crystals afire,
His voice poetic,
Come, come ladies into the dreams on a delicious night path,

─ And so they sleep charmed in dreams

His garden sea emerged as though surging with a slow thick tide,
Hot perfumed metallic air hung as ladies giggled,
Endless jewels of weeping eyes looked to he,
─ Pausing to gaze upon a flower, his smile vulpine
His guests lowered fluttering eyes.

Flowers quivered ***** flesh petals glistened,
beaded with sweet blood sparkles,
At each center a lone mortal eye gazed back,
A sea of stem throats slashed,
forever screaming for his pleasure

Thorn ******* sewn with sinew wept blood,
Endlessly, faithfully dripping returning,
below to the blood wine feeding his garden art
Moaning, they the melodies of hades,
And the night masters sermon begins,

─ “Ladies, beautiful ladies allow me to introduce my immortal garden
Seek you me in your garden of dreams”


© 2016 A Sol Poet Arnay Rumens

Me, sometimes too slow
sometimes raring to go.
And you? like a ray of sunshine
that walked into my room,
Oh! my room full of my lonely
tumbled gloom.

Like a star that lost her moon,
like these rains that makes frozen
doors, inside my caged rooms.
I always saw myself, mostly through
the window, of my dark uneven mind.
Many of those characters I made
in my narratives could have been me!
But were never me for a reason.
Oh! did you ever know that
my beautiful silent vamp?

I usually sit down in my room
unsparing my mind, body and soul
sometimes in relentless pain,
but that was a story lost long back.
Now, in rosy curvy overture
you need to wake me up
with a sweet little pen lamp!
Read my vulpine runes
which I pen late nights
and then wake me up
to my own chorus tunes!
Also please use
my mystic crafty hands,
to give fire to your words
everywhere you wish to write!
But then again let me ask
with my mystic cryptic voice
where were you all this while?
Oh! my invisible little pen lamp.

You are excess of my goodness when am done with my badness
I love you Africa in excess for your excess of problems;
Poverty, wars, warlords, diseases, hunger, famine
And cataclysms evilest eating away your terra firma
Like a desperate Tiger on a capsized boat,
Your riches in history of slavery and heritage of colonialism,
In the excess of your global bleeding that makes me love you more,
Your excessive black ugly humanity in the explosive population
of useless human beings; barely illiterate and blunt in knowledge
Buried deeply in the starkness of crude and vulpine culture,
These bestow to me the synergy to love you O! My dear tarzanic Africa,
Your excessive cult of dictatorships that glitter in aura of democracy,
Sending your sons and daughters to miserable powerlessness,
Devoid of governance in abundance of power and money corruption,
Financing and cementing torture chambers for the voices of reason,
Building my pedestal on which I stand to execute
My cornucopia of love for you dear Africa, an avatar of Satan,
As you are prone and spread eagled in a defenseless stretch
Against  all the ****** condemning your self to ideological turmoil,
I still do love you in supercilious superfluity my dear Africa.

Blowing a plume of toxic smoke.                  Into the nebulous reflection of a pallid wasted face                                                      He grinsfrom ear to ear.                               The blood painted vulpine smile of a lunatic clown.                                                      The mirror  image confuses the conflicted. Yet it speaks rancorous truths                                                                 This is a very special day indeed.                Fruitcake Day.    We have all been released from the cages   The human zoo has opened the gates of hell.                  Party hats are donned by the very special people as they walk about doomed to mortality. Let them enjoy brief moments of light.  Placid and placated. Walking in a daze. Give them Thorazine lollipops and free passes. The bat cages are lying in wait

The carers of clock tower.
Dark this morning.
Mornings lights switching on as work motions, the end of night.
Going into the city,
Spying twitching curtains, of forward moving city lights.
Smoke hangs grey in the cold air above the refinery.
An early photographer catches the lights in his lens.
Sadly, a dead fox curled up on the carriageway greeting eternal sleep.
Foxy for one escaped daily drudgery.
Greeted by overnight headlights.
He bade the world a perfect goodnight.
And so my daylight came.
From the night bus, I stepped into day.
From the kerbside my day was done, someone cleared the fox away, his  vulpine body was gone.
(c) Livvi

Lambasted by the bushwhacking shambles of potsherds burrowed beneath enchanted rhapsodies of sunken Earth lurks a might unleashed by the preemptive dirges of Heaven
Shattering the weight of mismeasure adaptive to apt remarks of conservatory stellar repartees gilded in the flombricks of insuperable gammon wed to the divorce between mammon and guardian treasure etched by revets of colorful nuance but colorblind fortitude chalky yet with scattered sound blinking in the wink of intelligentsia a thousand parsecs of understanding in milliseconds of orbit
The periphery of forgotten stars bereaved but informed of circular axioms of axiolative thermolysis bellowing stoked smokestack locomotives of hibernal clairvoyance dare to wonder beyond limited or enhanced pulchritude the denizens of thievery stolen in a flashbang grenade of a new Grenada of fustilugs gabbling in flushed rosy red tongues of frenzy or aplomb what lurks beyond centurion sentinels of robotic half-witted half-baked semi-cooked bludgeons of cruel insensate irony withheld by vulcanized drapes of curtailed curglaff fashioned by kneaded distance and suspended for heaved awakening at riometer’s knock barnstorming the crude churlishness of the foreign at trespass of the inane scaled down by infamies unstated and flanged to appropriate provisions of measure that conquest lurks behind recess and all is grafted from the callous pachyderm skin of absolution cozy to remedies but aloof from necessities of pang and Tang rollicking magpiety like a rotten pastime aged past its due.
Yet the batting average of the uncanny visitor undaunted by glaring photogenic record balks at precedent and aims to lollygag his chicanery roundhouse above the ricochet of enamor to whilded terminus at circular diamonds soaring illimitable skies boundaries to another nothing beyond the past of something worthy of pearls piggish in appetite for oysters to inhabit
Yet these cloistered vacuums between the pleonexia of the avarice of retches of chyme and the digestion of complete guarantors of shielded heterochrony wassail on dreams Titanic and sunken living repeatedly in revised stereodimensional waves of registry beyond fundus hijacked by towering dimensions ulterior to the profaned foresight of the wretched dimensions of reprehensible coteries belonging lost even when fetched by glimmers of the profound.
The riches of aberrant mobilized fleets swung into tether pole centripetal flictions of swarpollock surpassing credibility and peace surmounting mountebanks of petty finicky itches of cretaceous extinction mapped to qwersy frugal mathematical jokes recoiling at rebarbative manifest destiny belong to the records of soundracketeer trivialization of malleable gold fashioned from Whisky Bar encounters with goldmines ascertained in magic by the suspense of upholstered dramaturgy lurking beneath tall crestfallen visagists who toss and bandy about in tempests of curdacted flow emissary and envoy to flajousts emergent from the verdure of aboriginal machinery fumbled by human ergonomic chicanery espoused by asylum rather than touted as marksman prestige flippant by inordinate gavels ****** asunder into delignated copper-brass keys of foreboding prisons on sinking ships for counterfeit litanies of bogus warning meeting inclement poverty to a drawn sine in the sand vacillating on purpose but intransigent in declension.
Starlet gnashes of odontoloxia wavers of tangential tendentiousness escaping the orbit of enumeration by sly remarks surprising the elective prerogative for convergent autumn to skittish paces of fast-forward beating the brumal bears in their gelid lollygag reminders why the 2nd protects the 1st and the primacy of interposition is the immediacy of flexed muscular DeLoreans cavorting with fringes of unfurled destiny in flashbang instants between the space among malingered pauses among secondary waves of betrayal shift the curious rip tide of stretchgraves too ennobled for widescreen yet narrowly faint in their promontory illusions as mantelpieces of emblazoned scarlet A’s for nothing more than a tempestuous flair with stigma but simultaneously the realization of true dreamy blues escalating around tensions finessed into ****** before drooping into the droll 1850s as the balderdash of detriment belonging to the salvo of picturesque still-life expressionism dripping troudasque in antiquity with flairs of impertinence celebrated more by melodrama than by billows of industrial hinderbaggle toxic to the stated alarmism of trinkochre preventing treony by the warbles of songbirds hemmed in by bushwhacking galactic police forces of granted licentiousness for backbites in the feral canine drollery of aged literacy chosen over youthful foofaraw belittled by retches of attentive brevity rather than protracted obtuseness: neither ideal for the gravity of aborning centuries
Yet we dally in convergent esprit filibustering rhymed cadavers of cadence for prurience in ebullient parvenu damsels vacant from the setting but entranced by the galloping herds of buffalo formidable with warmth because of death and locomotive drive-by shootings Daphne wouldn’t miss.
Yet what Mission Impossible has a BioCyte worthy of henpecked ransom and detached villainy of a trespassed appendix bursting in the Young crowd much to the awakened dismay of the colored affront to black-and-white hubris finicky in oligochrome yet fainter yet than stellified bronteums burgeoning in generativity separated by inherent gulfs of heterochrony balking at submissions fished by loaves of interest in the hambasket of aswallone fractious to redshort individualism in the subhastation of Jurassic prowls of replication hibernal for millions of extinct permanence scowling only by the mandibles of crackjaw Samson yielding his jaunty hair to flummoxed Cutthroat Collapses trimming yardstick furloughs of pleckigger for demotic flavork above fishy warbles of tilted pretense vagrant to everybody simultaneously renowned for arrested cacophony but bridled by few examinations barnstorming teetotalers with haunted patrons of aged wine speaking redivivus in contemplation.
Measured glare radioactive to lizards beneath Mojo Grooves monikers fielding “fly away” as transcendental harpsichord anagrams filter through lavaderos of hackneyed nockerslugs berating illusion for conflation in the influx of dacoitage among Vikings who swim flanked by sonic blares of innocuous dolphins floating dead by the carnage of bloated whales and ridiculous spates of welter above conscience ragged with tetherball futility.
Sparring with engastrimyths sapping the sapwood of sappy banality for toonardical lullabies that pacify opposition more than the Pacific is internecine to volcanic tirades of seismotic jolts of burgeoned awakening I vanquish petty sneakthievery with the unspoken power of a Tweed that masquerades not on ******* but on virtual rhymes cascading throwaway brown-brick fifties collapse on Dagon armed with gnashing poise against guttural gubbertushed victimized flippant fantasias arrayed to brook the decrepit streams of my elevated retinue for staged intrepid barnstorms against phony assassinations to prove petty Edison powerhouses clairvoyant in even their specious participles of quantum irony decisive in fliction marveling at sensible conveyor belt beltways infested by sluggards of inferior hives contrary to every inclination of self-edified skyscraper invented by the mettle of industrious man
So swanky in boast but gingerly in insightful discretion I careen ping-pong victories into a plevisable fortune of Bubba Gump wealth and Fortune Magazine ostentation as the ringleader in Barnum’s neutered circus that never spays a single sword of creation in the barnacles of progeny and progress frogmarched by cruelty and vehement in suppositions of craven popinjay popples of a whangam metropolitan artifice tinsellated with angles of trim prance above suburban ecstasy in transcendent flash and peerless reaches of stratosphere above mundane plaid macaroni witeless in the sterling grace of foreign domestication of livable conditions abiding by aborning stardom.
Harriet Tubman flowers on the bedside of ****** seances of 70’s Parisian cafes gerrymandered by hobohemias of herculean heft squaring account with encompassed brevity in byword dazes with ***** futures yet to court the cordial consensus in dodged drafts of fumiduct riots bailing upon New York Time for 44th street colored incineration of an orphaned Africa embodied in a totemic titan with reninjuble peerless majesty compromised by a frapplank in immodest incisive harpricks of fumbled swerves against the original proclamations anniversary to Boston Indians revolting against Manifest Destinies magnified in incidental clarity by bestowed churches fuming with rampant clairvoyance tamed by the grisly realism of intermittent thaumaturgy swaddled by the reconnaissance of eventual warps blistering in milliseconds to overturn the ultimate row that the mire always wades through in impoverished egestuous profligate convenience of hamstring declension against chary mettle in scruples by elementary riddles in precise junctures of sanctity the bodewash of slick partisan gibes of a puppet show vampire avenging Sarah Marshall. Harriet Tubman is an overblow of subniveal pickets of defensive clarity to immemorial churlish katzenjammer of a protracted flux capacitor dynamos in abolished feral groves of bohemian legend rather than ignoble rhapsody flirting with apartheid’s chosen engineers whittling an indelible scourge of hatred rather than a revived simian immunity scalded with potboilers of sveldtang water scorching like Helsinki after Stockholm goes up in conflagration over bonanza of wednongue dative duress in impregnated purpose skanky with ministered drivel of doytined attempts to flicker a switch exorcised by the integrity of neuroscience besides an intransigence of exuberant interruption of warped logics of pataphysical coarse arenas for submerged vapid Yellow Belly Pie Slingers aimed at 7/11.
Broadside bruisers aim at fracked 80s heyday like a Hey Bulldog reminiscence on a quaint suburban joke of alien freebooters in Franc Swiss gloss swanky on the spot of frapplanks endless in retired liturgy of surpassed peace amicable to truces among the pragmatica of checkerboard pastries willful in array backing sentinels from rearguard hindsight to flank the motatory missiles of target from ransom built like fortress of immutable graves lost to the celerity of the outpaced spectral wonder of teenage flights and hegiras into recessive parsecs enamored by a stage-fright of recocted astral wonders plasma to the ears of a strange foreign abode hospitable to most heaved alacrity sidewinding into effigy and the crumples of used demise recycled twice by intrinsic spirituel flocks of engulfed eagles spooning the pristine littoral waters of precision in nexility
Stayin’ Alive cackles resound in the hallowed furrows of a neat daydream in a scattershot imagination screaming to make myths sticky pigment rather than imbroglios of intaglio filibustering cohesive firm firmaments flexing with windfall at princely surprises cobbled from chocolate-box chariots of brisk elation shoveled by the conglomerate of prim-looking star-crossed unbuttoned snoozes with glamour in the corsair sojourn beyond the space emergent from stardust tinsel and glowered vindication of self-engineered huffs of vulpine vainglory touted as preeminent above dodgy 70s swerve in the vibrant kantikoys of covert tenure and flickers of swandamo glitterati borne of triumphant dimples on immaculate refraction.
Yet lingering on the precipice of aboriginal unity in disjointed sejungible frames of vernal restive residence decaying with anthill colonies of demarche the cadence lost to gyrovague trinkets balks from corridors of Pacific  Avenue peace that is the cardinal to the priests feasting on militias of rentgourge evicted from their own leash of lease ruffled in the plumage of horizontal margins folded into origami zenkidu gullible on Raptor estrangement chained to the rhythms of parsed sparse rumbles of the rhombos without a complexion intended for sparkled starlets doomed to regular tides in swollen tsunamis of soft-spoken surrealism the providence of aimed dreams of drastic marvels beloved to impregnate a verdant cadence latent by faltered seamstress elopes flickering for caress in the duress of finesse.
The quaint drawl of scrabbled runes of rumbled rumination streaks like a quivered acerbic winsome peacock jagged in the parlance of henpecked peak beyond the reach of the highest teacher that ever had the privilege of tutelaries spawned born to teach in Steppenwolf rhythms of rugged heavy metal impeachment yet ripe enough to preach. The last juggernaut is vile bereaved of yets to become the blemish on risky flambeaus overrun by crackles fuzzy in written retch for sudden bursts of volcanic speech.
In the quagmires of serrated heavy leaps I stroke the frazzle as the choir reaps the grim proclamation gilded by sentinels of majestic Challenger Deep burrowing tunnels of coltish ploy dilettante to all his curated adoration that toys with the children of majestic modesty ever so fractious as to balk at the priggish calumny of retinues of the tired coy rampant in emasculated spayed days of stranglehold filigree geometry bent on noisome bleats prone to annoy
So I leapfrog the redundant hackencrude fawn of gripping spectacles of alpenglow summits on acid at dawn foaming with betrothed pumice on borrowed past from potentiated future belonging once to a man yet always bred to prefer fairer damsels sprinkled with a hint of germane Soy saucy to the Bossy promenade to an Islander born and bred.
Guilt like Gravity gilded into spacious trailblazed glory sent seminal and said loudly bowdlerized the pasture of hidden thickets in sparse backwater chavish remanded by fisticuffs of elapse travail in artistry fundamental to rhapsody in distant milky affection jangling high plaudits of auditoriums of the delicate audit bulldozing fraudsters colored by defected records set ablaze in seminal disco becoming cordial homes for shaken residue blushing in crude crass mass the inertia of the classy beyond recognition without flashbang clashes of cultural class glimmering to faltered waterdrips of palatial mischief in correct lens for froward recalcitrance of jittery stash hidden in dacoitage by the police that knelt on incinerated livelihood predicated on chauvinist cash for departed untouchable caste of radical haste too blinkered for internet barnstorms limited only to lurid copy-and-paste regimented for revolution damaged by the loneliest orchestra of refineries of an alien taste.
We crack skulls against ossified hulls riveted weakly to iceberg submarine bulge battled in wars past always to suppress greater travesty yet divulged that Barbarosa was an insider coup expunged by remonstrance against finicky postulate brayed from deranged heirs to a disease of relish quartered by blue danger dancing with shadowed emancipation librettos finkly in tripwire terms of routed inefficacy killjoy to seanced second guess prisms of rootless flimsy accusation wagered by pathetic overstatement in hypenstance trimmed by the crimson paint of a glowering silk woven from dramaturgy belittled by grasp if not by locomotive passerby pause wicked by subversion inclined not to dismay by oriented by nefarious rage of flagrant hapless scrimshanks in prowess sued by process and refined by progress never erased by a five-second glower by the sentinels of parlance intrepid by desiccation to supervised superstition bemused by abundant gray twists of turnverein pillory.

In fossilized forests
Of evergreen
Streams flow
Steely
Because snow hides
The furred canine species
Away from the caribou
Quite easily
They being herbaceous and sought after
With the eyes of the wolves
On them
Approach the gelid waters
Situated perniciously
Close to death
Somehow
From somewhere
A hermit agile, enters
To save a nearby fragile fawn
Alerted by the vulpine dawn
From predators across the same shore
Ensnared by the bloodied river
He is a caregiver
Once more
The hunter in him
Long gone

A gliding entity between ecstasy, my eyes grew from seeds
to inversely unbounded trees, oxidizing, breathing into the collective
a collection eclectic; the ripening ages convene the gods' pallette
so mortal and clean.  From the vantage of mauve mountains,
beholders pressed through the ravine.  "The bewildered be wild"
She crooned on to me.  


Deepening the night, scintillant ancestors dug
with Light, unearthing cherished retinal prints.
The vulpine maw imposed no sin, indigo glow
and a patina sheen, feral bliss had greased
the chain.  Lineages span millennia as scions cast
the sacred Heron, spear of the World beyond
the eros plane.

So She crooned on to me
Her sybilline Dream.

You are like a library, do you know that?
Going slowly crazy looking at endless spines,
enigmatic titles that I have not read everywhere,
purples, blues, reds, indigo,
I want to read you in each last word,
to suffer that impending end

Ah the smell of you in my mind,
the cloistered shadows in corners,
the silence of your vulpine smile,
Glittering crystals on book covers,
gilded writings in gold and silver for miles,
Soft covers, hardbacks

I am in a labyrinths, a maze,
Creative soft chairs are begging,
Come sit and grow,
Visions of other worlds,
Sun stars rotating,
You inspire my secret smile,

My shadows are dancing,  
Reading, reading **** it
I miss you  

─ © Arnay Rumens 2016

I don't know if it's a deity
or the DMT
DMing me
that it's my enemy
and that it sent me this
feeling of emptiness
in blank fields with no flowers
or green grass
just concrete towers
and broken glass
digging into my feet
agony during delete
dragging me to a steep
cliffside leap
this gift I reap
and drift to sleep
until I can't leave
the unending sea
bending me
its entropy
entering
like a centipede
frenetically
slinking down my spine
like a vulpine down a vine
no wine
or ****
can slow down its speed
no way to impede
what makes me bleed
which makes me seethe
seething to believe
there's nothing underneath
my broken glass feet
just an ash heap
I'll see lastly
before passing.

Those vulpine eyes

and crooked smile

could hold my thoughts steady.

The sky is missing a maiden,

and the sea is missing its robe,

but sheltered are you,

in the mists and tears of

a time when I was loved

It was a party like most, I guess
And not a “fun” one, I must confess
But our hostess I adored
And I just couldn’t say: “I’m bored”,

So, I milled around, and said “Hello”
And tried to fake a “party glow”.
Through my third glass of cabernet
I tried of something “cute” to say …

To those persons I’d never met
And find a place for me to set.
In my search for a seating place
I glimpsed an unsettling face

The man to which that face attached
To me appeared most mismatched
With the guests there milling ‘round
T’was from his presence that I frowned.

His forehead high, his hair was dark
His eyes in-set, his skin pock-marked
His cheekbones prominent in their place
And sunken cheeks in his hollow face

His mouth was wide, his lips were thin
And he possessed a jutting chin
His jaw-line strong and not discrete
But that made his face complete.

From ‘cross the room this man I watched
My impression? “The man’s debauched”.
Then I thought: Absurd! ‘Tis the wine
Which makes me think the man Vulpine!

The hostess produced a deck of cards
For playing card tricks and canards  
And for tricks, she performed a few
She was skilled, accolades were due.

The cards then she handed to
The very man that I had viewed.
O’re the cards he quickly pawed
His card skills were great and awed

With manipulations lighting fast
Everyone watching was just aghast
And I’ll admit, I was too
Until at last the man withdrew.

I began to light a cigarette
Then realized I would regret
For filling this crowded room with smoke
A chastisement would be invoked

So … I walked out to the patio
To have my smoke … but didn’t know
The man with the hollow cheeks stood there
And held my eyes with his calloused stare.

Tho’ not a single word was said,
His thoughts were transmitted through my head:
“There inside while you watched
You thought me to be debauched”

“And I am, and as you shall see
I’ll verify that painfully”.
Then cards he held out in his hand
I knew I must do what he had planned.

“Pick a card, any card,
As you can see – none are barred”
I saw my hand as it stretched out
I picked a card mid-deck, about.

I touched the card - there was a singe
An imperceptible tiny twinge
Between my finger and my thumb
I began to be overcome

As I looked into that hollow face
A vision I wish I could erase
His transformation from manly form
Around my being began to swarm

His eyes sunk backward in his head
The whites of them turning red
With burning centers of yellow hue
‘Tis then I knew my doom was due.

I watched his evil face contorted
By oozing running sores exhorted
Evil retched rotting worms
As back into his nose they squirmed

And in my assaulted mind the pain
Was already driving me quite insane
The last thing I heard – his yell:
“You’ve just met the Prince of Hell!”

And now tonight I’ve met you,
Let me show you card tricks I do
Don’t worry it isn’t hard:
“Pick a card … any card …”

Earlier in the week I was pretty sick and Peter was pampering me. One night, as Peter was taking away my tea tray, I took a selfie to send to my mom - as proof of life.
He looked at it from the side, “Ooo, no,” he frowned, “too slutty.” He put his hand out for my phone, “May I help?”
“Can you hear yourself talking?” I asked. My mouth was incredibly dry from the steroid meds. The entire world seemed an unnecessary irritation.
He gently tied my robe, straightened me and my pillows and took a new version. “Better?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said, a little more crossly than I meant to, “you’re always right.”
“It’s the world we live in. Get used to it,” he muttered.
When I tried to pick up my iPad and go back to work, he gently took it away, “Stop,” he whispered, “It’s 12am, you’re done for the night.”
I groaned, relieved really, then he took a small eucalyptus stick and dabbed it on my temples. “Gaa!” I said, “That’s cold!”
Who knew grown up, Californian men were so into homeopathy? After a moment though, it felt amazing.

The next morning, a cat appeared in our suite! It was a solid gray kitten with deep, brown eyes. At first, we stared at it like it was an alien (where’d that come from?) until Leong came in from the cold and said, “Cat.” Then it was welcomed.
About the time Sunny ID'd it as a British-shorthair, there was a tiny knock on our door and a little girl asked, “Have you seen..,” only to squeak “Cirrus!” when she saw her kitty. I’m telling you now, **** the rules, we would’ve kept that kitten.

bye Google. All Google’s been doing this semester is feeding me into CAPTCHA traps, Argh!
How, in 2023, can Internet searches be getting harder? One of my roommates, Anna, is helping me test alternative search engines.
Anna’s a wiry, freckled, 5’4” farm-girl from Oregon, with wavy, shoulder length, dark-brown beach-hair. In our first semester, Anna was a firecracker tossed into my life. She’d bang on my door at 2am (I didn’t even KNOW this crazy farmgirl) with her problems, klutziness and bad boyfriend stories, but she won me over with her vulpine-braininess, her impertinent straightforward secrets and laughter - all delivered in her exotic, western twang.
“Ok,” Anna suggests, getting way into my personal space to see my screen, “try - headache after ***.”
“Sure, GET me on odd shopping lists,” I snark.
“Black mole on armpit,” she countered or “intimate dryness.”
“Big help!” I laughed.

Dark and gelid
A chill of fear runs up my spine
With my death, I flirted
How he snuck, so vulpine.

My captor had me bound
Before I realized
The ropes he put around
Would leave me incised

I tugged and I screamed
In the silver moonlight
While he reamed,
I swore I would fight

I am not a princess
By birth, nor blood, nor right
But I have a fierceness
A silent kind of might

My ropes then I rend,
And I am free again.

Me and my Imagination,
We have this relationship where it feeds my mind with delicacies so sweet,
So tender,
Unlike anything my eyes have seen, my ears heard,
My nose smelt, my tongue tasted,
My fingers felt.


It dishes out and dishes out and yet I turn its fruits away.
—No, I say to it. I will taste of you later. I have a million and one things to do.


"Like what?" It bellows.
"What else have you to do but set eyes on these things foreign and curious I show you?"
"What else have you to do but meet these characters,
the vulpine elegant, the kind troubled,
the frenzied queen, the servant king?"

"What else have you to do than trod through melting clouds,
Traipse through deep marshes,
Trek through a city as quiet and solemn as a graveyard
and rove through a spring that collapses into a vast, vast transparent sea?"


But I—


"But what!?"
"Are you afraid of me?
Do you not like these travels?
These adventures?
These strange and peculiar wonders!?"


I do but—


"Why do you forsake me?
You trap me!"


Please! Calm dow—


"No! You deprive me!
A thousand stories I have fixed,
A thousand you have thrashed.
If not you, my genius I want the world to know.
My worlds, the world to see!
My characters, man to meet!"


I cannot—


"Enough of you!
Bile, and tar,
and poison and weeds I add to the cauldron!
Mix, mix and steer!
To sicken your thoughts and dreams, day and night, I shall!
'til cold sweat breaks upon your forehead,
and fright amaze your mind 'til pen to paper you put!"

Enough counting
Stars in poems
I want to be puzzled
By the firmament
Enough of having power
Over men
I'd rather they'd have
Luckier stars
When it comes to
Saving sisters
That aren't ours
Pretending they're perfect

The first occurrence of warm diplomacy
Of a presidentially concurrent ceremony of icy handshakes
Was the inauguration of Robert Frost's poetic recitation of a lukewarm reception, but, boisterous rationale
Among the black people, were some on the sidelines
And some white people were freed at last
By threat of a less-traversed path that brought them ostensible freedom
The positive outlook of a friendly face in the midst of this diverging wood
Made the travel worth the entry in my journal
So, did Robert Frost put fire to my soul
The medley of this luck is simply the fire to my icy rubber soles
That tread upon palliating poor relations and the force of nature wasn't inconsequential

In the existence
You will
Find your bliss
With the essence of pepper
A simple passage of paper
Of the vociferous vulpine in the green forest
Unseen in this coniferous leaf
Cerulean eyes gaze at the frozen lake
Miracles of Strangers
Foxes running from every empty glass of water
Taking away the serried scenes of defafening silence
There must some way to keep this away
From the authorities
I must confess
I have been deprived
It has been for long
But, not for eternity
With the same breath
I turn
My life
My love
Peace walks among shadows of crowds that you can't explore
Type so slow, I probably haven't typed a word
I'm censored
I'm spoken
I'm in love
In the beleaguering bliss

Derelicts ask for the fire and the ice of the God, I speak of to keep you silent in truth and rectitude
Circus adds some placid perception of derision of citrus amalgam
Port and pomegranate, all the capricious sutures of captious
vulpine and Poliphela dawn on pulpits

Backpfeifengseicht, ill and criminally-ill-fated
Remembering wading, thrusting and jostling
Elk and pliant prying incrimination with surveying perspicacious human nature
With parsimonious prison fortresses and gauntlets

You could swipe
Yourself through
The card that I keep in a pocket full of things
That I don't even know
The bebop stays with you in this innocence
The innocent time that you took the tuk to search through a bag full of flowers
Had to fall into my lap
And the vain veritable truth is that thing is the result of this cosmic flow
Can be fixed just by vulpine dawn
And the place you want to be in other than in this ****** planet
Can be fixed by those red eyes
Looking at the sun at the end of the road
On the road, this place makes your own situated feeling in your soul
And you're crying when you see the light
The redness of your eyes can be seen in the warmth of the sunlight
Personally, we are inclined to take advantage of this comfortable place
That makes us feel warm inside our probable circumstances of trouble
That's when you take in the sunset, and really realize you're at the end of the road
And you're in a place beyond the problems of your very maddening poverty of the soul
This is when you think of a better time, and nobody robs these emollient feelings
In a faraway planet, you may have these happier times though
And you're destined to see it till the end, right?

Amongst a hedgerow a vulpine den
lies parallel to the road and ranches
in a burrow where the residents lay
between man's best friend and vermin.

Imperial hunters track serpentine paw prints
that lead underground; a temporary home.
A permanent grave; a house for humans
must be built here, even if it means

eviction by execution
foreclosure by fire.

Smoke billows before American Foxhounds
drool dripping from canines; saliva trails lead
to their master's boots; the tactical militant kind.

A hollow existence is paved over
cementing a subterranean legacy.
Now the smoke billowing before the foxhounds
exits through the fireplace rising from the grave.