the story went as though
she'd always known the sea
and trusted in its depth
to mellow any ill, caress her
open lovingkind as in a dream.
and dream she would upon the waves,
having settled into floating reverie.
she'd close her eyes and inhale being
there among herself caressing only
ocean, only breath, all sunlit space
to draw her earthly trials gently out.
softened beachside noise would fade
and let alone her ears to hear
the water oneness dipping clear
and deeper in the troughs, for distance
from the stranded holidays,
the beachy noise of seaside frills
and bear her boyancy to rest
in lilting motion, peaceful cresting sleep
atop an intercontinental,
earthsize water bed.
her trust profoundly spanned
the trans-atlantic rift
and any rift to set apart her undulating
ancient ocean mastery. moon
and sun were kneading vastly where
her snores were lost in starfish whispers balancing
the tidal volume set
to always fill and keep afloat,
or otherwise to wake in
sputters and a salty throat.
her body settles into swinging comfort
napping over waves so deep the shore recedes...
... what bright, kind, clarity cascaded in your dreams?
what heart you had, embracing open quiddity,
never sinking nowness breath alert in lucid sleep
and water surface mystic skyward shallow course?
to merfolk gazing up in wonderment
you limply crossed their bouncing sky,
just another flight of fancy in a world of mystery?
did you dream you were a whalesong
sphering out to carry sadness sonorously? did you
school the many impulse-thoughts to clump and flee
the jaws of time? did you bask in light
and find a shining womb of self
to nurture once again and labor out anew?
did gravity make sense to you?
i float sometimes and live that question true.
sleeping far you drifted out and out and in and out of view
and whistles drowned in gathered drama fear
'my grandma! my grandma!'
screamed my cousin at the lifeguard
sweating ******* and leaping over stroke to spash
into your side a breathless shouting mess for you to calm
and ask 'what's wrong?' and angle slowly back to shore
in fits of giggles, bubble laughter at commotion's reach.
they blink in crowds, standing herdlike on the beach.

and now you swim your last,
another summer day.
like any other i awoke
and fed you eggs, so soft
     (at first it wrinkled my nose),
but taste is strange, and slimy works
just fine sometimes,
like in the absence of teeth.
she never liked her dentures,
     (she said she couldn't taste her food)
and gummed her frozen dinner meals with a smile,
like it was the greatest thing in the world.
     (in fact she'd often say, 'that was the best meal i had ever had',
     and with a force that made me happy to suspend my doubt)
and who am i, judging
that which you select? your pills,
your diapers and your vote,
your shows, your nursery rhymes,
your crown manipulation,
your age?
i use abjection well,
as something not unlike a whetstone for denial.
performing daily rituals i abhor
i retrain and edit, revising social eyes:
dilapidated fictions, safer norms
and mores tailored to a loan
with interest from the self.

she didn't call herself a 'nudist,'
though she lived beyond the fence
living **** for decades saying
'i'll never leave, i love my home.'
we played dominoes 'til noon
'another kind of indoor game, one on a side'
her interpretation of my being there
changed soon, like my aversion
for the liquid yoke she buttered with a spoon.
our neighbors loved her and i,
and to meander down our path,
lay their towels and sit
like all there was to do was visit.
lunched,
she hobbles from her plants back to the sink,
and filling the cat dish, stands
century-old arms akimbo
in the doorway, with a sigh to wake the sun.
being of caretaking was never so fun.
holding hands i help her over roots,
around the rocky sections, through
the easy path and level now
she hobbles sure, the cane a decoration
for her pride at being old and young
at heart and quick at stories overtold
in grooves to satisfy the sense of time.
greetings shower us with beaming smiles,
inching to the sandy edge. denuding,
joining everyone, we stand engulfed
in air. modern digambar to don
a vaster cloth of letting be.
skinny dipping grandma, and me.
the water slips around
her fraglile skin, human driftwood
knotted with a smile.
a grand mother slipping through akashic cracks
to undiscover friends their seeing core.
they wonder at the shore
of hoary plight
and wonder on, once we're gone.

The rainy season is at
The door once again,
And loneliness has
Brought me a new pillow,
But who is to defend
My repugnant soul?
Can it be the Gods?

Hear this! The rain has
Began knocking at my
Slammer door gradually,
Oh no, it is knocking
And wailing so heavily,
With his icy voice
Of storm and cold
Arresting my hearty dreams,
But I will retch at his smell
And hurry for my handkerchief,

Where is my lantern?
May be, the native doctor
Has the answer to the
Cylindrical jar containing
Her eternal juniper organs,
Indeed, it is my misfortune
To go about with the priest,
For even the child of
The priest even dies at noon,

Ah, I thought she was
Vigilant and ever-ready
To make the debtors
Chew the palm kernels,
But she became the
Portion of the exterior of
The *** that skin can cover,

I have lost my heaven,
Oh no, I have lost the
One whose neck is like a
Bunch of small-fingered plantain,
I have lost the whetstone
On which I sharpen
My thirsty sword to
Perform deeds of valour,

Let the Gods weep!
Let the ancestors wail!
Let the people of Africa,
Give me condolence of
The talking drums,
For their child is gone,
The wise woman who cut
Her thumb in order to get
A wise husband is dead,

Mother, the Okro full of
Seeds of children and literature,
Efua Sutherland, the queen,
The toad likes water, but not
When the water is boiling,
Send me something
When someone is coming,
Efua Sutherland, the queen,
You and I exchange gift.


© PRINCE NANA ANIN-AGYEI
Email: nanaspeaks@gmail.com

I went to turn the grass once after one
Who mowed it in the dew before the sun.

The dew was gone that made his blade so keen
Before I came to view the levelled scene.

I looked for him behind an isle of trees;
I listened for his whetstone on the breeze.

But he had gone his way, the grass all mown,
And I must be, as he had been,—alone,

‘As all must be,’ I said within my heart,
‘Whether they work together or apart.’

But as I said it, swift there passed me by
On noiseless wing a bewildered butterfly,

Seeking with memories grown dim over night
Some resting flower of yesterday’s delight.

And once I marked his flight go round and round,
As where some flower lay withering on the ground.

And then he flew as far as eye could see,
And then on tremulous wing came back to me.

I thought of questions that have no reply,
And would have turned to toss the grass to dry;

But he turned first, and led my eye to look
At a tall tuft of flowers beside a brook,

A leaping tongue of bloom the scythe had spared
Beside a reedy brook the scythe had bared.

I left my place to know them by their name,
Finding them butterfly-**** when I came.

The mower in the dew had loved them thus,
By leaving them to flourish, not for us,

Nor yet to draw one thought of ours to him,
But from sheer morning gladness at the brim.

The butterfly and I had lit upon,
Nevertheless, a message from the dawn,

That made me hear the wakening birds around,
And hear his long scythe whispering to the ground,

And feel a spirit kindred to my own;
So that henceforth I worked no more alone;

But glad with him, I worked as with his aid,
And weary, sought at noon with him the shade;

And dreaming, as it were, held brotherly speech
With one whose thought I had not hoped to reach.

‘Men work together,’ I told him from the heart,
‘Whether they work together or apart.’

It's telling looking through
the window’s eyes ; 
a room with a paling grey glass view
befogs the clouds reign inside the storm
Often feeling misbegotten regret
for the unfiltered passing glimpses,
whetstone honed and splayed ;
raw hues of a latent life exposed

There's an uncertain hidden shame
in the unheard truth
starving out in the cold;
dwelling in a petrifying silence
of a common hunger
the lonely do ache
  
Merciless hunger pangs
manifest and shake
with an unrelenting bitter taste ;
loneliness grapples and grips
like a silent earth quake
rattling a rib caged heart — writhing
as Autumn bares the trees
  
A jagged ambiguous fault line
ripples through the hollow echo ;
a bolt of lightning caught in a bottle
strikes — silently contained
swallowing the unspoken words
in a greater good

This broken merry-go-round
keeps turning round and round;
the great mandala spinning on
like a worn out hamster-wheel
without a conscious trace
of going anywhere out there

The place you come from
is gone when you leave it —
even if you really never
feel you were from anywhere
but a thousand unmarked mileposts
from out here somewhere adrift;
a pilgrimage towards understanding
why sometimes I don’t know
if I know who I am — or could have been —
waiting on a threadbare prayer

One-day the winds of change
will shapeshift — bye and bye ...

"When the light that's lost within us
reaches the sky"


Jesse Stillwater

November 2018

“ Master Blacksmith, I would like to commission a weapon most formidable. The mere mention of its legendary name shall strike fear in my foes. “

{ In Hephaestus’ name, I craft you this }

So I will hone your heart,
Set fire to your lungs,
And conquer all your unanswered prayers
Into a battle roar.

I will boil these tears.  
A stinging, blinding pool at the bay of your eyes,
Use them for crystal clarity,
To sharpen the mind like a whetstone.

I will forge a sword from your fury,
And the hate of your enemies.
Temper it with thunder,
Cut a path out of illusions.

But not before this:
I crush your spirit a thousand times,
Force you to your knees.  
I will show no mercy on your soul —
Not even if you beg for it —
Bleed it, wring the daylight out of it.
To your despair, growth is the cruelest devil,
And I its most loyal advocate.

But in time you will learn Strength,
And to heal;  
Through the growing pains and screams
Mend all broken bones,
Stitch up all the open wounds.
Dripping, drilling, stilling.
You will, you will, at your will,
Lace together the miracle, the magum opus: Your undefeated self.

No comfort or ease lies in death.  
But all phoenix bathe in flame and ash.
Selves and egos, they died for you to live
— So live!
Dance on its grave with manic abandon.
Honor it with your new life.
Transcend it, over and over again.

I recall the day, before she was five,
She asked to go, and play outside.
I answered, Yes, for awhile;
For I read his poem, about the road,
The travails she'll face far from home.
At our door I watched her play,
And saw the roads lead her away.

There'll be times she's on her own,
In a one-on-one, or in a throng;
In places where she won't belong;
Or find herself between right and wrong.

Yet, I untied the knot,
Dropped the tether; as a father,
I knew there'd be tools to hone,
Wits to sharpen, boards to carry,
An ax to edge on her whetstone.
There was work to be done.

If all goes well,
If I got it right,
It won't matter
Which path she roams;
She'll always know
Which lead her home.

I am the Consumer
Not one of goods, not one of gold
Nor one of flesh and blood, but souls
I drink fear like water, engorge sorrow whole
We’ll see who’s the stronger one when that bell tolls
I betray Trust, blood splatters to rust
Beauty's a thing you call cinders and dust
I’ll build my shrine with hatred and time
Still alive in the muck, your spirit is mine


And I will eat until I’m complete
A satiated unstoppable beast
You do the math, there’s no going back-
To this world that we love once I’m on the attack
Money, my brainchild, nations, my stars-
In our fun little system of bites, wounds and scars
The borders they draw, like a hunter declawed-
Let me pacify them while they hem and they haw
Wealth’s worth more than life, how very sad
Death is encroaching, this earth has gone mad
And I am its true god, inside all of you
Division and pride, I am nothing new
Most fail to realize my myriad forms
Skin pigments, religions, when torment’s the norm
Strings for my show, your weak human traits-
Are the vectors of my blight while I sit and wait


I don’t want extinction, I’m full of love
I want global completion, I'm the eye above-
Pyramids of dead bodies and blank staring heads
The ideas behind them, they keep me well fed
No, I don't want death, my pleasure's your pain-
I'm insidious in dark parts of your brain-
Empathy is the whetstone, savage my blade
I am the tragedy where peace could have been made-
But the will of proud men wont let your hearts accrete
I am greed, but not greedy, I'm just trying to eat


This vision, my foe, I don't want you to think-
Apathy helps me forge my chain of endless links-
That will constrict this world till the fire or ice
Your whimpering fades while I steal paradise
Drugged minds that yet live drown in my river Lethe-
Dare to resist, you'll be crushed underneath me
But I'll keep you alive by a single hair's breadth
While poor dogs in the streets gnaw on themselves to death
And no, I'm not evil, there are worse than I-
My tools sold me this world as they watched children die
They’re the malicious, they gave their hearts to me
Counting the coins in which they put their beliefs
It could be anyone who thinks they are blessed
Because you're all the same, I have you fooled
Your children will be next
For I will eat
And eat
And eat

In shallow slumber
Full in fight

Through the

Yearning

Through the night

A man apart
Of will and start

Reveals his open
Empty heart

He revels in the thoughts
That last

And never feeds
The famished past

For

Going
Home

Is this
his cross

to bear

And wear

Of earth
And air

So give to him
The proof of life

The going
Home
and worthy fight


worth
The owning
Of his plight
Upon
The heavens
And
The plains

Upon the sacred
Faceless names

Remember Him while you are young,
before your days and years grow dim,
before your time finally draws to a close
and you realise that life has ebbed away.
Remember Him before the sun burns out,
before the constellations are turned off
and the dark clouds remain after the rain.
Remember Him on the day the guards quake,
when the soldiers are doubled over in fear,
when the workers stop because they have fallen
and the faces peering through windows fade,
when the doors of houses are closed shut
and the whetstone grinds to a standstill.
Remember Him when people wake to silence
because the birdsong can no longer be heard.
Remember Him when people fear the mountains
and terror finds them wherever they walk.
Remember Him when the almond tree blossoms
and the grasshopper can barely drag itself along,
when all love and desire and passion wither away,
when the mourners come to wander the streets,
because you are reaching your everlasting home.
Remember before the silver ring is melted down
and the golden bowl is smashed into pieces,
before the water jar is shattered at the fountain
and the pulley wheel at the well is broken.
The dust becomes one with the earth again
and your spirit returns to He who gave it.

Nothing has meaning.
Everything is pointless,
an inane transient cloud.
A single breath of smoke.

War; absolute
This will be my macadam into re-assemblage
For if I'm not on edge, I'm taking up too much precious space
What wickedness lies beneath the surface of the skin?
I should know this place better than anyone
But my landscape has become mercurial
Ever changing, impossible to map
I am forced to navigate its pitfalls in ever complicating ways
It has become a desolate place
I alone should rule here, my sovereignty unquestioned
Yet I've become content to be complacent, and have allowed a sickly intruder to slip past my walls
They infect, demoralize: turn my skin to stone
They must be expunged; cut out, snipped from the healthy flesh like a cancer
As one removes a gangrenous foot to save the leg
Though my tools at the moment are blunt, I sharpen them daily with the whetstone afforded to me
They will not continue to expel bile into the bloodstream for long
My strength returns by the hour
They know this, and they tremble
I am the goddess to whom this altar is devoted
I am righteous fury, come to cleanse this blight with holy fire and flood
The war drums sound as the gate is lifted

The iron bell tolls -- judgement day cometh

Beautiful scar
I saw a chasm in my skin
A deluge
A mount of Venus
The angels took their hands
And forced upon my palm a deeper meaning
I saw it bleed
I felt the pain
No head line can account for this
No love line can amount to this
No lifeline
No imperfect star
Only knives
Sharpened by whetstone
And gleaming with meaning
As they steady carve your name into my salt
You were the razor
I was the skin
You were my love
I swear to god
Even the tears you shed found a way to cut me
Cut me deep
And I bleed your touch
My screaming nerves
my fragile flesh
My paper skin
I offer up
In all my wounds I know your heart
And as I heal I know your hope
It is a line on soft tissue
A forever
A beautiful scar

Now heaven does not seem so
close, never singing, yet—
I'm putting will to whetstone
while building on regret.

The flash of our general’s bayonet
Is brighter than ours, the blade
More piercing, sharpened every day
With a worn out whetstone.

The general’s cry is fiercer than ours,
******* and ferocious. His eyes
Reflect green back to us, as though
No light can penetrate them.

In the charge, no man outstrips the general.
The bullets that fell his men only graze
His flanks, as though a common soldier’s shots
Dare not strike at a higher rank.

He is first to take the hill, first to raise
His battle-muddled head over the ridge.
It is he who first spies the other side
And calls victory while the last men fall.

There is no sorrow like our general’s,
Sorrow that follows each man to his grave
And climbs on those broad shoulders
When the rites are given and dirt thrown on.

And we, though we may know his worth,
Question him for all that dirt - could we not
Have moved less earth? Had so many to die?

Our general, beaten in victory, shuts his eyes.
His chest heaves, but he will not cry for fear
That we are right. He will not have it said
That great men were led to die by a coward
Who was afraid to shoot at death.

His breathing slows, his eyes open,
He orders us to march and not to shy
From death, for always some must die,
Though he cannot tell us why.

Finish me with your lips flushed;
rosé on my skin, whetstone
that surrounds me with moans hushed
pleading to have her love sown.

Post-Apocalypse Liturgy

0.
These are the days in which the dead outnumber the living, and in which most of the living
                                                                                                                                     act like the dead.

1.
The wind in this place is a howl that never gets tired.

Still, I march on, a lonely soldier in a foreign land, desperately trying not to feel like a refugee.

The remains of my regiment left me long ago and are now buried under grey sand-dust or are walking, but away. This does not mean I am walking to anywhere, or that I know what I’m looking for
or what I will find.

                     I once knew a girl, and then knew that girl as a woman – two distinct and different people who would be strangers to one another if they ever meet.
                                                                   I once knew a boy, who did not become a man because I couldn’t **** the other man with the axe fast enough. There’s blood flecked under my nails and it is not his but it may as well be. I carried his keychain with the rabbit foot on it for the longest time, but in the end bartered it for clean water.

These are two of the people who are walking away from me.

2.
Here there is only a scarf over my mouth and nose, scratched sunglasses and my battered boots moving, always forward. There is no longer a North Star to guide me so who knows what direction my feet are taking me.

I see hollowed trees and cracked tarmac peeking out from the dust. The sand and the dust are the only things that move here, swirling, like us, directionless and in circles.

But not like me, no. I am moving                                                   Forward
                                                                                                                                                                          
Through the shimmering haze ahead I see a smudge, a smudge that is not a ruined tree or a ruined building. Just a ruined person, and they’re coming towards me. I check my hands, my knife, my pistol that has no bullets but does have a heavy **** and no one needs to know it’s just a glorified club.

We stop a few meters apart from each other. He’s wrapped in ***** bits of cloth and smells like turpentine and fatigue, but he holds himself like a wire. He’s looking at my pack, the blade at my hip.

“Howdy stranger. Any sign of life your way?” I haven’t spoken in weeks and no longer have a voice. I shake my head.

“Got any water to spare?” Again, I shake my head. He keeps looking at me, all wire and tightly wound desperation.

I’m going to have to **** him, so
                                                    I do.

3.
It’s a lonely dark, trapped between the teeth of suspense and resignation - an abandoned parking lot at midnight where an old drunk man cackles at nothing.

And I made
          ****** sure I was surrounded by nothing.
Sing to me silence
                   Remind me that I can still breathe.


4.
I still talk to you sometimes.

“Remember when we met? You smiled and looked clean and told me there was water nearby. I didn’t trust you, didn’t believe you but followed you anyway. Maybe because I couldn’t smell anyone else, maybe because I hadn’t been clean in what felt like years

            (but only dead gods can tell time here, so who knows really?)

Maybe because I still had a bullet left or maybe because I was

Lonely.

Were you lonely? Is that why you trusted a wandering wretch like me?

Or were you one of those dead gods who could see the Future, who could see the Forward, and what came at the end?

Sometimes I ask you things forgetting you are no longer there. When I’m thumbing the sharp of my knife and say

“Pass me my pack would you? Need the whetstone.”
                                                            Or
“Do you remember Before? Were you old enough?

I remember,
Before
        Before
Before
         Before…

Do you remember if it was better than this?”
                                                           Or
“Stop hogging the blanket already, just lie closer to me.”

And I wake up thinking you’re there but it’s just my own arms wrapped around my own waist.

5.
When I see the first sign I imagine I am hallucinating. I saw a bird earlier this morning, and that can’t be right. I saw you this morning, and that can’t be right either.

But I walk and soon hear something I haven’t heard in a long time. Someone is laughing.

And the town I wander into is not really a town, just a place to sit and sleep, cobbled together with people and plywood and spit.

‘Hopetown’ it’s called. And that would make me laugh if I remembered how to.

I’m greeted with a mixture of caution and curiosity. There must be a few dozen of them, ***** but alive and they smile at each other and have the energy to talk with their hands. There are huts and there is a circle marked by stones and a fire pit in the middle that is a meeting place. There is a hut with a table out front that is a ‘supply store’. There is a row of bicycles, some more battered and twisted than others, and I look at them carefully.

I come in peace, I come in pieces.

Stranger, stranger, become a bard and tell us of distant lands.

But there is nothing to tell about distant lands. There is only sand, and ruins, and those people walking away from me.

So I make something up.
It seems good enough, I can stay for the night.

I trade a battered toy doll with only one eye for a refill of water and a can of some food with the label scraped off. I ask for boots in my size because mine are broken and giving me blisters. They say sorry, don’t have any, and ask me to sleep with a woman with dark red hair and bird thin wrists. Plant a new seed, they ask me.

Don’t they know I’m shrivelled and hollow? There’s another woman and a man I’ve seen who I’d rather sleep with, but I’m a guest here and I say yes.

Rozelle, her name is, and I forget it immediately. It’s safer that way.
I can tell she doesn’t want to sleep with me and I’m still thinking of you so we talk for a while about things I also forget immediately (safer, safer, safer) and then we fall asleep next to each other. She can always tell the others it didn’t take,

It’s common enough.

I wake in the night like a ghost has tapped me on the shoulder. I don’t like it here, can’t remember the last time a body was so close to mine… It was you, wasn’t it? Then it must have been centuries ago.

So in the dark of night when there isn’t even a moon I steal the stallion of the bikes. I have to knock out a sentry to get it, but I don’t **** him, I put him to sleep quietly.

Because I am the villain here.

Maybe that means I should have killed him, but I don’t want to be the villain. Bad is what this life has painted me as, and I don’t want to be that.

Not that it matters because I’m only ever going
                                                                                                             Forward.
So I ride,
Going
                 Going
                                 Going
Gone.

6.
They might follow with pickaxes, but townies don’t like to travel. They have water, they have each other. But still I ride all night and into the rising sun but
Still don’t burn.

Two days I ride and nothing happens but                                         space.

Wait, that’s a lie. I rode past a graveyard for the elephants: huge trucks, hollow, huge trailers, hollow, huge dreams, hollowed out.
hollow                                               hollow                                          hollow

I peddled faster, then, because I don’t like mirrors.

And now the sun has fallen out of the sky and I usually stop before then and find a place to camp but I was caught up in getting past the graveyard and forgot about it.

Now it’s pitch black – no stars anymore – and I’m walking my stolen bike, looking for a dune I can crawl behind and sleep with one eye open, bike tied to my wrist with a bit of rope I found several suns ago.

And then I see the glowing shadow of a fire. I smell cooking meat. This cannot be a good thing. I consider riding on but without giving myself a why I lay down my bike and crawl as silence up a sloping hill so I can spy on the people gathered around the fire.

Apart from my hunting knife my most prized possession are my binoculars. I put them to my eyes like a spy from a Before movie. There are three men and a woman around a sad fire.

A leg is being turned on a spit.

The leg belongs to a middle aged man slumped on the sand. He has no limbs left, and there are ***** bandages on the stumps of his arms, his left leg. The Eaters kept him alive for as long as they could, taking a hand there, an arm here, an ear and some toes there, but now he is dead and they will cook and eat the rest of him. Feast, feast, and starve until they steal another body, another soul.

I turn to go but see something else. A girl
Hogtied and *****, tangled hair.

She’s a scrawny thing but they’ll eat her anyway. I wonder if she knew the man, if he was her father, or a friend. Or just a stranger.

I once ate someone:
She cried and cried and cried and I devoured, devoured, devoured until there was nothing left

But her flesh.

“You’re a cannibal of the heart” she said, still crying.

And I shrugged, because I no longer felt anything (this was before you, of course)

Because this is the book of our lives:
          Read it and don’t weep
There’s not enough water to spare.

And she is another person who is walking away from me.

7.
But I want to be the hero.
I want to be
                 Something someone will remember with a smile
And not with tears, or rage
                Something someone will remember without reaching for a handgun.

8.
It takes a few minutes of planning, and some sneaky footwork. They have weapons but so do I and I have surprise. So I get behind the one with the shotgun by his knee and slice his throat.

Surprise!

Can’t remember much of what happens next but it ends with three bodies on the ground with the man without limbs, a blossom of red on my forearm and a lot of sweat, a lot of kicked up dust.

And the leg on the fire has burnt now.
Ashes to ashes, and so on and so forth.

The kid is looking at me as if her eyes could slice. And who knows, maybe they can – she was certainly born After and no one knows what is possible anymore.

“I’m gonna get this off you, ok?” I say, holding my knife and touching the gag trapping her tongue. She doesn’t move and I slice it off and she still doesn’t move.

“What are you going to do with me?” She asks. And I don’t have an answer.

I didn’t think that far
                                               Ahead.

“Nothing. I’ll scavenge that lot” (I **** a thumb at the bodies behind me and repress a wince as my bleeding arm screams) “and go.”

What she says next is unexpected.
“Can I go with you?”

I look closely. She’s feral and ***** and reminds me of jungle cats from Before. She might jump me in my sleep and leave me for dead, steal my knife and bike and name and ride into a sunset and burn in it.

But I want to be a hero,
I don’

To another shirking duty do I die
Swarmed by specious crowding thoughts that sped  
We wed in black, so dreaded black to tie  
The altars bones of white that lined our bed  
And followed constellations in our heads.  

My addled weight of whetstone you've become  
With tons of stones in wooden bladed sling  
Past summers clouded face hung heaven's sun  
On bark you tried to dry the deadest things  
And on my strumming soul threadbare you'd sing.  

The nightmares ran past colored vats of dye  
As shifting shapes geometrized the rune  
What dyed the pigment in your furthest eye  
Was joined with the paler canvas tones
And cracked the varnished face our pebbled moon.

Aye, that crescent cuts the cloud
with golden slits of predilection
for the fog's encompassing shroud
and a parasol's protection.
The sun's spring-time blooming
auric light nearly blinds my eye
because that beauty's all consuming
with eulogies woven through the sky.
I contemplate the blazing fires
along the razor edge of the sword
slicing thoughts with solar spirals
eliminating the errant, straying word,
and cast back the black magic
of numbed-down confusion
while sharpening my moon sickle
on the whetstone of illusion.

the sonofabitch tremor
  from a tall cup of americano

i am somewhere in the heart of Libis
  feeling the libidinous snarl
  of trucks, the poignant treason
    of leaves slamming against each other,
  the bamboozle of the youth

   this is my 5th poem sliding out
    of my whetstone mouth
   sharpening the dull blade of tongue
    as the harum-scarum of the swivel
   door crafts a rising hullaballoo.

    spilling coffee on my ****** white
     this sonofabitch tremor
    terrorizes the purity of the *******
       clenched against no succor,
    eyes squinting in lachrymose fretting
      palpebral shade of tossed out gray
        caprice of clouds — no
  
   more coffee
      for me,
          these words nudging me
   keeping me awake with
      persistence.

You've got me burning away from the inside.
I meet you on the back porch,
windblown and beautiful,
with shaking hands and a racing heart.
It begins,
as anything worthwhile does,
with the chime of your luagh.
You stand lost for both breath and words,
and if I hadnt loved you before,
I certainly do now.
You love me glacier slow and golden,
though I am anthing but.
Truthfully,
you've never been good at staying where it was safe.
There is nothing contained about this.
Nothing tame.
Nothing careful.
Some people are born with soulmates,
and some people make them,
like a whetstone honing a blade.
Besides,
who wouldn't fan this flame?
I deserve to be loved how I want to be loved,
and I want broken.
I want fire-starved.
I want unkowable.

I want it here,
where dark things make a legend of themselves.

They always ask questions
                Over and over again, questions are asked.
My lips a constant question mark, my hands a fleeting moment,
                 my hair ******* in thoughts I never question.
whether I am asking for knowledge or release or death is uncertain.
                               The last two are not mutually exclusive.
                                                             My bones are restless.
When she dips into the spaces between your ribs, digs out flesh and words with claws
                   I often wonder if you can even feel it.
                                        But my hair is too messy and requires my attention,
      My hands are too chapped for me to do anything but lick the cracking skin.
We are not an answer, and questions are not lifeboats.
         The sea is not afraid to toss and turn in its bed, drowning nightmares beneath it,
                                                             ­             But who are they?
                            My lips think they know, but they say nothing,
pinched into silence by something different than us, but not bigger.

                                       When our knowledge makes manifest something like peace
   I return to my whetstone, press my teeth to the grain, and wait for the storm to put me to sleep.

Said the sword as the eye,
"My edge is the sharpest,
Quickest maker of greatest numbers."

So the squid said:
"Oblivion is the lip of my beak,"
And he was the sharper.

The eye, as the sword, set to the forge,
Forfeit to visions of keenness,

And became claimant to a wicked edge
Which shaved him of shame;
Which loved most the whetstone,
So he set back to sharpening,
Growing so fine as to slice the stone in twain.

In recoil, he knocked upon his plane
And cut himself from his steadfast cradle,
And was pulled silently
Into timeless unbecoming.

that sharpened them.  Every
time they rubbed against my grit
their silver blade cut just a bit. The cool
in me turned them to steel. I built

a tower I cannot feel. They shred
the lines so thin into turpentine
and gin. I laid colorful as chalk
as they carved upon an empty

block. How many times can I
sharpen them till they inched their
way up my hem. On a  blooming spree
they stung me, like the honey bee. Now

my eyes are sandpaper, and my stare
a skyscraper. No longer cool, but
burning brush from scraping metal,
and steaming like a hot tea kettle.

Sharpen the knife by whetstone,
walk to the shore, hold the blade
perpendicular to the fat belly
blanketed with tiny mirrors glinting
sun into your eyes

    Find the bridge decorated in promise locks
    cast a net,
    prime your tongue
    squeeze air from your lungs into
    gurgling words decorating her ears,
    be impossible
    be the everything
    lock yourself inside as a habit
    as the indispensable limb

Scrape scales with the cutting edge,
send them flying in the air
landing like lily-pads
breaking the surface of salt-water

    Touch your roughest hand to the softest
    palette of the face with knuckles
    first tenderly like a mother
    and then violate in flight,
    land harshly
    crush the rosy palette into a
    cacophony of betrayal on the
    cheek, corrupt the soft curve of the lip
    decorate the chest in crimson,
    cut out trust from deep inside her
    womb  

Bathe the memory in a white tub
kissed by carmine, let it flow down the
hypnotizing hurricane drain
through hair-matted pipes.
His after-shave knuckle tenderness
will perfume the steam,
permeate your memories
make home deep inside capillaries

Wash the fish in the Atlantic – let it
kiss its forehead, puncture the gut
with the ****** end, pull back,
let crimson blood and iron
perfume spill in globules onto emptying
tides washing out to sea

Dawn crab will come to the shallows,
eat the scraps with their pincers.
In the morning gulls recognize backs
hunched over by the water, swoop down

Pull out the curved hook from your cheek
dragging you in matrimony
drop the shredded robe of sinew and worth,
leave the tatters on the bathroom floor

    Go to her in the evening
    sew the pretty back together into a quilt,
    stain it with ****** knuckles and
    kiss her goodnight into resentment

Others will come into your life,
one will recognize the perpetual
circling in the epicentre,
swing prayers into your centrifuge of
consequence and
pull out the spears from
your chest, mend broken hopes
straighten the shattered
bones into a home indispensable to him
and show you simply, Love

{every body does speak at once, which is why we learn to focus, as if quiet}

dikes were wire cutters in my youth,
probably short for diagonal cutters,
in the blade-making trade.

There is a knack to a clean cutting edge.
Carbon, in diamondic form crystalized in
the whetstone, wet with
golden oil, just a drop,

the edge, one stroke, one way, soft
like pet the kitty
or, yeha, the baby chick. You know, soft.

Except,
ye whet the edge, soft, ye stress the bonds that link the all
oy vey today to the cutting edge,
not the bleeding edge,

steel to steel, and past that, soft touch
carbon point to carbon point, diamond shapes diamond,
softest con nextion, feel the flow hear that dove
sing triptic signals, make make see
(coo coo, too)
So soft, we say
peacemaking is not a noisy occupation.

Fame is less desirible, I mean,
you may
desire less fame, using your may power right,
to regulate surges and urges and impulses
and other flesshy stuff,
**** it, ignot it,
you may, you know.
or not,
while wishing for more money at the moment of need,
the point of lack poking me in my back.

forcing war's phonytian reasons
to cease with this disturbentce, settle down.
Imagine you won.
This is ever after that.
You know, here, at this resting place in life, you must pay attention
to receive instruction for construction of those things you hoped for,
beyond rough draft.

We are not at war with any opposing idea, there are none here.
You words are free to form them but all that shall
remain is the shell the pearl formed in,

when we made those gates. Feynman added the do-over mode,
it only works if you think before you act,
in terms of being.

To be or not is not a quest. One hand clap to the forehead.
Here we are. Thinking the same words in English, and I may be
dead someday.

Ol' fool, he believed some impossiplease, a trap

stab my ****** birth right.
I sit still and don't march as onward christian soldier
damnedright marching of t' war for Jesus sake.

incursions of self-less-ness, soft touches, whispers

do or don't, if then else, see it through, is the end evil,
in your judgement.
Reset, or ride it out, hell is not as believable as you imagine
if you wake up there.

In a fictional world, true rest is an act of trust.
this is worth the test.

Not live, but living. Each sound
even
chosen
symphony beyond belief, take it, take it

he who hesitates is lost, eh. You land in a pile of proverbs,
super positioned motivators planted
since god gnos when and only then

for a flash, upper left quadrant of the primary window
from a FPS POV
then
nothin'. Hell was over and here I am.

That's as close as it seems it may habeen,
we found this thread, it's live, we think, touch it.

--- no child need master every game,
--- nor must any greybeard

Who is making these rules? Ah, you see. When we,
augmentedus, who meant it

when we sought truth, and despised boos for no reason.

Now. Awake by any mortal standard.
Arrogant. Self-called teacher of the safest route I found
to here.

You can hear me and accept insanity as apossible cost, so what.

Ye, gads, ****** did that, he said They (the notusem) shall hate me
for loving you,
so they shall hate you for loving me. Nicht vvvahrrrrr!
He plagiarized Jesus, I think.
That stinks, but

from a certain POV, however the door is knocked upon

curios and kurioso or pure lust for power,
greed morphed
from imaginary
need to be a part of the side not losing,
like an abused Poke'mon gone insane,
knowaddamean.

Inside the game, is virtual as allhell, in the the mind of the author
and finisher of the game,

be his intention good or ill,
dare ye play?
Here, it's safe. Get a grip on happy here and after all you go thru,
ever is as easy as pi.

Dragons devour what dragons devour in reality,
same rules.

Cut both wires faster than the spark, watch...

do you remember when you lost it?
when you would take me hostage?
when you turned caustic?
you used my presence as your very own mental whetstone.
you called yourself psychotic,
called our words cautious, hypnotic,
but they were toxic.
they were exhaustive.
talks of the atlantic,
and how i'd cross it.
"don't worry, my flight stops in austin,
and then again in boston, i promise.
honest, i'll even book in august."
but then we tossed it,
there was a line,
and you crossed it.
sometimes you got so reckless, so hostile,
that i felt like your chaperone.
we both had to learn how to grow,
living in time zones of our own.
the air turned cold,
when we let our emotions show.
but i was lonely too,
so at least you weren't alone.
you acted as my bright summer sun,
setting my world aglow.
but every time you said hello,
i remembered how much i missed the snow.

Exhausted
kneeling so grit is driven deep
and the sneer and shove
of those robed in a fake love
harries

The smug, paid for fists
of sanctioned thuggery
inflict blows that go beyond
contusion and haematoma
deep into a world soul,
and scar

Solutions are there
if we bring a whetstone
to the keen edge of care
and weaponise kindness

Because something that has
been a mess for generation upon generation
can’t be ignored to fester more

It is time to exercise rights
and excise

SONG OF THE SCYTHE

My uncle
sits cross-legged

the shiny sickle
of the scythe

held in
his hands

as if he had pulled down a moon
wrestled it to the ground

tamed it.

He looks like a friendly
Death

having a tea break.

Nothing dies in these seconds.

The world holds its breath.

The scythe winces
with light

so sharp it can cut thought.

It cuts through
what I am

thinking now.

The whetstone sings
to the curve of the metal.

It cuts through Time
sharper sharper each time.

My mind bleeds.

It cuts through each successive second
so that each second is separate

from the rest.

The song the whetstone
sings to the scythe
scares me.

My Uncle
takes a horsehair

from Dolly’s tail so
softly she thinks it’s still there.

The scythe eagerly
divides it into two.

Dolly whinnies
nuzzles him affectionately.

He runs his thumb
along the blade.

Blood sings
in the open air.

He ***** it.

“Perfect! ”

He smiles.

“Perfect! ”

The world catches its breath.



*

Waiting for my turn to go on at Brighton...my poems placed carefully upon the table didn't realise how near a nite light was and up go the poems in flames. A barman had to come down and put me out with a tea towel. Just then I'm called upon to read and there is just enough of the poem left alive for me to read!