this is my excavation to
the days coming along
running hands with laughter
throwing it down on the table
straight
flush
okay, cool

sister, these things don’t matter
when we’re twisting into the sun
with pants that are too short
the fountain rich with
iced chai
tangled with the peculiar
the beautiful
through these moments
I commend
our hearts for finding each other

love is always on the move
as sure as shoe shine
as mahogany
like timidity to relinquish
to let the universe take hold
and instill this emotion
into my body
fit it all in my heart
O, singer of love
fit it all in my heart
the knell
the reverberation
the cotton that lands
on your hair
the sunscreen stuck in my ear

we are a sketch of two travelers
sleeping under stars
the fire
finally dies down
the rapture of the universe
is overwhelming
everything flows
everyone is connected
and this music we hear
is constant
like gentle waters falling

this too, sister
makes my cane solemn
and I draw you in the sand
only to watch the tide
wash you next to me
the emotion
wrangled in English
simply means good
simply means
a full listen and
dear sister
because everything begins
and will be remembered always
as love

Sleight of hand
creates illusion
politicians the rich
in collusion.
Good slaves we
buy their Solutions
titrated diluted pollution.

They've got you wrangled
with the carrots they dangle.
I see black holes
You See Stars Spangled.

"Disseminate fear keep them numb and Confused
they'll reward our
egregious abuse"
but fools won't believe
when it's dark
they see day
so now I tell you
what's the use anyway?

They've got you wrangled
with the carrots they dangle...
You see white stripes.....
I see liberty.....***** and strangled

Keep it obscure,
then hand you a cure,  
their best phishing lure
To make you believe
that this country's great
they use a little bitty hook
and a tiny bit of bait

They've got you dangling with the carrots they're wrangling.
I see black holes
you see stars spangling

They've got you wrangled with the bait they dangle...
you  see white stripes,
I see liberty ***** and strangled

They got you dangling
with the **** they're wrangling....
Open your eyes
you'll see there angling.

the river flows as
living memory

the birds of the
Nile are its
knowing eyes

fly catchers
ply the rich
delta
probing
sediments
of sand
washed
from
distant
Nubian
mountains
eons
ago

layers of
recollection
go fathoms
deep

shrieking
gulls
plumb the
mud flats
with heroic
persistence
as they did
when the
first rafts
drifted out
of the
Great Rift
ferrying
civilizations
forebears
to the
opening chapters
of world history

the first
seafarers
competed with
greedy spoonbills
to navigate
porous
papyrus
crafts
through
the narrow
channels
of the
Damietta,
transporting
ideas, skills
and goods
to build an
emerging
world

mallards
troll the
same
gentile
eddies that
goaded the
Mother of
All Waters
to float the
basket cradling
Yahweh’s
infant prophet
Musa, into the
loving arms
of Bithiah
who nurtured
the vanquisher
of Osiris’
galleries of
Gods

a litany
of conquests
rolled on the
silver waves
of this river

conquerors
maneuvered
the truculent
currents
like sharp
eyed hawks
skimming the
pliant waters
with well
extended
razor quick
talons
picking the
Nile’s bounty
clean

this fertile
delta remembers
more than
6,000 seasons
of harvests

the
cycles of time
has produced
seasons of plenteous
abundance and
desperate privation
all cleverly exploited
by generations of
fearless herons
who wrangled
the demons
of hardship
to route the
dread of hunger
expelling despair
from the Egyptian
DNA, etching
a new hieroglyph
of freedom onto
survivors hearts

the Niles
sorrows
and glories
perpetually
wash this
magnanimous
delta
surely as
the gentle
wakes
of feluccas
continue
to lap its
shore

the marshes
have not withered

the verdant
reeds prosper

flamingos find
the water
rich in fish

in due
season
the red
lotus will
paint
the arcuate
alluvial
fans in
scarlet
autumnal
hues

In the
Valley of
the Kings
the shadows
of migratory
flocks mark
the foundation
stones of the
pyramids
as they did
when slaves
pushed them
into place

the eternal
lines of
pharaohs
rule has fallen,
their gods
imprisoned
in hieroglyphs
adorning their
royal tombs
on display
in the worlds
museums

the weathered
pyramids continue
to crumble

the face of
the sphinx
withers away

torrents of
blood flowed
in this rivers
currents, now
strained clear
by the reeds
anchoring
its banks

the fleeting
rule of regimes
are pictured
as momentary
reflections
skimming along
the ripppling
water; the
rise and fall
of rulers is
captured like
the shifting hues
sunrises and
sunsets bespeak
upon the waters

the ascending
waves of
the Sacred Ibis
dance atop
the Nile’s gray
waters; the
river jumps
to life as the
graceful wings
take flight
to foreign
destinations;
expecting
to return
again as
the cycles
of seasons
round once
more

as the Nile flows
its memory deepens
the eyes of the birds
watch and remember


Music Selection:
Gary Bartz, I've Known Rivers

Oakland
3/31/12
jbm

We pass the
walled incline
of Barbour Park

during the day
a foreboding
patch…an open
air market for
the slave merchants
hustling crack and
**** drippin ****
that's been stepped
on so many times
its a wonder the cut
can still chide a high
out of a wrangled soul

the park’s
modest elevation
is an advantageous
lookout for
runners dealing
dimes while
petty ante
gangstas
daydream
gun blazing glories
of their next big job

not long ago
the park was
refurbed with
an industrial
strength plastic
Jungle Jim,
soon after
the park was
condemned
as a no go
zone for kids,
the litter of
hypodermic
needles and
mounds of
lead spiked
soil, deemed
a public health
risk for youth...
quickly
repurposed
as a crib
for ballers…

back in the
day, the shady
pocket park
lifted Paterson’s
citizenry off
the heated
pavements of
a bustling
thoroughfare

a respite from
the pulsing
tensions of urbanity,
a secular sanctuary,
balancing the urgent
industry of commerce
with the propriety of
residential life

compacting a
brief escape
from the clanging
metronome with
a viewing stand
offering elevation...
a heightened
perspective on
life’s parade
marching
up and down
Broadway…

this urban
oasis planted
at the center
of Silk City’s
grandiloquent
boulevard,
occupies
the most
democratic
equidistant
transit point
between opulent
Eastside mansions
of livin large tycoons
at one end….
and the
industrial district of
The Great Falls,
rising at Broadway’s
western terminus,
assiduously
manufacturing
dollars for the darlings
of fortune and
subsistence for
workers yearning to taste
the crumbs of
prosperity that may fall
from the tables of
opportunity

the park once a
pleasant face of
the landlocked
4th Ward filled
with homage to
a nation's greatest
citizens, Hamilton,
Rosa Parks,
Lafayette,
Madison, Fulton,
Montgomery and
Franklin has
denounced the
virtuous pursuit of
their aspirational
yearnings

now playas
feast on
the mead
of sustenance
harvested from
emaciated streets

commerce has taken
up full residency...
the wards cottage industry
cannibalizing
homes, hoods and
homeboys

as the
4th Ward
grows ugly,
the healthy
matrix of
bustling
street life
breaks down
the peeps
weakened
lay prostate
offer veins
to blood *******
predators
roaming
distressed
going south
neighborhoods

wise guy
knuckleheads,
get busy
gaming
the system
short changing
themselves and
hustling game
to get by
in the sweet bye
and buy of life

at night
a back lit
Barbour Park
floods with the
yellow haze of
blinking Fair St.
lamp posts
and the pulsing
halations
crowning the
Baptist's
of St. Luke's

sentient figures
shift between
park benches
flitting among the
black torsos
of skeletal trees
blending into
the faded
complexion
of abandoned
swing sets

I swear I see
Hurricane Carter
shadow boxing
dancing
around a gangling
Elm, jabbing
away, lifting
a sweet uppercut
working combos
of left hooks
and right crosses
hoping to drop an
intractable
presence
banging away
at a body politic
forming the walls
of taunting
inequities

Hurricane stays
busy delivering
body blows
to burst
through the
prison bars
surrounding
Barbour Park

Music selection:
Bob Dylan, Hurricane

Paterson
01/30/13
jbm

A fragment from extended poem Silk City PIT.  
Published today to honor the death of Rubin Hurricane Carter.
May he find the freedom in eternal rest that eluded him during his lifetime.

VACUUM CLEANER TANGO

---Lyrics by Jonathan Caswell

(Some misspellings are due to rhythm keeping)



The Vac…cuum Clea…ner Tango,

Is like…a juicy…mango,

Those fi…bers will…entangle

Your teeth or brushes, pretty quick!



The girls…who do…the cleaning,

Are ev…ver so…well-meaning,

To move…around…guys leaning,

That watch…and approve…the show!



Plugs must…be changed…more frequently,

If lon…ger hallways…decently,

Are cleaned…the most…expediently,

It’s all…a part of…the dance!



The vac…cuum clea…ner tango,

A dai…ly chore…is wrangled,

By clea…ners star…spangled,

Perfor…ming it with…extra class!

"That's it! I'll take it to the scissors myself!"
Mangled, wrangled, tangled mess,
meandering tendrils coil and cross, clump.

Split ends,
knots so impossibly tied the eagle scout is left bewildered,
sun damage: fried, frizzled, frazzled, frayed.

Broken teeth in a gasping comb,
choking brushes enveloped in the furling mess,
hairspray, fruitless, face it:
(Another) Bad Hair Day.

"That's it! Today's the day!"
The call is made, the appointment scheduled,
you sit and wait.

X's mark the calendar, the day is nigh,
your do's judgement day is at hand.
It's time to settle this.

The day before, you wake up,
absentmindedly getting dressed, drudging through routine,
mirror's the last thing you see.

Crusty eyes suddenly open wide,
as split ends seal and knots unfurl,
sun damage heals and combs sing ceaselessly.

The day is met with a new life,
and the dark days of yore seem like a past life,
as this sunny day seems like all there is.

You laugh at what now appears to be such trivialities,
"Twas a bad hair day! And merely so!"
You allow yourself such a shallow deception.

Your hand grabs the phone, your fingers make the call,
your voice makes the cancellation--
"How could I have been so foolish to resort to such measures?!"

You hang up and scoff at yourself,
a hearty laugh in jest at such hastiness,
tossing and swishing your luscious mane to and fro.

You allow it to slip through your fingers,
on the cusp of the cure,
as the bad hair days truly outnumber the good (you know it to be so).

For the next day will come--
You'll greet the mirror with that heart-wrenching sigh,
in visible anguish at the chaotic mess that encroaches upon your head.

          Don't let a good hair day fool you;
                                                        make the call.

3 weeks, that's all it takes,
      how many necessary things could have
been said, but weren't...
    i could have written to my local m.p.,
or say - an imaginary letter to
Lorca, like Jack Spicer -
     instead, i wrote a few pieces of
verbal-diarrhea - sheer frustration -
      how debasing i sometimes see myself
becoming, all this talk of self-censorship,
     it's this ominous shadow of some third
party sources... the more you write
it seems, the more you start fearing
in the existence of that famous chestnut
known as writer's block...
                         it's such a fear that it's
impossible to call it irrational,
a tiny fear, a phobia, fear without a narrative...
so you end up becoming debasing for a while:
thankfully: there's nothing in concreto
about it...
                    you begin almost in trance
blurting out words to no civilised purpose -
  just to go beyond the rust and stiffness of
3 weeks sober, as if starved from the world:
because your grandparents don't have an internet
connection...
      and you return from a place where
you have to time to read books, and be content
at being fed by a television set...
                rather than having to feed
the computer and that amassing of knowledge
and shared experience...
      a digital detox they call it...
   i call it a double-whammy detox... and strange
how doable it is: it doesn't require
a rehab...    or some guru telling you
       that you have to block out thoughts
immersed to the internet...
                    but then again, is it about that?
all i can claim to say is that:
    the internet can really become a cul de sac...
i'd feign to believe that anyone with
   it can read a novel these days...
                       i know i can't -
     in the most ordinary circumstances -
                     a complete shut-down can provide
enough furniture to be so less itchy
and nagging to touch...
                               and it wasn't even a case
of a self-imposed hiatus...
                    don't know what it actually meant
other than an immersion in: what
life was like in the 20th century...
                              and on that touchy subject of
certain words being treated as if said
by children and deserving the scorn from an elder...
well sure, would that give us many more
graces to: write in the fxxx?   and if i actually did -
if only the english language used some sort of
orthographic, but it can't: since it has no diacritical
markings...
    the aesthetic is so different in Poland...
you don't censor certain words so might think you're
talking roses and adorable puppies for some
grand social project...
       there's a graffiti joke in Poland...
              and there about four different variations
of the same word (as it sounds) -
huj                         hój
             chuj                                and chój...
  there are no others... but there's only one accepted
spelling of the word: given the orthographic convention...
and if this word is seen on walls
   without the correct orthography, it's a good joke...
  (it's the first spelling of the word that's correct,
if you want to know)...
     what i can't understand is creating these excessive
emotional associations with words,
not sentences that lead to a fuller meaning:
but isolated words...
                         it's a simple bewilderment that
using such words, for the sake of using them, might
suddenly lead toward some antagonism of
an ethnicity -
                                 it's black on white -
there are no hues of words... but when it's used
from fear of a writer's block, and it has to be used,
once again: not in concreto...
                        then it's again, used like i might
throw everything into grammatical categorisation of
words, and get back a lesson in grammar...
    that's 3 weeks without a keyboard - you're
bound to vent out some frustration...
                    at least there's an antidote to it,
on saturday i experienced zenith of the frustration,
until it dwindled away, overnight...
                             rarely do you see a review of a poetry
book in english newspapers...
   perhaps the guardian, but in the times?
               once in a blue moon...
           the review: if jeremy corbyn wrote poems...
    for almost a whole evening i was experiencing this
sort of: debilitating paralysis, debilitating because it
was wholly mental... i equated reading this review
with an experience of: ethical monopoly of vocab...
    and it really does exist... its not a question of political
correctness, but a case of ethics:
                  could i use the word nxxxer or not?
    can it really be so scary to see that correct spelling?
and what if i wrote about the river Niger, because
i felt like it... or took to the fancy of a trip to Nigeria?
       boy, Niagara falls must be stunning to look at too!
i don't understand that privacy can be so usurped,
so wrangled out one's on comfort...
    so we have our closet racists and closet intellectuals
(who i call the bearded white boys
                 in chequered shirts and torn jeans) -
    but in a fit of personal transitioning, are we really
about to censor each other, and on what ground?
      yes, i have a ku klux **** hood in my closet
and i'm about to shout ye ha! on a lynch frenzy...
      it's a word said out of context with a historical content
still ascribed to it... if this word were taken into
an urban environment: it would be an epitome of
what once was used with the words *******...
         i'm not concerned with the word historically...
       historically speaking: it's urban now...
                               it can literally mean: thick-as-night...
and can you start to begin finalising such
nano experiences in life...
                           some people get to sky-dive,
or hunt lions on safaris...
                                i'm stuck with a wasted evening
duped into thinking this out:
  like so horror minority report, said the word:
predestined to do the most god-awful evil...
                       or like i said the word:
and that's equivalent to not washing my mouth for
2 weeks... 2 weeks spent on a diet of onions,
garlic and raw beef...
                           it's this absurdity that has nothing
fancy about it, this could not be written by
Albert Camus... it's too worm-like absurd...
                 i don't whether to laugh or cry, or tell you
how i had to find a counter-frustration...
but i did, the review of a poetry book in a saturday newspaper...
philip collins' take on unreconciled - poems 1991 - 2013
   by michel houellebecq...
                               i'm guessing the actual book
would make me feel less frictive than the reviewer's take on it...
   such this huge ball of fungus dropped into
my cranium and started to cannibalise itself with
digestive juices of nihilism... thankfully reviews like this
would spur me on and make me want to read such a book...
just to get the antithesis (if that's correct word to use)...
   to me, it sounds like a book
that's supposed to oppose the european use of the haiku...
   for me not all haikus are philosophical...
     although i know they're intended as such...
personally, i think that the art behind the haiku is
more than the actual haiku...
    say, someone who invented this medium,
yes, an easterner would probably write 20 haikus in
a period of 20 years...
     writing too many haikus (usually done by westerners)
is precisely the opposite of the art-form...
      how can a haiku be written without a year-long
restraint, and when finally the pressure is too much:
you get ''so little''?
                      well sure, i can write a haiku any moment
i can... but i'd have to have a gnat's worth of
consciousness to write one without having meditated for
a year...
                we europeans can at least write
absurd excerpts from our rigid lives...
                        and houellebecq does that -
   we live in these snappy narcissistic observations taken
from the world we have so made systematic -
    and i guess reason is a big tender dog -
given that unreason is a ******* chiwawa that
constantly keeps barking... or any other small dog
for that matter...       well: once again -
who told these people who review poetry books that
poetry is an Ikea manual?
                               lack of imagination, i'd say...
   and i'll say that about any other liar out there who
can say that visualising poems is easy -
     modern art can be seen as pretentious ******* -
but then what can you verbalise about it is the whole trick...
   just asking, because i was thinking about when
that famous school of fine art in Florence is going to
reopen, and why no one bothered to remember the techniques
using oil on canvas...
                 evidently something is up in the zeitgeist -
    i'm guessing we'll not see a **** study by edward calvet
any time soon... and it'll remain so, for quiete some time -
something is being revised - i'd call all modern art
by the movement: revisionism -
                      well: the dark ages were revising something -
everything's crude once more...
                  as came with the over-exposure to our
******... and did i say there's something wrong with that?
but evidently seeing too much fucky-fucky
    has created jelly in the eyes of artists who have to
go back to basics... it's like artists are looking for words...
they want to return to a dialogue of the reneissance...
    or at least it sounds like that... oh no, not from them:
from the people that have a critical eye on the matter:
the intellectuals... i see it as a hope for coming back to
dialogue... if you can't return to a dialogue over
a very simple modern canvas... there's no point
talking about the greater intricacies...
                             that leave you speechless -
  i mean: what's the point of talking about a mona lisa
when you can enjoy a joke asking whether
the devil didn't have his hand up her skirt?
       or the ecstasy of st. theresa... what's there to talk about?
i look at that statue and just want to get a hard-on...
but first i guess i have to rediscover a dialogue
with what the current times prescribe me...
and these really are works of prescription... there's no
point look into pharmacology's list of prescriptions...
   as going about saying it's all a load of *******,
leads to the first step toward modern alienation...
       if darwinism can be a humanism, a study of
the human... i can only give it a motto:
there's a reason behind everything... there's a reason
snakes don't have eyelids...
                              or that giraffes look funny...
             or that camels are the most vile mammals
to walk this earth...
                       personally i

The holy cardinal said:
who bare rib?
fresh cut new did,
he said -- who is this?
He slowly tread; wrangled thee
there's a 4x4 in his 20/20,
he asked -- “double play?”
the kid ran away

Titanic barnstorms the Tennessee plain through jet powered airplane
As though the Lusitania New York City could hardly proffer a contradictory profane
Nevertheless the intricacies of gamboling and gambling garble too many dice
Listerine rinses a whitewashed flaw until it singes gravity sawed twice
Three pieces of would form a tripartite could, that can’t because beggars are mute and rude
That beggars whisper the hymns of an immemorial festivity churlish upon listless attitude
So we hearken the classics and drop the ink quill upon that pile of effluvium and molasses
We invent friction just to pass a fall’s worth of failed jack-*****
“No more” he exclaimed just as the leaky faucet marginally contained
“Know more reason and you will be fully redeemed”
So I cannot pinpoint the provenance of despair among discrete colonies with barter too unfair
With ***** dens conflagration’s dead blank stare
The pit of the useful and the heap of the useless sorted into neat piles on either side of the River Nile
And each pottery keepsake is a husk of a land long ago defiled
But the hunters that talismans comfort shadowed into a grave crypt
They marooned a contact with pedigree to become flimsy with vogue equipped
So they lament on an August morning, lugubrious in toil and minatory in warning
The darkest nights yet seen by sirs yet sheen rollicking in mourning
We skedaddle the limited spectrum of shallow rust becoming hard work’s dross
Draining the swamp of career politicians that prefer the aroma of cod over the swagger of skunks with high sunk costs
Filch me a new coast Bill the Butcher and secure my passage for bonanzas of wealth
A fool’s card is now the traipsed parliament of one world stealth
Among the aristocracy an impediment to change locks all race in internecine game
Racecar palindromes offered as sacrifice to winsome but momentary glares aglow with disdain
Neuter the profligate, neutralize the builder’s set, stain the chastity of the Marmoset
Suddenly the zero-sum game adds up to twenty
With every dime and dozen going to infinity beyond debt with prosperity aplenty
As the laggards play dominoes on quaint tables frittering at the surface
Foment the disregarded rage and wrangled page into a classic Ace of Base
But who really is Walter White?
Does he live in camouflaged tents next to trees daring an alien but mutual fright?
Is he the kind of Wizard that never had consanguinity with alarmist rite and expeditious lies that aleatory fate is somehow too proximal to become in lambent sight?
Questions answer themselves over time with droned litanies of every conceivable tome
Forgotten in an ash heap in Alexandria more so than Rome
Supersonic flight that hedges prizes qualified kites
Encyclopedias of knowledge won’t even decode ghastly ghoulish capes of an off-color might
Now we simper at the glowering ignorance of menial men
Swimming with sharks and synchronized with the obnoxious hen
They won’t learn nearly as much from the Sun as warmth as they would the Moon for guidance
They won’t plaster Paris with the vandalism as counseling for pilfered tridents
So maybe the Anglophones have a menagerie yet seen
Maybe the game was introduced so early the royalty knows explicitly of beatific beams.
All is lost can never be forgiven in the land before time
In the land before precise minutes, seconds and momentary fragrance of threadbare design
So horology is horrific, when the jaws of the aliens in time thresh galloping headless horsemen Revered in this part of town
The imperial switchboard was stocked to the brim
The counterbalance of a Washington winter was equally grim
Embittered by the bellicose autonomy of fledgling families with endless land but limited prosperity
The dragooned riposte resounded among church bells with alarmism in sincerity
But the attrition of winter and the conditions of every primordial printer
Staged the coup that led to the walloped whimper
As the world shrank and wealth enlarged
As the shark tank of time plowed through shares like an ice threshing barge
We found that history is the caretaker of fringe reason becoming indomitable arbitrage
And for ever space that exists from now to the beginning of time there has always been space that begins with a luxurious spa and thereafter credit charged.

The game played no longer how it once was
No votes on new posts
don't check the trends
or check your own for views and comments
The substantive roaming data of broken WiFi connections
Mangle your jangling words, hide your swollen faces behind forced smiles, Rembrandt bastardisations or smeared oil paintings of the black soul(less) beasts that lurk in satiate tree shadows fawned over the lawnmower blue cycle rinse washed acid soaked daydream ***** slap nation
So you revere the works once read on poetical facsimile sites
only to smear words of younger wordsmith wrangled teen angst
and now in your age and ardor it seems advantageous to judge
But then that will leave you hollow inside
or in fact, you could jump from a tall building only to bounce off the concrete into a children's pool and drown there in three inches of **** coloured rain water
But so instead the workload decreases as your dementia bedpost nightmares
all come aflutter
The laced lily white throng of petal pinched patterns masks
the marked men on their dusty knees
There, watch how heads explode
or listen to foley artists rendering the lacquered finish of the watermelon headjuice
Make up words
or make up lies
Wear make-up daily, earn some prize
or don't
I don't care
idc
idk
Resemble rhyme or reason
Disassemble the times and season
Return to pejorative pretensions, rants in verse verse verse verse prose format and **** the rest
Or simply return to the old ways of playing the game
Upvote this, and maybe they'll take interest
Comment here
return one there
Use tags, hashtags, wash rags, fat slags, arm chair fat cats
But always separated by spaces, prettyblankspaces
No, I don't do slam poetry, I'm too white and not nearly rich enough to not care
Reassemble the times and season, maybe make sense of it
Maybe not
Just don't let them become a passing trend, please

cool. lightly scented. i sit alone in the reception of a spa. tranquil tones soothe the atmosphere. i lean against the wall, and wait. a fear of physical contact roots me to the spot; they will not touch me. impatiently. silently. i wait.

grey, cloud-tinted sunlight blankets the day. it was blistering heat earlier. i think of the way sweat pooled in the hollow of my chest as your tongue dipped over my collarbone. my back in damp grass. hoodies abandoned. who cares about a little mud when the things we do to each other go beyond *****? somebody might see was a quiet worry drowned out by rough breaths and guilty little whimpers.

now, i am thousands of miles away from you. six hours of time difference. phone vibrations. my unshakable conviction that you might leave me be if i ignore you, even as i miss your touch. sitting alone in a spa reception, too uncomfortable with the idea of hands on my skin. but i miss the pads of your fingertips digging into my sides. palms clamping my wrists either side of my head. pinned in place by ocean eyes that drown me.

we will leave for the secret garden soon. coffee will be placed between my palms. maybe hot. i'm feeling a chill in my bones that wants to be chased away. my mind's eyes conjures an image. memory. you sit across from me on four hours of sleep. your body vibrates on caffiene overload. you are like me sometimes. but my poison is bitter, coffee beans; your poison is an attack of fizzing sugar on your cardiovascular system.

maybe. maybe that's the answer. why you're sweet. why you escape confined spaces (read: relationships. you are like me sometimes.) like bubbles leaping from a can. maybe it's why i'm dark. with an aftertaste almost everybody is determined to chase away.

something tangy hangs on the air despite the spa's best attempts to provide aroma therapy. my mind pines for your natural scent. light washing powder. a little musky, like faint sweat. not the sweetest, but real and warm. i can find it. i reach for it, fingers finding warm skin. we press chest to chest and this hardly feels real. motorbikes and scooters rumble by. your voice is a ghost in my ear. too quiet to be present.

eyes open. receptionists wander. you are far away. my eyes glaze over anyway. sleepless nights and busy days. i slump into scenery: green grass, wrangled trees, a brick wall decorated with poison berries and stinging nettles, a blue sky with white clouds. your body above me.

Apparently, there is a word for people who like to cover up pain with a smile.
That's such an odd thing to have a label and concept around
Considering how broad the meaning could be.
Are these people simply masochists?
What type of pain are they subject to?
Physical?
Mental?
Emotional?
My body doesn't always know the difference.

But when I think about my personal embodiment of such a concept,
I think of tense social situations.
Either private, or public
With only one other person, or a group
And the smallest tip of the scales has led to,
what was previously,
a tall and solid tower sculptured by your own iron will
Only to be unveiled in all its fragility
as a flimsy stack of paper sheets

Maybe you see your ex-lover are at a coffee shop
And you realize they don't think about you all that much any more
Or maybe they never did
Or maybe they just moved on.

He used to say he saw a universe inside of you
and oh, how he longed to be a part of it.
One day, he could see a future with you
One day.
But just not now.
He lied.

The anger grazes a kiss across your heartstrings
like the most vengeful angel fire
It sends low and heavy static through your bones until waves reach your seasick gut
and all of its contents beg to scrape a way back out of you now.
You're restless jaw flexes
primal reactions lead to feeling far too eager
to latch onto flesh and rip
Maybe you catch your own tongue or cheek in the process
and the blood will taste familiar
and coppery sweet

You're probably enraged.
You feel livid and betrayed and
entitled to their future and love and
at least some sort of explanation.
As if that would serve as sugar
to make the drug taste sweeter on the way down.
But, it does not change what's underneath that loud, hot and passionate aggression.

You're sad.
Your hurt, demanding to be heard.
Your body is carrying weight it wasn't a few moments before
And yet, you have not shown any of this.
You're not throwing a fit,
knocking over ****
or punching him in the face
in the way you really, really want to.
You're not screaming, or crying, disappearing or leaving
in a way you wish you could even more.

Because you may think your first response is more trouble overall if expressed
On some level you don't want to guilt or blame on this person
You may want to make it seem you're in the same boat of composure and indifference.
As if this show of self restraint will change his mind
And he'll come running back to you
As if him being impressed by apathy
and begging forgiveness is what you'd want him to do

No, on some level, its a feeling of embarrassment
and trying to cover up the fact that
four poems and two songs ago you swore
you'd stop having feelings for this boy
That your heart was your own once again,
and no one had a leash to **** you around
one way or the other.

Nonetheless, out loud, you say: "oh."
Because that is a few second window
to wrap all the dread and fury and hyperactivity
the adrenaline has shot into your bloodstream.
The entire world is frantically on full volume
There's a locomotive, crashing against your sternum
every split second
And you have to dye every sun spotted moment with him
In oily black disappointment

"Oh" buys you enough space to find bandages to hide the bruises
underneath your chest
In that "oh" you have compacted all that space junk whipping around and rattling your skeleton into a black hole
that will self destruct and,
hopefully,
collapse all it's contents unto itself

You hold that star sucker in your centre
and you slap a smile on top
You grin in the face of your own pain
Because it is safe, and what is familiar to you.
And you can hold it in a cocoon for protection
until your left alone to bleed
or breathe
or convince yourself this never really mattered.

But for right now, you show complacence in this agony
as not risk any more damage with exposure
Maybe you say something that sounds mature and impartial.
Convince them you are so happy they've had something good come into their life;
Implying that the same has come to you
Something, at the time,
you can't remember is necessarily true or not.

You are insistent not to stir the living creature
wrangled in muscle
sitting atop your lungs
And that grimace is a 'Do not Disturb' sign.

I think "oh" speaks for itself in its pain and simplicity
Its a gasp of pain
And the pause after a blow
The start to so many sentences with no end
And a reoccurring soundtrack to all my reluctant epiphanies
Played on repeat
and more consistently skipping than my lovers.

Disheartening moments like that
serve as uneven pavement I trip over and simultaneously
have gravel split my skin and break my nose on impact.

"Oh" was the delayed fire alarm
to tell you the building has already burnt to the ground.
Come and see the remaining disaster, now that it's over.
Watch helplessly as the building collapses with a whisper.
"Oh."

That is the sound of you hearing part of your friend group
Still hangs out with your local ******
Even after the dam of stories cracked onto their lap
the night they assured you that you had their ear
That they were listening
That someone cared
But now he's a different guy around me,
he doesn't remember it, I swear.

"Oh," is realizing the friend you never quite got the chance to know in school
killed themselves last week.
It's the sound that escapes me, when someone is interested in who I am
Until they realize I'm trans.
It's a noise that gets stolen when people are interested in me,
accept me for being trans,
but leave when I fall short of expectation because of who I am.

There is so much hurt encapsulated in those two letters
one syllable
one sound
for me
It's packed in pearly whites and dead eyes
a shaky wall with a tornado tucked behind.
How can a storm pass so quickly
Without any sign of trouble outside?

Simply put:
I don't want to let anyone know
I would rather be left to suffer on my own
Without any rescue team to disappoint
when they cannot find a single living body
to dredge from the rubble.

Here the triple-shadowed unveil their beliefs:
wrangled dusk-bitten demigods walking with-
out shame.
                    Between the voice I feel and the
touch I see, sweetness loses itself in multiplic-
ity. Here the ****** creators
                                                     peddle their big
dreams: failed, half-imagined writers writing
for some fame. Between the ink I taste
                                                                    and
the blank page I peel, beauty spills onto an
unfinished film-reel. Here the salient idealists
distribute their silent pleas:
                                                 faceless, disre-
garded farmers farming hapless grain. Be-
tween
           the thoughts I see and the biases I smell,
innocence sits unwanted in a wishing-well.
Here the greatest artists
                                          present their newest
piece: aged, masterful painters painting to
stay stane. Between
                                   the subtlest colors and
the heart-arresting hues, skill picks up a gui-
tar and sings some southern
                                                  blues.

Swerves the verve of voluptuous curves
That ******* clad lies become ironclad wides or wives
That the uxorious mission is a useful instrument of precision
That a denuded forest becomes the acme of toon and television
Let us garble our quotes and refrain from prolonged oaks
That whisk the memorial flames beneath the softly and the constricted spoke
I wrangle with big swells and tumescent lips
Labial love is liquid rushing to impress my scent and my lisp
Flamingos careen the specialty of wide-nosed oxygen
The toxic ragamuffin does lack the characteristic halogen
Runny tears on whitewashed days, scrape the pond of excess
**** of waifs and wastrel sways the world’s columns stand ever more proud
The future has two authors a converging future and an approximated past
Leeching on to the dastardly knockers of hacked brass tax
We then linger and malinger with germs that flippantly exercise the *******
That exorcise the ruffled harbinger in an incomplete rhyme
Sordid yet sublime, a city breaking on through to the mother side
Of the brother’s promise, to bequeath love lost and undressed
Unbuttoned snooze caffeinate my coffee
Established crews scour my pastiche of laundry
I need a confirmation that some littoral joke isn’t anymore creative than a hoarded broke
Broken in fracture, illuminated by rapture, the panacea of pain disaster
The deliverance of fragrance yet to gain and yet to lose,….. refrain poetaster
Simpered friction swipes the edict of election
As ******* becomes the Olympus of defection
But ponder no more these quodlibets of regaled glory
The amaranthine time has been proferring the same tried and true Love Story
Arranged or deranged, the best will *** and the rest will come
Thereby we become the litter of Medulla Pons surviving on Jack-and-Dandy ***
Remember this in many ways we are a shining city paid for by the mentally ill
Waylaid with the marble of the ultimate rocketship dumb enough to thrill
We soak and absorb the truest bright and the weakest light
As the fraternal order of the lambent moon becomes an extraterrestrial communion rather than an aghast fright
John Derry offers me two geese and I offer to fleece the homespun danger of the moral police
But Capone cannot cap the stone with signature and artistry alone
He cannot unfurl the booth bonfire and the broken home
But his evaded taxes are relaxed because of meritocratic classes
Of wisdom becoming wizardry and idiocy becoming harlotry of sinister waste crass plastics
Limpid with freckled frowns and monolithic and nomothetic pounds
Of zeros escalading a spawn-trout upward voyage and a quiet pillage of a bear-eaten town
Benign rumors of soaring afflictions and deloused tumors swarm the pasquinade village
A Potemkin place where gays get spayed covertly by laying a nescient egg deceased and weighed
In the navy we are not, but thanks to the gravy we are bought and we are sold
And of course you must trim the bushes before they scowl in the fold
Hedged bets on arts, squirts and debts
Of hottest flirts, car washed shirts and wrangled King Tut **** and Cleopatra wet
To this history I owe a greater than perfect debt
A Raider with influential sweat
A gamboler with a frisky totem of regret
Radiant sun says goodnight
Glazed to beat you, you fearful fitful 1997 willful fright

We synthesized tomorrow; -since.


Enzymes bore more than-
Colour to bone; --though.

It wasn't the sound
Of nothing that betrayed-
Marble-ebbing-into-waves.

A lisp could quaver,
Sight; we only heard
Centipede-segments-sometimes; with-
One leg too many.

They caressed magic from
Moon-vivid illusions; and
As whispers wrangled senses,
We found the ground-
This wraith became me.

In distance; I stole.
Attention, yet before that.



We electrified paper once.

and in the graveyard of my lovers
i take care not to step loudly
that they might not wake and see,
how cold it is.
that i might not smash their corpses still

i put an arrow in my own heart
to wrench it out with might
and little will it bleed, if at all

i finally dug myself a spot
so i too can wait for footsteps overhead
warm in thick soil
only asking to be wrangled from the dirt,
here and there,
to see the cold.
stooping heartily into my hole
i whistle merrily

I have a secret, something sour, and something
deep, deep, and deeper that I try to keep from you –
The fury that I can’t rid nor come “real,”
real me, the “he,” who stands not more than an
arms-length your side.

I may smile, wink, and speak of sunny days,
but there are the hours, sometimes,
where I can taste the, “vicious,”
the blood of both survival,
and all that’d threatened prior –
the “red” that flows from the past and
meanders “now,” the “red” of a
thousand yesterdays wrought dust,
wrangled bruise,
the “red” born in back-alleys
and buried in whiskey,
the “red” that never seems to rest.

This war-drum, I can feel It” climbing up
and crawling out through my nostrils
singing songs for –
Split teeth on split knuckles, breathing,
steady and suddenly, uphill,
the flare of the maddened bull,
an eye for only anger and beyond tether –
Destructive.

I dare not tell my newest friends that a part of
“Him” is still in “Me.”
He’s always “there,” hunting, haunting,
and will always be.
They’d surely run if they knew,
and I’d run too, if I could, but wouldn’t get far,
as he’d be running right there and with me;
Like the shadow always yearned for
and the same that’d scare come the movement not my own.

An apartments the size of a grave
and just as expensive. It costs a life
to be buried on Avenue A.
Two girls reunite in their street corner booth

where many nights have been spent confiding
about boys, the plausible deniability
of taxicab *******, flights home over
one bridge or another.

She's just returned from a semester in Africa.
The unencumbered smiles beaming from
the children's faces linger like a sunburn.
Her friend is agonizing over a guy who believes in her

wholeheartedly. She commands him like a drone
with the send button on her phone.
She asks her friend if she saw the article in the Times
about women in Afghanistan who die for their poetry?

Is it still warring over there? the friend says.
Her laugh is ambushed by a new feeling, something like
regret at having allowed herself to be wrapped
in the personality of her dresses for so many years.

First thing when she got home she pulled her grandmother’s old fur
out of storage and wrangled the antlers onto the cat
but the smile didn't come. Tonight, we're going dancing.
The boys are meeting us there. Does that work?

She nods. A button is pushed and a car carries them
to a warehouse in Bushwick which twenty years ago
was a wonderful crack house. Oh, it's so good to see you again!
She laughs and pretends she is living the night like it's her last

the whole time thinking about a young girl
across the world speaking her poem
into a telephone so someone else can hear it
before the line goes dead.

Treacherously torrid torrential tempestuous
The warrior on the mountain confessed to us
Sordid sully suborn salacious
Only the worst will ever keep pace with us
In extremis extremity exigence exodus
Is the answer clear to all of us
Intuitional intrepid impetus intrigue
Spontaneity's tortoise trauma fatigue
Heuristic horizon hornswoggle huckster
Or just another cauldron muck stir
Mystical magical manumission mandate
That only the good would ever relate date
Fornicating fecund finite's fate
I can only hope it will be I rate
Tirade treatise's transpicuous treachery
Adjunct juxtaposition may get the best of me
Estranged ensemble's ethereal expletive
Won't be contained, like water in a sieve
Wanton wayward warrantee wrangled
And all of that surreal newfangled
Omnipresent omnificent omniscient omnipotence
How I wish I could float its boat sense

I don't know what word other
mothers secretly wait
for their children to utter

but when my son first said mommy
I felt like an ice cream cone
sliding off its hinges toward the grinning dog's
waiting tongue.  When shoe came,
he stopped looking at faces for a few days
to more fully watch the world
where his new word lived.

Daddy comes and I change the subject. Last night,
I built a good enough campfire while my dad held
the boy and pointed heavenward, beginning his
celestial litany, Andromedae, Cassiopeiae,
Draconis, Moon, Star, but the Sun is
asleep, and I suddenly felt too
close to the fire. I knew I was nearing
that glen around my secret word

In the growing proximity, the world narrows
into the paper-thin bridge where only poetry will fit.

Later that night, the baby wrangled with
his own yawp and could not lay his head
and so we walked the isle
and stopped to be wooed by frogs with banjos in their hearts

and we remembered together all the secret
trails to lagoons and we pointed and garbled
at all things known and unknown

and at last, he pointed to the sky and said new.
I peered up to see what was new, but that was
not quite it - he tried again, moo

and the last gear gave
and the great machinery of my waking
rolled onto the highway of my own life
as the son put the two words together and spoke my secret moon.

To describe how you entrance my lusts is not to love you
To say you are beautiful, to compare each feature you wear
With flowery prose, with dramatic declarations
Is not to love you
For it is not you curls, or the scent of your hair
Nor the colour of your eyes that I would squander an ode to
There are many with eyes and hair such as yours
Many with less or more graceful hands
A many of lover’s lips and pleasing faces
With shapely forms and tapered waists
With the embellished scaling cadences of a choir
And other things for which I’m told I should desire

All of something mortal worlds compare
All these things the world tells you is beautiful and faire
These are things a camera could capture
And not the reasons I love you

What I love about you is not something that can be caught
Cannot be wrangled, pinned down, or fought
I was allowed witness to your spark
A moment your soul burned bright enough that its very embers reached my heart

It took root in me, it grew to a flame like a zippo lighter
Every time we spoke, it fanned a little brighter
For me, before it began it was over
Of any room, dressed in any garb, to me you are the cynosure

That light at your core lit up your face when you smiled
A smile was just a smile until I saw how you did it - right there!
It fills a room until I scarcely believe there is such a thing as air

I fell in love with your clever disputes and the contagious way you laugh
The words, worlds and points of view that you craft
With that mad humour, compassion, and your bluntly put curses
Your desires, your faults, your quirks
Your temper, your heart, your mirth
How your eyes took in spans of bland ashen days
And your mind painted it all into a miraculous blaze

I love
The things about you, you don’t notice or even see
I’m like a bird in love with what it means to be free
For me there is no one fairer, no other who could raise the bar
Because there is no feature that could sway me
I fell in love with who you are

time ticks quickly
          its insistence echoes through my bones

dates mean as much to me
          as raised voices do

and both whizz past in a blur
         the way cars do on a highway
                   because that's all i am, a kid playing in traffic.

i am no more a child than the girl i was ten years ago
         i have, in fact, shrunk.

i have been crushed upon being released,
         wrangled by the wind before i can begin to take flight.

the most enduring thing society has led me to think is that
         i am simply incapable of living.

i am a sad impersonation of the sun -
         shining so brightly for others, though inside,
                  
                   *i am lethal vacuum.

The calendar maker don't know tragedy
is gonna happen on the day
he takes most pride in, it ain't visible on his screen
and it ain't wrought and wrangled in
with the pixels on his
paper or on the
walls of his custom.
if he knew, d'ya think he'd bother
caring for september,
June July or November
d'ya reckon he'd bother
to name the days at all?

Reading books, drinking tea,
Trapped in it's own hypothesis
Yes, that's me.

Manacled hearts, wrangled thoughts.
Trapped in the past.
When I shouldn't be.

Choking
And sputtering
On a wrangled wreckage
Of my long, lasting train of thoughts
Tangled

she is not here
she’s gone
stranger in our midst
uncomfortable in our ways
she walked in the quiet below the trees
while we wrangled and plotted
in crowded alleyways
and streets

you do not see her
she’s not here
you won’t find her
at the edge of the lake
where she walked often
she’s not at the park
where she sat in meditation
while we clamored and fought
to bring to reality our dreams and ambitions
and vast unimagined desires, unacknowledged

she is not here
you do not hear her song
you do not see
her gentle face
all you have is your violence
and the harshness of your faces
she saw she was the stranger
and she walked past to move into her own

games like small children
fire like the hell pit
relentless stupidity
disgust and aching soul
all the dogs are black
barking and biting
chewing to the bone

syphilitic like groupie ******
sycophantic like talk show hosts
skies of swine
and rivers of dirt that can't flow
people undervalued
fighting and clawing
for a morsel to take home

dreams like night terrors
opportunity like a flu vaccine
black hole emptiness
always night but never peaceful
militant peacekeepers
targets all lined up
wrangled into old chains

longing for the end
for the end of the world
trying to bring it ever closer
just to hold it tight

The Heraclee sky was a lurid, neon blue but the morning was surprisingly cool (at 54°). The antemeridian sun managed to cast sharp, surreal, black-hole shadows, giving the world a baroque art look, as if we were strolling through a Rembrandt painting, where everything is defined by shadows.

The lavish breeze, coming up off the Mediterranean Sea, seemed compressed and frantic, as if trying to flee the choppy, sapphire water. Tall marsh grasses waved back and forth, as if to unheard music, reminding me of 60-thousand swaying arms at the Taylor Swift concert.

Higher up, the wind played with feather-like clouds, making them seem to rise, fall and spill over each other in their race for the horizon. On the beach, there were ten or more colorful, elaborate kites - the French love their multi-wired stunt kites.

There was a dragon, a multi-color WWI biplane, there were bird kites, an octopus and a swooping butterfly. We watched them for a while, from a hill. “I’m going to get one of those,” Peter said, dreamily (for use on the Malibu beach his parents' modest home overlooks).

A little later, Peter and I decided to bike down to the beach from the hotel. The idea was valid but the bikes, seeming leftovers from World War 2, shook and rattled like percussion instruments as we made the death-defying plunge down the steep, uneven stone-laid path. We were laughing, screaming and half convinced we’d die by the time we reached the bottom.

Once there, a snooty concierge said, “That is NOT the bike path.” Which seemed hilarious. When Peter replied, dead faced, “We’re American,” as if that were an internationally understood pass for being stupid. It made us laugh so hard we couldn’t look at each other for a couple of minutes. I don’t know which hurt more, my bottom or my side.

As our guffaws were dying down, Charles arrived on the bike path.
“Why’d you do THAT?” (take the wrong path) he asked, with a tone of irritated censure.
“There was a sign,” I argued, gasping for air from my still doubled up laughing position, “that said ‘Bike Path?’" my voice rising like a sarcastic question.
“You didn’t notice the ten-inch tall, blue arrow under the words pointing to the bike path?”

Sometimes Charles can be extra over - as in overprotective and over-reactive.

As Cherles and I wrangled away, Peter stood patiently by, waiting. He doesn’t argue with Charles, he says he finds the 6-foot-3-inch, retired NYC policeman a little intimidating.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said, dismissively, “he’s a big ‘ol teddy bear.”

riverrun past eve and adam so
fast it tossed up my chainmail
vest. For a second it shone my
tattered back battle scars.

I’m not one to reminisce
about bad times but the fish
I had wrangled had rattled so fierce
I bell ****-boreward into the fox
of fishing hooks.

Dangling pirate hands shredded
sails salty water waves filled my
whales -- “ARR ME BACK”
The fish cackled and got away.

The boat was in the Abiquiu river, a ways away
a way a lone a last a loved a long
the riverrun

"My body craves you like parched senses ride waves, deeply, sensually, like a new life, a new frame of mind. I've found a gem and into it's depths I gaze for hours. Windows aligning with mine and I'm in your panes, your frames, your lens of power. I'm free, I'm wrangled to the ground by branches, and now I'm underneath the world and I'm sinking to your bed and we're warm.
I want to be a woman, clay and you'll mold me, form as you hold me, crack when I'm dry, you'll rewet and reshape my core. Heat me and glaze my sharp corners and fill me with rising warmth and purpose
Break me and I'll be fine
My pieces will be yours "

"Woman you already are. Molded by your own hands. Inspiration gained from the world around you. A masterpiece already. Nothing i could do could ever increase your beauty. So instead i shall take the role of awed onlooker.
And somehow i never believed i would produce that effect on you. But if what you see is anything like what i see. Than ive been to the stars and seen cosmos from afar. Ive watched stars die out in brilliant arrays of color and searing heat. Ive seen new life bloom in the cold wastelands of space. And i really should thank you for making me an astronaut. "

The winter catacombs had
long since seeped into the skin,
so that my eyes were scarred open
to ransack the surroundings. The faded
room’s flicker of white noise wrangled
itself inside, while droning tones
tucked away each staggered sigh.

Perhaps it’s farce to believe
that feelings can be trapped in
the wavering spaces where we
can never return. Maybe in all
the languid memories that sit
cross-legged on the edge of well
practiced absolution can never
truly be touched: like gripping
yellow, or blinking chromatics.

Despite this, found mangled against
the gate of my ear, is an urgency that
is engulfing. Concave to the outskirts
of breathing, I am told that all one wants,
is for the age of their quiet, non-being,
when the silver knife arrives to cut
silently upon an existence already grown
too thin. Years swell, but each passing
era exiles what it means to be—because
we can only depend on the reality of flesh
and the chance illusions of refracted light,
but never the notion of something more,
so, the dying, jaundice question lingers—
who will wipe this blood off us?

There was a vine
A flowered vine
Growing on a fence
Poking out the cracks

Someone cut them down
Wrangled them together
And tossed them
In the trash next to mine

Days later
In the middle of the night
Our garbage cans contents
Were pulled out
And scattered next to the ally

Night owl me,
Brought another bag
Found the mess outside
And put the 'waste'
Back in its place

The lid says "NO YARD WASTE"
So I left the abused plant
Where it fell
On the cold concrete sidewalk

With no sleep to show for
The sun rises
The tangled, cut,
Unwanted fence ****
Lay there in the light
Smiling purple blooms
In all their glory

They told me to tell their story