Cape Carnival

Sawtooth dragons besides what they want it was. Cause it isn't too much to save. Adjacent to leather goes lasers to cut the crib. From done the bib for. So quota. Hope hold us. Dose those holds stranger. Foal hope. It lies on marginals. Time to change.

Better keep it. Jeeps howling on in the sunkissed distance. We waited for a good four minutes before saying a word. The brilliance of mind tuned to nature. Song turns to harmony. Even cars are collective. Cascaded shapes. Taking form. Speaking flight. Sides with anunger. Non anger is still a form of protest.

Safe chapter. We seek. We seem. We've seen to seizing. Sneeze left seething. A left hand warning. Do don't didn't. Could have had us assessed. Then left where basking?

Return of a sunrise. Not much can touch such a swing. As irregular as an apt description of color.
Of soothing we squeak like life itself was watching.

I know nothing. But quest for clumping has never been forced in favor.
I can tell you as much:

To dust goes hush hints
Sentinal sanctuary

Winded with mind
Blazon wish castles

Subtle density
Whispering all ways   

Strawberry Charms

I'm glad I found this napkin

Before festering the thespian

Who tore fast negligence

Be benched for basketballs

Not another lousy sunset

Just syrup upon rats inside 

Who ambitious got it wrong in the end

Be sure the horror is the last

Feel free to take notes

I won't thank fenced wisdom

But pine for chimes and diamonds

Hot like monkeys

Floors made of coffers

Bring a tooth or I may be sick

Forsaken by grapes and whips

The exit bears witness

I kissed the starlight that night
As I was raised up on a wind-scorched hill
in the sepulchral cold of late autumn
I could feel myself bleeding blue into the surrounding rocks
and the grass sew itself up into my skin
the tears would not end
my breath was being tethered to the whirling earth
and I felt my eyes spin with the golden constellations:
the speed of Gemini on four legs
the rage of Leo in the throes of eternal hunger
the white slate of Virgo's fate.
And my voice echoed in the valley below
and returned to me blissfully unfamiliar
having gathered the whispers of an infinitude of invisible beings.

Rose-red voices lie intertwined
in the dew of this summer bed

dark constellations burn forth 

where my wings graze your soft grass.

We met at the corner of the dusty road, 

past the last lonely house in the village,

under the gaze of the gulmohar burning with envy,

we drank deep of that well together

the sweet waters of Now trickled down

and slaked that infinite thirst.

Music lies in torrents surrounding us

separating us,

drawing us in sharp ecstasies

and dashing against the rocks our sense of self.

Now someone turns a light on in the distance
now we step back and take stock of the prosaic landscape
now we breathe and collect our papers in a neat bundle
but now again we chose to plunge and forget. 

I woke up to the brisk bite of snow on a late summer morning
I could see the cold breath of long gone winter fog up the window
and the leafless pine scrape hopefully
at the threshold of my past.
As the day wore on
the ghosts of the present visited me
as fleeting visions of a bridge
that the wind teased out of the surface of a shy, yet clearly aroused lake.
The parallel universe,
whose laws seem natural only to me,
speaks to me in faux nonchalance
knowing that one of these days
I'll follow his voice
and take that step into the slipstream.
For now, I sit up this night
waiting for the seductress future
to steal up on me.

A parable of half starts and full stops.

Period.
The end of an era when I stepped out into the rain.
Turned up the collars to the wind,
and turned a corner off the road of momentous occasions.
This alley had two dumpsters
one filled with forgotten plans and stratagems
the other with unnecessary regrets.
I closed my eyes and there the sun smiled through the slats.
Period.
The rounded edges were frayed in the most intricate manner.
What once was claustrophobic now abounded in infinite possibility,
and I pulled back the curtains further, and raised the blinds higher,
till the council of trees filled my vision
and my mind with the voices of a thousand whispering leaves.
Period.

I could reach up and brush the raven's wings
softly stirring the skies without anyone noticing
and blinking when everyone else blinks to mask your existence.

He went to bed that night
having seen the hurt in her eyes,
having turned away from the asking hands,
having averted the gaze of the pleading throng,
having nothing but the short breathing in his mortal frame
and yet somehow he slept well that night.
In the midst of all his half-becomings he slept well.

How does it happen?
The shift through time and space
when the street hawkers and lazy cuckoos
of ages gone by
can slip into the pockets of present perception
and make their smell known.
The light flicker of a dusty road impinges
on the waking moments of my older self
when the breath of painfully lost worlds
slides quietly into my lungs.
The universe sleeps at odds with itself tonight
and I dream of somewhere else.

I savored that Sunday,
when I stood hunched over the bare bones of the world
and racked the ribs with rhythms and chimes
and sang songs in the rings of grass
that graced the traces of the doe through the day.
And I have seen the green of the pine tips
and the cold stares of broken bare branches
that scarce withstood the fiery bloodletting.
I could have throw myself off the shelf
of stone and into the overgrown vales
and everything pales in the tales I tell.

The wind wept amongst the coconut trees,
and the neem leaves trembled in sympathy.
Evening walks along the platform
clad in late summer blues
and she pauses near the hiss of the kerosene lamp.
She keeps me company in these days
when no other person seems to grace this earth.
I have waited for 7 days and 7 nights
for my train to come smiling down the tracks
and embrace me into its familiar fold
and carry me back to civilization.
But there are no schedules,
no rumblings that speak of an approaching engine;
just me and this twilight that stretches to the limits of my perception
without a hint of a head or tail for me to judge its length.

Sure there are trees, and distant huts without lights,
and rustlings of rodents in the undergrowth,
the creak of the lamp swaying every so often,
but they are hardly enough:
I realize I need to be reflected in the speech and actions
of other people in order to be a person myself.
But I can let go sometimes and merge with the solitude
and become the dusk,
and crowd with the other insects close to the warm glow of the light
and sing with my body to the tune of the crickets
and sit down to scrape my story in the restless dirt,
where it is meant to remain for a mere moment.

"Why did you make this choice
to fall in love with fire over and over again?
Do you enjoy it when your insides are singed by a thousand candles
of the unknown?
Must you seek the brambled path to the mouth of the volcano
and risk blindness by staring deep into its heart?
Rest your head on a cold stone, drink from the cool stream that flows down the hill,
and sup not on the molten ecstasies that pour out of Her chalice."

I know no other means of being.

Ma,
  I shot an arrow into the eye of heaven today
The response was an angry shower of stars
that spilled across the velvet robes of the universe.
I have enraged a god or two
and must atone with a duality of self
and a pain that carries with it the warm hum of learning,
like the sound I used to make when studying for my exams
late at night, just before I dreamed of stars.

Destiny ordained the quiet life for him
Destiny pushed him towards a secluded beach in Alone town
Destiny whispered lullabies to his blood and told him to smile
Destiny simply asked him to be forgotten by History.

Hope told him there were no rewards in heaven
Hell, Hope canceled all orders for an afterlife
Hope shook his dreams with vague tremors
Hope plunged him into sweet novelties.

Fortune stalked him from among the bulrushes
Fortune sang otherworldly melodies through the reeds
Fortune lifted him from the brink of extinction
Fortune swung him upon the ropes of ecstasy.

7 billion chests rising and falling
7 billion hearts pumping like there's no tomorrow,
defying time.
Our breath mingles
the choked struggles of a coal-miner
the long draughts of the drunken stroller
we share the common thread of existence.
Your pasts are varied and rich
and yet our paths are not so different.
You and I we trace destinies that are parallel
even if for a little while.
Un ratito.

Signs and Omens

Sanity might be
to see signs and omens
and recognize the difference between the two.
Causative correlations
Passive associations
The which is which.
My head hurts today.
A homeless man on a bus made a sad attempt
at weaving fictitious subtexts into someone else's conversation.
What a piece of work is man:
that he may construct patterns out of the litany of his own nation
and yet not stop at the border of the undiscovered country.
Can we help but delve deeper into the patchwork of reality
hoping to find infinite fractals of order?
What arbitrary deity draws the line of structure at "Here and no further"?
Internally and externally we find peace and position in society
by drawing multi-coloured threads between the pegs of events
and yet, someday, will we pick up a wholly unnecessary spool
and overwhelm the map of reality with our prophecies?

The falling raindrops outside my window shiver
when struck by the piano's chords,
a quiver of recognition of the cathedral they recently saw in the blue depths,
when they surged with the waves of the ocean a thousand miles away.

The trees stand in cold repose,
weathering winter's irrational moods.
Most of them have grown, and lost, branches low down along their trunks
branches borne in the springtime
in the bright light and perfume of arboreal ardor.
But now scars in the shape of watchful eyes have taken their place,
and the newest branches grow higher and stronger,
with their fibers intertwined more deeply with the pith of the stem.
The tree behind my dwelling stands a little apart
no scars, but the first branch, the lonely branch,
grows higher along the trunk.
Let us hope it stands strong in the breezes of contemplative summers.

The day has not begun for people yet.
Yet the sun stretches,
sweeps the floor with his fingertips,
disturbs lazy dust motes that hang around the shelves.
He lets himself in through the ebony-framed window panes,
and lays himself down on the mahogany desk
smiling and soaking in the smell of history.
The sandalwood elephant, with a chip in its left tusk,
no doubt the result of some heady attempt at writing down his own epic tale,
is amused.
He converses with the sun through a staring contest for two,
and lets his mind wander through the silent, frozen paths
of the forest painted in oils.
He can hear his own tail swishing along in the warmth of the canvas memories
and the birds sing with sweet abandon.

Holding hands and dancing in a circle,
the children laughing all the while
the hidden smirks
the broken promises
and casting the first stone with ease;
tease
then release into the confusion
a rite of passage off the platform
before you could form your own worldview
true to the moment and sore to the point of no return
falling to the ground and cracking the spine
of a book that's been read twice from a dusty old shelf on the library.
The litany of brahmanical priests leading me from sunrise
and dropping me into the crazed cacophony of individuality,
I cannot chart these waters with somebody else's broken moral compass,
and with the astrolabe that emerged from the lips of Venus,
nor by the sun that burns my lost chakras.
I put up a feather bed on the balance tip of a crescent moon
and rock till the day begins.

et in Elsinore ego

The wind with wide sweeping arms
cradles the weary on the great open plain.
The tired eyes fix upon the crashing columns of basalt
and their trembling hands
wipe the tears of regret and shame with a dirty sleeve.
Having lost a million brothers,
and two million sisters
since yesterday
they can only break camp, and,
hoisting their belongings on a shoulder,
bear further into the realm of sunlight that the future grants.

Otis sings the blues

The taste of the same old pain
singing the sweet refrain
of the sun
ceding to the morning rain.

The drum rolls of thunder remain
echoing through the halls of the day
and I sink deep
into the black satin sheets of dismay.

I fear to drape you in veils
dyed in the various shades of night
that, paper-thin and vulnerable,
yet bear the leaden weight of the world's iniquities.
I would rather swaddle your mind in robes
of colours that dazzle and blind
of silken fantasies woven with images of gods and animals
and clasps studded with the drunken gems of escape.
To hold the delicate balance of another is to truly fear.

Fearless she rides along the vast lines of juniper bushes
that skirt the unforgiving cliff edge.
Shadowless the horse glides through the noon wind
and scoffs at the hot breath of exhaustion.
Impressionless the music of the insatiable waterfall cascades
drumming softly and inexorably on the patient boulders below.
Aimless the eagle courts the laziness of midday
and scorns the thermals for the challenge of stillness.
Heedless the azure god climbs across the horizon
dragging behind him a web of delusion.
Soundless my heart skips several beats at once
and rolls across the vicissitudes of novelty.

On a good day you might notice the sharp bend in the sea gull's wing,
But then again you might forget the warmth of palm pressed against palm.

There was just a single light on in the cathedral that night.
It hung high above,
barely casting light upon an empty floor.
The dusty pews were lonely
having been jostled about in mild disarray,
and waited for the warmth of prayer
to stir the shadows once again.
I sat near the stained-glass window
with the pale moonlight shimmering through.
A vast space, that carried within it both
the soft fragrance of a loving embrace
and the cold, eternal loss of dear friends torn asunder.
It was a divided space, a duality of the impersonal and intimate,
and I felt caught in this twilight between the two worlds
of the spiritual and religious.
But even this was perversely uplifting
this confusion and alienation,
this restless ebb and flow of questions and doubts.
There is a thrill in opening up the doors to a strange world
where there isn't even a language to speak of.

From the canopied alley,
to the stone-masonry parapet,
and on to the ridge overlooking the vale.
I move from history to history
drinking in opportunity and failure,
and changing bodies to receive the next lesson.

The sun rings a definitive tone
to crack the spine of a freshly-minted day
the mountain resounds,
the falling leaves chime.
And passing birds flock to the horizon
to drink the nectar on the edge of the world.
Sharp-edged words drip down the petals of shy flowers
that bow to the clear music of this moment.

nec sinistrorum nec dextrorum

A constant buzz crowds my mind these nights
a high-pitched chattering of voices malevolent and yet obscure
and promises to bring my sand castle crashing into the surf.
The moments drip quietly into hours,
achingly hovering before they fall.
To accept that these are the last sunsets of someone
are beyond the ken of my ego, which writhes with passions and designs deep.
And so I hold my child's hand and weep a different set of tears
sour with rage and disappointment,
hoping that I wake up into objectivity
and into a ridiculous sainthood I have always deluded myself with.
Strange contorted regrets are creeping beside my bed tonight
and rearing their disheveled heads to see if I am still asleep.
How do I survive this long twilight
when just this day I have once again forsaken god?

Dancing through dreams and shadows of expectations and anticipations,
you now step into the prosaic nightmare of paralyzed limbs and
frozen words.

"I turned the earth with my spade
and smelled the promise of fruit as yet unborne;
but the new harvest bore the uncertain marks of blight and blessing alike
and some fell to the ground over-ripe with summer's passion.
The ambiguity inherent in the seed must manifest itself in like fashion. "

A dream fulfilled,
a dream dwarfed
a moment in the high-altitude sunshine
when reality and fantasy finally embrace,
and when I don´t know if there is a higher peak.
I drink in the tranquility
and move on.

A shaft of sunlight finally breaks through,
and just barely stretches its fingers to the awakened floor stones.
There's a tension in the air
as the silence watches the stone satyr
awaiting his response.
He sits with heavy-lidded eyes,
a lazy upturn of the mouth at the ends,
underscored by a careless goatee.
Yes, he muses, maybe the moment has come
when once again he shall dance with the wood nymphs
and tease their golden locks with his hands,
when the music shall ring in the sun-addled shallows of the forests
and the wine shall free the spirit.
Maybe the time has come to leave this giant chamber of echoes
this vast resting-place for those who have reconciled themselves
to their mortality,
with the musty smell of millenia of neglect
and the sweet aroma of forgetfulness.
Maybe. If only I were ready to leave.

Snowfall at dawn;
I follow the rich scent of shivering pines
and hear the crunch of white underneath keep time
with the incomprehensibly loud beating of my heart.
I have walked till the blustering drifts have covered all tracks
and softly erased my tenuous links with Civilization
and her child, Memory.
All that is left is the merciful purgatory
where time has lost meaning.
I feel the muscles in my face numbed
to the point where smiling is a trial and an act alien to me.
I am grateful for no one's happiness hangs
upon the inflections of my eyebrows
or the melody of my words.
Only the sweet taste of snow and freedom remains today.

A date in America

Mine turn to take your
Satyr Dane tazer party
You see, it's like
A long fish washing itself
In grazing waters
At least lore is
Fresher than wishes
Wintry apt witches
Clinging to singles
Out of range
Shingles
Separate epsilon

Cornered, yet happy

Holy mother of grotesque forms, whose hair cascades over the rocks, and meanders through waiting grasses, bending to the rhythm of your breathing. The jagged peaks, the forlorn clouds, the whispers and rumours of storms that disappoint, the call of the raven, the ravenous liaisons of wolves in the moor, all have your blessing and eternal guidance. The knobby-kneed tree with its twists, and awkward skyward dances, is the flower that crowns your head. and I lie in waiting, for the day when you share the light with beauty and its silliness.

Sadly, I passed away before writing this sentence.
Under cascades of cherry blossoms,
in curled around the base of a willow,
my ears still ringing with the sounds of a distant lonely big-jazz band,
a silly smile perking up at every flourish,
and listening forgetfully to the growth of the grass,
straining beneath my weight.
This garden lasted for aeons of distance,
turning hazy at the very edges of perception,
claiming chuckling dominion over a flat earth.
The bird song is lazy and carefree
the uncertain winds would pick up and take off in one direction,
then another
tousling my hair in query: "Do you know the way?"
If I did, would I be lying here?

Softly padded steps on cold asphalt
sniffing the nascent spring air,
night has crept up on the world
miles and miles of cold granite behemoths rise in the dark
there's a deep, barely perceptible crimson flame that lights their inchoate forms
and I run down into the heart of this dusty land under cheering stars.
I have no body, but I got soul.

The wind clears the self
and opens up the tree-lined avenue
to dusts and tornadoes of ochre-choked deserts.
I smell the bleeding of grass on the spring air
and yet the salt of the sea at the same time.
All places are contained here,
without the borders I use to define my ego.

Letter Intent

carrion crawling

447 orth horn of alunger

Mari 16, XIX

Le: we seek we've seen, cliff slide crushing ocean

Greets,
Your offer is most generous. So I must accept. You may send them at once.

On my behalf, I have located those texts which you requested not half a month ago. Their contents are as follows.

poet: 
rushing closer
to tune a cluster
entombed entrusted
oft lust of lustre 

actor:
for cloudy blood
enough
on off 
in tant did dan
intent intanned 
indented 
tangible

witch:
with whispered rush
a rain range hollis
flake flame remaiment
force change on constants

wizard:
arrange known crane ingrainments
into mange page staged arraignment
rancid escape encamp emancipated 
or cancel a fancy dance rant 

of fame,
floff fallident

came and went.


cc: Gordon Cormoroad, Selsy Amblin, CARP

You can hear the soft lamentations
of fingers scraping against paper
of gingerly seeking hands with blood pulsing erratically through them
as they skip a beat and tremble.
Sleep will not come easy to some.
Too easy to others.
This room encompasses an entire life.

I realize that my life could end
with the bite of a single bullet straight down the third eye of my forehead
a red-annulated hole boring into the smiling center of my mind
as I fall to my knees in a dusty road
on a hot summer day in a town where no one is born.
Where the bright searing yellow of the sun
wipes clean all memory,
and the lime-washed white houses shimmer in the heat of mid-afternoon,
slipping into dreaming mirages of their own.
Insubstantial can be this dance into darkness
this silly performance on the final stage,
a blunt point on an otherwise fine life.
It has happened before to mothers, fathers, daughters and sons,
and I too can be swept up in chance's sense of humour.
If only I can learn to laugh wryly at the ridiculousness of that moment,
I can live with that possibility.

The cold wipes away the lingering scent of the new year,
we stand amidst timeless waters.
On a dock that bobs and sways to the tune of the light ripples on the lake,
we see the hills that bristle with pine,
peppered and dusted with flecks of snow.
These quiet witnesses
are slowly erased from memory
by a soft, white curtain of snow and mist
as if She were shuffling her petticoats in shame
having revealed the supple glory of her secret
in a moment of careless abandon.
But now better sense has prevailed.
If you must taste of the dew,
you must earn the right of initiation,
to gain entrance by shedding your own self,
a naked, flickering flame,
that holds its breath
and plunges into the great unknown.

I tried to mold the air between us
into shapes and shadows of staggering nuance
and came away with brittle words that snapped and echoed without remembrance.
I aimed to raise my brow to the finest arches of sophistication
and came away night after night as a startled mongoose once bitten.
I posed and preened and roved the lands for an adventure to share
and returned frost-covered and lame-legged from the journey.
I tried, but apparently keeping my silence throughout was not the right option.
And so I turn tonight and walk against the tide of my heart,
and find myself a child crying in the backyard
because my favourite toy fell into the mean old neighbour's yard,
and I'm certain I'll never see it again.
Never will I hold it in my hands,
nor know again the sheer joy of having it for my own
no matter the all-knowing consolations of my parents,
(with their omniscient confidence in the ways of the world)
I stand eternally bereft.
Never is a kind word. It means that now is the worst it will ever be.

Let the rain come

She stood there, decked out in the finest robes of righteousness,
A life immaculate,
Clean, pure, untouched,
Brow worn high,
nary a wrinkle
Scarcely a furrow,
And waited, in the rain, for the bus to come by.
She spoke softly in a confident tone
That spoke of riches in the winds
Of ethereal beauty
Heavenly gifts
All encased in the gilt fabric of conviction from the Other-world
Where one of her feet was firmly planted always.
Within this spirit of moral levity
She floated without imprint,
Leaving no history to besmirch her name.

The other bystanders wore galoshes and raincoats,
Mud-speckled boots,
Umbrellas with bent spokes
And rattled to each other their earthly secrets
Their stories of “who’s who and what’s what so there,”
And bore the scars and weathered lines of a lifetime of jostling for space,
And left behind progeny of memories and mixed emotions
That will course through the veins for the world
Forever after,
Tracing complex patterns of shimmering iniquity and gossamer goodness.

The bus picks them all up without judgement.

Are these days that test my faith,
even when I never had none?
Are these words of Anglica too poor
to be couched in nothing but Biblical referentia?
Are they crouching within
the left temple of Pat Robertson,
nay, synagogue,
nay, demagogue
(nay, but he is the Christian Balrog?)
Circle deep the pool of thoughts
plumb the Stygian depths of reptilian umbilica
and seek life in those clammy depths of the Mother Goddess
Her placental warmth gives rise to words of loss
pregnant with meaning and self-worth and self-standing.
Those few unearthed onyxes dew-ridden with the collective humidity of a heaving earth
they will be my messengers.
Take them and run.
hide in the caverns and wait your turn,
arise dear Lazarus when the sun strikes at the face of a new sky far away in time.

The spirit that lurks in the highest branches of rain-soaked trees
swooped down this night.
And riding the dark winds of revelation
stripped me of my mask
and laid bare the trembling animal,
the white-eyed naked creature that hungers.
The shadows, my parents, have stayed away.
I stand under the quiet lightning of tonight
and accept myself.

Dragon under the stars,
coiled by the lakeside,
in frozen lands forsaken by the fire,
breathing very rasping shallow breath with difficulty.
In those moments he fell in love with the Rabbit in the moon,
an unachievable link with the rest of the world,
and so he would try
to fly
and fail
on reptilian wings of wax
the cold air condensing on his chilled body,
scaling new ever-thinner heights
and then closing his eyes mid-air.

Home
I thought I left you behind with my grandparents, my dog,
In a sun-baked, family-buffered, cricket-obsessed memory
Far back in another life, with another man’s dreams.
Home
I now find you adrift on the high seas
Floating away on the little buffets of wind,
Your temples lit with cyan lanterns rocking quietly
Swaying to the rhythm of the waves
The sweet smell of sandalwood and old flowers lingering in your narrow
Rock-walled alleyways
And your disheveled, over grown gardens.
Home
I find,
Is tangled in her hair,
In the sound of her voice and
The lilt of her chiding.
Waiting for the smile to turn into an embracing expanse
And swallow me whole, and satisfy my unrequited hunger.
Home
Is strewn across faces that I’ve never seen
Yet would love to like, and vice versa
And scrounges around in forests for aromatic tubers
And runs naked through the trees, headlong then into the cool brook.
Home
Has cheated me of peace
And robbed my days of rich sunlight.
Home
And its grand mythologies
Of beasts that scream in my dreams
And of planets that sing in sweet harmonies across the emptiness
Has left me bereft.
I can never go home now,
And that forbidden fruit is the most tempting.

I
Somehow you still manage to splash across the pages of my day in aquamarine.
II
His voice flowed down the walls of the fortress
echoing over the vast lawns
stirring the blades of grass with life anew
awakening the long-sleeping dead with its mournful poetry
and in the yawning caverns of its musty halls
sending a shiver of recognition.
Life beyond the afterlife.
III
Riding the brown horse across the blue sky-laden desert
hearing the wind sing the litany of freedom.

Don't call me "buddy"

Chichi scanned the shop fronts:
“Presbyterian”, “Lutheran”, “Alimony”, “Pay stubs”, “Masculinity”,
and she peered down at the green dolphins swimming below the crystal surface,
and the rippling images below crawled across her skin,
like fire ants, burning,
shaking her heart and lending a restlessness to her day dreams.
She wanted to leave the market-place, but the dark tress beyond
Could only be reached through an impenetrable barrier of blind crowds
And searing oil frying the day’s catch.
She tried to pry open her mouth with her fingers
To let her escape and run free.
And the sky was a dun-grey shade.
Somebody would have to break the dam and flood the village she mused openly.
And people laughed and breathed in the smog.
Tear-stains from yesterday amplified the crinkles of their upturned mouths.
I would like to be outside of here.

The shaman grasped the spear firmly,
as he stood on the beach this fine moonlit night,
and he waved it aggressively at an angry ocean.
"Stay back," he said,"and be calm.
Your children bid you to hear their mouthpiece,
and soothe your raging temper.
I draw straight lines from the Pole star
to her five sisters
and bind you within their radiant arms."
And their fears were manifest,
a tangible shadow across the night's surface
one that lent conviction to the entranced spirit-keeper,
an enemy known, ethereal,
yet confined to the limits of conscious thought.
On what fine day will he see defeat then?
Are there no bounds to his powers?
Ah, but when he stands on that beach
amidst the ruins of his village,
as age and decay rot away the traditions of his world
and the threads come loose from the fabric of his star-spiced worldview
racked and ravaged by strange, new seasons of smallpox and arrogance,
then he he is forced to sit back down, agape,
the spear slackens in his hand,
and the Fight in him ebbs away,
cowering in dazzled incomprehension.

Slipping away like weakened graphite pressed
between aging pages
the words crumble into shadows,
an osteoporosis of eloquence
and vague shifting gaps in memories,
a dry brook running itself into the hungry earth.
The dawn elicits no light,
the night shelters no sleep,
and thus steeped in the twilight hum
of every day
time steps ahead.
There are hints, taps on the shoulder
slight passing perfumes of muses moving underneath the distant trees
carried on the wind, but
they leave me lonelier still when they stream on by.

Drum roll, mon Papa!!
A little sky by the wayside,
and sunshine to boot in the new year.
Do you have something to say to the fiery volcano and the cool moon,
that play down the electric sheen of a delicately rendered world?
The sharp salmon softening the horizon
and giving birth to the white phoenix arising in silent fury.
Now that I am alive,
bury me gently in your warm caress,
and let me close myself.

Gary Got Letters

Gary,
To carry it. Finally fornicate. Barely a surrogate.
Mine, as in make me.
Swarms forbid passion, if one is to matter.
At sludge on the level. Bulk as in mulch, fancy escape me.
I blink amid mastery. Faking an anger.
To ride is to riddle, to spill a brash honor.
For what comes the keystone?
And how could he hold out?
Slipping is cruel when you're needed.

Ann Bannister north of a much needed N-stop.
When sin isn't lust but brains burnt the barn down.
Back in the days of an outlet wrap fracking.
'Twas Wayne, I am sure of his truck lights.

So hospital wafer or swipe verse conundrum.
I cost us the war and fortitude rumbling.
It was clear I was wanted but stayed in my corner.
For this I bring tension pleasantly into your home.

It's a dome, which now you can whisper.
Loftily,
Dave

Too steep to climb

There is a breeze here on the hill
That speaks of cold winters to come,
Even though yet the embers of my erstwhile fire sputter among the moon-drenched stones.
I smell upon it the wood-smoke from cooking in the hearths
And the soft songs being hummed unconsciously by the dozing lantern-lighters
Who draw easy breath in the comfort of their own homes.
I look briefly over my right shoulder
At the grey distance, barren and endless
And turn back to my past, the village in the valley below.
But within arm’s reach are the memories of my days amongst that council of trees
And of my trials of adolescence in the school yard,
Of my dreams of stars in the fragrant meadows beyond.
All of the history that I have piled upon the world in my years
Is wrapped up in a neat little bundle of houses, and lives
Tucked in a hollow between the hills.
I am still young and my feet will carry me far
And so, even more so, I must be gone,
And lose myself in new births in scattered lands.
As with every step the dream of days gone by will lighten and fade
And yellow in the dust of new experience and time,
And since the future remains clouded,
I will have merely the beating of my heart to keep pace with me.
My ever-renewed present is worn proudly.

When the thread of music fades
The buzz and hum of an everyday busyness
And a silence slips inside,
You pause and consider…
The ends and means, the in-betweens.

The sounds that surround
The clamor of voices and passions
Of loves lost and gained
Of culture, cerebral yearnings, heroism and damnation,
The world that flits under the fluorescent light
Bedazzled by its own self-sustainment,
Is not enough somehow.
The real world spends most of its time in the darkness of unperception.
Grand trees decaying in the solitary company of stars,
Mountains sighing their substance away into the wind and sea,
The rebirth of violent volcanoes,
And sharp moonlight
All these and more will persevere long into the coming ages.

The marrow that drives my body
Seems to have crept out of the house
In the quiet of night
And I shiver in my dreams and lament a loss I know not how to cope with.
She stands away in a pale Buddha-hood of her own
Teaching high morals in a world that used to be my home
In a life I can’t remember.
And I couldn’t care less.
My keep is with the inanimate.
The uncultured.
The unculturable and eternal.
I walk through meadows of crashing columns of sandstone.
And fall on to the grass myself.
My eyes close.

Coping mechanism B.13

We walk side-by-side with the phantoms of symbolism
our emotions stand out in cardboard cut-out relief
and we pay to simulate life experiences
so that we learn automated responses
when the real thing punches us in the stomach.

Do you hear that
when you close your eyes, shut the vacant vaults of your mind
that vague roar in the distance
the silent cries of the beasts of night
those interstitial beings that inflate you with an anxious longing
that inject with you the barest hint of the mystery behind the moonlight that licks the glossy patina of the night sky,
cruel denizens of dark spaces
that work in irksome spaces of the unfamiliar and grotesque
yet are somehow the focal point of inward ambition,
I will seek you in my blind nightly wanderings.
I will find your homes deep in the wombs of caves,
intertwined in the highest branches of ancient trees,
in the shadow of breathing mountain.

The Gods of Creation and Destruction

The potter's hands
riven from earthen textures
washing red clays off,
those crinkles laid into her palms
the geometric weatherings of years
of building and creation.
The warm baked ground outside is her model
the hills and river beds her source.
The living heart transplanted into art.

Broken bottles and shattered windows
inset into crumpled car doors
forgotten bylanes by asbestos shacks
and a maze of dead-ends for the child.
This isn't about material poverty,
but about emptiness of mind,
about the lack of blue nectar filling those cracked, chapped minutes
the lack of that soul-enhancing food,
and the child feels this, in his teeth
in the inability to cry.
I feel the violence rise,
like a vengeful sun,
turning its gaze on a world turning away in fear.

I need to switch off soon,
the answer lies in stillness.

Where do I begin?
On this windy night by the shore,
the restless seas insist themselves upon the senses:
the sharpness of the salt on the air
and of the washed-up seaweed that gave up, exhausted, on the sands around me,
the silver fear that dwells at the back of my mouth in awe of the dark raw power,
the noisy conversations of the waves
the blue-black waters topped with whitecaps nearly fluorescent in the moonlight,
and to have this before your feet with the playful stars staring from above
in their childish lack of inhibition
they flit through the entire spectrum, all while gaping open-mouthed
as I stand still on that lonely beach.
How can I describe, within the confines of words, the affirmation of life
That you, Ocean-Mother, offer to me,
the justification of the breath that swells in my chest
and of the beating of my jaded heart?
I've tried to wade through cliches
and into fresh depths,
but I get tangled, and my steps are weighed down in the sands of convention.
And for that I apologize.
I hope my love is sufficient.

Pickled tink

She disrobed, dropping her grey cloak to the horizon,
the water lapped upon her fertile hips,
the branches of her embrace glistened in our sunlight,
the undulations of her form spreading out beneath me as I fell from the sky,
the soft hills and the dark meaningful valleys
the alighting of multi-coloured fireflies along her breathing coastline with evening's fall
and I slipped into the primal, cold waters within reach,
stretching to caress,
my heart racing,
my breathing rapid,
in translucence and in azure dreams
I met Sweet City Seattle, mistress of my now.
I lie inside her tonight.

My Empire, tied to a chair

Lord Mangestu, with your hands behind your back,
staring out a cold window, lined with yellow and red ochre tones,
an earthy confinement,
it's time to slip them off.
You see, don't you, the harkening branches of late winter trees
that are to carry you strongly into the dark sky,
where the stars will rewrite your history.
You can step outside the hollow palace with vaulted ceilings,
into the thin, biting air.
What the road holds who can tell,
but let it unfold its story.
Start walking.
Your captors never were,
you are alone and all-powerful,
with the power to fly and the capacity to cage yourself.
Things are fickle, because you flit from momentary self to self.
Chew through cast iron and run!

Corpus Mundi

Three crows sitting on a winter-ransacked tree
is not just a repeating motif in fables
but in my recent life too.
Corvus eats the Corpus
of the recently passed-on
picked down to the raw bone
so that white doves and civilized Greeks may partake
of polite society.
The cleansing to wipe the slate
and start with a clear conscience
the process of ignoring death.
All over again.
The wisdom of the birds
that once bore the responsibility
of advising Lugh of the Celts
one on each shoulder
the majestic dark-downed ones
users of tools,
and ingenuity,
have no home amongst the innocent.
The omens that they bear unto us,
are merely reflections of our potentialities.

Steely Dawn

I woke up that morning,
Into the steely sunlight
That forged its way through the pale clouds,
And gave off that faint metallic smell
That rings around new experiences and new worlds.
I had stumbled that fresh day into a fresh universe
Dusty streets with cement compound walls
Cars driving themselves,
No faces anywhere.
Like lat night was Ragnarok
And the worlds sins were washed away
The innocence of new beginnings
The crisp letter of new rules,
New banners in a foreign country,
That is my home from before.

In the birth there is no one else to share my incredulity,
At least none that I have found yet.
This is the singular effect that the sun falling at the right angle
Through a certain prism
On a certain cloudy day
Can have.
Beware the beauty of the changeling universe.

pow-wow on the yang-tze

now that i think of it, after returning home on the 11 i won't want to continue.
i just know me. after touching home i'll need to stay.
it's not about you. it's about me, peter. i'm the one that has to make this decision.
i know the way i would feel and it just isn't wise to leave.
i've had revolts of me, inside me, the very pinnacle of knowing one's self.
of being. of toiling with...this. it's all a tangled mess in the end.
but we press on, of course. the beat repeats. we write a new line of code.
we click moments into the past only to recall a bit.

at least releasing, your feet carry you out // the mind reacting without asking.

so..
the iron's been put to the fire.
question now is
what now?

Pacem

The desert this night is full of lizards:
sleek, lean, fat, scaly, horned,
skittering across the floor in the vivid blue light of the moon,
crossing paths, scaling the heights of each other
endlessly turning and churning the sand and rocks,
never letting them rest.
They dig network patterns into the dunes
and hurry forth with no destination, no final resting place in the sun.
Movement is its own purpose.

With a thin whisper
I can send them to rest,
back to their coves of memory,
their niches of passion,
their nests of solitude.
And I find the desert my welcome home and hearth,
once again.
I am sovereign.

Grooming my self-image
in the mirror-pond
laughing self-consciously all the time
until the day that I shed my body.
And step into those deeper waters,
without the need for air.

Yesterday was when a simple charge of moisture-laden air,
a wafting chill carried me over
to where my foremothers/fathers (as much as yours)
sat in the translucent days of innocence
before the skin was colored
when the lonely gulp and slosh of paddle in water
or the snap and tug of sail and rigging
were their only companions.
The journeys of discovery
sagas lost to history, retained as simple facts
without the flesh and hue of breath in the midsummer air,
and the Pacific calm
and all the details that connect us to the forever past and the forever future
without these, we move in shared blindness.

the safe race

weaping walker (without tennis balls)
amid languid season OR a breach of humanity
maybe no less humane, but certainly draining
like bricks from the street. like ignorance.
i told myself i'd stop judging violence
but i don't see it that way. a tunnel's a tunnel
where i can't see by the light of a cocktail
casting stone, spitting lung. god damned darkness.

a soft hand thrust down to knock sense into irrational
but that's just not me. i'm too safe for understanding.
still in swirling a fantasy family underquoted yet so pressed
amid friends swept arrested, i charge with abandon. what rage!
what courage! where's the badge? and who said we couldn't?!?

i can't remember the combination to a simple lock.
so to satiate my helpless cleats, i walk...and then i walk further.
i rant to the trees, the thatch, whatever has my attention.
i bind it, conform it, mash it like grease into my intricate parts.
new motions now setting, emotions in skin, a thin ring of wisdom.

hand to foot to knee to toe to chin to eye to heading.
i call this crawling. our baby race barely beginning.

Out of the dead expanses of a scorched earth,
Do we see a virgin birth
Conceived in neither sound, smell, or the taste of freedom;
How do we choose to unshackle ourselves?
Millons of lives sold as the Live-Stock of another from the womb
Right to the trembling muscled days of hard labour in an unforgiving sun,
Did we accept even ourselves tacitly as the property of another?
No, for people swore to themselves that there was something better,
In those brief interludes that the captors did not see
As sowing the seeds of liberty,
In those fleeting glimpses of the glory of this world, grow the potentialities of the human spirit,
And bid the feet to run, through that free grass, through that racing stream, through the cloud-jeweled blue days of grace, into the arms of our own futures,
And our own rules.
To break our backs on our own terms.
And to savour the sweet corn that spills from our own horns of plenty.
I do not understand the horrors of slavery,
I am on the other side, where I feel the warmth of what life can be,
Of what infinite joys the universe can offer, if only we open our arms wide
To contain its embrace.

But is history in the past, or are we still finding ways of accepting our bonds?
Is the yearning for anarchy reduced to a movement of college kids with red tags smeared on forgotten walls?
Or is there a desire for more: have we compromised for the promises of society
To the point of being willing slaves?
Everyday we’re driven by the gales of prejudices, gossamer-subtle, a mere whisper in the corner of your room, a quiet little flap of its scaly wings in the darkness of our hours,
I found this insect of misfortune in my own home,
And had to shovel centuries of filth off my own perceptions of the world.
The task is far from over, but I am trying to free myself.
Slowly, with measured, sometimes tortured steps,
To extricate myself from the expectations of a non-sentient yet often aggressive world of opinions and ideas.

...and all they could be measured by...

get up! get along. the friar didn't go bald for your pension.
unwaxed jackets now stay strewn low and slovenly like kelp, just waiting for wave orders
the next passerby eliciting momentary control, then silence
what is happening?
spices strapped inside barrels bound for the shore
sunstroke sweeps and windswept fascia pose like victimless paddles
let's hope the seals were worth the tender price we paid

servitude, at least
i can not work. something about john henry and a fuzzy stuffed lab
repeating in my brain. good enough to get it now. to look good. to give the good. now a need.
star gazing for angels in time on top offered objective and sallow
padforn, he lost it. magpies remember. with wishing these combine
already dousing sluggish energy, true mean - soon or teeth
brew ha! we laughed. we're down, bobbing.

squalid, in a stream

alkjdg8376://

pining for the universal doorway
we sit recalcitrant staring at our own casket
the symbol of giddy children or muscle men, circus bound
with no other option than to be what others say they should become.
without from the to gets too much attention and bubbles form
facing a new nest recorded in stagnant waters already reached by dark rays of yellow birds, curious of their brethren possessions, chaos in the treetops
spite on the ground
"i can't ascribe to the same eddies as your upbringing"
still, he tries to be patient and rectitude
soaking up another culture's beat
twanging and swaying
free

the tongues slip out of frowns awaiting turtles in biohazard cores
it's creepy time for sure
a little man with large eyes in a tiny head
feeding on whatever floats by
wearing stepladders and french people
it was almost over
the clover had come for crowds to graze
for the glaze of normalcy flowing into rivers
with no other personality than point A, point B
swoops! cooing. this pixie dies in small part upon hearing organ choruses
and mother keeps up her back breaking routine
squalid, in a stream

Four crazy people sat facing the four cardinal directions.
They protected your movements, your morning cofffee from spilling,
your daily bread,
with thte force of their incantations, breathed into the enchanted wind.
One was a black man, torn from his family at 5, now guardian of the east,
who broke that dawn when he was kicked out on the street by the last landlord,,
who felt the spring snap inside him when he couldn't understand the way out of the maze.
The second smiled into the graceful south,
where the wheels of his chair lay directed ready to carry him to the ends of the earth,
oh those soft eyes of pity, those leaning coos of "hey Buddy, need a hand there?"
all this and the frustration of never being able to run again,
led him around the dark corner,
into the alley by the roller rink, where his mind lies trapped.
To him falls the need to bear the weight of the world as it falls southward eternally. An Atlas with an ever expanding smile.
The soldier of the West is a veiled lady of Arabia,
the supreme subject of a million stereotypes, reigning over the gardens of her imagination,
where she can sing, and meet her friends, and speak her mind,
And paint the wild naked corners of the Serengeti without fear,
And these she tracks with her one good eye,
and her crushed soul.

And the stalwart of the North, an albino of uncertain heritage,
a woman with no past or future,
a blank slate that creation colours with the whims of each moment,
She was born without the any purpose for her tongue,
and knowing all languages uses none.
She alone has it within her to stand up to our winters for us.
She sees thin strams of gold and deep blue, and smells things before they occur.
She does not cringe at the sight of the guts of a pig, nor does she feel joy when the sun warms her feet.
But she is seen to smile, when the tide comes in. When Mars enters summer,
when the migration of the whales reaches its end.

I am

...in love and more,
and the satisfaction of one moment
does not communicate with the next.
Lessons that bear reminding in every fresh, newborn instant.
So be it.
The collections of things that define life need not be thematic.

Past that memory

Sweet Seraphine,
in the quiet darkness of tonight,
floating so peacefully away,
away and away.
And do I notice that slight bitterness that so lightly pulls
you from this dream, so silently
draws your eyes back in time?
Why yes, but I pray you, dwell not forever in that place,
tarry not in the quarries of sorrows,
for there is an echoing silence that bids you to rest.

And let not that sadness be driven harshly,
but kept well,
like a piece of glimmering nostalgia,
a keepsake, well-rounded by time,
and slightly threadbare,
dusty in the attic, visited in reveries
and moments of necessary reflection.

Sweet child, your destiny will wax and wane,
and the universe will force you randomly through its testing-sieve:
through pores of passion, tunnels of anguish,
passages of glory, open fields of equanimity,
and you shall carry those scars, wear those medals upon your breast,
and each shall bear witness to your life.
This whole and nothing less will define you.

Along the dark street,
with waning Christmas lights in January,
the exorcist returned home.
He took off his damp overcoat,
sat in his worn armchair,
and held the tips of his fingers in each hand alternately.
The cold had got into them.

"And so will death release us?
Into judgment?"
The trade he had plied all these years,
and eroded the sharp edges of faith
and the water had receded to reveal veins of inexplicability.
Every so often, it was the same story:
a young boy sent to fetch him, the devil was hard at work,
he arrived in the ramshackle house,
a distraught parent, spouse,
and the diseased, the unclean,
would sit staring, or frothing at the mouth.
He would say his piece, his bored litany,
and ask everyone to leave the room.
In the quiet, he would hold his head in hands,
and stare at the wretch that lay in pain.
"I cannot help you," he would whisper,
the lucky amongst you will wake up the next day or week or month,
and praise the name of God and His messenger,
the less fortunate, would pass into the shadow of the valley
the contest having slipped out of mankind's hands.
And mine.

"A salve to the wounds of the remaining
the anima, the soul, the blasphemous Brahman,
what does it mean beyond the reach of our time and mortality?
We build castles in the air and cathedrals in the twilight of our lives."

Grave it his all

The closing lodestone is, unfortunately, exactly as advertised
We were hoping for some tumbling anomaly
Perhaps a feather wafting or a grain sinking
It could represent the end of fall
The end of all

We may have whispered hard
Who knows: Back in '86
Dose: The paper-mate wisdom afforded by forged oranges
Trace: Purely a northern distraction
This too, out of edge of eye, reminiscent

A smile will, of course, wash this all away
A miner is a stranger
A strange pilgrim aside a pig
A grade cravings all too busy for laughter mixing
A!

Basement lodgings paste rubber satchel
The trunk of swollen historical neverminds
We as an alternative to hiding
Gets a fetching drove from time's merchant
Long overdue, the socks are wet

I'd like to zoom in a little further
If you'll indulge my footprints
Haven from the outboard risks
Miles of twitching
Only standing still ask visuals

This draft is borne of a liking
A glance of indifference only in snapshot
Dodging frightened light
Finding mist
And a fine layer of dust to authenticate

Might we slash again
Might we repeat for it's own sake
May I dote until red dawn
May I please have another
Sure comes an answer from the flame

MistereR's Neighbourhood

On the trolley ride back home,
as you swim backwards past all the memories
leading back into your childhood,
you ask yourself if you want to return.

Regressive or courageous?
Security of the past or in the possibilities of the future?
Do you strike gold in the darkness and the red hills?
or do you plumb the familiar ponds of youth...

Three people walked into three different rooms at three points in time.

I
He swayed into the room,
Reeking of madeira and already days old attar,
“Sometimes anger is the only currency that people understand.”

II
Out by the coffin of the old lady
He looked upon her unfeeling face,
“…and I’ll be too dead to care if eternity holds my name…”

III
His heart sank upon achieving resolution,
And the infatuation let loose its grip upon his mind,
“I cannot fool myself that it will not return, but I shall remember this moment.”

I was sitting on the bus,
with reality crashing in on my mind,
clamor both internal and external,
feeling slightly light-headed and separate from the world,
when the shouting kids and traffic noise receded for a second
and a voice called out clearly, vaguely resembling my mother:
"Prashant, wake up."

Not yet.

Tip of the iceberg

In the darkness took shape a little being,
Of immaculately untainted conception,
A clarity of purpose, whose cold insensibilities
Had neither to do with the cloying excesses of social magnanimities
Nor the raging passions of self-perpetuation.
But a single-minded hunger to absorb images:
Without a sight for aesthetic fashions, indiscriminate hydroxyl groups,
To pulsating blue giants
To the great shadows of clouds in intergalactic wildernesses.
The hunger would burn up this being’s essence, yet was never sated
And while headed down the inevitable path of finitude,
Fear was as distant as its own beginnings.
In the twinkling of an eye (which it would have endeavored to absorb had it known of such a happenstance),
It would flit from world to world,
Nebula to solid rock,
Inferno to icy interstices, purged out by former solar systems.
Until in its great venture
It stopped before a lake of mercury,
A placid mass of improbable occurrence found under a coincidence of unlikely circumstance
That smacks of predestination OR, just as likely [sic] the projected intercrossing of two infinities of parameters:
Here catching a glimpse of self, and of all the imbibed realities available for visual consumption,
It set about documenting every set and subset of it own being,
A task which simultaneously fueled and exhausted its finite resources
Until stuck in a nauseating fractal of unending redocumentation of documented images.
The poor dumb beast, that neither desires nor resents you sympathies,
Stood frozen in an obese equilibrium, a stationary Niobe of unceasing activity.
If you find yourself in a quandary give thought to this that still stands by that forsaken lake on that tired world out there, and thank your stars that you have no purpose. Or that you do. Or something, something…moral.

Testimonial

Born in a desert
The red sun framing your head
As it sinks below the seething sand,
Your eyes begin to take form,
Small embers of rage,
Tiny reflections of the day’s glory.
An even deeper pool of regret and sadness
Wrought wrinkles around the corners of your once smiling mouth
And the fallen grace that used to dance upon your lips
Now flounders like a flapping fish.

I was told to offer up a eulogy to your still-living self
To mention in high-flung verse
The deeds that sharpened the cursive history writ in stone
But I found none that stand in Time’s withered gaze
The Old Man just reads on past skipping the parts that detail your ad-ventures.
So what remains behind, for me to speak of.
Nothing.
Is that defeat?
Are you one of the billions that accept a soft spot in the grass and pass the moments of their lives in humility
Grateful to count themselves amongst the infinite,
And unwilling to waste a breath exhorting ambition and fame?
Can you find yourself amongst the thronging brotherhood
Where uniqueness is not measured by how high you stick out,
But how tall you stand in your own mind’s eye?

There is no eulogy for you tonight, my child.
Your twin self refuses to offer you up the cushion of self-indulgence.
Choose your flame: regret or fierce belonging.

Courting

A cold morning of listless sunlight
the bleak leafless trees scraping against the deathly white skies,
I sat at the table surrounded the muffling weight of red velvet curtains
that smelled of age old incense, and cat hair.
I looked at the creases on her face as they continued onto the table cloth
a march of ants in the corner of an exposed-wood room,
high-ceilings supported by whispers and cold thoughts.
She smiled, and I croaked: a loud raspy sound that escaped without my willing it.
Her smile deepened. She sat across from me
drew my glance into the purpled haze of the crystal ball,
no futures within nor ghosts of the present,
save the dryness of the moment, the feeling of being parched
a boat on the high seas with no land to sate its thirst.
I felt her hand clammy close about my brain
cold and yet smooth
like liquid metal filling my mental crevices.
I was walking towards her in spirit,
letting the room take me over
the ancient power of red gloom
and an aesthetic of dead branches.
My autumn was sliding hopelessly into an inviting winter,
I was being seduced.
I danced the unholy dance of powerlessness
a puppet in the hands of sadness and despair,
as I sat in the high-backed chair that seemed to embrace me in its vice
and looked at my charming captor,
an aged puppet-master, a grey-haired, horned demon in old chiffon
a Mrs. Havisham of willful malice
the day outside held in half-hearted stasis
unyielding to the redemption of sunlight
or the solace of darkness.
The flapping of buzzards from the ceiling spaces, the shadowy recesses.

And that's when I pulled the rose from my breast pocket
this was a game for two,
I flung it across at my partner
the red of the flower clashing with the sickly sweet scarlet of her lips
She was taken aback, I'm sure, eyebrows arched almost imperceptibly
a momentary lapse in her demeanor.
I fixed her stare, reached slowly for her clawed hands,
leaned forward in my chair, ready for sweet release.
The ecstasy of knowing my future
of the certainty of that infinitely dark curtain
made me a little mad, a little tipsy with power.
I sang two lines of an Old Anglo-Saxon ditty,
a lovely rhyming serenade
I tapped a rhythm on the confused floorboards
a beating of sensual drums
I pulled out an arsenal of Urdu erotic poetry
a strange melange of throaty Mongolian harmonies
I was pulling out all stops
pulling into the glow of the lamp overhead;
my hostess was now in distress
perfectly unhappy with recent developments
checking the centuries old water clock
shifting eyes uneasily,
curling her distasteful lips in a sneer for every declaration of amorous intent,
disturbed by the shaking of the table and the rage and passion in my voice.
She made excuses about her next appointment
I dragged my chair three feet forward until I could smell her fear
and she could get the barest glimpse of resolve in my eyes
I had to have her you see,
I had to have her see that I had to have her,
The orgasm of a single moment,
when she picked up a knitting needle in self-defense,
and I held my heart in a lovelorn tremble.
And smiling, I walked out.

And that was how Daddy cheated the Reaper, children.
No, she wasn't your Mommy!

Before the night is done

"Breathe," she suggested,
as they careened through the whistling wind,
in updrafts of gale storms they held each others' thoughts
and raced toward the darkest of nights.
"Smile," she proffered helpfully,
for the moment about to pass is all there is,
for in spite fo the screaming debris
in spite of the latent regret,
the supernatent anguish,
we had the wherewithal to soak in the spinning stars
and the dizzying moon.
"Spread your fingers wide," was the recommendation she gave,
and "Grasp with warmth" the sunlight that filtered through the coughing dust.
And so they did,
and fell.

I tried on another man's pants today,
but they didn't fit.
Can I get my compassion back now please?

"The House on High" Street

When all the shutters and doors were closed,
a thin, high wailing shuddered the walls
a child's inconsolable cries saturated the rooms.
On other occasions, there were vague crashes,
the falling of china,
the splintering of door frames,
the chipping (at midnight) of the high-polish ceilings.
How long would it be before the neighbours noticed,
before the sheen of normalcy split through,
and the seething breath spilled out into clean society.
The house tries its best, but it was never meant to contain things for too long.

The great disappearing act of 1932

He sits on the park bench,
staring down at his hands,
little wrinkles in his palm
unfolding tales of his life's worth...
And who is he, he asks to the buzzing moths near the lamp overhead,
the fading memories have been worn out by disuse.
And who am I? He asks this time to that welling sadness and forgetfulness inside,

Well,
to answer the question, we have to pan out and ask the world at large:
what say you hustle of streets, with trams and autos and after-shaved gentry?
Well,
He's a dark little man, with big eyes, the mind of a child,
and a naivete in the way he smiles without intent.
He probably doesn't wash behind his ears, or even clean his linens every week,
his kind have no sense of moral rectitude.
In the old brick tenements, huddle the hundreds and thousands of little children and wives and husbands,
insects multiplying, a burden on upper strata.
He is bred from such stock, a lineage crippled even in the prime of life's bounty.
So, we answer you, this man is worthy of contempt. Of tolerance if you've just emerged from church
or are afflicted by the romance of summer
but no more...

I've conveyed this message to the man on the evening breeze,
I spoke in the rustle of the leaves,
but the tears in his eyes tell me that he already knows
through the stares, and harsh words, and rebukes, and bitter loneliness that the company of crowds affords.
But our friend on the bench does not quit, he refuses to back down from the plate of life
he still has swing in his arms, a great desire to hear the cheering masses
calling his name out, to hear the world chant his deeds, to see his destiny writ large in the stars,
and so he asks those stars for a miracle, raises his voice again to that crazy silence
and begs for a fairer hue, better shoes, a sharper suit, simple things that can trap a man in the rewards of a better life, right?
And this wouldn't be much of a fable, if the next dawn didn't grant his wish
And he awoke from that bench, from underneath the pile of his life and the Times,
And looking down, lo, behold he was bedecked in what seemed like the garb of the regents of Europe
the royalty of Bengal, the Sheikhs and Pashas of Far-off lands
And he rushed to the fountain reflection and caressed his new pale visage
a mirage, he thought, of mere will?
Ah, but now gone were the looks of unvarnished distaste
the muttered abuses by passersby were replaced by vacant nonchalance
the violence of the world was stilled and the gales and storms of hatred
lulled to an oppressive quiet.
He was happy, he thought, ecstatic in those first few moments
he was no longer the Object of Ridicule,
the butt of the cosmic joke
he was Ordinary, sweet sweet word “Ordinary” that rollicked around gently on his tongue.

And so do we leave our man in his Pyrrhic victory?
No, this cannot be. The moral of this story is that we don't dream big enough.
So, verily, to that end we shall squelch his happiness with the forcible passing of some time.
Dragging the clock's hand forward till we find him sitting on that self-same park bench
Conversing wearily with the blue jays and complaining about his new lot,
for Ordinary carries the price of invisibility
where once people acknowledged his existence, a stunted, grotesque existence but
he occupied some space in the mortal world
now, he is as the air, transparent, insubstantial.
Sometimes it's better to despised than to not be seen at all.
He sits on the park bench, and stares at his palms.

Sally the volcano spewer

O Madam can you see,
by the dawn's twirling might,
the brighter-than-sunspot radiance
that surges forth from her mouth?
It is a graceful, screaming, life-enhancing train of heated intent.
I love your fertility.

stopping

A fingernail moon rises above the black lake,
a Cheshire reminder of mystic deeds in ages past,
the slow bobbing of my boat, the gentle dipping sloshing sounds of wood in water,
the complete quiet out here, silence untouched,
where I let no greater thoughts invade,
a protective cocoon, a sanctum, a bier.
All interactions with the world are as whispers
like shadowy fish that emerge for a nearly-missed moment
and are quickly engulfed by the still moonlit ink on which I float.
The womb of my birth lies far upstream, in a grey dawn of hospital lights and birth pangs,
and my childhood is merely a warm feeling of lost summers, whose details are washed out by the night that surrounds me.
My future is a boundless unmoving horizon.
The stars are missing.
Details are washed out by the night that surrounds me.

Spermatozoa SWIM their way towards an ovum.
Single molecules of DNA SEEK other molecules to merge with, and continue the cycle of life.
There is no visual metaphor that can better convey the impulse of life for self-continuation,
as if, once a body begins its slow decline, and begins to break down in stages towards an inevitable closure,
the larger organism of Life on this planet, and beyond, seems to persist unblemished,
enhanced even, by an exponential explosion of potential,
as if, the sentience of this being emerges in pockets, the physical bodies of people and animals,
briefly glows and shines its light of self-perception, and then moves on to another physical manifestation; as if this closed system of a universe awakens an avenue of introspection with the birth of every child, the fertilization of every mind.
Somebody said that we are thoughts in the mind of god, cells in the body of a deity,
it's hard to deny that with this simple image of life seeking to maintain itself, a driven self-propagating machine,
beyond all the derivative trappings of religious restrictions to thought and possibilities
the certitude of Life begetting life is undeniable. And beautiful beyond conception.

Patience begets absence
and the meek inherit a dying earth,
so blaze a burning gaze
through their round eyes
and unfurl those turning, seeking connections
and synchronize.

Don't look away. Fear makes no sense.

Those helical sequences of words
that coil out of your mouth
under control of your subconscious snakecharmer.

Nifty, ay? the way the payscale reflects your lifestyle

The whiplashes as they skip the stars
chasing ghosts
and demons of the deep
denizens of dark dungeons,
and cold fingered Others,
the heroes of the void fuel their days
with the passion of the hunt.

Traversing the millions of miles,
far from the warmth of the family hearth
far from the sandy shores, and azure gemstone skies
the turquoise of day,
and the green of summer,
burning with glowing eyes
they scream in the stillness of the universe
chasing phantoms
with silver hammers, shining daggers, lonely-unsheathed spears
saving the day from the horrors of their minds.

They feed on stories of glory,
pouring out epic tales spun and unspun with fading memory,
foaming at the mouth with unaffirmed emotion
the metal steeds and their battle scars keep stable company,
and their stories are written in ink dyed to look like blood.
And pages slip out of the windows, to scatter across the void
little yellowing sheets of paper glinting in an ever-expanding universe
tiny unrealized stars, little mirrors of what might have been,
beacons with whispers calling out to whoever, whenever,
and these tales burn up in alien skies,
orbit heathen planets,
lap up on unknown shores,
and are ignored as oddities.

The romance of ignorance.

Such Striking Moments with E

;lg://

jevin even heavy hedge um me? i cheb eleven edges end to end in edi bullet tulliss testin chest and all effortuitist soothing me wheat indeed neither has a never have it try to tie up and sauntered up to suck as seven of them lesbians in enema class - they sassed the team across the grass! and after all i asked the cheering charm an asking asp greeted me as acid niece it's decent cream she screamed as car men in a state of out as inner needs of leach about us eating lunge a leaf oh under we's so pleasingly at ease it's easily an all out honest come on on the while or all the subjugated wierd that even east teas tensed and teased he's eye sighs a beam heat he's hessian hesh to pin sheepsins on knees easy sneezing enevitibly heaves as i see it it seems to me to be an E! i mean, what's on and off the bent need?

Sea Breeze Informatics LLC

lkad8g2://

Deposition log 66-0-OL76 on August 21 1944

//begin transmission//

we witnessed a morphable color depth changing bringing plate in space now sphere in shape. for in our wishing we accidentally reached into other dimensions, got slapped, what happy? well wale pronounced with a walleye could repeat every last bit which happened to select a quick neck faster than sick could get sicker. these picks quell a nervous habit of batch latching a master of putative soothings. make it bold. fasten it brashly. we're watching. we got the readout.

\\end solace\\

Muscle, Wait

lkajg7826://

a surrogate pathway
found dazed, lain above river
apt slaps turn rocks unfurled
with whips arc marching
will wind never stop

or take omage and drink to the heavyweights
up sauces and those long pickled
a spill of tears even the precious can't deny
a dim dollar bill aghast good time
i guess we worked for it but swapped for what

safe tasks weave toward a rushing fine fit
this too can be done within a heartfelt feat
a shape near shearing
a ship bound for cord wood
all along knowing its waste is ours too
and what shall we do?
burn the crank?
shaft the grapes?
no. justified shrug
with a wink
we march on

shivo typo

lkg926://

by now we all know the answers
we know the drill to be applied
inside the claw foot creamery
the space where rotten winds blow
short of a sack pense complimenting
backward in style, forward blinking
the swirl of fate reevaluating its mission
and what of the mission we set upon not ten years ago?
what of the wonder inside our fresh and brash brains?
who's splendor is transferred inside a rustling pocket?
perhaps these and others, may never be known
mimicking sickness, left aside as we plow on, marching forward
crushing and sinking our dreams and hopes, heavily floating
bitty ideas flitting our mind like the awakened moth
we may never know again, we may never have known

bet on ti

Stepping across the stones set into the ground,
a broad platform, on a windy plain,
a smell of wet grass,
and dry longing in the throat,
a pilgrimage into a watery sun.

A stone-cold altar bed to lie down forever
and view the ebb of civilization
and the rise of savagery and wise wildness
the old temple encased in embracing vines
possessive, with an authority of entrenched colonials,
who for generations have settled themselves into a staple
of rock, and dust and stories that echo around the sanctum
and the open gaping archways, that had frozen over time into a slack-jawed sedation
a wheel on a wooden axle recalls the winds of yesteryear
keeping track with a to and fro rotation
a trajectory with a higher purpose.

Without the flickers of human lives that shape the colours of transience
that give breathing form to the ticking moments
the universe quietly sits under the bodhi tree,
in stone-faced enlightenment.
Without the struggles and scraping, the loves and bitter spilt blood
the curdled milk of humanity and the sweetness of hope,
the whispering of the grass continues in monotone.
The simplicity of that other reality is what we seek
every time we surface to intake air.
We are social animals who fight daily for interactions
and yet see the boundaries of our selves in solitude more clearly.

Chaos in coffee

Pot-boilers and romantic mysteries begin with the clairvoyant siren
passing through the swinging doors of a no-goodnik hole-in-the-wall
and setting a chain of events that culminate in the flying of a low-altitude plane over the plains of Africa.
This, however, is about Chaos. In a Coffee shop.

The slow-motion server with the smile frozen mutating as the splash of an open-faced cup o' Joe
sings through the air in driblets of brown steam
an M. C. Escher painting of fractal caffeine,
and the other server, well she's mid-joke papering the walls with the sounds of socially-induced mirth and good cheer,
and the patrons? Well, they just got free scones as the sugar granulates off their faces,
and the coffee shop has its precious little writer
on a Mac in a corner eyeing the girl clientele in sly joy
and tapping away at his ever-so-creative writing about writing about writing...
an ad infinitum ad nauseum prognostication of events never to come.
But he wills that the large glass window behind him
ensconcing this wooden home of sticky hot cocoas and intellectual brownies
would shatter of a sudden, as the coffee splashes, as the sugar granulated falls
and two arms of a middle-aged woman angry and all-encompassing
break through to make a grab at his neck,
in the hope of this chaos amidst the presence of chaos which is created by the writing of this
he loses track of a thread of thought and must grab at the tray of straws that have fallen over
as a result of the people leaping in haste to offer a helping hand.
I marvel at their willingness to be human in their own sort of way while in my own sort of way
I still wonder if writing this can will things into existence.

Apleasing Question

alkjg72://

slogging through the shadows
we beget one who flees his receding hairlip
in a time of safe wonder
in a time of tragedy
this perverted fireman
does only what he wants to do
cries for no one
and returns things freshly purchased

do you perchance have a laptop for this child?
she waffled in a coarse manner of speaking
along the shores of frozen tides
wiping ships askew toward chains, whips, and catapults
these are the tools of a bastardized era
of bags crinkling with no one touching
but everyone tuning in to experience the outcome
of whatever large number of configurations
one could find themself within shimmying

slimy dog mouth
a trident of sea men
all things are correlated
in a wise package of leisure

shy eyeliner
the one who approaches
should have taken pause
or at least some self defense classes

a sash lain on the dresser drawer
a fresh bit clinging to the sides
a mashed shit in running shoe grooves
a tossed salad still undressed has no croutons

i wander through a lusty landscape
memorizing faces or at least forgetting
a depth too penetrating to allow the stuck zippers
to behave like their bullet born brethren

might i have one style
to call my own
before the code
changes my opinion?

Mines is a mind that fears
that he's one them who disappears,
one of those walking talking ghosts
that's there then not heres.
The one that boasts
no claim to glitz-banging fame
but for the mosts
is dusted under the rug
of social-undercurrent tug
and lands, crashes
under the banyan tree in the sun.
there where memory doesn't travel,
standing on the grit and well-worn gravel
where the other wraiths roam ravenously
seeking your attention. And yours as well.

The homeless' eyes are not met.
The mentally ill are shirked and shrugged and danced away
as if neon had the power to zap you to the reality of your choice,
and away from theirs.
Their stories are told only
within the context of NBC's schmaltz factory.
The smells of faeces and laborious sweat,
the panting of the adrift obese, sweating under the larger weight of derision,
the immigrant stereotype show in pantomime. A joke that's funny because it's well meaning
in your suburban homes on Tuesday nights.
I don't know when the beetle of anger crawled up inside mine herrfungstrung
but its thrashing about like it wants me turn around and look at the shadowed figure who hungrily eyes my lot
who thirsts for the privileges I have
who would take better care of their sisters and brothers.
I have failed in my own idiom.
and so I fall by the wayside,
and join the shadows,
I dance in the moonlight when no one is around.

No more sugar please.

It's days like this that make me believe in a God,
That vengeful Biblical deity that torments Job
and rains fire and brimstone upon the judged and misjudged.
The world seems like a floundering ship
where the rats are piling up over on themselves to avoid the bubbling water from catching up to them,
or a world of plastic and ugliness, a veneer over the chaos of irrationality.

It's days like this that I feel tested
like a Job whose belief in humanity is ridiculed, poked and prodded
and who has to lie down and breathe off the burdens of cares,who has to try and believe that the tone of resignation in his mother's voice is passing
and that the day will dawn brighter tomorrow.
For that he must believe in a Deity who has compassion in her outstretched arms,
who soothes the hatred in his own aching soul and in those of his brothers and sisters around.

But he cannot believe in the existence of Her,
not on days like this.

Mosh Afast Fishency

slid gazen scarce stares as slagg sludge to bled fume shoos a flew spun interspin simple rod saucerful soaked a most loathe oaths alove sighs aside cinder tint timingwise sade a safe sayt a tain tack dack and done duck atucked sup aslung a none damp an ass tassle tass tossed a dos tune to boot robs i'll ask yes question about back in alaska rastering such a truss stuck up on n under tons redone dundant shunk audunk dunkins and on donnavans gone hong along hogs in the wild silliness historic shift in adrift wilderness whisp illicits sistem stick restitch in interrim is is spouts and i dow tompiden didnt did n tin atiss tisk a task tackle tap tandem asp passing a ascarade daedalin nincontrap tapperlin happens that way whey wane weighed too often and off and then off again

in doubt

I'm tired of the irony
when I feel most drawn outwards by the wonder of this world
that's when my extremities feel the coldest
and every breath seems to carry away a little of me on the night air.

I feel less of a human being
and more of a sensory organ,
just moving through the winds
sensitive to light
curling up at the first sign of danger,
vibrant and frightened.
And my fear is my last tie to the world at these times
If I could push aside that final turnstile,
and roll onto the slick white floors of the wider universe
bereft of human ties
I could no longer be caught in this cycle of alternate insularity and longing.

I could move through the wide caverns,
swim through the waves of turquoise foam
lick the candied sunlight
and walk on the untouched sands where no voices speak.
There is a place where the imagination is no longer confined to the far-fetched reaches within,
but where consciousness merges with the broken standards and rules
of the world beyond.
There are days like this. When I don't feel human.
But I am of rock, and water, and fire, and air.

पोस्टमन रिंग्स nice

a few moments of megalomania are allowed per fiscal year,
some scented candelabras
and some herbal therapies for your washed up dogs tired of old routines.
Then comes the vacation in cabo.
Then the perfunctory scrape with serpents of the deep.
Then rest. Stop.

Dreaming and scheming
leaning on the future for sunshine and
receiving brine in a cup on your doorstep today
or acid wash down your throat at your cynic-fest by the watercooler
bros before you can touch your toes at 80, before you're dead you realize that you should have breathed deeper at 40.
Poor you. Sue your aunt and uncle and then bewail the lack of family values.
Bill O' Rightsey, suck on a falafel.
Winged beast of anger and froth do yo freakin' wurst.

james's's'statute

,mahg9267://

gelf melding, never a ferret
shakes trees under the writing of unmemorable moments
still spine ponder oh, so porcupine damage

Trigger Capri

liver, happening!
this mask is happier than a papoose set wild on a campstove ramp running straight into labor day. "that's a latrine!" but it was too late. the oats hath festered, as the mane whistled windward and backs were turned to the group warning. whispers rippled through the myriad of sectional couches, braziers, and hamstrings (novice attachment), not to mention great wafting chortles of joy streaming up through the grate of never-the-less efforts. always proper, always consumers. the moon cycle makes me horny. so does a good fish taco, but let's stick to the chapter at hand: mumu, a historical perspective. this lectures in massive duality. pensive socks. ripping corpse. a ball breaker.

MANchurner

la;kdgi2://

suspended croft and banner,
i hath hobbled to der kuttin board to get some game. seems
like everyone had a bad version of the same. idea, that is.
piecharts and surfer kingdoms. the worst kind of rash - an
inner. now with outie belly buttons ripe for the pressing.
such a sad bench these will be when the workmen carve out a
new sentence. theirs end with preparatory nuggets.
mine end with whistles!

toot.

Rhizoid

Voot voot, boring into the door, came the owls, upon the hour. Clocking cuckoo, striking , the wooden gong, the clickety-clack of clogs upon the overfloor, the treehouse dome, the gremlin cartels and their business matters, the plaster of paris moving towards the sunlight Pinocchio in life-seeking. I peaked through the cabbage patch at the door and the smoking seagulls that can’t catch the wind for all their gusto, and the 700 year old hunter with the blunderbuss. Buster keaton’s comedy routine upside down on the tv screen, as we capture the last traces of an aerial culture. Alien isolationists. Hopeful, mythologized, boasting of various moats and spikes the impaled castle walls that are dragged down on whim, serve as a bellows to our flight-fire.

Pale Sally

kjg72://

tool stoldt, ((the lost wives memoir.))

for graving bergat soldiers
on the verge of post-consumer
WASTE
belingering a fallen cauldron
as such manes ashame truth
behind rumor milk
so sullen
so mutton
so there! i've got cancer
you? just keep crabbing
along with a lyman
or a sweetheart in the shipping industry
we couldn't quite keep track
and now less corroboration
than could ever be boasted
she sings of a she-male
he wings on the goat
of fresh wisdom

still itching, i can't

f=MAMA

I raise the tips of my forefinger accusingly,
raising my foe's hair,
tall as a steeple is his fear,
and I force him to wipe the slate with his sleeves,
why, o why, can't I
be a force of nature?

I see the blood trickling on the floor,
the raging white bus screaming down on the hapless innocents,
the war machine squashing the world
and with the squint of an eye,
the squeeze of a mental trigger,
clear the screen, bring forth green grass to your desert,
why, o why, can't I
be a force of nature?

When the battle lines are drawn on your mind's map,
when you spit and foam and fume
champing at the bit of your hatred
as your scaly black wings cover the day, and covet my soul,
I can calmly stare into your lidless eyes
force you down with the fearlessness of my moments,
my ignorance of death:
why, o why, can't I
be a force of nature?

When the grain silos are empty
and sand bags are buttresses for an entrenched village
where children squirm in the heat of parched days
when you rape, and plunder and run yourself into the barracks of a bare group of recruits
when your blindness plucks the eyes out of bystanders
dumb and mute witnesses to misery
when you grab a choke-hold of the world
I can slip my mind into the substance of your talons
and dissolve your grasp, weaken your venomous words, heal the gaping wounds with supreme unction
why, o why, can't I
be a force of nature?

When all and more is present
when you already hold sway
where was I?
Who am I?
Where are the arms I thought I would present to a hopeful world?
why, o why, am I
just a freak of my own nature?

What is absolution?
When we have crossed the lines of our own consciences,
and beyond those of our collective ethic,
what repentance is to be had?
Is life without external judgement?
Does it then continue unhindered by the muddy waters of absolute condemnation,
safe in the weakness of memory?
Is penance real? Does it allow us to wash our hands clean of blood and sorrow?
Who possesses the power of supreme forgiveness?
The availability of God for solace is too easy.
To sit and sob in the cradling arms of the Superior is too simple.
But it lets us live with ourselves,
because we have to accept the iniquities of our everyday lives,
the failings of our choices,
the contradictions of our actions.
Can we give in to Your powers, because we need to hear
That it will all be alright if your heart wills it,
that you can be embraced by all even after the most grievous of transgressions?

Or is forgiveness the commiseration of those who commingle in those confused waters,
and can see the reflections of others in them?

Indigo Pendant

It seems like a naively short while ago,
staring at a gleaming sheet of the whitest paper,
carefully drawn margins,
neat rulers, labeled by passion, markers of futures,
in abstract we live a long glorious dream.
I had visions of distant towers,
flower maidens on the parapets,
green jade mountains of earthly paradise,
utopic sand-castles.
The wind whispered of truths to be.

I am no longer a lover,
the festive lights were taken down last tuesday,
the sounds of the hustling street are clear through the open window.
A man with a back-breaking load to bear,
a child with wide open eyes outstretched dirty little fingers
he reaches towards you following you around hurriedly as you try to push him away,
hand to mouth, mouth begging for paisa.
There is a grating sound from the nearby factory.
And I lie mouth agape,
my face reflected in a cracked mirror,
my soul feeling like a lost penny, small and alone.
I can move through this world and hear the laboured breathing.
I don't have the energy to move my hands to come to its aid.
The clarity of conviction is the luxury of the ignorant.
And ignorance is truly bliss.

Dark temple

Lying alone in the dark temple,
my head resting on the Mother's stone lap,
steps down to the green pond,
a central courtyard, dark, peaceful,
haunted by the hopes of hundreds
of years of self-sacrifice and love,
of positing the mundane and the grand questions of existence
of launching queries up to the stars above that circle around the edifice.
The dark gopurams, silently breathe, a quiet contemplation,
the warmth of the stone below, a soft hum.
The wind saunters about, the spirits of priests, and lonely old women
who in life, devoted prayer and food to the gods of the domain,
and spent their moments pondering the afterlife as salvation from the bondage of now.
Rest grandmother, in peace. Your footsteps have led you to the dark door. Savour the fruit,
the broken coconut.

Sometimes...

I feel like a Mongoloid bake sale.
A trapeze artiste with a specialized toe hold.
A pacemaker that's one step out of tune.
A ripcord for a birthday balloon.
A whale that ate too much.
A tomb that coughed up a bucket of dust.
Perhaps, tomorrow will have been different.

Please quit, already

jklg782://

hey anus, HI-atus
biracial taste tetanus
tantalus fibrillating hebbian hair clumps
staring down then up all the while cupping
a lump in the prenup as sand banking slums
pampers amp dancehall cantankerous monacle
sandwich squeeze, peeved
mamwich knee, derving
self craving derisive
why sly? we don't know yet
why shy, plus a-go-go
fry somnia plus convict

"my leg is up on the client"
grets burnt to reading posture
sloth poseur dressed in morocco
once again, frosh mervian
weap turnip weak turn around
i found campers an aerosol cancer
we danced, of course, then lamprey
so shame on shampoo
can it rewrangle
i'm sitting now

shapeshifting, shitting

framewerks

Swinging deck rises to greet my feet,
hair grazes the ground.
To and fro,
Silent, except for that very insistent owl,
calling over and over again,
but you'll have to admit,
even It knows resolution to its music.
The great cosmic bear's wispy paw grabs hungrily at the points of light
but they escape laughing, needling the bear's dim-wittedness
slipping through its paw to shine on unhindered,
those two eyes on the edge of my vision
staring, monitoring, making sure I don't make any sudden moves.
And still I swing, and the world swings with me,
and that owl, yes that owl,
is the deck rising up to meet me as aforementioned,
if a Newton's force law pair exists, is there such a thing as cause and effect,
well, of course, that's stupid, your volition guarantees that there is a direction to the flow of action,
ok maybe, but could it not be that your grey powers of telekinesis are forcing the balcony to ram up against you,
that the hammock is as Foucault's pendulum (yes I'm reading that book)
two nodes of immobility at either end?
So going back to volition:
if you trace a series of actions: telling your feet to push up against the floor moves you,telling your feet muscles to contract moves them, etc. all the way back to a Newton pair in your brain, do we still hold these truths to be self-evident? What is The Last Third Law Pair?
Hoot on Mighty Owl,
the barn doors are opening!
And to those stars on the dark screen,
I love the universe, a love measured by the extent to which a longing fills me,
unbearably, lends direction to the rambling through the mazes of thought,
an absolute point
a focal sheet stretched in three dimensions,
as far as the heart can reach,
tongues of thought
the divine octagon of stars,
the frame against which all measures of success are to be made.