Unwound

The End Of The Beginning

XV.

sunrise

sunset

and then

the darkness

XIV.

a horse

a noose

and the relic oak;

this is your sentence

XIII.

"But I loved him."

XII.

"Your union was forbidden. And now his life has ended.

You carry death about you. This you know."

XI.

"Did you give pause to consider?" asked the Patriarch.

"I wear pollen and the smell of a saddle blanket. 

Every petal tossed into the Maiandros was worth the price." she said.

X.

Sunrise

then sunset

she went before the council

IX.

by decree

he had to be burned

VIII.

2 moons, and

2 suns

and

one last sunset

then

he was gone

VII.

sunset

moonrise

sunrise

then

the ague

The Beginning Of The End

I.

She tossed petals, one at a time, into the Maiandros.

II.

"Picking flowers by the bank, a worthy occupation."

He was tall, covered in dust and sculpted from raw iron.

III.

"I'll return for you later and

I will take you

here

in the long grass," he said.

IV.

"So you may. But will I be here?

I bend senuous with the watercourse.

You might find me by the oxbow lake;

it's equilibrium that I seek."

V.

after a while

the man returned

clutching riverbank grape

and a bottle of it's produce

handing her the parcel of leaves

"This is for your pleasure and

the bottle is for ours."

VI.

and later

her dress whispered

as it fell

VII.

sunset

moonrise

sunrise

It was just like that ...

I crawled up the pull-down ladder in the
garage ceiling, crept across the attic floor
to find Annabel, my wife of three weeks,
supine on a cot--

and there I prepared to lick sweat out both
her armpits to inoculate myself against the
sweltering heat and rigors of Air Force sur-
vival training.

Late July, Hondo, Texas.

Yes, just like that. It worked.

Just like that. Now that I a civilian again and
enrolled in Dr. Taylor’s rhetoric class, and I
see what I will have to go through, I need
some kind of inoculation against the way the
man teaches his class-- which we spend 75%
of the time by listening to him read his own
writings.

What the hell! We have books!

I need inoculation, a lick, of something, a
kind of sweat-serum, that when slurped-up
and self-injected into the soft tissues under
the tongue disagrees with common sense
and the more delicate palate—

but necessary.

Yes, it disagrees-- yet,

'Yet' (what a great word!), as we all have
come to understand and value the many
forms of atavistic cannibalism -- in disguise,
sometimes disguised as flanks of hippo meat
(Yes, Conrad meant human flesh).

To guarantee that a person won't find some-
thing even yet more disagreeable during the
day, they must upon waking swallow a toad
or lick sweat out of an armpit or groin.

Swallowing toads or licking sweat, while not
the most savory thing, has not only the effi-
cacy of providing the body with antibodies--
but as well, such licking is an action that in-
troduce synecdoche into the consciousness.

Some professors leave acrid, bitter instruction-
al rank in the room when class is over. This
heavy air feeling is similiar to having dangling
calcium carbonate stalactites on the soft palate,
also vinegar pock on the hard alveolar ridge--

on which a person often runs his tongue back
and forth like a windshield wiper to rid or dil-
ute the taste.

Yes, and to forget forever Taylor's class-- if
it makes you sick because you didn't inoculate.

Maybe some coeds like Taylor's class. If so,
they have to push Taylor's taste into deeper
recesses of their damp oral musculatures--
whence such taste might be coaxed out later
as a memorous vestige-- maybe in those ster-
ile, lonely times when the girl sits on a fire
escape and listens to Steve Lawrence sing,

"The Wee Small Hours of the Morning."

Coming to a Taylor class, itself, is for many
an inoculation against the melancholy brought
on by coming to class, sitting and listening.
Coming to class for some is an offense against
the time spent doing so and a stain that
washes out only when the cause of the stain
is excised.

So, I sat in class, not attentive because my
mind was on Annabel, who, when she got the
chance, ran away with some airman who work-
on helicopters. I guess she ran away from me
because she didn't like my tieing her to that
cot in the attic with her arms pulled back and
roped to the wall--

all required if I were to survive survival.

I remember the scene-- kneeling by the bed,
I looked at Annabel with her mouth taped,
eyes wide and her arms pulled up and back,
armpits soaked and glistening.

On the wall by the stuck-closed attic window
hung a thermometer-- 112 degrees. It was
a good inoculation.

I wonder who licking her now.
##
p

A Comment on Veronique's Poetry

Up to today at noon I have not obtained from
any poet the same drug of artistic delight as is
given me by a Veroniqian poem posted in one
of her rooms in that place called the Feverish V
Hotel.

By such meta-rich language I obtain there,
from the poems a fluid that greases my intel-
lect, such as it is, and a fluid that juices my
loins. Her mosaic of words, in which every one
by sound and position and by meaning diffuses
its force by cancelling in a kind of sous rature--
a fall back the better to leap forward, to the
front, right and left-- a stamping out, in the
sense of cutting a die, every word and re-
placing the whole with such a touch that I
want that touch to run down from my chest
to the base of my compass needle and make it
dance as if it were nearing the North Pole.

The poems illustrate a morality of inertia-- a
writing lure that comes to her neither by her
choice nor by her stir, but by necessity.

Her writing is Roman. It is noble par excel-
lence. Her poems are candle flames seen be-
tween slit lacunas in a basket woven with
river reeds and thrown over.

My poetry contrasts to hers as mere senti-
mental loquacity.

##
p

Wife of a Holy Roller Man

Eighteen-wheelers pass and rain falls
like tinsel twists into marram grass.

A preacher's wife in flimsy wraps
runs away from God and man--
cotton dress and shoes untied,
and a gob of rags between her legs
stuck sopping in her underpants.

Jellies canned and peach preserves,
calendars nailed to basement shelves
marked months of ugly wedded lock
to the cleansed soul and cold heart
of a Holy Roller, Bible Belt man.

He called her lewd the day she leaked
and stained the Bible Book, fingerprints
on Exodus, trace of smear on Genesis.
Against that blood raged Roller Man--
he'll beat the buckled-strap ten times
on her sweet and innocent bloody ass.

Headlights torch the marram grass;
gully nettles spear her legs
and insistence thicks the tacky patch.
A truck stops-- to a husky man
who honors blood she'll pay her way,
give good head and road romance.

Surprised by joy the driver laughs
and drones his wheels to Anytown--
rains falls like tinsel into marram grass.

##
p

Eulogy For The Living

Do not wait ‘til death
to mourn,
to mourn.
Instead stand shoulder to shoulder
and weather the winds of rage
as splintered hopes impale the last
refuge of delusion.

No funerary silks nor petaled
velvets can mend
the ragged threads of
marooned desires, and
no gilded box
will ever contain a compass
to track the clandestine
footfalls of serenity’s course.

Book Review Section **
Wagon Tongue, North Dakota--
by Winston Garmouth
　
Tessie Willden is a lonely 18-year old New
Yorker sent to live with a family friend in a
small town in North Dakota while her father
travels the continent and her mother runs
the company auto repair business.

Ostracized as an outsider, Tessie struggles
to fit in with her new surroundings--she also
struggles to fit in her new jeans, as she had
gained weight.

When Tessie befriends Lisette, a beautiful,
self-admitted lesbian ghost who had haunted
the town's cemetery since her mysterious
death 155 years earlier, Tessie is drawn into
an eerie story of betrayal, loss, old curses
and family secrets.

One evening ghosty Lisette, without warn-
ing, gives Tessie a quick slap on her ass by
flipping a towel-- this was as Mardi Gras ap-
proached and after Lisette had also slyly ap-
proached the innocent Tessie after Tessie
has stepped out of the shower.

This ass-slap leads to a culmination.

Something dark and angry has been brewing
for decades-- and also a light and refreshing
beer brewed inside the brewery on Hydraulic
Street.

This moody tale thoroughly embraces the
rich history, occult lore and complex issues
of girls kissing girls, ethnicity, class and cul-
ture that has defined small North Dakota
towns since pioneer settlement.

Rather than shy away from lesbian practices,
the author of this novel uses lesbian practices
to capture the essence of lesbianism--as prac-
ticed by lesbians from (in) Mardi Gras rituals
to voodoo spells, from lots of lip work during
Hurricane Katrina to under-the-table tend-
er hair-gropes in Jamacian Jazz bars and in
Peruvian cafes during July's mosquito infes-
tation.

This is a story that could only be written.

**
Ms Floradador Coaltrain,
New York Times Book Review

##
p

The Hammer Falls on Both Sides

I.  Mujahideen

there

on the curb

on a roadside

with no sidewalk 

on the other side

lay a young man

hands bound behind his back

and face against a concrete block

there

standing over

was the bearded Chechen

grotesquely fat and sour smelling

holding a sign post, orphaned from

an intersection

a hammer in search of a bell to ring

"Ti si licemjer." [You're a hypocrite]

"Gdje mogu naći moj mir u vašem okrutnost?" [Where may I find peace in your cruelty?]

"أنت كافر." [You are an infidel]

.[The spring will not remember the spill of your blood.]"والربيع لن تتذكر بقعةمن الدم"

""Što ti je to borba za vas? Reći će vam vaša djeca da su neki ljudi i neke stvari ne?" 

"Oni stupovi te držati gore, oni raspasti." ["What is that you fight for? Will you tell your children that some people matter and  some don't?"

"Those pillars you hold up; they crumble."]

"سأقول أولادي وأحفادي ، التي كانت آخر من النوع الخاص بك. إن شاء الله وصلي الله عليهوسلم".

["I will tell my children, and theirs, that you were the last of your kind. God willing and peace be upon him."]

"svinje s krvav kurac fucks svoju sestru na grob svoje make" [a swine with the bloody dick fucks your sister on your mothers grave]

before the altar of Kledusha, they used sledge hammers.

but the signpost did just fine...

II. Tupolev Tu-22M (Туполев Ту-22М) over Grozny

"Range" [Линия]

2 kilometers [

"Crosswind" [боковом]

2 knots

"Altitude" [высота]

10,000 Km

"Open the bomb bay doors. [Открытые двери бомбового отсека.]

On 3

2…1…

Release" [Освобождение]

Saguara

the ride was worth the whisper
mile markers passed by at a rate
generally reserved for a centrifuge holding vials
her hand holding the steering wheel
and the other holding a bottle
the car holding the road
my hand holding my hat
me holding my breath
a boy holding a sign, and
the sun holding
the sky
and
her lips
held a secret
a secret worth the whisper

Turner's Pudenda Drawings and Cocks-At-Point

Never in history has the reading public so anticipa-
ted the release of an author's first published work--
but the date is near and all expectations will soon
be fulfilled.

Yes, in mid-December the author known simply as
T. will have his new book, Turner's Pudenda Draw-
ings stocked in book stores across America and
abroad. For the first time art devotees and art de-
votas will learn the truth about those mysterious
drawings Joseph Turner made of female pudenda--

some 363 of them, 112 in pastel, 130 in charcoal,
115 in ink by quill, and six in some palish-white
substance, origin unknown but guessed at.

T. goes to great lengths to assertain the impulse be-
hind the apparent obsession Turner reveals by
"these 363 drawngs. Also, T. seeks to explain why
the artist left all his unsold work to the British na-
tion; and why, years after his death, most of the
paper pads were yet boxed, wrapped and stored
in the cellars of the National Gallery, unapprecia-
ted and ignored.

The 363 drawings, however, were not forgotten.

T. tells us that after a time the trustees of the mu-
seam agreed to sell the drawings, as space was need-
ed for other acquisitions. The lot fell into the hands
of a one Draco Delo Quinn, an auctioneer for the
London trade firm, Smyth and BB Wheatly, and
who had in the summer of 1857 auctioned off Lady
Jan Chittenton's entire collection of Andocides' 'pe-
nis pottery,' -- a name Lady Jan gave herself to the
hundreds of household pots thrown by the Greek
potter who invented the 'red-figure-at point' tech-
nique, a skill envied by all other potters of the time
(6th Century BC).

One such pot-work went on display in the gardens
of a country house outside Berlin, T. reports, shows
Heracles and Apollo struggling over the possession
of a Delphic tripod. Both men are erect, pricks 'at the
point' dabbed red, in Andocides unmistakable style.

The background is black.

T.'s detective work has uncovered other 'penis pots,'
either on sale or in private collections; and oddly
here's the frame for his new book-- those art lovers
who have collected Andocides have aslo collected
Turner's pudenda drawings.

T.'s research follows the trail of 'pricks' depicted on
pots' and Turner's pundenda drawings-- who bought
them at the auction? who sold them after? who bought
for others? who sold? who kept? who donated? -- and
where are they now?

T. accounts for the whereabouts of 349 female puden-
da drawings made by Joseph Turner, and has found
the owners of 767 pots depicting 'red-pointing' pricks.

T. does not mention the androgynous 'pricks' who run
Gazebo, nor the sweet and tiny innocent pudenda of
giggly girls enrolled in Catholic colleges-- those tasty
morsels from good homes.

##
dt
p

A green and gold meadow, nature not having decided wheth-
er she ought be late summer or mid autumn and having scat-
tered tulip leaves atop a brook most fair and cool, I found one
fine day and thereupon the bank lay a most beautiful girl
asleep

(as I guessed she was)

clad only in a vest of such see-through linen that it scarce
in any measure veiled the cherry of her breasts-- and below
her waist nought but an apron most in a whisp, light texture;
and likewise dressed, at her feet, there slept two girls and a
boy-- her slaves,

(as I guessed),

for no sooner did I catch this sight, than the Princess

( as I guessed she was)

turned in her sleep

(as I again guessed she was)

to her back, cried out words I had never heard, and spread
her legs

(as I guessed she did).

I really don't know anything about this lovely scene be-
cause I was in a barn tending to a sick horse thousands of
miles away.
**
A green and gold meadow, nature having decided that she
is late summer and having scattered tulip leavesatop a brook
most fair and cool, I found one fine day and thereupon the
bank lay a most beautiful girl asleep

(as I knew she was because I yelled words I didn't know I
knew right in her right ear)

clad only in a vest of such seethrough linen that it scarce
in any measure veiled the cherry of her breasts-- and be-
low her waist nought but an apron most in a whisp, light
texture; and likewise dressed, at her feet, there slept two
girls and a boy-- her slaves

(as I knew they were because their faces had been brand-
ed XXX with a red-hot iron)

for no sooner did I catch this sight than the Princess

( as I knew she was because she wore a little crown stud-
ded with diamonds. I knew they were diamonds because
I had worn something similiar when I was the girl Prin-
cess of Karlsbad)

turned in her sleep, cried out words I had never heard

(again I knew she was asleep for when she spread her legs
I dropped my lips to that most delicious place and she stir-
red only slightly and sighed ........ )

I do know everything about this lovely scene because I
was in my den watching it on a XXX dvd-- but that's all
I know because the electricity went out-- right at that
last moment mentioned above.

##
dt
palinirus　
　

viral intentions

I caressed my lover's throat,
during spasms of ecstasy,
whispering these words:

I sail through the seas
in our ship of feces;
the world is our disease.

I am done with you.

snowflakes and acceptance

I looked up into the sky
through the trees,
stripped of their leaves,
because
that's the way
winter has always been.

Death existed before me.

I lit my cigar
and drank my beer --
with the knowledge
that
I don't give a shit.

Lift

9 passengers
5 of them
victims

"I told her
to shut the
fuck up. Her
mouth was only
good for one thing
and it needed to be
plugged while doing it."

3 of the 4 now
red faced, suppressing
laughter. They can't believe
I say these things.

Floor 2. One person steps off.
Hah! I know they work on the 4th floor.
They opted for the stairs.

Doors.

"So that's when I punched her in the stomach.
You know, I'm due in court next week."

Floor 3 and 3of 4 leave; it's my stop, but I stay.

Doors

I back up to a corner of 3. I'm not aware of personal 
space. Don't care.

I reach into my pocket and pull out a bottle of something
obviously prescription, shake 2 white rattled-around pills
into my palm. Throw them in my mouth and and...chew slowly

Doors

Floor 4. This is a different agency. The remaining 4 get off, 1
has one more flight to go but opts for the stairs. I might see him 

on the way back down when I take the stairs on 5.

I wonder
how a passer-by
acts when
there isn't
an opposite
side
of
the
street

I want to step back and away from the
silliness of my last two entries here at
the Gaslight Hotel-- and post some-
thing that is so meaningful to me and
something that identifies much of my
mostly wasted time here on earth.

"None of us can help the things life has
done to us. They're done before you
realize it, and once they're done they
make you do other things until at last
everything comes between you and
what you'd like to be, and you've lost
your true self forever."

-- Mary Tyrone, O’Neill’s
Long Day’s Journey Into Night

Fuck you, old man.

We sat on your porch,
you, me, and your Lord,
discussing transgressions:
compulsions, desires, and needs.

They were never a taboo to you;
thus, you had become
her personal shame --
a memory of grandpa.

Part Two-- My Secret Life
　
For having such confidence on stage read-
ing my poetry, I am awfully confused off of it.

But who wouldn't be confident wearing a
palepink shirt and tight linen tannish pants,
highboots with bright yellow buckles, a black
velvet jacket and a long red scarf?

--- being the star of the Montmartre district.

Now my secret life is full of question marks.

This isn’t like having to decide for a girl who
comes in the drug store whether I should
make her soda with vanilla or strawberry
ice cream, or whether I had jerked off too
many times in the back storeroom for Mis-
ter Bern not to notice.

If I give all of this up, I can’t press the re-
wind button. Do I tempt Fate by leaving
Paris and going to Montreal? Do I suffer
the consequences of not knowing better,
and well, the lady known as V?

Yet, here, there are critics who find flaws
in everyone I do-- and that’s their job. Oh,
these are people who come to the show and
later write in their columns how I had made
a nice hip snap during an octave but was en-
tirely flat dull reciting a poem based on a
aunt's love for her nephew--

and then they bring up the fear that my ass
will not retain it's lovely shape for long with
all the sweets brought back to my dressing
room after my show; that I will soon have
to disguise a bubble butt by discarding my
tight tannish linen pants for a more loose
and fluffy pair.

I wouldn't have that in Montreal.

One mention that my ass was getting bigger
and here comes a momentum that takes on
a life of its own, and all of a sudden, a great
performer can go from being sensational to
being just another brick in the wall, just one
more stage poet with a fat ass.

That wouldn't happen in Montreal.

I think if I leave Paris I will teach other up
and coming stage poets just begining their
careers a valuable lesson-- don’t make all the
critics start to question you, or they will pounce.
If you’re in their good graces, you have to take
advan-tage of the small window of opportunity--
by honing your poetry skills and by offering
blow jobs.

That wouldn't happen in Montreal

Right now I'm leaning toward that Canadian
city and giving up poetry altogether and giv-
ing up all this fruity stage performing.

But can I find Veronique?

##
p

pulse-taking ( this may be a found poem )

Dear Gas-Lighters,

I am taking a collective pulse. Are you interested in relocating to a
new venue? Some of us might be a little bruised from Poetsphere.
We're mostly seasoned guests at Online Poetry Hotels, but would
you like to take a leap of faith and try once again?

I could set something up at the drop of a hat. This is the blue-print I had in mind.

A Demo Forum
Go back to MadMooseForum.com

We'll be few, but we may grow. Dissension will appear as it always
does, but will you pack a small valise and make this jump with me?

Gaslight, as such, remains, and perhaps it is all we need.
What do you say?

I will definitely require a technical troubleshooter to assist me and
a couple of co -admins to manage the space. Do you think it's
worth the effort?

veronique/bandit/champagne_shoes

Breakfast of Losers

Perhaps it has always been the
starkness of being between us,
cocooned stasis
away and between the measured
beats that pound life out of
red licorice-kissed lips.

Fall we did into oatmeal puddled
existence, and there we languish
where the only shared thoughts
are of milk,butter
and sometimes guns.

How I long for another

hot creamy cereal
to stir my disposition
up to something
more than tepid.

My Secret Life

I was born Donald Taylor. After I was born my uncle
added 'Cloyde.' That was my middle name. Although
I was Donald Cloyde Taylor, everyone called me by
the girl name 'Courtney.' My mother said I was called
that because I was so good looking in a girl's way as a
boy.

I left home in 1959 to work in Bern's drug store about
two blocks down the street from our trailer park, where
our trailer was parked in Row 7 Lot 9.

Following my dog's death, which I head about while
jerking sodas at the drug store ice cream counter, I
was deeply saddened-- so I went back to the store-
room in back and jerked off in a newspaper classified
section.

Mid-way diown page two of the classifieds I saw the
words 'WANTED-- call 544-7333' spelled out in ink
interspaced with my 'spendings,' which at the time
was beautifully colored a frosty white.

WANTED? for what?

I jotted down the phone number and threw the news-
paper away, that part that was the classified section,
stricky. I neded to find employment with more of a
future thn just jerking sodas. I would retain the other
jerking even if I found a girlfriend.

Wanted-- for what? And then I lost interest.

After I saved sufficient money to buy a ticket, I bought
a ticket and took a sail to France. Excited, I found my
way to the Montmartre Quarter of Paris, where I hung
out in working-class bistros. There, I finally was given
an opportunity to show the poetical talent I didn't know
I had.

Although poor by birth, I soon adopted the earthy lan-
guage of my haunts and turned it into poems that told
of the delights of the rich..I began performing at cafe-
poetry readings and developed a style that came from
my beautiful looks as a boy back in my home town.

In fact, several men wanted to take me home with them
and read poetry aloud while they made love, but I was
uncomfortable with that, so I courteously said no.

Then I signed a contract to appear at the Film Noir club.
I dressed in a pale pink shirt and tight linen tannish pants
which really showed off my ass and that long and thick
thing I played with back when I jerked sodas at the drug
store-- in the back storeroom.
**
I might mention here why what I did was called soda jerk-
ing-- a soda jerk fills a top-heavy, etched flowerly glass
with vanilla ice cream, Then the soda jerk takesit over to
and under the carbonated faucet. He or she 'jerks"the
handle down. Fluid fills around the ice cream making that
fizzy sound that is the mark of an ice cream soda.
**
I also wore high boots with bright yellow buckles, a black
velvet jacket and a long red scarf, I used the stage name
Tide Huranunti, and I soon became the star of the Mont-
martre district--

and when a lady called only 'Veronique'started coming
around to see my show I fell in love.

Then she moved to Canada, but she remained my best
friend-- the best I ever had.

(End part one)
##
dt

Sunlight

Regardless
of how dim
the house is,
or how warm
the temperature,

if even
the narrowest
band of sunlight
makes its way
through a window,

my dogs
will find it,
and lie down in it.

I like that
about them.

the shoemaker and his tools

by night, a poet:
haiku striker,
tagger with a foreign totem.

his hands are stained
saddle-blazing brown,
the colour of a bareback rider
when new in town
.

a void

delirium
and the swirling attrocities
of my insipid memories
tantalize the moment
when i disemboweled myself
in the parking lot
outside the pharmacy
where i often purchased
my anti-depressants
and M&Ms

If Only She Knew

He asked her mother,

How’s she doing?

And is told, She’s fine,

doing quite well for herself actually.

He said,

That’s good. I never did believe

all those things they used to say.

But he believed them -

he helped create them,

once his children were in bed;

fulfilling bored marriage fantasies

with their submissive, barely a teen, babysitter,

who was confused more than willing,

and yet didn’t quite know

how to say no.

He told his cousin, told his friends

(some wanted in just as badly as him),

yet his wife never seemed to see.

She was off to work, or out with friends,

not realizing or maybe not wanting to

recognize that he only worked late

so the kids would need a sitter,

who ultimately would sit for him.

He would bring her

on father and children outings,

under the guise of helping with the kids.

Yet in the dark of the car,

or in the movie theater, his hand would clasp hers,

or brush across her chest, before moving slowly

up between her legs.

Sometimes they’d smoke,

or drink in his house,

while the children were fast asleep.

His grizzled face would scratch

her soft thighs, and she’d pretend

to be more out of it than she really was;

disengaging from what once felt like flattery,

but mostly now made her feel

like a little girl gone bad who no one

would think much of, if she told.

Years later

her mother has this odd conversation,

and said, I don’t quite know

what he meant by that but you know,

I never really liked it

when you were around him anyway.

He and his wife were just a couple of bums.

Cheba Leverette

an orphan in the cold

While menstruating, I wandered through the bloodied snow --
cursing Jesus because my mother had always cried for him.
Even if she hadn't, I understood futility.

At home, in bed, (naked and discolored), no longer desperate
for the one who only sought me, she had known
I was her carnal sin; so, I left him beside her.

Daddy always said, "You're my special little girl --
nothing more pure has come from that whore."

Bauhaus

I don't know how to attach videos. However, I have provided this link -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZ5DBOmH9T8.
Bauhaus is one of my favorite bands. A fan has provided images to this song, "Crowds."
For decades, this song has consistently torn me apart. If someone can link the video, or if someone could share with me how to do it, I would appreciate it. I believe, Veronique, that you will enjoy the song.

Perpetual Arrivals

Elusive flight beckons
clipped wings
and muddied thoughts
yank the earthbound
closer to ossified
ascendants.

Vertebrae clatter in
toothpick chatter
await the plummet,
and the plume of dust
announces that a new
dweller has arrived.

The Bitter End

And so
you died;
it wasn’t a lingering death
but one that was pre-ordained
from the moment the bitterness
spewed from your lips, and you knew it
to be so, and you encouraged the deed.
Perhaps the only real surprise
was that you lasted
this long.

will you recognize your own dead bones?

your whores are solipsists;
I have interest in none
of them.

it is your bones
which tilt my head,
turn my nipples rosy red.

It lasts-say-eleven seconds,
at its best beast,
cherry pitted finest,

tweaked.

lifetimes are relative; just ask
your Uncle in Tokyo,
the one with the indigo rose.

One American poet we must remember as well
as we remember the Alamo and the Maine--

that poet is William Jennings Bryant(1794-1925).
In the early 1800's he was a poet; later he was an
editor. Americans know this poet better for the
famous "Cross of Gold" speech he delivered to the
Democratic National Convention in 1896.

Also, the speech was so great, Bryant won his
party's presidential nomination. In fact, the man
ran for the highest office in the land three times
before old age and the process of evolution
caught up.

When he died in 1925 only Clarence Darrow and
TS Eliot were happy.

Most readers are familiar with Bryant's famous
poem, "To A Waterfowl," about a man who re-
news his faith in God by watching a duck.

But it was a starling that gave to William Cullen
Bryant lasting fame—but the poem as it reads
in American Poetry anthologies is not the poem
the great poet first wrote.

Here is that first draft, the poem in its entirety
(all of it).

**

Perched aloft, head back and wings outspread
Thou dost to earth a treasure-trove bequeath,
Which, coming from thy tail and not thy head
Makes it dangerous to stand beneath.
Ah, bird. My utmost patience thou dost try—
America was not thy native zone,
Go back to England, and there multiply!
Leave my suet and sunflower seeds alone.

Yet, from the winds, thy heart has caught
A mighty moral. And to we mortals given
Harmonious renderings of this solemn thought—
The lowliest soul is loved by God in Heaven.

Yes, he who made the lamb, likewise made you.
Which goes to show God can fuck-up, too.
##
William Jennings Bryant

I Am Alpha

it began like this

i'll meet you in the abandoned silo

take your hand and lead you

past the empty shop-room

and under the sodium vapor lamps

to

two buckets of latex

one

rose madder, and

one

cobalt blue

i'll pour cerulean over you

head to toe

and you pour on me

subdued anger

take my hand and lead me

to

a conveyor belt

stretched across the empty

and

you leap

onto an imbalanced beam

and

run the rollers

i

follow

there

after dismount

is a tank

of fresh cement

we

meet inside

the uniform pressure

and grit against the skin

wading to our chests

i tie your hands

with your braids

turn you and

take you

from behind

portland

sand

and water

i pull out

semen

and cement

then

pull you out

we shine

you are Terra

and i

Mars