Paralysis
Crippled
By fear
Or anxiety
Depression
Like the gaze of a basilisk
Sinking
Unable to swim
All the lifeguards look like sharks
Manage to struggle in the currents
Further and further
Swimming
Away from the shore
On purpose
People can tell you you're Superman
But when you are your own kryptonite
Why even try to swim
Being crippled
By the basilisk
Its grasp never loosens

Ornamental graves set like feasts
                                                                             for unfaithful lovers,
                   the broke marrow of virtuous phantasms,
                                                                      now swaddled rapture
                                                                      chanted as basilisk verses.
                                           Scarred Alice wraps it around
                                                             torn limbs--
                                               festering gauze--the cynical made anew.

                         "Creation moves," the gluttonous moper speaks again,
                                                     "to erase itself."
                                            Alice's children blasts
                                            the afterlife caboose
                                            to the front of the freight
                                           --saeculum saeculorum--

               "Wake again and again
                          without ghosts and wrath,
                                 dear children." The wind whispers their souls
                      back to her--"the molding of men
                      and women attend to sponge the graves dry."

          They will raise themselves
                            --chanting the basilisk verses,
                mother Alice
                               departs her children twice
                      to the corridors of rose fields
                      in her naked cloud.

                                                    "Come back, dear mother...."
                                                    "Come back, dear mother..."
                                                                               they chant,
                                                     "Your salted epitaph
                                                        still lingers in our throats."

            Not fit there
                   or here.
           Nowhere, Miss, nowhere--

                                     Sin is the party
                                           that doesn't die
                                  and neither does the health
                                               of lyrical sand.

                              --Floaters like discontent
                                         Alice,
                                     recreate the world,
                                  --our world with
                                 pastels and finger-paints
                doodles on Arlington headstones
                                             --messages for our ear bones
                                             --disasters on eleven
                 turning stones roll over--tortoises play dead
                                                            but whisper,
                                               "Clergy cerebral
                                                 won't wisp away
                                                  beds of jewels.
                              I pity people who think
                                          themselves powerful.

                    "Frost-bit devices dilate
                   like the hands of a watch
                          tearing time apart with
                     rusty blades.  

                                                                                      "Counting fingers--useless freedom
                                                                                                                     --bothersome slavery."

         Alice knows what the basilisk knows,
                              we would sacrifice
                              the only righteous heart in *****
                                                                           & Gomorrah
                                                                           to save
                           &n

The Triumph of Wit Over Suffering

Head alone shows you in the prodigious act
Of digesting what centuries alone digest:
The mammoth, lumbering statuary of sorrow,
Indissoluble enough to riddle the guts
Of a whale with holes and holes, and bleed him white
Into salt seas.  Hercules had a simple time,
Rinsing those stables:  a baby's tears would do it.
But who'd volunteer to gulp the Laocoon,
The Dying Gaul and those innumerable pietas
Festering on the dim walls of Europe's chapels,
Museums and sepulchers?  You.
                               You
Who borrowed feathers for your feet, not lead,
Not nails, and a mirror to keep the snaky head
In safe perspective, could outface the gorgon-grimace
Of human agony:  a look to numb
Limbs:  not a basilisk-blink, nor a double whammy,
But all the accumulated last grunts, groans,
Cries and heroic couplets concluding the million
Enacted tragedies on these blood-soaked boards,
And every private twinge a hissing asp
To petrify your eyes, and every village
Catastrophe a writhing length of cobra,
And the decline of empires the thick coil of a vast
Anacnoda.
          Imagine:  the world
****** to a foetus head, ravined, seamed
With suffering from conception upwards, and there
You have it in hand.  Grit in the eye or a sore
Thumb can make anyone wince, but the whole globe
Expressive of grief turns gods, like kings, to rocks.
Those rocks, cleft and worn, themselves then grow
Ponderous and extend despair on earth's
Dark face.
           So might rigor mortis come to stiffen
All creation, were it not for a bigger belly
Still than swallows joy.
                         You enter now,
Armed with feathers to tickle as well as fly,
And a fun-house mirror that turns the tragic muse
To the beheaded head of a sullen doll, one braid,
A bedraggled snake, hanging limp as the absurd mouth
Hangs in its lugubious pout.  Where are
The classic limbs of stubborn Antigone?
The red, royal robes of Phedre?  The tear-dazzled
Sorrows of Malfi's gentle duchess?
                                   Gone
In the deep convulsion gripping your face, muscles
And sinews bunched, victorious, as the cosmic
Laugh does away with the unstitching, plaguey wounds
Of an eternal sufferer.
                         To you
Perseus, the palm, and may you poise
And repoise until time stop, the celestial balance
Which weighs our madness with our sanity.

In the centre of the ruins
A carved stone creature stands
His mighty beak is open
As are the talons on his hands

The muscles on his chest are taut
His wings spread on his back
His legs are so positioned
As if ready for attack

He stands upon a pedestal
Struggling with the clinging vine
A witness to civilisation gone
He has withstood the test of time

His stare is across the ruins
Toward an ancient obelisk
Which somehow might be linked
To the mighty basilisk

If the basilisk could talk
What tales he could tell
Of generations of mortals
And of how the city fell

basilisk ****
nonparticular inexecrable exit
art ****
the lips on for breakfast
twilight zip entanglement
meticulous bending and sensual telepathy

fever-sickness
rock 'n roll boo-boos
lilting black 'n blues on the caboose
puppeteering every tasty ***** loose

chews the collar
thighs and necking room
bustling bussers it gives ifs
gets down with

daisy, dior, dkny, grapefruit(purple) to narcisso and pink sugar too

Bliss tainted madness
playing tug-o-war with
January's vacuum
Years of passing down groupies
to the most recent djs playing bad dubstep tunes
and that sickness of seeing iloveyou's abused

A new dawn has surfaced,
I woke up and realised I was wrapped tightly in your warm embrace,
I gently pushed your arms away,
Headed to our brightly lit kitchen,
Fixed you marshmallows, pancakes, muffins,
Marmalade,
Everything that could revitalise your day,
And then I remembered what you said,
'Babe, never leave me more than 5 inches away'.
I giggled and decided to return to your warm embrace,
But there you were standing,
Shambling like a Haiti Zombie,
Hair messy,
Breath as foul as Smaug and Shrek,
But there I was wanting to close our 2 metres gap,
Till' no spaces between us were left,
But I halted from my tracks, and said,
‘Baby, would you like some coffee to ease your groggy state?’
‘Who knows what tomorrow’s dawn may bring’
‘But my love for you will never dwindle from change’

I wept as the last pages of your diary was soaked in red,
From the sliced vein of my wrist when I was in a fit of rage,
With the broken glasses of our photo frame,
Taken whilst we were at the Carpathian cliffs,
Alas I could not capture your fall,
And I could not stop recalling how your hands gently slip away from my palm,
You ended up in a coma, failing to respond despite my desperate calls,
Nor from kisses that could awake you magically like Snow White with her company of dwarves,
Know that I am forever yours,
The same bespectacled spectre, Always haunting the campus halls,
Waiting to steal your attention and leave me petrified,
From your Basilisk and Medusa like gaze,
You were a personified patriot of beauty,
With hazel scarf, scarlet hair, pink lips,
Seraphim in disguise,
And what an angel you must be, to fall from the atmosphere,
And defy society’s tainted rules of attraction to fall for an underdog,
Though I find it ironic that your name was Dawn,
It seems like my sorrow was fated all along,
But I do not wish to survive another dawn without me in your arms,
How silly am I to forget about the running water in the tub,
The portal to bridge our gaps,
Not another step was taken,
When I felt a familiar warmth behind my back,
Followed by a disembodied voice which sounded like a ‘Hello’
Or was it,

‘*******’.

"We'll see."
(Thirty-two team,
two kyoo-bee,

a full-starting
O-, and only
two-guys on D.)

Mixed-media,
played-with, in poetry.
War, on, inside-me.

Implying-unstable, infer-me,
infirm the insane,
afraid,
and a stain,
and-to-blame.
And,

for shame,
part of race, don't,
myself, run-in.
Tryna buy-my-lunch. (&)
*******'s brought a gun-in.
Element'ry school, and all you wonder's where the fun's went. (&)
"Probably in another-empty-bag of
eaten-Funyuns." (&)
Probably, blue-blew fireworks, with fingers-off...
stumped-him. (&)

"Stomped'em."

Wonder, beauty, why you cryin'?
"Wonder,
if you'd drive?"
Bought-in, you did! To
all-I've-said, ugly and
alive-eyed.

"Wouldn't cough too much,
with tube-in!
You're mouth-dry."
Hampton-Beach-power-plant-hug,
July Five. CJD makes-me.
A bad brine, mine.
Another-youngest,
"Brother has died,
blind."

North Hampton,
on the way to
Hamherst-dam.
"Tryin'-man!
Love, the fam.
Will it be too late t'jam?

If I leave, you, now, from where I am?"
I leave now, from where I am. So,
[Leave now!
From: where I am!]

Leave now, "from where?"
(I'm already there.
Or did we come
the other way?)
"I'm getting there,
****."

I.

Am.

Despite the **** blizzard.
Why am I afraid to say
"it?"
Like:
"it" isn't.
I'm a Wizard.
Are we set,
now?
On-a-plan?
I'm a lizard,
tail-dropped.

Basilisk-Kenevel,
walking water-cans.
Bet you coulda. Know I woulda.
Puddle-crossed,
"Bye," I ran.
Ogled-over noodles,
with the
"wrong-sauce-
Dan-Dan."
I'm always glad to read you.
Wrote to your-self, I am

THE man, I am
THAT guy! I'm not?
"You are."
Just-High.
I fry.
These-frilly vegetarian-victims.
I ripped flesh from bone, before my dogs,
had to sic 'em.

Oh--
if you don't like the channels you can clickclick-click 'em.
If I'm showing off my *****! "Better go-head."
Lick'em.
See? Hawk-my-****, and
Stickemmmmmmmmmm.

Didn't happen to 'bic' him."
D'you know
how to pick 'em?
Cuz I take hit, like you
take-a-****:
Ummmmmmmm
...
well.

And, I turn-it.
All-around.
And I make you
****-yourself.
*******-on my
"all-that,"
it comes, with.
Now, Fall! Back!

Cell-tough, in round-III, so
convert, or burn-winnin'. "Comfy-
When-sinnin'." In-system,
Preferably would, and should-be:
Bobs. Newhart and Lee and "the
Third. " "Cornball." Griffin.
Racist, your second-choice, whiffin'.
K-battin', ten,

outta-tin.
Hear it in the heat, soul-hissin',
lion-sun, bathing,
and she-glisten.
Cast me, to an
island away,
swears-by-we,
"Listen."

"More pills, son?"
Try'na name
your brand,
Of volley-*****.
Wilson,

Rus-sell

"I call them the
'defensive-stars,'"
And this-league: ***.
***. Arr.
Ain't-no-side-

hus-tle.

Iodine damnation cleanses Alice--rock-and-roll medusa
                                              alone in the field,
she waits for the flies to eat the spider
                 --the third testament of law
                                                   divinely christened as low as $19.95.
                  Hell is where
       Schrodinger throws the bodies. Revived Alice is in a burlap sack
            embedded in the cubbyhole
            of a mortal anthro-rubix,

    the small garnishes that spot livers during cancer.
                         "Hello and welcome
             to the resting place of all Blues songs."
     speaks the curbed lips of Gluttony. A name that vomits
            up rebellion, like cleansing the glucose off
   fish-cleaning tables.

   Alice touches her eyes                                       rolls them
                                                                        --fortunate galleries,
broods deeply on the jaws of her receptors.
                    "After the last drop, the hard boiled spoil
and the cats won't eat 'em. Neither will I," Gluttony spews, "You all show up
                    as do I, magnifying the cruelty of digging,
                                                                             digging,
                                                                             digging
                                                 that follows me and you to the bitter stem
                                                  and rough petal--throwing this rose,
                                                                                                that rose,
                                                                            here and there inside the carcass of lust.
                                    The scalding photograph of a guerrilla war playground
                                                                                   hangs over
                                                            the mantle of a prideful garden.

        "Pulp wisdom
         looking back at the names of thieves/murderers
                                                       of simple thought
                                over-turning scars of fallacy
                                         in that garden.

            "Picking,
             picking,
             picking out the best arrangement
                           so it doesn't look like I went
                                                                         through a drive-thru
                           for what to say.         'Hey.'
                                                               'Yes?'
                                                                'I love you.'
                                                                'You too.'
                                                   Something in between
                                             what you, I, and the others were looking for
                                            has uprooted bushes--the tilled chest of my sister
                                                                   and lover--disarrayed, dirt thrown
                                                                                                         to the side.
                                            Fibonacci colors patterned
                                                                        across the moist earth
                                                      to distract you and I, all from the dread, and all
                                                                                 the relief
                              of ripping apart the white, pink, black, and red."

I.

So far as our story approaches the end,
  Which do you pity the most of us three?—
My friend, or the mistress of my friend
  With her wanton eyes, or me?

II.

My friend was already too good to lose,
  And seemed in the way of improvement yet,
When she crossed his path with her hunting-noose
  And over him drew her net.

III.

When I saw him tangled in her toils,
  A shame, said I, if she adds just him
To her nine-and-ninety other spoils,
  The hundredth for a whim!

IV.

And before my friend be wholly hers,
  How easy to prove to him, I said,
An eagle’s the game her pride prefers,
  Though she snaps at a wren instead!

V.

So, I gave her eyes my own eyes to take,
  My hand sought hers as in earnest need,
And round she turned for my noble sake,
  And gave me herself indeed.

VI.

The eagle am I, with my fame in the world,
  The wren is he, with his maiden face.
—You look away and your lip is curled?
  Patience, a moment’s space!

VII.

For see, my friend goes shaling and white;
  He eyes me as the basilisk:
I have turned, it appears, his day to night,
  Eclipsing his sun’s disk.

VIII.

And I did it, he thinks, as a very thief:
  “Though I love her—that, he comprehends—
“One should master one’s passions, (love, in chief)
  “And be loyal to one’s friends!”

IX.

And she,—she lies in my hand as tame
  As a pear late basking over a wall;
Just a touch to try and off it came;
  ’Tis mine,—can I let it fall?

X.

With no mind to eat it, that’s the worst!
  Were it thrown in the road, would the case assist?
’Twas quenching a dozen blue-flies’ thirst
  When I gave its stalk a twist.

XI.

And I,—what I seem to my friend, you see:
  What I soon shall seem to his love, you guess:
What I seem to myself, do you ask of me?
  No hero, I confess.

XII.

’Tis an awkward thing to play with souls,
  And matter enough to save one’s own:
Yet think of my friend, and the burning coals
  He played with for bits of stone!

XIII.

One likes to show the truth for the truth;
  That the woman was light is very true:
But suppose she says,—Never mind that youth!
  What wrong have I done to you?

XIV.

Well, any how, here the story stays,
  So far at least as I understand;
And, Robert Browning, you writer of plays,
  Here’s a subject made to your hand!