Clutch, child,
Clutch with your diminishing strength,
Clutch with your breakable nails,
Clutch to your chest.

Clutch, child, hold it tight,
Before the nostalgia comes
And removes it from your sight.

Clutch the times, clutch the places,
Clutch Mother Gooses's wings,
Clutch Daddy knowing everything.

Clutch for dear life, your innocence,
Clutch all the things you've not yet given.

Clutch to your sweet heart
Whilst it's not yet tasted bitterness,
Clutch to your soul, dear,
Before it turns to heresy.

Clutch bright- eyed sincerity,
Clutch skinned knees and easy remedies,
And for the life of us, child, clutch me.

+clearly, the ears, are pivotal: in terms of coordination - and the eyes too, but the eyes seem almost secondary...._

because i'm not a poet or a feminist or a vegan
or a combination of the three
because i'm not a vegan poet
or a feminist poet
or a vegan feminist
or a... i forget the quadratics
i like listening to Iron Maiden...
the driving instructor just said:
CLUTCH! CLUTCH! CLUTCH!
i said that with capital letters and exclamation
mark for my own emphasis...
so after i had enough spatial awareness
to go beyond the clutch for starters
on the field of maneouevuring
ontomatopoia
i will... leave a trail of spelling mistakes
because i'm so ******* excited
that i'm learning to drive
about to turn aged 39
and i'm also so excited about being
a man: a male... a man male...
******* narrative of the oppressed
peoples seems so strange when
you don't include the oppression
of how society starves for vampires and werewolves
and i wonder
but what of the LGBTQ++V/W?
what about the vampires and the werewolves
and the zombies and the mummies?!
i already said it to my wife
i don't need to say it to the world:
it's super serious it's super exciting
but after spending 30min with her on the automatic
gear box
and now the horror awoke and it was
big at first then shrank and became little
and i don't care what EVEN SHE WAS SAYING
shut up: the vehicle is alive i'm
flying
i'm dreaming
driving like this is a rebirth of the 20th century
since it was so freely avaliable for so many:
i don't care about spelling mistakes!
i'm learning to drive a car and not turn a car
into a tank and plow into a throng of people
at a Christmas market
or a bunch of junkies at Piccadilly Sq in Manch
Munch Ch'Ch'Chichister... **** yo boyo...
i had my highs and thankfully this is one
of them:
i'm not a poet i'm not a vegan and i'm
not a feminist:
i'm an example of some who says:
well... CLUTCH! CLUTCH! clutch before the hammer
of the STOP and the CLUTCH!
ghost limb and later an ego limp
from an automatic gesture
like salutations Hail Hishy Shaft and Shudder...
i don't know...
i went onto the balcony and thought about stars:
replied? blank... an utterly dark black almost
deep purple song alike so where
did the stars go?
but i'm not a poet a vegan or a feminist
i'm not a vegan poet or a feminist poet
as i am also not a something-or-other:
i just want to escape the cage
of riding a bicycle and swimming
and i acknowledge that people exist
who know not how to swim or ride a bicycle:
my grandmother...
hmm... i am just writing *******
and pretending to not think about
geopolitics but that doesn't really bother me
after all i might
end up being armed with a tank-of-potential
but i am no Shakespeare no rhyme when
once upon a time rhyme was cute and it was
written with intended rhyme so that actors
might remember lines
but we are not remembering so we are
forgetting so we are not going to rhyme...
why should poetry rhyme when there's talk
of emails and the wolf folk...
but at least i have the awareness of a cyclist
and a pedestrian now driving...
well... all i'm missing is a ******* ******
bullet and hole and aim...
because when all these proxy wars come
to pass and we gear up for Armageddon
i'll hope to be the last person to learn to drive
a car
when all the Japanese truck drivers slurp
and pray before their bowl of Ramen
and my stepdaughter breaks all her teeth on nibbling
on the dry p'ooh... oh hell:
words mean **** when you are given the feel
for a clutch and the two other pedals...

... and if there was a lineage of philosopher
and self-help gurus
who first learned to walk
before walking learned to trust an Alsatian
shepherd to put their entire arm into its gob
and before the people most precious
before the stubborn socio-political demands
for journalistic crab-bucket "democracy"
before some awe and yawn inspiring happens...
before all that
before all the physics:
i was young
and in mny youth i was supposed
to be planning a trip to the right of Columbus'
Copernican "prose"
way ahead in India and Thailand:
****!
i missed the plot!
All Saints: Pure Shores
with a...           Promise... Reyla and Priya
could fathom coconuts and peanuts
and elephants...
but i landed with a wife in somewhere
mid-/ late- Polynesia culture
and i'm just getting to the GRIT and GRIP
and also learning Polish Prison spreschen...
CWEL for a MYZYG another presidential
candidate and so much reality
is so Catholic in that it's so more distant
and sort of abstract in the geo-
geography and grammar and that part with squares
and algebra...
i think i have extension i call limbs
and limp knit picks and some other: ghosts...
but then again... i only have words
and i only have abberations...
hmm... and sometimes i call that love
and it's comfort profound to know
i was a pedestrian and a peasant and i've seen enough
because i'm so exited that
one liter of ***** will not get me drunk
beside there's a beyond i'm singing along
to a Christ Rea song on the M25
and i'm not getting ghost limb
itch because:
Mr. Mateusz the CLUTCH! CLUTCH!

then towers of time shine with a shrink
and the pools of the emblems of
space expand
and such is the trivial manifestation
of the mortal-play
that i found ?! and had a future
in thought
and went beyond mere ought-i and i-ought
and it happened so:
that from working within the confines
of earth
there was a heaven of answers
and a hell of questions
and the mediators upon earth
asked and asked...
but at least in heaven i will have
answers while
in hell i will only have questions
i don't think of Pavlov and
the bell chimes and rewards:
just give me the basis of infinity:
the basic square, magic:
the answer from which i can work with
and around...
not this salivating stupid... just the basic:
huh?!        aha!         hey presto!
if you think that god doesn't worry
about the existence of eternity you might be
quiet wong in the yolk of...
god is worried about people not having
the lost stomach to live to eternal...
sanity breaks like any machinery...
at some point i hope this fail-safe machinery
of planets will stumble:
burp... peasant *****...
but until that perfection fails...
we have hope
in reviving the smart
and the perfect engineering solving
problem and answers...
so until the planets stop doing what
planets might stop doing:
and we can stop claiming power of ingenuity over
the Devil because fire is less than
dirt from the basis of thirst
and need for problem solving
the Devil didn't know anything about problem-solving
so he was proud but if i'm surrounded
by people in an Islam pseudo
Death Cult and this passive Asian ugh
i want to get away from your \
Ninja breath-take-aways of
uncles and demons and
rotten ***** of the hijab....
      i don't want to live among Muslims... period!
get me away from these ****** junkies!
**** me: i'm getting arachnophobia feels!
ugh! get me away from these inbreds!
the Hindus know what i'm talking about
no wonder they are bombing the **** out from
these sand-*******! ugh! ugh! ugh!
i'm not a poet i'm not a vegan i'm not a feminist...
i'm just learning to drive a car...
a tier above laughing while spitting
at a camel
and teasing while ******* a crab
to valk STR8....        boogoo... who would have
thought that ghost need both bed-sheets
and cushions to borrow: boot... dunno...
New York stinks...
i thought i was heading to the Raj and Thailand...
i ended up in Hawaii...
if god doesn't live in me then
god needs no other place to live
for me to otherwise not speak: and him to: speak.

she didn't know..
until she knew
what a curve of learning!


1.
both college-students and real good-friends
he was a science-and-botany buff
            *and the mountain would get a taste of his cells
and she, student of philosophy and languages
            would hear the latent-message from a dozen sources


2.
they shared confidences to the other
things they never told a soul
            he also discussed his theories and science-experiments and projects and stuff
            she told him how slightly-uphill her lectures in Russian proved to be
they'd meet there every Monday.. under the campus-trees
with two hellish-strong espressos
        he remembered her chewy-doughnuts without any snow-sprinkles
        'cause she was given to these silly coughing-fits
        when eating peanuts and pulses
he teased her endless and ragged all her idiosyncrasies
they seemed closer than kin

yet he seemed to remain aloof when she tried to get closer
      he brushed off her advances
      and told her to get lost
then ran off with Lilian on Tuesday
then Zita next Tuesday
then Sumaya the following Wednesday
and Tarryn on Thursday after that
and so it went on for a whole while
the whole academic-year, in fact

yet still
      they studied together
      and swore in debates
      and met every Monday
oh, that was the one day he never dated


3.
on the first day of each month
he'd give her a beautiful clutch-pencil
its casing bled entirely in translucent-fuchsin
and told her to guard well context over content
she never understood this cryptic-crap
       but smilingly accepted each one
she thought them too pretty to use
       and kept them in a special-box
       yet her heart broke each time
he took out a new flavour-of-girl
and shared his tongue with
     Sally and Margaret and Lisbeth and Anne..
     some lasted days, others short-weeks
but they all fizzled out
like the pop that they swallowed
and she wondered if he would ever
              favour her with affection
              give to her what those lucky-gals got
              look into her eyes like that
              whisper sweet-nothings to her
why didn't he want her?

but he was brusque with her and abrupt as discordant-chords
he scolded her like uneven-bricks tumbling down
and yet, it was to her that he played
               his own alternate-ballads on his banjo
               i n t r i c a t e - b e a u t y like living-pearls on those strings
      he couldn't look at her, then
      too caught-up in sweet-delivery of song
and with his eyes closed, her imagination took high-flight
as she was able to stare at him, without fear
                           in wonder
                           in enchantment
and marvel at the mesmerising co-ordination of those busy-fingers..

others passed by, but he did not care.. so giving
she felt so unique
'cause she got what they did not
           unbreakable-bond of
            music and.. talk and.. those clutch-pencil gifts
and for his birthday, she gave him a two-tone pelargonium, potted in cream
left him wordless..


4.
it was near the end of November
(just like now:)
and he casually mentioned of going away
            a week-long hike in December
            with a girl in a group that he'd met, some Sarah or other
and something in her flared and she broke down..
                                                                ­went off the rails

he looked on aghast, in total silence.. half-perplexed, half-squinting
     which disquietened her far more than any outburst could have
he stood there before her, on that Monday
       in the beautiful mid-morning sun
she remembered, to the moment.. how the light caught his eyes
       seemed to be looking right t-h-r-o-u-g-h her
       and almost, she saw the tiniest-trace of something...
       struck by a touch of liquid-vulnerability in his being
but hooded-eyes quick again, typical-hider!

he reached into his backpack
****** her a clutch-pencil
which she almost rejected
but she calmed herself down
and he looked at her once
            turned on heel
and walked to his Beetle
rode off the campus
without looking back

and she kept on wondering what it was all about
       that silent intense-look


5.
news came of a group of hikers who succumbed
from high up
some slipped and
her acrid-tears were not the only to fall
upon learning......


6.
she ran back to her dorm
reached for his gifts.. in full-remorse
and clutching a pencil in each hand
she squeezed and accidentally pressed on the flick-top
and then...............
               (it came out)
i t . . . c a m e . . . o u t . . . ! !

never in her life would she be as stunned
as they repeated their message
     over and over
     in tandem audio-confusion
in all the tongues she had studied
she learns now
of the time he took to delve into her crap to relay his truth through his amazing-invention!


7.
at the interment, she couldn't speak
displacement dipped too deep
she took up one clutch-pencil
      and pressed on the top
      message loud and clear
custom-made brilliance direct from heaven's fingertips

the pall-bearers lifted him up
                 and
out of her life

now this roundabout-present lies in the velours-box
like he does in his



students of learning..
in book.. and in heart








S T - 25 nov 2013