Floating above the rifts of apperception I glaze over the gaudy faucets of imagined vector thrusts in hibernation by the lucubration of space-time materialized crystal in the somber beats of fetched farrago of choice slices in delicate hums of hemmed balance rantipole only in ethereal importance but otherwise supersolid above the sprauncy vagrancy of dilettantism. We shout a clarion virtuosity so that the conclamation of neovitalism conjures upon a spell of lapse and regress a motive for further crystallization of epidemiology into harmony with syndicated admonition sleek in design and parceled into renown by feats of completion rather than slugabed gregarious fountains of wasted ingenuity bleeding from the vacuum of an empty hearth in a hospitable dwelling otherwise cleared of imperfection. Right now, I levitate with transcendence with an approximated eidetic memory that is the surgical vibrancy of renewal rather than the chameleons of hidden talents buried by the walls of Jericho sounding tocsins of alarm that the anointed favor of choice destruction is only an encircled rapture of rhapsodies of confluence found in axiomatic truths ribbed with the futtocks of seaworthy but cauponate recidivism into the donnybrooks of apocryphal revelation preceding the whimsical fall of cascading permanence just as gravity so ordained it. We breathe the life of the ethereal numinous spirit of isangelous repute because we navigate the exquisite cobweb of reconciliation to surpass all understanding in peace what would be a miscegenated carcass of war otherwise apart from the incidental apartheid of the drones of causality ignoring the antecedent reality too much to register fathomed streaks of preventive endeavor because of the scars of a scrappy schlep of the rampicks of ecbolic servitude to moth-eaten star-crossed lovers of the mean menagerie of gutless succor renowned only in tepid rejections of harbingers bequeathed in succession but ignored because of the procession of “Billie Jean” politics.

   The citadel aflame with controversy buttresses carnality by witless contaminants of hidebound scaldabancos of ineffable destitution so craven in eisoptrophobia for their hypostasized indolent fatuousness of capitulation that they are but a minor punctuation in the largesse of centuries to favor audacity in candor over the prevarications of catastrophe to dented human pride against humane dictates of theodicy in fatalism that predestination experimented with its own vaulted verve to find permanent solutions engraved in the agrapha of time to solidify the redintegrated truth of God’s divine stewardship above the quisquilous deism of former regnant centuries of blench and blandishment. We revolt at the specter of rot only when the effluvia of disgust elevates the visceral reality above the utilitarianism of recycled prim nuisances of noisome lineage that yet balk because they are bereft of attention but not a vacant talent and therefore should the subsidies of man surpass the ignorance of appearances he will shrug of the demur of the scrimshank and sharpen his scrivello in the service of redemption found through cultivated prowess of gardens beneath where rivers flow above a cubic centurion of embattled visages of the heavens becoming the rampart for the vestigial clarity of Secret Masters to foresee the bypass that heals decadence and rebukes the formalism of puritan endeavor to sweat with exhaustive patience over the gossamer intertesselations of a ripe reality rather than a groveled fragmentary world shattered too much by exigent metanoia to mount the crenellated catchpole of vigilant enmity towards the stew of listlessness found in epigone and farce more than in organic fortunes. We flip the upheaval of society to squander our proportionate degrees of wealth on the necessity created by dire quandary which enamors by interrogations of pulchritude the verisimilitude of participle ivory dalliance of etched canvasses of simultagnosia for the librations of the liberated rings of betrothed liberation despite profound lurches of the mistetches of ignorance presiding dismally over the hulked disdain of glamborge rather than resselenque.

     The winter is a poor porcine glut of ciconine swelters because the prickly obtuse recoil of the delopes of caution find their permeable balance with a sort of photographic photosynthesis that braves the dearth of reprieve for the reprisal of nostalgic deeds found in the docimasy of riveted reflections because the preordination of God is the superlative champion of the witeless grandeval protectorate of infinite concepts guarded from the parvanimity even of the most strident minds squabbling over the braseros and battues of history as though those funereal stains of lachrymose regret outweigh the traditions of vaunted human progress because they are finicky about importunate pleas of subsidiary injustice rather than fulminations of the modern rebuttal to the disclaimers of an uneven history that shepherds the doubts of nihilism into ripe fruition at the expense of very expensive moral rot for the codlings of urbacity and mendaciloquence used to foment that tribalism of totemic justice. We see in Penuel the wrestling match of specters and heroic giants documented on the ageless pages and we notice the ironic twinges of struggle that kneaded the propriety of gentilian privilege that ultimately fostered an insurrection against chosen bravado among those that sear with zeal beyond the yordim afflictions of yobbery because the Jewish heart is stronger than any calamity even if it departs from the reverence of the colporteurs of the integrated syncretism of the attempted monolith that beseeches polyphiloprogenitive growth in mindset rather than in testy abeyance of forbearance because of known scrutinies into the tropology of wilted facts remanded by curious historicity that crumples without disdain when we memorialize the erasure of scepsis by modern standards of thaumaturgy.

    The minauderies of growth are a repositioned tacit allegiance to the untold fanfare and hearsay immunized against the broach of facetious levity to buoy discordant hearts above fumatoriums of relentless ignorance because coherent masterwork can be cobbled without such lapidary toil and toll on sincere affectations of wizened brevity. The seismic precautions for the forefathers of incidental convergences between expectancy and crystallized history are an ironic intortion of priorities because the heralds and tribunes matched the peerless foresight with the gerrymandered figments of apartheid between the imaginary and the real so that the delicate synchrony of events could unfurl a riveting carapace from the shells of protection even in amiable squalor for its impenitent attrition on the volleys of sensible rumor becoming fashioned in covert bedazzled errors in judgment leading to the triumph of the eventual civilization over the futtocks of the burial of the former trekleador of zenkidu belonging to provincial cadasters found so tucked in the hedges that discernment of frikmag would be an indelible scourge on the biognosy of the diagnosed endeavors that elapsed into remediated circumstances that brave the depths of deontological violation for the breadth of apportioned loaves and two swanky fish earning a place among the miracles of transcendent liberation from articles of decree imperious by sardonic disdain becoming nullified by the histrionics of a delicately staged orchestra that cements human achievement.

       We relish the frescades of a ruffled autumnal reminder of flourish above pothers of the screed of admonition swamped by nostalgic backtracks in the séance with ultimatum of design and the impregnated and carnal lusts of a world pitched in darkness with guarded lambent lights fomenting a perjury against tact for the deliverance of freedom in tacit agreement with owleries that every bonanza be tithed in their favor regardless of hibernation of spoilsports or their subsidiary remarks on indelible quills of invented manufactured realities we crave with desperation rather than cower from in requited nescience urging us to depart from affairs and stagnate the loyalty of fealty above the limber of utility mobilized above levities for solemn remarks and rejoinders. Promulgated above the robotic rubble of staffage haywire in wiredrawn contemplative resonance of tremulous subterfuge vestigial but immediate to the yardsticks of reprehensible malarkey, is the barnstorm for erratic dimples sauntered by the saunas of shelter above the chaos of ruined ginnels for the gimcracks of auxiliary duty to service, is the glorification of the sultry intimations of legions of remonstrance in guarded decorum about sunken atrocities lapsed in memorial to the incumbent brunt of sockdolagers of justice returning revenants from the bridewell of historical internment. The symphily of orchestras to cineaste symposiasts of surquedry in impudence beyond the brays of betrayal is the aborning mythos of regimented perceptions of a world that when magnified by minutiae appears starkly contrast to the gapped gubbertushed reality of the average patron of the arts to such an extreme gulf of receptive understanding that the qualia are dovetailed only in the swink of careful kisswonks to certify certitude itself when all the fragments coalesce into subjoined harmony to the substructures of inherent conscientiousness. The miracles at work that are vesicles and vessels for the swage of imprint above the loyalty of the imprinted tribunes of the fluminous is how hidden protrusions can emerge so victorious over popularized glazes on the pastures of a farmed culture itching for timmynoggies of innovation but only finding the etched remarks of pristine imagos of heroism dwindling in motivation to surpass the imaginative leaps accustomed to a newfangled laziness that bedazzles the guzzle of crowds but not the discrimination of the crowded morass of incompletion found in mosaics missing enigmatic philters of intoxicated love for the profound. So to be intermediary as a custodian for artistry we must cozen the wheedled imaginations not of the relic but the archaeologist that discovered the embedded prisms of attentive scrutiny for glinting sunshine inherent in troves of surpassed excellence beyond parochial sympatric blandishment of donnism rather than a resselenque that floats above demeanor to usher the cosseted age of treasure above the glib brocards and florews of past success.

      Immanent to the provisions of God as decreed from a syncretic reconnaissance of the pitiable gulfs that separate boundless divine love from the clavigerous potential for scrappy sympatric affiliation to **** through the barnstorms of internal comestions of conflated priorities we are ourselves prismatic in the indulgence of a tasty life sprinkled with zest rather than tempered with the vengeance of retorted animosity that we knead the pottery of ironclad resistance to a metallic conduit of pruned fulminations of unguided intuition so that the natural accord supersedes the goad of materialism for the sustenance of antiquity beyond its heyday for vital gains against the tauricide of panic and frenzy. The linchpin of all realistic attempts at the sympatric symphily of civilization is a guided remorse through the torment of affliction that sizzles without anteric barbs as it measures through engrenage how to pilot the vehicles of prosperity through the minefields of contingency that invisibly bequeath new hurdles and inestimable obstacles that collude surreptitiously to fulminate measured controversy against the backbites of restrained equipoise created by polities of the macadamized fabric of a welded smithy of a universe that with ubiquity proclaims above the senseless the harvest of conjugal repartee in sensible pride against militant bastions of incidental prejudice for a careen against the flyndresques of danger and the flyndrigs of glaikery alike for a humane spurt of enlightenment to tower peerlessly in supervision of entelechy created by esemplastic unity in apolaustic purpose. We cannot be puritans engaged in a pilgrimage to a palimpsest of priggishness because the daring elements of adventurism are necessary ingredients to catalyze the supply-chain of the innate gluttony of ego-seeking endless balance with a natural sustained biognosy that prizes biocentric harmony above bibliognost scepsis so that the enthused can flock with liberty divorced from libertinism. The ultimatum is a war between hedonism wed with donnism against eumoirety and self-restraint and this battle will be waged on the indolence of a future of cordslave tethers to interrogation of privy conceptualism hamshackled by the gradgrinds into the neat nexility of precise conformity that blacklists the samizdat because the genizah profoundly twists the already jumbled jengadangle and provides a junediggle of procession and ceremony rather than pomp without substantial grit embedded in the showmanship of a reality in need of a fourth-wall.

        It is ironic how we bewrayed our stewardship of the planet as a plenipotentiary sentience waged against the vesicles of instinct but more fundamental to this tattered but pregnant psalm is that the stronghold of our future is the tenacity of filial duty to enthrone the household with husbandry and restraint as an emolument to divine justice that sparkles opalescent in its own redacted notions of gravity imperfect in the taradiddles of science but refined by the eclat of the combustible syncopation of a reiterative trope of realism combined with surrealist caprice to henpeck affectionate violation above inviolable screeds of blood sport rather than conjugal affections afforded to the brood and the feast of the flocks that rein supreme over all things but exert inclement justice over the cattle and chattel of civilization itself. The minkumpf against the sacrilege of a prioritized kosher is to abhor the suffering rather than embrace the penitence of perceived but specious sacrifice which is an ornery thorn on the stained conscience of the yobbery of both the apikoros and the obedient because to attenuate all suffering even of instinctual beings we anneal our hearts to a glorified compassion that supersedes the relegated relics of pushful genuflection by succedaneum of sacrifice waged against the docile whangams of otiose theodicy. The filibusters against the regnant complexity of regalia that is a sprauncy poivrade with terpsichorean flairs to transmute the intimations of hibernated perfidy into finicky transmissions for the riometers that accord orbific merit in a lackluster time enchant the rollicking audience of this auditorium of the prevenance of the conquered universe bracing for the camorra of the insipid entreaty of defalcated casuistry—the prominent exchequer in hoodwinked political agitprop that forges ironclad allegiances to flimsy facades of the verisimilitude of dignity with recalcitrant but incondite bruits of venom militant against secular apostasy—that the fitful arrivistes that swim in dire dearth will be welcomed into the reconciliation of all time with a tempered lurid glint of revelation bounded by sunken albatross of hype unbounded with a peace insurmountable in prestige rewarded only with the highest reservations.


    On 3-1-2020 when I penned my philosophy—even at a slowpoke margin of crafty precision above rapid empirical faucets of folly—I was entirely selfsame with the autotelic engravings of the smoldering aboriginal talents within that many can swing through by tenacity for enormous plaudit but a flagrant majority will apprehend with flippant scollardical tenets of rebuke and remain honest in their appraisal only in meek resignation of parvanimity.
Consider the postulates of rarefaction whittled into a vehement zeal against the prostitution of our species to the anteric cycles of residual molds of dingy spectacle mired by the tyrannical towers of supercilious squirms of revamped novelty rather than enhanced by the freebooters of dirigisme that borrow from time the behest of philandered flairs divorced from the cadges of secular instinct and enthroned by the qualms of engineered virtuosity that is stark, barren but peerless in its outstretched clamor for luxuriant sprees against the silentium of grandeval asylum incurred by the flippant filigrees of recalcitrant modernism endangered by the irredentism of the future upon the whimsy of the present-minded momentary glare of rapture.  This impending architecture of nimble but subservient endeavor is a pinprick rejoinder against the wernaggles of prepossessed fountains of configured animosity against the stapled heed of a modality of trayned invictive invectives against the plodding course of fustilugianation that swerves in apathy of autopilot junediggle to emanate the surrender of epigone to the raktendure of the synaesthesis of the attuned perception of all superimposed minutiae delegated by calculated design into a synclastic focus on veiled caprice that is vaulted above the choppy and sketchy verdure of remiss perception to stellar continuities rather than mundane knickpoints of stodged blurs that magnify syncretic qualia into baseline congruity rather than staid torpefied resignation of the visage of thunder without the pangs of the widely vituperated lightning that bequeaths all certain notions but flouts the tortious saboteurs of the prim trucage of brittle fundamentalism.

     As the flawed paragon of a picaresque youth punctuated by vibrant plumage of self-wrought tropophilous usucaption of remote groomed frontiers of desolate luxury but buoyant morale into the ballasts of a nimble usufruct that hikkles yet still against still-framed thilloire--fatuous in endearment only to the polity of the waterdrip of craven but gravid disingenuous flickers of lambent cloaks of perfidy—that earned its birthright by meditative fruition rather than prodigal tallespin of indolent frapplanks of a vicarious personage rather than an autotelic haecceity showcases the folly of heterodyne inclinations meeting an impasse of accidental dislodgement. The interregnum between the spurts and sprees of luxuriance is a staid pause between continuities of afforded parlance becoming stapled demographic solidarity affixed to a strident gallop of effortful pushes against the tenacity of the slumberous wicked hibernation of vetust magpiety without hieratical internment because youthful industry beats hackneyed bludgeons of wiseacres of a stilted manufacture of steamy nostalgia for lickerish moments that dignify but undermine moral virtues but splash anointed and sometimes disjointed favor upon the congeners to a rabid escapade of a heedless love frowning on the girdles of the prim balderdash of heralded jolts dim on levity and puffed with elusive contextualized control of libidinous serrated defilement because the crotaline **** outmantles the sweedled limber of exploitable folly. The cosseted reality of wheedled gourmands of continuous perception rather than the Gaussian blur of the protean invention of stitches in time that obscure rather than magnify the supernal levity inherent to most artistry is a linchpin of lenient gravitas that levies the lavaderos of ripe perception into annealment.
Excuse the bravado of the gait of winnowed forks in a bronteum for heralds of megaloscopy fastened to the macroscian reality of indelible filigrees of countermanded controversy becoming its best behest in the sempiternal flowering of burgeoned demonstration rather than illustrious overhang of drab slabs of manufacture rather than organism that should be interposed between the constellated concepts of both apperception and the aggrieved counselors to obtuse obsessions that are an improper tutelary for a designated reprisal of the once profane now immediately gratified by ramshackle tenets of a guarded sublimation of the tenets of post-modernism into a sustained force of the internalized tabernacle of haecceity shepherded into exuberance by the manumission of spirit from the ******* of purblind scalds of defamation that incurs the penalty of flippant privation. The refuge the Lord provides is not contingent upon the vagaries of deliberation nor the calculus of oversight but the remontant amaranthine glower of a listed deed becoming an eternal reminder that a dismantled and disjointed world fathoming only remorse rather than the trudge of gentility against the headwinds of brunt asperity will always flout the successor rather than atone for the failure of the imponent condition that constellates around rudimentary drivel grubbing the momentary out of avarice for allotted merchandise rather than glommed magnets to amoeba sentiments for the kisswonk of ulterior motive beyond dungeons of desperation that lurk ghoulishly with spectral frights at the disfigurement of morale created by errors askew rather than a contagion of righteous valor.

   Ask the heedful servant if the captaincy of reneged commitment owes homage to dutiful instruction or whether it is a balking corpse of necrosis accorded to the omphalism of brutish carnal repose in times of sedentary silt siphoned in spelunked rijuice for preordination is a predominant specter for a world scared scurrilous and skittish in a diatribe against the very notion of tribal screeds embedded in the sedimentary heft of traditionalism above the pother of vacillation commended to the apikoros but counterfeit fiat system of a ruddy governance without a supreme magistrate. Now lets venture into the territory of visagists as we envision the swanky subversion of impoverished and nebbich visions of oligochrome that fixates on belabored but dead notions of rigid propriety and levitate above those concerns with a querulous transcendence that never wernaggles about the profaned irrelevance of burlesque tropes of sidereal friction but instead memorializes the thermolysis of permeable endeavor above staid countenances of imposture that lurk in the shadowy penumbra of the connivance of persona above the archetype of the tutelary guardian spirit that through windlass and sometimes deliberation affixes nobility to even the pedestrian in order to assize its proper proportions to granular ironies expounded into megalography transformative by the very rivets of its supersensible existence and cohabitation with histrinkage among human taboos.

   The handiwork of a permeable race prone to exacerbated proclamations of prerogatives bulldozed by the rapid percolation of insoluble quandaries to the gripes of the feast of foofaraw sometimes shelters our otherwise regnant concern about the plenipotentiary God that observes all latent affairs without the paramours that conflate vivid carnality with appeased luxury and superimposes a crafty system of seismic shifts in rantipole dances with numinous flux rather than dissipated militant suppression of the fracklings of dissolute pollution which swirk in their dastardly desperado endeavors to corral the entire monoliths that guard each province into a winnowed rumble of rubble by tarnish of Tyre rather than by the upstart rejoinders of Canaan. Every creature which has the capacity to perceive language is afforded benedictions by the overhailing force of the hypaethral heights of superlative ingenuity founded in the bolted speculation of the endearment of all to tropological seesaws embattled against the hearsay of nyejays that contaminates the telmatology of the ecosystem of revivalism rather than buries the leaden debts of the disjointed revenants of past prominence into recycled irrelevance for posterity rather than for anything but a machination of a clockwork apple rigged for a rotten worm to swindle the sweet delicate tempests of unforeseen disaster to perjuries against financial solidarity.

The spinsters of sardonic drollery underscore the imminence of an incondite cutthroat collapse blackguarded by the hucksters of incontinence grubbing every fetched noisome notion and congealing a bonnyclabber of desiccated mildew that proves vestigial when the victors of time earn their joyous serenade to the pinnacle of the totem of jaundice slits in wavy endeavors for the participles of sejungible syntax of the ephorized furor to outlast the draksteng of droned dereliction manned by half-baked spies of ulterior recitals for imprinted vicissitude in supremacy in synquest for frizzlounges rather than the pedestrian circulatory system of careworn polity. We vaporize the petty hatred of sympatric regelation that neuters the virulence of motivated impediments to the draconian surge of asperity that sinks temporal haplessness as a regaled blasphemy that crowns only the ringed betrothal to spumid serrated halts in slick superstition that is a buggery to the idea of insectivores devouring the erratic chantage of germane germs that pauperize rather than even blind the deafened to be a crutch to vehicular homicide. Melismatic sennet is a dirigible of immense herculean sinew without the traces of vestibulary retches of kisswonked grisly tepid intimidations of eccedentesiasts by the radioglare of wizened corrugations in thanatism that exhort the avatars of narquiddity over the natural departure of revenant souls back to their temporary hostility to crass lifeless decarnate immediacy that slinks with foibles magnified by vertiginous heights of scollardical reputes rigged by the rijuice of the plackiques of meaningless spoils for swashbuckler bonanza borrowed from serrated vengeance exacted in prominence to provide false avenues of extenuation to malefaction that is confidant to the panopticon of exemplary dimples meager in the largesse of the composite realism of a sizable imprint on megalography that outlasts impertinent excuses for dangerous trout swimming against the mobilized selachostomous frizz of sharks gathering to avenge disclosure with insolence and gravid atrocity of incisive surgical evisceration of attempted depositions that falter by innumerable facets of countenance that belie ultimate realism and the perdurable construction of a sturdy hive of bibliognost revelry.

     Even with the blaring sennet of majesty inundating my piecemeal perception with the marstions of flarium that is an efficacy in a flaccid world of otiose pretenses limpid only in folly but contraplex in ironic skewbald skerries of grubbed destination that is the terminus of karezza despite the maledictions of vehement guarded betrayals that conjure up lurid noisome virility against the gamines and gallywows that populate interstellar fictions of virtu rather than mundane pragmatica that astound with the resselenque of contaminated skeumorphs of latent fracture belonging to a skeletonized ossified reification of farce above historicity in seemly seamless countenance with overwrought princely stature deserving integrity to ripples through sparkling opalescence. The vapid insularity of the self-contained mythos of appeased groundlings is based on the rhizic and rhizogenic fracklings destitute in predicative flares to swelter above stratospheres of the illimitable into the dwelling of the highest serenity inherent to the pacification of truth to neglect its egregious errors of mistetches of a ripened pachyderm of bravery in times of austerity and now a reclaimed notion of sempiternal charades swimming above the punitive draksteng of dranger that is enlarged by acclimated attempts at foiled raltention hikkling against its own superior forces of galvanized preterition to elide over screwball insanity of derangement in this virtual paradise of inhabited souls belonging to former times congregating on the pasture of the evanescence of now for all eternity having the optative condition of incarnation above the ferules of the stagnant brevity of oversight in heavenly realms by postulate but not confirmed by regal logic.

     The troponder of the flickered lambent niceties of polity is a countenance that piggybacks on simpered jostles of negligent engrenage to appease sworn enmities among beatific havens for certitude swarmed by the fisticuffs of darbied bridewells of desiccated drainage traversing the distant disdain for the gravel of cemented slits of stilted pragmatica that is a gavel of atrocious estoppel mediated by heroic heresiarchs against pitiable betrayal for forceful remedies in acclimated servitude to the groans and groaks of a life of remorse and dearth rather than the glut of luxuriance in forbearance to its own intorted mirrored ironies that etch infinity with every scrawled rejoinder to austere ploys of checkered rumbles of threat and exigency posed by the clairvoyant hypocrites who benefit greatly by the design of the omphalism above the frays and brays of corporate dogmatism slowly outmoded by vibrant plumages of heteronormative originality beyond petty chantage. A hesitation overcomes the bluster of bravado as the restive earnest concerns of tribulation beset the minauderies of divine affection to reaffirm the teachings of the Gospel so that future generations genuflect beneath the altar of the ultimate stroke of sociogenesis and the blood ransom of suffering that promoted the human latitude and liberty against incarcerated throngs of virtue over caesaraproprism accorded to genuflection beneath denarii rather than absolution by tether to the eternal vine of sensation of the supersensible entelechy of all valiant insurrections against defective polities and renewed policies.

     We thus seek a transdimensional bridge between the morphean virtu of rudimentary alchemy of propitiation divulged by leverage and the teeming rambunctiousness of fiduciary tribes to the ultimate duty of man to consummate the future of eternity even in slowpoke mannerisms that sidle through rigors of entelechy and assize the masterwork of tutelage above the circumforaneous entrenchment of glut above the mastery of the subtle subaudition that beleaguers an adept conflagration of harnessed human ignorance staid in the incarceration of exotic virtues of freewheeling sapience never vulnerary to hospitable concerns that entrenches the verisimilitude of a refracted justice to reign over the stultification of a primitivism inherent to man and not man alone.

That second that slithers in
Beckoning forbidden fancies
As your lifeless figures lies in shadows
That eat at your lonesome soul

While he frolics among his virtuous games
Uninformed of the stains and bruises
You so carefully conceal beneath
Petty giggles and witty banter

This is what you so desired
What you long lost
When the others ripped your innocence
Limb by limb-
The purity which glimmers so brilliantly
In his golden eyes

That sincerity so eagerly falls at your feet
Yet your calloused hands reach
For the one who knew the girl
Before her brittle bones
Aches with sores and colds

The one who not only knows the history
But watched it unfold familiarly

"Democracy is the lesser of all evils."
Says the Liberal.
The Libertarian.
The Corinthian.
The Macedonian.
The Farrier.
The Squire.
The Stoic.
The Astronomer.
The Ornithologist.
The Eschatologist.
The Augur.
The Retiarius.
The Hoplite.
The Centurion.
The Governor.
The General.
The Senator.
The Orator.
The Assassin.
The Emperor.
The Ferryman.

A plume should be a thing lovely and light
dancing violet as it's fanned
at the flanks of the blue
bird-of-paradise
who hangs limberly
to solicit a mate

It should curl
blinding white at the back
of the puffy Samoyed
prancing fancy to please a master
who also preens on the oval
of a sawdust track

It should flop
red at the top of gold-painted tin
helmet awry on the head
of an aspiring actor
who plays centurion for tips
outside a mobbed Colosseum

It should spray
as clear and cooling drops out
the copper mouth of a grass-snake
green hose uncoiled by
the sneaky dad who tickles
giggles from sweaty kids

It should flutter
gray at the tail end of a quill
bouncing to the frenzied
jottings of an anachronistic
frump who takes the pain to outfit
himself far too seriously

A plume should not be a thing of plague
riding currents kissed by taint-
sweet crude blasted from a wound
gouged in the crust
of a frigid deep to feed
our shallow lust for eases

It shouldn't choke

It shouldn't muck

It shouldn't tar

It can't help
poisoning that last pretense
we cared about anything,
be it plumed or not, but
the finality of
a bottom line

Tube worms hellish creature
Centurion of pitch and isolation
No internal altimeter

Pressured to bake and cook life
Take energy from pressured light
Press and push and valve and close
Entrenched, in line to another world

A planet a dot, a dot a spot
a spot a rock, a rock a dot

Wiggle waggle struggle straggle
Life and death, dream and cot

It is hot down here
In passion of dream
and the brain can easily
Overheat

Lisa and I finally tested covid-free! When we saw our results, we began an impromptu dance that felt like levitation.

Although my covid case seemed much milder, Lisa’s been nothing but supportive. Why just yesterday morning, before we tested, Lisa said, “If you test covid-free before I do, I’ll **** you.” She was holding a spork which gave the threat a specific gravity it might otherwise have lacked.
“Back off, Sweeny,” I said.

We worked the next day, masked - just in case - and I’d swear that Rebecca, my surgeon, almost smiled when she saw me. As funny as Rebecca is, off-hours, once she puts on that white coat - forgetaboutit - she goes to some other, humor-free zone.

That night, we went out to our favorite bar to celebrate our Lazarus-like resurrections.

In the club, as we were walking to the bar, Lisa asked me, “What if we get carded?” I gasped. Never, have I EVER been carded. To even suggest the possibility is to risk breaking a spell that has lasted since I was fifteen years old and first walked in the adult-bar world.

It’s not that I look old, I’ve been told I don't look 21 (although I’m almost 20) - but in dark, bar-light - I just look “right,” like I belong. And let's face it, no bar turns away college girls or charges them a cover - we’re good for business.

I put a hand on Lisa’s shoulder and stopped us in our tracks. “Turn around three times,” I said.
“Why?” She asked. “To break the god-****, bad luck, vu doo you just put on us!” I said exasperatedly. She shrugged and started to turn in a circle. Again I took her by the shoulders, “Counter-clockwise,” I instructed, “don’t you know anything?!” Once she’d broken the jinx, we were free to go on.  The next part can only be poetry.

Behind the bar were shelves of bottles, brightly lit,
with pastel glows that shame the merely silver moon.
Red rums, golden bourbons, begging you to commit,
elixirs that dull every pain and brighten every mood.
Give us your tired, your lonely, and like Houdini
we’ll invoke fun with mystical treats like martinis.

We were basking in those lantern-like glows, like tourists, in heaven, when a bartender said, “What can I get you?” How generous those words were, how open and inviting.

“What’s your name?” I asked, he was wearing a name tag but I leaned in and gave him my friendliest smile. It’s important to establish a personal connection - but you can’t get carried away. He might be gay and decide you’re trailer.

“Brian,” he said. Brian was talking to me, but then he’d noticed Lisa and suddenly, he couldn’t take his eyes off her (Lisa’s an adriana). This bartender wasn’t gay at ALL.

I handed him my black, Centurion, American Express card “Can we set a tab for us?” I motioned to include Lisa, “and please include a 30% tip for yourself.” I smiled. He smiled.
“Oh, and there’ll be a gentleman joining us as well (Charles).”
“Sure.” he said, as he swiped the card on his iPad, adding, “now, what are you having?”

I’m a bit of a bon vivant, where cocktails are concerned but tonight, we’ll keep it vanilla.
“We’ll start with a Cherry coke (for Charles) and,” I looked at Lisa for approval, “Two American Martinis?” She smiled, “Please,” I added, putting my card away.
The coke is psychologically important; it gives the bartender what’s called 'plausible deniability.’
“Do you have a menu?” I said, as he turned to go. “Coming right up,” he said.

We were on a rooftop terrace that overlooked the Boston skyline. To the left, there were tables enclosed in glowing, geodesic bubbles that changed colors and off to the right, a dance space where couples were dancing, and a DJ was spinning ‘Sorja Smith’s - Little things.’

Our drinks arrived and Lisa and I laughingly toasted our covid survival.
At that moment, at least, everything seemed right with the world.

stars
are the
centurion guards of night
wearing
battle armour
carrying
both shield
and spare
ready to fight

THERE ARE THINGS TO DO - LIKE GOING TO CAIRO,
SEEING THE STATUE OF JESUS IN RIO,
HE SAID TO ME: 'WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG?
YOU HAD TO COME BEFORE YOU BECAME A CENTURION.'
THEN THERE WERE SOME PEOPLE TO SEE - OR MAYBE NOT,
IT'S EASY TO PRETEND ABOUT THOSE CONVENIENTLY FORGOT,
YOU CAN NOT FORGET - SOME THINGS STAY WITH YOU FOREVER,
IF YOU SAID THAT I WILL DENY YOU THREE TIMES - I WOULD SAY NEVER;
THEN I SAID THAT I WOULD PRAY FOR MY SOUL TO BE WHOLE,
THERE HAD TO BE COMPLETION - PART OF THE DEAL,
NO ONE WOULD KNOW JUST HOW I MIGHT FEEL,
MY OLD LIFE WOULD NEVER GO AWAY, SO THEY SAY
THAT IF YOU LIVE TO ONE HUNDRED YEARS OLD - YOU GET A FREE PARDON - STRANGELY FORGIVEN FOR EVERYTHING YOU
HAD DONE.

try hard as we might
there was no
ignoring
the scratching
coming from the walls
and there was no
reckoning
to be had
with the things
crawling on our skin
but we laid there
together
all we had
each other
and my arm was around you
and your head was on my chest
as you softly slept
and in your dreams
the storm must've turned
the scratching of the things
finding its way through
the tempest inside
and i heard you
start to mewl
and whine
and cry out
from the dark place
down where your dreaming
had taken you
and so i raised my hand
from its home on your hip
and softly
smoothed your hair
away from your troubled
beautiful face
so near to mine
and i cupped your head gently
and i loved you
and you were quiet again and

everything

was

perfect

Lambasted by the bushwhacking shambles of potsherds burrowed beneath enchanted rhapsodies of sunken Earth lurks a might unleashed by the preemptive dirges of Heaven
Shattering the weight of mismeasure adaptive to apt remarks of conservatory stellar repartees gilded in the flombricks of insuperable gammon wed to the divorce between mammon and guardian treasure etched by revets of colorful nuance but colorblind fortitude chalky yet with scattered sound blinking in the wink of intelligentsia a thousand parsecs of understanding in milliseconds of orbit
The periphery of forgotten stars bereaved but informed of circular axioms of axiolative thermolysis bellowing stoked smokestack locomotives of hibernal clairvoyance dare to wonder beyond limited or enhanced pulchritude the denizens of thievery stolen in a flashbang grenade of a new Grenada of fustilugs gabbling in flushed rosy red tongues of frenzy or aplomb what lurks beyond centurion sentinels of robotic half-witted half-baked semi-cooked bludgeons of cruel insensate irony withheld by vulcanized drapes of curtailed curglaff fashioned by kneaded distance and suspended for heaved awakening at riometer’s knock barnstorming the crude churlishness of the foreign at trespass of the inane scaled down by infamies unstated and flanged to appropriate provisions of measure that conquest lurks behind recess and all is grafted from the callous pachyderm skin of absolution cozy to remedies but aloof from necessities of pang and Tang rollicking magpiety like a rotten pastime aged past its due.
Yet the batting average of the uncanny visitor undaunted by glaring photogenic record balks at precedent and aims to lollygag his chicanery roundhouse above the ricochet of enamor to whilded terminus at circular diamonds soaring illimitable skies boundaries to another nothing beyond the past of something worthy of pearls piggish in appetite for oysters to inhabit
Yet these cloistered vacuums between the pleonexia of the avarice of retches of chyme and the digestion of complete guarantors of shielded heterochrony wassail on dreams Titanic and sunken living repeatedly in revised stereodimensional waves of registry beyond fundus hijacked by towering dimensions ulterior to the profaned foresight of the wretched dimensions of reprehensible coteries belonging lost even when fetched by glimmers of the profound.
The riches of aberrant mobilized fleets swung into tether pole centripetal flictions of swarpollock surpassing credibility and peace surmounting mountebanks of petty finicky itches of cretaceous extinction mapped to qwersy frugal mathematical jokes recoiling at rebarbative manifest destiny belong to the records of soundracketeer trivialization of malleable gold fashioned from Whisky Bar encounters with goldmines ascertained in magic by the suspense of upholstered dramaturgy lurking beneath tall crestfallen visagists who toss and bandy about in tempests of curdacted flow emissary and envoy to flajousts emergent from the verdure of aboriginal machinery fumbled by human ergonomic chicanery espoused by asylum rather than touted as marksman prestige flippant by inordinate gavels ****** asunder into delignated copper-brass keys of foreboding prisons on sinking ships for counterfeit litanies of bogus warning meeting inclement poverty to a drawn sine in the sand vacillating on purpose but intransigent in declension.
Starlet gnashes of odontoloxia wavers of tangential tendentiousness escaping the orbit of enumeration by sly remarks surprising the elective prerogative for convergent autumn to skittish paces of fast-forward beating the brumal bears in their gelid lollygag reminders why the 2nd protects the 1st and the primacy of interposition is the immediacy of flexed muscular DeLoreans cavorting with fringes of unfurled destiny in flashbang instants between the space among malingered pauses among secondary waves of betrayal shift the curious rip tide of stretchgraves too ennobled for widescreen yet narrowly faint in their promontory illusions as mantelpieces of emblazoned scarlet A’s for nothing more than a tempestuous flair with stigma but simultaneously the realization of true dreamy blues escalating around tensions finessed into ****** before drooping into the droll 1850s as the balderdash of detriment belonging to the salvo of picturesque still-life expressionism dripping troudasque in antiquity with flairs of impertinence celebrated more by melodrama than by billows of industrial hinderbaggle toxic to the stated alarmism of trinkochre preventing treony by the warbles of songbirds hemmed in by bushwhacking galactic police forces of granted licentiousness for backbites in the feral canine drollery of aged literacy chosen over youthful foofaraw belittled by retches of attentive brevity rather than protracted obtuseness: neither ideal for the gravity of aborning centuries
Yet we dally in convergent esprit filibustering rhymed cadavers of cadence for prurience in ebullient parvenu damsels vacant from the setting but entranced by the galloping herds of buffalo formidable with warmth because of death and locomotive drive-by shootings Daphne wouldn’t miss.
Yet what Mission Impossible has a BioCyte worthy of henpecked ransom and detached villainy of a trespassed appendix bursting in the Young crowd much to the awakened dismay of the colored affront to black-and-white hubris finicky in oligochrome yet fainter yet than stellified bronteums burgeoning in generativity separated by inherent gulfs of heterochrony balking at submissions fished by loaves of interest in the hambasket of aswallone fractious to redshort individualism in the subhastation of Jurassic prowls of replication hibernal for millions of extinct permanence scowling only by the mandibles of crackjaw Samson yielding his jaunty hair to flummoxed Cutthroat Collapses trimming yardstick furloughs of pleckigger for demotic flavork above fishy warbles of tilted pretense vagrant to everybody simultaneously renowned for arrested cacophony but bridled by few examinations barnstorming teetotalers with haunted patrons of aged wine speaking redivivus in contemplation.
Measured glare radioactive to lizards beneath Mojo Grooves monikers fielding “fly away” as transcendental harpsichord anagrams filter through lavaderos of hackneyed nockerslugs berating illusion for conflation in the influx of dacoitage among Vikings who swim flanked by sonic blares of innocuous dolphins floating dead by the carnage of bloated whales and ridiculous spates of welter above conscience ragged with tetherball futility.
Sparring with engastrimyths sapping the sapwood of sappy banality for toonardical lullabies that pacify opposition more than the Pacific is internecine to volcanic tirades of seismotic jolts of burgeoned awakening I vanquish petty sneakthievery with the unspoken power of a Tweed that masquerades not on ******* but on virtual rhymes cascading throwaway brown-brick fifties collapse on Dagon armed with gnashing poise against guttural gubbertushed victimized flippant fantasias arrayed to brook the decrepit streams of my elevated retinue for staged intrepid barnstorms against phony assassinations to prove petty Edison powerhouses clairvoyant in even their specious participles of quantum irony decisive in fliction marveling at sensible conveyor belt beltways infested by sluggards of inferior hives contrary to every inclination of self-edified skyscraper invented by the mettle of industrious man
So swanky in boast but gingerly in insightful discretion I careen ping-pong victories into a plevisable fortune of Bubba Gump wealth and Fortune Magazine ostentation as the ringleader in Barnum’s neutered circus that never spays a single sword of creation in the barnacles of progeny and progress frogmarched by cruelty and vehement in suppositions of craven popinjay popples of a whangam metropolitan artifice tinsellated with angles of trim prance above suburban ecstasy in transcendent flash and peerless reaches of stratosphere above mundane plaid macaroni witeless in the sterling grace of foreign domestication of livable conditions abiding by aborning stardom.
Harriet Tubman flowers on the bedside of ****** seances of 70’s Parisian cafes gerrymandered by hobohemias of herculean heft squaring account with encompassed brevity in byword dazes with ***** futures yet to court the cordial consensus in dodged drafts of fumiduct riots bailing upon New York Time for 44th street colored incineration of an orphaned Africa embodied in a totemic titan with reninjuble peerless majesty compromised by a frapplank in immodest incisive harpricks of fumbled swerves against the original proclamations anniversary to Boston Indians revolting against Manifest Destinies magnified in incidental clarity by bestowed churches fuming with rampant clairvoyance tamed by the grisly realism of intermittent thaumaturgy swaddled by the reconnaissance of eventual warps blistering in milliseconds to overturn the ultimate row that the mire always wades through in impoverished egestuous profligate convenience of hamstring declension against chary mettle in scruples by elementary riddles in precise junctures of sanctity the bodewash of slick partisan gibes of a puppet show vampire avenging Sarah Marshall. Harriet Tubman is an overblow of subniveal pickets of defensive clarity to immemorial churlish katzenjammer of a protracted flux capacitor dynamos in abolished feral groves of bohemian legend rather than ignoble rhapsody flirting with apartheid’s chosen engineers whittling an indelible scourge of hatred rather than a revived simian immunity scalded with potboilers of sveldtang water scorching like Helsinki after Stockholm goes up in conflagration over bonanza of wednongue dative duress in impregnated purpose skanky with ministered drivel of doytined attempts to flicker a switch exorcised by the integrity of neuroscience besides an intransigence of exuberant interruption of warped logics of pataphysical coarse arenas for submerged vapid Yellow Belly Pie Slingers aimed at 7/11.
Broadside bruisers aim at fracked 80s heyday like a Hey Bulldog reminiscence on a quaint suburban joke of alien freebooters in Franc Swiss gloss swanky on the spot of frapplanks endless in retired liturgy of surpassed peace amicable to truces among the pragmatica of checkerboard pastries willful in array backing sentinels from rearguard hindsight to flank the motatory missiles of target from ransom built like fortress of immutable graves lost to the celerity of the outpaced spectral wonder of teenage flights and hegiras into recessive parsecs enamored by a stage-fright of recocted astral wonders plasma to the ears of a strange foreign abode hospitable to most heaved alacrity sidewinding into effigy and the crumples of used demise recycled twice by intrinsic spirituel flocks of engulfed eagles spooning the pristine littoral waters of precision in nexility
Stayin’ Alive cackles resound in the hallowed furrows of a neat daydream in a scattershot imagination screaming to make myths sticky pigment rather than imbroglios of intaglio filibustering cohesive firm firmaments flexing with windfall at princely surprises cobbled from chocolate-box chariots of brisk elation shoveled by the conglomerate of prim-looking star-crossed unbuttoned snoozes with glamour in the corsair sojourn beyond the space emergent from stardust tinsel and glowered vindication of self-engineered huffs of vulpine vainglory touted as preeminent above dodgy 70s swerve in the vibrant kantikoys of covert tenure and flickers of swandamo glitterati borne of triumphant dimples on immaculate refraction.
Yet lingering on the precipice of aboriginal unity in disjointed sejungible frames of vernal restive residence decaying with anthill colonies of demarche the cadence lost to gyrovague trinkets balks from corridors of Pacific  Avenue peace that is the cardinal to the priests feasting on militias of rentgourge evicted from their own leash of lease ruffled in the plumage of horizontal margins folded into origami zenkidu gullible on Raptor estrangement chained to the rhythms of parsed sparse rumbles of the rhombos without a complexion intended for sparkled starlets doomed to regular tides in swollen tsunamis of soft-spoken surrealism the providence of aimed dreams of drastic marvels beloved to impregnate a verdant cadence latent by faltered seamstress elopes flickering for caress in the duress of finesse.
The quaint drawl of scrabbled runes of rumbled rumination streaks like a quivered acerbic winsome peacock jagged in the parlance of henpecked peak beyond the reach of the highest teacher that ever had the privilege of tutelaries spawned born to teach in Steppenwolf rhythms of rugged heavy metal impeachment yet ripe enough to preach. The last juggernaut is vile bereaved of yets to become the blemish on risky flambeaus overrun by crackles fuzzy in written retch for sudden bursts of volcanic speech.
In the quagmires of serrated heavy leaps I stroke the frazzle as the choir reaps the grim proclamation gilded by sentinels of majestic Challenger Deep burrowing tunnels of coltish ploy dilettante to all his curated adoration that toys with the children of majestic modesty ever so fractious as to balk at the priggish calumny of retinues of the tired coy rampant in emasculated spayed days of stranglehold filigree geometry bent on noisome bleats prone to annoy
So I leapfrog the redundant hackencrude fawn of gripping spectacles of alpenglow summits on acid at dawn foaming with betrothed pumice on borrowed past from potentiated future belonging once to a man yet always bred to prefer fairer damsels sprinkled with a hint of germane Soy saucy to the Bossy promenade to an Islander born and bred.
Guilt like Gravity gilded into spacious trailblazed glory sent seminal and said loudly bowdlerized the pasture of hidden thickets in sparse backwater chavish remanded by fisticuffs of elapse travail in artistry fundamental to rhapsody in distant milky affection jangling high plaudits of auditoriums of the delicate audit bulldozing fraudsters colored by defected records set ablaze in seminal disco becoming cordial homes for shaken residue blushing in crude crass mass the inertia of the classy beyond recognition without flashbang clashes of cultural class glimmering to faltered waterdrips of palatial mischief in correct lens for froward recalcitrance of jittery stash hidden in dacoitage by the police that knelt on incinerated livelihood predicated on chauvinist cash for departed untouchable caste of radical haste too blinkered for internet barnstorms limited only to lurid copy-and-paste regimented for revolution damaged by the loneliest orchestra of refineries of an alien taste.
We crack skulls against ossified hulls riveted weakly to iceberg submarine bulge battled in wars past always to suppress greater travesty yet divulged that Barbarosa was an insider coup expunged by remonstrance against finicky postulate brayed from deranged heirs to a disease of relish quartered by blue danger dancing with shadowed emancipation librettos finkly in tripwire terms of routed inefficacy killjoy to seanced second guess prisms of rootless flimsy accusation wagered by pathetic overstatement in hypenstance trimmed by the crimson paint of a glowering silk woven from dramaturgy belittled by grasp if not by locomotive passerby pause wicked by subversion inclined not to dismay by oriented by nefarious rage of flagrant hapless scrimshanks in prowess sued by process and refined by progress never erased by a five-second glower by the sentinels of parlance intrepid by desiccation to supervised superstition bemused by abundant gray twists of turnverein pillory.

Carla,
Whom I love and regret in equal measure,
Told me to talk less and think only in the morning.
It’s unfair, she said, for someone with your demons,
To obsess past mid day.
You will only exhaust yourself,
Become dizzy from looking over your shoulder.

It’s the sparrow’s lunch you eat, she said
Afterwards you think only of suicide,
It’s your pathetic answer to everything.

You have a propensity, an absolute need to confess, Carla advised me,
You see sin as an obligation,
As a necessity to fuel your ridiculous notion of salvation,
Repentance is a shell game,
No sooner have you apologized for being yourself,
Than you begin sinning all over again.
Your quest for innocence is a self-selected Sisyphean task.

I told her I had no idea what she was talking about,
And that if she wanted to save me she had to speak in simpler terms.

Quit looking for the meaning in things, Carla said,
Life is lived on the surface,
What we really fear is not that we will die,
But how we will die,
I mean good god,
The insane Christians
Have us picturing death
With nails driven through our hands and feet,
Hanging from a crucifix,
Can you imagine the indignity,
While some low level centurion,
Stabs at us with a sword,
I mean really,
Hauling crosses up mountainsides
Being laughed at and scorned in our weakest moment,
The drama is laughable,
When the absolute truth is most of us
Will die peacefully in our sleep,
Gone without even knowing the party is over.  

Replace your metaphysics with a game of chess, Carla told me,
At least do psilocybin once in awhile
And have a genuine spiritual experience,
And she held up her hand for two more glasses of scotch,
Neat,
And lit her cigar.

Fearless he is, fearless he was, fearless forever now.
Less than half my age my first time he is
Painted planks first for the centurion Baptist Church
Promised to go fossil and crystal hunting when done as a reward
Beads of salty sweat drenching the tiny brow now
Arms sore and tired from the heavy coating
Minutes finally now of sunshine now squint your eyes
Rounding the corner can tell a new cut is due
Without a second thought found delight it the next chore
With passion, with precision, with intimacy it must be done
Doors unlocked shoeless we enter never wanting to desecrate
Hand in tiny hand he pulls me in all the quicker
Unfamiliar smells puts riddles ends mark on his face
Like a brave warrior he marches down to his own beat fearing nothing
Finds himself a level lower looking at all the music boxes
Sleeping boxes he calls them “They shine don't they daddy!” yes son they are
Questions of why no sight of little sleeping boxes now shatters my drums
Instructor confirms of such a thing then comforts his unbroken spirit
Like praying to his God saying “Those are the sad ones”
Opening another door closer he wins with me with his sincerity
One in the lock the other same one on the ring he sees’, unaware of the other side
I know what lies behind the other side of the keys hole
With uncontrollable anticipation I reach and grasp his hand to spin around
Eye to eye we lock in with one and another like looking in a mirror we are
Nothing can be heard no other sites can be seen as if we are one
“No need to be afraid Son, I am here with you hold my hand”
Double door swings open now exposing a lovely dress and shoes
Can tell she’s deeply loved and will be terribly missed
By seeing Saturn twice side by side
Looks of wisdom, in the gene pool,
By the tale, of having such silver hair
Delight in the sight I get my fill turn my eyes and saw him standing still
No fear in his face I knew he could do it, hoping now his Mommy won’t have a fit
Feelings of tremendous love rush through me like a raging torrent
Hugged my side and look, he never even cried
I’m getting my rhythm I’m getting my flow and look I still have room to grow
Took charge without even a prompt pushed the music box to where it should go
That’s my boy that’s my Son; even a stronger bond has now begun!

(CARSr. 5-12-12)

They tried for years,
Perhaps to fill the boredom of a life-unfulfilled,
Perhaps to try to hold together their universal but tenuous bond-
Like leaves from the same branch of the same centurion tree,
They swayed to all the same winds,
Almost broke through the storm that was
her,
And then ultimately
His
torment.

And where did it come from?
Well nobody knows- not to this day
Can anybody say
Just where the fruit of her madness sow.

But it was as though one day,something just changed.




And at times there
was
even
Some  quiet lulls in the Symphony
Of her self-destruction
where,
Perhaps,
pray tell
  She (and so he)
Felt
Happy.


And so they tried,
For years,
Maybe out of stupid habit


Her name was Violet and she had always
Loved
The Element
That is Water.
The Ocean,
  Like a purification from birth,
Draws her back again,
still
A ritual
That some say cleanse the sins
Of the flesh.


And she has flesh,
Raging, burning
Insatiable flesh
That screams for the touch of another.
  But that scares her.
So she must create
Barriers around her heart


Perhaps to quell the fire
Of her absolute and inconsolable
Rage.
She had Irish in her blood,
Right from day dot.
It came from her
Daddy'
And those twisted genes
came
from that place of darkness
That neither her Mother nor Grandma can see.


Once upon a time...
There was a Prince
With a tussle of hair so long,
It dragged her up from the darkness.
He was the Dragon Side of her Rapunzel.


Violent Violet
  was her name...
And She
Was

A super-hero from Birth

He knew the secrets of this wood
He knew it should be shaped for good.
He was not sure that he approved
when the Centurion came
seeking a rood.

The grain was heavy and unforgiving
It was surely meant to serve the living.
Now a means of torture it must be
for some rebel rabbi from Galilee.

Whipped and scourged like a beaten dog,
a poor excuse for a son of God.
He staggered through the streets of the City
Cursed and reviled for few showed pity.

His grieving mother, one courageous friend,
and his woman stayed until the end.
Nicodemus helped to take him down
with my ladder he had brought from town.

Those who died with him fed the dogs
but the Rabbi did not share their fate.
His body was lain in a Hillside tomb
on Nicodemus' own estate.

What happened next depends on Grace
What transpired there on the third day?
Did the body rise or was it just misplaced?
Some will scoff while others pray.

I contemplate the rough hewn rood
Now to me it seems a stranger.
Was it used for good or ill?
The secret is held
in the hands of the Maker.

Georgia Sun relaxes in the fifth house
Hummers circle Florida sky from my shaded chaise
Blue Jays and Brown Thrashers lounge the
ripened Fig Trees , shadows walk the vegetable
gardens , nightshades ardent for cool , rainy reprieve
Crows muster high atop centurion Oaks
Bluebirds and Sparrows work the grass like -
two old time blokes as the ice melts away in -
a frosty *** and Coke* ......

It's the weekend (Friday night). Lisa and I are hangin’, music’s playing, and we’re rummaging through my suitcase, for an outfit option, for me, tonight. Call it cliché, but we like going out - and getting ready to go out with a friend, beforehand, is one of the rituals of beauty culture.

Let’s get poetic!

If the sun is gonna shine
in an endless blue (climate-changed) sky,
if the temperature’s going to climb,
until eggs on sidewalks fry,
then it’s lighter, summer-wear time.

I made sure Lisa and I had two days, in Paris, to shop the Rue Saint-Honoré. ***** 5th avenue, the 1st arrondissement is la capitale of fashion - after all, it’s Coco Chanel's old haunt. Now, we have Armani, Chloe, Dior, Michael Kors, Hermès and Versace - just to name a few - I mean, gag a fashionista.
Looking for bargains? You’re in the wrong place.

If you’re down and thinking the world is turning to.. well, something bad, then you NEED some fashion, some beauty and some elegance. You don’t even need to buy anything - browsing is sumptuous.

The boutiques are sound-proofed - so the world won’t intrude - and thickly carpeted so even your steps are muffled - or marble floored, polished to a fractured brilliance under the lit spiderwebs of fallen-star-lights. And the fragrances - no cap - the very air is different - it smells like aged money - that was a joke - they take new money these days.

What’s important, in these palaces of style, are the whispered promises of unattainable beauty. Just browsing will up your game, because inspiration is everywhere, in sheens that put butterflies to shame, supima-cottons as soft as a sigh, and dresses that swirl like magic - and so many accessories.

Lisa and I are young and easily ignored. Sales staff in these boutiques wear a leotard of arrogance, that fits like skin - the arrogance of people talking down to lesser folk.

Lisa gasped when she saw a delicate, white ecru-cotton and silk-poplin mid-length shirt-dress by Dior. “Look at this,” she said softly, running her fingers along the delicate hem. I checked the tag, it read: €2770 ($3000).
At that moment, a salesgirl - who looked to be 25ish - stalked over with a "look but don't touch" vibe that implied we weren’t worthy to touch the merchandise - or maybe be there at all.

I bristled for Lisa, who’d withdrawn her hand as if burnt. I fished my phone from my clutch (it has a card-carry-case attached) and waved my black Centurion® Card (which can serve as a fu^k-you passport),
“Have you got this in a French-36?” I jibbed, obstreperously (of course I know Lisa’s size). If my return-rudeness stung the salesgirl, there was nothing she could do with it.

An older lady that I assumed was her supervisor joined us, all smooth smiles and low honey voice, “Hello ladies,” she said, as she glided around us like a wraith. “Go see (about the dress),” she told the young clerk, dismissively.

The original salesgirl gave us a brittle smile that came and went like an eye blink, “Oui,” she said, smartly, while spinning away like a top.
“Would you like a glass of wine or champagne?” The supervisor purred.
“Non, merci (No thank you),” I said, smiling curtly.
“We have it,” the original sales girl announced a moment later.
“We’ll take it,” I pronounced.
“NOo,” Lisa said, jerking as if electrically shocked.
I waved my hand, as if scattering dust, “My treat.”

Lisa insisted on trying it on. It fit like a dream and she looked like a supermodel (My dress needed tailoring - the bust taken in sigh). So, at least we know what she’s wearing tonight.
.
.
songs for this:
Glamor Girl by Louie Austen
Baby You’re a Superstar by NuDisco
Comme ci, comme ça by ZAZ  
.
Our cast:
Lisa, (roommate) 20, Manhattanite ‘glamor girl’ (who’d bristle at that description but it’s hundo-p true.) - my bff. A fellow (pre-med) molecular biophysics and biochemistry major.

Go my husband, show the Romans how to die.

Poison will slip thru my lips,
As the gladeus slips your spine.

Go my love, give the Romans something to write,
Inhale the smoke, from the sacred Athenian grove,
The invaders burn where we were vowed man and wife.

Go my husband, show their might ~love is Etruscan,
That once ruled their tribe,
Look, the Roman General already wants a Greek wife.
And wants to spare your life,

Go,
Our love will make their spears sigh,
After defeat–
They run into their own swords-–their  trusted centurion, aiming chest high.
After defeat,
We run into each others arms,
For the last kiss on this side,
The enemy can know,
We gaze forever into each other
with death's unblinking eyes.
Go my love, show them what we value in life,
Preparing for the last tragic nuptial,  
To find each other through the dark death night.

Rows of rogue gladiators
Recaptured and crucified.
Muscles, grit and warriorship

Beyond that of any centurion,
Humbled, humiliated, spat upon
By the wine-greased gears of a

Machine the size of seized continents
And cultures crushed to crumbs
Within weeks -not centuries.

The stuff of contemporary tales and
Future feature films. Justice -not
Unlike poetry- is a purely man-made

Concept. But so very unlike the
Other; as frail in its mortality as
Man's own justless Self.

When the fifth nib broke,
I knew what she meant to me,
Realization, seeped in like a season new,
For I knew how it was meant to be.

Her eyes,
Empty, like uninhabited shores
Her tears,
Silent, like unopened doors
Her lips,
Dying, like the spirit of a centurion’s corpse
Needed, only her dreams,
Set afree,
Like an unsaddled horse.

But who would ride
A  painted shadow,
A prisoner of pride,
For that’s how I mocked ,
My handcuffed bride;
And now watch me preach ,
Of Gods and Guilt;
To the bride who shook ,
The world I built .


When the fifth nib broke,
I knew what she meant to me ,
But when her fifth nib breaks ,
Will she ?

In you, I have found….

A peaceful happiness,
eyes to imagine in dreams
a calmness    by your soft touch
a warmth…
a sweet soul    to rock with me on a swing
someone
I have no fear of losing    or hurting.
Someone
to wander the trail that leads
   just into the woods
nowhere special, thousands of them on earth.
Someone
to listen to a bird’s chirp
and see the beauty in it like I do.
Someone
to share smiles with as we make faces in the clouds.
Someone
to hold onto in the darkest recesses of insecurity.
Someone
to balm my wounds and kiss with tears
to love, like love has never been seen.

                               ~

*Far off in the misty glow
of one centurion
distant show
of a bursting new star
all alone
another
her brightness
showed
to draw him nearer
near to her
and he was reborn
as a nebula all pink and red all showy
as gravity and space collided
they made love
in the heavens dark.