you stopped visiting the ocean after your brother died
so we drove inland, instead, that day
and found the pit of old bunkers
left to decay
        from a more actively
                                  apocalyptic age
and, inside, the
      eschewal vision of
                                      tinned food,
                                                           concrete pillars,
   liquid flesh
warm comfort in disintegration,
    emerald concavities that lace the sky

we considered stealing some ****, but just drove on back instead,
  leave history to history


if you stack the boxes, there will be more space, you-
   yeah, just like that.
    the chairs have no back, sorry, so you'll have to be careful.
sorry, i just have to deal with,
  yeah, the drain pipes broke again,
   it now decants into the living room, all
  dammed up with paper mache and static

so uh
   make yourself some tea if you have to
   -ah, no, sorry, i didn't mean to be curt
it's just,
there's no time
    but stay, anyway, please

it gets lonely at night
                  all boarded windows and
                                                     old casements
till in the end you're just
              embracing a
                               damp ****** guilt
just to pass the time
           with a forgiveness complex


do you think you'd do it?
they make you wear their shirt, and take a photo,
but they give a free ice-cream at the end.
i mean, it doesn't cost you anything,
                         nothing palpable, anyway


remember that time we drove inland?
   and found that petrified forest,
                        buried in basalt and pumice?
we walked among treetops, near the old crater lake
    and
                         skipped stones

She sweeps him
up.

Puts the bits of
broken urn in the bin.

Empties the back end of
the ***** bottle.

And with the aid of
a little yellow funnel

decants his ashes from
dustpan to bottle.

A little cloud of him
hangs in the air

like a genie
appearing from...

She keeps him in
the ***** bottle

for ohhh...years

despite him being
a whiskey man.

When he was a real
life man

he would beat her
when the spirit moved him.

Sad to say she was glad
he was dead.

His death gave her
her life back.

She hated the way he
coloured her

skin in
with big blooming bruises.

One year she just got fed up
looking at him in the bottle

in his ashes to ashes
transformation.

So she just flushed
him down the loo.

His photo kept on
smiling as

he watched
behind the ***** glass

this her
final revenge.

g) Reflection Temporality

In cavern series, the lava was converted into cations of hydronium, in subterranean sinkholes that softened in the timelessness of Tsambika when the homily was officiated.  Some pieces and calcareous boulders, rotated ramdonic  by the humid and dark narrowness of the anthropic reflection having lived in the heavenly paradise that formed them by the volcanic tube and its syngenetics, by the erosion of the subsoil of Rhodes. The mental rock icons expired of the symptoms, with albuminous cliffs in the genetics of the Theoskepasti chapel, Etréstles carried under her arm the contract of expiration of the Universe, to deliver it with her signature, for the will of dimensional transfer. Everything Bloomed with attractive mineralization systematizations, under an astral dosage, with trace elements from distant galaxies converted into particles of an end of evolution, condemned to gravitational spilling origins of Hera and her lactations in compound stellar analogues, towards the disdain and backlight of her own emission of the spiral, uniting the irregularity of its transit in revolutions and bars of filings, making the entire face of the earth undaunted but delivered to a temporality, with much sovereignty from a terrestrial planet ..., but not from a universe to another in fusion!

In the cognitive, Kanti memorized his wanderings in Crete, imagining his physical body united with his mind on the paths of the shoulder of his ascendancy, with batches of clockwork that went and passed through his physiognomics, bathing with the piece wind, but also with They yielded with epistemological globes, but levitating in excesses of the shoulder and the unknowns, for states of temporality that became mentalized in pursuit of a supra desire ..., ailment or long-standing typologies that used the supposed ontological formalization, diffusing the property of the body with advanced memory towards a new duality. The officialization of Ars Choralis, solemnize for processes of emotional property; In this way the cave of Being and its Temporality is lofty, isolating itself for intra-cave investigations, as corollaries of agility in those who yearn for identity, being able to attach themselves to deities in tens to epicene, which would be from tens to ten, thus being seventy tens and a half, which would be seventy-five of the seven tens and of the unconscious of the phrase that Etrestles carried away, separating the syntactic of the Vas Auric hypothesis, in order that they coexist ..., although the pestilential decants before the syntactic of Kanti's enrobed head. Untreated and conscious-unconscious to his instinct, resorting to and harassing the prodicedemental bars of the Ergo Sum parameter. The temporality of reflection, In momentum ac Diadem, shone from the third trumpets of the Seventh Seal to the potential of the twilight corrodes and its regions that made the hard shoulder the awareness of a temporality reflected in the required and dismayed collectivities, to transcribe exhorts to the behavioral pattern of temporality and love faust. Little remains immobile, little drive when two masses of consciousness withdraw to the warehouses of the Universe already advantageous from their exhaustion, but inheriting them in active emotions towards the preconscious factors, on the heights of the mountains of Crete and Kímolos.

Kanti the steed says: “Deus Nostri Pontificatus annis et ad eum, God is my pontificate and my way to Him…, Adonis in relative absence of credit, before Ephebe with absolute deafness, being surprised here in the Diospyros and his escape from neuro archetype. I ride farther than my physical-emotional, contributing in the micro-fusions of the tubules, in quantum and interacting with the fineness of the miniscule substance, within themselves. Almost injuring the storms that vibrate in mine from the risk prop of a steed, in pursuit of a trance that only ends up being the architect and augur of knowledge ..., of when and where I die more than once, but within the limit of the crushed Duoverse At his own risk, evaluating himself steadily from the transfer of a whole genetic force in solid steel hooves, but of ornamental and Reflected Temporality. I am a witness to the signing of the contract that everyone who did not look convinced and unanimous, but Hellenika awaits us ...”

Here's a short story in the style of Stuart McLean’s Vinyl Cafe stories, featuring Dave, Morley, and their annual reluctant plunge into hosting Christmas: his Dave cooks the Turkey is an annual reading in our house. I hope you like this


---

“Dave Hosts Christmas (Again)”

A Vinyl Cafe-style story

It was December in the neighbourhood, and that meant a few things.

It meant the old man across the street had once again mounted a plastic Santa on his roof without any obvious method of anchoring it, which meant it would fly off sometime between now and New Year’s. It meant the mailman had switched to a red scarf and a dangerous twinkle. And it meant, most of all, that Dave and Morley were once again preparing to host the Annual Family Christmas.

Not because they wanted to.
But because they had the biggest house.

“It’s not even that big,” Dave grumbled, standing in the living room with a measuring tape and a wounded expression. “The only reason we have the most space is because I didn’t tear down the wall to make an open-concept kitchen like everyone else. And for that, we get thirty-five people and two folding tables?”

Morley, bless her, had stopped listening after the word "wall."

Christmas, you see, did not bring out the best in Dave. He was not what you'd call a festive soul.

Morley, on the other hand, was twinkly and soft around the edges. The type who decants eggnog into a punch bowl and says things like, “Oh, it’s the spirit of the season, Dave,” while Dave mutters things about the spirits disappearing from his liquor cabinet.

Which they did. Every year. Like clockwork.


---

The preparation began, as it always did, with the boxes.

Morley would go into the basement to retrieve the boxes of decorations, and Dave would follow her like a reluctant archaeologist uncovering a tomb he had no intention of opening.

One year, a mouse had gotten into the fake snow and made what could only be described as a "holiday nest." Another year, Dave threw out what he thought was a tangled mess of tinsel and lights but was actually Morley's grandmother’s antique angel hair garland. There were repercussions.

This year, things went wrong even earlier than usual.

While hauling up a box labelled “TREE LIGHTS (DO NOT TANGLE!!!)” Dave tripped over the cat and knocked over Morley’s ceramic nativity scene.

Mary lost a head.
The donkey lost a leg.
And the baby Jesus ended up lodged inside Dave’s slipper.


---

By the time Christmas Eve arrived, Dave had polished the good glassware (and by “polished” we mean run under warm water and dried with the T-shirt he was wearing), rearranged furniture, and stocked the liquor cabinet, a task he approached with all the solemnity of preparing for siege warfare.

“Do not touch the Lagavulin,” he said to no one in particular. “It’s hidden behind the oatmeal.”

Of course, it was the first bottle gone.


---

The family began to arrive.

There was Uncle Reg, who always brought the same thing: a tin of expired smoked oysters and a story about being "nearly deported" in 1978.

There was Cousin Lynn and her gluten-free stuffing no one touched, and Morley’s sister with the purse dog that barked at tinsel.

As usual, no one brought liquor.
But somehow, Dave's bar was bone-dry by 8:00 p.m.

The same jokes were told. The same stories rehashed. Someone (probably Uncle Reg) would invariably ask Dave if he “still sold records out of a van.” Dave would smile, politely, like a man being slowly buried in snow.


---

Then the turkey caught fire.

It wasn’t dramatic. There was no explosion. Just enough flame to set off the smoke alarm and sear the side of Dave’s hand.

He stood in the kitchen, looking at the charred remains, holding a spatula like a man considering new paths in life.

“We could serve pizza,” Morley offered gently.
“Or move,” said Dave.


---

But here’s the thing.

Later that night, after the pizza boxes were stacked high and the last cousin had finally left with a Tupperware full of regret, Dave stood in the quiet living room. He looked at the crooked tree. He saw the crumpled paper, the dented angel, and the half-eaten plate of gingerbread someone had left behind.

And for a moment—just a moment—he smiled.

Because somehow, despite the chaos and the flaming poultry and the looted liquor cabinet… it had been nice.

Not perfect.
Not even particularly good.

But warm.
And full.
And theirs.

Morley came in with two mugs of peppermint tea.

“You survived,” she said.
Dave took the mug. He didn’t answer right away.

Then he nodded.
“Only three hundred and sixty-five days until we do it again,” he said.

through a rectangular window
the coldest light of winter.
the whiteness imprisoned
any other color in
the spectrum.
the crusted snow caves way
to jail your steps
unnecessarily.

through the leaded glass window
bare shouldered in the vineyard.
the mulberry light of august.
as though the future
was before us.
A dervishly swirling summer
decants your love
unquestioningly.

through the smoky amber glazing
a storm outside is building.
useless wind lacks clemency.
no wonder love's half-life is blazing.
the broken leaves
sought refuge.
their ashes flutter
helplessly.

through the scope's clear lens
the iridescent ice is breaking.
the world is undiscovered
once again.
osage green iris leaves
or arms that wave off gravity.
someone's love returned,
unexpectedly.

Lady Of Dead Leaves



Beneath a dead leaf my love lies hidden
with a rose pearl and a starling's feather
where the dark forest unties Her ribbons

where night rides as black as robber's leather
with a bagful of moon's most starving hours
in a forest where leaves are falling forever,

where balefires blaze meteoric showers,
where pale sprites teach old lovers to dance
and sew up their wounds with threads of flowers.

For grape never saw the wine She decants,
a vintage that ripens with dissolution
aged in a song, sealed with ash and chance.

Under the starlight's silver infusion
asleep as a bee in the fading thunder,
which is volition and which illusion

when all that's left of life is to wonder
or lift the leaf that love lies under.




October 2022