"Mother of heaven, regina of the clouds,
O sceptre of the sun, crown of the moon,
There is not nothing, no, no, never nothing,
Like the clashed edges of two words that ****."
And so I mocked her in magnificent measure.
Or was it that I mocked myself alone?
I wish that I might be a thinking stone.
The sea of spuming thought foists up again
The radiant bubble that she was. And then
A deep up-pouring from some saltier well
Within me, bursts its watery syllable.

II

A red bird flies across the golden floor.
It is a red bird that seeks out his choir
Among the choirs of wind and wet and wing.
A torrent will fall from him when he finds.
Shall I uncrumple this much-crumpled thing?
I am a man of fortune greeting heirs;
For it has come that thus I greet the spring.
These choirs of welcome choir for me farewell.
No spring can follow past meridian.
Yet you persist with anecdotal bliss
To make believe a starry connaissance.

III

Is it for nothing, then, that old Chinese
Sat tittivating by their mountain pools
Or in the Yangtse studied out their beards?
I shall not play the flat historic scale.
You know how Utamaro's beauties sought
The end of love in their all-speaking braids.
You know the mountainous coiffures of Bath.
Alas! Have all the barbers lived in vain
That not one curl in nature has survived?
Why, without pity on these studious ghosts,
Do you come dripping in your hair from sleep?

IV

This luscious and impeccable fruit of life
Falls, it appears, of its own weight to earth.
When you were Eve, its acrid juice was sweet,
Untasted, in its heavenly, orchard air.
An apple serves as well as any skull
To be the book in which to read a round,
And is as excellent, in that it is composed
Of what, like skulls, comes rotting back to ground.
But it excels in this, that as the fruit
Of love, it is a book too mad to read
Before one merely reads to pass the time.

V

In the high west there burns a furious star.
It is for fiery boys that star was set
And for sweet-smelling virgins close to them.
The measure of the intensity of love
Is measure, also, of the verve of earth.
For me, the firefly's quick, electric stroke
Ticks tediously the time of one more year.
And you? Remember how the crickets came
Out of their mother grass, like little kin,
In the pale nights, when your first imagery
Found inklings of your bond to all that dust.

VI

If men at forty will be painting lakes
The ephemeral blues must merge for them in one,
There is a substance in us that prevails.
But in our amours amorists discern
Such fluctuations that their scrivening
Is breathless to attend each quirky turn.
When amorists grow bald, then amours shrink
Into the compass and curriculum
Of introspective exiles, lecturing.
It is a theme for Hyacinth alone.

VII

The mules that angels ride come slowly down
The blazing passes, from beyond the sun.
Descensions of their tinkling bells arrive.
These muleteers are dainty of their way.
Meantime, centurions guffaw and beat
Their shrilling tankards on the table-boards.
This parable, in sense, amounts to this:
The honey of heaven may or may not come,
But that of earth both comes and goes at once.
Suppose these couriers brought amid their train
A damsel heightened by eternal bloom.

VIII

Like a dull scholar, I behold, in love,
An ancient aspect touching a new mind.
It comes, it blooms, it bears its fruit and dies.
This trivial trope reveals a way of truth.
Our bloom is gone. We are the fruit thereof.
Two golden gourds distended on our vines,
Into the autumn weather, splashed with frost,
Distorted by hale fatness, turned grotesque.
We hang like warty squashes, streaked and rayed,
The laughing sky will see the two of us
Washed into rinds by rotting winter rains.

IX

In verses wild with motion, full of din,
Loudened by cries, by clashes, quick and sure
As the deadly thought of men accomplishing
Their curious fates in war, come, celebrate
The faith of forty, ward of Cupido.
Most venerable heart, the lustiest conceit
Is not too ***** for your broadening.
I quiz all sounds, all thoughts, all everything
For the music and manner of the paladins
To make oblation fit. Where shall I find
Bravura adequate to this great hymn?

X

The fops of fancy in their poems leave
Memorabilia of the mystic spouts,
Spontaneously watering their gritty soils.
I am a yeoman, as such fellows go.
I know no magic trees, no balmy boughs,
No silver-ruddy, gold-vermilion fruits.
But, after all, I know a tree that bears
A semblance to the thing I have in mind.
It stands gigantic, with a certain tip
To which all birds come sometime in their time.
But when they go that tip still tips the tree.

XI

If *** were all, then every trembling hand
Could make us squeak, like dolls, the wished-for words.
But note the unconscionable treachery of fate,
That makes us weep, laugh, grunt and groan, and shout
Doleful heroics, pinching gestures forth
From madness or delight, without regard
To that first, foremost law. Anguishing hour!
Clippered with lilies scudding the bright chromes,
Keen to the point of starlight, while a frog
Boomed from his very belly odious chords.

XII

A blue pigeon it is, that circles the blue sky,
On sidelong wing, around and round and round.
A white pigeon it is, that flutters to the ground,
Grown tired of flight. Like a dark rabbi, I
Observed, when young, the nature of mankind,
In lordly study. Every day, I found
Man proved a gobbet in my mincing world.
Like a rose rabbi, later, I pursued,
And still pursue, the origin and course
Of love, but until now I never knew
That fluttering things have so distinct a shade.

Chapter one:

  The strange entanglement of the sun, twisted in kooky bedlam with The Great King Moon in winter.

Have you ever looked down at yr feet on the long walk home & wondered if you’re really moving forward any more or if all your really doing is just moving the ground? Don’t answer that, its a rhetorical question. Of course you have. We all have. You think you’re moving in the right direction, following the north star or the compass in your brain or maybe just your nose or your thumb and fore finger. You  believe that you’re gonna make it somewhere, you have to believe. What else is there. The truth is, you’re going nowhere, we are all going nowhere, we just spin on the slanted axis & never really go anywhere. We have been conditioned to believe that this is the way the world works but I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t, you gotta buck up, **** up or ******* ‘*** let me tell you, yr ‘dreams’ mean nothing to anybody ‘*** living, real living is not connected to REM. That’s all just more ******* you’re gonna have to put up with people trying to sell you. Lick the boot, get over the barrel & bite down on your watch strap. That’s all there is to it. The mind is a magnet. If you find yourself staring in to the abyss: Jump right in. Swan dive. Hold your breath & wait. Everything will be OK. I promise you.

I’m writing, ah writing! Writing this worthless piece of *****// manuscript of means for you. For me, for the future, for love, for lust, for hatred of all things hating, for your mother & farther, for my friends, my beautiful angelic, clinically insane friends, for time, for the soles of my shoes with hundreds of miles under their laces, for your fat greedy pockets, for the moon, for the sun to spit on, for the wind to taunt, as he does like the great cowardly, perverted invisible fiend that he is, for nothing, for not quite everything, for your aching lovers, for your broken hearts, for the worlds water, may you always be clean & run free, for the great biblical liars, for the sorrowful wonder of the great homeless & may all their wants come to be wanted, for *******, for fumbling, for the vast oaken heavy doors on bars that keep us safe from the  horrors outside, for guilt, for sugar-blue smoke, for all the kids sitting in **** stained squat houses with half a horse embedded in their face, for my schools that gave up on a bored child, for warmth & fire & woollen clothing, for Paris where I can fulfil my great dream of becoming a sullen cliché, for the gravel-mounted marching marvel, may you never lose your way, for the Parthenon, for Aubergine, for The Firefly, the swan, bleeding,for growing up, for all the music makers,all people should play all instruments to any degree(rather than just, age & shrivel), for Howl for Carl Solomon, for every down & out that ever clawed his way up the street & through the yellow door, for all the animals that gave their lives to keep me fat & red faced, for Christ sake, for the invisible man in the sky, causing all war & so much death-thank you, for the wild west, for Bert & John, for the great literary mastodon to look down his reset nose at & ask me why. Why?

The way that old dial telephones look & feel. The questions that need no answers. Feeling down, down & out, upside down & inside out,upside in & downside out on the pavement at five am. Waking up in unknown beds & crawling down drain pipes. Getting lost in a place you have lived your whole life. Being in the woods simply to be in the woods. Drinking coffee even though you hate the taste. Never telling a stranger the truth. Living under a false name. Drinking yourself to death in the dark lonely-crowded corners of ***** stained wood floor warehouse floors. Feeling solid-sterling-gold for feeling so terribly horrifically half-corpse-like the only way you can really feel is completely statuesquely angelically magnificent and the only way is down(you really have no idea how far I fell that morning) , Only going out when it rains. Only going out in the dark. Staying up all night dreaming and sleeping all day. Remembering to forget, forgetting to remember to remember to be forgetful. Understanding that you and no one else understands nothing but eat-drink-sleep-****-death. Smoking until yr tongue bleeds and yr eyes burn like that fire in the sky in the fearful month of June. Wishing you knew how to tie a noose & writing ”suicide” on yr calender on a day you have no planned engagements. Shooting to the moon & back in the bee-bop-bo-bo-batter-batter-chitter-chatter like jazz on the neon streets of the earths mother. Crawling in to a stone cold bed after walking for six days & feeling bored & lonely again in ten minutes.

That’s why, I’m glad you asked. If I’m going out, then I’m out going with some steeze in a cloud of smoke, yr wife & I’m not taking you with me.

For all these things & more is the reason I write. To write for the sake of writing. For, some people write, just to write & they are truly the the lost meaning of it all.

Automatic travel rambles to plug up the holes in yr lonesome pockets. Blues.

Chapter two:  

Creeping moss-stick under-flowering the useless but grateful Tuesday poet, Jim Gravestone Sr.

The ghost of the monorail, living only in upturned memory sits slow & smooth/low against the Sunday evening rapture. You gotta know which way is down. Down. The dew on the grass & the creamy-green residue of the night before is just too close to a real drama. Absolute dahma. Down in the cold rising damp & the stain on your shirt.

He sits , sits like you, like me & like old Tom Mooney the prison king. If you ever saw such a sad sight as he, I do believe you would roll out your tongue on the pavement right there & then & wait for the road sweeper & all his secret, early morning charms & the great wolf man, pork chop sideburns (lupine dreams)to clean you up & clean you out. I do declare!

For he knows-for he has seen. Seen the sun rise from his pearly throne up on the dark side of the moon, the very face of Bowie, right there in the eye socket. He sees all. You can live your life, & you do, & you should, but he, O’ he, he has really been there & where & back again. You carry on with your sleepy routine of mule-back coffee office doom death jobs(you sleepy Bohemian, you)  & in you spare time trying to keep your nose from filling up with water & your private parts entwined with somebody else’s most private of parts, & on the side lines of you spare time you can deal with your family & all the friends that you’re sick of but hold on to, only for the fear of being left alone in the dark with nothing but all of the above. Then again you always have your studies(STDS)all of the ologies, of course.

Sleepology, cocaineology,rainolgy, sunology, lonleyology, depressionology, suicideology, talkology,empypocketsology, meaninglessology, masterbationology, coutntingyourmoneyinpintsology,walkology, onenightstandology, jumpthetaxiology, begology, borrowology, stealology,feelology, upallnightology, sleepalldayology, Xology, ologyology, etcology etc…ology etc.

Just find something you can care for ‘*** [insert atheist god/idol] knows that nobody is going to do your caring for you, even I they do in fact care for you.

I have been beginning to notice,that I(and I may not be alone)

always look at the past through a marigold monocle.

This, meaning nothing now ever seems to be joyous or gay or splendiferous until it is a past memory.

A cobweb. A rafter. A leaf on the ground. …I guess.

         Chapter three:

I know you know it but people that you don’t know, really are a funny, funny thing…

I stand outside the rain & watch the people passing by; really the most depressing experience of my ever increasing years. Un-jolly fat men with whiskey-nose & scuffle-feet stanzas of gibberish, talking gibberish & gibberish being their inner most self. Pre-war women with Arctic-blue hair, faces melting, everything pointing down, shuffle. Kids pushing prams full of ugly babies towards a house of who-gives-a-**** & ******* & I’m-gonna-die-here and what of it. Is there really no more to life. Listen to the top 40 on the radio, clueless, oblivious. Cogs. All cogs. Military troglodytes following them back in a dead eyed daze, dreaming of killing in the real and virtual. No you may not have a cigarette. Leave me alone, please. Let me listen to my watch ticking in peace & at least pretend that you don’t exist.

The human body is comprised of several ‘substances’

including..

Mercury,

hydrogen hydroxide,

fountain pens,

the lost dates of calenders,

various small woodland animals,

including…

Voles,

rabbits & field mice.

Other such things as…

Misplaced birthmarks(of the brain)

feelings of remorse and regret,

the stolen trinkets of past lovers,

and of course,

white blood cells,

pesticides,

and the second hand

from a 1956 ’Hamilton Rail road’ pocket watch.

E.L August 7th

           Chapter four:

Last night, last night was the last night it was the night last

Picasso raincoat. Imagelessness. Bottomlessness. I lost my umbrella & my Holden Caulfield head-wear, again. I was skipping on a rain cloud, corduroy boy and scarecrow girl, reunited in a soft entanglement sticky in the senses. Hoof! The only way is up when you walk down these stairs, snakes and blisters, but you’ll sweat it all out in babble cream conversation and love in your eyes. Tell me a story, tell me a story, tell me something to prop my chin up in this brown tunnel. Your name it is something I cant care to remember but of course I never really had a name of my own either, so we shall be the great wonder of the nameless masses, the ones born to no name and never wanted one anyway. A name is nothing but a label, a calling card, call me anything, call me king Charles II just as long as you do call me, the sound of a voice, your voice, any voice reeling off a comprised anagram of the alphabet is enough to get my short attentive ears to perk up and twist my noggin backwards towards the direction of my inbuilt gypsy sonar. So anyway, I was going to talk about something, something great… but now its gone and all I have is bloodshot eyes and sweaty liars palms to prove to the world that I had an idea once, I swear I did.

Here’s an idea for you to dig you heels into:

The world keeps making mistakes, everybody makes mistakes, its natural, nothing to fear, it happens all day every day. BUT, with every mistake we make, we then proceed to learn from that mistake, so.. stay with me here… Once the world, the whole world meaning everyone in it, has made every mistake they can make and of course and one would hope of course, that they have also learned from all of these mistakes; once this has happened, there will be no more mistakes to make, right? Therefore leaving the world perfect as a whole, no mistakes to make, learnt their lessons on every lesson and we can all go on with living a perfect existence, yes?…

No.

I’ve really thought long and hard about it -could never happen, people are not perfect, they never will be, if they were I wouldn’t want to know any of them, and the world, well the world is an imperfect place, and the same rule applies.

But let me hit you with another bit of knowledge to round things off and maybe put a positive spin on things. Hoist ye marrow-thumbs around this;

One of the many few early times that my legs forgot how to use them selves, I was sitting on the pavement, trying for one to reattach these two now useless appendages stuck like butter to my lower torso, but foremost trying to light a cigarette with my useless cold hands and equally useless matches, fearful of the sneaky clear coward, invisible old Mr wind, when a kindly stranger, half my size, red my hair, opposite my *** and now opposite my broken legs appeared like a person will appear when you mind is in other minds, a smile, a sympathetic look and two working hands to fire up the stick in my mouth. I said my thanks, babbled about babble and the generation of gibberish and im sure many other things inconceivable to the sober ear of a dame such as she, the bringer of flame and enlightenment, not of the smoke but of the simple mind, an idea is what she left with me and it never left. She stopped my rambling typewriter of a tongue and said ‘shush’ she held my head in her hands, looked at me straight,so I thought she might be death or god or that I was passing out,she all green eyed and like the woods, looked at my eyes like they were tethered together and dropped the bomb on me, she said ”if you are looking at the moon, then everything is alright” kissed my warm on frozen forehead and was gone into the night, never to be seen again.

That’s all the advice you will ever need, & so ll I will leave you with.

You never left a name, but I never wanted one anyway.

Midnight moment

beautiful rags

midnight joy.


Nevermind your little light,

set apart your golden dreams

that offen break,

& come to play.


Chapter five: There are things I want to write but I am not going to write them.

The End.

‘Stay gold, Pony Boy’

So let us now place monetary value on information.
Let us return to the source,
Mining & prospecting that fertile intel seam.
To wit: WWII and G-2 shenanigans.
Wild Bill and OSS-capades,
Artificial disseminations.
Partial recriminations.
And PSYOPS:
A literary nightmare--
THE CYCLOPS from The Odyssey,
For example,
If you lack your own,
Your own personal Bogey Man.
Or men. For me:
Allen Dulles or Richard Helms.

The Intelligence Community:
It was a small tightly knit crew,
Less than battalion strength in 1942;
A few myopic soldiers,
Who, although could barely type,
Were still too cerebral to
Waste as infantry fodder.
It was a huge converted Army-green warehouse,
Space strategically partitioned,
Sectioned off into cubicle-like spaces,
By giant 4-drawer file cabinets
Standing tall like MPs,
Sentinels & Guardians,
Monuments to pre-electronic storage,
Data relatively comprehensive, and an
Archive secretive & intimidating.

Within the Army-green incunabula,
Scattered throughout the intel landscape,
Here and there a few commissioned officers,
A smattering of college psychology majors,
Personalities with predilections,
And penchants for mind games.
These self same WWII vets,
Would morph into Cold War Mad Men.
Stalwart, stouthearted men of Eisenhower,
And J. Walter Thompson,
De-mobbed, as they say in the UK.
Consumptive.
Self-indulgent,
Particularly when it came to the kids;
Children of the peace,
Called Baby-Boomers,
An entire generation enabled & destroyed.
Who would produce little of value
Except medical marijuana and
Coupons, clipped by that sober ruling class—
Fat interest-bearing college-loan portfolios
Held by that neo-Calvinist Elect: The 1%.
Fat cats one and all,
Loaded dice & canasta cronies--
In concert a stacked deck,
“Una mano lava l'altra.”
The words of my namesake--
My grandfather Giuseppe--
His vowels reverberating,
Rattling in my dreams.
Not friends, but
Fiends in high places, like
The Fed and dark liquid pools.
Thank you, Barack, for
Fooling us again.
For giving us
“Belief we can believe in.”

But I digress.
It was when the Government Secrecy Act,
In all its transnational incarnations,
Embraced capitalism in a big way,
Elevating the ideology to whole-Earth saturation,
Systemizing the ethos of Darwin,
Into one global Moby ****,
One solitary leviathan,
A multi-level marketing labyrinth,
Where wealth is the end game--
Greed: pure, unbridled & unrestrained.
Bond--James Bond—
Did his bit, supplying catchy
Slogans & tag-lines:
“For Your Eyes Only.”
“On a need to know basis.”
“Confidential Information.”
“Top & Ultra-Top Secret.”
“Hush, Hush & a Bag of Chips.”

The sealed letter sits in a locked drawer,
In that stout desk,
In the Oval Office
In The White House,
“To be opened by my VP in the event of my death.”
Another staggering work,
Of achy-achy-heart breaking genius,
The culture commoditized,
A disease containing its own cure,
Assayed, graded,
Portioned & packaged.
Priced accordingly,
To a logic that goes something like:
“Anything this tightly controlled,
Anything the government deems to be
This illegitimate and/or & secret
Must be really, really God-awesome,
Must really be Da ******* Bomb.”

Brother Coolidge was right:
“The Business of America is Business.”
And INFORMATION:
“The Most Valuable Commodity on Earth.”
So said Stanford Stuyvesant Whitehead III,
19th Century robber baron, and
Consummate Fat Cat.
Get the picture:
We were smoking cigars and sipping cognac,
Mighty comfortable in leather armchairs,
Muted billiard clicks,
Punctuating the atmosphere
In this spacious lounge,
His East Side
Downtown & private
Manhattan club.
I, his guest, had not the slightest idea
Why I was there.
"By God, man," he went on,
My eyes speared by his laser gaze,
His bushy eyebrows,
His monocle.
His bulbous nose;
His thick wet mustache.
And those EYES:  
Those crazy,
Insane eyes.

"I am talking about a profound change,” he continued.
“Back when the steamship
Gave way to electronic wireless radio."
He puffed smoke,
Removing the cigar from his mouth,
Holding it,
Examining it critically for a moment.
"I'm talking about communication,
Instant communication
With business associates, &
Cronies far away,
Way out there,
Far beyond the places we know well.
Picture it:
You're running a fleet of
Ramshackle Filipino banana boats,
Out of some nameless cove,
Indenting the south coast of Mindanao.
A cyclone comes out of nowhere.
Good God--there’s sixteen banana-packed
Coal burners lying on the bottom of the Celebes Sea.
Think about it:
You've got telegraph radio.
Everyone else has the post office.
Now, I ask you:
‘Who's going long,
Who’s getting rich on the
Caracas Banana Exchange?’
Good Lord, man, it would be
Like being omniscient!"
“This very conversation,” he went on,
“Could well be a verbatim transcription
Of a conversation right here in this very room,
Between people like: J. Pierpont Morgan
And some lesser Gilded Age nabob;
Some Astor, some Rockefeller,
A Gould or Vanderbilt,
Whitney or Duke,
Some Frick or Warburg--
To name just a few, old sport.”
He stopped suddenly.
He looked down at his hands,
As we both realized he had counted these names
Out on his fat curled fingers.
He looked at me and smiled.
I was afraid.
Why had I been invited to this meeting?
I smiled back at him,
Doing my best to mirror his
Carnivorous menace.

I knew it.
He knew it.
He knew I knew it.
Mr. Whitehead’s growling rabid jowls,
His slobbering canine smile held me steady.
“Okay. Touché. ‘Ya got me.”
He shook off the phony smile,
An absence, accentuating
His stare: lethal, carnal & rare.
“I never had much formal schooling.
I’ve been hungry.
Hungry enough to know for sure
That the correct fork,
Don’t mean ***** from shinola.
When I’m dining out, fancy-like,
Me manners is the least of me problems,
Far less important than
The dinner chit they
Hand me after I slake
My thirst & appetite.”
Again, he stopped suddenly,
Recognizing that, perhaps,
He’d revealed too much of his
Bedford-Stuyvesant pedigree.
He turned again and stared at me.
“None of that,” he said.
“None of that means squat to me, Boyo.
What matters now is I’m rich.
I’ve got mine, By God,
And ******* It!
Tough ***** on the rest of you losers;
The rest of you fecking whiners can go
**** yourselves over at Zuccotti Park.”
He pounded the armrest,
The padded armrest of the rich Corinthian leather—
( . . . ***, Ricardo?
Get your Montalbán
Mexicano ***, back in
Random Access Memory Land,
Where you belong.
**** ya’ Fantasy Island
Hospitality, Mr. Roarke,
Go be wrathful Khan Noon Singh,
Somewhere else.
Now is not the time, or,
Let me rephrase that:
This narrative will not allow your meme here . . .)    

Whitehead pounds the armrest again.
“My point is this:  
None of JP Morgan’s decidedly,
un-nattering lesser nabobs of negativity . . .”
BAM!  Again, he pounded the leather . . .

(Back in your ******* hole, Spiro!
Do you realize just how far back,
Just how far back
Maryland’s reputation
Has been set back by your venality?
Not to mention any shot at ethnic assimilation,
The rest of us grease ball non-Wasps
Have in this country?
You ******* Greek!)

I stopped thinking
When I realized Stanford Stuyvesant Whitehead III
Was reading my mind.
“So that’s what it’s really all about,” he said,
Rank smugness in his voice.
“So, I’m just a nouveau riche upstart,
A socially inept parvenu,
Yet they still let me
Join their tony clubs.
It chaps your ***, Boyo, don’t it?
I’m still Scotch-Irish, and
A WASP, Laddie.
Something your skinny
Greaser-Guinea-****-Spaghetti-*** ***,
Ain’t ever gonna be.”
But I digress, again.

So I joined one of Uncle Sam’s
Lesser-known clandestine services,
An assignment appropriate to my ethnic identity,
Namely GLADIO in Italy,
A NATO stay-behind operation &
Cold-War comedy.
I infiltrated the Brigate Rosse.
I drove the Aldo Moro kidnap vehicle.
I cooked minestrone for General Dozier.
I sliced off J. Paul Getty’s ear in Calabria.
Ironically, I lost my hearing during
The Stazione Bologna bombing.
I am consequently pensioned off,
Off both the radar and the payroll.
Years later now,
I live in one of those gated, golf-coursed,
Over-55, sunny southern California
Lunatic asylums.

Most days I am drunk at 9 AM.
I fill Bukowski mornings,
Conjuring up Jane Fonda,
Jazzercised in camo spandex.
She is high atop a Vietcong tank in Hanoi.
Or Daniel Ellsberg
Enjoying a second act in American politics,
Praising Snowden & Assange,
& Bradley Manning,
I summon up the ghosts of
Julius & Ethel,
Benedict Arnold,
Rose of Tokyo & Mata Hari—
And Ezra exiled at Rapallo,
And John Walker Lindh,
A Yankee Doodle Dandy,
Born in Washington,
District of Columbia,
By way of Afghanistan,
Taliban Americano,
Kangaroo-courted,
Presently residing at the
Federal Correctional Institution
At Terre Haute, Indiana.
Spies.
Traitors.
Saboteurs.
And Poets?
No longer capable of keeping secrets.
Desperate now to tell
The truth.

the barker in charge
is sniffing markers
& the dog's the one
in the shock collar.

good god.
I'll come back

tomorrow.

galapagos, I'm sorry.
rocketship jalopy
wrote a handbook on
banana boat cutthroat
reconnaissance exotica,
abominable
beast of tropic atrophy
broke folk casualty engulfed
in telescopes & TV shows

being monitored thru a monocle
the theatrical apathy & topical misanthropy

can anybody understand me?

Look, I just want to move you.
Woo you.
Shake you loose but never lose you.
I want to
Savor the glazed reverent silence
Of your gasping, ungrasped breath.
Sip it down till there's nothing left
Yet still explain all the rest.
See, it's time I unearth some gold.
Nothing here sold.
Just given freely to slurp up,
served up cold.
But I dare not go it alone.
Not when there's so many heplping hands
Beyond my own.
So I first court Eloquence.
She's an easy mark to find,
volubly masticating volumes
while leisurely lathering her tanned,
Leather skin.
Dolloping her monocle-bodied features
In librarian sin.
She says...
"My dear boy.
Berate them NOT
with your false start,
lethargic oddities.
Your penchant,
Melancholic falsities.
You must but grunt through the trudgery
Of your muddy misgivings,
And birth only accessible
Pertinent notions.
Neither precarious nor
Incongruous to the truth!
Robby.
You must simply relinquish your
Intrepid, frenzied paucities!
So I dismiss the diss.
Since
her big scary words are kinda lost to me.
Evidently, though,
I must need a Joe Blow.
An Everyman.
A Streetcorner Clairvoyant.
I turn to
(drum roll)
Raunchiness.
His beer belly **** and **** jokes
And dollar store aftershave suggest
A pleasing 'pull-my-finger' charm
that just might turn the trick.
He licks his lips,
And chides through a buck-tooth,
Spit shine smile.
Sheeeooot, boy,
That there one's easy.
All you gotsta do is
Go down deep
And speak from your gut.
Tell em how you feel..
How you REALLY feel.
Tell em..
shoot, tell em they rub you just right,
You might well feel as ***** as
Your gas gauge after a good pump.
As ***** as a McD's wrapper
Corner-pinch-discarded like
A used diaper hammock.
Yeah! You tell em your as ******
As a receptacle
For used diaper hammocks!
Hells yeah.
Girls will eat that **** up!
And say you're as gay as rainbow gold
As straight as an arrow-head.
As misled as finding your folks are still *** fiends
or as contradictory as ***** like me!
Boy, you are as con-fused as the
Lumpy, stumpy, pimply dimpled teen who finds out
Santa Claus IS real!
And he's hanging out loose
In every single Hustler Magazine!
Now hear me boy.
If they still don't care,
Or they see that you're scared,
Just say you feel as guilty as midnight dials
From parents of Girls-Gone-Wild,
sneering,
"Well shoot, sugar plum.
You sure ain't been feeling
Real secure in awhile."
And as he loosely labels me
As awkward as **** thermometers,
As misunderstood as **** plugs,
I give Raunchiness a dismissive shrug,
And return to the mystery
Of what I've missed from me,
Whatever still may be
My own poetic style.

what spawn of madness lies behind the crooked lens
chains tied to the entropy of ends
chaos bound to nothing but ourselves;
now unfolding fate that we’ve propelled.
somehow now, beyond the folds
withholding beyond reach;
the light of every star unknown
will rapture; be unleashed.
so I may bend and break the lines
of all the rules they teach
i’ve made my own,
this world is mine,
no longer shall I sleep.

I can't imagine how this looks
Me, face of clay
Silent windchime mouth
Aquariam glass eyeballs
Snowglobe life
Swimming in glitter
Tsunami at your hands
Plastic toes stuck
Until I lunge
Eyes flare heat
Stove top face
Coiled brain
Orange is the color I saw in you
Finger painted pianos
Mole rat grass
You took my monocle
Smashed glass in the garden
Next to tulip bulbs
That will grow in as your teeth
Fingers on mice
Like your genes
Granola girls take paths
I am glued, plastic feet
You walk around me

write at midnight. edit in the morning.
write on a mountain. edit on a beach.
write inside a dream. edit & exist in reality.
write in a fever pitch as starlight kisses your cheekbones.
edit in the cold dawn light without excuses.
write loudly with Bjork screaming into the curtains.
edit in silence.

write as the clouds gather around the gibbous moon.
edit as the sun crests the hill & burns away the fog.
write inside, cozy under a blanket.
edit naked, cold on the front porch.
write asking questions.
edit demanding answers.

write blindfolded with your fingers waltzing across the qwerty.
edit bespectacled or with a monocle.
write like a mass ******. edit like a suicide.
or better yet
write like a homicide. edit like a detective.

write toward the open sky with your legs outstretched before you.
edit facing a clean white wall with your knees against your chest.
write because you are innocent. edit because you are guilty.
write during a fit of hyperventilation.
edit during mammoth exhalation.
write with complexity. edit into simplicity.

write, as Hemingway did, drunk.
edit, not sober, but hungover.
see your flaws in the sharp mirror of a headache.

write during sloppy explosion. edit during precise implosion.
write with your head in the clouds gnawing at the cumulus.
edit with your feet firmly planted in the ground.
write during violent collision.
edit during calm separation.

write with a pencil on soggy paper in a hot shower.
edit with a red pen sitting in tepid murky bathwater.
write among raucous laughter & banging skillets.
edit in secret while the kids are asleep.
write like a sadomasochist.
edit like a psychiatrist.

write while running on your tip-toes.
edit while lying flat on your back.
write in several languages with abandon.
edit beside a translator dictionary.
write as you are engulfed in fire.
edit with an extinguisher.

write with careless fluidity.
edit without assistance from amphetamine or coffee.
write with a full bladder,
standing up,
jitterbugging,
squeezing the tip of your *****
closed--urgently
squirm & trickle
your ideas onto
the porcelain page.

No monophonic masterpiece
Sung on a monorail
In monotone with MSG
That's monosodium glutamate
I say that monotonously
A monoplane monopoly
A monomaniac with monomania
A monocle for monoculars
A monograph of monogamy
Monocetyledons- plants with single seeds
A monolith that's monogramed and monochromatic
You know the monosyllable of monotheism as fact
There is no monomial for mononucleosis
Are eggs mononuclear?
Monoxide just sounds dangerous
I have a monolingual term for mono
It's bad so please don't catch it

Just picked up my thirtieth pair of glasses
(perhaps you call them eye glasses).
Progressive, photo-chromatic, temples with wrap around cables.
Same round frames since I was sixteen (first saw them in How I Won the War).
I don’t mess with what works. We fit. No need to look further.
Had my eye on the prize.
They give me perfect sight. And I waited years to get perfect sight.
Always needed glasses. Finally got them when I was eleven.
Big family. Immigrants. No health coverage. So, no glasses.
Couldn’t see the forest or the trees. A genetic thing too.
Several sisters and brothers are as myopic as moles.
Mammy and Daddy never wore glasses (which is not to say they didn’t need them).
All granny glasses are wire rims with a golden finish.
All of mine were. These ones are round black wire rims. I’m being so adventurous.
I remove them (singular is a monocle) to shower and go to bed. I never ask to try on someone’s frames, and I never loan mine for a second (Period)
I also have a face that has grown so accustomed to glasses, that my eyes have surely deepened into my skull. I don’t recognize myself on my driver’s license, health card or passport (Why do they insist on that? I’m never asked to remove my glasses upon surrender of any document for visual verification).

I’ve yet to regret the wealth I’ve spent.
Their cost could pay the rent
For a third world family for years.
It would feed and clothe a village, I’m sure.
I'm not blinded by how good I've got it here.

I have been beginning to notice
that I(and I may not be alone)
always look at the past
through a marigold monocle.

This, meaning nothing now
ever seems to be joyous
or gay or splendiferous
until it is a past memory.
A cobweb.
A rafter.
A leaf on the ground.

…I guess.

i cannot rest towards sleep,
not insomnia nature,
but this mind's consistency
to intensively be critical
of cared units to measure.

continuing as each
tactile, contractile, dactyl pressing
against this chest contesting
examination against my inclination
to worry a hurried
yet impede succession
to assess these abscesses
within
weaving teaming thoughts
defensive to the x and o drawn
so that i may anticipate
tomorrow's entailed
beauty

wait, a change in tone
a drop in breath
rest, retired, and displaced
movement of consciousness
no longer anxious

gravity has provided
a pillowed valley
to allow this face
to rest this monocle
towards the dimly lit
neon green
pass the hour 4
am I divulging
my emotions
to conceived
mirror
dramatic animated images

alas spirits
lifted
time
remains
cycling
pedaling
from
unneeded
wakes
of waves
so
I may
dream

It’s often of a christmas time
When words will dance to relish rhyme
To tell the story of demander
Sharp of dress – the proper gander

His monocle peers down at you
An eye for flight and finesse too
He flutters out about your heart
You want him but he’s so apart

Put your treasures at his Tod’s
His feathers flutter and he nods
But you’re so crass, so undefined
Your love for him is leagues behind

While you chase with mollycoddles
He’s dancing with the supermodels
A candle dinner, just for two
He’s sharing with Chanel, not you

Leave him be, for the common we
Are odious to one like he
The proper gander often finds
He’s chased for love by lesser minds

He once brushed his Boglioli
And told me that for Christmas Cindy
Would meet him neath the mistletoe
I should not call him, hard I know

So let this poem serve as warning
Do not follow your heart’s calling
When you see the great demander
Sharp of dress – the proper gander

And now that you are out the way
I’ll wait until that special day
For within the wrapping and the ribbon
I’m hiding ‘till I’m duly given

The postie will deliver me
To his doorstep and we’ll see
I’ll burst forth from the wrapping paper
For Christmas we will be together

He’ll choose me over other women
He’ll show a side he still has hidden
The other girls may chase romance
But faced with me they have no chance

For my ship has one commander
My love’s the world, he’s Alexander
Without him life would be much blander
How I want the proper gander.

the stony silence
is an offshoot of the violence
brewed in the madman’s dream
none shall speak ever again
he will be king
drunk on brandy and power
and only he will speak
they must listen in perpetuity
he is a latter-day monarch in a monocle
and severe coat tails and top hat
everyone is a servant servile and compliant
his will is to be done at all times and in all places
always he wakes up to a continental breakfast
and an academic on radio talking in RP
like an Oxford-educated pundit of anthropology
who has theories for everything
including the shape of his own nose
lo and behold!
The days of change are here
men shall whimper and die
women shall rise up and rule
from the bedroom to the boardroom
it’s a woman’s world, ultimately
and the tin *** king shall tuck his tail away
and kiss the hand of she who rules

The ingrate is chewing on his ungrateful cud
But he isn't a liberty to say what's in it
He spits fire at social drinkers
And goes slow mo in the fast lane
Just to ******* those he considers wastes of life
He'd curse them out but that be a wasted breath

The milk maid's dunlap is protruding
But she doesn't give 1/16th of a ****
Or 1/4th of a ****
She has gunk in her teeth
But all the *****, ***** old men are all aboard The Desperate Express

The polygamist is off to the races
Then the roller rink to inject misinformation into the grapevine
He gallantly gives his consent to take a lie detector test
As they try to get past his veneer and get a confession compromised of cul-de-sac secrets
With their monocle and chronic swamp-*** they contracted while waiting on line at the concession stand

The spy's identity will not be compromised
He needs to investigate this world's nation wide arms race to the red button that will undoubtedly end us all
That's why hes undercover in the vineyard
His beliefs correspond with mine
He thinks the planet will be fine but its inhabitants are doomed
And I concur

"I bagged this one
out in In-di-A!"

...the braggart's boast.

"It's a very rare
( these days)ALGERNON!"

And indeed, an Algernon
bares his teeth

above the roaring fire's
mantlepiece.

He looked startled as
he had been shot just that second.

"The head is splendidly mounted
complete with handlebar moustache

...& monocle.

One feels that one could
pop next door and there

would be ha ha...the rest of
Algernon

sticking out the other side.

The glint in the eye
the sneer just so

...right.

"And to the right of the Algernon
is a genuine Cuthbert.

Again from 1901 or there or
thereabouts."

"It is indeed a perfect specimen of
the good old chap..."

the white rhino brags yet again
of what he calls his baggings.

White Rhino's
collection of colonials

is the envy of
all the other animals.

"Some more hot *** old chum?"

But the White Tiger
puts a paw over his glass.

Declines.

The fire's flickering
leaping up the wall.

The shadow making
the humans almost

come alive

as if the Cuthbert
could turn to the Algernon

and say
"OH...I SAY!

With a Rose quartz around your neck
You’d figure Shakespeare had named you.

Depression is a heavy obstacle,
One that I can not save.
Could I provide a monocle,
Examine the stone.
It fades when exposed
To too much light.
You’re meant to be brave,
You’re never quite alone.
You’re time is not apropos.

I find you significant.

Archie Monroe, the swollen bell ringer of Lavender Moor,
Is looking to sell his copper claw,
His wartime Horlick’s pedals,
And his ferocious bone lick with its wet mink sheath.
He half believes in two thirds of a God every other end of the day.
He believes in St. Clank, and the spanking of the parable,
He believes in the Holy Bee and the miracle of the monocle.
He's walking all lookable
He talks about succulent;
The warm unbuttoned government;
The other worldly succubus,
And tickled sinners such as us
Who never want to make a fuss.

The curled up nurse of Russia Road is building ghosts of crimson brick,
Hurting the sick, and Christmas pale
With the poisoned tip of her sharpened nail.
She nestles by comparison with the dullards of noon.
Who would have thought it expensively cruel
To do it in the dentist froth,
Now that she's lost in Hoxton Square?
Barely able to breath;
Hairy and ****;
Sticky to the last.


See the violent and widespread bed spasms of Arbuckle’s bottle,
And the lamp lit cancer of corrosive blue whining,
The ill mannered throat-goose
And the manicured miscarriage of Mendleson's twenty fourth mother.
Felix was peeling
We knew it to be true,
Even back then
In the pickled omentum.
The pompous rebuffs and the transparent gloves of yawning;
It seemed not she like.

See the museum’s scratched trumpet mask of medical sod,
And the soft dissection of the ink *****.
Implements of ticking and slip with the slow itch and clop.
The anatomy doll, all green and glad;
Its uncertain internal shrinking of Crippen;
The skull’s Baron of the Intact Apparent.

She cradles her parents in terrified liver
Resembling dill with an unusual, excitable finish.
Meanwhile out in Kraków:
The idiotic London guillotine shop
Shows eight obscene operation reveals trembling on a saucer.
This, I'm unafraid to never say, is not almost uncertainly bowel pay.

I'm static,
I'm stuck,
I'm riding the deck,
In silence,
I'm eternally seeking port.
I miss the wife and kiddies.
The waves are stilled now.
Although their crests are tipped with white.
There's not a bird or shark in sight.
I can't even smell the sea.

I'm picked up and examined,
Closely inspected,
by the old sea dog,
in the tatty tweed suit,
through his right eye,
using his monocle
He puts me down and creeps away,
moaning at the assistant,
that's much too expensive,
I'll have to leave it for today.

Next thing I see is a manic child,
with his mum,
he's running wild.
Hey nipper leave that alone,
Crash,
Air swamps me,
As the shop assistant with the dustpan and brush,
sweeps me up.
Wraps me in a newspaper page,
throws me in the re-cycle bin,
What will become of me,
one thing's for certain,
now I'm free.
(C) Livvi

His mustache twitches,
His monocle gleams,
With the tap of his cane
It's Silent.

His pea-coat is ironed,
His buttons shined,
With a wave of his hand
It's Silent.

His expression falls,
His slacks wrinkling,
With a hands to his chest
He's Silent.

I prefer my actors live on stage:
Living, breathing, running around.
But sometimes you need a stiff;
I like them to be, metaphorically speaking, upstanding
With a military bearing and patriotic moustache,
Ideally tricked, or seduced, by cunning foreigners.

Once they are dead, I want them face down,
Fully clothed, shot in the back,
Being studied by a stooping policeman,
Or better still, an upper class pre-war sleuth
With a cravat and a monocle;
No need for ceremony with them.

A doctor arrives.
‘What seems to be trouble?’ he asks.
‘He’s dead, you idiot!’ cries the sleuth;
‘Make yourself useful. Get Lady Bounder here a cup of tea.
She’s fainted. Two sugars.’

Enter Inspector Dummy.
‘It looks like ******,’ he announces.
‘Give the boy a medal,’ comes the witty reply.
‘Oh, sorry, your Lordship. Shall I shine your shoes?’

Then there’s a sub-plot, a side issue:
The bones of a victim
Of a botched bank robbery
Forty years before
And the stiff was his grandson.

It’s a hard job, being dead on stage,
Or so I’m told, I’ve never tried it.
I once saw a ****** victim sneeze, twice,
Under a table in the library.
He deserved that kick; nothing like a good laugh.

That bowlers cap fit you incredibly well.
A monocle for the laughs.
Constantly with a cigar.
A perfectly formed stash.
Never a hair out of place.
The personality of a tie-dye shirt.
The face of a businessman.
Rest in peace Tim.
You were more than a good man.
Truthfully a Titan.
Farewell Monopoly Man.
Heaven won't know what hit 'em.

The ball is about to begin
Get your fancy coats
And your elegant gowns
Get your monocle
Get in gear
All the important people
Will be here
No winos
Or other disreputable folk
Will be allowed
So please come one
So please come all
To
The very very important ball
You will not
Be murdered and robbed.

If I am
a woman of abundance
speaking fluent excess
in a time where
nothing
is denied
what do I become
when the borders
are closed
to the land
I promised myself?

Pigeonholed into
this sense of security
seeing myself
through one-half
of the monocle
--wasted tension,
then, if twice-effort
produces half-sight--
Where do I go
to find myself
when the only door
I knew
is shrouded
in second-hand screens?

I will rise-
for comfort has made
apaths of us all

I will rise-
realizing these bones
ache under the weight
of collected burdens

I will rise-
vision adjusting
as perspective changes
from lower life
to heavenward glances
too dry
too bright
too foreign to the naked eye

And yet
this simplistic wealth
contradicts itself
in losing, we hope
to gain
in leaving, we hope
to find

So I will rise-
embracing the new abundance
of having nothing
except All.