It was 98'.
No, it was 99'.
That was the year.
Yeah, that was the year.

I had just landed abroad and knew no one.
Well, I was there with my girlfriend, Page.

I knew her.

We had to get out of the states.
There was nothing for us there.
We were drowning in that nothingness - that lacking future.

Cookie cutters everywhere.

Everything I saw was like an outline of something that had already happened.
I couldn't sleep.
I couldn't ****.
I could barely call my parents to let them know what I was doing.

Nothing really.

Floating downward like a leaf broken from its stem.
I was scared.
I'll admit it.
I was terrified of the next four years.
Twenty-five seemed so far away and so close, all at the same time.

We had a found an apartment to live in while in the U.S.
We were lucky because people we met later on said it was hell trying to find a place after arriving.
I was never too good at that stuff anyway.
I always felt like people were trying to cheat me or something.

It was small.
You would have said you loved it, but secretly hated it.
One could barely stand in the shower.
Want to spread your arms wide?

Forget about it.

There was a balcony though and you could watch the street traffic from above.
People look so small when your high up.
Down the street, there was a large theatre where they filmed movies.
I rarely saw them shooting, but I could tell it was a good place to.
It was beautiful at night when the lampposts would flicker on, orange spilling on the street.
Everything was damp in the Fall when we first arrived.

"What do you want to do today?" I asked her. She was laying face down on the bed.
Whenever she was hungover, she would do that.
All the covers and pillows over her face, blocking out the world and its light.
I did the same thing, so I couldn't really say much.
We were hungover a lot those first couple months.
Then came the jobs and everything changed...mostly.

She moaned something that I couldn't understand.
I was standing by the window, staring at the pigeons and crows perched on the roof across from us.
They had made a little nest under one of the shingles.
Clever little ******'s.

"Look at those things," I said.
The coffee I was drinking was bitter and made from crystals.
It gave me a headache, but it was cheap and we were broke.
I stepped back to get a better look at their nest and knocked an empty beer bottle around.

She moaned again and rose up from bed, kind of like a stretching kitten or a cat.
Her back was arched like a crescent moon and she stunk of ***** and Sprite.
The blankets were twisted and crumpled and she was tangled in them like a fly in a spiders web.
I went into the kitchen and poured out my coffee, thinking of what to do with the day.

"Breakfast?" she asked me from bed.
My back was to her, but I knew she wanted me to make it.
I put the electric stove on and opened the refrigerator.

"No eggs," I said back to her, "I'll be right back."

She moaned and slithered back into bed.
I threw my jacket and slippers on and made my way downstairs.

"Dobry den," I said to the cashier.
He was a tiny vietnamese man with a extremely high pitched voice.
I struggled to stifle a laugh every time I came in.

"Dobry den," he said back, sounding like air escaping from a balloon.

"Dear God," I thought, "How does his voice box do it?"

I went straight to the eggs, pretending to cough.
All around me were packaged sweets and rotten vegetables and fruit.
There were half loaves of brown, stale bread wrapped lazily in thin plastic.
Canned beans, noodle packets, and cardboard infused orange juice lined the shelves.
Where were the ******* eggs?
We needed milk too.
Trying to drink that crystalized coffee without it was torture.
I don't even know how I did it earlier.
"I must be getting used to the taste..." I thought.

I opened the single refrigerator they had in the place.
It was stocked with loosely packaged cheese, milk, beer, and soda.
There they were, those ******* eggs, right next to the yogurt.
I looked at the expiration date of a small carton of chocolate milk and winced.
"Someone could die here if they weren't careful," I whispered to myself.

"Everyding O.K.?" I heard the cashier squeak behind me.
I turned and nodded and showed him the eggs.
He was suspicious I was stealing something.
It was ironic.
I put the eggs on the counter and handed over what the cash register told me.

"There you go," I said and handed him the 58 crown in exact change.

"Děkuji," he peeped.

His voice sounded like a stuffed animal.
I nodded, smiled, and quickly got the hell out of there.

"You know the guy that works at the shop across the street?" I asked the body still in bed.
Well, she was up now, back up against the wall with her laptop on her lap.
"You mean the guy that has the voice of a little girl?"
"Exactly. I was just in there - getting these eggs - and I nearly laughed in his face."
"That's mean," she frowned, staring at her laptop.
Many of our conversations were with some kind of electronic device in between us.
We needed to work on that.
"I didn't laugh at him directly."
She smiled and nodded and moved down the bed a little more.
Only her head was resting on the pillow.
I cracked two eggs and let them sizzle there in the butter and the salt.

"So, what do you want to do today?" I asked Page, "It's not too cold out. We could go on a walk."
"Where?"
"I don't know. Over the bridge and maybe down by the water."
"It's going to be so cold," she shivered.
"I was just out there in slippers and a t-shirt and I was fine."
"That's because you're so big. I'm tiny. I don't get as much blood flow."

I flipped the two eggs and looked down at them.
Golden and burnt slightly around the edges.
******* perfect.
Now, just gotta wait a little on the other side and make sure to not let the yolk harden.
I hated that more than anything in the world.
Well, that and hearing **** poor excuses like it being too cold.
It was nice out.
She'd be fine.

"Come on," I sighed. I did that a lot. "It'll be fun."
She looked up at me from her computer with a dead look in her eye.
"What?" I asked her.
"You're such a...nerd," she said.
"No I'm not."
"You're so weird. Some of the things you say sometimes..."
"Like what?"
"Let's go on a walk."
She exaggerated the word walk.
I laughed and knew I was being a little too excited about a walk.
"Yeah. So? What are you doing? You're just laying there doing nothing."
"It's my day off," she scoffed, jokingly.

We were unemployed.
Everyday was a day off.
This was not something to bring up.
It was touchy subject.
One had to go about it...delicately.

"We need to find jobs," I stated, "And we can probably ask around or look for signs in windows."

"Oh JESUS," she gagged, coughing and diving back under the covers.

"I'm just thinking ahead so we can stay here. There's got to be something out there we can do."

"Like what?" she asked, her voice muffled by blankets.

"I don't know...something," I mumbled, trailing off as I flipped one of the eggs, "Perfect."

After breakfast, Page finally got out of bed and took a shower.
I tried to sneak in there with her, but, like I said before, one could barely fit themselves in there.
We compromised to have *** on the bed, though I did miss doing it in the shower.
As Page got dressed, I watched her slip those thin black stockings on, half reading a magazine.
I had gotten a subscription to The Review because I was trying to become a writer.
I thought, maybe if I read the stuff getting published - even the bad **** - it'll help.
Later, I realized, this was a terrible idea, but I enjoyed the magazine all the same.
Page finished getting dressed.
I jumped into whatever clothes were on the floor and didn't stink.
Then, we were out the door on Anna Letenske street, looking at the tram, downhill.


"I can see my breath," Page said, "It's cold..."

"Alright," I said as both of us ran across the street, "It's a little cold."

"But it's ok because I'm glad were out of the house."

"If we would have festered there any longer, we would have stayed in there all day."

"And missed this beautiful day," she said mocking me, putting both of her arms in the air.

The sky was gray and overcast and a single black crow flew over us, roof to roof.
No one was out, really.
It was Sunday and no one ever really came out on Sundays.
From the few czech friends I had, they explained to me this was the day to get drunk and cook.

"Far different then what people think in the States to do," I remember telling him.
"What do you do, my friend?" he had asked. He always called me my friend.
It was a nice thing to do since we had only known each other a couple weeks.
"Well," I explained to him, "Some people go to church to pray to God."
He laughed when I said this and said, "HA! God? How many people believe in God there?"
I had heard through the news and some Wikipedia research Prague was mostly atheist.
"A good amount, I'm pretty sure."
"That's silly," he scoffed, "Silly is word, right?"
"Yep. A word as any other."
"I like that word. What else do they do on Sunday?"
"A lot of people watch football. Not like soccer but with..."
"I know what you talk about," he said, cutting me off, "With the ball shaped like egg?"
I nodded, "Yes, the one with the egg shaped ball. It's popular in the Fall on Sundays."
"And what is Fall?" he asked.
You can see our relationship was really based on questions and answers.
He was a good guy, though I could never pronounce his name right.
There was a specific z in there somewhere where one had to dig their tongue under their teeth.
Lots of breath and vibration that Americans were never asked or trained to do.
Every czech I met said our language was a high contradiction.
Extremely complex in grammar and spelling, but spoken with such sloth.
I don't know if they used the word sloth.
I just like the word.

As we waited for the tram, I noticed the burnt orange and red blood leaves on the ground.
"Where had they come from?" I wondered. There were no trees on the street.
Must be from the park down the block, the one with the big church and the square.
There were lines of trees there used as leaning posts for the bums and junkies as they waited.
What they were waiting for, I never knew.
They just looked to be waiting for something.
I kicked a leaf into the street from the small island platform for the tram.
It swept up into the air a couple inches, and then instantly, was swept away by a passing car.
I watched as it wavered in the air, settling down the block in the middle of the road.

"Where's this trammm," Page complained.
Whenever it was cold out, her complaining level multiplied by a million.
"Should be coming soon. Check the schedule."
"Too cold," she said, "Need to keep my hands in my pockets."
I shook my head and looked at the schedule. It said it would be there at 11:35.
"11:35," I told her, still looking at the schedule. There was a strange cross over the day of Sunday.
"You mad?"
"No," I said turning to her, "I just want to have a nice day and its hard when you're upset."
"I'm not upset," she said, her teeth chattering behind her lips.
"Complaining I mean. We can go back home if it's really too cold. It's right there."
"No," she looked down, "Let's go out for a bit. I just don't know how long I'll last."
"Ok," I shrugged.
I looked up the street and saw our tram coming; number 11.
"There it is," I said.
"Thank God," Page exhaled, "I feel like I'm about to die."

Even the tram was sparse with people.
An empty handle of cheap liquor rattled in the back somewhere.
I heard it rock back and forth against the legs of a metal seat.
"Someone had a night last night," I thought, "Hope that's not mine."
We had gone to some dark bar with a lot of stairs going down - all I really recall.
Beer was so **** cheap there and there was always so much of it, one got very drunk easily.
I couldn't even really remember who we met or why we went there.
When everything's a blur in the morning you have two choices:
Feel guilty about how much you drank, lie around, and do nothing or,
Leave it be, try not to think about it, and try and find your passport and cell phone.

We made our transfer at the 22 and rode downhill.
Page looked like she was going to be sick.
Her sunglasses were solid black and I couldn't see her eyes, but her face was flushed and green.
"You alright?" I asked her.
"I'm fine," she said, "Just need to get off of this tram. Feel like I'm going to be sick."
"You look it."
"Really?" she asked.
"Yeah, a little bit."
"Let's get off at the park with the fountain. I don't want to puke here."
"Ok," I said, smiling, "We'll get off after this stop."

We sat down on one of the benches that circled around the fountain.
It was empty and Page was confused why.
"Maybe to save money?" I suggested.
"What? It's just water."
"Well, you gotta' pump the water up there and then filter it back out. Costs money."
"Costs crown," she corrected me.
"Same thing," I said, putting my arm around her, "There's no one here today."
"I know why," she stated, flatly.
"Why?"
"Because it's collllllllld and it's Sunday and only foreigner's would go out on a day like this."
I scanned the park and noticed that most of the faces there were probably not Czech.
"****," I muttered, "You may be right."
"I know I am," she said, wiggling her chin down into her jacket, "We're...crzzzy."
"We're what?" I asked. I couldn't hear her through her jacket.
She just shook her head back and forth and looked forward, not wanting to move from the warmth.
Dogs were scattered around the brown green grass with their owners.
Some were playing catch with sticks or *****, but others were just following behind their owner's.
I watched as one took a crap in the center of the walkway near the street.
Its owner was typing something on their phone, ignoring what was happening in front of him.
After the dog finished, the owner looked down at the crap, looked around, then slunk off.

"Did you see that?" I asked Page, pointing to where the owner had left the mess.
"Yeah," she nodded, "So gross. That would never fly in the states."
"You'd get shoulder tackled by some park security guard and thrown in jail."
"And be given a fat ticket," she said, coughing a little, "Let's get out of here."
"Yeah," I agreed, "And watch for any **** on the way out of here."

We made our way out of the park and down the street where the 22 continues on to the center.
"Let's not go into the center. Let's walk along the water's edge and maybe up to the bridge."
"Ok," I said, "That's a good idea." I didn't want to get stuck in that mass of tourists.
I could tell Page didn't either. I think she was afraid she might puke on a huddle of them.
We turned down a side street before the large grocery store and avoided a herd of people.
The cobble stones were wet and slick, glistening from a small sliver of sunlight through the clouds.
Page walked ahead.
Sometimes, when we walked downtown in the older parts of Prague, we would walk alone.
Not because we were fighting or anything like that; it was all very natural.
I would walk ahead because I saw something and she would either come with or not.
She would do the same and we both knew that we wouldn't go too far without the other.
I think we both knew that we would be back after seeing what we had wanted to see.
One could call it trust - one could call it a lot of things - but this was not really spoken about.
We knew we would be back after some time and had seen what we had wanted to.
Thinking about this, I watched her look up at the peeling paint of the old buildings.
Her thick black hair waved back and forth behind her plum colored pea coat.
Page would usually bring a camera and take pictures of these things, but she had forgotten it.
I wished she hadn't.
It was turning out to be such a beautiful day.

We made it to the Vlatva river and leaned over the railing, looking down at the water.
Floating there were empty beer bottles and plastic soda jugs.
The water was brown, murky, and looked like someone had dumped a large bag of dirt in there.
There was nothing very romantic about it, which one would think if you saw it in a picture.
"The water looks disgusting," Page said.
"That it does, but look at the bridge. It looks pretty good right

MY FROG MASTERS

How thoughtful were the rainfalls
To water our gardens and flowers
The flowers spread wide garments
To celebrate their terminal beauty

The joyful frogs occupied my pond
To orchestrate their vocal prowess
They taught me to take blind leaps
Like lightning bouncing in the skies

Squatted, stretched, beeped down
I was a millstone on the pond floor
My slippery pond mates wondered
How soft I was in the maritime arts

Mortally rescued in a muddy mood
The clouds sent in rescuing showers
To confirm my firm loss to the frogs
Like a grain of salt cast into the seas


673. MONEY BAGS IN THEIR BODY BAGS

The money bags shopping for their body bags
Waggled through the makeshift supermarkets

Their ancestral homes they plotted modernity
Like the general gathering fine forces together

To the villages they made to return with pride
Like pregnant elephants caught up in the mud

Their desolate villages are deep and sickening
Glowing flamingly in the crucibles of local gins

The dusty and gravy pathways are like furnace
Burning the leather off from their frozen souls

Traditional birth attendants cut off their cords
And zipped the money bags in their body bags

674. A GLORIOUS DAY

The new day spoke powerfully
Like a war making superpower
And his voice roared forcefully
Like the skies forced to shower

The sunrays came dynamically
Like love responding to silence
Beauty crawled in submissively
Like the mixed arts and science

One eagle soared energetically
Like lions feuding in the colony
Far clouds relocated peacefully
Like souls betrayed to harmony

The breeze sighed thoughtfully
Like horses galloping on the lea
Inspiration unfolded thankfully
Crowns monuments with a pea

675.  THE FOG BANK

The sun had gone to pay our bill in the fog bank
The world foggily crawled into the strong rooms
Darkness demonstrated her strong mindfulness
Provided for the strong gale with lurking shrieks

The black paint billers snowballed to our dreams
With the bill of exchange for wild sunny excesses
Ghostly bats emerged with the bill of indictment
In demonstration of our acrophobic dispositions

We packaged the sunrays for our folk memories
To reassure the day of our eternal followerships
We cherish our follow-throughs in our dark beat
To usher the sunlight out of the hollow fog bank

676. THE PROTRACTED INTERNECINE FEUD

These things had happened before we were born
Like sulphur deep into our fresh hearts they burn
Now we stumble on the bumpy terrains in horror
Like one frightened by ghosts in a standing mirror

The internecine feud has razed our men of valour
With their carcasses dumped in their cold parlour
Our community cattle graze in the barren pasture
Like the unrepentant sinners awaiting the rapture

For our plight the once glorious sky is grown pale
Like the ***** fetching territorial waters with pail
The storms have rolled off the catalogues for rain
All our efforts to mop up the mess end up in vain



677. THE AREA LEADERS

They cracked coconuts on the heads for the crown
And embraced our days with their castaway pollen
Sadness and sorrow have dyed our garment brown
With the strongest song sung when night has fallen

These are the blinding dusts from our barn’s grains
They breed cunning serpents in the soft pasturages
They are failed cargoes on our broad societal trains
They dedicate our common committee to outrages

Now our days seek deliverance from their tentacles
Like the colourful fields immersed in gloomy beauty
They play our eyeballs with the stenciled spectacles
With our consciences to sight and found us off duty

To rescue us the colossal clouds were born gadarene
Our communal life was willed to pageants of gaieties
Then moonlight stories held us for a larger gathering
Now all the objects we sight dress up like cold deities

678. THE LAST DESCENDANTS

The rapacious thunderstorms ***** the skies for their tears
The hot embers were born to glow mourning the late forest
The moon crawled out of the blue like a great grandmother
Cuddling her descendants wrapped up in her ancient shawls

The wild waves were weird weavers weaving withering wails
The captioned wigs gyrated on stunning shoes upon auctions
The little creatures crouched in primeval baskets of the night
To gnaw at the generational tubers in the creative farmlands

The dazzling specimens of dentitions relaxed in water basins
Like bright red artistic architectures on potent ocean boards
Golden hearts glow in the threatening prisms of the furnace
As beautiful sunset defines her beauties in her nightly corset

It had been a sweet pill for the past descendants to swallow
Depending on the colonial masters for loaves, lore and lures
Our creativity had been packaged in their mortal depravities
Like the tranquil days resting sorrowfully upon the dark oars

The centenarian thunders downgraded our minute whispers
We had been kept upon our toes by the eternally sworn foes
At last our worthy artworks have worn their wormy catwalks
The refreshed dawns greet our easting days in their greenery



679. VICTIMS IN THE VALLEY

The victims in the dark rally
Caged, dried and browning
Therein their meanings tally
With waves born drowning

In the depth of a cold valley
Horrible nobles are cultures
Like pilgrims in the dark alley
Willed to ravenous vultures

The victims all robed in tears
With hearts like potter’s clay
For pains they have no fears
Only mimed games they play

For victory awaits the victims
Alien to a blind mimed game
Glorious are eternal rhythms
For death Christ died to tame

680. THE GIANT SCARS

These are our giant threatening scars
Engraved on our demonstrative heads
Our sympathies crawled on superstars
Weeping for us on their moonlit beds

They threatened us with nasal sounds
Like thunderclouds seasoned to burst
For us their galleries are out of bounds
Behind the iron bars plagued with rust

Our patience passed their wildest tests
Like the lions roaring in the thick jungle
On the heart of the Lord our faith rests
Like numbers posted on the right angle

681.  A LADY

In a lady’s handbag
Is her hidden hunchback
Stuffed with her heart ache
For the pains relieving groom

In a lady’s tender smile
Is hidden miles of similitude
Marked with the zebra crossings
For the ever winning marathoner

In a tender lady’s heart
Is hidden her cowboy’s hat
Soaring within the white clouds
To soothe the earth with the latter rains

682. BRING BACK OUR GIRLS

Bring back our homesick girls
Their vacant cradles are bleeding
Bring back our innocent girls
On the chariots of fire descending

Bring back our suckling girls
Their feeding bottles are weeping
Bring back our infant girls
Their mothers’ ******* are heavy

Bring back our harmless girls
The united universe is thundering
Bring back our dewy girls
In the sharp sun rising in the skies

Bring back our beautiful girls
Like light plucked from darkness
Bring back our glorious girls
Aboard the shore-bound waves

Bring back our worthy girls
On their fresh faces our lights seek to glow
Bring back our living girls
Our fountains of joy are bubbling to burst

For our returned girls the skies shall bear
Roaring rivers, singing seas, chiming clouds
With gongs and songs, pianos and praises
Dulcet dulcimers and documentable dances
With healthy hymns and eloquent embraces
All nations shall into a common cathedral flow

683. ****** GENEOLOGIES

They electrify their demonic high tables with old fears
Only their ****** genealogies are bookmarked to reign
The sight of their portables whetted our eyes to tears
We are reinforced by the clouds born to the later rain

Our skins have renovated the sickening cattle wagons
With our dreams flying upon huge smokes in the skies
Beneath their tables we abridge their creaking jargons
Upon their floors with our generational landmark tiles

The dew drops dropped like old crops upon our brows
To soften the veils falling to the flaming edged swords
The flaming hearted sword of the penetrating sunrays
Born to pluck us alive from our hotly bandaged bruises

684. LET US SPEAK UP

The light is climbing downstairs
And danger is sprouting abroad
Our feet are listening for a word
Let us speak up lest they go deaf

The light is melted on the glades
And terror grazing our eyelashes
Our feet are listening for a word
Let us speak up lest they go deaf

The light is late and lately buried
The mourners are on danger list
Our feet are listening for a word
Let us speak up lest they go deaf

The light has divorced the grave
Her grave clothes are dew dyed
Our feet are listening for a word
Let us speak up lest they go deaf

Silence is a forgotten tombstone
Lost in the din of cold morticians
Our feet are listening for a word
Let us speak up lest they go deaf

685.  THE SUN

The sun smiles on all prescriptively
Like the waves spreading on shores
The green grass glows descriptively
Like the full moon upon dark sores

The sun is a tailor fixing the buttons
Preparing the sky for incoming stars
Like the weaverbird weaving cottons
To conceal the day’s damnable scars

The sun is a marker on diurnal pages
Tall grace he bestows on the flowers
The sun retains his graces for all ages
Bees and butterflies are his followers

Our common laughter is endangered
When sun bows down in big setbacks
All mortals have the starlets fingered
When the night comes on drawbacks

686. UNTIL HERE

(For Lou Lenart and his team)

Their floods came seeking Jewish bloods
Like streams they roared for our dreams
They emerged as columns of soldier ants
Like whirlwinds they zoomed towards us

Until here we were crumbs for the reptiles
Until here we were like airborne cloudlets
But here the sudden change unveiled to us
From here the elusive victory embraced us

With skeletal jets we fought like bold lions
Soared like eagles and spoke like thunders
We conquered columns of invading armies
The bleeding armies turned back and blank

From here we turned from victims to victors
From here enemies’ defeat our greatest feat
Upon this memorable bridge it all happened
Victories leapt upon our pool like joyful frogs

687.  JOY UNLIMITED

The fledging sun offers its rays
And the rays offer golden trays
For our joy a platform to spray
Rowdy paratroops like thunder
To scoop roses from pure oasis

Our joy is ripe upon celebrations
Our celebrations with decorations
Decorations with documentations
Documentations for all generations
Generations in our joyful habitations

688. ANOTER RAINING DAY

The dark clouds are wandering river basins
Spiral bounded by breakable outer casings
The rivers and the seas display empty cups
For the swift blessings descending the tops

The rains come as defense troops’ missiles
And the drowning lands look like imbeciles
Now we are groaning in the watered claws
With the liberated scales marking our flaws

The retreating clouds crawl away in a belch
Dumping the missing cargoes on the beach
The winds bow in a state of shock in a cord
Praying and fasting for a visit from the Lord

689. GRANDMOTHER

Grandmother, please wake and get up
The sky is quarreling with her husband
Soon they will spill their freezing sweat
On our bodies for us to catch dead cold

Grandmother, please sneeze not louder
The sky and her husband are quarreling
Soon they will send old floods like gales
To sweep mankind away from the world

Grandmother, you are everything I have
My moon, my sun and my morning stars
Provoke not the couples with your cough
Lest they refill their greasily wraths again

Grandmother, the big reptiles have come
With their lethal grandchildren following
They are laced with secret burial shrouds
With sympathetic tears tearing their eyes

Grandmother, I kiss you a shaky goodbye
With broken pains roaring within my soul
Grandmother, where are your groundnuts
To conduct my solo heart as you sing away

690.  A NIGHT WALK THROUGH THE FOREST

Lured away on an alluring dream by fables
I trudged along the grassy paths with fears
Upon my steps spilling the prevailing dews
The shadows bowed their heads in silence
Like the soul issued with a death sentence

The night crawlers emerged above boards
Throwing light upon contrary communities
In their hearts and eyes were painful tears
Crawling down their exaggerated eye *****
Like a handbag filled with rotten cosmetics

The shadows were bold animators’ shelves
Stage managing the horror motion pictures
In the ghostly commodities I met wild hosts
Lifeworks evaporated from my fresh breath
Like foreign tragedies in common comedies

The sorrowful shadows cast away their veils
Like the candles letting go of the weird wax
Sadly I sat in the sack for conflicting fetuses
Another sun appeared like a serial divorcee
Counting the testicles of another naked day

691.  SUBJECTIVE SUBJECTS

The sad sun descended upon her haunting melodies
Reeling from mysterious layers for electoral riggings
To harden the flowerbed for flower girls born tender
Disenfranchised voters came weeping in barren polls
Dressing the blank nest for the fat electoral parodies
With the mourners the faulty bells they came ringing
Like the angry water castigating a ****** port fender
And the smokes climbed upon their wide aerial poles
Arching over the emptied shelves with liberal singing
They subjected their subjective subjects to all objects

Establish a research and development facility tasked with recycling 100,000 commonly used household goods or packaged products back into the original base material needed to remake it into new product packaging. Pass legislation requiring all companies selling products with packaging to buy their source materials from a registered public-private venture allowing any firm willing to participate to do so. Companies must then manufacture packaging locally using source materials supplied by one of the public-private companies. Companies will also be required to hire locally using a diversity and economic income model incorporating or locating the participating companies in the poorest rural counties in the state.










Society grows great when Old Men plant trees.  -Socrates

Barbiturate is one of the few drugs capable of killing you painlessly, so of course the state has banned it. Instead we get paracetamol, a ****** over-the-counter painkiller that leaves you in pain for up to five days while your liver and kidneys shut down. Suicide prevention is a ******* joke. Secular appropriations of Christian values that assume life is worthwhile, whether you desire it or not. It’s long been known that rates of suicide rose dramatically with the birth of modernity—techno-scientific paradise for the middle-class which stresses efficiency over existence. New forms of automation, the human body disciplined into repetitious acts, the partitioning of workspaces so that no single worker could operate the whole—so that any worker could be fired and replaced with the minimum amount of training necessary for capital to continue circulating. The body is individualised, scrutinised, and punished by rich kids playing panopticon, so that any mass agitation is coerced into silence through the threat of destitution.

Slitting your wrists barely succeeds and more likely than not leaves you with tendon and muscle damage. Catalytic converters in cars now convert carbon monoxide into harmless CO2 and H2O. Drowning is one of the most painful ways to die. You cannot escape. The state places helpline numbers around suicide spots to treat life after the fact, rather than at the source of suffering. Vocal band-aids, ****** ******* aphorisms that seek to revert you back into a happy state-serving commodity. Things will get better. Life is worth living. Think positive. Alienation is omnipresent. Neoliberal discourse requires you to be subservient to the greater system of capital and the easiest way towards this is the instilment of comfort, of pleasant nullity, the circumscription of emotional capacity and reflectivity. Suicidal thoughts are abnormal, because life is worth living. Eat your packaged food item and watch Netflix.

For a drop into water to be fatal, it has to be 250 feet. Try to aim for your head to maximise brain injury. The most prominent suicide spot around here has a drop of 100 feet. They cordoned it off anyway. Your life doesn’t belong to you. The first time I tried to suicide my mother asked ‘why would you do that?’ as if it was the dumbest thing in the world. The second time, the doctor looked at me in an exasperated manner and prescribed me lots of drugs. Geettt bettterrrr. Nobody cares about you, they simply want you to return to normal. Normality as in serving your parents, serving your friends, serving the state, and serving the market. Normality as in not questioning social norms and institutions. Normality as in get a stable job (i.e. compete against other workers in an exploitative, undemocratic system that values and inculcates self-serving desires), get married (preferably to someone of the opposite *** who is middle-class and imbibes European culture), get pregnant/get someone pregnant (but only once or twice, because anyone who has more children than that is backwards), invest in housing (those students and lower-class families need to learn how the world works; really, it’s a benefit to take their money), watch sports (to instil national pride in your children; no son, we didn’t colonise the Pacific Islands, keep watching the man with the wooden stick hit *****), eat out every week (preferably exotic restaurants), go see the world (preferably exotic locations, so you can be served by exotic people, take in exotic sights, then leave without considering where any of your money has gone to, whether any of it has reached the slums, whether the beach you lay on is accessible to the people living there, or whether it has been privatised by the tourist firm so that only rich tourists like yourself can lie on it), join a club (those capitalists were innocent, it was the indigenous folk that were making a ruckus over the new golf course; it’s not like we’ve been colonising their land and culture for the past three centuries), donate to charity (but never any charity desiring systemic change; that’s crazy), consume, always consume (keeps the economy going; why question the desire for infinite growth in a world with limited land, resources and markets?), replace your phone every year (those poor workers in Asia need our help), repeat to the point of nausea.

The most successful method to suicide is a shotgun to the head; high calibre, slug rounds. Of course, with all these methods, the chance of failing may leave you disfigured, paralysed, mentally disabled or physically crippled (spinal damage, broken limbs, failed organs), with no guarantee that your family, or even your state, will allow for euthanasia. After all, the popular discourse paints suicide as selfish—an irony, considering liberalism places the self first and society second. It is viewed as sinful regardless of context—deontologically detached from anomie, alienation, material deprivation, social pressures, psychological affectations, any cause or structure. Life is worth living. This ignores that the subject is situated in existence. The subject moves through existence to live. Life, then, is the totality of the subject’s interactions. It cannot be universalised into a single state or judgement that merges all subjectivities into a catch-all worthiness. Worth is dependent of the subject.

I don’t know why I’m writing this. Maybe I just want everyone to **** themselves, because the world is ****** and the majority of people are ******* it worse. Most people think being nice makes them good. They turn blind to the systems of oppression they partake in. A while ago my mother was asking if I’d heard about the mass suicides happening at Foxconn, the largest electronics manufacturer in the world. This year she showed me her new iPhone. I don’t ******* understand. I don’t understand how people can be outraged at humanity abuses, yet do ******* nothing to help or change their ways. Yes, market solutions are ******* ****, but these commodities are still coming from somewhere, and while capitalism is in place, our money is still flowing back. I don’t understand how people can be concerned about ecological issues, then pour dishwashing liquid down the sink every night, dissolving the gills, eyes, and organs of fish in rivers and oceans. I don’t understand a ******* thing. I feel physically sick most days. I can barely function outside of university, because engaging with real people, in real systems, just reminds me of how careless, worthless, and disgusting they are. When I first turned vegan, my dad simply said plants are living too. Well no ******* **** dad, why didn’t you ask me my reason for turning vegan, rather than simply repeating the dumb **** everyone else says? If you were stuck on a desert island. Well I’m ******* not. I’m stuck on this **** world filled with nice people who don’t give a **** about anything. I’m stuck every week walking the same roads, to the same university, where I become more and more distanced from reality through abstract philosophical theories that no one else cares about. I’m stuck walking through the supermarket every week, to purchase overpriced commodities produced by transnational corporations I don’t support, but nonetheless have to buy to survive. What alternatives I buy are mocked because it's so funny being ethical in our day and age. Because it’s so much more normal eating pies, and drinking beer, and treating women like objects, and affirming nationalistic sentiments of white supremacy, and making fun of ethnic minorities while they’re incarcerated, and beaten, and killed. All lives matter, the liberal conservatives cry out, while doing ******* nothing to help any cause. I don’t understand this world, and I have no desire to be in it if this is all there is.

I am angry today
Angry because all the core is hollowed
Angry because content became arbitrary
Angry because lies can so easily be packaged, sold and consumed
As honesty
And in consuming, leverage is given to the machinations of the lie
The machine is now whirring
Can you feel it?
Can you feel the happy monster, hollowing out the core
Processing all the content
And spitting it back indistinguishable, shiny and price-tagged?
Can you feel the great shudder of humanity
Yearning for its heart
Searching for its passion
Longing for its character?

I am angry with the greedy for their philosophy
I am angry with the weak of character for perpetuating
And building from the blueprints of greed
I am angry with the politicians who broadened the roads
Guiding emptiness to our doors
I am angry at the vast apathy, seeping from out doors
Flowing over each road and filling the cracks in the system
I am angry with each individual I have met
Who had a chance to let go of an empty façade
And choose to do something human
But who chose, instead, to look down
And push forward in the lie
I am angry that what is good is lost
To what is practical

I am angry because healthcare is not about the health of people
I am angry because education is not about learning
I am angry because news is not about being informed
I am angry because food is not about nutrition
I am angry because work is not about contribution
I am angry because music is not about sound
And art is not about beauty
I am angry because being a person is not about relating
To other persons as they are
But about relating to their function in the lie
Their function in the aforementioned and hollow
Shells of what once served as our pillars

Yesterday I was sad
I felt saddened by loss
Loss of people and meaning
Loss of a future that now seems impossible
Loss of purpose and agency
But then I realized something important
I realized why my heart still pounds when I see children
Beaten by police for speaking out against the lie
Still pounds when I learn of rebels
Still pounds when I see the truth growing up through
A crack in the road
Still pounds when I hear the slam poets
Yelling at my generation
I realized that sadness is what one feels
In the process of giving up
And anger is the forerunner to action
To life and to love

In sadness we absorb all the pain of the lie
In anger, we pull tight the raw sinews of our sadness
And shape stones of the pain we’ve absorbed
And though we are all mortal
At least, when we die in action
We send a message that reverberates
Through all the machinations of the hollowing lie
Through all the squandered hearts of society
Through all the ages and spaces of consciousness
We will be human
No matter the cost
We will be full
No matter the loss
We will relate to each other as we are
And we will not believe the lie

When you strike out in just anger
You feel all the camaraderie of history
Of those who shared in the common understanding
Of justice and of fighting for its attainment
And in that moment of action
You are not alone
A thousand immortal fists bolster you
Each one shouting “truth!” loudly and in a straight line
An unwavering line that does not bend
To time or place
To odds or probability
To fear or hesitation
To hatred or malice
To resources or means
Nor to any limitation

The only one true sin that man can enact
Is to forget love
And in forgetting love, grow detached
Fall into sadness and despair
Fall into apathy and neglect
Fall into the void of their core
Fall such as to forget what they deserve
And the punishment for true sin is to be alone
I, for one, would rather embrace the vast love of truth
And companionship of anger
Than wither into sin
Cold and lonely

I'm frequently told to
'Stop and smell the roses'-
I have hay fever.
If I were to stop, I would no longer be moving so
My mind has more time to fill itself up with the little thoughts,
The ones I'm walking the streets to forget.
Rose is one of my favourite scents but
Every time I try to take it in
My cheeks swell and my eyes water;
I'll just stick to being a walker.

I wasn't aware of this, but
The nose must play an important role
In the improvement of mental health because
I am also told to
'Wake up and smell the coffee'-
I don't want to wake up
And I can't get out of bed,
(Could you just bring me a coffee, instead?)
It might inspire me.

Within the cover of night I am sitting;
Lying;
Crying
-Doing anything other than sleeping-
In bed thinking about what if somebody told me to
'Wake up and smell the roses',
****
Myself?
Surely it's a death sentence
To do a combination of the two
That I have already explained
I cannot,
Will not
Do?

Today, however, I did attempt to smell those roses
And I bought myself a latte, too.
But all I could taste and smell was ash,
Which made me panic
Because it felt like I was burning alive and
I liked that.
Now I understand that cigarette smoke can sometimes be so potent, that it
Drowns the soul.

Tobacco is, in fact, a substance of which I feel I can relate to:
It's grown;
Briefly nurtured;
Removed;
Dried;
Packaged;
Labelled (with a warning);
Used by many and
Lastly,
Set alight by a temporary flame;
Used up in a puff of smoke.

The enthusiasm of ***** Gobé and Maria Paloma Fuentes is palpable. Riding high on the initial success of their summer collection of children’s clothes, the two French business graduates are planning their next sales moves, both online and through multi-brand boutiques.

The chic edge-to-edge jackets, Bermuda shorts and berets would probably look at home on the rails of Printemps or Galeries Lafayette. Yet their start-up company, Mini Bobi, is not based in Paris. It is in Suzhou, a couple of hours’ drive from Shanghai.

The two Skema alumnae are among the growing number of French graduates who are looking for their first job in China. One catalyst has been the rush of European business schools to establish campuses in China, run joint degree programmes with Chinese universities and set up internship programmes in Beijing and Shanghai.

What is more, the growth in the Chinese economy, together with the low cost of entry in cities such as Shanghai, has resonated with graduates worldwide who want to be entrepreneurs.

The real advantage of China, though, is simply the scale, says Ms Fuentes. “The opportunities are much more attractive here than in France. If you come up with a new idea it will be really big.”

The Mini Bobi clothing range, which combines Parisian style with the stretchy materials and copious waistbands needed by the increasing number of obese children in China’s cities, was the brainchild of Ms Gobé.

After studying fashion and business in Lille and Shanghai, Ms Gobé completed a gap year in the US and decided to write her thesis on the plus-size market.

“In this thesis I made a comparison between the market in the US and China. [Previously] I wasn’t aware of this market,” she says, adding that in China there are 120m obese children under the age of 18.

In the city of Shanghai more than 18 per cent of children at primary school are overweight — the same percentage as in the US, she says. “I was surprised when I realised [this was the case],” she says.

Enthusiasm for all things Chinese spreads well beyond entrepreneurs, says Nick Sanders, director of the Masters in International Business at Grenoble Graduate School of Business. Of the section of the MIB class that spent a year in Beijing, many are enthusiastic about working there.

“Ninety per cent of them actually want to stay in China,” says Mr Sanders, although practically, only between a quarter and a third will get their first job on graduation in the country. A further 50 per cent will be employed working with China in some capacity, adds Mr Sanders.

“They tend to be employed where there needs to be an understanding between China and another country.”

Entrepreneur Matthieu David-Experton, an Essec graduate, who also studied for a second degree at the Guanghua school at Peking University, is now on his second business venture in China — he sold the first, a packaged gift business, after 18 months.

His three-year-old market research company, Daxue Consulting, has offices in Beijing and Shanghai, with a third office planned in Hong Kong. It has 15 employees but by the end of the year he plans to have a staff of 20 and revenues of Rmb7m ($1.1m).

“What I have always done in China is take a model that works well in Europe, then adapt it.” Most of his clients to date have been international companies looking for information on the China market — western nursing home groups, eager to take advantage of the changing Chinese demographics, have been strong clients. That is changing. “Chinese companies are now looking for better information on their

competitors.”

For Mr David-Experton there are clear advantages to working in China, particularly the flexibility and speed to market. Products can be designed and developed in just a few days, he says. “I had the feeling you couldn’t get these things done in this timescale in Europe.” It means entrepreneurs can get a product to market without having to raise too much money, he adds.

But he warns that the Chinese business environment is not plain sailing. “They [prospective entrepreneurs] need to come here and see what is happening. A lot of people come here with ideas that don’t fit with the market.”

It is a message echoed by Manmeet Singh, senior affiliate lecturer at EMLyon Business School, who has worked in China for the past 13 years. “This market has a learning curve, it has a learning curve for everybody. Even the 50-year-old chief executives of multinationals have a learning curve. They can come here and get their **** kicked.”

European entrepreneurs are taking a double risk he says: starting a business and setting up in an alien environment.

He also warns that much of the “low-hanging fruit” available to French entrepreneurs a few years ago no longer exists. He cites the example of those who want to set up a wine importing business in China: now the tables are turned and Chinese companies are buying vineyards around the world.

But there are some positive elements about China for European entrepreneurs, he says.

“There’s a lot of money available in the market for the right product. They [the Chinese] are agnostic on the origins of their entrepreneurs.”

And the enthusiasm for start-up careers in China are still strong among French business students, he says. “A good 10 per cent of the class [in China] approach me with ideas.”

Mr Singh is heavily involved in Shanghai’s Chinaccelerator, which gives support to both Chinese and international entrepreneurs. Though popular in the US and Europe, incubators are more novel in China.

It was following Skema Business School’s tie-up with a local Suzhou incubator in 2013 that the founders of Mini Bobi decided to locate their company there. Now they are distributing their range of 30 China-manufactured clothing items in Hangzhou and Suzhou as well as Shanghai.

With a monthly income so far of around Rmb3,000, the founders are looking to wider distribution to increase sales and are now selling online through Taobao, China’s answer to Amazon or eBay, founded by the Alibaba Group. They are also talking to schools about designing more generous-sized school uniforms.Read more here:www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses-brisbane | www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses-sydney

My life is filled with endless apologies

Sincere and heartfelt promises that are shallow and empty

It's not a conscious thought
The words aren't spoken with known deceit or intentional mal-intent
But somewhere in my brain, buried in my subconscious, I know...
A self-sabotaging automated programming constantly running
And regardless of my cognitive actions or conscious thoughts, desires and intentions
My automated programming will find a way to inevitably run its code, follow its routines and execute its prime directive

And that's not a cop out
They're still my actions
Conscious or subconscious
Actions resulting from subconscious "thought" are those I'm too ignorant to see or too weak to change in that moment

I don't know what's worse
The subconscious lies and heaps of horse fertilizer, day in and day out, I shove down the throats of those who cross my path
Or the incessant feed of regurgitated words, phrases, thoughts, ideas and worst of all.... hopes.... that is being forced through my digestive track only to be excreted by my body and re-absorbed by my central nervous system

Hope

The worst trick of all

And it always works. Without fail
Why?
Because it psychologically and emotionally preys on everything I want to be
The Hope that THIS TIME I'll get it right
THIS TIME I won't FAIL
All those things inside of me
All of my
......
Potential
.......
This time it won't be wasted
This time I'll come through. You can count on me!
I promise!
This time I'll be on time
This time I won't be late!
This time I'll meet expectations
This time I'll EXCEED expectations!
This time I won't let people down
This time I won't....
                                 .....
                                    ..... let
                                               ME

                                                      .­....down

Hope

The saddest and ultimate cruelty of lies
Created by the Devil to prey on the weak and gullible
If Hell is living your worst day over and over again for eternity;
Then repeating the same detrimental behaviors over and over again for life, sustained in this perpetual motion by something so simple and harmless looking as "Hope" must fall at the Devil's hands

A wolf in sheep's clothing sprinkled in fairy dust
The worst of thoughts and beliefs are kept alive by Hope
Hope is a disease; a psychological virus
A damaged idea spreading from person to person, hijacking their system, and infecting their thoughts
For Hope is not a singular idea, isolated in seclusion, yet ultimately wrapped up and packaged out with other ideas
No, Hope is the vehicle that all thoughts that follow must ride in and by which be delivered
It is the Uber for ideas that follow
And like an unscrupulous and unpitying Uber driver,
Hope takes your brain to a secluded spot against its will and does as it so pleases
But unlike survivors of such horrific events
I, like a wide eyed doe in the headlights
I continuously expose myself to the exact same scenarios
over
and
over again

But not to worry

Eventually,
Hope will lose its magic
And the void created will be filled

By,

Regret,
Resentment,
Animosity,
Self-doubt,
Self-loathing,

And worst of all,

Denial

Denial is Hope's evil twin

The not so secret malicious trickster who, even though wears his emotions somewhat more clearly, is still capable of a lifetime of successful pranks

But unlike Hope, Denial doesn't always reveal his trick if the tricked has yet to become aware of the ruse
Instead, Denial will let them build
Stack upon stack
A colossal suspension bridge built and supported on Denial
And when I, with blind faith, cross that bridge
Putting everything and anything on the line, without question
That's when Denial delivers its reckoning
And in one all encompassing swoop it swallows me whole and any resemblance of "life" with it

Hope and Denial
My Atlantic and Pacific Oceans
and Me, a tiny island
Flanked on either side by the endless majesty of each
And like this planet,
I too,
Am a sphere spinning
A tiny island against the enormities of the the deep blue
A shipwrecked survivor
Floating on the driftwood of my subconscious
Left to the will of my environment
A helpless passenger on this ship of life
Constantly spinning between Hope and Denial
Some days calm and serene
Others, tormented by storms
Monster waves,
Flashes of lightning,
Ear shattering crackling explosions of thunder
And howling winds so fierce they must be the breath of God

And regardless of what scenario lays before me,
I'm left repeatedly with the same "choice" and same action

Enveloped with fear,
Hanging on for dear life,
Like a helpless and horrified child.....

On the verge of soiling my pants

Liturgy in Time of War

I will go to the altar of God
To God who gives joy to my youth

ENTRANCE ANTIPHON

The dawn (evening) is coming, another hot, filthy, wet dawn (evening).  Let us arise, soaked in sweat, exhausted, to speak with sour, saliva-caked mouths, to meet the deaths of this day (night).

GREETING

In the name of Peace in Our Time,
For the Hearts and Minds of The People,
For the Land of the Big PX
For round eye and white (black) (brown) thigh,
I greet you, brothers.

PENITENTIAL RITE

All:

I confess to almighty God
And to you my brothers
That I have sinned through my fault
In my thoughts and in my words
In what I have done
And in what I have failed to do,
And I ask Blessed Mary…

But how can I ask Her anything now?

My brothers,
Pray for me to…

But how?
Priest: (But there is no priest)

KYRIE

Lord, have mercy
Christ, have mercy
Lord, Lord, have mercy on us now

Have mercy, Lord, on a generation
That sits smugly in college lecture halls
And protests endlessly in coffee shops
The war they hear, see, on T.V., for free
Justice and peace by the semester hour
Like, y’know, peace, love, Amerika sux
Play the guitar, ****, apply to law school

Have mercy on us
Who crouch behind sand bags
And clean our weapons
And protest nothing
And **** in the heat
And die in the hear
And throw ham and lima beans away

GLORIA

Glory to God in the highest
how many bodies yesterday?
And peace to His people on earth
Vietnamese? Or us?
Lord God, heavenly King, almighty God and Father
ham and lima beans?
We worship you, we give you thanks, we praise you for your glory
Doc, I can’t go home to my wife with this clap
Lord Jesus Christ, only Son of the Father
cigarette, canteen cup of instant coffee
Lord God, Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world
******* magazine
Have mercy on us
relief behind the sand bags
You are seated at the right hand of the Father
i rot
Receive our prayer
i want to be clean and dry
For You alone are the Holy One
clean and dry.  just once.
You alone are the Lord
why do they chew that?
You alone are the most high
you mean the betel nut?
Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit, in the glory of God the Father
incoming!
Amen


PRAYER

A

Father, you make this day holy.
Let us be thankful for
The many little joys of
This day, for life, for
The chance to worship
You.  In the end, bring
Us to you, so that we
May be cleansed of mud
And sweat and filth and
Guilt, and live with you
In peace forever.

B

Father, just get me through
Another day of this mess.

LITURGY OF THE WORD –

FIRST READING

From the Intensive Care Unit, NSA DaNang

A twilight world
Of neither peace nor battle
And of both

A man world
Embracing life and the grim death
Both

Peering into infected wounds
Night building shiver
Down from the black sky flares float

Broken bodies from the war somewhere
Eyes of a shattered nineteen-year-old Marine
Staring at the door to Yokosuka

PSALM

A Song of Descents

I cast down my eyes
Into the mud
Into the blood
It seems cleaner than death and drugs and casual ***
Drink Coca-Cola

I turned my eyes away from you, O Lord
And made this
Build this
Came to this
Samantha and Darren on Bewitched

Have mercy on…but how can we ask?  How dare we ask?

SECOND READING

Old Man, Viet Nam

Old man, a dog is barking at your heels
Old man, with the tired, weathered face
Are you afraid to turn around and deal
This dog a kick, to put him in his place?

Or is it, old man, that you’re just too tired?
Just too tired to turn and show anger
Just too tired to have your temper fired
Beaten by years of contempt and danger

Where are you going, trudging so slowly?
What are you thinking, behind those tired eyes?

Probably not about ham and lima beans

GOSPEL

In the Cold White Mist

After an all-night run on the river
Our boats arrive in the village at dawn
Dawn is never cold along that rive
Along that steaming, green, hell-hot river
But the mist is cold, the grey-green dawn mist
And after the engines are cut – stillness
Foul brown water laps at the mudding bank
Sloshing softly with fertile, smelly death

In the cold white mist

The boats are secured, and watches posted
We step off the boats and onto wet land
And follow the track into the deep mist
It becomes the street of a little town
A dairy lane along which cows slopped home
And where dogs and chickens and children
      played
Bounded by carefully swept little yards
And little wooden houses with tin roofs

In the cold white mist

But some of the houses are burnt.  The smoke
Still hangs heavily in the whitening mist
The lane is littered with debris.  A lump
Resolves itself into a torn, dead child
Across a smaller lump, a smaller child
Their pup has been flung against the fence, its
Guts early morning breakfast for the morning
      flies
We smoke cigarettes against the death-smells

In the cold white mist

Beneath a farm tractor rots a dead man.
When they – they – had come at sunset
He had hidden there.  And they shot him there
A man with bare feet and work-calloused
      hands
His hair is black; his teeth need cleaning
They shot him beneath the village tractor
His blackening blood clots into the mud
And our lungs choke in the white mist of death

In the cold white mist

White mist.  The path disappears into it
Smoky skeletons of little houses
In which there will be no tea this morning
No breakfasts of hot tea and steaming rice
No old widows to smile in betel-nut
No children to mock-march alongside us
Pointing at our ******* boots, and laughing
At us, for wearing shoes in the summer

In the cold white mist

They are dead and rotting in the white mist
On the edge of the jungle on the edge
Of the world, here along the Vam Co Tay
And the people pour out of their houses
To greet us on the fine summer morning
A corpse across a doorway, another
******-doubled across a window sill
Still another strewn down the garden path

In the cold white mist

The other patrol doubles back to us
And they tell us that the Ruff-Puff outpost
Must have been overrun the night before
He had heard their radioed pleas, and had
Run the river at night to get to them
And the ARVNs had fled through the village
And the VC had stormed in behind them
And it was knife-and-gun-club night in town

In the cold white mist

A little girl is the lone survivor
She looks may six.  Cute, except for the
Bubbling, *******, bayoneted chest wound
We patch her, and tube her, and use suction
Sort of like fixing a bicycle tire
And in the wet, gasping heat take her back
With us downriver, where a charity
Hospital leaves her on the steps to die

In the cold white mist

It will be our turn again tomorrow
Not a one of us died today.  Today.
But a village is gone, burnt and rotting,
Soon to disappear into the jungle
Along the green Cambodian border
Up some obscure river.  Up there.  Somewhere.
A few hundred people.  Their ancestors’ graves
Will fade with them untended, forgotten

In the cold white mist

Radio Hanoi might blame it on us.
But maybe not.  We made our report and
Nobody really noticed; no one cared
The talk is of the VC battalion
And where it has gone, and where it might go –
Maybe into death under an air strike
“And you guys better get in some sack time,”
Says the C.O. as he turns to his maps.

In the cold white mist

HOMILY

I’m scared, and I want to go home.  I don’t care any more about justice or fighting Communism or winning the hearts and minds of the people.  I can’t think about all that right now, because I’m scared, and I want to go home.
I don’t care about truth or loyalty or bravery or honor.  If Miss March were here she wouldn’t get cold, but she sure would get sunburnt.  And in a few days her skin would start rotting.  Then nobody would want to see her in the **** anymore.  
I’m scared, and I want to go home.
Up the Vam Co Tay, everyone is scared, everyone is tired, everyone is sick, everyone could die: sailor, soldier, officer, priest, farmer, fisherman.  Everyone rots in the wet heat.  The skin bubbles and flakes and peels, and is pink again, to bubble and flake and peel again.  
I’m scared, and I want to go home.
I’m Doc.  I’m a scared, stupid kid with an aid bag and a few months’ training.  But I’m Doc.  I’ve got to fake it.  I’ve got to be cool and calm because this other kid with his guts hanging out will probably make it if I don’t ***** up and if the dust-off from Saigon can get out here now.
I have an old dog at home, and my folks write and tell me she sleeps outside my window at night, waiting for me to come home.  Someday we’re going to run and play in the woods and fields again.  She’ll bark and run wide circles, and dare me to catch her.  I will laugh under the autumn leaves.  But now my nights are glaring darkness, fits of sweat-soaked half-sleep, then sirens and falling glares and falling mortars, and then the Godawful racket of all our engines of destruction.  There isn’t any use in all this.
I’m scared, and I want to go home.

And I don’t want any ham and lima beans.

CREED

We believe in the Land of the Big PX
In presidents in suits, and generals,
In makers of economic strategies
We believe in flak jackets and .45s and peace

We believe in swing ships and dust-offs, yes
In the dark, green omnipresent Huey
Eternally begotten of technology
Blades to rotor, windscreen to machine guns
Made, not begotten, one in being with us
Through it all things are transported to us
For us men and our hunger and our hope
It comes down from the skies
By the high power of technology
It was born of the long assembly line

For whose sake are we crucified today?
Who suffers, and who dies and is baggied?
And on the third will arrive back home
To be neatly packaged in stainless steel

But not in ham and lima beans

LITURGY OF THE EUCHARIST

Preparation of the Gifts

Celebrant:

Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation.
Through your goodness we have this cheap Algerian wine to offer,
Fruit of the vine and work of human hands.
It will become anaesthesia for our souls.

People:

Blessed be…we just don’t know

Celebrant:

Pray, brothers, that our sacrifice may be acceptable to God, the almighty Father, to somebody.  Maybe.

People:

May the Lord, or the baggies, accept the sacrifice we offer with
our own burnt hands
For the praise and glory of…of what?
For our good, and the good of all His Church.

PRAYER OVER THE GITS

Little green cans, and I don’t care
Little green cans, and I don’t care
Little green cans, and I don’t care
Air cover’s gone away.

EUCHARISTIC PRAYER

Preface for the Monsoon Season:

Father, all-powerful
And ever-living God,
We do well always and everywhere
To give You thanks
Through Jesus God our Lord
Even with diarrhea
thanks
When the mail doesn’t come
thanks
When we rot
thanks
When the heat ***** at our brains
thanks
When the mud ***** at our boots
thanks
When the horror ***** at our souls
thanks
We’re alive
thanks

SANCTUS

Holy, holy, holy, Lord, God of power and might
The bunkers are full of blood and death.
Hosanna in the mud.  Blessed is he who comes with the mail.  Hosanna in the mud.

EUCHARISTIC PRAYER

The Kien Tuong Province Canon:

A sailor is silhouetted against the dawn
Along a steamy river
Mostly helmet and flak jacket
Above dark plastic gunwales

The sailor has lost his New Testament
But there’s a ******* around somewhere
Naked, willing women –
Miss March wants to be an actress

He also carries an old plastic Rosary
To touch occasionally
While whispering a hurried Hail Mary
He hopes She understands

Those who in bell-bottoms and head-bands
Fight Fascism
In Sociology 201
Will never forgive him

A sailor is silhouetted against the dawn
This day he is to be elevated
His body broken and his blood shed
For you and for all men

OUR FATHER

Our Father, who art in Heaven
this ain’t it
Hallowed be thy name
Thy kingdom come
this ain’t it
On earth as it is in Heaven.
Give us this day…
not ham and lima beans
And forgive us our trespasses
as we shoot them that trespass against us
And lead us not into ambush
But deliver us from evil

SIGN OF PEACE

Peace on you.

AGNUS DEI

Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world: have mercy on us.

Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world: have mercy….

Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world: grant us peace.

Priest:

(But there is no priest)

People:  

Lord, I am not worthy to receive you,
But only say the word and I shall be killed.

COMMUNION ANTIPHON

They ate, and were not satisfied
They killed, and were not without fear.

PRAYER AFTER COMMUNION

Lord,
If we do not get out of this
Make some sense of it to those who remain
May we go home.  Home.  Or if not,
Take us unto you, in mercy.
Home.  Where you reign, for you are Lord
Forever and ever.  Amen

BLESSING

May you walk on grass that does not explode
May you sleep without rot
Without fear
May you never see or smell ham and lima beans again.
May you live
May you play with puppies
May you find forgetfulness
May you find peace
In the Name of Him who took your death for you

DISMISSAL

This is to certify that____is Honorably Discharged from the____on theday of____.  This certificate is awarded as a testimonial of Honest and Faithful Service.

CLOSING HYMN

Old men, smoking in the sunshine
Exiled outside the doors of life
Old uniforms, old pajamas
The chrome of wheelchairs, shiny, bright

Inside, polished wooden handrails
Line the hot, polished passages
Something to cling to on the way
To the lab, to x-ray, to death

And more old men, shuffling along
In a querulous route-step march
From Normandy, from The Cho-sen,
From the Vam Co Tay, from the deserts,
Past the A.I.D.S. ward and the union signs
On waxed floors to eternity

Portions previous published:

“Closing Hymn” is from “Outpatient Surgery – Veterans’ Hospital,” Juried Award, Houston Poetry Fest 1993

“In the Cold White Mist” is a Juried Award, Houston Poetry Fest 1991

“Old Man, Viet-Nam,” was published in Pulse, Lamar University, 1982

I've spoken,
about my boxes,
my memories,
my friends.

Each one,
they're different,
none the same.

While cleaning,
I began opening boxes,
taking a peek at the ones I haven't seen in awhile,
as I was looking again,
I began re-sorting.

High school friends,
from middle school friends,
from elementary friends,
then true friends from fake,
slowly my shelves started to clear.

I didn't throw any out,
just re packaged.
Added new labels,
moved them around.

They're all still around,
just in new places.

*I've changed my priorities,
adjusted my life,
made it better for me

A Few lines etched where no words give weight.

Good riddance say the veterans
Of a nation gone sour with grief
Like a lemon slice evaporating onto the tongue of the sick.
But when the young yearn for White Nights,
The old claim they are blinding lights to the cold sugary substance
That supplants an easy path.
The bullithole rush of renewal and loneliness and progress thwarted and abandoned,
Inertia seeping through
Into a cold summer's day.

Between the cursing slant of sleek paved roadstrips,
And the burning briars that thresh the border's haunt,
What is picture postcard emerald
Is in that same instance soviet architect gray.

These are the sleepers bereft of the dream
whose twenty-five stories high
or ghost estates
are domes to cast out the howling banshees, those suffrage of the real
to be re-thought as mere props which surround the haloed glowing screen.

So sheen the Motherland glows in untarnished eyes
Familiar solely with glass behemoths parading with their reflections
In grey water-drizzled streets,
Only to be replaced by iridescent rainbows that foster a hope.
A hope that was packaged and sold two decades back
Since it was not worth carrying into the New World.

The water-trough falls to where the electric line banishes, connects a spike,
"rejuvenate the breakfast table"-some far-off God reports, Hades still waiting,
Intel-chip Blue, epiphany at the gates.

Piggies dancing, floating along narrow passages towards what they hope is their ends. Their means have been stolen and packaged and sold by big suited, corporate, handy-handy machines. They eat piggies every day and love it, love it, love it down their gullet.
They are not worth a mention yet they get it, they want nothing but your attention, they don’t need it yet they get it. Their appetites are insatiable and contagious, they use it against us by showing us how we are nothing but what they are     and we are fools enough to take it as Truth.
                                                          ­                                                                 ­                                      Shame.
We have shame because they debase us and hence debase themselves.
We have shame because we see their debasement and yet powerlessness is in our bones.
We have shame because all we want is not all we get and nowhere near all we deserve,
-it measures much lower.
   It is irrelevant, it is biased, it is useless, IT is un-real-(UnRealistic, UnRelated, UnTrue)
                                                                ­                                                                 ­                          Lie.

If my breath stinks or my hair is greasy or my cloths *****, my teeth yellowed, my feet smelly, my nails long, my social life quiet and solicitous-   will you discern a negativity in my human-ness? We are no villains. We hate only those who would have us believe that we must hate ourselves and each other. They are no beasts like us. The animal within, encased by a carapace of Humanity glued and mortared by self-centered ideologies gets too thick and you must break it by looking at yourself. ******* and ******* and spitting and grunting and moaning in ecstasy and pain.
Repeat after me and say it loud with beastly yell “ I am a ******* beautiful Animal!”

‘Shadow of the day’

Play and play and release the locks of this attraction.

Sway and displace the diamond sealed in the concrete.

It shone and sparkled immense value.

Could’ve never ended and remained in your zone.

An amazing soul, rare and simply beautiful.

Replace this with thoughts known,

You pure gold, wish forces could entwine this desire not a norm.

Came packaged in a lovely form.

I viewed your sense and values and even butterflies fluttered and passed out from your flood of casual injection of euphoria.

Seems too futile…sadly the world hardly awards love.

Will it sub-side, found a real prince of note…maybe it could’ve been groomed and grown with the days.

Is it possible to remove such a being from my rooms of thought?

Will it get better or worse with time?

Hardly unreal when lips only recite our memories.

Make what’s engulfed me in your aura die,

It’s not needed, not happening again.

Why is it now…over and over again.

The stenches of my lust for you,

My longing to be in your presence.

For once, can I be blessed with  treasure like you.

Shiny and rare…beautiful and valuable.

Regrets of loving so easily has now become a punishment.

Again I need to mend the pieces,

The millions of pieces broken by heavy disappointment.

Why did those words you said colour my ears,

How can you have made me feel liked yet you saw past me.

Haven’t my feet walked this hurt before.

Seems things are too heavy…

Never golden or maybe their lame gestures have rusted my heart.

Hardly any good in the possibilities, I hate these realities.

I’m fed up with these warriors who easily pull on my heart-strings.

Where shall I rest?

Find comfort and acceptance from the evil rest.

I saw sanctuary in your eyes,

Pictured a loving soul and felt a honourale being from your touch.

Loosen my grip on what will never happen.

Too raw…yet the heart has become immune.

Now mind and energy drowns in gloom.

20years of living…still I believe in love.

Still I want to believe there’s one for me.

Understanding and equally loving.

But…sadly there’s been no luck.

Maybe, just maybe it’s my fault.

Maybe I reveal too much and have them regretting they laid eyes on me.

'i've only ever really read one poem. i, i have to admit.*  
You know, that, that one poem that everyone’s read, whatsit,
Howl by Ginsberg, 'best-minds-of-my-generation-destroyed-by-madness,-starving-hyste­rical-naked,' , yeah, that one;'
'It's just, I identify with it so strongly.' she says,
'That poem is soo me.'
It's funny how commentary on a generation 60 odd years ago come across as timeless insights..
how we learn that true spirit of rebellion and counterculture three generations ago,
  as it is taught to us by two generation ago countercounterculture academics.
but I guess, inevitably
                                         we
                                                  return,
  to those half drowned pontifications inevitably decried into transcendental truth by the onward spilling ratchet of cultural recognition;
  that sense of universal oneness generated by the unwashed ramblings of beat-generation hipsters dense innuendo in run on sentences running, running from their upper-lower-middle-class New York homes and their privilege of true vacant meaninglessness and despair,
   to those nervous tucked in shirted clean shaven scholars swooning over the same seme drugged, melancholic bearded men profussing the deepest of opaque truths only found up the furthest reaches of their own *****.
  As we push through to our lectures, the mosaic in motion of blazer wearing mac-users and mac-pac wearing blazers,
  As we hysterically interpret the formatting conditions for our reports, which could hang in the balance of whether the dreams we once had will ever be actualised,
  As we felt lost and found and found and lost at those park benches under the stars, where occasional strangers strolled by offering sessions and life-stories,
  As we paid exorbitantly to get out of our parents homes, and into tin-can flats with broken windows, absentee landlords and cracked paint only held together by all the moss, (the empowerment that is wage slavery,) for in our youth, poverty is not an ever-present pejorative, but the rite of passage to show that we are alive,
  As rituals of manhood are defined by two things and two things only; how much insomnia one can accumulate to meet insane and inane deadlines, and how much one can illuminate the walls in ***** from all the beers, spirits, cheap wines and questionable home-brews,
  As the government dismantles the human-rights commission, and we nervously attend the rallies initiated by the radicals, and the man on the megaphone calls on the crowd to chant and we can only mumble and laugh nervously at ourselves,
  And when the next speaker runs onto stage feeling the need to plead to this already nervous, placid mass that this is in-fact a PEACEFUL PROTEST, and that we are all true patriots and they insist everyone start singing the national anthem and we all look down and we again mumble, or pretend somehow not to hear them,
  and when, in this biggest independent rally around a unified cause our generation's ever seen, we have never felt so alone ,
  and isolated,  
                                  we
                                             remember,
                                                                    those earlier days,
  When we'd bleach our hair; we'd poison ourselves white, in the vain mystic hope that this was just the transition period to the time when we'd get true colour into our lives,
  Remember our wonder at the Eurocentric Asiatic television representations of the Abrahamic faiths, given transubstantiated holy revival by the medium of Saturday morning digital pastel pasture; when we were children staring excited and wide eyed into the Metatrons Fire of Sinai 'Random Almighty Mega Damage'; as Dante and the seraph class Tyrant-infused-Michael inevitably made battle with YHWH, -in the one True End,- as we grinded within the monolithic emerald obsidian halls, Mystical wonderment spilling forth from our reddened hollow eyes, at the beautiful unlimited expansive world contained within our console/consoling digital unit discs; conformally mapped and etched into the convex hull of our minds,
  Where we were gods, doing battle with every possible creature in morphospace, filleted into overpriced cards and cartridges, for which our strategies meant so much to us though none of us really understood the game,
  When we could quote verbatim every piece of dialogue in GTA2, and get concerned glances from our parents as we conjured veiled imagery of bukake-ladled innuendo which we didn't really understand until six or seven years later,
  When sexuality was a special secret club our elders and the kids in the years above came across so wise for being a member of, rather than an anti-turing test; a farcical ritual where everyone tries their best to imitate the hyper-reality of MTV while hiding the nervous feelings that this whole thing was really meant for someone other than us,
  When creating a whole new lexicon for our self-hood (be it artistic, ******, political or philosophical) felt like existential emancipation; a transcendental rebellion against the normalising identities and semantics of old, rather than an impenetrable circle-**** taxonomy,
  When one day we'd unveil a new term in some text, and it would completely change our outlook on every corner of our lives,
  Or, the next day, when we'd give up and just sit back on rolling banks, and look out at a veil of stars,
  Or the next day, when we'd wonder desperate and painfully, which of the last two was the real pursuit and which was wasted time? (Or was it this day, the day spent building an illusory dialectic between them?)
  Remember when we were in kindergarden, and you had to pass through the kitchen, -the adults zone,- to get to the toilet, and you'd feel both shame and wonderment listening in of the snippets of conversation muttered by these titanic figures; discussing abstruse issues from the newspaper in foreign yet noble tongues?
  Remember when we were teens, and every form-checking observation and question from these same adults was so painstakingly pedantically banal and asinine, that one could only respond with monosyllabic grunts and silent hysterics?
  And remember as 'young adults', when we'd inevitably entered this same dull Aristotelian world of forms, how we'd ask the same adults for advice on filling these paperworks, at once still asemic gibberish, and at once the fine-print that contained and predicted our lives?
  Remember when our dreams for the future were not bounded by the economy of our grade point averages and just how much debt we were willing to incur
                                …
I've seen the best minds of my generation climb into pre-packaged little boxes; and pay through the teeth for the privilege of doing so.  
  Akin to a 'Howl' they call it? Our cry for selfhood? What a scream.
It's not even a cry. Barely a whimper.
More of a zombified groan, completely aware our intrepid Journey of Self is just a pricey guided tour. (Tv Ad's static commodified existential emancipatory platitudes; 'your place in the world' / 'well it's my place and it's my time' urgh.)
And so we march asleep; all lame all blind.
  Trudging through the mind-fields; arguing, unravelling the semantic distinctions between the empty boundaries and the boundaries of emptiness.
  Transcribed down for essay deadlines,  /  assessing our lives trajectory as dead lines,
Becoming increasingly aware,
  We are not the living beings, the dasein, the Übermenschen being actualised; we are the machinery through which the institutions, the factories, the markets and education facilities actualise themselves.
  (While the only acceptable language we can breathe in opposition to these ratcheting pedagogical machines is the lexicon they provide us..
  ('oh, you hate systemic neoliberal alienation; the deestablishment of ontological anthropocentrism? Tell me more about the esoteric uselessness of academic culture.') bluh.)

But

       the more we follow those phantom images we built of ourselves,
the more we become aware they are but sirens; hypnotic dreamlike figures luring us to our doom,
  and as this awareness dawns; and the cognitive dissonances and schizophrenia grows,
       We


                                just try to keep calm and carry on regardless.

Can we really claim the arrogance of having a better path?
The conceit that there's a better cliff we should be guiding ourselves to to top ourselves off?
I don't know,
I reaally
really
just don't know.

collector of iron and all things metal
carried without slightest lament
by
beautiful brown-and-white nag with overflowing mane
clip-clops up and down
every road there is
and even beyond



1.
little doubt exists
of fine ingenuity
of said collector
who wastes no moment nor chance
to scour every luck’s platform
with sharp intuition and assiduous eyes
          an old stove with absent racks
          a precious copper geyser gutted with no fittings
          pine-planks discarded due to skew-cuts
          aluminium pipes abandoned with twisted ends
          old screws with rusty whorls from an recently bucket-kicked geezer’s garage
          parts of a car . . . an ****** gearbox and ancient exhausts
heaps of junk and piles of crap clang on cart
a veritable dump in some eyes but those of
the cool collector who takes all the sweepings in gracious stride
cast-off penalties and chaffs of society’s unwanted

2.
once a week on Saturdays
these wares are parked near the parking lot
for all to approach
to see
a fine spread of legend and lore
     bric-à-brac and books to browse
so many things of interest
     magazines and manuals with miscellany-topics under the sun
     hipflasks of silver and clear-cut carafes
     unused greeting-cards with dressed-up paper-dolls
     rare literature well-thumbed with care
and things you’d sure chuck out
mechanical entrails and shiny things
yet
quite a spectacle to behold
costing a joke but for you
a fraction of today's ha'penny

3.
nobody knows why the quiet collector takes the time of day
to re-inforce that fixture-presence
a kindly soul with half-smile always flirting round the lips
and greets with old-century warmth o'er book-edge, markedly a poem-spine
walking closer to peep curiosity around
relaxed eyes let one be
          no compulsive sales-talk
          no eager-****** hopping
just sitting back in deep hiker’s green fold-up chair
easy posture and half-drooped eyes with soft drink close at hand

4.
the collector really watches all who pass
     who go by on their daily trails with rituals oft unchanged
     who fuss ever-plaintive over facetious deets like school-tasks
as they return their books long overdue while whistling smasher-hit tunes (never to be heard)
     who rush to catch an ever-noisy taxi with their own raucous guards
     who help heaving housewives cursing under breath climb on board
as their groceries groan and nearly drop from overladen plastic bags
     who ignore for now with studious intent the hobos on the pavement there
     who beg lost coins for empty-belly from the tattered purses in bosoms
while others cry out impatient at peripheral nuisances
     who act as indiscreet ‘car-guards’ ostensibly guarding cars, even with folk in it

yes, he watches
and observes with keen eyes yet never obvious
even those who saunter by
with pondering glance and walking stick
even as years have graciously touched their brow
he sees them *tut-tut the ******* on the wall
like stray-dogs in a pound

5.
once in an often while
this collector who loves a rediscovered hypothesis
to explore the myriad facets of humanity
does an odd turn now and then
when walking to the toilet at the local library
which has parked itself adjacent to this lot
drops a twenty-buck note near the side
and soon joyful sees the utter surprise
when tired high-school kids with sullen backpacks
do a double-take
espy their luck . . . whoo-hoo, look!
their gloomy cloaks of learning plain melts
they take off sure-footed and lighter of heart
and repair to the fish-and-chips shop
they share their vinegary ***** in a finger-licking circle
and amity strong-cemented in a cool memory
that they’d recall with fondness many years later
at their 20th school-reunion
and as grand-dads visiting a dying pal

pangs of hunger satisfied
and
not only by them


next time
that note will be dropped in the park nearby
where effete winos sleep their lives away
     who ken much and give not a care
     a kind long not recognised
educated derelicts debate on war-merits and erstwhile musicians play melodic arpeggios
sitting in the gentle arbour-shade of mutual acceptance
with chess-mad players
working out strategy in rapt blade-moves
which belie and scorn the forgotten titles to their name
along with Ph.D to boot

6.
when night-time hails - all grows still again
and settles, though just for a nibble of time
it’s pack-up time
the listening collector hears the owl-hoot’s call
and knows the time has come to rest a bit
     for when the morrow dawns
     all neatly packaged in a brand-new gift called day
it’s back on the road again
to observe once more
with trusted nag in tow
clip-clop . . . clip-CLOP

7.
and the collector is the one
the housewives invite with alacrity to Xmas-lunch
the taxi-drivers offer gifts of goodwill
the school-kids give their chips and last treats
the vagrants seek out to share a ciggie and sympa-chat
the grown men visit for esoteric slim-tomes and philosophical advice
the shopkeepers welcome reassuring presence of

yes, this quiet collector
is the inadvertent guest
to shores of the lonely
the too-busy and life-ridden folk
who seek a sweet smile
just once in a while
in a world
where compassion is not justified by its deep-touches of poverty





no fruitless labour
in one who sees little detriment
but senses the full value of
every item’s moment in vanilla-time
while trying always
to catch
the finest one can be


supreme harvest, indeed
yes :)
love . . . love . . . love . . .





S T, 1 September

You ******, exotic,
Beautiful creature.

I could not be more intrigued by you.

I drove,
46 miles,
just to meet you,
you screamed at me for being late.
I wasn't.
I just live farther from your perspective than you can imagine.

I saw your face,
then I saw your eagerness,
Then I played this game,
Where I googled every word you said,
became an expert on it.
Throwing back refferences to things
i've never seen.

When I rolled in with my cigarette lit,
Sporting my badboy leather jacket,
you asumed I was this rebel.
This dangerous,
adventurous,
amazing creature.
Dropped onto this earth to entertain you.

Today.
That's exactlly what I am.

I'm 46 miles away from my home town.

My foam swords,
magic the gathering cards,
Dungeon and dragons playing self
Packaged tightly in the lockbox at my bedroom door.

The daddy, I became years ago
because I wanted too.

The lover I was raised to be,
watching nothing but romantic comedies my entire childhood
like some sort of propaganda to be the perfect boyfriend.
Tucked crisply into my bed.

My smolder is a gas mask.
you are the poison gas.
It was invented specifically for me to survive when I'm in the trenches with you.
My attitude is an army.
I hold myself like a commander shouting orders at my mind like it needs a leader.

“Stop calling her beautiful, maggot! She wants you to take charge.”

“Sir, yes sir!”

...So uh...
What do you wanna do today?

“What do you think you're doing?
Don't give her options!
Tell her where you're going!”

“Sir, yes, sir”

We're getting coffee.

We go to her favorite coffee house, I guessed.

She gets a nutella mocha.

I get a 16oz almond milk maple syrup latte

She calls me a hipster,
I laugh, I don't disagree.

I give her the radio,
“You pick the music”

“What do you think you're doing maggot!?”

“trust me,
we need to find out what music she likes before I play my music.
It's very important.”

I can pull brilliance out of any genre,
bands she's never heard of, but she'll fall in love with.
She plays show tunes.

Oh...

... Jackpot!

I start the conversation, you ever heard of Rocky Horror?

You ever hear of
Doctor Horribles Sing Along Blog?

You ever hear of
Little Shop of Horrors?

You ever hear of
Repo, The Genetic Opera?

You ever hear of
Hedwig and The Angry Inch?

She has.
All of it.
Every last word.
And she knows all of the words.
In fact,
every song I sing,
she sings along.
Word for word.

I  crack the whip,

you ever heard of Bo Burnham?

She has.

This girl might be the one.

“What do you think you're doing maggot?
Don't fall in love with this girl already,
Don't fall in love with this girl at all.”

“Sir, yes, sir”

We walk the beach,
Singing,
Dancing.
Every word of every song either of us start the other knows all the words.
She's breathtaking.
I can't believe it happened myself.
We chase each other in the sand.

I confess.

“You're actually the first person i've seen in real life from tinder...
I hear all these stories of couples meeting people for threesomes online and then murdering them.
I was half expecting you to **** me.”

She says:

“Well we didn't get to the end of the beach yet.”

I laugh.... wait... is she serious?

She laughs. “No really, i'm a sociopath.
My boyfriends waiting at the rocks down there and when we
Start to **** he's gonna jump out and slit your throat.
The redness of your blood spilling on the rocks is going to make me so,
*******,
Wet.”

This sounds like a great Idea.

She texts her boyfriend and asks if it's okay to kiss me.
When he doesn't reply she spams him.

Babe.

Babe.

C'mon Babe.

Really, Babe.

Babe.

Babe.

Babe.

It starts to rain,
We stay and get soaked together,
We don't care that we're wet, we keep singing.
The rain stops.
We get in my car.
I drive her to portland,
We park in the parking garage,
because i don't understand...
Signs...

I buy her dinner,

Not because it's the polite, gentlemanly thing to do,
I'd do that without the leather jacket, no.
because her sugar was low
she was having a panic attack
her boyfriend and her were probably breaking up and I felt bad.
Her boyfriend finally texts her back.

“Yeah, do what you want.”

I kiss her.

She asked me too before he gave permission, and my colonel said to do it

But I've been on the otherside of that text messege.

And even knowing what she wanted, I was waiting for that reply.
I don't know that boy.

But he deserved that

We go back to the parking garage, and she does not waste time,
My belt undone,
Her mouth eager,
Did I mention that this was the mission?
After awhile She asks to go to the back.
We do.
She removes the leather jacket.
this is her chance to wear
The leather jacket.
I make her ***,
I have this brief thought that maybe she faked it for me, but then
I can taste the truth,
I'm proud.


“Good job, maggot.”

“Sir, thank you, sir”


I drive the 46 miles back to kennebunk to drop her off.
She keeps my shirt.
I get home and find her phone charger in my backseat.
“Looks like we have a second date,"

I text her. “you forgot something, beautiful.
And I think you might want it.”

A Few lines etched where no words give weight.

Good riddance say the veterans
Of a nation gone sour with grief
Like a lemon slice evaporating onto the tongue of the sick.
But when the young yearn for White Nights,
The old claim they are blinding lights to the cold sugary substance
That supplants an easy path.
The bullithole rush of renewal and lonliness and progress thwarted and abandoned,
Inertia seeping through
Into a cold summer's day.

Between the cursing slant of sleek paved roadstrips,
And the burning briars that thresh the border's haunt,
What is picture postcard emerald
Is in that same instance soviet architect gray.

These are the sleepers bereft of the dream
whose twenty-five stories high
or ghost estates
are domes to cast out the howling banshees,those suffrage of the real
to be re-thought as mere props which surround the haloed glowing screen.

So sheen the Motherland glows in untarnished eyes
Familiar solely with glass behemoths parading with their reflections
In grey water-drizzled streets,
Only to be replaced by iridescent rainbows that foster a hope.
A hope that was packaged and sold two decades back
Since it was not worth carrying into the New World.

The water-trough delving where the electric line banishes,connects a spike,
"rejuvenate the breakfast table"-some far-off God reports, Hades still waiting,
Intel-chip Blue, epiphany at the gates.

**** head, struggling for breath
Final hit, before the red
Light flashes, warning to stop
Over dose, **** the innards
She never chose to lose this
Battle, between herself & it
Where'd she go, lost in space
Chasing herself, a dog with his tail
Praying to an above, to lead her
Straight laced, not swerving off track
Please God save me, her last plea
Before another day dawns, her final wish
Sketcher, tweaker, where's that syringe
The lights too bright, reality a curse
Rolled up in rehab, another ghetto kid
Not this girl, high class, white, moneyed
Lost to the night, speed freak, hopeless
Drowning in addiction, using again
Chemical structures defining her fate
Her brain the game
Disfigured face, unrecognizable eyes
Family love, isn't ever enough
Rushed to ER, another broken soul
Promises that drugs will save her
When only she can ever
Save herself
This time, she's not another life
Lost
The Gods sure blessed her, not with
Her wish
So she's packaged off to rehab
The third times a charm, right?

© Sia Jane

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.

They began without notice, in the city of Mombasa
By the Al shabab shooting baby Osinya in the head,
Killed the mother, leaving a slug stuck in Osinya’s head
Killing and mauling many others macabrously,
Killing for no other reason, but tribe and faith,
Their victims confess different religion and ethnicity.

They had initially lynched the West Gate Mall
In Nairobi, killing the aged and seasoned darling
Of African poetry and true fountain of peace
The dearest Kofi Awonor, in full watch of his son,
Confirming a trail of the ghastly curse of fate and death
That totted him arduously from his home in the west
Of the tropical gulag that makes the land of Africa
From where the terror maestro ; Boko haram reign scot free
Mayheming, Killing, ******, and kidnapping harmless virgins
Killing For no other reason but tribe and faith,
Their victims confess different religion and ethnicity.

They have now killed fifty peasants in Mpeketon town,
****** them in circles to puncture their virginity
and brutally kidnapping those that are not *****,
Using the AK 47 and the Ak 74 to shoot and ****,
Without reason nor course but failure of mind
Botched down by authenticity of holy diversity
Heavenly packaged in God’s idea of tribe,
Uhm! An African man with a gun is a brute of brutes,
Giving an African a gun is simple mess of the world
In to helter-skelter poise tilting peace higgledy-piggledy,
Killing one another like animals premised by Charles Darwin
As overtly seen in the warring Congo and CAR,
Where Africans **** one another in a stupid dint,
To ape Rwanda or no! To outshine the Jewish Massacre
In the Ammonium chambers of fuehrer Adolf ******,
This stupid Africans baser than wild beasts,
Who told you that your greatness will come
from killing your neighbours; the fellow peasants?
These African men are the modern homoguerrillus,
Which one call cheap war making man
They and **** ! ****! ****! ****! ****! ****! ****,
For no other reason but faith and tribe,
Their victims confess different religion and ethnicity.

Gunshots of the gunmen in Africa are not
A song of the caged bird, no whatsoever,
They are cowardly maneuvers of the weak
As the weak and cowards rarely forgive,
They arm themselves to the teeth
With deadly weapons from Russia or wherever
Only to shoot and **** the old and malnourished
Peasant women, killing the likes of baby Osinya
Shooting a suckling baby to prove your heroism,
These African men are really a Whiteman’s burden,
They **** their fellows from cockcrow to chick roost
For no other reason but tribe and faith,
Their victims confess different religion and ethnicity.

i was born under
a pennsylvania moon                
in the middle of jericho.

where all the walls
had decided
they were done
being womb                              
and crumbled to the blow
of winter winds.

i was whisked out of
from my cocoon
too soon                                  
and spent weeks
piped to feed and breath
for me.

the moment
they let me out                          
i moved back forth.

i have been hopscotching
from city to city
since 06
and thus have forgotten
how to play dominoes.
or cards or do puzzles
or anything done sitting still
because the rhythm                                
of my life
doesn't allow me
to squat for too much
longer than the linger
of my scent cross these sheets
so i've learned
to sink in deep while i can

place my print in
these pillow tops
before the moon drops              
and its moving day again.

i find it hard
to be me sometimes.
too busy trying                          
be a resident.

sometimes i pretend
im a committed writer
but come on,
****** spend more time
trying to pair their                      
tops and shoes
then i do
scraping these wounds
over screens
letting ink bleed.

i'm just not
consistent enough                  
to hold a title.

i'm only a student
til the summer
so don't try and teach
me in july.
there are summer sins                
that i wont even
begin to learn from
til autumn starts to
reek of jansports
and gym clothes.

i'm only the baby
on holidays.
only hear from all
3 sisters when courtesy            
twists our wrists
and force fingers
to remember phone numbers
filed under family.

so i cant believe
when ****** still
text me good mornings.
there's been so many
since we've last talked            
and the last time
we walked the same grounds
i switched my route
and pretended
i didn't see you.

ashamed i let you
think there was
room in my inconsistency.
should've warned you
not to bring your pillow          
cause there's little
chance ill still
like you in the morning.

those sunrises can be            
so haunting.

when the sun
is so low
its shape is tombstone          
how could i not
bring up those bones
in my closet?

i cant answer your call
today because                      
we were never meant
to last past 24 hours.

that's like two fireflies
trying to keep                        
their glow past dawn.
don't you find it pointless?

i have learned
to harvest as much as i can
before the season ends        
and the infatuation                          
turns to wrinkles
and withers.

alysia once said
poets love love
because love is life
and we're
afraid of death
so we create                      
between where we
are and were
and where we were going
but i am here.

standing in a shower
trying to scrape
these postage stamps
off my corners                  
cause cargo holds
haven't been
all that good to me.

i've been packaged
and stamped and
boxed and shipped me    
more times than i'll admit
because honesty
doesn't drip off your lips
as easily as blood
when you hit maturity
and are taught
to bite your tongue.

the only roots i have
were sowed                  
in my convictions      
so i'm destined to roam
everywhere except
in my faith.

my sister knows
of my wishes
to never have to wilt        
beneath mahogany.
i want to be cremated
when i die.
i want to be fire fly.
bathed in the bright
of a thousand fireflies
in a daytime thunderstorm
to make up for lost time.

but don't
scatter my remains.
sit me in a vase
on the end
of your mantle            
with a candle
and ill pray
for you're stability
for all the days
i spent in transit.

after living all those years
in solidarity                    
with the wind
i'd at least like to
spend my sleep
in one spot.

the dead poet of your romantic youth
left behind his melodious words in song
left behind his roadside fast eyes neatly packaged
still can purchase his dream down at the five and dime
still can find a tight leather pants version
of his photograph looking lizard like
in clean bollywood style

the dead poet of your romantic youth
lingers there in her eyes
she always said he was so rad
with her eighties big hair
the dead poet was in one of his many revivals
they would drag the poor old slob out
prop him up and take a picture
the dead poet lizard king
his words faded now
as his star on the walk of fame

The Frog That Took A Giant Leap For Their Kind"  
 
Forever being laughed at for not being able to leap  
Always last in the frog army sport, called ‘Jumping over the Jeep’
The little jump frog was embarrassed to belong to such an army  
So he packed his things and headed off on a long journey  
He crossed all over, the large wetlands of Florida USA  
Even made a makeshift home, made out of some hay  
After feeling a very warm heat, from about a mile away  
He came across some steps, but when climbing, they began to sway  
Frightened by a loud bang and an almighty explosive roar  
He hopped inside the nearest room, via a big white door  
Then, all of a sudden, he felt his feet, effortlessly lift off the floor  
Floating past a small window, he couldn’t see the earth, anymore  
After a while, the room hit the ground, with an almighty thump  
Looking out, he saw a strangely dressed man, pray and then jump  
He followed the man and went on down a few gigantic steps  
After making his biggest ever leap and without special effects  
Luckily, the frog was caught on camera, so became the first of his kind  
To reach the faraway moon and take a great leap, if you don't mind.  
 
 
 
"The Hare That Looked Out Of Place"  
 
The local country fair had arrived in town  
But one animal was looking angry and down  
For the farmworker had placed the hare at the fair  
With another breed of animal, without any care  
He looked out of place, while sitting in the dog pound  
To the hare it felt more like a very scary hunting ground  
One child yelled out, "That's a very small doggy, Mummy"  
No it's not, said Mummy, but it'll make the dogs meal taste so yummy  
She ran to the ticket seller and said, "There's a hare out of place"  
He said, I think your hair is fine madam, but here's some gel, just in case  
When the farmer found out, he ordered the workers to quickly catch it  
And to make sure there's no more hares where the dogs will sit.  
 
 
 
"The Sheep That Escaped From The Bars"  
 
The large family farm was not really up to par  
Because the farmer would keep the sheep behind an iron bar  
They wanted to escape from behind the metal brass  
And wander about and eat more of the fresh green grass  
Eating packaged food was not treating them well  
But they were getting upset tummies and not feeling that swell  
So they hatched a plan so they could graze on the vast land  
A billy goat agreed to fetch a plank of wood and give them a hand  
In return he would get all the leftovers of the sheep's fake food  
So one by one they took the plunge and escaped for a better mood  
The goat had a ball opening and then eating so much more  
And the sheep could be heard for miles, laughing Baa-Baa galore.  
 
 
 
"The Monkey That Lost His Grip"  
 
His name is Chip and he just can't get a grip  
He has to hold on tight for the entire round trip  
His friends in the troop said he wasn't very hip  
Always having to wear a parachute with a safety clip  
He tried to branch out one day, but fell and hurt his hip  
Then one day he got up early and decided to leave without the equip  
Now the monkey named Chip was so brave and he ran with a skip  
And he swung from branch to branch without any major slip  
His friends were in awe of his huge lunges and gave no more lip  
So from that day forth, everybody said he had great grip to do his solo flip.  
 
 
 
"The Cheetah That Wished For No Spots"  
 
Cleaning his teeth using long green grass as dental floss  
The healthy Cheetah often wished he had no more spots  
He was tired of hearing, while playing Hide n Seek, the sound,  
Of his animal friends yelling, "We give up, for you can't be found"  
He thought, maybe he could wash away his camouflage dots  
By soaking himself for a while, in some warm water and soap in pots  
It might be a long shot to remove those game wrecking blots  
But at least his friends would have fun playing in Africa's back lots  
No said his friends, you were born with all of them  
And after all, your spots make us all different, Amen  
So stay like you are and we will find you one day  
But never ever try and wash those unique spots of yours away.  
 
 
 
"The Zebra That Painted Her Stripes"  
 
She looked in the river and saw her reflection  
Her skin colour made males look in another direction  
For her colours were not really that bright  
With her body stripes painted in black and white  
So the next day the lady zebra decided to get a makeover  
By getting colourful paint and brushing it all over and over  
Now she felt like a beautiful diamond of a gem  
And maybe others would take notice, especially the men  
But the day she went back to her favourite watering hole  
Everyone thought she belonged on a merry-go-round pole  
Then it started pouring down, the hail and the wet rain  
And washed off all her colourful paint down the drain  
She wasn't that sad when she heard the laughter of other zebras  
For she was now world famous, from all of the tourist cameras.  
 
 
 
"The Mouse That Was Forever Getting Trapped"  
 
The poor little mouse was forever getting himself trapped  
He couldn't stop from smelling the cheese, even when wrapped  
His concerned mother told him to visit a hypnotist  
To try and help him get off cheese, you get the gist  
If he gets trapped again, he might not be able to tell the tale  
Because if the help he receives fails, his face will turn pale  
So let's hope this short tale of some very sore mouse tails  
Helps the other obsessed cheese loving females and males  
Can the poor little mouse keep away from the snap?  
Let's all hope that he doesn't forget, after taking a quick catnap.  
 
 
 
"The Panda That Got Bored Of Giant Plain Bamboo"  
 
Sitting under the tree eating gigantic bamboo stalks, sat a cute Panda  
But eating one thing all day long was boring for the cutie named Sandra  
So the workers at the zoo tried to change her diet to see what it would take  
They tried strawberries, oranges, pizza, meatballs and even rib-eye fillet steak  
But none of this food worked, to make Sandra the cute Panda, less bored  
The workers were confused why the delicious food was simply ignored  
She started to lose weight and became very agitated  
Quickly the zoo staff asked for help, but really they had to be educated  
For pandas only eat bamboo and not much of the world's fine food  
By just adding a bit of spice would've changed her boring mood  
They hurried back to the zoo kitchen to prepare a spicy dish  
Chopping and stewing and even adding a few drops of relish  
Sandra loved the change in her daily food of bamboo  
And was happy again chewing on her new tasting food at the zoo.  
 
 
 
"The Owl That Didn't Give A Hoot"  
 
When the sun went down and the moon came out  
Some owls could be seen in the trees hooting about  
But a strange noise one owl gave, was worse than a toot  
For the owl, for some reason, didn't give a hoot  
This strange sounding owl instead, made more of a screech  
A sound that the English owls have never been able to reach  
For this different style speaking owl, is on holidays from afar  
And his spoken language is so unusual to ours, by far  
The other owls wanted to know how to screech like this alien bird  
For they were so bored, with only knowing how to speak one word  
So they all took quick language classes to learn how to French speak  
And their guest also learnt to belt out a bit of a hoot, from his foreign beak.  
 
 
 
"The Spider That Stood Too Tall To Crawl"  
 
A large daddy long leg spider named Paul  
Had such long legs he stood too tall to crawl  
He looked like a gigantic monster, standing way up top  
All other spiders who saw him, would come to a complete stop  
Frozen in their tracks, insects would free fall and dive  
And go so low between his legs to hopefully survive  
The spider himself would get a face full of cobwebs  
As he walked so tall into his own hand made project  
Enough he thought, and off he went for a professional opinion  
The doctor said, he had a name for his rather tall condition  
It was called nothing at all, you are like this on earth  
For all daddy long leg spiders are like this since birth  
So he was told to bend down more often, stretch and do some exercise  
And to watch out for that high floating killer insect spider pesticide.  
 
 
 
"The Elephant That Couldn't Make A Trunk Call"  
 
While playing a game of elephant soccer together  
Using a coconut for a ball which was as light as a feather  
The elephant herd had finally ran out of pace  
One player named Noel didn't stop until he fell flat on his face  
When he got home later that night after his great fall  
He tried, but couldn't make his routine long distance trunk call  
But nothing came out and he went into shock  
Noel the elephant thought he had swallowed a rock  
So off down the road to the local doctor he went  
Also complaining about his loss of his favourite flowers scent  
The doctor first said, it could be all in your mind  
But after shinning a light he saw what it was, well down behind  
For it was the coconut the herd had been playing with before, with Noel  
After a tickle on the trunk, Noel shot it out and somehow scored a goal.  
 
 
 
"The Koala That Was Always Bare"  
 
Kyle the Koala loved to just sit in the trees and eat his leaves  
The tourist would come and take photos without having to pay any fees  
But he once took a peek at one of those friendly tourist's cameras Polaroid  
He saw some family pets wearing fashionable clothes and was rather annoyed  
For you see, Kyle then noticed, that he was always totally bare  
Dogs with jackets and cats with gloves, but he had nothing at all to wear  
So he decided to make all of the paparazzi pay for their shots  
When he saved enough money, he dressed up with the lots  
He purchased some pants, a hat and T-shirt and a colourful woolly scarf  
He felt more natural and not as bare, but mainly because, he made all of the tourists laugh.  
 
 
 
"The Rabbit That Stared Into The Light"  
 
When Warren the rabbit went out on the town  
He wore a lucky tail, pinned all the way down  
Hiding from cars, buses and motorbikes driving past  
Then hurriedly crossing the road, hoping not to be the last  
For if you were left behind, you'd be all alone to cross again  
And be able to have the strength to not look into the lights of the men  
But on this night he kept on staring straight into the light  
His mother always told him, to wear sunglasses at night  
The car stopped and out stepped the driver and along with his passenger  
Warren couldn't move even a bit, luckily for him, it was just a messenger  
The driver picked him up and placed him on the other side of the road  
Thanks, he said to himself, next time I might've got no respect, like that man showed.

Yes, I want to be your guitar
That guitar that you’ve fallen in love with at first glance
You can’t let it go; you’ve already carved its features in your heart
I would steal its position, if I only had the chance

You tried averting your eyes from it and looked for other one
It was expensive after all, you can’t afford one
But you did all means in the end, just to have it in your hands
If it was me, would you have done everything you can?

Finally, it was all yours, I was happy for you
With that even brighter beaming smile, who would not?
You started spending time together, like a couple would do
And then I started doubting, I am happy for you, right?

You brought it home and even slept with it
Ah! I was so envious, how I wish those arms were wrapped around me
The two of you under the rain, walking against the wind
Whereas I can only write our names under an umbrella, wishing it can be you and me

I dedicated all love songs to you as you composed your songs for it
Expressing your overflowing love, your undying happiness, it was all packaged in the songs
And though I was so hurt, your songs are always on repeat
Listening and undergoing the same excruciating pain all day long

I’m a mere fan, with a paper and a pen on both hopeless hands
You’re shining brightly on the stage with your guitar, a wonderful superstar
I wonder when this stupidity started, but this poem was made because of this great distance
If this unrequited, one-sided feeling will someday reach you, I’ll tell you, I want to be your guitar