study, cram, call, make plans...
power point, presentation, speech, rewrite...
theory, materialism and idealism and the difference,
Marx, Freud to psychoanalyze...
on to polynomials, linear equations, I make a scientific notation...
take a break. (eat)
ham sweet and thick
with lots of pineapple and some cherries
potato bread and cheese
PowerAde to rehydrate
little vodca with o.j. and cigarette  
after lunch, breathe .
and it’s back to study lab to mentally beat meat.
paper due, final today, did I remember to triple check
and get rid of paper clips, include a cover sheet...
ready to evaluate... I think.
ready to second guess, miss dates and time, "you're late"
again...
95, 98, 3.5 GPA? pre-test, for final, make sure your research is done,
site, source, quote, student rate and double space
power nap, smoke again,
is the day over yet?..

I pose high my chest of ragged ribbons
And unravel a fist to stretch out fingers in search
Of a hand glimmering pale like a lantern
throughout this grey
        empty space. Once a pavement, now as good as

Cloud. Frozen lake. Dust. Boiling ashes. Skeletons.

I am walking on the slashed frames of waves
As jesus once must have. Propelled to a miracle unwitnessned
To anyone but myself. I am impelled to corrode
Into a statue; to remain a rigamortic rotting jade jewel in the sun
Until I no longer can.
Until they found me...

Perhaps they'd dust me off, thaw the ice from my shoulders,
Rehydrate me and gorge me,
Restart the blinking light in my brain
And refrain me evermore from having to seek.

But seek I must, for the lonliness weighs me down
Further by the day. I take half as many steps now as when I began my voyage.
My memories are like ghosts of flames that play
Snakes and ladders and hide and seek.
I am the lighthouse man and I sail drunken--
A rubicund mishape of bone and scuffed thoughts,
I can feel every soul which once embodied and huddled this place.

It's like they are trying so hard to posses me but even
Their souls have been smouldered to whispers
So thin they ring as mutely as the surrounding mist,
So soft they vibrate akin to an infant’s pulse
Throughout these walls, these scrapyards, these crumbling arcades, this sandbox grey that begs for a scream.
The spirit of a tarantula trembles along my back and grazes it teeth against my shoulderblade,
Praying that I turn to confirm it's being –but it's a game I’ve long grown sick of–


I am the lighthouse man and I ceased having a face long ago.
What I recall of my reflection was a child so young and so sure
Of a different life that

I cannot be sure it's even me.

I am the lighthouse man; a puckered bulb balancing on too-big shoulders, that walked
  through barren flat closes and exited empty handed, the lonely poltergeist,
a bitter flab of skin.

I am the lighthouse man and I am the final Aspen leaf in the pond of the universe,
I see myself reflected in a sole star twirling underfoot and overhead
rowing my ears so thick with disfigured silence so that I wished I was born deaf.
I am the lighthouse man and my mind is a spinning fragment
    my eyes can merely follow and my floating steps merely trail.

It never changes tone here, I can only vaguely trace the time
By the occasional moon. Tonight it shines half chewed,
  Befitting the levelled star a sideways crown.
It is beautiful but I mustn't stop to admire, lest a survivor
Scavenger loses patience withholding the last of their scran.

I am the lighthouse man and I haven't eaten in years.

I am the lighthouse man and I bled for the first time yestardy.
I am the lighthouse man and my bulb ricocheted off the base of my skull
In a telling fairy tale dream. I felt static in my head
And my light's ink spilled across my hands and for a minute I thought
My light had gone out. I tasted blood,
Trickled down from my stinging nose and I had never been so scared.

I am the lighthouse man and I never knew I could die.

I am the lighthouse man. Once the world danced with magic and I was
A walking satellite that grew to want to dissapear.
I am the lighthouse man and my decrepitude is casted in my hands:
Black as the night from the dirt collected over the years.
The few slashes of skin clear enough to see look rust-like and obtrusive, outdone only by
My veins like wonky bruises that vine across the silhouetted bone;
Bridging gear to gear, clinking shivering knuckles
         That want nothing more than to surrender.

But I am only frostbit, not frozen.
Life was and thus must still be.
I am a raindrop, not the whole ocean.

I am a walking lighthouse inspecting and guiding empty seas,
A form without virtue
That ceased feeling it's metallic steps too long ago to recall.
A cubist teardrop falling down a grey giant's cheek,
Waiting to be captured and swallowed.

Or perhaps I am climbing uphill, slowly along the circumference of his forehead.
So slowly I cannot notice the rise. Perhaps I was destined to amble in hypnosis,
En route on this colourless limboid curve until I forget the concept of
             a destination, a soul, a matryr jester to rouse me awake...
             and perhaps it is then that I will be blessed with the heavenly bulb

Of the weeping giant on whom's flesh I disturb.
I am the lighthouse man and I dream of purpose.

I am the the lighthouse man with a penchant to levitate
I am the lighthouse man and I am a God without tool or reason.
I am the lighthouse man and I'll walk this limbo until my feet dissapear.

I am the lighthouse man and I am cursed.
I am the lighthouse man transitioning between lives and never knowing
Causality nor the answer. There are no questions to have;

I am the lighthouse man and I must have been a murderer in my past life.
I am the lighthouse man and I can feel my inner fuses twist,
Falling fainter and fainter by the second.
I am the lighthouse man and I will not make it another night.
I am the lighthouse man and I am a memory-bank full of nothing remarkable.
If I felt this months ago then perhaps I would make do with the my sojourn of an empty house, atop a parked car, and perhaps I would be content with rotting.

But now the moon shines so luminously bright and full and close! So very close!
I am the lighthouse man and I chase the moon.
I am the lighthouse man and I vaguely recall my mother saying 'do not eat the moon,
It will give you nightmares!’ and it all suddenly makes sense now.

The stars are all out tonight and they await my company. I am the lighthouse man and now I run.
I run run run run for the sky in ode to the rest of the bodies that abandoned this place.

The
weight of the world sitting dumbly on
those fructose eyelids.

They, in turn.      melt into the mummified  
morning.

laying in the corner forever like a
favorite-shirt
ruined in the wash.
Every other stripe on you is stained pink
from
some cheap volunteer tee that ******              up
The whole load.

Each ray from the blinds
Takes some life away.


Searing past you- into the floorboards
with
quiet fury.

Time passes_
It shoves us down into compact spaces.
(but)
I thought of you
In a shoplifter's prayer.

(There is something left that evaporates out in the form of you)

I imagined you
Still.
But growing
Like
Crystal salts
Crusting up the pores of the earth.

Vapors fumbling upwards to rehydrate
My dry fingers_


We make decisions . that stick around.

We break off blisters. Rip little things that hang off our lips.
We take breaks before we need them.
Take too long to say
**** this.

Thoughtlessness.



Somewhere out there, they are screaming loud.

Somebody either cares or
Doesn't.


The marks on the carpet know better than
us
How to last forever

I want you to consume me as I do you
put me in your mouth
chew me up
swallow me to be absorbed in your system
because you have been drained of me

the smell of cooked meat is
too strong in my nostrils to ignore
the sizzle of oil in the pan is
your fingers running across my stomach
the steam from that *** is
the way my heart flurries when you look at me
I can’t consume anything
because I want to consume you

and you can control the temperature of the pan
and you can check the doneness of the meat
and you can whisk the homemade gravy until it thickens
but can you find me hidden in your meal?

we marry together
like pork and apples
like steak and potatoes
like crepes and dulce de leche
but my shell is cracking
and my form is melting
and my alcohol is evaporating
I am being sautéed, julienned and sous-vided by you
I am losing my flavour

do you promise your pigs you won’t hurt them
before you carve the meat off their bones?
I don’t wish to be hung in a cellar with all the other carcasses you’ve left
hanging by a hook and swinging,
the blood draining from their bodies

I can’t cook
but I would cook you:
reheat your stock,
and rehydrate your fruit,
and flash fry your heart
so your colour returned
and you were mine,
on my plate,
at my table,
holding my hand,
and I could consume the only thing I want:
you
yes, chef
you.

I’m sleeping on raw skin
And fire behind my neck
And swollen eyes
And swollen lies
And lucid dreams melting

I’m sleeping on the prospect of open arms
and warm skin
and caffeine in the morning
so my mind can wonder
and burn itself out
and rehydrate with sleep
and put out the ever embers

But you brought me deep sleep once
And I woke up in time to send you on your way
And  to burn and scald my skin and heart
And sleep amongst the night fires

One day I'll be someone you can talk to,
I'll know what it's like,
know how to feel,
to express this emotion that bubbles in the pit of my gut,
Conditioned to feel nothing,
Nothing, nothing, nothing...
This armour is slowly being taken off, dissolving,
No longer strengthened by the acidity of self destruction,
What's left is closer to the bandages of the ancient Egyptian mummies,
My emotions, themselves drind out and mummified, begin to rehydrate

You've bruises on your thighs,
both sides of skin beat and red.
If this is how he says hello to you
then maybe it's time leave, or is
it time to relieve yourself with
hits and smacks and colourful
comic-book thwacks back so his
****** nose can complement those
he gave you that time in spring.

Take your glass slippers and be
one of those girls in red dresses;
dance, twist, and twirl as well as
the rest of them, churn up that
dance floor ring and take time
out for more drinks, rehydrate
before looking for another long-
term date to be a tactile touch-er
with, another involved and committed
lover.

Take note from the pint husbands
and their half-pint wives around you,
pen a note to yourself for the future
beginning with,
Listen,
then moving swiftly on with,
If you find another man that hits
before he kisses you than you've picked wrong,
ending with,
*You've plenty of time left, stay strong.

days and nights and days
all melding into one
a temporary escape lies
at the bottom of a bottle.

in ash-blackened mountains,
white soldiers in crumbling helmets
crowd glass barracks to the brim
as they burn in embers of regret.

awake, arise and stumble;
residual drunken stupor;
rehydrate as hungry stomach grumbles;
flip through blurred snapshots
of the night before.

double, over-exposures
forever lost in your strobe-light mind.
massaging temples, rubbing eyes,
you let slip this futile plight.

they receive, interpet, discard, rehydrate, delegate, redistribute,
brook no, smile stupidly at stupidity, opinionate but never lecture,
never hector, rarely curse unless it is essential, tell good jokes, abhor verbosity, act on instinct, admit error when instinct stinks, sharpen
their teeth, their tongue, and their verbal reciprocity skills

in case,

life becomes interminable intermittently intolerable when other creatures impose, flagellate, pontificate, render the impossible as quite likely, reveal things I wish I never heard, detail the details of the inexplicably intricate uninteresting with prodigious force, and an unlimited absence of periods, commas, or breaths taken,

and escape
impossible for some meetings require good manners, first dates the remote but not trivial possibility that a false start has or can occur,
(see The Pleated Skirt poem) and the incidence of really good books in very poorly designed book covers…ditto the men variety of same!

The Man Of Metal and Rock (It Just Got Rockier)

The man of rock was sullen in heart,
As that which he held dear to his heart,
Rock was fading from the hollow halls
That he had let loud music vibarte the
Walls apart.

The pub he had called home, helped
The needy, who had to have rock and
Metal in there heart, was closing the
Doors never to open, never music
To entertain the masses, as he left with
A empty heart.

But metal had to live on, so a band
He made the blazing monkeys,
Founded for those that needed
Rock & metal in their heart.

So on they went to find their weapons
Of rock and metal, a drum kit to make the ears
Bleed, to explode a lesser heart. And guitars
To cut through the air, to mend those hearts
Deprived of rock and metal, so onwards to
Rehydrate there minds of what music sounded
Like before pop and rave, that tarnished the art.

Where are You going?
It's been so long headed nowhere
So will You call me when You get there?
Cause I can't follow You anymore

It's aimless when You're wandering
It leaves me helpless and wondering
If what I do will change anything
Because it's never aided Your suffering

Wouldn't it be great if my words were pills to alleviate?
If my syllables were a remedy to rebuild You to Your proper state
If each letter was water to rehydrate

But both of us know that there's no healing in prose
Unless You let the lines linger and see the significance they show and
Allow the implication of their meaning
To bring truth and understanding

But You never do

child
watching sports
winter snow on the ground,
excitement all around,
disappointment when there
are no successes for to cheer,
on the field, in summer heat, people
of all sorts, dressed in shorts
and shoes with cleats or on the
court with nets and lines, or teams
which have personalities unto themselves
greater
than
any one
individual,
but it starts with one
one glimmer
one idea
one shimmer
one hope
one heart,
one mind,
one body,
one purpose,
one aspiration
one respiration
                        of many, many, many, many, many more,
one dream
       go ahead and dream, give yourself permission
one goal,
one plan,
one step at a step at a step at a time,
one time
one fall and another and another and
get up
            keep getting up and
                      start by taking licence plate numbers of what is knocking you down,
one word of encouragement
one passion,
one cry
one exertion
one no quit, just do, no try
one race,
one training session after another until you no longer remember
how many,
one rest,
one injury
remember that part about not quitting,
                                            stop sitting, on
one couch
one bed,
unless it is just for rest,
one water,
times eight
maybe a myth to rehydrate
but no good to dehydrate,
one day and multiply and multiply and multiply
one race,
one standard,
one Olympic dream,
One place on the podium
One Gold Medal,
many people have completed
by different paths and routes
from different countries and one truth,
but even teams, that become one
start with one, individual.


©DWE022014

The bugs have overwhelmed my deet defence,
So I've retreated behind the screen door,
Smoking by the doorway, leaning back in a chair,
Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks, and Christine McVie are haunting me with their words,
To never break the chain...
My eyes feel like there's grit in them,
I drink a glass of water to rehydrate a bit,
To counteract the cigarette's sting,
Of 2 packs smoked when I should have only smoked one.
I feel like a record player, and my table belt is just slightly off kilter,
Making me so my rounds just a little too fast,
Just fast enough to be noticeable and an annoyance.
13% battery left,
How many more can I do?

I am awaiting your presence;
As if my body is in shock and I am freezing to death.
With only one intention, which feeds into an urge to love.
A permissive thought, that only you could bring by touching me once again.

Dying for the plica interdigitalis to be again connected,
And the volar surface of our hands to re-ignite the flame, that once blazed vigorously.

I am awaiting your presence;
To see that beautiful smile
One that lightens my spirit of laughter and joy.

Until then I will remain cold, empty, frustrated like a deserted man waiting for his chance to escape.
Life without you is comparable to the very arteries of our body,
pushing oxygenated solution from the heart to keep the rest of its system alive.
With the exception that, this solution is missing its solvent.
A substance that possesses fluidity,
Your presence would once again rehydrate this dilapidated body.

This leaves me to wonder,
That may be my body would just surrender
To the force of the lacrimal gland, secreting its solution into a hysterical cry.

I am awaiting your presence;
To smell that natural aroma of life
A sense of freshness that illustrates the feeling of springtime once again.
One that will magically open the doors to my heart,
Moving through each of its four chambers, exposing my wall of love.

Open for change, like a plant with blossoms ready to expose its true beauty to the world.
But!!
Take your time because when you do grace me with your presence, your presence will be eternal.

last year's hangover
Morning Star blind
without the ride
of imbibing libations

words bled dry
in powdered thought
desiccated emotion
won't rehydrate unsalted
and I just ain't in the mood

shoulda had that drink
winning every battle
lost in war I can't see
but scars burn deep
courting failure
with fear

why fight fate
in altered perceptions
that are all real enough
to feel
in a world where the
only thing concrete
is thought...

bled dry
in last year's hangover

Unrelenting heat
Persists for protracted days
Outstaying it’s welcome now
Oppressive the lack of shade

Nowhere to escape and hide
From the blinding rays
Sweaty, sleepless nights
Wandering around in a daze

Fatiguing soaring temperatures
Sap vitality
Lounging is all I feel capable of
Low output, productivity

The air so densely humid
Almost another layer to bear
I yearn for the intermittent breeze
To cool and caress my hair

Gooey tarmac
Scorched white grass
Too prickly to sit
It scratches my a**e

Too sweltering now to bask
And obtain a golden glow
Instead I dodge the searing fingers
That singe me as they stroke

From dawn til dark and into the night
The temperature persistently high
I toss and turn and beg for mercy
But it continues until it’s light

Oh pretty please would you kindly
Turn it down a notch
It’s boring now, really
To be so burning hot

Bring on the rain
To cleanse us all
Extinguish the furnace
Rehydrate, let it fall!

Drench my skin
Until I’m soaking wet
Bring about rebirth
I entreat, nay, I beg!

Summer breeze

A sweet warm crawls arround the neck
The bright blue ocean
The shiny day
Never ending smile and laugh
The drinks rehydrate the body

Until a phone rings
Shaken the earth

It supposed to be shiny but now its thunder
It supposed to be the chickadee not the raven
A bright and vibrant color shall be the main colour, not the black with the sorrow
The tears with the screams
Hoping it would never happen

It was the breeze kept him happy
It's the breeze making him suffer.

Shadowed dream reality,
peppered curious chaos,
delving into karma
with a silver teaspoon.

Stirring dangerous emotions,
in cauldrons of cast iron,
where hearts once were,
now cold and dark, the fire gone.

Irradiated kisses burn,
into skeletal cheeks,
once plump with joy
now evaporated.

Sweet condensed tears
drip dewy trails,
falling on empty palms,
dried, unable to rehydrate.

Parchment soul written,
the final story read,
now crumbled
and blown away.

We wander in the smoke
Of the fires we never should have fought
But we thought we knew
A thing or two, about calamity
Having burned the world around us
So many times for such small reasons
That when the rains came
Like a transcendent ritual
To clean out the sky
Of the cinders of our sins
You’d think that would have been enough
Of a miracle to rehydrate
Our choking spirits
But maybe we were meant to burn
In the unexpected beauty
Of these Armageddon sunsets
Full of imbalance and entropy
Where the dead wood of you and me
Needs the lightning
And the imagined ending of everything
To find a place
To let the green things grow