It’s 6:47am on a Monday morning on I-71 south towards Cincinnati and I’m driving in the middle lane entirely surrounded by semis and service trucks and out of nowhere, like it was some miracle act of God, it starts pouring down rain so hard that all of the traffic stops in the height of morning rush hour, everyone’s radios playing morning talk shows so loud it vibrates the ground our tires are on and everyone’s coffees move back into their hands from their cup holders, I guess we’re all just trying to wait it out right now

I guess I have no choice but to wait it out right now, he says, hoodie wrinkled, two all nighter’s deep and still no passing grade, standing outside of the campus Starbucks, as it’s pouring down rain

I guess we’ll have to wait it out, says my sister to an 8 year old me, as I wait on the curb of our neighborhood for the ice cream truck, no matter how disfigured the spongebob popsicle’s face looks by the time I get it in my hands, and no matter the fact that I never understood that his eyes were bubblegum

I guess I have to wait it out, my father says, watching my grandmother lying in her hospital bed, getting tests taken for her potentially and what would be proven deadly, lung cancer,
Her eyes glossed over and her lips still yearning for the pull of her usual afternoon pack of cigarettes

You just have to wait it out, says my grandpa, standing next to me in his garden, after having helped me plant my first tomato seeds,
The summer has felt like forever at 10 years old, I wish it stayed that way, and I wish I liked tomatoes

I guess we just have to wait it out now, the head of police says to his crew of swat members, after having everything fail towards coaxing a young high school boy out of his boarded up bedroom, the shotgun he killed his ex girlfriend with, still in his arms

Well, we’re just going to have to wait it out,
I think to myself as I sit in this traffic at what is now exactly 7am on a rainy Monday morning in the middle lane of I-71 south towards Cincinnati, entirely surrounded by semis and service trucks

The rain will stop eventually

Turn on the TV and switch off your brain,
tune into Jezza as you fade out the shame,
point at his cattle, and laugh at their pain,
forget their faces,
cos’ they all look the same.
Memorise headlines, forgetting you’re smart,
the news screaming fear, as this world ‘falls apart’
hating your neighbour’s a good place to start,
he’s likely a ****, or a bomber  
at heart.
‘England Expects’ is their asinine bray,
as they talk up the players on ‘Match of the Day’
before posting on Twitter that one of em’s gay.
‘Oh we lost in the semis?’
Start feigning dismay.
Forget about stress, skip working hard,
you can lend owt till payday, or just get a new card,
it doesn’t matter, if your credit is barred,
say you slipped in reception,
and hit your knee hard.
Now! Vital News! Our cameras have spied,
the markings of botox on that celebrity bride.
Maybe it’s scandal, there’s no rush to decide,
you’ve opened the box,
and its trapped you inside.

dear lord i
want to do
things i will

not regret eternally
i sleep in
your hammock love

i am no

longer in

hiding

but rather waking
to the silence
of my hut

to the how-are-you-this-mornings
of the secret friend
and friends

singing
songs
to

each other as
the semis roar
by on the

highway headed for
nyc or maybe
bridgeport

dear lord thank
you for life
for this hut

for this blanket
please wrap your
grace around those

who are doing
without wrap it
around me that

i may wrap
it around others
heal us and

we'll be healed
save us and
we'll be saved

Kaitelka was in the Equinoctial Aftó, she bathed but always oriented herself as an Argonaut star bathing in the Aegean while waiting for the ******* of Áullos Kósmos. Between both Aulos and Citara, she modeled the auletic- citaristic, in glimpses of her Psychic Trisomy.  In effect of the existence of an extra chromosome in a diploid organism 158, for a number of chromosome fifty-four, instead of a homologous pair of chromosomes. From this position she was limiting her chromosomes of normality in the genetic proximal when entering the bay of Skalá that she was waiting for her native, where the art of navigation danced in the nitrogenous water that brought her from Skalá; from Eleios-Pronnoi, about 39 km south of the main city on the island of Argostoli, in southern Kefalonia, on one of the Ionian islands of Greece. From here, mimetic was thrown towards the art of the unknown sea, collapsing and disoriented by its territorial similarity, and maritime per se of its Otolith that brandished it in dual places of Ionian-Dodecanese geography, following the semiotic songs of Leiak that emerged from the auletic to infer Ballenid genera, which acted precisely between the island and the Bay of Patmos with the same name as Skalá.

Kaitelka's Vernarthian tenor carried her behind her with another Ballenid, this one carried the Demiurge Ezpatkul, with his prominent Augrum or Gold teeth that rotated on the backs of all the borer beetles, being Scarabaeidae that delimited towards a dialectic, and paraphrase of a qualitative satirical one, especially in the form of Vernarth's sub-mythological subgenre. To commend all the hypotheses of this whale, it sang with the native cephalization ultrasound, where it continued to harmonize media in its cranial cavity, and in the muzzles of its larger fins that transmitted waves of parapsychological regression towards Vernarth, parodying the transparent sendal ballads that it made. with his transit through the water, however, not having members that strengthen his controversial cetacean passerby by waters of a melodious literary language, such as a great inspirational propeller, and satires that host greenhouses in most of the jubilation, related to rudders that furrow his verbal poetry, easing restrictions, and possessing the genome that was deprived him in his gestation, of a maternal expropriation victimized with fears of an end, and Apocalypse hungover by the sea and freshwater. They piloted their heart valves, mere and Dantesque with Zeusian buttress spauto, muddled and bundled in their bombastic myocardium like omitted ships without ever lifting anchor and setting sail, a very brief tulle of water satirizing formula additions, and a piece of dull wood on its spur that was It bore like a whale, it was carrying its weight in a literary category where there is no way to test it. Without hindrance, she laughed alongside the breakers in the manner of a belligerent tendril in thick keel skins, dramatizing him and perhaps delaying the investiture of Vernarth's Himation Proskynesis, peering jocularly and foreshadowing his encounter with her. Her chains were Caucasus icebergs, demystifying seasonality by residing linked to a single Down Whale destination, ******* with her dorsal to exhale genome rearrangements with Cinnabar, refining hormones and stereotyped whale chromosomes.

The concordance of the Satirical subgenre, and the polarized gender correspondence inanimate Kaitelka, usurping the intentionality of the sub-mythological drama, in two roads of Skalá that appeared to lose the standard of their ears, in tragic representation versus the comedian staging, harbinger of an interlude between two areas that struggled to have it directed towards three comedies that plunged into three tragedies, missioning the furrowed features of the ideals of survival, with preceded parables of the psychic-linguistic being, due to its canonical supernatural modality by blending itself with disciplined domains. Of a rhetorical poetics, rectified in religions that grant Orphic and messianic structuralism; foreshadowing the hymns of Orpheus in the Bible, and metaphorical in revealing divine truth, accessible only to spirits worthy of it. The purpose of metaphor in her poetry has the deciding function of the ineffable of thought, through simile, comparison, or image.  Song and poetry, song and prayer, prayer and ritual forming an inseparable phrase of meaning in it, impossible to differentiate in the biblical psalms themselves. The penultimate of them recalled number 149, being a hymn destined to accompany the dance; "Make melodies for him, with drums and lyres." It is known that the classical instrument of Orpheus reaches the level of the sacred in biblical texts. Psalm 150 contains an orgiastic ending to a symphony, in the description of the instruments that accompany the word and the voice that praises God, with sermons from Kaitelka blooming from an oceanic being and printing songs of the subgenre, without blemish of sub- mythology and the unconfessed proceeding. The comical exaltation of him recreates aspects of great joy, for those who feel vibrations under his belly in his orphic water, portraying semis or semiotic cathartics of their own trisomic roots, in an effort to decode drama, for intermezzos of the mythological subgenre. Borker with his sword Mythos interpreted the story of Kaitelka when he told her about the melting of Horcondising, seeing in them friendly glaciers that included her within the storytelling of provinces that sensitize the culture by rebirth on spherits and plasma hematocrits, for an apologist that admits inanimate corporality actor. Its genesis is Bereshit, "which names and does not start", from the undervalued parashot of the gods and kings, commanding them ibid to the inter-dogmatism that it contributes in its credit reserve, in large consortiums besieging colonies by the southern seas of the Borker  Nótos. "Evil tears their veins heal their goods and relegate the forgetful in the tradition of existence alongside the demiurges, incontinent to their ills that enjoy making creation sleep, soothing it in innocuous myths that are often more than a truly supernatural!

Helios went out to the road by the west and not by the east, in the nascent instant of the ectoplasm that revealed micro satires that led to the station of the hero who lives hidden, behind the proscenium of cultural and religious intimacy, Kaitelka plunges a few meters below the Aegean where he was already arriving, and he can realize that he did not see marine species around him, only beams of light that distorted his view of those who flatter him on a descent? Underwater a mythical mission wailed on dry surfaces, and the phenomena of the underwater stones were relaxed before any reflection of the veracity of a myth of expression in the mouth of a fish, brushing against systematic hermeticisms of what was infinitesimal. All this dialectical journey towards inevitably alternating molecules of his genome, to re-establish himself in his hybrid status upon reaching Skalá, here he would have to use his two neurochemical brains for a mortal instinct that does not die inside the mouth of a whale but in interrogation. …?  Based on Leiak's sexagesimal nanoscale extension, endowed with a fractional comparison that collects mythologies within them, for the uncertain truth. The only burden of etiological myth in Kaitelka is a consequence of her suffering, which is offered in psychic trisomy, for being **ized by three chromosomes, disorganizing her reality as a specimen that unfolds as a congenital disease.

Kaitelka says: "Who am I and where do I come from? I am reaching the floodgates of my lord Vernarth, and I can see that I am reborn in his astragalus and honeysuckle, which tell a story ****** under the tripod of Herophila.  Authoritarian truth that will bow before the pig to become, smelling here the tragic essence in truths that are hidden in symbolic denial"

Kaitelka is instituted a few miles before she begins to navigate in a zigzag, trying to condense forces for the origin of her ethereal, with sarcasm techniques that the self encourages to plunge into diluvian tears and moan in the scenarios of uncertainty, in the judgment of pouring out real myths, transposing its flow in the destination that is flooded in imprecise gestures and between cries with super sounds that lifted it on the swells, and these, in turn, were shedding the mystery Masken by raising water concentrated in onerous polymorphology. With joys and hilarious meltdowns on the mountains, she approached everything when she reached the pleasant Skalá, escaping from the cosmogony that bound her ungraciously on the light water, overflowing towards the very origin of a Vernarthian deity, in pasts and futures that do not intersect in the radial of its origins. The sky proclaimed laughter and mimicry gestures that adhered to the vitrifying phenomenon of past-present pashkien images, ready to lightning that heals the invalidations of walking on disturbed waters, a dipsomaniac leitmotif in early Christian justice. Kaitelka sins irascible, violent and proud, urgent and judicious, but conciliatory despite carrying a cross and a harpoon on her back. She will remain Kaitelka Down, but Patmos will arrogate her Thracian gift from her Orphic origin to her, for purposes of radial preeminence in the Ballenids that hoist sacred sites. The adventure prescribes a univitelino twin, but when she goes beyond the hirsute destiny of her Iliad, she begs to go transforming into a rainy sphinx on the thick bronze roof when the coins are broken, towards a seduction stop that is enthroned in the gloom of the minotaur, in the numinous hands of a daffodil and on the face of the Epsilon. Or crawling in mitral of valvulopathy with the carriage messengers, with the swans or pigeon birds; perching on a wreath of roses and myrtles that surround her red bozos. Almost always appearing undressed next to her escort, usually more than multiplied towards her, with the amazement of her animal consorts, which are dolphins, and Thracian pigeons, a priori of being covered by the Pythia of Delphi that is migrating in murky triumphs of the Achaemenides in Gaugamela.

it’s as if you were in an endless (and beginning-less) traffic jam. The road is cramped and narrow; there are tanker trucks slowly pouring black smoke into your car’s vents, you can’t hear your radio or car stereo because of the low RPM rumbling of cars and trucks and semis all around you; any act of kindness you commit, such as leaving space for some dented, banged-up machinething trying to merge, is immediately ruined by someone else, scampering into the space you had left, foreclosing the chance you had of feeling you were being kind? noble? anyway, no; you are both starving and nauseated at the same time, and your stomach hurts from both; there are no exits where you can get off escape this, even temporarily, even shabbily; there are just jersey barriers and grey vehicles covered with grime, it’s drizzling now, and your windshield wipers don’t really work, they scratch and smear the grime across your windshield with a piercing, repetitive shriek, and when you try to look to your left or your right to see something besides damp, gritty, gray, fumy highway, the most you can see are the oblique outlines of institutions that could be factories covered in graffiti and litter and ragged advertisements for products not even sold any more, but you do realize that the space between you and the car in front of you seems a little greater, now, how? and you look in your rearview mirror and see that the car behind you is no longer looming, but instead is a spacing back, is not filling the view of the mirror, and as you cautiously press down on the accelerator, glancing to the left and right, afraid of what you might see, the cars move faster and are now farther apart; you press the WASH button and you’re going fast enough that the blue fluid sprays delightfully across the windshield, and the wiper blades automatically activate and clear it all, smooth and clean and fast, and is that sun? you now see greater distances, you see before you a world full of light and shadow, the sedan purring smoothly at the right speed. Things flash delightfully by, the car thrums, you can feel, in the center of you, that moving-forward feeling of progress, progress, progress. How could it be that just moments ago you were in a trench of grime and shuffling? Those trucks that were so sinister are now shinybright and obligingly staying to the right, their engines working better too, the sun glinting off their carefully custom-machined grilles; there are some curves and dips in the road that you follow with precision; there are grass and trees and the possibility of exits; even the paint on the road is whiter, and the road itself is blacker, and as you fly along you remember why you took this trip in the first place.

That's what it's like :')

So the Violets lived
in the long shadow
of a slaughterhouse,

separated from death
by cyclone fencing
and a scrabbly yard.

In summer, family time
meant sitting on the porch
drinking cans of Budweiser.

It took about a six pack
each to mask the smell
of cow and diesel fuel,

but the rumble of semis
and the relentless lowing
of cattle were inescapable.

In winter, woodsmoke
filled the small rooms,
slowly turning the walls

the color of ***** snow.
Icicles hung from gutters,
lengthening like knives.

The youngest Violet daughter
grew up, moved to Louisville,
and became a painter of vivid

abstracts.

I have one of her paintings
hanging on a wide white wall.
I like to pour myself a Scotch

and watch the mangled colors—
brilliant viscera sullying
a slaughterhouse stall—

the smell of peat and smoke;
the taste of earth’s undoing.

oh the joys of idyllic
small town life in this
whitewashed village where
everyone knows everyone
and everyone knows
everyone’s business

where the groceries are
overpriced and the taxes
are high and everyone but
the wife knows he’s cheating

where everything is a scandal
and nobody will admit to knowing
anything but they’ll still talk
about it behind closed doors

there are supposedly prostitutes
on main street but i only ever see
the drunk and drugged out there
and if someone is single there is
someone determined
to find them a match

all and all a very pleasant
charming life we lead here
what with all the arrests
and the highway department
yammering away on things
and the way the tops of the semis
scrape the bottom of the
traffic lights on their way though

something charming about
the way the sides of the buildings
all need a good power washing
and there’s probably lots of
good clean arsenic in
the water supply

scenic
a most sleepy
little burg
they say

spend some time
with us and
you’ll find a community
you’ll find a home

you’ll also
find a thing or two
you’ll wish
you didn’t know

There’s no rocky, narrow shoulders,
Lining each side of the highway,
Waiting for sets of tires to roll,
And pull over on.
There’s no rest stops,
Every few mile markers,
Offering you a place to stop,
And take a break from the same scenes.
A few too many sports cars,
Who’re just in a hurry,
Passing all the semis,
In a race to get to the finish.
No overhead signs for information,
Telling you which way to go.
Just one at the end of the journey,
Telling you that you’ve completed the drive.

A skippity hop and muddy socks
Sail boats and rain coats
Semis and dump trucks
Bubble baths with ducks
Throwing a ball I love it all!!
***** feet and a sweet treat
Firefighters and quad riders
Lights and sirens and jolly lions
Puppy heroes and horses with wings
These are a few of my favorite things

Greenery full of life
sits atop hills
beneath a moody grey sky
lush shrubs, bushes, trees
a sight lusted over
by people like me
a guilty pleasure
for those from Michigan suburbs
stationery, observing humans
the fast moving traffic below
semis rushing to make deliveries
people getting to jobs they hate
or don't mind
in outfits they aren't comfortable wearing
road rage
accidents on the highway
houses sit atop them
steep backyards
even they wonder
why anyone would live there
people can fall into traffic
their steepness is not something they can help
flights flying overhead
humans making it to events
thinking they are so important
living a life of privilege and ability
nature is peaceful, kind
unbothered, it's number one hobby:
people-watching.

Why is the color of death black?
The color of night
of inside a cave
of your mother’s womb
of behind your eyelids.
The color of no color.
For some, it’s white–
of crumbling columns of ash
of salted soil where nothing grows
of days when the sun shines
too bright to see
when you look out your window and
can’t see your mailbox
when you leave home and
drive through clouds of snow
blowing across the highway
of snow dusting the air from
the backs of semis
of ice buried under snow
and you see the fields and trees,
the world shrouded in white
and wonder if
you’ll be buried here too.

A war memorial stands
Keeping guard at the end
Of an ancient High Street
Alone on a roundabout

From this historic spine
Of Flooring Centre and Bugdens
Run ribs of semis
With their suburban wives

I watch as my feet
Stamp down cracked pavements
Teenage schoolgirls
Giggle at a phone

At the village hall noticeboard
I read Parish Council minutes
Wondering at the secrets
Of the good who serve

Whilst against it all
The background hum
Of M3 traffic
Racing towards death.

She sees him from across the highway
He's looking back at her
one hand in his pocket, the other spanning a wave

So she blows him kisses and gestures her heart
but it can't possibly reach him
because cars and semis stretch them apart

so she spins in circles and sees what surrounds
the sight isn't nice
Because he's not around

she analyzes her chances at dodging a bullet
and admits that they don't look good
But she decides that her happiness will always be worth it

She puffs out her chest and takes in some air
and sees him smirking at her
She closes her eyes as the wind blows her hair

Wind below her feet, she skates across the road
she's never felt this rush before
and faster than expected, across from him she showed

Proud of the miracle that brought her across the highway
She reaches for the hand by his side
But he turns his back and walks away.

unintentionally, I've made habit of waiting
until the highway clears out,
leaving nothing but sandy semis
and gritty grizzled men smoking and steering
Staring dead-eyed through sleepless deadlines
to make my way home alone.

Watching infinite dashes pass through my peripheral, separating me from
passenger-less lanes,
perpetually pondering present pessimism
as pale streaks slur by
enough to white out every word
I spoke and you never heard.

C.e.M
April 15, edit April 19 2016

Nights encroachment is changing the face of town ,
an orange star phasing out ,
the borough is closing down
The elderly are content from front porches
the children called to dinner ,
bicycles , baseball bats and chalk are left
on the ground ,
the sound of buses and semis , the last train
headed south
Artificial light slowly filtering out
She's slowly , methodically , shutting down

weight.
that’s all I feel now.

the weight of silence.
absence.  
thoughts like boots
stuck in mud up to my knees.

thirteen thousand nights
pounding out of my chest like a riot mob
choking on my life
and staring down twenty thousand more.
****.

the searing void
of an ancient sugared kiss
sends tears down my face
like tiny iron weights—
a silent guillotine.
you’re so far away now.
or maybe I am.

dusting off dreams
like they’re old pictures
and setting them back on the shelf
in this violet desert.
mirage or memory?
who knows.

I’ve become a warm corpse
mumbling “no”
to the tired lives that want to ride me
like an old horse
one limp away from being glue.

who is there to tell?
who the hell would listen?
who’d step foot
onto the interstate of my heart
dodging semis
and roadkill potpourri?

doesn’t matter.
the dreams look clean again.
and that’s enough
to keep the lights on in the cell
for another thousand nights.

so keep that duster handy.
go back to sleep.

these nights are hungry.
and they’re not going to eat themselves.

I hold your brain
Even though they call you lame
Despite the pain
You use me to stay ahead of the game
But things have changed
I’m getter lighter everyday
Instead of books and paper
I feel metal inside
What could he be doing with maps?
And why all the caps?
You have changed so now
Instead of study hall at 11
We’re at the gun range til 7
I miss our locker so
Now all I know
Is it takes 9 guns till I blow
It doesn’t feel right
Where are you going with this?
I don’t see a enemy insight
But I couldn’t tell if I read what you write
Who is this “they” that will pay?
Answer me please
Or let’s just freeze
We left for school late
Headed for you violent date
Packed with semis and automatics
I hope this doesn’t end up tragic
You walk in the cafe with no intention to eat
I feel you put me down and slowly unzip
I pray that this is only it
Then I hear the shots and the screams too
Why couldn’t you have just said
I needed help Drew

greeted by the musty smell
of yesterday’s bacon grease
the familiar scrape
of sliding glass and brass
and the blast of hot air
from an open oven

turn on the lights
unlock the doors
whining and whirring as coffee
falls from the grinder chute
the steam wands hiss
water spits through
the filter basket and i
find myself awake

and standing with my
elbows in a bin of hot
water and soapy dishes
the crust over my eyes
loosening with the
warmth and wet

flip the sign
wave the flag
the plates clank
as i walk by

smile
chat
say the same lines
i say every day
toaster to register
sink to grill

an autopilot person
as the world spins

ivy on the brick walls turns red
snow blankets the stone steps
the streetlights stay on through
the fog all morning

the picture windows
rattle when the semis
roar around the corner
at night i lie awake
and imagine them
cutting the turn too close
and crashing through plate glass

i can’t sleep
not when morning
looms so soon
when the sky out the
window will be black
when i wake up

black when i
eat dinner
and gray whenever
else i look

and it’s true
i don’t have it
as rough as
some people

but that doesn’t mean
it’s all so easy for me

i’ve found by living in
the early morning
i can achieve the same
effect as staying up
too late but with less
negative consequences

but the things that are whispered
when the world is still dark
aren’t things to be whispered
to the faint of heart

never knew how blinding the
sun could be before I hid from it.

the dark is a dangerously
safe place to be isn’t it?


I think I found a new emotion
it comes from experiencing
the beauty of things I find
repulsive

all the dream house
developments nestled
like cheap toys

sun glinting off the bumper
to bumper traffic
arcing above the horizon
semis blocking out the sun

parking lots
fractals of shiny beetle shell
car bodies disappearing into the glare

countless things
somewhere between awe and loathing
it’s kind of like a scream
stuck in your chest.


also,  I think I keep seeing people
who aren’t real.
they exist. other people see them too.
but they just seem out of place.
or maybe too in it.
too predictable

I say I hate public transit
but ya know
I think half the time
I like sitting on bart
more than doing
whatever the **** I left
the house to do

my mind wanders best when
my body is hurdling through
space at high speeds

The rocky road is a diverging river
Splitting into T shaped tributaries
Feeding human fish into the highways
Silver schools of cars, trucks, and semis
Swimming dangerously through the streets
The masses ebb and flow
While the smokestacks grow
Drivers do not really know
Why they go where they go
Drive fast to die slow
They drown on those roads

So there. [What's with a gigantic motorhome the other day, and today a semi, literally driving out of their lane to push me off the road when I speed ahead on the ramp, then going back into their lane on the interstate as I try to figure out who's trying to **** me????? I didn't believe in PTSD until now.]

(sonnet #MMMMMMMMMLV)


From semis with an urge to **** sans bail,
To nary sleep 'cept two nights all week, whence?
No less than three sites Friday:  if my sense
Is badly *******, thank all the madness.  Frail,
Yet trying to stay atop, oh LORD, avail
Me, for despite my efforts, all's pretense.
I'm begging for dear sleep, recov'ry hence
In mind, if only, fearing to ask'd fail.
Thanks, thanks for all Thy mercies which in tour,
New ev'ry morning, never fail.  I knew
Ere this week t'would be tough, and feared for sure,
Yet Thou art my God and all is of You.
Tis Saturday; I'm fragile.  Come, bestir
Thy mercies, save me now.  I wait anew.

28Dec24