dahil wara katapusan an duon san mga mata
mabubuhay akong minamatay
san dating kaaway ko sa lawas na ini
sa lawas na ini naghambog an talawon
pinapagubtik an kaaluhan na nagpapamuda
muda na nagpupukaw saakon gurugab-i
kendi na nagpapahibi
mesias na naghahala-hala

magiging madalas an pagsid-ip niya sa bintana
para laen ko makita an liwanag
malaog siya sa kahon ko
laen para magkawat
kundi dagdagan an pagub-at
makasakat an pagbagsak
siya na ako
masurat tula.

~Written by Melton Balicano
(a bikol dialect)


since these eyes have been weighed down on unending
i shall live while being slain by an old foe in this body
this body where the craven had once boasted
surging chagrins that blaspheme
blasphemy that rouses this corpse in the dark
treats that shed tears
a messiah that taunts.

he shall constantly peep through the window
so that I see no light
he will break in my casket
not to thieve
but to burden further
the downfall shall rise
then he becomes me
penning a poem.

~a translation of Balicano's masterpiece
Glenn Sentes

You’ll never know how many times a day I fantasize about running a blade across my skin.
Feeling that dull burn and the pull of my flesh against the blade.
The sweet crimson relief pouring from my soul.
I feel the blackness in me.
It’s toxic, flooding my veins with poison.
Causing sepsis within my heart.
Killing what is left of me.
I need to release it before it eats me alive.
It can’t get out if I don’t make an opening!
It’s fingers reach through the wound and slowly tears me apart.
Pulling at my skin until the hole is big enough for it to slink out of.
I am frozen.
Forever haunted by my shadow.
Forever tormented by her words.

Snared heart kept, imprisoned could be potential dying day,
Lips regaled in ischaemia, blue blood,flows.....cold,
Face scarlet,temperatures up, pyrexia rules, as she tries too cool,
Mouthing  strange babble,  
She's talking in tongues,
Beaded mask  sparkling,  droplets trickle,
Tachycardic, heart beats, trying not to escape this life desperately, Heart trying not to explode!
the forties....roaring!
She breathes, so fast...  the forties....roaring!
It's  tragic,like everything's trying to meet  demand with supply........!
Inadequately,
Currently on remand, waiting for  her sentence to be be passed,
Docs and nurses they rally, running with obs,
All taking their roles, while doing their jobs,
Mews activated, doc visits he's, anxious,
Iv antibiotics he orders,
In plastic sachet, hanging up high, hereby, lies the awaited decision, if she'll  have the will to live, or will she die...
Hope not!
It's not in an instant, but, recovery apparent, as breathing slows below twelve,
Heart beat, it settles,
Her kidneys show function,
Her temperature chills slowly, 36.5, she's still alive,
Thank God,
She got off the train at sepsis junction!
Copyright Livvi Kent (RGN) 11 /04/2013

To smile at the carnation,
So gallantly growing,
At peace with this world.
In silence...
I tune in a short conversation
Between minds and bodies -
Incredibly cold.

My heart has surrendered
To nightingale's song.
I dream of Rhode Island...
I'm leaving! So long!

The winds of Sonora,
My nannies and friends.
My love for Evora -
My tears know no end.

The shadows of Mordor,
With sunrise they fade.
Grace, Kindness and Splendour:
Three Buddhas in jade.

I feed roastede pidgeone
To poor ryebread crumbs.
Avoiding curmudgeons,
I'm playing professional dumb.

Caressing the grass-blades,
I live in a drop.
Arcadian arcade:
There, God has no job.

In hurting the Nature
We drain our souls.
Let’s all at once cease
Being ignorant ghouls.

...To stroke the carnation,
To gently kiss buds.
To eat simple meals
Like lentils and spuds.

To carry some water,
To chop down some trees.
To stop feeling rotten.
My soul is at peace.

The time is forever,
The purpose is now.
No “when” and no “where”,
No “why” and no “how”.

The light effervescent,
The sound circumaural,
The hearts ever-pleasant,
The dreams polynomial.

...Collapsing eternity,
Upheaving humanity,
Rock-bottom fraternity,
Defying the gravity.

Creative destruction
Is staunchly forbidding.
The wisdom of ancients
Is widely-misleading.

Depleting our anger
Is key to survival.
Harnessing the hunger,
Improptu revival.

Combustion of senses,
Precarious laughter.
Incurable sepsis,
Delirious canter.

Regrets are forgotten,
Bright days are all-cherished.
Let’s live unbegotten
Until we all perish.

13.06.2012

They say we are free.
Free to bark, if no one listens.
Free to scribble, if no one prints.
Free to inhale, if it doesn’t cost too much.

This is not anthem.
This is not lament.
This is autopsy.

Let the ink blister the page
for those whose stories
were throttled before sunrise.
Let the silence rupture into
a thunderclap of what should have been...


Judas of the Womb

Her name was reduced to a whisper.
Her death, a technicality.

She died of sepsis? No!
She died of legislation—
the sanctified paralysis of law.

Izabela.
Thirty years haunted by patriarchy.
Twenty-two weeks into a doomed gestation.
One human life overwritten
by a cluster of cells wrapped in legalese.

“They’ll wait until it dies,” she wrote,
"Or I will."
She did.

The state shrugged.
Three men in coats clutched
their degrees like shields.
Guilty, but not too guilty.
Penalized, but not inconvenienced.

And somewhere behind a mahogany desk,
a BBC editor ticked the
"Do Not Disturb Poland" box.
Because truth, like radiation,
is best contained to domestic fallout.


The Jester Beheaded by Branding

He made them laugh.
He made them uncomfortable.
Then he made them look at themselves.
That was the mistake.

He survived presidents.
But not the quarterly earnings report.

The axe did not fall.
It slid.

No cancellation. Just de-prioritization.
No outrage. Just polite press releases
and quiet exits.

The revolution will not be televised.
It was tested poorly with key demographics.


Soft Guillotines

Not fire.
Just foam padding and soft lighting.

No jail.
Just "violated community guidelines."

No riot gear.
Just Terms of Service.

They won’t stop you.
They’ll just stop broadcasting you.
They’ll hide you in the cellar of the algorithm,
behind un-skippable ads and SEO oblivion.

Your words are welcome—
as long as they sell soap.
Your outrage is valid—
if it fits in a drop-down menu.


The Global Echo

Warsaw, Manhattan, Manila, Paris.
Different names for the same soft boot.
The same velvet rope
around the neck
of the narrative.

They don’t ban the voices.
They dilute them.
Filter them.
Render them un-shareable,
un-searchable, un-fundable.

We live in a marketplace of ideas,
where truth competes
with cat videos and loses.


The Hollowing

When liberty must pass through a monetization filter,
it is not liberty.

When satire must first clear advertising compliance,
it is not satire.

When journalism fears its own clicks,
when editors redact themselves,
when profit margins call the morning meetings—
we are not in a democracy...

We are in a theme park of tolerated dissent.


The Sliver of Soil

But still—yes, still.

There are cracks in the concrete,
uncatalogued by surveillance,
unpolished by PR.

In those fractures, we gather.
Not to shout—but to build.
Not to trend—but to outlast.

We will forge our voices into chisels.
We will scratch our stories into steel.
We will be inconvenient.
Unprofitable.
Relentless.

So write what they won’t publish.
Speak what they won’t air.
Sing the verses
that sour their brand strategy.

And if we rise, not in hashtags,
But in habit—
not in virality, but in volume—
not in fury, but in fidelity—

then liberty may yet bloom.
Not fast.
Not free.
But truly ours.

Liquify,

Modernize,

Affix,

Me.

Dicast parts,
Formalize,
Metastasize.

I am Growing this agar's too small.

Feral,
Lycanthropy,
Hearts.

Through the stigma,
my bones bleed,
my wreaths hanging,
Sagging.
Of unwelcome,
all my being.
of unwelcome,
all my being.

The Truth of getting older,
the senescence of emotion
The people we love and once were,
Are gone forever.

I am not for this heartless place.
I am but Peter Pan,
understanding.

A bitter struggle,
While trampled underfoot.

Of a world,
Not built for us.

Built for no one.

When the eggs all hatch
inside of our bellies
and begin to bore holes
we will bear it
because we're
not good enough
for a doctor to touch

When we give birth to the babies of flies
we will love them like our own.
Because they're
not good enough
for better parents.

When our fly babies grow up
they will ask us why
they are so different than the other kids
We will tell them it's
because they are better
than the other kids.

When we die slowly and painfully
from sepsis when the holes
in our stomachs finally leak out
because we were too engrossed
in our fly babies
We will wonder if it was worth it.

After our funerals,
attended by our fly babies
and our parents
there will be hor d'eourves
with which our children
will mate.

Our dads and our moms
will eat the food
crunchy with their eggs
because they are not good enough
to ignore free food
we will be reborn.

And leave holes in the stomachs of those who made us not good enough.

Staccato's of clasping chains.. feverishly flaying your wrists...

As a rabid dog chewing off its own limbs to crawl away.


You hide in my shadow.. The only place where they cannot get you...

While your children burn...

A sour scent of ***** floods richly within these forsaken walls...

A tranquilizing melody of ****** gargling


I will mutilate the memory...

I will stain the status you built...

I will pluck your fruit and devour it with voracious appetite

Gnawing your rotting tongue bit by bit...

i drink sepsis that drips from the shank of your thighs..

My hunger everlasting...

Ravenously, depraved, my claws rend and maim your angelic wings...


A carpet of feathers gusts at your final gasp....

A cold lick on your eyeballs...

We drag you into our grave...

Rats...

Swarms of rats...

And i wear a crown baptized and blessed of your blood....

Adorned with warm and beating entrails of the defeated and the devoured...

Bricked in walls....


I can still hear you clawing during the  most sleepless of sleeps...

And taste your rotting tongue...

By your leave, let I slumber once forever..
And my moment shall never realize itself.
My portfolio possess no wherewithal wager,
My seat of affection is now dull and rough.

Sepsis leak a foggy black since blight is nigh,
The sea is feeble whilst the sun shine naught.
The corpse of venal men flow unhealthy dye,
Henceforth pervade the soil with miasmic malt.

Lest my mistimed demise be not remembered,
Shall the script mark y'all failed to deter abuse.
Today my ember is snuffed and plundered,
On the morrow a bright star will rise, I muse.

Heed thine auguries borne from frigid stupor,
Vicious tendrils cascade upon my rigor mortis.
O gray vision as though gazing through vapor,
Hear that silent gasp veiled under my spicy lips.

I aimlessly drifted in teenage years,
From subtle scion to zaftig plebe.
Seen phony glory, vanquished fears,
And the stench of a wicked glebe.

From below, saw the stars up high,
Igniting horizons with callow wonder.
Beheld colossal beauty with mine inner eye,
Begged for chained thoughts asunder.

Amidst the serene flock to be slain,
Oft' a titan, seldom a vacant savant.
Known sorrow, elation, gain, vain, pain,
This mortal hour, hear joyful lament.

How quick we are to bid farewell,
How slow for friendship to pierce the cloth.
The rhythmic ache of that darkened knell,
The sobbing whimpers for a lover's warmth.

Nix for reciprocated amity, yet!
My seat of affection thrives in twilight.
Herein discipline is adamantly set,
Whence shall this ****** ire take flight?

Into the night that covers my soul,
Unleash that verdant star I see.
The divine abyss have taken its toll,
I pray the shadow is only me.

Note the ease to neglect one's clan,
Yet savored glee of reunions by blood.
Fury cease my elder ties, an infant plan,
By filial ardor, I still kneel in mud.

Star-shine ablaze onto vivid blooms,
Arise the stench of broiling debris.
Beauteous summer-tide metronomes,
The sinking scythe follow gales of peace.

Labor come sweat yield sweet fruition,
Tis annual come the bronze harvest.
Wrongful vengeance seek humble redemption,
Autumn under siege of well-fed zest.

Stormy vista rime graying meadows,
Entrench the sepsis by the ice age.
Taste weeping woe of guilty widows,
Lest their beloved hunger in cage.

Arise young lilac out of barren frosts,
Touch the vital aura to begin anew.
Altruists gladly pay auric costs,
To stalk vile leviathan into dew.

May stones bear indistinct distinction,
So my stride shall stumble and falter.
Peace paint heroes of sluggish fiction,
Chaos rouse prodigies from quiet slumber.

They must not hear of
things that have gone on,
under this roof,
during these hours,
they would scream at the top of their lungs,

You do not want to know,
pressing intentions
why his waist bulges over his belt,
why his face is so red,
a murky sky,
eyes slits in ebony stone.

she is gone,
someone must know why,
others are left to guess and to gossip,
hens clucking,
you must not know,
what they whisper with thickened tongues,

There is a kind of pride,
in being the one that sees and knows,
nervous,
menaced by petty stimulants,
Events become like a sepsis,
webbed,
sickness  multiplying,

years kind pass like temporary paralysis,
fear is  a currency,
sometimes.

Damaging thoughts invade my mind,
enveloping all the parasitic positivity
poised to curtail them.

Resurfacing memories surge like viruses;
enlisting others to help send
septic suggestions racing through my
Synapses. Converting creativity
into anxious apprehension
Overcoming the entirety of my being…

No one understands this feeling.

For I cannot bear to cut you off
I will live with the open sores
Waiting for a word from you
To be finally restored

not exactly a poem, sorry.

The turnkey was the fumbling sort, the sort that could be taken advantage of, Carver never thought about it more than a passing fancy. The kind of thought that was dangerous, it wasn’t a ten-year stretch after all. Popping the old guard and making a break could work, would work.  A couple of years is nothing in this joint, they told him, once you get a few connections in the yard, get on a baseball team, two years is a breeze. You might even miss it all. Carver was hesitant to heed the trappings of these old relics, they were just counting the days to nothing. He knew that very well might’ve been their prerogative, but for him there would always be that something. A lonesome post-office box, containing the culmination of his life’s worth. They didn’t know about it, none of them knew, his brother, his slick-*** lawyer, not even those rats, those ******* rats that got him in here. At the time he resolved that he would part with that secret of his post office box for no less than his life. Whatever dissent had marked him as the fall-guy passed him by. Complacence led Carver here but it would never happen again. No more concessions next time.

Cellblock B wasn’t devoid of small charms. The periodic mewing of this crooner or that, with what seemed like a common intonation amongst them, all tapping from a collective unconscious. The window with a view of the yard, although mostly obscured by another cell block, was still something. Lately he had been privy to comparative bliss, his erstwhile roommate having to nurse off in the infirmary the sepsis resulting from a shiv wound after an ill-judged altercation in the mess hall. The daily motions had long since become routine, Carver thought that in many respects, this was not too dissimilar from his army days. Avoiding the unsavoury types was the key to surviving both.    

Conversations which abounded lacked privacy and tended toward the trivial, but listening in did occupy a sizeable chunk of Carver’s day. Someone, Carver was fairly sure it was Fuzzin two cells down was wondering why he was growing more hair in his right underarm compared to the left, and was resolute in uncovering the mystery. Sal in the cell to the left was perpetually reciting his conquests, ****** or otherwise, to anyone that would listen. “I was in Maine for a year and a half. Lobstering up there. I mean, what else is there to do. In Maine....” A collective murmur took the cellblock suddenly, stirring Carver out of his reverie. Sal dutifully motioned and whispered “cell inspection”, Carver did the same for his neighbour. The deputy warden for cellblock B was a short rotund man Williams, who as appearances go, looked like he should be better acquainted with ledgers and stock tickets than prison walls, but was a lax sort, permitting what modest allowances someone in his position had the leeway to do. I have heard harmonicas and guitars chiming after meals regularly, unheard of in any other cellblock. Thomson’s mattress was tossed down the way...of course every now and then a few examples had to be made to appease the warden, Thomson’s codeine addiction not doing him any favours by way of effective concealment. I exhaled a sigh, not so much in condolence as boredom, as even the strewn mattress and its assorted artefacts was becoming as familiar as the yellowed walls and the evening chill.

It was the 14th and Carver was due for a visitation. 9:30a.m. and already in the throes of being worked up, he was sure to be getting worked upon soon enough. Carver cracked his knuckles against the edge of the table in the visitation room, an apparent thick black line bisecting the table with ‘hands behind the line’ mirrored on each side. “Hello Maurice.” Carver winced, knowing that she was purposely diving into ways to put him ill at ease, commencing with the upperhand, by calling him Maurice the name he hates, not Maury. “How’s life treating you?” The smirk barely contained in the pinstriped pencil skirt, her hips less so.  “Yeah okay, it’s okay. Great to see you here.” And he meant it. Not that her presence normally roused anything like that sort of sentiment, their domestic life was a burned out cinder even before he was busted.  But there was a particular warmth in her notes, just an untouched civility foreign in place like this, tending to be drawn out from the inmates one gesture at a time, often for good. Carver thought to 8 months prior, camped at opposite ends of the house, their wares might as well have been labelled ‘his’ and ‘hers’. Evenings were carefully orchestrated, where arcs in their lines of vision only merged for the briefest of instances and only as a measure to avoid any dreaded physical contact. The prospect of *** was a joke, Carver well aware that she was ******* at least the grocer and his broker, but felt better for it. One less unfulfilled expectation he had to relieve. “I’d ask how you’re dealing with the weather, but I guess you’re keeping pretty warm these days.” She half-stifled an involuntary scoff, “You know I don’t need to hear this now, Sam is due for the dentist at 2.30 and I want to get him all washed and ready, I’m not here for your games.” “So who is it today? Talbot? Someone from the club?” Carver questioned without a hint of animosity. She breathed a defeated sigh, “You know I’m not going to talk to you about this here.” Carver jolted, the seat raised an inch or two on the linoleum, “I’m just asking if you’re ******* around, and you don’t give me a straight answer so what do I have to assume huh?” The guard was giving allowance more than he had any obligation to, but Carver’s voice was raised enough to disturb a few of the surrounding groups. He moved his way over, “Hey, what’s the ruckus here Carver, keep it down okay. What’s this box up here, move your hands back, c’mon, you know the rules. Diane piped up, “It’s just a taint, sir.” The guard prodded it with his baton, quizzically. “hmm oh yes? I thought those were seasonal, okay just keep it down.”

Carver motioned to the box, “Why did you need to bring that here? I don’t need you parading my taint around. You know I’m trying to get parole in three months? What have you done with it?” “It’s just a taint.” “Yeah, but what’s with all this purple and green stuff here? All these spiky bits, I don’t remember that.” “Well, two months ago you asked for the taint and I’ve got it here, so what else do you want from me.” Carver listened to her speak but looked passed, to the frosted glass, wishing that a window was all that really kept him between here and there. “Christ, I’ve had enough of this, I come all the way down here, spend fourty minutes caught in that dratted excuse of a highway, and you won’t even thank me for bringing your stinking taint along. AND, just last week you were all taint-this and taint-that, why do I bother.” She flung around just slow enough for Carver to observe her figure it in all its majesty. A drop in his stomach, as she moved off with authority. “Wait!” He flung himself towards her. “Please...I’m sorry....please....just...leave the taint.” “Here just take your **** taint, I hope you’re thinking of it when Sam and Eliza are eating that canned **** and asking what their father is doing so I can be sure that I’m explaining what a worthless **** you are and be accurate about it.” The words fell on heedless ears, Carver and his taint. The taint and Carver.

Fuzzin was moving back to the cellblock alongside Carver, “Buddy, your wife has some ***, you better hope my parole don’t come through before yours.... say...what’s in the box.”

I will not deaden the pain
I will bear the lacerations
To keep my heart open
The price for your possible return

We are creatures made ill;
by the decision to remember or forget our many exhausted selves,
Those familiar faces
Worn from the weight of self birth.
I do often see
See sight of familiar eyes ….
A memory fresh in your palms
Appearing most often at night,
When the barriers to duality falter and
momentarily, our hearts align.
Most likely it is just the pulsing of flesh that feels to us like presence.

So young to have the misfortune of a rot.
A sepsis caught from the spit of the past,
Asked falsely back by laments,
Cast into your own ether at self expense.
Hence, it appears worthy of thanks,
that the one with whom I shared a skull no longer gives me fear.
Anxiety, sheer dried flesh that brought me close to death,
For years, I have not tasted her iron on my breath.
Retrospective thanks, perhaps, that bring a memory back?
Easy. Wonder, where that shade hides,
For it’s true — we grow and shed, but keep our baby eyes.
I didn’t perform my own last rites,
So then perhaps it is my own shadow, cast by two lights.
It’s important, not to forget to worry.
Worry of your own mimesis, flesh imitation
Poetry’s invitation, in this developing obituary,
with each memory dragged from stale dirt with wary hands,
Serving to marry that past and present —
The act of burying that younger girl I cannot see —
Forming a shadow of its own, and killing my Eurydice!
I know the danger of Calliope’s hyperbole.

How worthy I am now, of love and life.
Tangible hours, warm and empty nights,
dripped in February sun, October ice.
Fresh and scented air.
Now these days, they pass with eloquence,
Joy exists, and this is evidence.
What’s strong in me, force that fills my once cold thighs and stomach,
Fruit and wine, yes — but most of all, the years of age gained living with death as a child.
Exiled from my own body, only to return old, but carrying the capacity,
the ability to be unrelentingly happy.
There are some things you never gain again after being lost.
Innocence —  those snowdrops don't return after a frost.
Innocence, something I'm not sure I wanted anyway.
Unlike Orpheus, my dead Eurydice had a single life.
My glance is as his, far from pulling her from the Underworld,
That old and broken lover is kept inside by hindsight.
But I offer to the Underworld, that blinding grey I now have so happily forgot,
That blinding grey haunted, I imagine, by the shade I share a name with,
This final lament to the lost years.
I know now to not flee fears that surround my own myth.
A confession and a celebration, my own libation —
dedicated to a prayer that they stay dead, forever.

Inspired by the story of Petra Kormos.

   One Of Forty Thousand

It’s Sweden, 2020.
Population:
A shade over ten million,
Ranking country’s population
By percent of Europe’s calculation
Sweden ranks as ninety-one.

Not many people one might think,
And they’d be right,
                              and yet,
Forty thousand humans yearly,
Life corrupted by a sepsis,
Interrupted  by a virus,
Death an outcome or a nearly…
Limbs that blackened;
Life force slackened:
Source unknown;
And amputation!

I, one of the forty-thousand.
Coma housed, un-rouseable,
Hand  defaced,
Erased forever, their profession.
No appeal or cry for pity.  No confession
Only fact; a plain statistic:
Unemotional, un-egoistic,
‘Forty thousand’ makes it prime;
Time to make the virus traceable,
Follow up the un-erasable,
Taking sepsis off the table.

A task that’s not too much to ask,
As one sits fingerless
At the piano.

One Of Forty Thousand 9.3.2020 Circling Round Experience; Pure Nakedness II; Arlene Nover Corwin
*sepsis| noun [mass noun] Medicine
the presence in tissues of harmful bacteria and their toxins, typically through infection of a wound.

Magi always bring Magic, among other
things, Frankincense was given me to give,
some kids bring tobacco.

Sunday, in our world with weeks
and months and years, in constant tension
pulling days from our lives, as gone-by,
but barely acting once in decades
of note, until
daily news of those who did
begins to pile up and tends to overflow
into to story, myth, and history, fit
with screwy prosody
and no practical scheme for rhyme…

all proving, now is after all that,
our access to mind wandering excursing,
excusing your innocence and ignoring
your being not so,
not so innocent, nor
feeble of mind, un exercised in godliness.

Yes, this
is the blessed assurance that we
were not the first to be
Perfectly Normal, Thank you.

------- and, further more

mind wandering is not a wartime pleasure.

Forward Tactical Operations Center,
some where
actual place, a point in time and space,
to you from me,
actively, choosing to rise to the occasion,
and bow to the overall situation,

life is attractive, not repulsive,
knowing is appealing to the best in me,
not the lazy
good for nothing I can be, with no help
from you or any
strange
power not mine to use,

con-sci, come see, came saw, and a we
arose to agree, this might
e
see, esse, e, this might be power, lying idle.

--- balance of power? Ha. Push
comes to shove, and wishes we could
make up a reason
to enjoy today as the final sure thing.

-- it was a darkthonic thought ought shall should

Substrates, strata below, this pliant surface,
gurgle, signaling nothing, save, more or less,
a belch, or a ****, more like,
ew, {cell phone- in a search pattern}
we need not more of that,
what stink think ye we ought celebrate,

buffoon?

Suppose we all know the story behind
or under as we may,
surmise, compromising prized right ness
given up over down,
stand up, fall down, prop up hold down

proper propping
propagate a reason, fit to this season
- autumn, ends the year, winter
- starts next
now
all this de novo knowing, for the price of attention
you may know, not freely,
known, but freely taken as known before, by others
of our kind,

-- I am distracted by a blue jay, on the rock
-- behind the thinker comes
the thought, dragging it's feet, to make clouds of dust,
because,
the dust is there, and does this flying at my desire
to see once, and again, the effect of

me at six, mind wandering on a dry and dusty trail,
-- realizing
confabulatory stories are in fact
"perfectly normal, thank you. A basket of eggs, or a basket
of

air, empty air, no signal, no closing inverted commas.

Have we lost the magic?

---
No listen, ah, and smell,
the bacon, ah, forbidden meat,
smells so good, does it not, smell so good?

It might not **** you, son, but hell of a price
you pay for taking a bite, of some thing
due to it smelling,
so good.

--------- setting, as the propagated
translation of tradition to kab-allah, I say
a wish in time to pre
vent any explosive out burst of gut dispute,

per and may haps rise around me, big
am, we, m'fam… wakes in me a joy,
quite normal,
joy of a grandfather, finishing the faith
a character has developed,
while making, wei true, making wei wu
wu wu of the ever skeptical sepsis sort,
test this
T-cell, is this us? Or is this MERSACOVIDEO
override, through the bluetooth meanies

missing since the Yellow Submarine sunk
in Central Park, c. 1968.

Around the time Dubcek lost to the Commies.
Same season when North Korea got the Pueblo.

The tangled web,
seen in the sunlight topping the eastern wall,
George Harrison, perfect timing
every time I remember, this is real, out there
nearer the edge of my light cone,
from c.1968…

deception, ungrip the gripped fist,
monkey reaching for the fly in the bottle,
that chatters incessantly of having lived before,
monkey fist
feels something sticky,
is it… curious as george, for dammedshore,
a wave
of recognition, there's Waldo,
and Magic, Incorporated, free to reread, and
seed into my grand children,
who are reading the same hard back
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, that
I brought home to their mother after the trip
to Huston, during HP's takeover of Compac,

No, correction, it was after the trip to Denver.
--- sidetrack breadcrumb Quark and metadata

in disguised fashion,
and contemporary flair -
****-laden euphemism -
rushing thoughtless at
bricked wall.
knowingly, no way
through, though run
on tip-toes to
gain agility of ancestors.
pseudo rain-dance;
      is that cultural
      or is it racism?
no room at the bottom anyhow;
we'll linger here
developing emotional interlingua
as means to better,
to comprehend gaped chasm;
allusions, perhaps
it's a bit more magic
oriented than prior presumed.
            (the ever consumed)
then fretful sitting,
continued curiosities of death;
      (perhaps hyperbolic?)
feet still stink ten years later
while linger understanding
of sepsis; is this life infected?
is this a gangrenous growth
in existence;
was dead at birth,
and rehearsed the gurgles
prone to an actor's drowning
monologue. euphemism?
perhaps only rhyming to
schism metric longings.

Cluck — then duck.

And there, in that dark park — shark and spark — mark, their responses.

Oh the powerful, how they bluster, hulk, sulk and skulk when exposed. And if they can’t deny it, they mouth crafty-drafty-daffy apologies.

I hate it!

I asked you, “Why?”

“Why do you think that even after you complained, he or she or they or Ray — his supervisor or even, say HR — did nothing?”

You weren’t sure why; I wasn’t either.

Systemic evil, personal stupidity, good-old-boy culture, a bark beetle, a comet, tormented egos, black holes, massive incompetence, weakness of character, fleas — money?

We couldn’t sort it out.

Think about it, all the complaints lodged all over the world — then dodged. It’s maddening!

You do the same job as he does and get paid less? Really?

You are assigned work that isn’t even in your job description? Are you kidding me?

He said, what?

****!

He touched you inappropriately?

My God!

He sexually assaulted you?

Ugg!

The ****!

The sick creep!

Hell!

Go tell — in order to get well!

Yes, I can see that, and I’m so sorry!

It is horribly and terrifyingly humiliating! But to not tell — that’s devastating!

Prepare yourself. Do it. Of course there will be the denial. the revile, in the aisle, the social media pretrial, the counter attack and threat to sack.

But, keep this clearly in front of you:

Secrets perpetuate sicknesses.

For there within the sinister silence of relational violence oozes the foul psychic **** of false shame and self-blame, a suppurating sepsis of misapplied guilt and a fetid, festering biotoxin of furious fear mingled with ferocious anger.

My God girl!

The organizationally administered inflammagens are virtually dripping out of the open crack at the base of your skull, running off the tip of one of your shoulder blades and bio-trailing you along the office floor.

This cannot continue.

I want you well.

I want you healed.

I want you empowered.

I want you vindicated!

Therefore, fill the hall, and tell it all!

Make the complaint, lodge the grievance, file the paperwork, notify the press, call a conference, sue their ***** off! Trap the fly, smack down the lie, out the tie, exposify — him, and hem and them!

This much is certain. We must not go on without you speaking up.

I’m standing with you.

Pellmell, raise hell, go tell

As much as one hates to use the pronoun “I”, writing or speaking, there are times when ‘I’ is the middle point and of the essence.
Sincerely,
Arlene (see footnote).        

  Now & Then, How I Miss…

I practice living the Now.
But now and then
I miss the old Arlene
Who had ten
                    fingers;
Who could play arpeggios
With ease:
Adagios, capriccios,
Effortlessly
Trouble-free.

Un-nostalgic, chanced to see
And old Youtube of Arlene-me
Singing, playing“All God’s Chillun” speedily,
Gleeful, musical and jazzy.
Wound up teary-eyed.

With just three left to play with:
Thumb and index on the left, only lonely thumb the right,
Filled with weakness
I can play a swinging bass
With Monk-like dissonance between,
The right thumb not at all a small dumb finger.

The trick will be to sow creativeness anew.,
Augment, stretch, grow and not go into
Any other place than Now
(if Now at all can be referred to
                                        as a ‘place’.
I rather think of it as space).

In any case,
I was a little sad today;
The old Arlene who cannot play
The way she used to,
Caused by nature’s vagary.

Dear reader, please forget  
This sentimental, reminiscent “…How I Miss…”
A useless business at the very least.
Now &Then, How I Miss…1.6.2020 Vaguely About Music; Pure Nakedness; Arlene Nover Corwin

Arlene Corwin collapsed on August 3rd, 2019.  In a coma for a month, when she awoke, there were 4 fingers missing on the right hand, 3 half fingers on the left,  and two catheters in one kidney   The cause: Blood poisoning or sepsis (from the Greek ‘sepin’ make rotten).  After two months she was home.  Muscles shrunken, walking with help she began a regime of sit-ups, pushups, yoga…and using every object inI the house as tool now is fully flexible and growing stronger with each day.
But the hands, those hands…We’ll see what happens.

I haven’t shed him like I should have,
an undercoat that I didn’t need.
Too hot on my belly, stifling
and dangerous.
Heavy layers that take on water –
if they get wet they could pull me under.

I should have shed him like a snakeskin.
It’s wrapped around my throat, taut over my
thighs, my *******, my eyes.
It aches familiar, a size too small.
I’m wrapped in it like chicken meat – sterile,  
unable to grow.

His heart is a rejected *****.
It looked plump and pink but it didn’t fit.
His organs and my organs pressed together,
Hair, bone and skin, but the sepsis had set in.
Now it lives in my throat,
a bile I can taste but I can’t throw up.

I offend myself with my desire.
This tether, woven by my own fingers  
going over and over the same patterns.
His mouth, my mouth, the words we say
are not magic, not a promise
but a sarcophagus.

As much as one hates to use the pronoun “I”, writing or speaking, there are times when ‘I’ is the middle point and of the essence.
Sincerely,
Arlene (see footnote).        

  Now & Then, How I Miss…

I practice living the Now.
But now and then
I miss the old Arlene
Who had ten
                    fingers;
Who could play arpeggios
With ease:
Adagios, capriccios,
Effortlessly
Trouble-free.

Un-nostalgic, chanced to see
And old Youtube of Arlene-me
Singing, playing“All God’s Chillun” speedily,
Gleeful, musical and jazzy.
Wound up teary-eyed.

With just three left to play with:
Thumb and index on the left, only lonely thumb the right,
Filled with weakness
I can play a swinging bass
With Monk-like dissonance between,
The right thumb not at all a small dumb finger.

The trick will be to sow creativeness anew.,
Augment, stretch, grow and not go into
Any other place than Now
(if Now at all can be referred to
                                        as a ‘place’.
I rather think of it as space).

In any case,
I was a little sad today;
The old Arlene who cannot play
The way she used to,
Caused by nature’s vagary.

Dear reader, please forget  
This sentimental, reminiscent “…How I Miss…”
A useless business at the very least.
Now &Then, How I Miss…1.6.2020 Vaguely About Music; Pure Nakedness; Arlene Nover Corwin

Arlene Corwin collapsed on August 3rd, 2019.  In a coma for a month, when she awoke, there were 4 fingers missing on the right hand, 3 half fingers on the left,  and two catheters in one kidney   The cause: Blood poisoning or sepsis (from the Greek ‘sepin’ make rotten).  After two months she was home.  Muscles shrunken, walking with help she began a regime of sit-ups, pushups, yoga…and using every object inI the house as tool now is fully flexible and growing stronger with each day.
But the hands, those hands…We’ll see what happens.

As deadly as sepsis
It makes your world so small
Creeping in
Inch My inch
Until you suffocate within yourself
OCD has made my world so small
I'm not sure there's any world at all anymore


But I will fight back
Push back
Against the walls
That suffocate me
I will push back and
Kick and
Scream and
Swear and
Fight.
Until I can see the world again
"OCD no longer engulfs me.
I engulf it."

Underneath the thorn
  stinking, **** suppurates.

It throbs–
pulling the splinter–
  pressing out the ****–
      squeezing until the green sepsis runs ******.

The thorn's scar
      is permanent
            biding time,
                  waiting for bacteria.

Avast abundance of life forms
doth snapchat and buzzfeed
a motley fool of indiscriminate creed
resembled yours truly freed
from those scrambling greed
dully sending hotmail google
eyed hungrily ogling indeed
six months later post March 23rd
every herbaceous and woody plant
gets brittle and goes to seed.

Autumnal hint faintly tinges air
finding this mortal
bewitched by blare
ring refulgent radiance,
which quiets viz cheer
ring, harkening murmuring analogous,
when Holiday carolers
happily, gingerly, and
festively doth declare
punctuating ethereal medium
melodic equilibrium gently, ineluctably,
and lightly dust flirtatiously
kibitz, palpate, and tickle ear
projecting medicinal kissing effusion
across world wide web
primal beat linkedin within

uber tinder shutterfly lyft
razzmatazz nature
made renaissance faire,
which brilliant mid
eve ville theme
finds me shielding sensitive sight
against blinding, glomming, and limning
eye optic cull glare,

thus hands cupped
visor like impinged
whatsapp blinking instagram
reduced vision bolsters hear
ring to increase decibel
(home on the) range
prodigious symphonic production
issuing verdant pastoral themes

billow and flow across terra firma
hallowed ground made sanctimonious
immaculate mother earth conception
synchronized in symphony with terrestrial
fauna and flora, which life forms abound,
via natural laboratory called Mother Earth,
especially at unseasonably
thermally, searingly scorching dawn
make offal spring tide, where multitudinous
existence strain to avoid extinction
carving out figurative zoological niche
in kaleidoscope of palm olive colors

and funereal sounds galore
idyllic melodic musical sounds compete
against backdrop clanging din
artist palette of rainbow blended spectral views,
sickeningly sabotaged, smeared, and sullied
which unforgiving, twining,
and strangulating manifestations
vaporize, undermine, and traumatize
therapeutic potential restorative
natural environment damaged
ability becalm ming terrestrial sepsis

no longer assuage auditory and
visual sense pleasures respectively
serve as psychic balm against global threat
of life, liberty and happiness triage psalm
rampant forming diabolical deliberate deeds
bred deeply rooted soiled hatred
kudzu resistance asphyxiates human camaraderie
democratic state attacked with no qualm

malicious terroristic plots splatter
(Jackson ******* like) methodical map
blueprint leaves catastrophic trail of red
dire prognostications
constitute doomsday scenario
no rocket scientist mentality requisite
grave misfortune writ large for all life.

Like twinkling drops of hallowed lambanog
that you later called miraculous coco *****,
they remained in the night sky of your shot glass
after you tried to drown the sorrowful mysteries
in countless gulps of your comforting best friend,
anaesthetizing every pain in your fatigued heart.
There your imagined liquor-incarnate compadre
of one comforter spirit friend and brother beside
sitting, hugging your shoulders, in whispers telling
you, you’re not alone, just cry if you need to, crying
as no Jesus or Mary could save your unfortunate soul
sentenced and punished without trial, by sheer strike
of Luck or lack of it. Keeping the faith despite the fate.

Not even a single teasing demon to offer you to pawn
your one forsaken spirit. Gods are deaf. Salve Regina!
yelling to high heavens, growling to the deepest hells
"Eli, Eli, Lama, Sabachthani?” - viral pneumonia spells
the names of maimed friends and silenced co-workers
“in no particular order!” as if finalists in that pageantry,
we call pandemic - worldwide but never world class
- and only the coronavirus wears the crown and reigns.

The roll call of the departed has become as endless
as the river of tears and sent messages of sympathies
and ocean deep condolences and sincerest wishes of
peaceful rests, soul or no soul, expressed. Covid or not,
all the dead are suspected zombies and swabbed; a stick
up one’s nose has taken new meanings. And thinking
positive is suddenly not on, not in, but off – it’s feared.

Life is like the alcohol with which we wash our hands.
It easily evaporates, leaving our skin feeling cold. Like
when Sepsis claimed a dear sister on New Year’s Day –
Anxiety is a real, a dangerous reality. Then colleagues,
mentors, friends, relatives, acquaintances, mother of one
pal, a health worker, front liners, a driver, a poor child,
a teacher, a student, a jobless man, a millionaire, an idol
An aunt passes away, on one unhappy day. Grim Reaper
blindly, swiftly, sweeps the shining sickle, the scythe . . .
and the life that began at daybreak is gone, gone, so quick.
All grains harvested in just a day.
Life. Just one short day.
One day.