I made you a crown of dried chicken feet,
it goes with your snake eyes,
like how dice stare back, irisless.

I bet fifty clams on Steady As She Goes,
I dug them up in Maine for chowder.
Well, my Friday dinner just walked away.

I put your hand in the waffle iron and closed it shut.
That's for trying to make a better pancake, good suggestion,
pretentious Belgian *******.
Next time I'll just stub my cigarette out your sweet Sunday brunch,
you'll eat the ashes out of the little cubes that are so fluffy and crisp.

Cleaning up a broken pillow after a pillowfight,
that's rough stuff.
**** feathers, it's a cotton from now on.
Let's practice making out.
Gross, I don't like girls, I was kidding. Get the ******* me.

They snuck syrup and chemicals into all your drinks,
but don't worry, I removed it.
You spit it out and say GROSS WHAT IS THIS THIS HAS GONE BAD
fine. keep ******* down on those chemicals cancer kid.

It was the time of summer where every kid had silently realized that it was ending,
No longer halfway through, no longer half full
Leaking and spilling out,
like the gas in my twenty two year old car
We couldn’t stop it,
And the moments of high school summertime
The moments that supposedly turn into stories we tell forever
Hadn’t seemed to have happened.

Both of us on the swing lazily swung
Dizzily from side to side.
Climbing forward, falling in reverse
Our combined bodyweight shifting back and forth
Tanned legs kicking up in an attempt at unison on every backwards glide.
Gravity hung us there,
Pulling the swing toward the ground no matter the rotation.

I sat on top.
I wore bleached shorts and bleached hair.
I worried that gravity or more so my value to it
would crush him.


At the same time, I felt unbelievably small.


The air pressed in on me from all angles,
it touched my bare legs
it easily waffled my shirt.

“Mel, if you were squishing me, I would let you know”,
he assured with a cocky tone of his very own that somehow made me feel special.
I couldn’t help but think he was only trying to be tough
Attempting to let sheer willpower overweigh my well earned quads,
My six foot frame.
The awkward body I never quite grew into
Never knew how to masterfully control
Never knew how to fill.
Though I secretly (wanted to) truly believe him

On this humid night I felt like the ball was in my court,
Like I could do anything and everything.
That nothing could go wrong
That the boy that I was sitting on was genuine
And that I could simply drive off to wherever.

(I had a full tank of gas and enough money to get me to Alabama).

I felt small in this,
in this infinity of possibility all around me.
Like a weight was pushing into me
Putting on pressure that couldn’t be ignored
That shrunk me just enough.
I felt powerless to fate
Powerless to this planet
To this grand, glorified hunk of earth which was so much greater than me
(and surely my insignificant weight anxieties).

I felt like the gas was leaking out faster than I could use it.
I felt like my infinity was disappearing as I swung within it.


Just like that, I let the ball drop and the gas leak out.
We just kept swinging.
Laughing,
Wasting,
Talking,

Dying.

our circles of right and wrong,
fractured in absence of fickle zen,
stand now across the sky
diagramed on clouds in venn

and smiling the grey
blobs block the meteors;
it’s love of life that may
chain our bodies in the center

of that shifty airy water space
where waffles are gentrification
and the hands we hold are separation
and its happening everyplace

we go. so to talk and act
separately, is to deny that cloudy venn;
to go where mind is scarcely fact
and establish a dangerous distance

cuz yesterday I meditated
but today I must’ve particulated
cuz  I see we’re one big contradiction
inside love that’s bound to mediation.

friere would say this occupation
is precisely our ontological vocation,
but to subjectify ourselves at the very
center of the venn is to carry

a weight upon the column
of my spinal cord unknown
even to the days
of my very best posture.

yet, your resistance to the slump—
it guides me to listen for the thump
thump of distant drums:
a revolutionary battlecry

through which I extend my hand
to hold yours across the waffled
space which we’ve so ******.
our heartbeat races through my mind.

since childhood
and since I first knew
that such unglamorous places as libraries exist
(well, obviously the masses think
places of worship and amusement parks
and cinemas and mosh pits are much more attractive
as these draw crowds like scavengers to carcasses)
ah, but I digress
like a man past fifty
which is what I am -
but, as I was saying,
since I first discovered public libraries
(I couldn’t afford to buy books once
and the books I can afford to buy now
are not worth the dollars
the booksellers say I should part with)
ah, but again I digress…

and as I was saying,
all my reading since innocent childhood
has been of borrowed books
from public libraries
which I read and appreciate
but in which I dare not write comments;
I dare not scribble
in the books
for I am worried about fines
and being labeled ‘delinquent borrower’
and losing my reputation
as being an eminent citizen;
and so I do not write comments
but I have to say something
as you can well understand
to express my disagreement or approbation;
but I cannot write my comments beside the text
or at the end of the short story
or at the end of the poem
or in the margins of utterly un-understandable Einstein
and so with no other way
and my frustrations building
and determining through reason
I should not allow my pent-up emotions
to explode into expletives and ravings
and such implosions and explosions
to ***** up my precious emotional and aesthetic life
I decided
since childhood
when I first started reading -
I decided, and
what else could I do?
to explode into expletives and ravings
and such implosions and explosions
and so
unable to write comments
on borrowed material
on public property
I shouted at books
(and still do)
and uttered expletives
(and continue to do so)
or went done on my knees before books
and made sweet moans, something akin
to ****** ecstasy
before, say, a poem of Keats
or shouted and hollered with joy
at a volume of Leaves of Grass
or screamed with disapproval at stories
turned out with worn out plots
and predictable turn of events
where every man had his maiden
and lived happily for ever
well-fed and well-sexed and fatter and happily ever after;
and I made faces at writing
that were just clichés
and poems that waxed lyrical
and I scowled before un-creative pieces
that waffled with thin sentiments
and moans and sighs of love
or of poetic philosophical bombast
and so my reading career,
since childhood -
O most cultured gentlemen and most elegant ladies,
my reading career has been
dogged with explosions of expletives before books I read
or books I refused to read
and also of course with ecstatic cries before
well-written and well-thought out prose or poetry
but, tragically, unable to write on spines or margins
or between lines on borrowed books
this became
a habit so deeply ingrained
I cannot tear myself off from it
and so
you understand why
even in this age of the internet and cyberspace
I find it excruciating to punch in comments
because this borrowed-books mindset
is fixed and ******* so firm in me;
but you can imagine I have
knelt before your poems and blogs
in near ******-ecstasy
or more unkindly
I have uttered expletives
and shouted obscenities at your blogs and posts
and my family have run in to my study
happily thinking I was going insane
and they could finally confine
me in a Hospital for the Insane
but I am ready
and I just grin with a stolen book of Shakespeare
which I keep near for such occasions
and I say to my precious wife:
Oh, I’m just practicing to direct
a modern production of Shakespeare’s plays
sometime in the future, soon
and disappointed,
the family curses and utters profanities

but I digress -
so back to the subject at hand;
and gentle reader,
perhaps we are both one of a kind
and you too suffer from this
borrowed-books mindset
and you give my poems and blogs
and my online posts
the same treatment I give yours…
well, we understand each other
and we naturally utter obscenities
or kneel with pleasure
but leave no comments or scribble
because the shame of public library censure
has too strong a hold on us…
but what is important is,
we understand each other

THE SHADOWS PALMS
STRETCHED IN THE EBONY ROADS
MUSING ON THE BLOCKS OF RUGGED STONE STEPS
GARNERED AND GATHERED BY CHAFED PALMS.

STRADDLING OVER THEM
THE DEEP FURROWS AND HEATED BROWS
NOW BROWN AND TANNED WEARING
A RUMMAGED MOUSTACHE OF CLIMBING VINES.

EVERY STEP AMUSES,
A MUSE THAT DOES NOT CEASE TO AMUSE,
IN THE HEAT OVERDOSES.


AND WHEN THE ARECA PALMS PALIPATING
IN ARRAY
HOIST ABOUT LIKE ROWS OF MEN DOPED


IN CEILED BANKS OF DISTRUST
A CYNICAL NILA CRIES ,
HER PLUNDERED SANDS.


NOW THE SUNKEN FERRIES ,
HAVE APPEARED AT HER BAY,
AND PAINFULLY CHAFE EACH OTHER.


A ***** FROM THE BOTTOM
STIRRING THE BELL FOR THE REQUIEM
PAY THE FERRYMEN.


FOR THE WAYFARERS WAFFLED WRITINGS
ARE ADDRESSED
TO THE MEN WHO PLASTERED HER WALLS ALONE

The girl she stood upon the stage
amongst the rainbow glow
and sang with power raw and wild
a passion all her own.
She sang of youth and politics
and of the poor man's plight
but as she sang the crowd talked on
ignoring her, despite
the fact they'd paid good money
to hear music here tonight.
They waffled on ' bout nothing much
the weather and such like
while all the while she sang her heart out through her lonely mic.

Guitar strings thrashed, her voice it soared
as though her life depended
on bleeding out her heart and soul before the night had ended
with the crowd engaged in other things
their selfies, blogs and texts
she left the stage with happy thanks
and introduced the next.

Waffled glass
Resting on a rustic oaken desk
Half-filled with the powdered sweetness
Of dappled peppermint

When I First Encountered with The Devil
There the weakest warriors wrathly
Flee from the farthest toes of a naughty evil
Even the roaring of a Lion wouldn't keep him healthy
Where trees dance, where the waiving hands of grass
Will be so frail to desist trampling, Where men ****
Grisly! When actually there a million of deathless Dalais
At abundance! But when invincible souls landed, Hey! Hope soar
That inevitable quest of callous chaos were quashed
That retro of hatred threat becomes clearly claptrap
That war wallows with forces that were waffled
For death! I survived those inanimate vap
From there, if for anyone knows but sonnets
They shall forever flows without dements

I scribbled my thoughts at the side of my ****** nose;
Skipping each meal as I breathe the same air from a decaying limb;
Shattered and rumbled, gabbled by a selfish tied leash;
It was I who run, run to the safest route to my swarthy thought of you;
Dangled on the same shift of blues;
I dressed on a tanned linen skirt with my pale blue shades;
I drowned you;
I drown and stared at the mirror;
I was pestered she called me again;
Shouting my not so popular name;
I fixed my head and walk slowly;
Slowly to the path of secrecy;
I was not alone;
I was writing inch by inch I came near;
I waffled myself and fought a giant fleece;
And fought so hard that I lose and flea;
Words domain my ingenious head;
Clocks are ticking vomiting heads;
Tick tock sounds of the hands of time;
Pursuing each opportunity to pass the line;
Our shadow’s fade on the dark desert high way;
T’was our self-hiding each fail;
O’ what a flimsy thought I’ve become coherent;
Slowly I’ve been dancing,
Dancing through the meadows of green;
I’m losing the same soul;
Wounded, dazzling and grieving;
Staring slowly;
Becoming one with the nothing;
As I’m soothing my wounds I’m slightly absorbed;
By my ****** hands.