• A Trip Down Memory Lane - Usenet Morpheal 2002 (1/2)

    From Terry Stomp@21:1/5 to robertm...@gmail.com on Thu Apr 29 15:56:15 2021
    On Wednesday, April 28, 2021 at 8:02:20 PM UTC-3, robertm...@gmail.com wrote:
    Subject: Re: Poems: 2002 (Recovered Files – Reconstructed Writings)

    Cythera And Morpheal

    A Picnic Basket Case
    --------------------

    Trapped, within the teardrop,
    amber made of mirrory thoughts,
    rosin upon the bow,
    made of smoke;
    left rows of suture thread annotations,
    flowers that are riverbells,
    limbless sex organs,
    from the tremblings of the mind,
    demanding disciplined obsessions.
    The way the water floating on your voice
    submerges remnants of near consciousness,
    and wears her eyes,
    under layers of social bandages.

    --------------------------------

    Karla And Morpheal

    Subject: Re: You are not a poet - Interpolated
    Mon, 15 Jul 2002

    You are not a poet -
    take the laurels off your genitals
    I braved speaking to you
    looking into your sandbag eyes
    with you
    ploughing a trench between arguments
    (not knowing keeps me home)
    fearful of a casually placed mine field
    I'd paint the summer in Fauve
    duties, obedient to common pretensions
    mustard sun pressing us against the porch
    a warm numbness of a ghosted flesh
    you whispering "ma mere.."
    from your womblike mouth
    blood lips from blood wine pursed
    connection to an umbilicus of language
    in vowels you'd mastered caring for children
    so fearful all might not become consonant
    of some director in an arrondissement
    in his private cutting room of risqué scenes,
    far from the Left Bank of my yearnings.
    reduced to a latte of not quite satisfactions
    "Repetez" and I'd swallow wine for courage
    simply to begin reading the manuals
    turning as the wind shifted plums bronzed in the afternoon
    thumbing the pages concerning oral sex,
    bells with no sound
    the shapes of resonant breasts.

    Last summer of a time
    of moon stained clothing
    you and your mad father the doctor
    in a wide eyed speculum stretched discourse,
    me and my flight from a cult
    of deeper stimulation,
    were stories we invoked and dispelled.
    We were afraid to go that far out
    Such treaties held back the roar
    lingering in the wash at the edge
    awhile
    before our world spasmed.

    Four babies and husband gone
    all a wailing cradle sirened jazz rush
    I hear how you wander crazy to lucid
    still prodded, chastised, by an inner crowd
    and files are kept of your threatening letters
    another part of that new mythology, sentenced,
    to judges and the President,
    who whisper dark curses into your nightly pillow.

    You are not a poet
    having gone AWOL from the ranks of the literati,
    so madness consoles --
    an undisciplined, unregimented, broken pen,
    let me purse this pain,
    among mind spills of a constantly falsified reportage.

    Only the firm voice of my friend shakes my hand from the phone.
    Conversation could still be something therapeutic.

    Into the twilight of my hesitation
    life is sometimes the same as a finger on a gun trigger.

    you are whispering "la danse"
    almost daring to dream skeletal mating rituals
    but the plums like hung black angels
    dangle aside an introjected spear of argument,
    do not touch the ground,
    as if they too are another hanged man symbol.

    -----------------------------------------------

    Poems by Morpheal – August 2002

    Subversive
    ----------

    She arrived quietly,
    a subversive moment between
    the first apple wind
    and the peach blush cheek,
    spring eyes with autumn lips,
    a heady new wine kiss,
    Wind sweep of finger motions,
    and more longed for in her gestures
    than any other revelations,
    her lotus blossom opening to naked from the navel.
    ---------------

    Traps
    -----

    The mice had evolved and were competing much more fiercely. They were observed building better traps. Soon, there were many dead mice, bodies strewn around,as if a large cat had been let loose thereto play them in. The many better traps, that had been
    built,all stood empty. As the mice had evolved further,they started to fight and to kill each other,contending as to which trap was the better mouse trap. The mice who survived developed another trap,a mythology,of explanation and blame,blaming an
    invisible cat for all the carnage. Later the story was changed and it was a mouse, not a cat. A mouse bigger and smarter than all the other mice,that had caused it all,and that mouse was called on,in his absence,as being the inventor,their creator,of the
    most perfect trap.

    ------------------------- August 1, 2002

    Run Aground
    -----------

    His marble cold fingers in the tangled ropes of her hair,
    and the fingers white as the wings of sea birds,
    becoming dark flights of sharp lashes striking across eyes of surf, scattering a salt dew spray upon the promontory of a bone stretched cheek,
    a land's end unmoved atop shifting sands of disquieted expression,
    awash around swollen ripples of pursed lips,
    that refuse to say,
    while rumours of wrecks drift up ashore,
    and some of them with names partially legible,
    imprinted on the remains of their broken affairs.

    ------------------------

    Gun Cotton
    ----------

    Gun cotton,
    black powder day,
    detonates thundering,
    the sky crowded with footsteps,
    rushing down onto swollen ground,
    leaving short lived obscure histories:
    puddled up reflections.

    ------------

    Finished
    --------

    Everything being broken slowly away,
    grab a few moments with one or another half familiar stranger,
    never really knowing when it will be broken,
    down and apart,
    eventually it gets right down deep into any sense of one's self,
    or the other,
    in a mudslide tumbledown slide scramble
    into undistinguishable new forms of soaked to the bone
    grimey incoherence,
    thrown together,
    heaped,ending in no point trying to build anything up,
    that will not be broken down or apart again,
    into shapeless wet clay,
    and whomever you think that the enemy really is,
    will call that finished.

    -----------------------

    Disconnected Rumour
    -------------------

    I hear something said of you,
    and I am immediately attracted,
    turned on to you,
    yet I cannot know you.
    There is no way,
    no way whatever,
    no way I can know you.
    I do not have your street address,
    I do not have your email,
    or your telephone number,
    and we never see each other face to face.
    I hear something said of you,
    and I am immediately attracted,
    yet everywhere I go,
    being there is always about something and someone else,
    nothing really attractive,
    in the usual waltzing of formal greetings,
    and the careful avoidance of most subjects,
    including anything much of what would turn me on to you.
    The rumour seems only there to stimulate my desires for you,
    yet there is never anyone with any resemblance
    to any rumour of you anywhere near enough.
    They toss a few scraps of something of you,
    through the cage of my being held wherever I am,
    in my place and time,
    my being a kind of victim of various circumstances,
    none of which I chose,
    and never saying where you are,
    those who come and go being only other prisoners with different desires,
    not sharing our bad luck,
    and not really wanting you,
    while they distribute the disconnected rumours of you
    that fall from their lips in automatic whispers.

    ----------------------

    Explosion
    ---------

    The decay of hours,
    and the speed of light slowly breaking down,
    a broken column,
    into infectious fear,
    gathering crowded coughed out from doorways into wide chasms of street, smiles festering with unspoken discontent,
    a spent wind,
    and we try to break loose and run madly,
    away into the night,
    our pulled threads straining together,
    across the social fabric,
    leaping from dream to dream,
    splitting the unbearable predictable patterns wide open,
    rummaging inside,
    spilling their colours,
    auguries spent into shades of regrets gone wild,
    among those futures thrown overturned into abandon,
    and our attempting to recover something romantic and intimate
    from in between the politic of debris.

    ----------------------

    Undertakings
    ------------

    We ferry the personally dead,
    into morning,
    crossing the edge of the river of sleep,
    moving on,
    to new undertakings,
    various ceremonies more perfectly performed in impersonal ways,
    taking them onto checkout lines,
    ticket lines,
    and other statistics,
    including word counts,
    making bank statements,
    giving account,
    in between greeting cards,
    entering into various assurances of belonging,
    wherever we can be certain that we don't know anyone,
    and everyone there is considered a friend.

    ----------------------- November 5th, 2002

    Tied
    ----

    Forests of green twine tangled up in August,
    tatters of loose leaf,
    trailing to abrupt ends that we try to reconnect
    tied across uncertain valleys,
    from a dangle of limbs,
    taking tumbles of emotion into tinder dry branches
    beside tufts of marshland,
    a melancholic hypnosis of sword edged cattails
    waving legions in formation along watery eyes borders
    where the white sun dives as a golden liquid splash
    onto murky cool browns being uttered from a riverlet
    of urgent discontent.

    ---------------------

    Wounded Impulse
    ---------------

    A sharp pain,
    drumming at the skin,
    puncturing the numbness of that day,
    all done in half on purpose,
    the wounded impulse stopping short
    at a self inflicted gash across a deadened psyche
    forming the startled trickle of red brown oxidation,
    and watched entranced,
    feeling a warm sting of blood flow from the wounded finger,
    playing in it,
    for a while,
    tonguing the edge as if it were honey,
    or the bitter stainless edge of a moment of decision,
    across another membrane sack of dreams pierced
    in a same silence makes fidget in tedious time,
    being all taken as flashbacks to those words,
    bled now almost a soothing,
    Thickening,
    imagined sweet as strawberry touched to starved lips,
    hungering for another kiss that never came.

    ----------------

    Waiting Is Dangerous
    --------------------

    Waiting is dangerous,
    and you knew that,
    when you made me wait,
    crouched down,
    holding ground,
    forced to think about what might come in between us,
    as I remained waiting motionless and quiet,
    among that jungle of everyone else's desires.

    Waiting is dangerous,
    and you knew that,
    when you made me wait,
    until I was bitten by a staccato of things
    that I could not see,
    the way spiders bite paralysing a segment of victim flesh,
    and as mosquitoes insert a sucking poison invisibly under the skin.

    Waiting is dangerous,
    and you knew that,
    when you made me wait,
    until I sickened,
    feverish and chilled losing the way,
    in the thick of delusions that implied you were coming
    at long last to see me,
    and again I waited
    feeling the bite of time and the sting of place.

    Waiting is dangerous,
    and you knew that,
    when you made me wait,
    until the last belief was broken down,
    ground away past bare bones,
    gnawed slowly and crushed helplessly
    Seized in the jaws of predators,
    a gleam of you and them,
    having left me nearly alive,again.

    -------------------- August 6th, 2002

    Clouded
    -------

    Your clouded brow the only signal in the painted out sky,
    now clad in muted blues and scarce whispering
    trembles of breath brushed across a few thin reeds,
    past the faded green,
    those bodies stretched out along a forever of rusted roadside.

    Something pushed at me and I rolled over the way a stone rolls over
    in a reluctant groan,
    kicked at and bruised,
    tumbling out of bed into gravity:
    the disastrous pull carrying everything along,
    from our impossible journey towards another that is even less probable.

    You have me reaching,
    under the hem of night fall groping for a way around in the dark,
    cutting my fingers on slivers of broken sunlight
    where the gleam in our eyes shattered and was swept away under the rug, among more dangerous artifacts such as love letters
    and imagined kisses.

    -------------------- August 7th, 2002

    Nik And Morpheal

    Iron spike into an orange, a coined phrase vending machine
    pulls out all the seeds.Instant push button chemistry.
    No more trees. Intravenously fed synthetic sap.
    And I will build a railroad into tunnels of raw pulp fiction flesh
    where no trains will run. Following ghosts of steam whistle breaths
    I will walk the tracks,along a million addicts limbs
    forth and back seeking a desperate disinterest,
    because I killed all who were craving anything,
    and the orange trees,incinerating each stray leaf.
    Like you, Andrew, I punish me,flagellating my own sex,
    for sins not known,striving to become a mortification
    for crimes unconvicted,as to all the laws not yet written,
    for the silence of give us our daily anaesthesia,
    and her, rattling around, as technical connections.
    We construct our own cages weaving the walls from routines,
    and then sit in them, punishing our imginations,
    looking out the open door. No where different left to go
    I am a criminal, I wiped out for the sake of intellectual arguments,
    all the trees exchanging wooden limbs for plastic,
    with my sexually transmitted need to comply
    with unease,and to keep moving on, uprooted.

    --------------------------------------------

    Subject: Re: lost it - Interpolated
    Date: Mon, 08 Jul 2002

    * * wrote:
    in its own dust

    no control
    puppet on wild strings
    gonna go off
    someone lit a short fuse
    on a killing spree
    plucking daisies, pushing up
    ones who look at me
    see my television head
    gonna die
    a vacuum tube brain burst,
    dont care if you cry
    shorting out your cerebral cathode,
    you'll get it first
    you high voltage monster
    put into the ground
    when they pull your switch.

    ---------------------------

    Subject: Re: t h e b a n d w i d t h w a r s - interpolated
    Date: Mon, 08 Jul 2002

    the bandwidth wars
    book of the dead

    a million brains
    strung together, beads,
    turned to day old pizza
    pepperoni faced
    saw it with my own eyes
    as they were sliced thin
    sticking out of my head
    and carted away in wheelbarrows
    bouncing on springs
    a night soil of visions
    housebroken to your ways
    dreaming rich and famous dreams
    of incest and mockery
    plagued by greedy fleshpots
    in camouflage tents
    wounded by their mortar fire tongues
    painted sky blue
    with cryptic insignia
    at least your optimism
    gave us reasons to mourn
    kept us out of prison
    served up breakfast in bed
    being vanguard elements
    the crisp starched precision
    of the weed eater brigades
    flaying various conversations
    well manicured faces
    trimmed of individual features
    a delight to zealots
    of utter disbelief
    who gaze upon a world of
    blank stares, empty words,
    snarling dogs and hissing serpents
    leaving behind their mythologies
    our blood their food
    the congealed ideas pan fried
    never ask to go
    never expect to come
    where you've never been
    or where you are planning to go
    that's opening an up
    breaking through the roof of the mouth
    a serious can of spiders
    becoming cobwebbed with data
    teach yourself a new language
    and have fewer ways to communicate
    even if it's the old one
    revised in unprovable ways
    hail California!
    dreaming, wake up,
    grade school children
    playing grown up, with breasts,
    into kinky sex
    purchased by Rhode Island adults,
    90 miles of highway up your ass
    a black puddle of apartheid races
    into an ideological trance
    of demonic shamanism played out
    by the mountain of tires
    a modernized voodoo right
    wife swappers
    trading dead chickens, and the news,
    of the Stalinist writer's union
    scrawling words with broken penises
    the mall Santa depravity
    a strip teasing elf strokes his knee,
    little and scared
    in a moment of continued castration
    hail to thee electro shock
    ultimate orgasm,
    gateway to the eccentricities
    bound and gagged with gold lamee,
    atrocities
    desperate for release
    beneath it all
    everyone turns tricks
    and aristocrats of image
    mass convert to nihilism
    it's what they do
    as everything cancels out.

    ---------------------------

    Dark Horse
    ----------

    You did the same as the other did,
    leaving me to no more than a closeness of familiar things;
    something more solid than what you gave me of California dreaming.
    The arrowhead planes leave smoke signals in the jet streamed sky,
    making me feel at least half wounded,
    counting the added scars,
    drawn out across my mind,
    much the same as waking up suddenly
    to having been thrown from a very dark horse.

    When I hear something scurry across the roof in the middle of night
    it reminds me of the restless spirits of a few of our conversations.

    --------------------- Morpheal

    Monster
    -------

    Prankenstein's monster with a P,
    not an F,
    where one of us has to,
    absolutely has to,
    fail completely,
    in the make a pass,
    and fail as to a system,
    there being no way for both of us to end up being right,
    according to the rules,
    one of us gets left out and behind.

    Either I am the monster that you have made me into,
    or you are the monster,
    and the villagers are trying to find out,
    so they can cut to the chase as to one of us,
    with their torches lit.

    ----------------------- Morpheal

    Collapse
    --------

    Running
    heavy limbed,
    strides,
    stretched out thin
    as a bed rail
    track
    going around the bend,
    the collapsing tunnel
    rapid closing
    of wind pipe,
    falling in
    from behind.

    ------------

    Cause of Death
    --------------

    The corpse stretches forever,
    and I dig for answers,
    after each exhumation
    of the body politic.
    The cause of death
    unknown,
    and dissection of motives
    reveals no useful clues.
    The organs are revealing
    of misleading signs,
    examination showing
    the heart has been removed.
    There is little left
    beyond the rubber gloved
    handshake,
    pure and simple,
    with some usual forms
    of preservation,
    scattered around
    among stainless implements.

    --------------------------- Morpheal

    Subject: Poems: August 9th, 2002

    Wanted
    ------

    Scarce recognizable,
    signs of personality,
    torn away
    left traces scarred
    across previous announcements,
    wherever no one replies,
    moving along,
    no standing,
    reading one another
    the same way they scan
    all the billboards,
    storing up the information
    finding themselves
    half consciously
    being wanted,
    in between public lines
    identifying with a variety
    of wanted posters
    announcements
    found pasted up
    in between graffiti scrawls
    that pass as anonymous
    attempts at signature.

    ----------------------

    Writing Reports
    ---------------

    Most events of any importance
    are clandestine,
    operations,
    and too often a lesson
    in getting in and getting out
    fast and clean,
    without forming attachments.
    A surgical strike
    cutting around the heart
    of the shades of grey matters,
    removing the other connections,
    stimulating only that momentary
    loss of nerve,
    that failed to say goodbye,
    failing to move on, fast enough.
    The alternative,
    is a terminated conversation,
    an isolated organism,
    cut off, septic
    in mid sentence,
    followed by capture
    into another deeper level
    of more complete boredom,
    held only by the complete lack
    of any real events,
    a specimen in a specimen jar,
    the way the origin was held
    before it all happened,
    forever kept under examination.
    Even there it comes down
    to writing reports,
    so the word is then given.

    --------------------------

    Ambiguous Strangers
    -------------------

    You talked to me about your voyeur psychiatrist,
    and your intimations about your peeping tom government,
    the way you were never alone in your bedroom,
    and no longer cared as to exposing yourself in front of cameras
    or to the startled eyes of ambiguous strangers.

    You talked to me of hearing voices from under your eaves
    going out of your own mind the way Marilyn Monroe went crazy,
    diving into the wrong pill jar,
    that being as sane a prescription as politics ever chances be,
    and you thought the congressman was under your bed.

    Since you became another sex goddess,
    I only get to masturbate to your mental image,
    while storing away our talked of sex lives in one of many closets,
    throwing a bedsheet over top of myself,
    becoming transformed into the sudden purity of a Klansman,
    saved with a sacrament of bourbon.

    ---------------------------------

    Requiem
    -------

    Orange blossom veined tissue on the opened wounds.
    Everything,
    including that,
    is seen through,
    leaving a thin chill mist where the flesh was meant to be.

    Every winter is the dread of spring,
    spent in the cold solitude counting
    the losses that always arrive when the snows melt.

    The mental struggle for continuity becomes sutured into place.
    There are various parts gathered at random,
    nailed together,
    repairing the fences,
    somewhere in between the blinded eyes and the broken tongue.

    Those bits of crazed glass,
    and some pink plastic that is moulded into perilous shapes.

    No matter what you expected
    you should have known that I cannot dream
    of what I have not seen and shall now never see.
    Everything remains shrouded,
    and the sanctuary of my opened hand is empty.

    ---------------------------

    New Mythologies
    ---------------

    When the lived portion ends,
    it is then that new mythologies begin,
    and we can begin to say that the sky split open all of a sudden,
    the future crashing to earth as a spilling of words,
    leaving a pale slit strained between the linings
    of two silver grey clouds,
    rushing bedsheets,
    and torn shreds of skin deep,
    as we mentally attempt to suture up the various incisions,
    as to his and her's,
    has beens,
    teased apart,
    from once convergent romances of thought.

    ------------------------------

    Cataclysm
    ---------

    She moved an eyelash at one end of the world,
    and the tree in his yard,
    at the other end of the world contorted,
    Spun,
    and in a cyclone of wind driven rain,
    that Pinocchio danced wildly until it split into two,
    the one part falling,
    in the same manner as a sweep of a hand gives way,
    then nose dives,
    sliding along a bad break between the sinuses.

    Everything else remained unscathed,
    other than the huge limb sprawled,
    fingers spread leaning into thin air,
    touching at the ground as if trying to get at something
    that was nearly sensed,
    across thousands of miles of endless fences.

    ------------------
    Cythera And Morpheal

    Dark Horse,
    broken from a carousel
    emerging from the closed eyelid,
    whipped furiously
    leaving,blood stained thoughts,
    familiar,as the black cat
    of dreaming,ill fated, crossed paths.

    Smoke sky in a pissed off haze
    unbound across the eye,
    of blurred recognitions
    much the same as immersions into not knowing
    waking up suddenly more murdered than alive,
    on the very dark horse,
    feeling the spurs,
    across the roof,
    in a broken up time
    of night,
    ghosting possibilities
    Lit as shadow in a dark cave.

    ------------------------------

    Date: August 11th, 2002


    Alone
    -----

    Distant invisible cries
    mixing human and bird sounds
    with the rushing white water.
    The canyon disappears
    below a fringe of cedars,
    their reddened fingers
    and strained arms
    wrapped around worn out stones,
    bodies leaning into the wind
    and holding back a blur of sun.
    I feel as if I too am holding on
    as desperately as they hold on,
    alone on the edge,
    as to another abyss,
    a mind left painfully cramped up,
    forced to clutching
    at sparse hand holds,
    of broken off communication,
    still struggling at a climb
    mostly beyond reach,
    of anything that does not break away,
    to vague ideas threatening
    to become another marriage
    of no more than tumbling clouds
    and broken rocks,
    some light having fallen
    breaking everything
    in between.

    -----------

    Unknown
    -------

    We never met,
    yet your unknown image
    flashed repeatedly
    as an unexpected jolt,
    of rare beauty,
    another hard blow
    to the edge of the mind,
    an interruption, hitting,
    at the usual programming,
    and then leaving
    a mind left to wondering
    about identity
    and other lures to meaningless
    attempts to fill in
    various unknown details,
    details and surmises,
    as to who that really was,
    conjectures would intrude
    into that sixth sense
    of eidetic disquiet,
    adding false labels,
    and spurious descriptions
    that become story lines.
    It always opens some avenues
    as to potential fantasies,
    giving rise to more
    sleepless speculations,
    that never get to touch,
    though I refused to dream,
    that anything could grow
    from that strange seed,
    planted in a derelict psyche,
    never having known
    dreams as being anything
    except as what was terminated
    earthed to ground,
    the moment it was dared
    into a specific anticipation.
    I simply assumed
    it was all another tease,
    and we too were never
    ever destined to meet,
    the way it is as to stars,
    and as to lesser deities,
    as well as how it is across borders,
    and beyond the margins of pages,
    that are the no man's land
    containing the fields
    of inner battles, fought
    by the forces of she loves me,
    and the forces of she loves me not,
    plucked from random daisies,
    and rendered into painful
    variations on the same
    scrawled love letter phrases
    then dared into a tiny corner
    of the world,
    defying all that remains
    as yet unknown.

    --------------- August 11th, 2002

    Wide Open
    ---------

    She strapped him down to his emotional bed,
    letting the meaning sink in sharp as a knife sharp glance
    sinks into the dead heat,
    a glass of iced whisky kept a finger tip away
    and destiny all going into total melt down,
    racked up precisely out of measured reach,
    and it's right,
    then,
    that something cracks concusively wide open
    to really knowing there's a new religion playing it's sex up tight,
    and cue ball crude,
    pushed right up,
    against your politics.

    ---------------------

    And Again
    ---------

    You were in the dream that I woke up from,
    and again,
    there was nobody there.

    No surprises,
    being had,
    a lot of packaging,
    and always something,
    to get all wrapped up in.

    This has happened so many times
    I hardly dare to close my eyes,
    blindly expectant as to anything else.

    Each time the same happens and I awaken suddenly,
    to being put aside,
    struck down,
    in the middle of the story,
    getting nothing other than labelled a little older in time,
    and being made wiser
    only as to uglier than the time before.

    ---------------------

    Wavering
    --------

    A sprig of moonbeams,
    the dapple grey mare grazing head shy among white lace flowers,
    the whole scene a field of stardust that's wavering along the sword
    edge sweeping hand of sudden wind wipes aside all regular numbers,
    pushing everything back across the clock face
    leaving premature burial,
    at sea,
    among the dwindling few
    remaining options.

    ------------------

    Beyond All Recognition
    ----------------------

    Times when there is nothing left
    to distinguish the days
    spread wide open across the center of the calendar.
    Nothing inviting,
    and nothing there to augment the shape of things to come,
    the money having been scalpelled away,
    with deft cuts of prevention,
    bled away into various rumoured destinations,
    stained ends of the line,
    up against the wall,
    as a kind of fashion statement,
    showing tales of rejections and the required rework,
    until no longer recognizable.

    ---------------------------- August 12th, 2002

    Stars
    -----

    The garden is full of death at this time of year,
    bordered with spindly yellowed stains of softening wilt,
    surrounded by unfinished projects,
    packages nearly opened up,
    and the contents barely visible under a torn corner.

    It is as if everything dies at one glimpse
    of a flower hanging its forlorn head down shagged and swaying,
    among a crowd of strangers,
    and then it is all over again,
    in knowing nothing more
    than some of us might make it until spring comes,
    when the snows melt from beneath one or another solitary
    Hibernation under the hard cold white of winter stars.

    ----------------

    Someone
    -------

    Everywhere I go there is someone to work with,
    on something,
    or other,
    and everywhere I go there is no one to know
    beyond someone to work with.

    There is never anyone to be known,
    as anything that's wanted as something nearer
    than someone to work with.

    I know,
    we are growing as thin as the stories repeated in advertising circulars,
    and thin as my thinning hair,
    thin as dreams,
    becoming not much more than our variant commercial messages,
    where it is all about making something,
    and everywhere we go,
    making it with someone
    someone to work with,
    someone different,
    always someone to work with,
    but I find it is lonelier everywhere I go
    no matter how many people are there
    as someone different to work with.

    It is lonelier and lonelier,
    left to reminiscing about a long time ago
    of romantic dreaming that got us only that far,
    and no further,
    than a tiny,
    hardly noticed,
    public cloudburst,
    where one of us was only an appearance
    Interjected into someone else's writing,
    writing off,
    writing in,
    or writing onto,
    that other chapter,
    only to find the story really ended before that.

    We never got to write any other lines
    and it makes me so sad
    that all I ever got anywhere I went,
    in that impersonal world of quietly dreaming
    those personal dreams,
    was somewhere where there was someone,
    always someone,
    someone different,
    to work with.

    --------------

    Broken Glass
    ------------

    The mental engines overheated,
    pulled steamed to the side of the road,
    uphill summer flares a blowout,
    leaving scorched tempers,
    various hot spots,
    mucilaginous skin glued to underwear,
    the saturated pools of molten breasts
    poured into her t-shirt.

    The coming of evening a stale beer smell sky,
    its pale golden brown a horizontal wipe,
    and the spilt froth being watched obsessively,
    for fresh indications of resurrections,
    through the curved glass of the broken bottle.

    ---------------------

    Past The Lips
    -------------

    It's all sucked out until the suction is tugging
    on the marrow cracking ribs of emotion
    feeling dry as tinder is parched dry,
    having already been broken and licked at

    [continued in next message]

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