Dimensional slippage
conceived from without
Length, width, and height
time squared thereabout
Spacetime endemic
on gravity’s spire
Black Holes ill rumored
supernova inspired
Fourth, fifth, and sixth
but then nobody’s sure
With logic’s deception
embraced more and more
The system it’s flawed
in both structure and form
Pulling you into
the physicist’s norm
Till that day you falter
and turn from it all
When the out becomes in
— and you answer the call
(Dreamsleep: July, 2024)
Momma lies in the old, old cemetery --
[A space] and then her third grandchild
Stillborn after long, disappointing labor.
Now largely neglected, I go when I can
Seldom seeing a living soul thereabout,
I put money in a caretaker’s wooden box
Hoping he’ll mow the old section clean
Of thistles, and briars, and overgrowth
Before Memorial Day.
The older generation are buried there,
Grands and greats from the old country
Come to work the mines, buy farmland,
Start afresh in the new world overseas.
Their progenies are in a new cemetery
Perpetual care, a few miles to the west
With a luxurious-looking mausoleum,
Flat stones and always well-manicured
Before Memorial Day.
Written August 9, 2022
The long life
The knowledge of living forever is already here
all one has to do is renew the old cells for new ones
once a year starting when forty or thereabout when
a person is self-sufficient.
It is also possible to renew cells so often on regress
to infancy and looked after by your son who is unable
to grasp he is changing his father’s nappy.
Longevity has its own risk of how to live you can alight
from the Garston, bus nr 9 and be knocked down
by a car, the autopsy will show the person was not forty
But 110.
The best way to get old is to kill someone in Oklahoma
get 200 years in a padded cell be fed by a slot in the wall
and when the conviction comes to an end
refuse to leave the prison, your home on earth.
At the corner of King and Far West Street
A newly arrived German family
They'd given birth to one
We were twelve or thereabout
I saw her in twilight of Hit Parade on radio Belize
I'd just walked barefoot from my yard
Never made it to Jim, the grocer next door.
I was face to face with newness of life
Eyes like a pussy cat, she pulled me
Half devoured me with her embrace
She squeezed as if to savor joy
I was pissed she dared to seize me
Caught me off guard
I smelled the smell of evening rose, but
Could not chase the fog that vied for her warmth
I knew not the color of friendship
Dark chocolate, white hands
Blues by the Caribbean Sea.
*
Melanie chopped down the trees
(Not by herself, of course)
That Jackie planted, just so she
Could get on her high horse.
The critics all swooped in to say
It’s “empty,” “cold,” and “white,”
Replacing all the flowers
That were colorful and bright.
My favorite comment goes like this:
(Or something thereabout)
“Who switches up their garden when
They’ll soon be moving out?”
Night has fallen, day will rest
It is so, east to west
Darkness will cover, sun will diminish
What day brought, night will finish
Reciprocal in time, precious to keep
Each rotation terminates, time to sleep
Awaken at dawn, or thereabout
Star lights ended, exchanged no doubt.
Lightness and darkness have both ended
Do they separate or become blended?
Does day govern and night stabilize
Subject in thought, to be realized
The sun fades, moon shines upon
Darkness turns over, new day born
Time separates movement, sun rules all
Day will emerge, night will fall
The weight of all the ants in the world is greater
Than all us humans, think someone's off their tater
How does one figure this out
Maybe it's just a thereabout
Or some guy spends his life counting ants and us gladiators
If you're too open minded, your brains will fall out
That's downright silly, whoever said that deserves a clout
Of course it ain't true
Look at me and you
Our brains are still up there or thereabout
Cataracts are bothering me, checking it out
Blurry at best, peeing in the sink or thereabout
Walk into walls
Drink ethanol
Lately by mistake, I've even eaten sauerkraut
Natty disasters sitting in boneyard wing
Hidden rolling shadows re-occurring
Tumbles the rain that rapture bring
All sodden on Golgotha fog·ging
Utterly murky shadows about
Dank teeth beyond the tomb square
The blindness of the swollen moon thereabout
Lightning strike, bitter air scare
The sky cracks as if slashed by a knife
Somewhere in yonder thunder blast wave
Sneak trees creak into the air life
Sinister and frosty on the grave
Spread quaking fears under midnight stroke
Dull spirits near shadowy flagstones
Grasping dark devils amongst the cloud choke
A poet's life, a written dream captured around ghostly tombstones
Temper so beastly, troublesome and wild
Anger quite disturbing which isn’t defined
Nuisance and discomfort suffered by loved ones
Two or thereabout, the usual age for this display
Rendering everyone around alert and agitated
Unnecessary hostility, care givers undeservedly face
Markedly disappears with more years grown.
On the last evening of a wonderful weathered
summer, flitting between the branches
of our rowan tree and the Chinese wind chime
that some like me hear a sound almost divine
while others hear as an irritant in an English
garden, a young male blackbird with yellow
beak chirping - four, three, two, but rarely one
note and as the Prima Don in the opera of the
evening waves its head and wags its tail so
belligerently at rivals thereabout, whether
birds, cats or me, weathering our courage.
The mother carries about her jutting womb,
pains, torments, fatigue… her daily companions.
For nine months or thereabout no one relieves her
of the bulk, and the toil attached to it.
At labour she is—oh! It’s unbearable!
If a baby girl she gives breath to,
She raises and nurtures her to her prime.
Growing and developing all her puberty signs,
she swing-walks with a serpentine gait.
Her shape becomes attraction; her face derives affection;
yet her smiles command attention and the bulges
control desire; instilling it deep into the heart.
Consequently, she is adjudged wanted,
and shall soon be cardio-captured.
Unbeknown to her, all this sends invitation to man
who already paints an imaginary picture of her.
He checks with his heart to ensure correspondence;
if it is positive, he innovates finesse to employ
in order to lure the mother away
using appreciable words,
to render her weak,
before poaching her daughter away
with promises of eternal partnership.
The mother carries about her jutting womb,
pains, torments, fatigue… her daily companions.
For nine months or thereabout no one relieves her
of the bulk, and the toil attached to it.
At labour she is—oh! It’s unbearable!
If a baby girl she gives breath to,
She raises and nurtures her to her prime.
Growing and developing all her puberty signs,
she swing-walks with a serpentine gait.
Her shape becomes attraction; her face derives affection;
yet her smiles command attention and the bulges
control desire; instilling it deep into the heart.
Consequently, she is adjudged wanted,
and shall soon be cardio-captured.
Unbeknown to her, all this sends invitation to man
who already paints an imaginary picture of her.
He checks with his heart to ensure correspondence;
if it is positive, he innovates finesse to employ
in order to lure the mother away
using appreciable words,
to render her weak,
before poaching her daughter away
with promises of eternal partnership.
Benafim and Thereabout. (Algarve. Portugal)
The road I walk on is flanked by old stone walls, in fact, the scenery
is crossed by these walls but most of them have fallen down by now,
and behind walls almond trees. I can’t think of anything uglier then
these trees, grey, spindly with a few nuts hanging here and there like
discarded Christmas decor of yesteryear. But come February I will
wake up to a beautiful sight, the almond tree will be full of pink and
white flowers, which it sheds, petal by petal, fooling us to think it
snows in fairyland. Then it will be full of vivid green leaves, not drab
green like olive tree, but verdant as a woman’s dress when going to
a new year ball. This landscape has not seen war for eons, dictators,
presidents and generals have ruled and gone; they never came here
where the land has nothing to offer but beauty. But if you listen well
to nature’s murmour, you can hear an echo from an unseen minaret
an Imam’s melodious voice calling the faithful to prayer.
(Once upon a time Algarve was ruled by Moslems)
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