Hello up there stop

Supply + demand has flubbed gone awry as there is not any chocolate in the house to be found stop General time is standing still + specific time goes out of the window w/out being sent stop On my desk sits a dark oxblood leather attaché wallet stop It is soiled in the bottom edges w/ splattered bird droppings + the lock smashed + half missing stop So it seems i have in my possession the curious case stop But the brown shoes have now gone missing stop The moonlight over through you stop Alert all who may not care

Yours

L. Dangling

End of an Arrow

The sky is alight + forms distress signals i am unfamiliar w/. The stars are not wholly still, but alive w/ vibration as though the earth’s mounting energy obscures the clear deep space. Branches camouflage as com/radicals dart away into the greenery, trailing fire w/ the ironic confidence of Hansel + Gretel.

i am drawn to this warming flame, it leads me. When the way out is baffling, the way in is too clear. W/out border crossing, w/out fence caging. No walls to graffiti messages for others to misinterpret. Free to play w/ dancing flame, + the appropriate longing to inter/fear w/ emoting. Eyes of fire are blind. All’s fair. There is no need to qualify the hankering for this inner war of passion, nor the outer suffering. In this confusion nothing is forgotten, only left behind.

i’m hit. Assumption fills the being i am. Dropping my chin i see an arrow protruding from my breast. Blood leaks down, rushing toward the earth in an anxious soaking to become one w/ the subtle energy that we all belong to in the end.

Falling to my knees i look up, + sway to an ancient internal rhythm. Vultures form as ink spots above me, then twist + depart as if they were a mere thought flushed from the sky. Everywhere an echo of the outskirts of civilization.

i now long to take a partner by the hand, to follow the parade i’m slipstreaming into. But my mind turns + sees only one. Anteros is wiping tears as he laughs at my shocked numbness. Not asking, nor waiting, as reply he turns + haphazardly lets another arrow fly. It is shot into the sky power/full straight. As its zenith levels, overcome by the earth’s pull of gravity, the weighty point leads a graceful arc down from heaven. Somewhere another is hit in the back. This victim wonders why, even as the answer is known.

The moon fades to blackness + i am alone w/out senses. i hear no longer the breeze through the lacy sifting green. i see no longer the details of this plane. Three mutinous moons shine simply. Three romantic grizzled crones each mocking me w/ a wagging finger. i feel no longer the heat of a burning heart. Only a low resonating hum that becomes deeper, stronger + overwhelms me. A nonexistent kingdom is so very close. The stark whole/iness is the roof of my mouth as it expands, extending beyond.

Not seeing the possibilities can sometimes be a half hallelujah.

-30- 

Compassion w/out emotion is the privilege of very few vocations in life.

They peered into the cryptic question + gazed on the round table of post cards trapped between glass + masonite. Someone belched. A wooden chair creaked.

The brave one gave it a meek try, "The answer can only be; Wonder."

 A complexion of 'eureka' + 'I wish I’d said that' scurried around the table till it hit the final player on his left side. He didn’t budge his poker face.

He remained stone for the rest to figure on whether he was seriously thinking, seriously numb, or just seriously miles away. They each gave up the read, breathed again, heads turning back toward private thought.

It was then he spoke out of turn, not knowing whose it was.

"It’s simply the Tenth Daughter. The stepchild that makes us think of something kind-of-like, sorta-to, or quite-near. Kind-of-like talking up sacred geometry. Speak that to a client and they'll eat that BS up real fast. Sorta-to like suffering through the present situation to have an enlightenment of it later.

And kind-of-like listening to a genius stutter."

The table commenced synchronized nodding and from up above it looked as though they were rehearsing for a Busby Berkeley - Esther Williams swimming moment.

-30-

  Tenth Daughter of Memory / deathbed revenge

(Next month perhaps Tom will have a happy little muse)

First of all, a deathbed does not seek revenge. Imagined or real.

People come to me as a last resting place. A place where you know where you’ve been, but not to where you are going. As elephants traveling out to the bone yard, or where you’ll find the deathly wounded sheltering in holes + scrubs. This place distracts from dreams + focuses concentration. A place people walk into knowing, having somehow decided, they will never walk back out. Everyone spends his or her life circling in on me. It’s like a parlor game. Reality always seems in the next room. Eventually I win.

There is history here. However, none of it judged.

What is missing is the future telling. Foretelling the future is taking away free will. Whose will is it any way? What would become of us if we controlled the present to foretell what is to be? I deal w/ the absolute/tion of death not the meander towards it, + certainly not the way it is handed out.

Everyone knows there is an end to everything that breathes. Does a cure take away free will? That is not miraculous, that is not prophetic, + that is not revenge for the living. No, I do not take away free will, it is will in process.

Second; I am in good shape, not broken down. Though once in a while I am, for lack of space. It is then I need to be re-built. That’s when I come in a kit of 22 easy to assemble symmetrical parts. For more rental dough I come with a pillow, for an uneven total of 23 parts. It is indeed a hard mean little pillow. You pay for the plastic wrap of new.

Thirdly: I do not recognize indulgences. You will have had to already taken care of that before you get to me. I simply pronounce the unconditional after passing the threshold.

Stretching the rules Right Over Yourself

(+ i mean) tedious random notes from a notebook.

Not very often, i’ll look into an old codex + read where my mind was at the time. Try to figure out my connection to the page. First, there is the deciphering of my phonetic spelling, + the mistakes of my furiously getting something down on paper. What''s left, or revealed may, or not, be the original thought.

So, here i go, again.

Dream of a refusal to listen to silent books.

What word describes a combination of misunderstood + thirsty.

Look for an alternate ambivalent tribe.

Revisit an old painting -She Carried a Blazing Flag + was Looking for a Cause.

Meet someone who wants to become a pamphleteer + is not the type you run across the street to get away from.

Articulate ideology.

Decide whether life is detritus. Or not.

Remember; understanding poetry is kind of like asking someone to untie some else’s knot.

Rest on that.

10 glass houses + 20 stones / 10th daughter of memory muse

(another uncontrolled printing of a choka is 5/7, 5/7, 5/7... ending with another 7 syllables.)

choka #17

O me to be trapped

Forever on the outside

to circle trying

To understand a/way in

But glass is solid

To name a hard nothingness

Without a crack or

Muntin of a meeting place

And so to recoil

Into my own hush-hush prism

Of well defined space

Figuring the alien

Out there circling

The glass bowl of a sharp eye

W/in an/other eye 

Creepy but now contented

Strange but for contents

You’ll know when the light is on

Remember there’s no

Way hiding the obvious

Though safe from weather

Except from the winds of change

— Of normality

And the winds of cunning words  

Does all of this count?

Is this place indeed soundproof?

If i can’t hear them, 

Are they allowed to hear me?

And etcetera

i can see i can see through, 

i can see stones lined

Up like gray broken teeth.

Standing in a row

Announcing just quietly

That someone has gone

Down beneath to stain that spot

If you cant see me

You aren’t here you are there. 

Eyes clear and open

Though imbedded w/ mem/ries

Streaking the one good

Decent enjoyable view

Unless reminded

Why the need to think about

The day after now

And the yesterday prior?

The glass and stone meet + play,

Who will always win the game?

Vigilante

visual antics

individual acts

more into the grand gesture

than the blind hem

these days

choka #9

Contemplative mind

Moment in time is magic

Highlands are between

The yearning + the learning

This will conjure up

An episode of kinda

Full of excuses

W/ emphasis on humane     

Attentive devout

Life is an algorithm

Warrior cloud heads east

History of logic is  

Full of dramatic

Episodes of eureka

That will lend credence

Well this is nothing like that  

Gathering feathers

Needing somewhere to place them

Currently commune

Words are not my first language

Compassion near by

Obvious not yours either

Plateau in the clouds

Ends unexpectedly soon.

If we cant escape our fears,

What then, will they do to us?

(i'm positive this will not print correctly. It will be run-on. Which is okay w/ me. But know a choka is 5/7, 5/7, 5/7... ending with another 7 syllables. Just figure it out.)

Dropping her fetters in the wings, she walks into the straight jacket in the theater of the mind.   

She squints her eyes with childish solipsism making the eidolons mere whips in the dark space. The others had fallen into an echoing silence over the years, long ago. And just now.

Offstage in queue they sport costumes of heavy antique bullion and quilted brocade designed and built many years ago, mimicking a hundred years before that. A set of lovers coo, a pirate is selling buckets from a red corvette, another dangling a silver spoon, a child inside a feline, a drooling hunchback, a chorus in deep eggplant chiffon, each waiting a turn while the henchman fumbles with a noose.

Brushing by the understudy she hears break a leg whispered under a breath. The cliché rings in her ears until the deafening roar of the audience applauding becomes inescapable because of its absence. A queue is up. Closing eyes altogether, she gathers herself and charges out onto center stage expecting to be spell bound.

Settling into first position, centering, she glances up at the vacant right box. The big seat is empty. It is worn with wear, and has always been empty. He is not coming. Again. There is freedom in that seat being empty.

Her eyes travel to the pit where the conductor’s arm is paused midair. Once and again a bond with the stick is made. As it begins to flaunt and conjure, she easily steps into the slipstream following in the wake of a major chord.

The exalted feeling is somewhere amid earthbound limitation. That gift does not come from a butt in the seat. Habit dictates she play her part without hesitation, as there is a cycle to round every week, on this night about this time.

When there isn’t scenery one must chew the curtain. The deep crimson fabric pulled up into a sculptured form hovering and leering at the wraithlike audience. The newly replaced footlights again glare like skinned eyeballs staring down and daring a reaction. Her flow steps up the pace into the air and glides from stage left to right. This is when you can believe you are in the presence of a god. She knows sometimes it does not happen. Sometimes everything is in place and there is only disappointment. A spin turns staccato, as she becomes a marionette leaping and dragged down stage.

Rejected again. They aren’t coming. You think my dancing reeks? How about this move…

With a chaotic thrash of the body her leg shoots out and a foot ends in a severe punt to a footlight.

-bash

How does this one grab you?

- POP

Chaos takes the dance away from her.

One by one the lights erupt, flicker and die.

 …And this, they are foot-lights, yes?

- crash

She spins and hits with deft precision of practice until the only glow left is coming from her face.

The music ends in a deadly crescendo as her breath heaves and the lyrical stillness left behind brings her back to perennial dark Monday. Audition was again over for another week. She descended the stage steps into the house, making room for Next.

-30-