The God Complexion
 

"...has a voice of a thousand angels

coming forth from the boughs of misery

and is like a shadow guiding you through alleys

in a strange city that you've never seen before"

I keep my word always

cause word is the language that wrote it all down'

and is the only way that we can sing or cuss

or lick the page of a history book

(give me a second to

get out the breast-pocket notebooks

stolen from Boris Puncinello

and I'll start blowing the shadows about

any mind that has the time.)

Word sees friends

putting together a booklet of writing

and rushing off to local vendors and retailers,

in hopes of filling the universe with poetry

and just plain good stories about us people,

but the journals sold few and we scratched

our heads wondering why the word

seemed to have failed...

Then friends slunk off into a

night that was quickly forgotten

until now. For the word did not fail.

It merely needs to be championed further.

Cause the truth be known.

[When your word goes forth

your word gives light

your word gives understanding]

Psalm 119:129-136

I once't sat in a bar in the college town that I

had graduated from and met a guy that I used to hang out

with and we was drunk enough to be bold enough to start

talking about the word and he done scrawled a darn foolish

thing onto a napkin that went this way (I kept it to this day):

"this dumb grey morning

finds shine rotting

amongst our blistered

tongues

out, out (get it out).

It remained lying

on the floor -"

Afterwards

the clouds were down and it was a night

so foggy you could drink the air.

I guess I was young enough to

care about crazy, bizarre thoughts

and old enough to record them:

"these last few months have been strange. Sometimes I just want to get so drunk that I forget all origins. ...have not written prose in over a year... but mostly what has been visiting me often is the realization of my own death. It is not depressing, just that I have been hit with the (for lack of word) ultimate-ness of it. It is to say that I wonder when and where I will be when the light inside finally extinguishes." (12/30/94 12:35 p.m.)

[...as bright as the days may be

reckon the horrible moment

of the unalterable monstrosity...]

so then how cannot I tend to think of young days

when I'd go back to cabin with beloved Dad

and sit on stump waiting to kill my first thing

which turned out to be an albino squirrel

which didn't die completely so Dad had to mash its head

on a punk covered rock as my eyes bulged

and stomach rose. When we got home, Mom rushed forth

from kitchen door to see what we got'. Later that winter

my mind broke the surface and I would sneak

out of the house and slink behind the barn,

where Dad had a picnic table set up

in order to sight his rifle. So I sat there

with my black dog, sitting, watching winter moon....

wind across fields felt like whole world slipping

@ million miles an hour into freezing hole.....

(So you can see how on a particularly clear night

when you look around and see lonely trees and gaze

up into the sky with all those stars,

that you begin to think about the end

when the wind howls no longer.)

It causes you to look to your right

and makes you feel lucky that you got a

dog sitting next to you who has no

questions in his eyes

(no one is ever cursed because they question what is

but can only be blessed as they move towards

the un-grinching of their soul)

On my way to work everyday

I look around to try to see everything new

though all is locked in its ordinary container

and on this particular

day I glanced into the rear view mirror of my car

and caught glimpse of THE DRUMMING FINGERS

of the bus driver behind me.

How they thrummed on his steering column

in anticipation of the change of light

and I thought of how my fingers would do the same

waiting for my files to open on my PC and then

it hit me that everything is connected

like STRING THROUGH THE SAME THING...

but nothing last forever

(especially thoughts of SOME STRUNG UNION)

and most times I'm just a normal guy

trying to get home as the rear axle of my car

falls off as I was working my way up Cameron Street

ready to get on Interstate 81 (north)

but I was lucky enough to get off the road

and pulled into the Department of Agriculture

parking lot whereupon I called AAA

and they dispatched the tow-truck to come get me

(my car staring back at me - askance -

in the parking lot,

its ass on the ground...

like it knew it had failed).

(So the physical body

eventually falls from favor

as the questions of the soul's destiny

take over and it is not as easy

and apparent as running into someone

who asks you to visit our church'...

and it was all those

programmed and atonal souls

that have approached me in the past

asking me to be saved

looked at me with lifeless eyes

that said, "You gotta be saved to get to heaven"

and it seemed to me that they was already dead

as they walk down the halls of their everyday

stoned-faced and mono-toned hello's

and maybe I run around all high-strung

and everyone asks if I'm stressed-out

[later they call me weird]

and I kindly scoff to myself and think,

"No man, I'm not stressed out, just

high-strung on life. Sure I wanna get to heaven,

but whiles I'm here I wanna live cause that's

just what God wants.")

Once you accept money as the primary motivation of mankind then you pretty much have it easy (which is why I have it so hard) and I know my friends think the same way and when we get together we never sleep and sometimes our families weep and gnash their teeth when we are away, but they know we are coming home and will be happy in them until the next time we converge to see the sky open wide and howl with that particular soul-scratching effect and we will talk talk talk about the obvious and the forbidden COME WHAT MAY even bringing the body forth wrestling contests until dawn that see even a frail man crack my rib on the kitchen floor and will make me lie in the medical center two weeks later and when the doctor asks what happened I tell her, "I was playing rugby [unlocking the universe]" as she fingered my chest.

(Long ago I went away from the crowd

and left my family less than proud

but I ain't no dumb fuck

just a guy down on his luck who sits down and still

tries to write songs as though someone's gonna care), like:

"Tired of being in the company of dead souls

searching in vain for salvation from role models

but what is it that keeps me coming round

fighting a mission but still loosing ground

I'm not hideous

just a guy no one will miss

see me in my crazy hat standing on crest of hill

sun working down over summer and individual

bending over, I look at all the trampled scenes

realize the wake of existence destroys many things'

a simpleton in the yard

feels God like a coward"

the God complexion nurtures

flowers yet unplanted in thy soul, holds them up

and breaks apart our houses

but can never turn us away completely...

"can I help that my mind is hungry for more than the things thrown at me by employment and family. I hope to devour mountains to see what was there, in eternity." (5/95)

(I'll be the first pussy to admit

that I've cried at night laying naked

on top of the sheets thinking of

THE HORRIBLE BEAUTY OF DEBBIE HALL

which forever kept me guessing

in days of high school when I saw her

walking down along the lockers

with her seductive body swings

(best to look at her from behind)

that kept me floating along forever

like Goofy gone after

a distant

moving

pie...)

but I've come down a long road

since those days of report cards and shoulder pads

and I like any other human sometimes sits and

wonders why people are so rigid and set' like

some old horse-hair plaster that is

LONG DRY AND BOUND TO CRUMBLE

and can only conclude that Conservatism is just

a natural by-product of the death and decomposition

of the human mind'.

Maybe you know what I mean

to be a certain way

(the only way you know how to be)

only this way is alien to folks

and it makes them nervous sometimes

and sometimes it makes them laugh,

but most often it makes them uncomfortable

and when you walk into a room,

you're seen as having the cancer'

and silence fills the room

like none other when people

don't know what to say to you

(but you don't have no cancer,

though you are alien on this planet

you are traveling everywhere with your feet on

DIVERGENT TRACKS

either to arrive or be ripped apart...)

I'm like you

if you too are in a haze

one of those out-of-it days

that finds you getting ready for another day of work

and running downstairs to grab a cup of coffee

for you and spouse and then running back upstairs,

hand the mug off to spouse, then walk back into the

bedroom to watch some of the a.m. show so's you can break

Gumball apart on your terms,

(smug bastard that he appears)

but before your world is so solid spouse bursts in

to see you naked on a newly re-upholstered

chair and there from the tip of organ

is a glistening trickle of urine

and it has gotten onto the fabric

and she yells like the planets have finally aligned

(and carry enough gravity to end it all).

but she was right when I was thoughtless (albeit groggy), but sometimes I am extraordinarily sentient like when a boy one time I was reaching into a closet to get pair of shoes when suddenly I picked up a Baltimore Orioles cap and for whatever reason I looked at it. Maybe mistake, but on the hat was the Orioles logo which was an oriole wearing a hat with the same oriole wearing the same hat and for the first time..... I conceived my first thought of eternity. Soon after that I was thinking of all kinds of things like when I asked my mother why there had to be anything at all. She was rather shocked, standing with her back to me and her face focused on the pot of chili brewing for dinner. It caused an uncomfortable silence but she eventually asked, "Well, whatever do you mean?" I heard the fear in her voice (which I now know as mortality). And I proceeded to tell her of my vision of nothing'. How life never existed and there was nothing. She was confused by what I meant, but I tried to explain it to her and could get no further that telling her that it was a great grey area'. "But that is something honey" she said back and I wept and gnashed my teeth. She had won for now, but I had an early start to this thought that plagues and bedevils me still.....

(now I'm older

and feeling sinful

is my God given right

though mine eyes have seen the horror

of the falling of the lord"...)

I meet the same old anguish each day

like when my friend and I get together at some bar

right off the square in Elizabethtown

to beer it up and eat cheeseburgers served up by Janie

only there is an old guy present

who wants to play pool and score

ONE LAST VICTORY

(in case he is at the end of his frayed line)

but I duck out quick and sit at the booth

watching my pal finish the game with this

tight-fitted Camel T-shirted be-wranglered drunkard'

waving his cue arbitrarily

like trying to pinpoint his slippery soul

but he is really the ELDER STATESMAN OF SQUAT

and looses the game to my partner,

but then suddenly the old guy says he is hungry

and done with games,

and like some Whimpy wobbles over to the bar

looking for a hamburger....

(....given, finally, to pure honest thought

rather than worry about

eternity....)

but that don't mean I don't wake in the morning

and question again and again. Sometimes I know the answers,

but most often they got me on the run, and how they love it...

and to tell the truth it makes me want all of us to give it up and

dwell without anything...then I'd like to see how we are....

I am strong in gusts, but can be ever so weak

like when I am walking down the hallway

at the state office building

and hear death walking behind me

whistling and rolling a juggernaut

of paychecks for the good workers...

but when weak I seek out the elan vital

to break away the cerumen

like an earwig with a work ethic

who attempts to influence by private talk

and eventually drives me

from my modern nineties quietude

"...to write my way out of it..."

like GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO giving birth to prose

I do my best to lubricate this world on its rusty hinges

and I ask all of you to come off to a country sanctuary

and flee from this common plague we all see....

(let us tell stories in the hot afternoon

and relate to each other when we seem hopelessly alone

but this makes me wonder when we should come together?

is it now while there is still time?

for suddenly it may be the end

when it will most surely

be too late....)

CONTRADICTION:

...I am still given to fits of misanthropic thoughts...

and don't run home gaily checking the messages on the

answering machine, "Yea! Did anyone call for me?" No I

lost long ago that exuberance and too often

I am an irascible devil not wanting anymore ever....

(and crack open tabs or caps

and hoist to lips filling me with alkyl

but I don't really get drunk

just a little more pure

because you kinda have to do something

what with all that crime going on

but you can't really call it just crime'

like it actually is something outside of us all

cause:

"crime is just an outcrop of societal dissatisfaction with the overall structure, scope, and goals of its creed.")

So I turn my GOLD WING to the sun

even when I am just a cattle in line buying

packaged needs at the grocery store

but all this activity just leads to the word

and I am a searcher who heads out into the mountains

and acts happy there like those mountains are just

suddenly gonna speak and my friends are all around

(what could be better):

"...out here in the woods as the campfire crackles in my right ear just beyond the cooler that is blood red because the ketchup spilled into the ice. All is quiet just a plane moving away above with folks in it looking down at the mountains and Susquehanna. Where has my brother gone? He just here a moment ago now maybe off in some of this wood. Last night he had so much cactus juice that he scraped his knees and smashed my tent. While all this was intended as an intellectual foray into our belly-souls, it came off as just another bent rant. But that is beautiful anyway. We read poetry and stories into the trees as the leaves yawned. What are we doing? Crazy? Blessed? I surely don't know, but what I do is get nervous when friends start encasing themselves in wax though I will just as easily take a walk out to my roof top porch and smash a beer bottle against the appliance store next door. (Sometimes I wonder when it is going to wind down and I will be done with this)."

(but lost weekends are good

cause they leave you trying to find yourself

and you'll be lucky if you find a small reference point

like when all is said and done

and we're set to drive home

and Kurt hands me his unused pack of smokes

cause "he doesn't want them no more" (he quit) and

he knows I'll surely smoke them cause I'm young

(but before how long until I old myself))....

yes, said glory

what have I been thinking of?

Am I writing or am I doing something

because I can't sleep or

like a dad who can never relax cause I

caught a whiff of my own death once?

Why suddenly do I think of Shenandoah

bout now and Johnny Mel in old INDIA

as Ganges flow and trees whisper on horizon

like more forever than George Washington

ever imagined? So why am I damned to

DULMYRA

to struggle out my existence

when all I want to do is be amazed?

Well, here I sit

with everything aligned

for a sliver of time:

"I'm a bastard

because I want

AMERICA

to be the way

I want it to be.

I'm selfish

like all the

rest

of

you."

The global ASS OF LATE

is clustered with bulbs of hemorrhoids and cancers

(from the poisons passing through)

that cause us to dig at it

when we're alone in the hallways of our everyday.

That is to say we are flesh and bone

having a chance @ saved interior mist that

will rise victoriously above the smoldering last

ash of the litter of western society that was

ultimately the tool of devils, priests, alcoholics,

and lovers....

you lame america. [You are not

(and never will be) an equal opportunity employer

(this coming from a personnel officer

in the establishment)]...

[I think it all ended when

we shut our gates to more immigrants

with the National Origins Act of 1924

siff we were saying the dream boat

can't accommodate more. I mean if that's

the case, then let's just admit it and

while we're at it might as well bring down

Lady Liberty there in that harbor

and send it back to France, telling them

"We bit off more than we could chew."]

When lit at birth

we burn and oxidize

until our last smoke carries us all away...

and I guess I believe that...

that is to say that I believe in BURNING

cause too often I see dead eyes cross mine

and now I'm gonna open another

notebook to continue with this tale that

aids THE THREADING OF THE EYES

I'm outside the music now

and I used to be cool (and probably even cared)

and it approaches 1:30 a.m. on the day of my birth

3/16 and my wife is asleep all peaceful downstairs

undercovers as we are on our own and hoping to make it full

through and to love each other boundlessly for this length of

life no matter what HE may decide that to be... and that still

makes me kind of sad that we got our bodies all geared up

for everything... when we just gonna leave it after all...

But overall I nurture a plant in here

(hand pounding chest)

for I'm not time bomb,

just a flower waiting to explode

BLOOM!

right before your face

world gone crazy

everyone's lost their whey

they topsy

but never as turvy as me

(The world

ZINGS THROUGH SPACE

with time and souls pealing off.)

It is crazy, like:

When I go home this past weekend

to visit with Mom and Dad and they

want me to dig through the last vestiges of junk

that I had neglected these past 11 years

and I can see Mom has been diggin through the

boxes of our past cause there's all this

old shit hanging on the walls all subtle like

and she is showing me pictures of relatives I don't know who

and I more or less just shrug my shoulders and say

whatever' in my head not callus or anything

just keeping my guard of sentimentality up a little

but easier said than done and I trot down the basement

steps to lay waste to my long-forgotten past

but then suddenly I was witness to everything

I had ever done or worn (cheesy as it may be)

and I looked at all the junk and realized I was finally

at the age when I had to start throwing some of this

shit away. Cowboy guns and wrinkled jock straps.

"Ma" I yelled upstairs. "Do you think the

SALVATION ARMY is gonna want my athletic briefs?"

She never bothered answering and figured I was old enough to

know the answer to that one. And what about

Bugs Bunny with the pull-string voice box that said,

"ah what's up doc?" I really don't know Bugs, but I figure

bout now you're on your way to some landfill in Central

Pennsylvania. Sure we had some good times together,

but now you're beat. That leaves me standing there before

a box of my memories that now will be carted off to the trash

(I only walked away that weekend with a couple old pants

that I will use paint my house, some Jackie Gleason albums

Music, Martini's, and Memories'....., and some trophies

that I had earned all the way back in scouts and track awards

for running) and can you blame me that all my awards

were in RUNNING because life is almost scary the way

you can be as thoughtful as you like and still you gotta

throw things away and be mean to some things and carry on

cause "YOU GOTTA LIVE" and that is okay, I just wish some

of those fuckers out there saying that, would really live!

I am living in my own sort of fucked-up way. For too often

I am hanging out in basements and attics because my typical

activity is that which is not condoned' or identified with'

and therefore I gotta be away from everything and everyone

else where I can't break anything. Now hear this:

(May the God complexion land on you

like a face becoming apparent out of the fog

and all the time we race about and quake it up

but behind all our houses is church and grave yard

as though off in the distance there is a slow drum playing

reminders ALL THE WHILE its intensity increases)

I've been coming to God for quite awhile now and I can't even tell of it all here (you'll just have to believe me) cause I been angry with the world the way IT IS... all falling apart and years ago when I was in D.C. I just ran through all the different ways the world could have been - like what if the Incas or something could have won their war (though they would of had to rapidly develop some form of ballistic defense) and their way of life prevailed... it would have been cool (were they the ones that cut the hearts out though?... no, I think that was the Aztecs). Anyway what if that all played out in favor of those other civilizations and what we know today never WAS but was only something maybe dreamed of in our indian minds? I know, I know... this really isn't any significant breakthrough but to get back to the point in D.C. I lamented over the breakdown of the earth because it was all so darned tragic and I hung my mind on two points of a string; first point fastened somewhere when all those damned ships sailed out of Europe after teas and the second one fastened the day after tomorrow and then I drew a conclusion of demise. How could it be otherwise? Not only was I gonna die but the whole DINGBLASTED PLANET was gonna come crashing down! Seemed like such a waste until this past July when I started looking up in the sky and without intervention from another [Come to our church to be saved!] I started feeling something more was out there; more than stars and man-ships. Then in October I talked sincerely to a co-worker who truly cared and helped explain me what I was feeling....

(But I didn't do too good the other weekend explaining it to my friends though cause we was drinking beer and foolishly I brought up my feelings of Christ to my two pals sitting around a table at 3am and after likely 5 score beer of all kinds of wild home brewed derivations my one pal proceeded (and I eagerly participated in) a philosophical discussion of belief. This caused one pal to run off to wisely run off to bed. My other pal had some really good LOGICAL points and soon beat me down to where all I had was my faith and then suddenly it was 5am (gone eternal hour of the magical eves) and I was down on one knee splaining' to him that there is no argument for faith (and that his inductions were hasty and rooted in the physical world). We went to bed then (he to a couch and I to a sleeping bag in the formal dining room) and in the end nothing was resolved except our convictions.)

"But avoid foolish controversies and genealogies and arguments and quarrels about the law, because these are unprofitable and useless. Warn a divisive person once, and then warn him a second time. After that, have nothing to do with him. You may be sure that such a man is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned." Titus 3:9-11

All benders must come to an end

while the arrow of glory crosses the sky like a comet

but anyway all that does not explain why I write the

DANGED FOOLED THINGS OF POEM and the only answer that I

can pull out of my ass is cause it is the only thing that I can play. I mean I have a guitar up here in the attic with me but might as well use it to kill flies for I can't play a thing only whistle and sing some. Don't mean that I don't feel the presence of music but rather the contrary for barely a day goes by when I am not scratching something in the notebook cause I am amazed and I keep promising my wife that I will one day write the testament of our love in a poem called THE SANDWICH GESTURE (the title obviously rooted in our young lust for each other) but I never get around to it cause I am always courting the NEXT BIG ARTFUL EXPRESSION of my heart, but suffice it to say that, of course I love you darling . Wow, look at us going way back filling our ticking hearts with the purest of everything...

Segues back to sanity

now say that it is necessary to push this rant further

and if I can't figure it out for myself then

I will write it all down and throw it to the stars

and let them decide (for if at first you don't succeed

lie, lie again)...

but all this talk of 'SPIRITU does not deny the

fact that we here on this world to wreak what we may...

and what does that mean? Should I just wear some

white garb and sandals and tromp around condemning everything? No I don't think so... Moreover I feel the world is everyday a thing of evermore unraveling marvel. I'll take what I am given, but I'm gonna get me a little more than that. This world is doomed and you'll see me out dancing in the fields IN THE LIGHT of that fact.

"The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever." 1 John 2:17

In the beginning was born the idea of the end and with the perseverance of a thousand mothers He never gave up on me and when I was not acknowledging Him, he pushed me gently in and led me to write: "Yesterday disenheartened with inability to write novel. Overall feel strangely affected and weakened by negative things in world. I look at those around me and realize how unfair life is. I feel a horrible sense of something to come. Doom impends. I am walking in the shadow of death. Please God, save the day." (8/21/95)

[The beauty is too much and when I heard for the first time the APPALACHIAN SPRING in my attic after about four beers and pounding on this typewriter to the point where it didn't want to work anymore, I WEPT OUTRIGHT alright...]

It is in this contrasting light that I bob uncontrollably with all that is going around when I get outa bed and it doesn't take me too long to be affected and before I even get to work and walking the mile-long bridge to the state office building I think to myself, "Keep the flags at half-mast forever. The sun has set. Our nation is mad."

When death stalks me I let the cigarette fall

from hand like I's never going to smoke again but I am just

HUMANO and I aint asking for no special treatment

(and surely no one is going to give it to me).

Am I just dirty young man?

No I think not (naught)

I just a guy who chooses to observe the

random manner of this world as the

months they die, but only to be reborn again

each one having a different flavor

so that gives us some variety

but sometimes the months they just blow

by so fast it is like watching a locomotive

scream past in front of you... and you just

sit in your car at the railroad crossing

MOTIONLESS

box cars blurring together so that all their

destiny bleeds together inexplicable to your staid mind

and you just

sit in your car at the railroad crossing

MOTIONLESS

wondering when you're gonna get (where you wanna)...

Then again sometimes the passing of time

just aint enough

and what else can you change? Of course

PLACE AND LOCATION

and my one pal once wrote a poem called

MOVEMENTS AND THE ARGUMENTS FOR IT

and it was right on mark for continuing

the search for spirituality and identifying

with the existential self and it was great

but now I argue for and yearn for both A LA VEZ

that is to say, "Man I need to stay on course

with that 'SPIRITU but then I gotta

get me some different scenery." Like in 8/95:

"I like so many others have been stricken with the need to travel. Movement seems to parallel the flowing stream of our lives and creates wild new landscapes over which to run our eyes. When I am not traveling, a part of me is unconscious SLEEPING and dreaming of the places I may go. It is that part of me that must remain near the surface, aware of the INFINITE POSSIBILITIES."

Maybe I'm not even too old to run away

from family and friends and believe me sometimes

I want so bad to fly but I don't have wings and

it really aint so bad after all for where else

can I sit on a porch with my brother and Dad and have

arm-wrestling competitions and drink homebrews

to the sound of LOCUST CHIRPINGS OF A JULY NIGHT

even though my brother won that particular round

(after all he had loaded me and Dad up on his

exceptionally strong ale). So we stayed up laughing,

busting gut and chiding each other and then

Dad took a cheap shot out of his mem'ry banks,

recanting the time when I first got on a horse when

the barber after haircut took me out back his house

and slung me over the fence and onto the horse (I was

small maybe two or three) and he just held me there

never actually letting me ride. From what Dad then

related (-tears spraying-) I just stared at Barber Bill

and farted in the saddle.

Still this does not answer the question

of how I became so engrossed in my

own self-absorbed deprecations and speculations

of why things is.....

....all I know sometimes or ALLTIMES is

forever only me cause sometimes you think you can count on something but it only changes [(like maybe a friend you thought you'd always love and see... that friend who was so important that if you take yourself back for a few milliseconds the communication between you was always a glorious volley but now life uses you both as separate pieces on different board games and for a few months becoming years you think of them on your way past the phone mull, "I really should call" but then are taken back into a smaller game by saying "Well, they haven't called ME in awhile" or (smaller) "They have a phone. If they wanted to talk to me, they would pick it up and use it". But all of the above is okay because my beloved sad soul, we are all little pieces of the same driftwood maybe for a time lingering around the same whirlpool, but ultimately to go where we will alone..... )] too and you're just burned in the end but that also is okay because you're surely changing and breaking someone else's heart and the sad thing is you don't even know it....

And this is the stuff that I'm thinking

when I let my dog out at night and he

trots ahead of me his mind on his business and I lumber

slowly long behind him (see he just wants to leave his scent

while I gotta think all kinds of crazy notions [why? (well

I am at least trying to address it)] ah, the buffoonery!):

"I walk outside on a Thursday evening after having a couple beers go out to the Jeep where I keep my cigarettes and stare out there into space like half expecting something to swoop down from the sky and pick me up and take me away." (8/31/96)

Does that make me some kind of cosmo-tologist?

nay, but it keeps me a healthy notch above a

nation of EASILY SATISFIED PEPTIC MORONS and I guess

that I am someone who understands the fruit that got us

into all the trouble from the beginning:

"to get to the pit

I ate the fruit

then planted it"

(9/6/96)

but this all probably will die in the shell

or if it ever had sprouted even into a yearling

it would grow and go unnoticed in the forest, for:

"Some of the most beautiful trees deep in the forest

will never be seen."

At work they ask, "How many hours each day would be saved if everyone accepted the phone calling them as soon as it came through." I sat with the others in the state training session as they muscled over the solution like it was SOME BIG DEAL (they didn't realize that major pretense in life is just coming up with another solution because they old one was around long enough....), but I was all like, "No hours would be saved. I mean time is passing anyway you look at it. It'd be like trying to catch up on hours of sleep once lost. It's not possible. But I know what you're saying. You're all like , What else can we do with the time FREED UP if we just accept phone calls the first time'. "Come on man" I said "we'd just waste it someplace else. So don't try to tell me how to fuck my own time." No one really appreciated my input and turned again to the next fashionable solution.

But that is the way it should be I guess cause the world aint no perfect flower in bloom forever. My fate is my own.

"The kick in my step

is hope

The shuffle of my friend

is despair"

(9/12/96)

(The drama unfolds and snaps in the sun like a clean

sheet on the washline with the winds working over it

and making it all smell sweat as everyday.... "...was so

tired at work this week that my mind was all affected

and the workers again were giggling at me and then

shuddering to themselves the next instant when they

considered what it would be like to be

hideous timid me.")

Having a hard time getting it going tonight and typed the above stanza as more of an exercise than anything else, but it is kind of obvious that it failed cause sometimes (and especially) when you want it (most) to happen surely it doesn't... for now what is hardest is to gggggggglean the insight that will pour into me when it knows the difference of when I should pull material from Boris's breast-pocket notes or straight outa heart (¨lo mismo?). Well, I'm a man of the heart so here goes....

Like I am trying to accomplish too much lately. Maybe this is a mad fury given my recent epiphany of mortality that I want to run all over the place in bare-chested accomplishment at home, in the attic, and when at the job that actually pays me money, and I haven't even made mention of my lover and wife who also is in turmoil of her own (having as well experienced the shadow of death). And I guess what I am getting at is that we are both departing the dark ages of our lives. Up until recently we'd been a church with no organist. Not to say that this is bad, but we are now adults who have seen the EVILAND and we now have a tremendous opportunity to shoot out of its dark hole like earth rockets after the stars.

But we are good people who have faith in the progression of life, maybe unusual one, but still, there we are, faithful on our own terms. So it hurts when she goes off to her job that for some reason has drug her off to Baltimore to sit before throngs of others who love their jobs and likely deny themselves life and family for the sake of putting the latest RADIOLOGICAL NEWS into paper form (this is a journal of the highest stroking what with all contributors actually paying to have their shit stories of unfathomable REACTIONS published and then sent out to all their bullshit colleagues to sit around and harumph over) [man where was I] of a journal that is just the huge culmination of intellectual schmoozing. And when she is sitting there all pretty and not able to say anything because she is not able to kid herself into thinking that her job is JUST THE FUCKING BEST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED TO HER!

(WHEN ARE ALL THE FUCKS GONNA REALIZE THAT A JOB JUST DRAGS YOU THERE FOR A PAYCHECK AND NOT BECAUSE YOU WANT TO SIT AROUND AND SEE YOUR CO-WORKERS SMOKE THEMSELVES INTO COFFINSYAGHRDAWHATTHEFUCK!)

Well it's that kind of shit that drives me out of the

office when I CANTS TAKES NO MORE and I walk out in the

oak grove behind the office and stuff my pocket full of acorns (that I plant in a pot in my window of my attic cause it seems to me then that I'm taking in my life and heart). Then I walk over to the downtown Harrisburgonian Mall to meet my sister who wants to apply for some state nursing jobs and we hand in the forms and then sit on a bench to try to talk to each other in the fifteen remaining minutes of the lunch hour (like I can actually come clean with a sibling that I'd known all my life in a mere fifteen!). We end up talking to a few of the passing-by strange-ohs and then awkwardly hugging each other as we each pair off separately to face the ogres of tomorrow (suffice it to say sister that I love you and want you to know that I miss you and when I go back and listen to those tapes that I made when I was thirteen and you were twelve, it more acutely breaks my heart). I know that we shall never be as close as either of us wants to be. For that reason I weep.

(Okay, so I sounding quite like a pussy. Yeah motherfucker a pussy who will whip your ass in anything and take your teeth out before you can enunciate, "I'm sorry I ever doubted you....")

I could never really harm a thing though. I'm all talk @ 5'9" and 140 pounds, less than I weighed in high school and maybe I'm withering way with hair all wiry fine growing upwards and outwards crazy and if twere orange I would be like some lonely bozo carting off his wheelbarrow of joy to whomever will have him, cause: BOZO ALWAYS DELIVERS THE GOODS." (9/28/95)

(Everyone's scattered and I am aware of their loneliness and collective joy as I come out of my dark ages and tuck my bastard wings behind my chest perching like a SMILING BIRD above you.)

And what is this crazy cause of happiness? Well none other than God to whom I send a thousand thoughts a day... I mean how does God fill your chest? Is it when making love to your partner OR in your attic listening to Antonio Vivaldi as the sun sets OR leafing through discount shirts at the thrift shop OR thrashing back and forth across the neck of your guitar and flexing those vocal chords till they summon the angels OR taking a big long drag on a hookah and then blowing into a towel OR planting flowers along the foundation of your home OR getting all beered up in the woods and tripping over a log and skinning your elbow OR chasing a dream that you saw for the last fifteen years in film and book that drug you off across the continent and away from me.... well I don't know but all these things ring of happiness and I encourage them all, what with God wanting us only to be happy and believe in him...

I used to wreak of a tragedy

that had people stumbling over chairs to get away

as I approached smiling saying, "Hey, good to see ya!"

but then sometimes I wonder if it weren't just that

I had no idea of where I was going and it went on like

that for too long, like six years (to put it on time line)

and it was good that I went through it because I came

out of it wiser MAN who is offering to tell a tale if people

can see fit to make room in their ears (those same lovely

people (they all lovely)) who scattered before me

all those years ago...

This is what I told a young woman once who came to me on the edge of my bed who had reached an impasse in life (she believed there was something wrong with her), but I told her nay, that it's just everyone's got a primal hunger in them that must be satiated or risk madness. Life is a search for that hunger and subsequent satiation. (Remember, the HUNGER aint supposed to be something dirty... right?). Person must follow the most basic of passions... spool along the tiny thread that will unravel the sweater and start pulling to reveal the nudity of awareness...

(Our minds go and time flows,

but I still think back to all those

SEPTEMBERS AND OCTOBERS

that I loved so well who had

eventually left me)

but that was a little small

sentient me that eventually learned not to linger

too long in the MUSEUM OF MY OWN YESTERDAY

and to be happy at this moment and

knowing that the person who thinks

this world will ever be just is

just an ass

This poem of infinite contradictions goes on

because all of a sudden I am taken to the past

and reminded of my recent SUPERSTAR DREAMS

when I was visited in my sleep by such key players

of mi vida as old buildings I used to tromp through,

Dad, various cars that I had driven, Charlie Gottard,

Happy Andy, frail shard of a man, Warren Mumikuke,

the mountains and trees that always treated me kindly,

Pap, and of course J.J.....(so the past just slaps us

around like a pliable clay and sees us off

into tomorrow)...

(tugging at the roots of yesterday further, reveal):

I then must think back to my own beginnings,

TAR BABY growing up in this TAR NATION

like the bizarrety of my education there in Western PA

when me and all the other eighth graders

were up just after dawn

to struggle cutting open THE EYEBALLS OF COWS

(the only thing I learned [remember]

is that eyeballs are really tough to cut)

in the shadow of the Allegheny Mountains...

But that was when I was growing up

once favored and up to recently maybe even felt forgotten

because the beacon was not so obviously shining on me

though now I realize that I have to bring it all back inside

and work my heart to where it is NOT JUST COMFORTABLE,

BUT HAPPY like I can imagine it being...

(we all know it's out there)...

On an October day last year that was almost

like any other I was at work and me and my co-worker got to talking about THE WORD and what we was feeling (and not that we had never talked about that stuff before... though your not supposed to in the state government offices....IMAGINE!) but on that one day she knew what was in my head better than me and kindly asked, "Are you ready to let Christ into your heart?".... and like from across the room (maybe my heart moved my tongue before my head could cloudily intervene) I said "yes". And like that she worked around to the other side of my desk and into a comfortable chair, read me 10: 9-12 from Romans which I repeated. They weren't just words, but rather like some GREAT AIR (SPIRIT) being breathed into me. (Thanks be to God.)

And that is how I was saved

for I finally came back around from the dark

alley and was washed clean and given a power that I never

knew was there and now I feel like some HEAVENLY BOBO

dancing through the day wearing my new makeup and

big shoes and red nose and wild hair hoping to stir up

the EVERYDAY DOLDRUMS in those hearts out there

of those people who cause the world

to die a little quicker...

So maybe we can be the WILD CHRISTIANS and

stir up the stagnant flatulence of faith that is out there

turning more non-believers OFF to the whole notion

of Christ and I'm agonizing over HOW TO REACH THEM

but I'm trying my best... cause the unguided have been

EATING CROW long enough.

There is no way that I'm probably ready to start

spouting all these bent proverbs cause I just got on

this unbelievable BRONCO OF LIFE and still am just a heretic

pounding on a typewriter wanting ALL WAYS to do things

my way but have a huge capacity to grow and develop

and gather as much information about the world as I may

and then become entrenched and launch into battle

(for this is the way wars will now be fought) to tell

forcefully of my impressions of the injustice.

(little person laughs at the

flawed traits of other person rather

than concentrate on development

of self)...

I thought of the ironies

as the clown laughed at me

(he is my only true friend

and I only find him in my mirror)

He laughs hardily when I am no longer

in the day. When I am thus denied the moment

as it drifts by...

It was a hard communion

living Christless and only

laughing at GALLOWS HUMOR and

anguishing over the inevitabilities

of life like the maple who

would not relinquish the leaves

(while the alder knew better)

The SEPTIC LIFE

was splashing all around me

and I was shooting my poetry

into the small window

through which it must pass

before it is dead and soldered

to THE COLLAPSIBLE MODERN ELEMENT

(which is a reference to never sitting in a wood

where passing of time is slowly

noted by falling leaves)

12/2/95 notebook entry came to me

when I was sitting on a log

participating in the antlered deer harvest. It read:

"Part of my problem is that I am always seeking the next spiritual level and while it would be nice to say I've arrived' I have such a keen awareness of heaven that I must grow toward it like an oak, small at first but always growing (passing through ever higher spiritual levels) until death when I truly arrive in heaven and say Here I am'. Only then may I shut down and just sit back and laugh with God."

I guess alot of this is addressed to the petty individuals cancering-up this land.... "You small men, you hunters of flies and spiders.... I've got a purple heart that's all bruised up from the knocks it's taken while rushing forward to conquer those on the hill moated behind HAVELOT with its pleasures of touch which control a shallow mind that never thinks that DAWN does match DUSK, just shadows reversed... instead the shallow minds walks around every day with the tune to a catchy commercial in its drying mind"...

Sometimes when I was writing this it got to sometimes that I was watching too much what was them notebooks and maybe denying what was actually in me head and maybe this is one of those times but I'm not really sure... All I know is that I'm here in a Grandvillian attic listening to some Donovan and taking in ale and cigarettes trying to graft it all... the mystical essence of a spirituality trapped within the confines of the everyday experience that gets us all to the point sometimes when we wanna give it up and drift off with whatever currents come along, but wouldn't that be all sissified? Come on man, just hang in and fight the battle at hand. There's no better time than NOW. I mean you wouldn't want some historian coming back through your life (God) sifting around through the papers mumbling to Hisself, "Hhmmmm, how long did it take for this one to be beaten?"

(I kind of got off the point there for a second because what I meant to write about was the fact that sometimes I rely too much on the notebooks and I just TRANSCRIBE what Boris had written months ago, but my charge now is to take those scribblings of the past and use them like bricks and now at desk reassemble them into a form by smattering it all together into its inevitable base concoction... this amalgamation from north of never...)

I am better than

no one is better than me

and we're all here

to try to live blissfully beside death

and friend we have to do more

than wait in line until the end

because sometimes it seems to me

that as we all is caught

trying to get out of this room,

their trompings and trappings

are just dents in the ceiling,

while we aim to find the latch

on the SKYLIGHT that leads to eternity...

and all this may seem

some melodic anger and yes

sometimes my crass hole

does burn me so, but enjoy you motherfuckers.

Burn!

(And while I am at it, what is life without partying?

I mean if your not celebrating, then your just

sitting around. If you're not having fun....

YOU'RE NOT HAVING FUN!)

And don't think for a second

that the dead don't observe the living...

they're out there staring down or across at us

saying sometimes, "Man if you knew what I do now."

(Live NOW with their knowledge in your chest!)

So come out of your INSULAR ENDIVE

and trust a person until you can't...

get in touch with yourself and peer deeper, realizing:

objects in the mirror are crazier than they appear!

"Though I don't see myself being pulled into death anytime soon, I do find myself wondering why I had to end up growing old in armageddon." (2/2/96).... This was something that I scribbled down back in February and it hung with me for a long while until I had a recent chat at the top of some Lancastrian stairs with a man out to love the world. He explained me: "Man you have to know that only the strongest people are born in this age. And don't think for a second that we arbitrarily chose to come in at this point in time. The world needs warriors now more than ever. Love must finally be championed righteously!"

Still sometimes it seems that we might as well

all find our graves and stop looking for AMERICA cause

now it seems that I've seen too much of it and Grandville

is as good a piece of it as any... (I mean I still got the

STARS AND STRIPES twinkling in my eyes, but I still

want to put some distance between ME AND IT so's I

can behold its beauty like taking in the mountain

from afar)...

(I have smelled the stinky breaths of tomorrow and kissed them as they wake up in bed beside me because I am a CONFIDENCE MAN that can turn it all around FOR REAL this time.)

For now I'm still surrounded by those small misguided souls a mi trabajo who feel compelled to SEE WHAT THE FUCK I'M EATING, and I can only gnash my teeth and shake my head at those EARTHLY critters who just have to critique the lunch of others... or furthermore the guy that I run into all the time in the bathroom (when I have piss so bad I take reading material) who is nice enough (I mean at least he says hello but it comes out all wuzz-up?' with that urbana machismo forced gruff voice) and he takes his piss, washes hands, and plants his feet (wide before mirror as though some sudden GALE might interrupt?) gazing into the looking glass to inspect every twelve of his hairs to make sure they are arranged in MAXIMUM COVERAGE like they is some failing platoon on his noggin.....? He appeared to be a real important dude at 4:40 p.m. 2/28/96.

I'm not here to be cruel to anyone

and not overly kind either (especially myself)

but just am passing through the world JUST THIS ONCE

searching for the quintessential human experience

to question EVERYTHING AND ITS DUST

(are you getting what you demand?)

For me that means writing a poetry that's

been waiting out there like wild animals

milling about the junkpile only to leave their scent

on the oak that had forced its way through (3/9/96)

(Move my soul like a wind that blows

the trees into submission. Make my mind a thing

that sees everything at once.)

I mean it is like I came from nowhere

and have brought it along with me now to insert

the NOWHERE as being a bliss that taunts me continuously with a happiness (anonymous) and makes me ask, "Lord, what are you doing to me? What am I going to do if I actually end up happy?" Because for too long a time it all seemed like a fight that I was never going to win (the chase for elation), but then PLOP there it was and it was like somebody (Him) handed me a chord and am now forever again CONNECTED TO THE OMNIPRESENT.

...so just stare out the window and think

of the concept of a BOLDER GENERATION. The idea being that each generation takes its own acts of rebellion to a higher and progressively dangerous level. (This is connected directly to the premise that the OTHER END OF THE STRING is snagged in the river to the rocks of doom.)

Whimpily I mutter (or drunkenly scrawl) with tears all welling UP IN EYE, "Awh man, why it all so bad? All this killing like when those teens in Philly killed Ed Pollack because he was good enough to sell some beers in plastic cups to his friends (or whoever came along) in an alley behind his house." I mean geez, he was chased down and beaten to death on the threshold of a church for chrissakes! And each of us (or most of us) rise again the following day of WHATEVER TRAGEDY to do what we must to keep this CLOGGED THING GOING. I mean we don't strike against THE WAY THINGS ARE... we just keep serving our souls to wolves on platters. Why? Because it is OUR DUTY to see all this through, to "not live unproductive lives" Titus 3:14, and in the light of all the evil in the world we will tragically get up in the morning and take a shower... (and not because the dirt scratched us, but in hopes that something may be washed away!)

[The wacked beat individuals that hang their heads when sitting in repose in the middle of the nightcause they have no idea what's going on and don't know what to listen to.....

....are the ones who hold my heart.]

Sometimes the good of this world gets through (and it doesn't seem so much a diminishing resource) and it is like driving a van back from Tennessee with arm cocked through the driver's side window and looking out to left where runs the Appalachians MOTIONLESS (at least to our naive eyes) when I guess I should have been looking on the road and see now (reader) how those mountains caused me to drop off the shoulder and send sounds of popping gravel under the fenders and logically the BANDitos in the back sleeping woke to attention yelled, "Hey man! You still with us?" I just made something up like, "Awh yeah, I just found that one license plate that just went by real interesting." They knew better and looked at one another giggled and picked up on the pillow where they had left off. See, they was tired from playing a show the night previous at twelfth and porter in that country music town. But the music I ended up hearing that night as I stood and guffawed at the divine stream of sound spilling from the p.a. upon which rested beer #4 in a long series of Guinnesses that night was just plain... well, you got the feeling that if a billion people never ended up hearing these songs (and even better seeing them played) then there just might BE no JUSTICE in DAR WORLD! The earnest rocker has a smell, but not so much a smell as a GAS that shoots right up the nostrils and into the head that make you go, "Yeah alright.... There is a way we all can be that maybe makes sense and could cause us to be MAGNIFICANTICLE." And if you keep that same FEEL with you as much as is POTENTIAL then I guess we really can't ask fo' mo'.

It is to say that I am HUMAN and @ times together and compressed like DIAMOND... that is when all my ducks in row and I can pump them off at liberty.... but sometimes (most often when I don't wanitoo) those ducks are in someone else's sky instead and then I am like a spilled bag of lentils across the floor that someone is standing over and saying, "Fuck!"

(I'm just a looser

in a nutshell)

I'm flying through all the books and the music and the people and their work and trying to get as much out of it as possible between blinks, like some turkey navigating a forest. IT IS FAST. I AM AMAZED.

[Some people should be fatter than they are, but they just laugh it off. By becoming weak with mirth they have become infinitely strong.]

Some people don't like talking about work much. Especially if it is really something that they'd rather not be doing and you ask them how their job is going and they say, "Good" and that's it. They get this (all vacant) stare in their eyes like they can't communicate further or even remember what goes on there. Like maybe they're hollow. And don't get me wrong. I agonize over that shit too: ...thrown into a random set of people there to perform a task that makes money or serves someone but it's all COMMERCE somehows.... but (I'll try to tell you something you don't already know much later) it's life right? And sometimes it's those images at the WORK that grip you strongest like when I was up in front of potential CLERICAL STATE EMPLOYEES as their eyes (glazing over) fell dead on me as I covered IN GREAT DETAIL the application process. And I know what they was thinking. They was all, "Man, does it have to be so hard?" They wiped their brows AS I KEPT TALKING about more and more copies of THIS FORM that was needed before they could be considered. They kept thinking, "Geex braw, just hire me so's I can do the job.. CONSIDER ME!... while I'm sitting here now ready before you." After I was done I asked if they had any questions and though I was in downtown Harrisburg, I could hear the distant chirpings of crickets. It was that quiet. I could also hear them thinking....., "This is too much fucking trouble [it is]. Just as easy to go home tonight and get balled up on some beer." Sure some of them came up to me afterwards and asked me some vacant questions. I did my best to address these lame attempts to SKIRT AROUND THE FORM communicated to me in their stinking breaths of hope with my own retorts of standoffish bureaucracy. "Get the FORM. You can't get in without it."

It's all a formula. Procedures and regimen. Again, please don't misunderstand. I'm the nicest guy to ever wanna hire anyone. I'll bring anyone on. Reformed murderers - sex fiends - drug users; YOU'RE ALL WELCOME HERE.... if I was calling the shots. But the second you fuck up, I'll open wide the door and some hired Festus will sling you out into the destitute DIRT future of your own making....

I been passed around through VARIOUS THEATERS now for several years failing in attempts to satisfy like an old technology. So tired I can't even enunciate my own name. Like when I am full of DRUGS UNBECOMING a saved man (not heavy fashionable stuff, jess nic and ale), but I guess this is how I see fit to participate in the overall Dgeneration of this omnipresent like any other ALAN IMAGE for a dead opinionless mind in search of nothing more than GIRLY WHIRLS.....

(Don't ever be blamed for being a RESISTOR rather than a RECEPTOR... be forever WIDE*EYED to having the beautiful arms of (you know who you are) caress thy wanting heart which keeps thy twisted muscle alive and pumping!)

That is to say, my dear unrealized daughters LILLY, PEARL, and HAZEL (when I told your names to others they laughed... maybe because they thought the names old or funny... or maybe they knew that I would have SONS... but I still love you forever whatever you may end up being), know that after all the initial CAMPAIGNS AND EXPLOSIONS... that I am ready to be at peace with this world. (5/14/96)

I am a PECKER FULL OF PASSION who is trying to plant the seed of joy out there in this world like, redux: one who picks up an acorn in the grove of the Pennsylvania State Capitol COMPLEX and brings it home to throw it in some dirt in a pot that sits on the windowsill until it sprouts to a height which demands placement in its rightful spot in the ground.

(But realize reader that they're finding parasites even in the hearts of good men who become fuckers sitting behind desks and counters trying to pick my brain [s'iff there was something there to begin with (gaw!)]?)

The human comedy exploded in my mind and said: "Endeavor to be merciful like the teacher who let the students stay out A LITTLE LONGER FOR AN EXTENDED RECESS and stands there where the grass meets the playground, marveling and smiling approvals at the new and upcoming lives who will ALWAYS OUTSHADOW THAT WHICH CAME BEFORE (rather than the black-hearted and spiteful bitch of a 2nd grade teacher who caught me pissing on the radiators in the boys room when I had a broken arm and who could only say (overcome with the shock of all potentiality), "Get your little ass to the principle's office before I break your other arm!"

Awh folks, go out there and live like you know how and share a love that is lacking. Watch out for your own, but realize if you tug the easy strings of life you only unravel someone else's sweater. Walk down a fencerow and see the wild roses. Wonder if they ever die. Then come home and pack your bags for the unCONVENTION taking to it the knowledge of love lodged deep in your chest that is growing outward and LOUD/WORD like a trumpet vine....

Now almost done saying these things but who ever knows how long is the RAMBLE. I've chosen to pull fruit from the fallow ground and want upon my death to have my life come out of me and say, "You worked me to death." I want only to feel the satiation of a life realized to its PUREST POTENTIAL which makes my own DEATH HEAD stick back up out of the grave where body has come to rest forever and look back over the EXPANSE and say, "Pal, this is the way I wanted it all along." (It is a life concept only.... it never really occurs after the lungs respirate for the last time.)

Leave me behind

this time

leave me behind

I say

I will sit the parties out

they are pictures

of another day

Now

THE EVERYDAY

is just the same

unless I bring it to its knees

and somewhere

insert a change

(I HOPE) that with this I am helping to make it all a little better (or am I just pushing it a little closer to armageddon on my way to a harsh Nietzsche)... whichever it is I am forced to follow fate (like being smiled-upon enough to have met so many blessed angels in this life I can only be infinitely wealthy to know more in the next!).

I have removed the last stop and now the water is rushing freely as it pours down over my drought-stricken happiness. Man, know that we just don't want to be comfortable. One can be a comfortable miserable fuck. Nay, give us the mirth and joy and happiness to tickle us giddy!

(You there reader, ROCK THEM DEAD with your own. Stay up until the ERNEST HOURS. Help us to remember that the LORD was a man once too.)

[Me]

I'm just a good old boy

from the Keystone State

with everyone telling me

that I'd do great

but here I am

and there's

no one else around

nothing left to do

but sing this song

Brother and sisters, hear the striking of the LOVELIEST CHORDS THAT EVER THRUMMED YOUR HEART and leave something behind for those that may follow. Dust off the roots of any tree to see where it came from.... and may the TAP ROOT burst your chest with what you've seen there!

Maybe, perchance

you did not really like all this

and I thank you for getting this far (people cannot judge you nor me, they can merely cast their small stones) for the God complexion is an arrow at the heart. The one will make its mark if the other is in the right place. This is the tirade of the diaTRIBE and this is the way things are in stairwells all over this country. We have chosen to be in the HERE AND NOW. We must tell of our messages printing forth from the DOT MATRIX of our souls only to be spread from ONE TO THE OTHER to connect with those who will have it (that concept came from a Lancastrian stairwell).

It was written: "Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me. To him who overcomes, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne." Revelation 3:20-21

as I wait for eternity

I realize I am a slight product

of my physical and spiritual surroundings...

[Lord, send me out

to where the heather meets the shore

and I will show you a love

like rarely seen before]

My mind be wild

my body be tamed

and I look like this

EVERYDAY

because I will

never be the same

The sun now sets

on this one of the best I ever

had hit my back

(this tapping is done

for now

and I wrap this up in burlap,

throwing it from a window from my attic

which isn't as close to heaven as I hope to get

but it will do for now.....

for I have broken the E key

and hard carriage return of the manual typewriter

after all this RANT)

Embrace thy God

wherever HE may find you. And when he finds you,

you find yourself. You find your soul....

...has a voice of a thousand angels

coming forth from the boughs of misery

and is like a shadow guiding you through alleys

in a strange city that you've never seen before.