Land, ahoy! I’ll make my mark And bury treasure underfoot While I still can Roots in a sandy patch Loot of boots tie treasure routes I’ll sing my body electric Through a vain anatomy And seed a fruitless plot with bloody veins that drip and atrophy Just a metaphor for pouting poets facing closing doors Heave your anchors, paddle towards the shore with your bitter oars Concoct a newer brew of convoluted ancient lore It’s these ails that make an ale Making mail to stuff in lost decanters They’re rants or banter From this linguistic dismantler On an ABV of pageantry And rhyming ryes on tidal rides Bide your grains of sand And raise your toast to all the blushing brides That hide disguises, unease lines on aging faces growing wise And soon concoct the perfect crime to steal ourselves to wakes sublime And peer on crag a sweet abyss of a solitary artist’s bliss A recluse sans a Xanadu awoke by a croaking cockatoo Raise a toast to present ghosts The mother, daughter, and this holy coast And watch the surf encroach your toes And high gull calls approach the lobes And fill the world once comatose With fruitful worlds of wordly woes Embodied by a purple prose of repetitions overblown And castaway from outcast’s lips where tweezers could compose a ship Stick a cork like an exclamation awoke you from your dream It seems my scheme is just some lines left behind for you to read between

Put a record in the postman’s bag Carry it with Jude, the post-man’s drag Any day expect a revelation Even if belated: check a tracker A waxy spitter’s platter comes eventually Post-haste hardly matters If not today then a day I’m more prepared Cuz I’ve sent some tortoises with vital forces Every one of em paired against some hares If slow to trickle its due (between me and you) To the lands that I traverse on this wide blue earth And so the topics of these verses from the tropics Blow the doors down upon every delivery A misanthropic little ode on your doorstep to read Stake your claim And wait for the swelling pride of some shell-strapped pops of pulpy poetry I trekked soggy through the Flooded Strand Canvas a marshy land - stick pamphlets in some sweaty hands I heaved my soul through some Polluted Deltas A megaload of gold inspires sweltering brows in even most deft smelters I made my way through many Bloodstained Mires And volunteered my trusty beers to hold the sphere’s most urgent wires While I kicked the dust at the Wooded Foothills And lost thrills sermonizing mounts and doggypaddling Still heading to horizons over Windswept Heaths And held tight to beliefs on a scaly bottlegrip Until bequeathed A memo like a demo with a jazz-laced beat Anon the post-man’s fib Tripping out a shattered lid Here’s the desert isle trial for a tall tale-ing kid I ask attention in exchange I flip the ‘pro quo quid’ Fetch a land with planned intention What I did and how I lived: “Make money and die! That’s the American way!” So all the patient ears await with bated inhalations what I say

I’m gonna be the one to tell you that there’s Water on the Moon Now that you know you’ll probably colonize it soon Can’t help but do that shit wherever you can find the room There’s not a patch of soil that your sickly grip don’t think is fit to groom Water on the Moon I’m floating in a crater The Creator Has a Master Plan Water on the Moon That’s amore in the palm of your hand There’s no amount too big that you snakes won’t take You greedstruck leviathans sucking up entire lakes A mindless thirst unquenchable that can’t be stopped Meanwhile I’m skin and bones and feeling guilty just to taste a single drop Of course, lacking remorse Raze the forest, feast on flesh There’s naught left sacred No human dignity to best that thresh So why do I feel ashamed whenever I say grace To those ruthless rulers I despise Who tell me I deserve much less? Water on the Moon I’m floating in a crater The Creator Has a Master Plan Water on the Moon That’s amore in the palm of your hand It’s a mystery How this harsh mistress hasn’t been bled totally dry (Slice across the Adam’s Apple of your eye) It’s a paradigm: Stein’ll galvanize and watch his Adam rise I, unto the ribbed one at the ribbed rubber’s demise Words from the ribbed’s tongue, whether truth or fibs are hardly mine: “I was but the catalyst, the soil to the vine” Staring at the stars Fox eyeing grapes Plunging into the cheese Stately banners making stakes I plaster placards on some pickets Chanting phrases Guarding lakes “You don’t want this fortune, this was all a huge mistake” Call me Rex Pickett, King Stake Demonstrate wine divine from fruitful earth And cultivate a fragile grape Sing praises for its birth If it’s self loathing grower was a groaner in the end Then at least he gave away his bitchings Never asked for compliments Never hoarded boarded cellars while surface dwellers scraped for sediment He always with his broken body gave his blood as a condiment “Drink this in remembrance of me” And he sang it with accompaniment: “Some of y’all barons with your overflowing gullets Will be crocodile crying when you kick the fucking bucket” Water on the Moon I’m floating in a crater The Creator Has a Master Plan Water on the Moon That’s amore in the palm of your hand

That postman going down the river in a barrel Gurgling, burping and babbling With a gaggle full of ducks But that embittered brother never really gave a fuck About the double-hopped brother he’d deliver to the rabble Two of a feather Birds of a pair The practical among ‘em in denial and despair He dubbed his twin: anthropophagus Just one insult from an uptight gynecologist He dubbed his twin: self-amontillado’er While they brick themselves together in their filth-infested chambers These decomposing mirror images of perfect strangers: Fratricidal lingual and labial rearrangers One quick trip to the payphone, Beverly Meanwhile the sty soaks the feathers down In tar and shit and gasoline One more dip of the pill bottle, kid Chug the capsules and cram the message in And seal the fucking lid Two reclusive surgeons Going brick by brick Stacking mortar Quick encasing shaking fingers Quivering lips And now my brother’s keeper I must offer him a sip He takes it down And now prepare the poison pen A quill of fell and pluck’ed down I, an artist of this scalpel brush Require anesthetic for my own shot nerves So I siphon off the salve that I should have administered Hypocritic junkie coaxed to call a hoax the oath to nobly serve Turn my pen into an opiate And never share the word And now my brother’s keeper I must offer him a sip He takes it down And now prepare the poison pen A quill of fell and pluck’ed down Like a rock that’s all too able to come crashing on his crown Watch a crimson trickle like an I.V. Conclusively place the last brick Drink the red wine down feverishly Before goodbye: Tell me what makes up a man Is it the work that he has wrought by the tools in his hands Or the cigarettes requested when he makes his last demands Or the final rites he ships away as precious contraband? Flowing flow While that spirit dribbles slow into your cup Blowing bitter brother’s ashes While you drink the fucker up

Knock, knock Rise from your hardback, George Stretch your leathery neck And get prepped to get engorged If you unfortunately die before you hid the bullseye Then you’ll be the final bud that your family’s branching has forged At least they’ll never say you didn’t try (...and what’s more…) Tick tock, George You’re running out of time You gotta keep up the bloodflow to keep up the family line They sent a Tokyo mediator to a barren isle Wound up on the shore trying to inseminate a reptile Been spinning a pistol with a mostly empty chamber You’ve been shooting blanks Ensuring you’ll remain endangered Knock, knock Get yourself out of your funk now Or Galapago is gonna know the sorrow of another lost soul Give it another go Mount your Mrs. Take a bow Hope you got enough spunk to take the shot And make the goal Tick tock, George You’re running out of time You gotta keep up the bloodflow to keep up the family line Get your mind off your worries Ease yourself of some stress And yes, the pressure is intense Because the stakes are immensely high So if you’d like your legacy to survive “You gotta hit the fucking target ‘fore you die!” So believe that a bitter old last of a breed Could be a Don Juan tortoise Not so old he’ll concede Don’t recede into your shell What the hell Shoot some seed I’m not naive But do believe that you’ll achieve I know that you’ll conceive Tick tock, George You’re running out of time You gotta keep up the bloodflow to keep up the family line

Here’s how you begin: “Pack a parcel on the back of a terrapin And send him to the wind and tide And wave goodbye” Won’t ever have a better tether to the kingdom of man No rings on my hand or sprouts in my sandy land Cuz no poetry’s ever been written about me I’ve never been a Capulet on a balcony I’m just Orlando Watching Russian ships sail from icy banks With fifty drawers of cedar wood encasing cadence keen to contravene (Would overflow with rhapsodic and libatious forms on dreadnought’s planks) And their canisters Go bobbing along on a cold-blooded flow of a go-between Cuz I’ll never be a Helen to a single ship It’s me, myself, and no one else And we’re fused at the hip Cuz we be salty, earthly Truly all abrasive bits of fertilizer While clipping rampant stanzas (Amid referencing some wiser) And a breathalyzer moan of a long-sighed blow Shall be the wind in the sails for a voyage home From down below…

I am the wife of a sailor, I heard when your mutt saw you return he died of joy (How amusing!) It’s such a blessing, May the gods be praised! That through these couple perilous decades you were oh so miraculously saved! But your humble excellence has seen his homecoming best spent In the act of murdering suitors And hanging promiscuous maids So I may argue in this open letter That insolence, not heroism Has defined Odysseus And he’s left debts as yet unpaid I am the wife of a sailor, And your failure to deliver severance must be illuminated I doubt that any of your faceless crew had failed to truly see The workplace hazards so entrenched in those who sail from poverty And toil as a lower class on motherfucking “odysseys” But please explain and make it plain: The origin of the voyage’s name For I speak to a monster, Who has squandered his entire crew So why is this endeavour not dubbed for he, but instead for you? You have made no penance for the generations you have stolen Us, bereft of gods and glory, pillaged Theft has left us nothing Your failed apologies are Greek to me Or should I jest and call them “Roman?” You’ve roamed for twenty years, Return expecting to rest, With blood on your gold-clenched hands And then when I have the gall to demand these pithy condolences You dare to say it’s of no fault of your own? Zeus, Helios and the rest are to blame for this? (Well, praises to their names And their life-sparing gifts for Odysseus!) I ask: “How did it happen? Where did he die?” You shrug and say: “Coulda been swept away by the winds or turned into a swine…” You say: “Six men were snatched by a six-headed beast…” You say: “I went to pray and they wandered away And they cast their stones And they flung their arrows All at the sacred cattle of the sun! They disobeyed commands And they killed the bless’ed with their own hands! And thus our ship was damned! And all aboard except I drowned!” (Seriously?...You expect me to take that bullshit sitting down?) I am the wife of a sailor, I heard Athena gave your wife some beautiful gifts (I sense some recompense…) You think all the time that your Mrs. was weaving a funeral shroud This crowd wasn’t proud enough to produce a proper legal defense? Ithaca argues: “Though the Gods may have put the wind in your sails When the water was waist-deep who held and hoisted the buckets to bail?” Ithaca argues: “Though the Gods may have secured your personal return would not fail Who tied you to the mast to ensure your safety from those siren’s wails?” “Your Gods and Goddesses are careless spirits and excuses Pay what we deserve or we will make your fucking laurels useless!” “I would rather occupy a kingdom ruled by the winds and the seas Then see another sickly sycophant on bended knee come fall before thee!” “And though your records won’t contain my name I still retain my dignity and my claim: That you’re the one to blame!” “I can’t understand your legacy Can’t grasp your fame…” “I’ll never star in a poetic epic No Homeric! Call hysteric! Question merits!” “But still With vitriolic venom I will loudly proclaim your villainy And viciously demand that you explain: Why, if my man came home, Would there be no trumpets? Why, if my ship came in, Would there be no trumpets? Why, if I did to you what you did to me, Would there be no revelry? Why, if my man came home, Would there be no trumpets?”

Land, ahoy...

To set foot upon my isle’s sands I request you trample upon all your crucifixes I make few demands But request that when intermixed Both Bolsheviks and fascists leave their baggage on the shore To be lost at sea betwixt eclipses (just to be sure) “Welcome to the Island of the Misfits Boys! I was someone in a tree I was a watcher, Dr. O’Connor I’m a voyeur Tell the tales that I witness I was someone in a tree I was a watcher, Dr. O’Connor Let me quickly explain before you judge me to be witless: Trying to make some cents over a drumline of ones and ohs And sticks and stones and river’s run and bass that hums And splashes of some saxophones Here on Madeira: water on the 3-6-0 And here in the mirror: I just can’t wait to do a 1-8-0 So I rush to ink and scraps To scrawl lit little bits of bottleprose Amid those fire flicks on cavern walls That feathered flock concocted a new draught that you really have to try In fact, I’ve been sending scaly friends With samples gathered from my leaking pen Swish it in some cheeks and spit And try to get a handle on the painful cenobite’s puzzlebox of language I’ve dismantled! I write raps like Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra And Shaka when the walls fell I write raps like Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra And Shaka when the walls fell Aye, I no speaka the “aye, aye, Captain!” I, Island, floating on a Pacifical ocean I’m trapped in Aye, I get shaky when I down the potion I spy my limbs are heavy Treading in the spoken and interwoven passage Of a channel thick with rocks And stumbling blocks of knocked about phrases In wait to be unlocked Aye, I hope this message has found you patient (Thank God there’s “water water everywhere”! You’ll need something to chase it!): “You oughta know by now!” (“What the fuck are you even saying?!”) I write raps like Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra And Shaka when the walls fell I write raps like Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra And Shaka when the walls fell Buoyantly float into my pagoda in a channel from your palace And let me drop a spot of potency directly in your chalice!: “CASKS AWAY!” (...with no attempt to parse what the fuck I’m trying to say)

Call me Ishmael Calling this “The Key to It All” Turing the code by watching artists gazing where atop their idols might have rowed Someday, as a flower of white and gold I’m fit to pick and press An unreciprocated ode is what this duo’s acquiesced upon I’m a brazen self-inflater and hater Even fasting I went deep in mirrored waters I bask more in a casket than a percolator And fraught fear ferments With perilous penance proudly proffered A man of Golds out his hands: “Might you replenish my coffers?” While I dubbed my twin: anthropophagus That’s just one insult from an uptight Narcissus I saw the face of God and he looked like me! Some Franciscans vowed: “We shall not eat a single bite But we’ll need something to get us through the long days and nights” But while they’ve been bottling waters from this bubbling brook You’ve absconded with your costly plunders Run with blunder’s bundles like a babbling crook! I punch in and vow: “I shall not eat a single crumb While working bell to bell ignoring how my stomach gets to rumbling!” And while I’ve been bungling waters from this bubbling brook You’ve absconded with your costly plunders Run with blunder’s bundles like a babbling crook!” (And we’ve got trouble!) You saw yourself some salvator tugging me from this roux But whatcha got to show for it? What’s a motherfucking doppelganger brewed? If it wasn’t for me you’d make nothing Fucking nothing: No money, No product, No draught So before you flower or flounder What do you have to say to your better half? And what’s the alternative: Do I go out there on the streets? Where the organ grind, I guarantee, brings even less to eat? Listen man: I saw the face of God and he looks just like-- You and I are twins in an estuary Fingers on discordant keys We’re pandhandling Searching for some sterling on our hands and knees Reaching out my grasp And suddenly hear a splash misplaced As my palms plunge into a puddle proudly displaying my still-smiling face

Ooh! Stick ‘em in a black Glad trash bag Nagging and ragged sag snagged on the branch of a bush Watching those burnouts pulling off their kickflips Taking their last sips with their lips of the Anheuser-Busch Crush that can In the palm of a young little avaricious vice And sky-high flick that wrist on command So that smashed-down aluminum he dunks with a swish Pile defiled bits of would-be wishes Slamming coin in a trash can Rickety-sticky wheel of a grocer’s cart Absconded with the property of some mini-mart Shoved with your shuffling gait to a swifter grifter’s pile Of discarded treasures you’ve embezzled on your travels Paddle for a while Mile after mile unraveling crumpled bills that you’ve obtained A man who works for his living don’t complain or abstain from plainest pursuits He keeps his eyes on the prizes: Chipped, cracked, but entirely whole Going nickel by nickel and piling loot ‘Til he meets his unobtainable goal “Here’s our appeal to the commonweal: Someone downtrodden like yourself truly knows the way it feels A cold and frosty world spits icicle rimes That keep your face in the mud ‘til the end of time Give a man some art: he’ll be amused for a day Teach a man to make some art: he’ll waste he life away Now that man: call him a vassal with a vessel But while he’s wrestled with a serpent in an isolated fight The great devices of societal pressure Have kept men like you engaged in Sisyphean plights You, first man: I know you spent all day collecting bottles and cans But we urge you to give em away You, second man Require these decanters as well And to you we tell you: toughen up or face your fate in Hell Use a brick to build a wall Or smash a window pane But we’re gonna need an implement with a little more flame We’re gonna wanna make a fucker ignite Because they’re gonna kill the lights And we’re gonna need our crimescene bright! We need all the supplies we can muster So I kindly ask you: please, set aside the art A dire moment in time requires thicker luster We lack containers for our petrol, motor oil, and our bleeding hearts We need this shit to make weapons that blast That crash and explode and turn the Temples of Gods to ash We make it rubble on the double If it ain’t too much trouble to ask If we may borrow your bottles to fucking smash We probably won’t be bringing em back! Cuz they’ll be cracked and implode with a fiery glow! Take the beast by the neck and command some respect! They go low! We go low! Watch us motherfuckers limbo! Both of you got nothing to lose And you’ve taken too much abuse So cut loose And ditch carts and dinghies and we’ll shove off On this crumbling ship of a massive nation amiss You got the right stuff: Temperament, supplies, and guts So cut the small talk Bottle that hot sauce quick Make a molotov They’re so much more explosive than a brick…” “Fellow citizens Please I humble request And even plead I offer soggy stories in verse In bottles once filled with mead So, if I gift unto you This fine-aged, cork-sealed rhyme Then, please brother: Can you spare a dime?” “Come on man, Where do you think you are: Michigan?”

“Hey Ma! Take my Confederacy to the publishers Make sure that I posthumously get my fucking Pulitzer!” Twenty-six friends, Commanded and commended for their arranger Placed in patterns of precarious rhyme and time Twenty-six friends, From a world free of foes When the water gone froze make an icefloe grow If we grovel in the gravel at your labia and navel It’s cuz we’re waiting for a baby to be birthed upon the foot of Babel No linguistic tongue-twist could provide a proper cradle For you have felt some feelings that for which these wordsmiths have no label We await your opus But you usually use a Magnum Drag em and then knock em out The perched stans get crow’s feet And need something to eat Hunger pangs go undefeated While a single swift blow from thee Glassblowing Topples that tower easily Look what we’re sowing: Under feet is Soil trod and lauded for its Rich, dark pitch Prodded clod-up peat giving gift to Me and you And all the other yahoos have ceased our travels We’re defeatists among those who merely dabble And though we decode scrabbled morse and miserly code Too many S.O.S.’s in a row is overload But I found poetics In the gutters and the sinkholes Dumpsters and landfills Overflow with recyclables And if the vessel shatters Hope you’re shattered likewise By the prose that results from the leak of a wayward alphabetic (Hardly on the nose!) Peeking at panes of browns, greens While most slivers are clear In a collage made of the remnants of a few too many beers Like your goggles are a porthole to the swagger of an ass In the sands through the sculpted cracks of shards of stained glass (When you leave, take this last one with you!)

Morning wood Driftwood Nightwood Neither sleet Nor snow Nora Flood, Nora Flood: I’m in love with you Go down, Matthew Down to the deep Neither sleep Nor dream Nora Flood, Nora Flood: I’m in love with you Go down, Matthew Perchance to seep into the spell of that sinking feeling No foresight to know the battle of the herd vs the sheep is over Spots of valued rock over ticks and tocks Revealing that we’re all soon to steeped upon a tortoise quickly sinking to the locker I don’t understand you You don’t get me But we need to work together to divert calamity Though I’m sorry that your hajj has been aimed towards a mirage It don’t refute the realization that we’re standing on a sinking barge Bring me my broadsword! Bring me my mead! I need inebriation’s edge to hedge my bets and get my whistle wet! Maybe with these verses like a flare in the abyss Someone will find me in the dark And save me with a true’s love kiss Saying that the best things in life are free But look at all the money I made Saying that the best things in life are free But look at all the money I saved This urgency has made my visions start to come clear And frantic appearances of sparks a’flying near of a narcissistic seer As this roiling saltwater reflection climbs fast I spit the salty inhalations My last inspirations vast Neither sleet Nor snow Nora Flood, Nora Flood: I’m in love with you Go down Matthew, Down to the deep Neither sleep Nor dream Nora Flood, Nora Flood: I’m in love with you Go down Matthew, Perchance to seem like last drunken clinks slinking from inside where I knock Cuz when you steal away my quill I’m a mime in a box And even if my slurred processions were unorthodox I hope that when you pour me out you raise the slop And give me my props Saying that the best things in life are free But look at all the money I made Saying that the best things in life are free But look at all the money I saved

Say “Disobeying God’s laws” While lavs catch baying dogs And hovel-wrecking hungry hawks Devolving into beasts who gnaw And quadrupedal people’s jaws Spit hems and haws and caw guffaws Sliding towards the shears and saws And packaged into foie gras And served with side of slimy slaw While remnants of the abattoir Give pads and pause Amid applause Omit the clause Play Corps De Blah On sphincter toots Like squawking writ a final wish from beastly shit A penguin’s chilly dip in penman’s ink A links of tinker tailor’s stitch And kissed with feces on the lips And a triple X of triplets Pressed to a baleful strix flying westward treks And from Lamech, the son, takes quest To rise like yeast from the east on a hopeful breast To con the ark To struct work for a few And climb aboard to compose the crew Of these slimy, furry two-by-two’s They made their scat and piss while waters ominously grew And lest limp wrist slipped whilst thy writ The father, son, and the accomplice All accomplish these tall tails Leaving weaving yarns floating in the rising water while their ark starts to fail Sending stories out in bottles bobbing past their dampened sails While having not a single bucket or bottle left with which to bail “Now with regard to this literary experiment of yours. It’s a considerable thing because you are a very considerable man and you have in your crowded composition a mighty genius for expression which has escaped discipline. But I don’t think it gets anywhere. You have turned your back on common men—on their elementary needs and their restricted time and intelligence. What is the result? [Nothing but] vast riddles.” (H.G. Wells to James Joyce)

A funny thing happened on the way to the ferryman: “I flipped a two-headed coin A hard chip in the ice Or a plunk in the brine Climate once tropical Waters now turning to frost And colder temps bring with it crops lost And windchill’s rime Glass clink with fingernail raps And a tap on that surface Still fails to disrupt that swill on tap Drink up a little bit of an icicle’s snap (drip drip!) Parched lips spin the bottle And hope your tongue don’t stick!” Now this ice like Judecca How it’s up to mine throat Like the Paralyzed Prince Is in Beelzebub’s choke (It’s frigid!) I could use a turtleneck while squeezing through this bottleneck I could use a pigeon who could pace his carriage breakneck My slowly, lowly tortoise sunk My bottles all been shattered My paper planes divebombed They like in wake and tatters Channels all are frozen solid Brews refuse their fermentation Telegrams are oh so sluggish I can’t bear the hesitation So fuck a mic And fuck an mp3 And fuck a CD Cuz I always knew that someday I’d be rapping through a ouija Pocketful of prose cannot fulfill the need to feed Desperate beast’s sonnet bequeathed Instead of land that was left barren and unfit to yield precious yeast Cuz a nation starved of sustenance doesn’t need a poet or priest I wish these hands of mine could till the soil And not just toil with a pen So I bide the time While I watch the tides roll and bend Maybe with their bellies full They’ll have a need for me again Now who’s mightier: The poltergeist or the planchette? Now if I bet on who’s mightier: Would I betting on the bic and not the bayonet? Land, ahoy! I’ll raise a glass And swallow Jonah While the walls around me twirl The hours pass with faithful casks I reminisce of what I lack A dry-tongued kiss is all I miss As all about me fades to black I sent along a hopeful post so while we sink I’ll count the years A heaved-up high and hoppy toast from this embittered mutineer And while I cast those fears adrift you’d swear that you could almost hear Under my breath I was softly whispering “Look, I made a hat!”