Crimson

Crimson in defeat, they halted
Gathered lives and legacies in
___war-weathered hands and
pulled

Uprooted centuries where their names
___ were braided in the soil

Behind them the rattlesnake enjoined,
___ driving them on
___ across valley and stream,
___ across mountains and seas
___ to another shore
where,

Crimson
at home
___they began again

Crimson
at home
___they remained.

George Bush: Tribute to Helen Keller

Today I would like to celebrate the life of one of our most inspiring citizens, Helen Keller. Born a healthy girl with ordinary senses and potential, she was tragically robbed of her sight and hearing by an illness in infancy, sealing her in a world of silent, impenetrable darkness. No one could reach her. Not until the bravery of one teacher, Anne Sullivan, whose patience, love, and violent physicality finally won out, and opened up the world to young Helen. Who could forget those uplifting scenes from The Miracle Worker, watching Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke beating the crap out of each other? If only there'd been some mud handy... But I digress, whatever that means. What I mean to say is that Helen Keller is an example to us all. Or at least she was, until she grew up into a feminist commie book-writer — three strikes against any woman — and, sadly, had to go to Hell. But I choose to put the focus on the early, successful part of her life, and not the satanic slide into literacy and activism. It was her story that inspired our own plan for Iraq. Yes, thanks to proof we have that you can slap some sense into anyone, your sons and daughters are now dying in their thousands to beat Iraq into a better place... though not one that will write feminist, commie books! [Chuckles with receptive Republican audience.] But what more proof do you need than me, the President of the United States, standing here before you today and saying you can be blind, and deaf, and still be a success. God bless America. Thank you all.

Internal Exile

The road was long abandoned. At one time, it had been a farm road, straight as an arrow between the lake and the countryside. At the edge of a city now, just this little isolated chunk remained. On the one side, a modern warehouse, ablaze in light. On the other, the empty driveway of a lost home, the grounds overrun with returning nature. We stood there, leaning on his car, both of us clinging to a moment of timelessness.

The day had perished, but its heat still lived in the crumbling blacktop under my feet. But our attention was skyward. Here, you could still see stars. At least some of them.

We were only 25 or 26, and already, his marriage was over.

JB had a bottle. It was rye. Something cheap from out west. He took a belt right from the bottle and handed it to me. The angry liquid bit my throat all the way down. I passed it back to him. He looked at the label, noticing the town. "Wonder if I'll be passing through there," he joked.

"How long you think it'll take?"

"Four days, last time. But I can't stay at Nigel's this time, so... maybe three. I dunno. Five..."

"You didn't do anything to him," I said, as he took another drink. Passed the bottle back to me.

"Yeah, but he doesn't see it that way. Like it's any of his fucking business."

"You're his best friend—"

"Was. Was his best friend." JB jerked his finger, urging me to take another belt and pass it back. I did.

"I mean, all those years in high school. All those parties, the trips."

"Mmmnnn," JB grumbled. "You'd think it was his wife. Or... or that Beth was his sister or something. It has nothing to do with him." It wasn't just Nigel. Jay, Don... they would barely speak to him either.

I shifted against the car. It was a sensible car; Beth had long before made him surrender his beloved third-hand Z-28. When the baby came...

"What about Katie?" I asked.

He was silent. Gazed into the bottle. Sighed. "Shouldn't have happened," he muttered.

"What?"

He just shook his head. Whether his meant the affair, the marriage, or his paternity, he never said. Maybe he meant them all.

Suddenly he said, "Holy shit..." He nudged me with his elbow, pointing up. There, high above us, soft curtains of pale red and green were shifting in the sky. "Holy fuck, is that the northern lights?"

"Yeah, I think... I think it is!"

"Jesus," he breathed. They grew quickly wider, brighter. Dancing with slow undulations, as if beckoning. Living as far south as we did, I had never seen them; neither, I suspect, had he. Jaws dropped, we just stood enthralled. Finally, he took a swig, passed the bottle.

"That's fucking amazing," he murmured. "Hey... hey, listen... do you hear it? Do you hear that?"

We both held silent, craning our necks. Then I heard it. The gentle, hissing whisper. They actually made noise as they skated across our skies. "I can't believe it," I breathed.

"I know," he said. There above us, something eternal, something that had been going on for billions of years before our births, and would continue billions of years after our deaths. We were nothing. Mammalian fruit flies by comparison.

Suddenly, he began to softly sing the national anthem. We both chuckled, but I joined in. Our voices, fortified by whisky, grew bolder. Starring up into those shifting, whispering curtains of immortality, I had a lump in my throat. It stopped being absurd... we were sharing a symbol of all we would soon have in common. Soon to be half a continent away in British Columbia, he would be beyond the bounds of daily acquaintance, and lost to us... even those who had no quarrel with him, even those who forgave. He was cast out.

"When do you leave?" I said.

His gaze left the sky, and met the dark forest beside the car. "Rented the trailer this morning."

"That soon?"

"Probably Monday," he said. "Need time to pack. My Dad's coming to help. Gonna ride back with me."

"Do you need any help?"

He shook his head. I understood. He didn't want any of his friends there, closing out his life. Then he laughed. "Well, yeah, here, help with this." He handed me the bottle.

I took another drink. "We better take it easy," I said.

"Fuck it," he said. Then he added, "You're not driving. You finish it."

"I'm glad I could help," I joked.

"Yeah," he nodded. "Hey, remember the time..."

And so it went, as the northern lights writhed naked and beautiful before us. Memory piled upon memory until it was a sandwich neither one of us could swallow. Too much to digest, and too bitter. When the lights in the sky slipped away, fading to black, the asphalt under my feet was cold, and the bottle was empty. We got in the car and left the little lost road.

At home he dropped me off. "I'll give you a call before I go, okay?"

"Sure," I said.

Neither of us wanting to say it, he just gave a quick, short nod, and roared off, heading west.

Homeland Security

How do you fix something like that? That was on his mind, in different ways, all the time now.

The doll's head was off, and Penny was crying. He wanted to cry himself; it had belonged to his grandmother.

"It's okay, Penny-punkin, it's okay. Daddy'll fix it, I promise."

Penny ground her eyes with grubby hands, red-raw as she looked up at him, snotty-nosed, nodding her faith in him to put all things right. Jesus, how do they get like that? She'd only been crying a few seconds and she already looked like she'd had the flu for a week or something. Kids are always five seconds away from looking like that, he decided, holding out his hands and gently taking the doll.

Penny, suddenly angry, stomped over to the screen door that had served as guillotine to her doll. "You killed Alexandra!" she barked, kicking the door.

"Hey, whoa, whoa, whoa," Rob cautioned. "Daddy doesn't need to fix the door, too." Daddy can't afford to fix the door.

Penny nodded. "But Alexandra..."

"It's just a stitching job, Pen, honest. She'll be good as new before lunch." But he knew it would never be what it was. Maybe the hackneyed job he was bound to do on it would give the doll a charm all its own. He hoped Penny would see it that way. Somehow, he doubted it.

There was thunder. The clouds were trying to mount the Alleghenies but they couldn't quite make it, and so they were going to take out their frustration on the land. "I was gonna go to Mandy's house," Penny murmured, defeated by clouds.

"Is that where you were going?" Rob said. "You didn't tell me." Ask me, he meant. Ask, not tell. When had he mentally ceded to his five-year-old daughter that privilege? "You're supposed to ask me," he corrected, both himself and her.

Penny shrugged, not wanting to explain something she probably didn't have the words for anyway. "Alexandra," she whimpered, changing the subject.

"Yeah, right. Alexandra. Is that how she got caught in the door?"

"Can you fix her? Her head's off..." Penny's eyes welled up again.

"Yeah, okay. Come on. Let's go in the living room. I'll find the sewing kit."

She pointed up the stairs. "It's in the closet in the big bedroom," she told him, then added, chin dropping, "That's where Mommy kept it."

He nodded. "Okay." He handed the doll to Penny. "Here, you look after Alexandra. I'll go get the kit."

Penny nodded, making a face at her decapitated doll.

Rob climbed the stairs as thunder rolled; truly, it was stuff of waking nightmares. He padded into his bedroom, bed unmade on one side waiting for his return, and as the breeze-stirred drapes danced to summon the rain, he opened the closet and retrieved the sewing kit.

She lived on behind glass and housed in bronze on the dresser. He stopped for a moment and picked up the picture. He'd left them around for Penny's sake, but now he wondered. It was funny how it worked... she'd been the archetype once, and then Penny had come along, growing into a strange, not-quite-right version of her mother. But now, after all these months, it was the mother who looked odd... a mature, warped, unnatural version of Penny. She looked happy in the photo.

She hadn't been happy much in that room. Not towards the end. He looked around in the murk of the coming storm, and he could hear it like the echoes had fallen out of the closet.

Himself. "There'll be other jobs."

Her. Angry. With the situation. With his stubbornness. "Where? Where, Rob? This town had one thing going for it, one thing. And it's gone."

"There's more than the plant. We've got time..."

"We don't have time! Our savings are gone! Do you get that? Jesus, why did I let myself be..." She had stopped herself from saying it, but the implication echoed, still.

But the room was silent, actually. There were no angry words now. No words at all.

And he didn't understand it. Angry with him, sure. But...

He opened the kit. It was full of her, in its minor, detritus of life kind of way. Buttons to outfits he remembered. Patches she'd sewn on Penny's jackets, then recycled for the next one as she grew, but had never gotten around to.

"We have to move," she had told him. Holding the scissors lying dormant in the sewing kit.

"How?" he'd shot back. "Using what for money?" Now it was his turn to burst bubbles. "Where do we go, Carol? Your mother's? Live off her savings?"

"We have to get out of here," was all she'd said.

Me. I have to get out of here. That's what it amounted to. That's what she'd meant. In the end, she'd found the money. In somebody else's pants.

That he got. That he understood.

"Daaaddyyyyy," came the call from downstairs.

"I found it, I'm coming."

But Penny? Nothing but a birthday card in all these months? That he didn’t understand, and he never would. He closed the kit and headed down to make a dead doll live again. There was that much he could do.

She was the bottom of the stairs, still rooted where she'd been, holding a different half of the bifurcated doll in each hand. "Can you really fix her?"

"Well, we'll try, okay?" He took the doll from her and headed over to his chair. "She might not be exactly like she was. You have to be more careful."

"I didn't mean to."

"I know." He sat, digging out the makings. Penny sat cross-legged at his feet, holding a different, less-loved doll in proxy, and giggled as he tried to thread the needle.

Another loud roll of thunder, and then the hiss of their wrath. "Ooo, there's the rain," Penny announced, getting to her feet and dashing to the window, marking it with her palms and her greasy nose.

He wondered if it were raining for Carol, wherever she was. The card had been postmarked Knoxville, but he couldn't imagine that's where she'd be happy to end up. Not after giving up everything. There had to be a bigger payoff than fucking Knoxville.

"Is it going to be a tornado?" Penny gasped from the window.

"I doubt it, but come away from the window, just the same. It's windy. Here, we'll see what they say on the news."

Penny turned from the window and came back to her father, picking up the doll she'd abandoned. Hugging it.

If only it were that simple.

He changed the channel to the news and began lining up the doll's raggedy head and its raggedy shoulders. The news showed a bunch of broken-looking middle aged men milling around in a parking lot, holding signs, few of them very high. The anchorman's voice over told the story. "Halcion-West Switching announced today the closure of its plant in Wheeling, putting 1700 unionized employees out of work. The Teamsters local is protesting the plant closure, but say there's little they can do. Spokesmen for the company said that they have been forced out of the market by foreign competition. However, union representatives suggested that the board of the company has, in fact, reached an agreement with the Chinese government to relocate the plant in China and resume manufacturing there."

Rob felt his guts knot up, all over again. "Fuck," he whispered, his eyes shooting to Penny. She didn't seem to have heard.

The needle licked at the doll’s disjointed ends, meatball surgery with a hope of success. The thread was dark… Rob hoped his little girl wouldn’t wind up playing with something that looked like a Frankenstein’s monster with button eyes.

The anchorman offered what they were after: the hopes of hearing about the weather… but first, they had to pay the bills. Almost as if in answer to the prayers of the laid off men — men like Rob himself — Uncle Sam came knocking. Urging. Pride. Pay. Patriotism. The Army.

Rob felt his heart sink. He remembered it springing from Carol’s lips. Just for a couple of years, she’d said. Till things were better; till he could find another job. But the war was already on; he knew what it meant. Back then, he was sure it would mean he’d lose her. He still thought so. But now he knew he’d been straited on all sides. There’d been no way out.

He knew men, friends he’d worked with, men in their thirties, who’d enlisted. He could hardly believe it. When he’d been younger, it was young man’s game. Increasingly, it devoured anyone, everyone. Two of his friends were overseas as it was. He paused in stitching the doll.

He gazed at Penny, patiently playing with her doll and a toy car. Wondered if she’d be better off with her grandparents, and her father earning an honest wage again, somewhere on the other side of the world…

Jeff, up-ending a beer at The Tooth and Nail... what was it, February? March? The icicles dripped with the coming spring; there was the hope of flowers and warm weather but nothing similar for jobs. It was a couple of months after the layoffs, anyway. "The Army," Jeff nodded.

"What do you mean?" Rob asked.

"Signing up," Jeff said. Rob watched him wash the taste of the words down with the cheap beer.

Rob remembered staring at Jeff as though he didn't really know him, despite working on the line together for four years. "You're joining the Army? Already?"

"I was in before, after high school. It's not so bad. I know the drill."

"There wasn't a war then."

"I would have signed up anyway. I only missed the Gulf War by a couple of years." Jeff set down the mug. "You think I'm scared to go?" Rob didn't miss the insinuation: are you?

Rob said, "I was just wondering about Francine. And Terry and Lacie."

Jeff looked away, staring out into the somnolent street, eyes stung by the boarded up windows and tumbling newspapers. "They'll be fine," he said. More beer mouthwash.

Spring arrived. Jeff departed.

Sitting there in late summer, staring at his daughter but not really seeing her, Rob wondered who'd made the better decision.

She seemed to feel his eyes on her, and she turned, smiling. “Is it going to be a tornado?”

Rob flicked his finger at the screen as the answer to her question was presented; a brief interlude for the weather before back to commercials. “So can I see Mandy when it stops raining?” she asked.

“I guess so, if it’s okay with her mother.”

“I want to take Alexandra, too…”

Rob nodded, getting back to work.

Suddenly, Penny started, and bounced on her knees, pointing. “The dream house, the dream house!” There on the screen, two little girls swarmed all over the latest thing: it was a large, complex plastic doll house for an expensive, trendy doll.

She came to him. “Daddy, if I’m real good when school starts, and I get a good report card, can I have that?”

He wanted to say we’ll see, but he knew that would just fuel the fire, and it would be all the harder to extinguish later. “Penny, honey… we don’t have a lot of money just now. Daddy’s not working.”

“But pleeease, pleeeease… Mandy’s got it… it’s not fair, Daddy.”

Who could he pass this off on? Santa? Mommy? Neither one was going to come to her rescue… or his. “I don’t think we can do it this year, Penny. Maybe next year.”

“It’s not fair. How come Mandy gets it and not me?”

“Things aren’t good for us right now, Penny. You have to be grown up and try to understand.”

“Everything’s been bad since Mommy went away. I wish she’d come back! It was better with her.” She grabbed her doll, half-stitched, out of his hands.

“I got laid off, Penny, remember? Mandy’s dad still has his job.”

“How come he has a job and not you?”

“That’s how it works sometimes. It’s not fair. But that’s why they have money for things like that. One day soon, I—”

“You always got money for beer! Mandy’s mommy says—”

It happened and it was over, like a rattlesnake strike. She stumbled and sprawled, knocked back by the slap he'd given her. There was this instant of satisfaction, release, response; it splashed inside him like warm milk. It curdled instantly. There, on the carpet, propped on her elbow, her hand clutched to her stinging cheek, the thing he loved most in the world; the thing he'd die for in an instant without a second thought. His little angel, his tiny daughter. Penny blinked at him, too shocked for the moment even to cry.

Rob wanted to die. He wanted to be 10,000 miles away, his life ebbing out as he faced an enemy to protect her. Instead, he was the instrument of her pain.

Some part of him reared up and demanded he absolve himself, draw the line, tell her it was her own fault. Hide in his own power and authority, transferring responsibility for what had just happened onto Penny herself. But he couldn't.

He dropped to one knee, holding his arms out. "Oh, baby, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I didn't mean it. Please forgive me..."

Penny held back, cringing a moment, and it broke his heart. But she, herself, could not maintain the distance. "Daddy," she whimpered, and swallowing, beginning to cry, she came to him and hugged him. "I'm sorry," she sobbed.

"No, no, Penny, it's not your fault," he told her through his own tears, stroking her hair. "You didn't do anything wrong. It's alright, Penny-punkin," he whispered. "I'll never ever touch you like that again. Ever. I promise," he swore to her, kissing her. But he wasn't so sure. It had been on him like an animal, and he hadn't even known it was there. She was trembling in his arms. He was shaking.

And he was afraid. Now, he was afraid.

He stopped, she said

He came from me, she said
___no longer afraid of the flame
___ and huddled close,
___a house cat and builder at once
And he was so pretty, she said
Looked like me; he would
Sing dance run
And one day, one day
___tail wondering, forgetting to forget
One day he was sad
And then he stopped
Singing dancing running
I tried to make him but he wouldn't
And he fell off his bones, she said
___while the fire danced for her like her dead son
Fell off his bones...
Why did that happen? she asked me
___asked the fire
Why did he stop?
___and I was silent
___yes, I was the silent one.

Consider Ye the Upthrust Pearl

Now pause in passing, stop to dwell
Upon the homes and places here;
And listen, close, to what they tell
Of dreams the hearts of others cheer
That form the stars above the well
Of inky blackness mortals steer.

In what they have and what they build,
Behold what they aspire to;
The rough-edged lives they seek to gild
Are thought too plain to be in view.
When time has all the embers chilled,
Small souls depart the shells they grew.

Consider ye the upthrust pearl:
How little it enriched the world.

listen with my eyes

crosstalk
by the trees
she wants me to know she's thought of me
her words detach and float to the ground,
___the blazing summer in which they blossomed over

i listen with my eyes
gazing up into the sticks that rake the sky
infect the clouds with pus to fall as snow at my feet
___when she is safe and warm in some far
______elsewhere
the wind stirs it all,
___leaves and words and marionettes

Ark

Unbridled by
___control skins
The leaf the water
___seed and grass
______embrace me
The smallest knowing
___nothing hidden: shared
And the ultimate way
___is back where you came from
Don't condemn
___don't back away
___It will all be this way
______Soon.

Snake in the grass

My cock plays tricks on me
___Tells me things about you
___my heart and head deny
I want so much to believe

One more time; one last
___tilt at the gates of Eden

Cast

She nominated me:
___be my anchor
___keep me from drifting
______ or cresting the falls
Night and day, point of reference
___ she might circle and list
___ but never founder

Came the day of a new wind
___ bright and sunny
______ compass clouds pointing
___ ______to the future
___ She filled her sails with him
_________ broke the chain
___ I watched her wake spread
______ foam and lace
___ from below

Before the Lines Came

He walked
the steal-held land
___unbounded
___before the Lines came
Countries
___counties
______concessions

Driven iron come alive
___turning there to here
______that to this
___halving what was whole
___joining what was strange

He walked
the indivisible divided
___mindful thus
______all around him insane:

______Flags on the moon

Free of the Land

___Born in the church,
She was married out of wedlock
___Never saw the day she didn't night

The whole west production
___Brought her everything she wanted
And everything she wanted was in sight

___Owe, how they waited
To be ushered to her exits
___And manicure themselves in all her charm

And lingering behind her
___In somnambulistic chill
They winter-watched him take her by the arm.

northhumber

cool white plying blue
warm blue carving grey from green
we were naked then

LCBO journey vignettes

1
paved with gold

long line
___like geese
___like Beatles
leaves cross the street
___pirouetting
___like Trudeau sans the Queen
wishing they'd hold tight
not ready for fall.

2
hold my licker

Went to the licker store
Got myself some licker
I needed that — had a good, stiff tall one
helps me sleep
a good licker'll do that
___every time
wish I could manage it on my own
maybe one day

3
great rift valley

in sandals
___She walks before me
___with each step
___a split second
___bares her heel
like something
___primal
______forbidden
ceaseless
___sensual
______slap
_________slap
____________slap

'midst straight lines and steel
concrete and clock knives
it really doesn't take much.

seventh day five and dime

god's wife come into the store
sez i overcharged her on bananas
well i didn't but whattayah gonna say
___it's god's wife
i don't need no trouble
so i give her the difference
she buys an apple
___y'know one bloody apple
meeting a friend for lunch she sez
and slithers off
(she might be god's wife but i never liked her)

Pissing on the moon

I stood there
so did he
black water rippling, trees ghost-sided
all dusted white by soft light blast
sand still warm
on the tide’s retreat

He said
Look what I can do
baring himself to summer’s black eye
golden arches flying
reaching
straining
all the thrust of modest rockets
laughing, splashing my toes

Pissing on the moon
and more adventures
before the sun comes up

Severed

Padge packing in this jukebox hullabaloo
Padge packing in this Crisco-slippy moment
Padge packing, and all is well
Padge packing up a severed limb that was our life

There’s the train
What’s the province?
You don’t have to tell me, no
But maybe we could say hello sometime
Don’t forget me. Yeah, sure, I’ll write

As idly said, this home don’t miss the master

She has a skylight

She has a skylight.
Invites me over.
We gaze up at it.
Daylight streaming;
___bright blue sky, relentless

She says,
“Sometimes I sleep out here,
___just to look up at it.”
And I say,
“You’ll have to invite me over
___sometime
___I’d like to see that.”

She never did.
Not me, anyway.
I wonder what eyes
___saw what constellations
___through that sweat-fogged eye.

Cleveland 1996

he rose from her
lifting all but his sweat
at her urging
___she turned over, pillaring
and she instructed:
"maybe you should
fuck me
like an animal"
______i know
______i saw
______i was there
so he
fucked her
like an animal
___then it was my turn

later, she watched

The NEW Richard III

______ ______INT. A MEAD HALL IN MEDIEVAL ENGLAND

______ The merry court of HENRY, EARL OF RICHMOND.

______ Enter LORD STANLEY and RICHARD III.

______ ______ ______ LORD STANLEY
______ ______ ______(introducing RICHARD III)
______ ______ Your Majesty, the Pretender.

______ ______ ______ RICHARD III
______ ______ _How wrong thou speakest, assface.

______ ______ ______ HENRY, EARL OF RICHMOND
______ ______ _What seekest thou, bag of douche?

______ ______ ______ RICHARD III
______ ______ _Forsooth, thou who wouldst of thine
______ ______ _own father a cuckold make, I thence
______ ______ _me here to rap.

_____________________ HENRY, EARL OF RICHMOND
______ ______ _First mindest thy tongue, then on
______ ______ _with it gettest.

_____________________ RICHARD III
______ ______ _Thou art, and no mistake, a man
______ ______ _possessed of not one asshole, but a
______ ______ _multitude thereof; and moreover,
______ ______ _grapevines have it that they each
______ ______ _and every one abetteth thee in
______ ______ _thine interloping of my 'hood.

_____________________ EARL OF OXFORD
______ ______ _What of it, dung-addled?

_____________________ HENRY, EARL OF RICHMOND
______ ______ _Hold! He speaketh unto me.

_____________________ RICHARD III
______ ______ _Aye, and verily too. Indeed,
______ ______ _methinks thou wouldst pretend,
______ ______ _presume, pre-empt thyself — and
______ ______ _this company of those who do most
______ ______ _assuredly sup upon John Thomases —
______ ______ _unto my very crib!

_____________________ HENRY, EARL OF RICHMOND
_______________Enough!

______ He advanceth upon RICHARD III.

_____________________ HENRY, EARL OF RICHMOND (CONT'D.)
__________________ (reciting, as if a spell)
______ ______ _A cap in thine ass shall poppèd be,
______ ______ _when next we meet, and worried be
______ ______ _thine underlings, to see thee fall,
______ ______ _who hail from Sodom, one and all.
______ ______ _With glee shall I unbloom thy rose,
______ ______ _and unto me collect thy hos.
______ ______ _So mark me well! and bide thy time!
______ ______ _till by me rendered bones and slime.
______ ______ _Begone!

_____________________ RICHARD III
______ ______ _Be thou fed upon dung! I am away.

______ Exit RICHARD.

_____________________ LORD STANLEY
______ ______ _Alas, we are diss'd!

_____________________ EARL OF OXFORD
______ ______ _What for this, o my king? Surely
______ ______ _we will not suffer yon sorry man
______ ______ _bitch-issued, wherewithal he hath
______ ______ _said, to get away?

_____________________ HENRY, EARL OF RICHMOND
______ ______ _Nay, fear not; I spake not in haste
______ ______ _nor jest; neither took I the piss.
______ ______ _This very night shall his ass be
______ ______ _kickèd, and up shall his shit be
______ ______ _fuck'd, by this manly host here
______ ______ _about me.

______ ALL cheer.

_____________________ HENRY, EARL OF RICHMOND
______ ______ _To arms, dear friends! Let ye the
______ ______ _locking and also unto it the
______ ______ _loading be done! Mount up, and
______ ______ _gallop by vile Richard's posse, and
______ ______ _by so doing shall we waste him and
______ ______ _those thereabout, and be thus
______ ______ _avenged! To arms!

______ Exeunt, ALL cheering.

_________________________________HERE ENDETH THE SCENE.

July, Long Lost

So late that
___TV's gone to bed,
___ ___I roam the house
___ ___ ___to find instead
that freedom reigns:
___no job, no school
___ ___no waking mind
___ ___ ___to set a rule

___ ___but mine.
___ ___How fine

a thing it is:
___the darkness heard
___ ___the silence seen
___ ___ ___the voiceless word
and in the street,
___with none to see,
___ ___the moon eclipses
___ ___ ___just for me.

Enniskillen

Proud and emerald-fired
Formed of souls shamrock-hued
___and fed on words, words
She smiled at him

Him, from beyond, away,
One of
___them
Took his hand
___Let out those
___words,
___ ___words
New ones poured in like tea,
___hot, delicious
___ ___needed

What mattered
the colour of souls;
___alabaster all in the sight of God
And when the Somme offered his up
She took their daughters
___wild geese
___ ___across the sea

Original Sin (Personal Instance)

Kind
he was and
grandfather
___(not mine,
___so grandfatherly)
Set to be inoffensive
___Iron-firm, silver-haired
___like a man on TV
A mighty orchid
___and I,
___a happy bee

And I loved, too
___the little stream
___ ___that carved his land
___ ___imagine! to own a stream!)
___ ___like hot fudge across an ice cream plain
___Fascinated:
___ ___the little paddle wheel he'd made
___ ___held by rocks
___ ___a toy that turned and turned,
___ ___ ___spun by nature

I dared, like Prometheus
___I touched it; it broke
___tipped from its stones
___and stopped

I ran

Cried

Hid

Fearful he knew
___(how could he not?)
Imagining his rage
___(how could he forgive?)
Dreading his hate, I
___never returned

Did he wonder,
___where's the bee?
When he fixed the wheel,
___as surely he did,
___in seconds,
___did he do it for me,
___ ___wanting it to be right for my enjoyment?

I never looked him in the eye again.
___Afraid to be penitent
___Short-selling his mercy
___ ___I robbed us both.

Hardwood Maple

There crouched in all resilience
___in autopsy
___the dead snow rotting
___the birds back to peck its carcass

Fingertipped unmittened blue
___the iron clank swing set chains up the hill
___not wanting to wait
Thunderstorms broken on the rocks
___but healing
______hungry

Locks picked by wind
___lifted from young eyes
______whispered the furnaced It:
______fat appled limbs
______frolic salt-stainery
______unshod field tipped tricycle
___So I listened
______believed

The sap ran down me
___mourning six-armed
______glazing the sun so I could eat it
______hot off the griddle,
______blue unending

Hardwood maple—
___bone-knotted
___tear-keyed
___blond-leafed
—learns to wait