False lame

When your life consists in relearning

to walk, talk, eat, shit, fuck
breathe and fall

on average

every seven years, You

could be forgiven
for weakness and lapse,
attributed to old age, really
just inattention to detail, imbalance
uncorrected, resignation to
inferior coping thriving
defense modes, "Not
my fault!" "Best I

could ever do!"

, but it won't matter
if you are forgiven.
You'll still catch blame at every
step.

Really just.

Fair. Right. For if
you can't own your
faults, you have no claim

on your virtues, or oh okay
go claim away. You win
not much.

The hundred foot foot

A huge hundred foot
foot 
slid down the sky and 
thumped boom in front 
of me, bounced once and
heeled over, spraying 
gore 

It must 

have 

ah, you know I have 
no idea. It 

is scaly and hairy and 
probably some big 
big poor poor dude 
got lopped 

I scan the skies 
but 
no dice. Maybe 

I am only imagining 
this foot 
that heeled over 
to crush my chest 
hips, legs 

and feet. 

Hope so 
so hard 
that's 

so

lucid napping

First there's a rainbow pixelly
shape
like a retinal afterburn
cheerfully colored, shifting - organic looking
but rectangular
like a vegetable cell
then there

voices of cheerful, playful and serious, laughing

 control room (?)
 staff? They seem
 frequently amused and speak
as if they don't know I can hear.
Next
I can sense
my hand (left) raised
- at least one case I had
to shake and wriggle it like I was

working a glove on or circulation back.
Like it had fallen asleep
The background
all this time is

shifting like the shapes that drift
and merge when you lie waiting
for sleep,

but possibly it's become quicker.
A door forms with visible corridor
sucking into it - it's like a Universal
Studios ride kind of
there is
gravity and momentum shift.
It is possible to shift from saying things
"out loud" and actually using my vocal chords, or
moving my "hand" and actually my hand, which
is limited by the bed. It is possible

to do this without breaking immersion
entirely but it may weaken it.
Then through the door and often
what sounds like radio broadcasters. You can't quite

hear what they're saying - sometimes
you can. It doesn't seem to be about you.
Sometimes a dream can form around

you
without going through the door.
Through the door the scene and
people there come into view. Tricky.

Indistinct at first you have to sort
of
let go to make them real.
Sometimes

you end up in the control room.
They say they're real

but if questioned can
pretend to be aliens or
become aliens.
LIZARD PEOPLE!
I dunno, they seem okay to me.
Before they form or you
let
go
they can be anything. Once
you immerse it gets stable. But
you can shake your real head and pull
out.

---
The control room girl wore cotton tan slacks
(stitched like jeans) and a shinier slightly darker
tan shirt. Her hair was red or brightish auburn and
her face oblong. Pleasant, open, very restrained
annoyance.

In the dream it's all real
No longer a daydream either 

I had to save her
I lifted her to carry her our,

I mean, out

I can 
still feel
the taut, soft stitching like 
denim

light on my suddenly heavy
hand

By this point 

I was definitely asleep, and 
she slapped me awake

figures

ware prayer

Uplift all wings, uphold 
all craft. Let no one crash, 
or sink to drown on this 

Our watch. No accidents, 
no damn foul play, on 
this,
our chance.

Let's 
look and see, let's
show and tell, stand up

cry 

out 

This vigilance.
We cannot save
all lives all days, but
just this once, let's snatch
defeat from jaws of ugliness 
and hate. Let's mercy 
first, and
hurt
come 

last, 
and late. 

midline structure

Do I push you too hard? Is 
the silence a sign? We all must 
abide in such darkness sublime, 
but I take no bad tell until you 

say it's so. 

A ball in midair, cross the net 
I must wait now, to see what
comes back. 

Then I'll know.  

Assertive Manifesto

My self is 
an assertion. 

Yes, my self itself 
literally is. Not passive,
oh no, just deferential.
It's a courtesy I love, 
to defer to one and 
each other. 

Brass gong nope to
"Aggressive"!, haha
he he as if aggression
won one match wherever, 
anywhere, anyway
 I trod it down.

Presuming 
I noticed it there,
of course. Of course not, 
usually. Not a real thing, 
to notice, for me, 
aggression. Not

without a fight. 

Just lucky I guess.
Just assertion, I am.
Or at any rate, if not
just, I do try to be 

fair. 

I aim to be.
Just being, 
just barely,
fairly, not scarcely 
at all, and 

free. 

bolt Part 4: epilogue

Bolt epilogue

Yes.

The above are only three instances. Plenty of others,
though. You know, it’s
always something different.
Different things cue it. Set it
off. Different sounds, sights,
shapes. Pattern recognition. SOMETHING
UNCANNY
'ROUND
HERE!

Then I bolt.

You gotta. There’s a sense of impending
dread, delicious with threat. I love that!
It’s a great, strong
feeling, 
eerie.

Pretty wild! I never fail
to observe that feeling - unless

there’s some reason staying is
necessary or beneficial, of course.

Then I stay.

So far no calamities. The line between
intuition and imagination is not fixed. Although
in my experience, if I have some actual reason to
be in a place, the sudden
dread calm
rarely falls.
That sudden silence thrilling 
with alarum, alertness - as the
uncanny crashes in all around.

Not a thing in the surroundings
changed - only how it feels 
with me there. It doesn’t seem
to happen
unless

I’m kind of just someplace for no reason.

It’s like it knows. Knows when I have an excuse
to exist at the moment, and when I do not. When
I don’t - that’s when the feeling creeps in and seizes
hold.
That’s
when I observe 
and exercise my inalienable right to
f*ck off.

I bolt.

I get the hell out of there.

Never fails, and I’ve never regretted it.

Bolt #3: the beach

The third incident.

This happened at night,
on the beach. I looked
all up and down the
ghostline of breaking
surf that vanished and
reappeared, vanished

and reappeared. There must
have been a moon up above
the cloudlight somewhere, because

the cover layer could be seen scudding
by in featureless shape and form. The

waves could not. Apart from breaking foam, all out
to sea was featureless black void, swimming
in my night vision. I turned my eyes left and right, far
as could be seen.

The sands were tan bleached of all color,
a silvery patina of blown salt shifting over
them.

Anyway, that’s what it looked like. There
were houses along the beach I knew, but
not a single light from any of them. It was

the hour between
when you can remember
what day it is and
when you can’t; when
you slip into night
that belongs to
no day. To every
day. In that flying,
dragging dark the beach
grass seemed almost as black
as seas - but where the sea was
invisible, the grass weaved

like a thing alive.

It was alive of course. Alive with wind. Suddenly
I was gripped by a feeling out of place. As if
the feeling belonged there but I did not. 

The feeling was all wrong - the place 
wasn’t all wrong, maybe. My fit
into spacetime was.

I needed to get the hell out of there.

Which I did.

I hauled ass out of there. The whole time back
up and off the beach, threading my way up the path
barely-seen between the grasses, feeling their stinging
lash. I had to go. I had to go now. I was going.

There was a feeling bearing down. I was like, “Cool. 
Bear down, feeling.
Bear down.”

Gone. 

Bolt #2: work

The second incident (non-chronological).

Another time I was at work. I had the key
and the code to the building, being
as I’m a trustworthy ess oh bee and
overloaded with work only I could do
(stupid arrangement and entirely my fault
for not cross-training and outsourcing). Anyway

I was the only one in the entire
building. I took the alarm off myself.
Almost all the whole building was black.
I turned on just the minimum of lights
to thread my way through without

banging a knee,
or
knocking anything over - I knew
which switches to flip. A few
hours in, there I was in my office
(lights on in there) getting shit
stowed and cleared for a better
coming
Monday.

I had music playing quite loud.
It was awesome! Apart
from wasting my day off.

Suddenly, something made me
turn off the music. A sound? No. There
was no sound. It was a vibration of sorts,
from my belly. I went out to the vending
machines, scored a Coke and a packet of
crisps - the good kind, finally! They’d been
out
so long.

Suddenly it all slid together in my mind.
Me alone in the building. Saturday getting
late.

Something was wrong.

I got the hell out of there, pronto

Bolt #1: home

One time I was home (this
was at a time when I was living
in a white barn-style arrangement 

- a spacious converted loft and
a downstairs kitchen hall and loo) and
I just felt alert. All over like my soul
was electric
and my skin had eyes
seeing behind me and everywhere.

I wasn’t able to see out of my skin, mind
you, I’m just telling you how it

felt. Super alert and wrong. Something was
up.
I felt the need
to be gone.

I took off out of there.

I just took off. I needed out, big-time. It was dark
outside and cool. I went on a walk down
the concentric arrangement of streets
towards the church
in the middle, then peeled
off towards the beach.
I took the dogs. That

was my excuse.

That was one time.

I had to bolt

New Rap Handle: props up to emcee PBNJ!

Introducing emcee 
Pee Bee NJ! That's 
"Pig
Boy
Jersey"
and I don't
rhyme! With 
the words I say, I belt 
rhythm on cue, on
key at a tempo wrought 
wild and free, and variously, and 
people admire my wit and panache.

I uh,
duh- 

huh

to the beat
like some ass!

Like I beat
that ass
like
a bongo show! Slow 
to fast, and eh,

okay.
I might just
slip a rhyme 
in a beat behind,
or
two 
or three,

but that's sheer dumb luck,
accident or fuck, whatever. 

I don't truck with such aplomb
on purpose. Problem?
To make 
the crowd weep 
with joy! If only to realize,

"Oh. He's not meaning this.
It's a rap."

Quite. Just so, or dead wrong 
in case I meant it anyway, 
boy. Sometimes I do. Oh
boy, that's
my
brand new PBNJ
style! And
it always kind

of was.

Or at least, been 
awhile 

kind of want

I want to run my hands 
through your skin, and 
my tongue through your 
silken locks of hairdo 
kind of 

I want to sort you 
alphabetically by 
emotion 

and kind of 
get lost 

in the way 

the moon door

the moon is up behind 
the moon door, and 
this poem sucks already, 
but 
the moon 
loves being immortalized 
in verse 

so I did. 

Ashes to dust

My summer feet 

are here to stay. And if I ash
I step on it

and grind away. 

And if it's
coal, I do not wince. 

Just think of shoes

that fit, and grin

a bit. My sin. It
isn't pride. Just gluttony.
Informative chagrin

you see

How do you fare?

Poorly.

See, I 

just wanted to write a
poem about we should all eat 

animals, but leave humanity 
out of it, and...look. 

I got lost on a sudden research 
track. Stuck on 1-track shuffle for
forty good deep sucking minutes on
one hard, menacing croon Smith's tune
from Marr's guitars to Morrissey's
presumably still Jiminy cricket
Johnson bar. Against it,

at least 

one presumes one of them was. 

I was listening to How Soon IS Now, 
not the cow ode. But I couldn't help 
recasting the latter as the worst burger 
commercial score ever aired, by one 
Brit-Ass Jack King of Marrs by way 
of sincere epiphany, so one might
'pose:

 humanity

is not irony.
It is absurdity. It's 
look, it
needs work, but. 

Still
what she said was
she was either onto
something, or on
something. I saw her 
cute pun and rose my
hand. 

"Which what?" 

So I and I 

switched 

to a reggae 

chop groove and said 

screw the whole
thing, thank God I hadn't gone

into advertising. 

much 
And yet, 

There's so much not
to know, the point just bucks
can buy! It's
odd. 

I know people
who need so much money.
Goods & services buy that
so fast it could make a 
cryptoeconomics proselytizer 
smell paydays on the internet! 

Not kidding! Met one once or 
twice. Always pretty warm

on shills!

I can't see why they ask me 
for advice, though. Seems they 
have so much to sell 
already