Pedestrian Protection

//Spiders and whisky//

2011-11-20T17:44:00.005-05:00

//Spiders and whisky//

It's turned cold
and I've been killing spiders and insects in corners all day.

I put the Windsor next to the toaster.
They both warm me.

An account of last weekend.

A few prompts for presence

2011-08-31T04:06:00.014-04:00

It's grown quiet around here. Here are some prompts that will hopefully lead you out into the street from those foggy white margins. They are in the past tense but put them in the present. Give them a presence and a context, a reason to exist:

a. The afternoon grew dim as the wind whistled through the window and the sound of an ice cream truck clattered off into the distance.

b. S/he stood in (his/her) underwear as a glop of jam slid from (his/her) knife onto the floor. “Today’s going to be a good day”, s/he said.

c. A cigarette flicked from a passing window bounced down the roadway; “CHAOS 2000”, "Who are you?”, “Pressure Treat the DEAD” are written large on the overpasses. Smoke from someone burning their garbage in a backyard by the highway drifts over the hedge.

///No Title///

2011-05-13T19:35:00.002-04:00

I know someone
Who speaks in riddles
Got tall tales to tell
Got time to spit
Got nothing to give
I smell the jasmine and my head spins
When it's all done
Where have I been
Will you find me?
I can't be here
anymore
please

Attention Span

2011-01-27T22:53:00.000-05:00

The teenage boys, smoking on the parking ramp
proving each to each who’s horniest of the bunch,
not really by anything they say, but by an attitude of standing.

There are enough strollers in sight for a stroller factory,
and enough babies for an orphanage, or a nursery.
Abandonment or growth, both alive here among the many
futures to be lived. The shops counting their numbers,
and the crowds throwing theirs away, and still their children weep,
but not for anything in particular.

It’d be clichéd if it weren’t true.
It’d be stale but their hypocrisy is mine.
And that lesson we must learn, but don’t
or won’t, not in time
that in between getting rich and wasting away
is a road where the leaves are bursting
with red and orange, brown and gold,
where the wind breathes onto the night.

///The Afternoon///

2010-10-29T15:58:00.009-04:00

Stiff wind blows

Shatters the bottle that held my flower

I'm staring at the broken glass

Water drips down

I take a walk down the street

No one walks there, really

I do, though

And another hour has gone by in another day

And I love it

//Figuration Nº.3//

2010-09-15T16:31:00.018-04:00

//Figuration Nº.3//

She runs her hands over wine stains
fondly -and saves dead flowers

Minds her p’s and q’s
and dots her I’s
as she slowly,
packs away.

These are getting to be a bit out of order. I mill over some longer than others but they're all tagged under 'figurations' for quick reference.

This one's a figuration of someone I know captivated by life's abstract impressions and expressions in the form of stains, spots, dried leaves and flowers or funeral offerings and what-have-you.

//Figuration Nº.5 (in memoriam)//

2010-09-02T05:17:00.023-04:00

//Figuration Nº.5 (in memoriam)//

A man fills himself with dog smiles
and dies a dog’s death.

This is a poem about an old guy I knew growing up that lived on my street, and below is a bit of prose from the initial notes I scratched out on my memories of the guy.
---
He somehow wound up stuck living with his two invalid sisters in a clapboard house the entire time I knew him surrounded by a yard with a slight fence populated by nine crazy shelties, crumbling birdbaths and one of those gazing orbs that look like an overgrown Christmas ornament.

Consequently he shuffled around town most of the time chain-smoking from dawn to dusk, and dusk to dawn in these C.W. McCall type sunglasses with a perpetual marmitic-sepia sort of sunset cast over his eyes, taking out the bins of people that had let another trash day slip their mind 'because he could', 'because he was shuffling to the doughnut shop to get their day-olds anyway' he'd usually say in the tone of a concrete mixer chewing something over.

//-{ }-//

2010-08-26T06:33:00.012-04:00

//-{ }-//
(Sv.)
Du
död

den eviga tungan
huvud gud.

(En.)
You
dead

this eternal-tongue
head-god.

I wrote this one night while I was sitting drunk in front of a fridge covered in Swedish magnetic poetry. It was in reference to the idea of the homunculus/the notion of the 'self' -the Minnikin-the small child that lives in the head or the private dialogue.

...Yeah I don't know, some nights it's this stuff others it's cartoons and questioning my competence to consume hot eggdrop soup without burning the roof my mouth again, go figure.

Crawlers

2010-08-12T02:05:00.003-04:00

An explanatory preface: I work at three separate bars dealing blackjack and for months have been writing small vignettes on actual people I have met/observed while dealing. My initial goal was merely to relieve a bit of my hopelessness at seeing so many people waste their lives at these soulless businesses, desperately searching for some bit of solace I figured they could never find there. Nearly 40 vignettes later, and it has become less of an emotional outpouring and more of a philosophical inquiry into the existential insights bars can provide. These are the first five I wrote, all of which were quickly scribbled down in a small notebook during my breaks. Some of the names are real, others are not, but all are actual people with larger stories than I am able to tell.

1. Marty
He's forty, perhaps forty-five. A gangly and awkward man, he wears a tan zip-up and blue dress pants every night, even when it seems uncomfortably warm. He has never spoken a word to anyone, just eyes us all from behind black pupils. His dark hair is greying and barely a wisp slumbers upon his pointy skull. I would think he was a serial killer but for one tell: he only watches the dealers. No girls in skirts or waitresses in short-shorts get his attention, only the cards in my hands as I shuffle and deal smoothly across the table. He plays only as often as he speaks, yet there is a game being conducted in his mind as the queens and kings fly back and forth, back and forth, over and over without end. Without looking away, he slowly raises his hand for another glass.

2. Gloria
She's always on her cell, pausing only to switch hands and ears. She'd be a mystery if only her high pitched voice didn't give away her high maintenance issues; even the lesbian cougars know to stay away. We all politely ignore as she sobs and rages at her "Lydia" (girlfriend?wife?lover?pimp?) who slept with her own "Sam" (also known as "Cunt" and "Vag Slut" and the "her" of "It's her breasts, isn't it? So you prefer slutty D's now, is that it?!"). I have no sympathy for her until the night she - quiety and without the usual fuss - tucks her phone into her bra, eying the cougars with a deep calm confidence which could just as easily be interpreted as insanity by those of us who know better. Maybe it's over with Lydia, or perhaps she's finally past the point of sexual loyalty; either way, the cell is off and it's obvious there is nothing and nobody left worth sobbing over.

3. Lewis
He comes every Wednesday for the baseball games, but stays for the cards. He smiles even when he loses a hand, only raising his voice when Metallica comes on over the speakers. He calls himself a silver fox, and he is, but also reminds me I'm too young for him so "don't even try, sweetheart." He pulls out his Blackberry to check facebook each time I shuffle, explaining that it's the only way his estranged son he abandoned at the age of five ("When I was dumb, young and desperate") will let him keep in contact. He carries the device in his breast pocket, close to his heart, tenderly tapping it through the faded fabric every time he gets a blackjack. His grin never falters.

4. Avril
She's a cultural slut and I hate her guts. She sings to me at least four times a night though, so we do our best to tolerate one another. She's won every battle we've ever fought, stealing the players' attention away from the table each time her puckered lips and digitally enhanced breasts thrust out from the large HD screen. I sing along to her songs out of habit, until the night a player comments to me as I mouth along to her #3 hit single, "Wow, you know all the words. You must really like this song, eh?" "Fuck no," I reply. "She sucks and I hope her candy ass explodes tootsie rolls all over pinata-style someday." The player, a girl in her twenties who could be a dead ringer for the aforementioned candy-assed devil woman, laughs and nods in agreement. Avril - 20,000-ish, Me - 1. I will win this war yet.

5. Maria
She's the fat girl of her group, the one who shyly decides to "watch over" the drinks and purses as her friends slut it up on the dance floor. She's the most dignifed of them all and I want to tell her so, but she doesn't have the courage to approach the table. She won't even look me in the eye from across the room, or match gazes with any other girl in the joint for that matter. Glancing at my shuffling hands, she seems mildly interested, and for a moment I think she's walking over to try a hand or two... but then she veers for the side exit, cigarette and lighter clasped in a sweaty palm. Her downcast eyes and teal-painted lids tell me all I need to know; she's many lonely nights away from the day she'll take a chance and just bet all she's got.

Drone In The Back of My Mind

2010-07-24T16:30:00.003-04:00

Listening to a Scottish guitar play its drone

Wandering through a dark place, lead by its hand

Wondering what comes next

Imagining what might be

Dreaming of a deep deep sleep

Ocular Herpes

2010-07-13T00:51:00.003-04:00

A name far worse
Than the disease.
My vision clouds six times daily
And a sting-
Fire to my eyes and vinegar to my nose.

Nuclear water
Drains down the pipes.

Now through glass,
The world seems smaller,
Almost quaint.

I only hope
That at the end
I keep the perspective,
Leave the pain.

------------------

There's nothing terribly introspective about this. Quite the opposite in fact. In Russia, I got ocular herpes somehow. Too much unprotected eye sex maybe. Or perhaps the metro. In any case, I had a really awful routine. Every morning, I had to flush my eyes with some kind of liquid that looked like yellow hilighter had been soaking in. Then, eye drops. Wait 5 minutes. More eye drops. Wait 5 minutes. Manually RUB cream into my eyes. Repeat 6 times daily for 4 weeks.

//Figuration Nº.2//

2010-06-13T02:05:00.008-04:00

//Figuration Nº.2//

Single serving charm
Minican soul
Made for tv disposition
Pat Sajack haircut

-MUTED-

.awareness

He is the things people see
with the warmth of novelty.

Another figuration. I'll be doing a series of these. If you recognise yourself don't get offended too easily. Identity's not the point of these exercises. Essentialism and foolish Romantic notions play no role here either.

Feel free to sketch me out too. I'm too bound up in myself as is these days I think. It'd do me some good.

Northern Sky In June

2010-05-12T19:51:00.004-04:00

Warm haze

Brings thoughts to mind

of decay

of things lost

I'm feeling now

color

How does that happen

Make me melt

Float away

//Figuration Nº.1//

2010-05-12T03:40:00.014-04:00

//Figuration Nº.1//

Eat falafels
Close one sad eye during the conversation

Let it look for a sunny day.

I met with a friend for lunch a while back. I was doing a lot of portraiture and some figure drawing at the time. If I'd had a pad of paper I'd have scrawled down that bit of peasant grace diligently and carefully as a page or a squire if only I had the memory to match with the proper faculty anymore. It was however this that was the essential expression/gesture that stuck with me as described in words. I hope one day to be able to reconstitute these written descriptions into drawings.

Absinthe

2010-04-10T11:51:00.002-04:00

The flame licks the glass
And the green poison bursts to flame.
My nose catches the strong scent of burning
And I recoil
--If only for a second.
He chuckles,
I smile,
As the second flame makes contact with her wings.
This time I breathe it in
Anise touches the back of my throat,
Grips on
As if to hold the way for what's to come.
The third flame strikes
What's left of the green fairy comes undone
And as I drink her in
Our minds begin to grapple,
And in the midst of the struggle I realize
That I will never know if I won.

--------------------------

No secrets here. I drank some absinthe last night, and scribbled this out on a spare piece of paper while making the 40 minute stumble home at 4am. Couldn't think of a better title.

Alternative Eating

2010-04-08T06:31:00.001-04:00

Lead paint diet
Tell me when
And send me back to work again.

//Highway 22//

2010-02-15T14:21:00.009-05:00

Snow streaked wind lines dance over the road:
______________
It’s quiet and I’ve passed_____
____far
________Far away from where I’m going.

//The Impatient Corpse//

2009-12-27T18:19:00.010-05:00

//The Impatient Corpse//
Yoke the body,
bait the corpse

A stark outlaw,
I strive for passions without desire.

There's a less developed Promethean end to this tucked away but this first part is what I was happy with up to now besides maybe the use of the phrase "stark outlaw" by which I don't intend to convey any sense of machismo but rather just an intense alienation.

Left

2009-12-10T11:40:00.001-05:00

unwrapped,
the joy we had
yesterday before
your mom called
to say your father's brain
tumor is cancerous
has staled
and must be thrown out

Crumbs

2009-11-24T18:00:00.001-05:00

for three-quarters price, marked

down for clearance, making room
for something more relevant

this is my love, bought on a whim:

gifts, cheaply tendered
by the drug store, chocolates

offered sheepishly in the bag
with the coupons that bought them

and this room, when I open the door

first and take lead, dropping clothes
to their piles, takes stock of me;

crumbs buried in the carpet, small
plastic pieces of garbage, soda

tabs dropped, unpopped kernels, bits
flicked and brushed, long strands

settled invisible under foot

2009-11-09T12:54:00.003-05:00

Spitwad

this is your revelry -- Christmas light lit,

all bodies in clothing unmoving and jostled,

cupping the sound like a hand on your ear,

a hand on your heart

but a hard slap, a hot Cuban hand on the head

of the drum will unstick like an arrow, stick like

a spitwad on a chalkboard, stick and peel off

all flat and impressed

//Blackout, Out-black/Plea for a Palindrome Prayer//

2009-11-05T13:12:00.006-05:00

//Blackout, Out-black/Plea for a Palindrome Prayer//

‘I’M NOT HERE.’
‘I was NEVER there.’

I wake up dreaming after one second of infinite rest,

My brain
is minced
behind my eyes.

My pale hands quiver to a pallor
-fingers like so many shakey spindles

The beer is flat
and smooth.

The things which I thought were forward are suddenly backward.
-----
.drawkcab ylneddus era drawrof erew thguoht hcihw sgniht ehT
I should have spoken some palindrome prayer
so that I didn’t wind up on the other side of some looking glass.

Now

light shines
in the places I least expect
it.

(-Last half should be printed in a mirror reflection so that a mirror has to be used to correct it to be read. Uncertain as to what the title ought to be. Yes, it's pretentious as hell, in fact I even half hate the thing.)

//Stockholm, August//

2009-10-27T17:23:00.009-04:00

//Stockholm, August//

A dead steady sigh on the telephone line
sizzles
the sugar in your heart.

Tea With The Moon

2009-09-23T13:18:00.006-04:00

I was dreaming

Swilling from a broken glass

Clarity of mind and depth of soul

Honored and kept throughout

Born to break hearts

Jump cracks in the sidewalks

Through the branches of trees

Through the blades of grass

Was I not dreaming, sipping tea with the Moon?

2009-08-31T06:51:00.003-04:00

The basis for a series of downtown handouts, possibly.

You know, to expand the public's mind.

//Gaslit/Fooled by The Flicker of The Light//

2009-08-23T21:41:00.012-04:00

[Original scrawl]
//Gaslit//
A storm comes
and the power goes out.

The rain stops.
the town goes on a long smoke break.

In the middle of the night
the light comes on.

The cancer comes back.

--------------------------------------------------------

[Milled]
//Fooled by The Flicker of The Light//
A storm comes
and the power goes out.

The rain stops.
the town goes on a long smoke break.

By candlelight and glowing embers
-- a minute is an enormous expanse of time.

In the middle of the night
the electron light comes on.

Gaslit again,
the cancer comes back.

There was a storm a few weeks back. I scribbled this down as I ate Chinese food by candlelight and finished it in the hard light glow of a computer screen later. Tell me which you prefer/don't (if either) and why.

Deliciousness and parlor tricks

2009-06-23T05:24:00.001-04:00

"Good evening.
I'm the fool, the dancer, the idiot.
I'll be taking care of you tonight.
I've donned my hair-gel jester cap;
groomed myself gaudy and pretentious.
Take your table and give me your coins and change
to complain.
I'll listen. Hell, crucify me.
Like my song and dance? Laugh.
Spit on me, and for a dollar
I'll catch it all in my mouth
and gargle.
You see, all we serve on our menu here
is gluttony
disguised and renamed several times;
put some chunks of it on a plate
and wring the rest into a glass.
I'm here to pluck rotted teeth
and twirl intestines,
wear everything around my neck on necklaces,
like leis.
Anything to keep you entertained
as the choke of extreme corpulence
stops your heart.
Just leave some cash folded under a cup
or tucked in the sleeves of a black receipt-holder.
Anything you want.
It's not the money I'm after,
bills to pay or not,
but rather the satisfaction of killing
bastards and bitches
with deliciousness and parlor tricks.
Some are wise enough to last off of
water and bread, and maybe some booze.
No matter.
I'm shit for the next hour or so.
When you leave, I'll write poems and ballads
about our night together,
store them in the little bells on my feet.
In a few years, I'll come and dance on your grave
to remind you.
Anyway, I'll be serving and slaying you this evening.
What can I get you?"

Initial draft of the gathered frustrations of being a waiter.

The speech I wish I could give when greeting a table.

WARGEARS

2009-06-22T03:00:00.002-04:00

"Shadows rose from our feet as men."

A poem I've been working on, based off of the premise of the GEARS OF WAR video game series, and probably a large number of other unrecognized sources as well. Didn't post it whole, since it'd be an annoyance to scroll through.

An attempt at reviving the heroic/warrior tradition. I've tried to favor narrative over originality, to whatever extent of success or failure.

//A Soft Rent Sunday//

2009-06-10T00:03:00.007-04:00

//A Soft Rent Sunday//

She buries apples at her mother’s grave

Dreaming of a Sunday
under the soft rent Earth

in the colourblind darkness

From her flowers
grow corpses

The fruits of labour
lay next to pulpy skeletons

Those which disappeared
in the shadows of the tree’s splayed splintered branches,
sprawling out over the field

Smoulder and swelter cold;
the odd ambivalent apple falling not far from the tree

Told to stand up straight
you step into the stream,

But the water’s moved on.

And just when you think it’s all over
You get dragged back into the same old game.

Unsure as to whether I'm happy with this.

The sudden disorientation and change in tense is intentional to indicate the sense of disorientation and self-loss so strangely inherent to growth; a sense of (the consciousness, a new self-awareness? perhaps that's too lofty) being born when you least expect it.

//Nothing to do anything to//

2009-04-06T23:47:00.013-04:00

Stockholm, (Eriks våning i Tjustgata, Söder), 7th August ‘08
(I think it was under only a moment or so:
the little white-lies quarreled together on the balcony and then clung together as it began to rain).

Pigeons cling together in the rain
Feeding on the manifest destiny-
-. - --
--The tired death
of daydreams.

The lure of the bed is ever near.
The parade will not pass by.

[Heavenly sickness paints
Hell on the wall.]

Nothing to do anything to,
I am cloven before the doves on the balcony.

[So many swindled moments
laying between so much seed]

The sea awaits only for pigs and chicken-shits
under cloud-tossed skies.

From one of my research workbooks.

The stuff in [brackets] should be indented (blogspot fails to recognize indentation).

Kings and Counselors

2009-03-02T00:47:00.002-05:00

Once departed I’m fated to struggle
Among the kings and counselors
In those desolate places
The broadening spaces
Meant for ruffians and thieves.

We’ll sip the brandy from God’s lips
While straining toward the sun:
Burn all the skin off our skulls
We must grow new faces!
The better to conceal our rottenness.

Predators with crowns of thorns
And scepters stolen from sepulchers
Collection has become our trade
For there’s much to do for the dead
But yet more to do for the living.

I'm still unsatisfied with the first stanza, but felt inclined to post anyway. Brutality in the comments, is entirely expected and welcomed.

//Pt.II//

2009-02-16T06:38:00.011-05:00

Pt.I
At a fancy restaurant
People eat
Shitting heartache under the table

I’d rather wait in the hay
Watching the goats grow,
The Devil go by and
The soft sentimental ponies die

I’d rather
The moon drink up all the shine.

Pt.II
In cul-de-sacs
Pretend depressives cheat their demons
Jawing down their days like pills

Their souls becoming crumbly and white

All my joy is in the rain
Beyond the masses of murmurs,
Chit-chat, and broken tea-cups;

It's beyond nature’s chemistry;
A Cherub’s arrow cutting time

All my joy is in the hills marching away,
Rejoining my solitude in the pouring rain and
The happy loss no longer a sigh.

Been milling away at the second part of this on and off for quite some time with various working versions and plans for a third part in spite of not being entirely certain on where to take it.

This is the latest version.

La madre

2009-02-11T01:51:00.004-05:00

I have found the great mother, the last mother.
See how she enters?
How she draws the dust in,
world-worn but not world-weary.
There are bits of everything in the dust--
snakes and cattle and the South,
the sterile stability of the corporate North--
that subtly settles and ages everything; ripens it.
She has the world wrapped up in her clothes;
samples and scents layered in linen.
This woman, the final matriarch,
a penultimate token of bygone,
family-bound times.
She has come to break me down.
This world is built on her back,
balanced on her broadness--
you can see it garrisoned in her garments--
and she knows this,
knows that cities shake when she shrugs
her coat from her shoulders,
that she is the cradler,
the carrier of our kind;
knows that everyone is hers.
Wise and worn, but not weary,
she has come to break me down.
Cities tumble as she shears off her coat,
children scampering from about her legs
like startled doves and deer;
dust drawn away.
She shows me the smoothness of her skin,
wipes away her wrinkles;
works the weakness from her hands and turns to me.
Yes, this woman, this last-standing mother,
our world is built upon her,
and she is the keeper of our kind.
The wretched responsibility of compassion and care
wielded by woman grinds down on her,
layers dust and dirt and filth and ruin on her frame;
wrinkles her flesh-wealth, but never tires,
never trumps the timelessness tucked between her breasts.
She is the smooth-skinned preserver,
and she presses into me,
crafting man to child, to grow again, improved,
offering life and leaving me with lessons and lotion.
It is how she manages mankind.
The mother breaks me down.
She gathers her coat and the cities and
the children that she keeps
and kisses them, coaxes them along.
The dust departs; withdraws.
And I,
I, the infant, begin to crawl.

Commissioned by and for the venerable Patsy, a coworker.

Of course, the only refined, clean copy I had is now in her possession (or perhaps somewhere worse), so there are a few rough spots that I can't recall the solution for.

Bioshock

2009-02-02T22:20:00.002-05:00

Carry your shield or come home on it,
I am sea-floor Spartan.
Wielding wrench and radio,
I control the flow
of all good things that enter into
this city,
this fathoms-deep Sparta; rapture ruined.
Yes, this is where man has come
to devolve,
fish-to-man-to-fish,
to fish, to reel, to hook
the high tides of humanity
and heights of hubris beneath
salt and storm and sun.
No kings, no gods.
Only man and wrench and radio,
to carry himself home on shield
and shards of ideals.

Inspired by Bioshock, a piece of software that essentially ends the debate against video games as art, and a History Channel show about Sparta.

Not particularly polished.

2008-11-07T14:39:00.002-05:00

Somber yeoman, standing,
sows seeds; yields them to the wind.
His fields are worried and worn
by the winding ways of air--
arrogant antagonism incorporeal.
Gift-giver to fate, he wastes
and fallows;
somber-standing skeleton farming for famine.

Nothing.

//The Pariah and The Parasol//

2008-08-25T00:22:00.011-04:00

//The Pariah and The Parasol//

I’d rather speak without sugar on my lips
but again and again

Life is played precisely like bingo
Scott-free,
like a sin begot.

Sometimes, it drinks to spring
under a green parasol,
and leers at the servitrisse
…like a pariah,
…stinking of perfume.
How meaningless the mist is
In the face of life’s only truth
Firmly,
tucked away
in the darkness.

In little and in large,
Now you see him

Left standing
in the sun
and
silence

Love and destruction, life’s dear tax:
Ringing
((i mpl ac abl e )),
implicit
outside his breast
gleaming scarlet
without tongue
without lung
Shame is shone As
Life and Death
as life’s only truth, going together hand in hand.

The spacing is quite strange and there's supposed to be an effect at the end in which the lines can be lined up in such a way that it's read in two complimentary ways.

Ringmaster

2008-08-21T13:59:00.001-04:00

I am the millionare
I am the maker of explosives
I am the monster
the ringmaster who calls
cleft lip and bloody teeth
to frighten mothers
into one more child
with husbands
who take no interest
in the twirling circus.
I inflict the locked door
and neighborhood watch
I steal into children’s lives
and force them back inside
from a day at play.
I force the sun to speed
and end all days early,
all games unfinished.
With me, no more.

Sorry I haven't posted in awhile-my computer's hard drive went kablooie, so I lost virtually all of my work from the last 4 years...this is something new, written this summer. Hope you enjoyed it.

July 1

2008-08-05T11:58:00.001-04:00

So this is pilgrimage. A can of coke.
Some crisps. Cigarette butts. the smell of fried
Chicken. The sun behind a cloud. The light
Turns red. I cross. A girl my age touches
Her face and looks away. An older man
Kisses his girlfriend while she's on the phone.
The brick is black. Alone. Guitar. The sun
Blinks down. It's afternoon. A father has
No patience. For a moment there's a man
With coffee contemplating sitting down.
He looks at me. A smile. He walks on.
A language I don't speak. The sun again.
Unless I raise my head I can't be seen.
A woman leaves the city council library.
Tourettes. She shakes her head. Again. She takes
The corner. Ducks into a run. The wind
Blows trash and leaves. A car horn blows. I look.

June 19

2008-08-04T12:00:00.000-04:00

Earth fills her lap with pleasure and yearning;
I'm above them both,
Staring into world's end.
There is no smell here, no sound,
The taste only of teeth,
Two-day-old coffee burn.

The orphan ascends again:
The crown of stone bears up –
Each step reveals another half-mile,
It seems – fighting the clouds, glorious
And terrible, borne on the wind,
Which enfold and blur me;
Rough turning hands to face the descent, to tell me
Here is a temporary heaven.

Mist lingers behind the gale
To hold me in her long arms;
She chills me,
Evaporates on the backs of my hands –
Now she's in my capillaries,
Tracing her way back to the source.

I won't say I love her,
But I keep her in my heart,
Which is how love works anyway
The way I learned it.

It's not in my mouth,
The tips of my fingers,
But the occasional heartbeat –
Once every couple hundred, I guess –
That takes the taste from my tongue
Twice as well as any cup of coffee.

June 16

2008-07-31T11:47:00.002-04:00

the Orphan, ascending – abandoned for
hundreds of years, left to his own devices –
the devices left to him, packaged

and mailed across the ocean – the Orphan
today was reunited with the makers,
lifted up, replaced atop the crown

that still adorns his fair ancestry (not really,
not even his people's, but human –
so his) to find not some reflection to

reveal truer self in waters foreign –
anyway, the orphan feels too old
to reinvent – but anonymity

instead, and strange comfort therein; knowledge
that great men walked these giant stones and stumbled
not, but shook them into place, to fashion this

expanse by noble molds their own; and hope,
that he'll be one to shake these stones – or stones
back home – to recreate the world to
himself, if not to anybody else.

June 26

2008-07-30T12:57:00.001-04:00

Fell Asleep Hard
by 215 Woke Up
Harder by 730
Hot Brick Heavy
in the Head I
Pulled It Together
in a Cold Shower
Hit Whitby Sour
and a Bit
Cramped North
Sea Air Sucker
Punched Back
Almost Knocked
Out and I
Descended into
the Village Like
a Fog for Coffee
and Fried Fish as
a Gull I Circled
but I'd Seen It
Already Bored I
Waited for the
Others and
Together We
Ascended to the
Abbey Past
Cheese Stands
and Street
Guitarists Up the
Steps Halfway
Until We Turned
Around and
Whitby Fell
Apart Soft like
an Onion

sonnet - June 28

2008-07-28T17:39:00.001-04:00

The late Mrs. Fitzgibbon would have turned
Sixty-eight this year, if I heard right.
Your way of life changes, Fitz says, not lightly
But with life, as someone who has heard
The still, sad music of humanity
And greets the day with hale voice – and they
Would have been wed forty-four years today.
That song grows soft in age, the melody
Is stretched to fill the lonely twilight hours.
The choice presents itself: to brave or cower
From that music, which is itself the choice
To live or not, and Fitz raises his voice
Over the howl of mountain wind, back bent,
And breathes deep, ready for the long ascent.

2008-06-02T03:45:00.005-04:00

I fall by night,
following the foul fragrances of embered-irises and
a certain kind of stone (brimming with odious omens);
pursue patios,
gardens of shards,
hard-smashed cement,
and open-window victims.

I, trap-setter, chase roots flayed and spread like limbs; leave petals and faces
poised and posed for the mortician.
He takes the pictures home for his children, the sons
of the obituaries who are never mortified by
the thin, morbid monuments; trite
documents of death.

They're the ones I have a little trouble
washing down the garbage disposal;
they make it sound like Satan's seeping up
from Hell.

Just a pointless practice piece, albeit demented. I used James' poem of a similar name as a skewed sort of source material.

Check the comments two posts down for a slight update on expansion/new website ordeal, if you will.

I filled my tires with air today.

You Fell at Night

2008-05-28T11:23:00.003-04:00

You Fell at Night,

and by the time i found you
the sun had dried up everything
but your soft petals
in a heap on the patio
with the broken glass

no one heard,
no one must have looked
out the window to you
or else you would have been
swept up and thrown out
or recollected and replaced
on display, and i would
never notice until someone came home
from work to tell me
what i'd missed

but i found you, and came to you
and in the chill air the sun
felt good on my goosebumps

while i gathered you into my hand
and shook the glass from your stems
and carried you in while you cried
petals all over the carpet,
all the way to the sink
where i put you in
a tall glass of water

and when i carried you back
to your place on the patio
careful not to spill
and gathered up your petals
from the floor to the sink
i only had a little trouble
washing them down
the garbage disposal

2008-05-27T04:35:00.002-04:00

Sorry to post another non-verse block of text, and my apologies to James for bumping his poem down.

This is just a bit of an addendum to the previous 'house-cleaning/keeping' post, where I mentioned something about us trying to expand and whatnot. We've been offered a domain name and free hosting from Horatio, the founder and head honcho of the Rampage Network (www.rampagenetwork.com), a growing webcomics community. Horatio's interested in digital publishing in general (unless I'm mistaken), so it's not as awkward a fit as it may appear.

Bottom line, someone's offering to host Pedestrian Protection and more or less give it the royal treatment. Right now, we'd be the first of our kind over 'there' (the Rampage Network), but with a decent chance to gather more of our ilk as time goes on (again, unless I'm mistaken). Excellent chance for some more exposure/recruitment, and I don't see anything wrong with escaping the mire of Blogspot's multitude of blogs.

I'm for the move. What do you guys think?

Caps

2008-05-22T18:59:00.003-04:00

Caps (The Firefighter)

YOU CAN'T LEAVE
AND STILL THINK
WE
ARE GOING TO BE BEST FRIENDS
WHEN YOU LEFT ME HERE
YOU DID

AND YOU CALL EVERY TWO MONTHS
TO TELL ME HOW HAPPY
YOU ARE
WITH STEFHAN THE FIREFIGHTER
AND INVITE ME
SKIING
WITH ALL YOUR NEW FRIENDS
AND PRETEND
I NEVER TOLD YOU
I'VE NEVER SKIIED

you want trifles? i got trifles. i don't think i dare put this one on my personal site for fear of lucy (aka YOU) reading and recognizing her boyfriend's name/occupation, but it's something i wrote that i didn't hate immediately, so in the name of fertility it's up for grabs.

Spring cleaning.

2008-05-22T04:22:00.002-04:00

Just a couple of 'housekeeping' things.

First, welcome to Matt (is it?). His arrival makes us four strong... provided James ever comes back.

Secondly, Chris is going to be putting up some guidelines for a project we'd like to get working on, a collaboration/compilation of sorts. Non-internet publishing might be involved. He'll have something up eventually.

Also, since we're growing in number, we might want to consider expanding in purpose and presentation. Right now, Pedestrian Protection is just a typical, obscure garage band (of poetry), but would you guys be interested in approaching rock star, record label-mode? That is, trying to gain some sort of readership, finding means of exposure, etc., etc.. Or should we stay as we are?

Finally, update. Post. Create. Comment. Twice-monthly sucks. Chris wants a weekly schedule, and I'd push for something even more frequent than that. Anything is good, so long as we're fertile longer than we're fallow.

That's all from me.

The Singular Self

2008-05-20T17:08:00.001-04:00

the room is a husk
insides dried up
there is no one here
but a man’s straight thin line
which in the evening, so frequently
leads off to
the dark

it leads him to run
far across corn fields
always-bright
away from anyone and
anything at all
to strip off clothes and
run naked, to peel away into the dark
where no one can find a man
who wants to be found but
has no way to be visible

the clearing of throats and rolled eyes
the clicked tongues of conversation

he will instead run into the pale places
the poor places
piss-poor, no accomplice
but humility in the face of
the single self

the single self

singluar self

//Exquisite Corpse//

2008-05-05T00:53:00.009-04:00

//Exquisite Corpse//

If only your veins were filled with oil and your skin were paraffin
people would rush to your rescue,

If only your mind were made of wax.
If only your soul burned absolutely clear,
absolutely efficiently.

If only we weren’t forced to leave something behind

What an elegant, absent apparition you are.

Filled my car with gas today.

2008-04-17T12:41:00.003-04:00

Sweet scents betweens strangers--
no knowledge past smell and intimate odors.
An affair of the nostril; an early-morning
endeavour of the eye to expand lust's perception.
They know their places--
fifth seat in from the rear of the
second car from the front of the
6:15 express--
and everything is right,
but will never be anything more.

Just something from this morning since I haven't posted in many a year. Nothing good.

Almost every time I take the 6:15 train to Philadelphia, the same moderately-young woman takes the seat next to me. We never speak, but it still feels like we're familiar with each other. Comfort in consistency, pattern, and routine, perhaps.

She smells really good. Or her perfume does.

I guess I'm a creep for thinking about it, but, being stuck next to someone--for an hour and a half-- who doesn't reek versus someone who does often makes or breaks my day.

Gobbledygook

2008-03-11T12:58:00.004-04:00

Gobbledygook (Protest Poem)
for Professor Price

where I come from the plant is growing

I see it

at night
from my bedroom window
burning the sky's red glow

I inhale black smoke hot
like a cigarette and hack
caffeine arrogance
streetlight poetry

see

when I walk by they all flicker
like birthday candles: how I know
this is my neighborhood
my town
my polluted sky

see

my friends and me
we sip beers in basements
we cliff sit and smoke dope
we watch the clouds

see,

we drive 95 and 202

'this is romance,'
we think but don't say
over homecoming shakes
at the Charcoal Pit

see

in time
the creek will lead to the ocean

for now
I catch tadpoles in the slime

see

gobbledygook wins every time

see

where I come from
I am the power plant
this is my polluted sky

with thanks for the sweet comments on my last submission, i offer up this up. wrote it yesterday, tweaked it this morning. professor price teaches my poetry in performance class - which is not a writing workshop, mind you - and is the man who circled my poem (specifically What's More Important) and wrote 'no,' as well as other helpful comments like "prosy" and "distant" and "gobbledygook." and no, these aren't fragments of comments, they're the comments in their entirety. he's a self-professed "blues" poet, so i tried to do him some "homage."

in the end, he's a guest lecturer, so i really don't give a damn. i just needed to respond to the outrageousness of his critique and out came this.

besides, now i'm really good at spelling gobbledygook.

enjoy!

2008-02-28T01:56:00.003-05:00

March Morning

Tonight I dream I'm lying down in a field
and she's there, and everything is the most beautiful green
and she tells me it's ok to be sad again. When I wake

I go out, past the room, past the relatives
waiting for the wake, sleeping on our living room couches,
out the front door to the driveway,
to the car under the morning sky where I sit
and try not to wake anyone when I scream.

In my old room, my brother's room,
I can still feel the folding metal chair
at my granny's bedside where I sat and listened
while wheezing she tried to tell me something
I forget now, even if it was important.

Nobody walks past that room – nobody but me,
to get to my room.

When death arrives gradual there's nobody to blame,
so when blame comes and drowns the house by inches
outside the real world feels continuing and harsh
like March wind coming in under the front door,
snow held in bare hand, the telephone at night.

The sun still does rise on that lacquered wooden cross
she hung on the wall above her bed, but
we moved the bed after a couple weeks,
my brother moved his baseball cards in and that was that.
The room is still empty somehow, but with the months that passed
it's easy to forget she died here.

My mind's learned now
how to walk past the room without thinking of her
but my heart beats slower when I do,
and seeing the sun rise makes me sad,
and when I stick my hand in the snow I don't feel much.

i'm looking for some critical feedback.

2008-02-16T21:06:00.002-05:00

A dirge for Doomsday, and for Brutus.

I know we work primarily with poetry, so if either of you are against me displaying it here, just let me know and I'll remove it. It's a short story I wrote for a creative writing class I'm unfortunately taking this semester; composed one night under the duress of it being due the following morning.

To say the least, it really rubbed my professor the wrong way. A couple choice phrases I picked up during her critique would include "If you put shit in a bucket and call it cake, no one's going to eat it, and that applies here", "[This is] like a one-way fuck", and "It's not even a story". Hilarious, inappropriate, and hardly helpful.

So, I'm putting it up for professional review.

Here.

2008-02-01T16:50:00.000-05:00

In escaped vernacular
Odysseus rides the train; wonders what it's like
to live in a place he can see.
The king takes the train to Ithaca;
commands no men;
wonders what it's like.

Suggested by my train ride in to school each morning, past decadent homes and deceivingly-ruined neighborhoods, wondering whether Odysseus would trade ten unsure years on the sea for ten certain ones in the slums of Chester or Eddystone.

It's a simple thought, and the Ithacan king has always been rendered in heroic verse, so I tried to make it as plain and quiet as possible. While the train is far for being a sanctuary for silence, it's still a place where subtle reflection is possible.

I'm unsatisfied with the punctuation/flow towards the end; wasn't sure if I should have used "The king tries to take the train to Icatha" or if I should have left that absurdity unemphasized; or how I should arrange things so that the last "wonders what it's like" clearly applies to the two lines before it. Finally, any suggestions for a replacement for 'place' in the second line?

//Winter Solstice/The Halcyon Days//

2008-02-01T05:00:00.004-05:00

//Winter Solstice/The Halcyon Days//

Car-casses of rust
Salt-stained windows
Cream spread softly in the skies
Her hand stretching into the shade,
Asleep on the passenger side door.

These are The Halcyon Days.

Along the same lines as the last one. Thought to call it "Winter Solstice" in connection with the mythological "Halcyon kingfisher" bird, said to quiet the seas at the winter solstice and, but that might be a bit much and a bit too obscure and utterly lost on people as nothing more than self-absorbed bullshittery...which it kind of is really, I guess.

//Prefaces and preambles//

2008-02-01T04:15:00.000-05:00

//Prefaces and preambles//

January fading in silence
Fading in fanfare
Half-thawed frost
A sad-slow-lowly-silent-sound.

This time tomorrow I’ll have shaken off these words
Embraced a beer

Back to a new
old
huddled
prostrate,
puking
cowardly world

Heard from the second stall,
Looking for a balance of
sweet smelling sheets and sweat-stains
between
the
desperate
heartbeats.

The prefaces to weekends
Bottles,
Innocence,
beyond reach,
beyond hope
The preambles to the weeks,

With my dreams inbetween:
A cottage in the countryside,
suckling tonic and anise.
Fairs and festivals in the evenings on the grange

And my aching waking reality:
A degree at the bottom of a bottle,
To pay for car-troubles, and collared shirts

But for now it’s a tango
three sheets to the wind
doing the dance of The Diapered Nihilists.

Either way between the desperate heartbeats
it’s ultimately a long slow sad lonely
selfish
show.

My university has a 4-1-4 system which roughly means I can do whatever I like for the month of January. For the past month we've spent our days skiing or on short jaunts, watching films, making meals, working on the side and generally lazing about and now it's coming to an end. I've realized that I probably won't get another opportunity like this, perhaps in my lifetime while so youthful, or at least for quite some time. This is a contemplation on those Halcyon Days on the university dole.

Forgive the redundancies, thought maybe you gents could advise me there, hadn't yet figure out where to eliminate them so I just jotted them down. Seems a bit long-winded too, but then January's a long month so I'm not sure. Have at it.

Winter (Safekeeping)

2008-01-31T20:42:00.000-05:00

Winter (Safekeeping)

these days you leave your warmth at the door

the careless take it with them,
arrive stripped and breathless and blowing it
into their hands

you know it's worse
to have something stolen than to give it up willingly
which must be why last night
before you left you pressed it into my lips
full and quick
a parting gift

for all the moments we wanted to and couldn't
outside in the cold when you invited me in
but i, in my skin stretched so tight
couldn't move for shaking and excused myself,
embarrassed, left you wondering
was it something you'd done wrong

for safekeeping
for when the time comes to brave the cold
and we'll lock the doors

valentine's day comes early. enjoy!

//Ill Arrows All Awry//

2008-01-19T02:18:00.003-05:00

//Ill Arrows All Awry//
A rose cigar end between his fingers and a thought blossoming into the brain:
“The death of a cigarette proceeds you”.
A man smokes putting his ashes into his wife’s urn,
at around one in the afternoon and
an irremissible crescent of sun shines on the horizon.

“How tragic that love between two people can never be anything more than folie à deux, déjà vu? …quelquechose, comme un trou dans le vent.

Taught nothing but enough
There’s nothing to say.”

Nicotine
Will never reach nearly the right shade of yellow
reaching through his ears like pollen kisses on his rosy way.

>>------->
Ill arrows,
all awry
<-------<<

Something I've been milling away at based on an as yet incomplete rather post-apocalyptic short story I was working on about nuclear winter in England. These are just my thoughts on an allegory of a man that the main character encounters at some point on his way across part of the country. The tone's rather noir. The last bit came to me just now after talking to James a bit about the absurdity of Valentine's day even when you're with someone.

French traduction: 'folie à deux, déjà vu? …quelquechose, comme un trou dans le vent.' = 'a madness shared by two (rare psychological condition), already seen (self-explanatory)...something (an implacable intangible something), like a hole in the wind'

A classifaction of circumlocution to a point of location. That being:

2008-01-18T00:31:00.000-05:00

Santiago.

We hunt and forgather at the capital of ceramic.

It is jealous and lost.

But we have our vases.

The street is the horse,

and it runs. Red.

Clay, we coagulate; a need for succession?

Perdition? Prevention?

No. We have our paper cliche.

Shelved heads.

They are lost and jealous.

The vases: "Spurn enervation."

A streak-- Spanish horseflesh-breeze on the gritted streets.

Compounded existence (that is, Santiago–- Ed.).

My love, unknown greets, bemoaned, these fleets (that is, of foot-- Ed.).

Those, of the capital of ceramic (that is, conventional-- Ed.).

In light of James' nostalgia, I dug up one of my own poems of the past. Back when I had the confidence to write, when I (blessedly) didn't consider, couldn't conceive or perceive the notion that anyone could write better than I could, or that they did. I was a huge fan of using the thesaurus and unearthing exotic words, the type that you could drop in a sentence and create an area of ambiguity and uncertainty (there's a certain term that Wordsworth used for it, but I can't remember what it is). On top of that, I was also rabid about (and still am) creating one-shot locations and characters (in this case, 'Santiago', despite it being a real name/place) that produced more mystery than definition or something definitive, that would give the reader (hopefully) so much more to think about than the actual words on the page. A lack of finality, a prolonged existence for the poem, etc.. I don't know.

In short, but not really in summary, it's an approximate opposite to James' most recent post ("What's More Important").

Despite possibly being premature, how would you guys feel about compiling some sort of sampler (themed, maybe?) to publish in print. Something to get ourselves out there, as the adage goes, or something to get Pedestrian Protection some publicity (equating to an audience/readership). Thoughts?

I ask because the group that inspired this one, Mediocre Militia, is releasing their own sampler of art and comics this month.

Gunter, post something.

What's More Important

2008-01-17T00:22:00.000-05:00

What's More Important

is the kind of honesty where
I'm able for a fleeting moment to return
to the truth that lines and gives shape to the days
that make up the months that make up my life
as I live it.

what I want is to bypass entirely
the insignificancies that have attached themselves
to me with the passing years,
to know what changed within
the scrawny, rubbery figure

who watched television and, inspired,
told his mother that if He were to play football
professionally,
that after every down He would get up
and hand the ball back to the official.

has He forgotten that dream of kindness?
so soon, has He popped the balloon
that was only just tied to his wrist?
what does He need to accomplish
before He arrives at that place
He knows exists (or at least used to),

that place that He can only glimpse and find
reflected in so-called trivial moments? that place
he knows is a little closer when He stands up
too fast

and for half a second
gravity forgets to breathe
and the horizon and He lock eyes,

or lies bed-bound all day
following the ceiling fan, thinking helplessly
about Blair C; of how she disappeared
because her mom got fed up
with just about everything;

of her hair, and the way she always smelled
like watercolors, and the valentines she sent
carelessly to fragile hearts,
never meaning to break them,
never knowing she could;

of how He had loved her,
and what He’d try to say if He saw her again,
and those stupid, aching motions of the heart.

the last submission was an old one, but this is comparatively ancient. still a few people tell me it's one of my better creative farts. yes of course that's how i think of them.

2008-01-09T14:51:00.000-05:00

Liberal & Complicated

getting by these days, glad you asked
but not ecstatic, see I’m self-sufficient

digesting the latest Radiohead album
and my upped dosage of Wellbutrin

it’s empowering not to care about the gov’t,
old friends, new friends, whomever
stands on two legs; they all exhaust me

it cost too much to run away, in many ways, and
I thought about ending it but
in the end it was easier to just check out

show up to class, find a routine
watch TV with a friend or two

ridicule commercials for not getting me
say I Do to five miles twice a week

maintaining distaste for the status quo
still acquiescing, getting by

swearing, if I can’t do something with this life
I won’t try

IX

2008-01-05T02:06:00.000-05:00

The queen quakes.
She slumbers, unencumbered by callous thoughts
or splintered, shredding worries.
Her bed is soft, but bears my
blistered hand by her side; a
bold brandisher of battle-blade
and blood-bludgeoner.
It trembles amidst comfort, laid
in domesticity.

Nothing to say about this one. Just a return to the eponymous 'Plain Praetorian' poem.

Expect more, for better or for worse.

2008-01-03T00:15:00.000-05:00

Radio

Mary loves everyone

listens
to the radio

doesn't mind
commercials

likes knowing
somebody's there

loves to
listen

guards her heart with an
infinite kindness

sleeps in

asks the ceiling: "have I not been
Good enough?"

waits for answers

has doubts

pounds the wheel
at night in her driveway

takes a
deep breath

turns on the radio

loves everyone

i have a mild fascination with the name mary, as gunter knows. he put it better himself than i could: "on one hand, mary the mother of christ, on the other mary magdaline, the prostitute. every man's ideal."

this doesn't deal with that at all, but it's a fun way to judge anybody you know named mary.

i'm james by the way! howdy! harass me at http://kidjumpsearly.blogspot.com/.

2007-12-04T03:55:00.000-05:00

Marathon

2007-11-30T00:27:00.000-05:00

Twenty-six bullets and the Marathon's
run rampant and rancid,
a soured delicacy of despoiled human
glory for the sentience of outsiders
to sample;
gory champagne.
Dunrandal's dismayed, persuaded away,
and I am gunslinger-champion. Chaplain of
Christ-in-chamber; pistol salvation, holy handgun.

Just a unimpressive poem in an attempt to get myself back into updating this. It's written about Bungie's Marathon game, reflecting on the fact that I always find myself having to fall back on the handgun. I tried to make it as minimalist (I guess it could be called) as possible, but really didn't execute that effectively. Word choice and diction are alright, I guess, but probably on the bland side. It is an update, though.

Screw artistry and its opinions.

2007-07-29T00:09:00.001-04:00

There are too many people in the world.

A baseball star hits home runs and breaks records,
then breaks his bat.
He tips his hat and the grand game ends in a tie,
puts on his suit after a shower,
shows the crowds his smile,
then is whisked away into a limo.

The vanguard follows.

They take him to the new Titanic,
and he sits back
and welcomes the chill of the icebergs as the boat leaves the pier.

Into a microphone, he whispers a greater good, for all to hear:
"Look at what I've left behind."

The bar is thronged by people and thrown astray
as they press to hear the press
introduce the sacraments of a newborn Jesus (in a baseball cap)
on television.

Lucifer takes a table with some angels, and before they close the doors,
God damns everything and joins them for fellowship and fries.

I pick up a knocked-over ashtray and muse over the entrails of a cigarette.

A simple doomsday scenario.

2007-07-22T22:21:00.002-04:00

Pt.I
At a fancy restaurant
People eat
Shitting heartache under the table

I’d rather wait in the hay
Watching the goats grow,
The Devil go by and
The soft sentimental ponies dying

I’d rather
The moon drink up all the shine.

The first part of a multi-part deal.

Home, home on the range

2007-07-22T00:06:00.000-04:00

We bring cerebral landmines and exploding minds.
We are pleased to aim, though no accuracy is required.
Shake the sad sniper's hand,
the forlorn fellow with a pointless collection of bones,
who sits on an inornate throne of bush and camouflage.
"My sight is broken."
His sight is broken, and he doesn't have the range.
"I don't have the range to hit them before they hit the fallow fields,
the workers."
They look so downcast as they harvest the shrapnel patch,
and one bends over to pick up his hand to pick more fruit of the turmoil-- which tills and churns the soil-- and his torso falls off.
He looks up and laughs with a mouthful of dirt, discombobulated.
"No, no. This isn't home at all."
The dysfunctional overlord drives them on with nary a shot
or vodka.
The artist crumples up the paper, but it doesn't have the range
to reach the trashcan--
"No good. Maybe next season."
-- and the worker can't help but feel incomplete.

It's crap. I know.

2007-07-13T20:51:00.000-04:00

Icarus enters the restaurant with dirty shades.
It is a shady, seedy place;
hardly eponymous or agricultural.
I blow up balloons and ask him of
flight and failure and Grecian urns,
and the Manager runs out from the furnace
with stormclouds over his head
and shouts that my pay's been cut to a minimum.
Keep the casualties to a minimum, I am told.
"Icarus, let's get smoothies, before
the sun emerges, surges, then singes you."
He is a smooth talker.
He coaxes me into standing guard at the bar
--Icarus puts on his sunglass--
and bears away with the barmaiden (waitress).
I pull up the filthy blinds to watch
them go and grope and grab each other
by his car, but they pull away.
Icarus forgets his wings, so I
try them on myself, gathering
enough balloons to find the proper altitude.
I cannot fly.

2007-06-26T15:46:00.000-04:00

A hedgewizard and a hacker
spell binary pyrotechnics and prestidigitations on
computer screens (they keep the flies out).
One drinks lacquer; the other brews liquor beneath his wicker chair,
and a gardener, who cannot find a clean white shirt that fits,
drops rock and paper and scissors through his hands
and says: "Leave them where they fall. I for one, who is for all, cannot find the winner or their flaws."
Rub-a-dub-dub.
Three men in a tub, in which they float,
for fear of suppression and submersion of the model swimmer.

2007-06-14T11:22:00.000-04:00

[ADAM stands before the statues of FAITH and PERSUASION. He is on the first step of the flight of stairs that lead to the figures. Behind him is the cosmos, and forward stretches two paths into EDEN, one past each golem.]

[The SERPENT is wound about the head of the statue of PERSUASION, so that the face of each is one. The visage of the statue of FAITH is featureless.]

ADAM: I am the only man who shall not have to look to my footprints; where I had tread. I have the benefit of forward motion and the blessing of establishing the archetype of men. [Looks to the statues, and seeing the face of the statue of PERSUASION, frowns in recognition and realization, though not of the SERPENT.] Though I shall not have their gratitude-- I will be cursed for my knowledge, my failure to forethink.

ADAM: [Sardonically. Looks down to his feet and up the stairway.]. Shall I step to the second step, or the third? With my right foot or my left? Should I deviate eastwardly or westward from the center of the path? Will I move with caution or sureness or callousness?

[Waits a moment, then steps solidly to the second step with his right foot. Waits again.]

ADAM: [Mockingly.] I could have stepped with my left. I did not go far enough. I must have moved too much, too quickly. I am still far too centered.

ADAM: [Spitefully, shouting.] Am I to question every act I commit, every action I commit to? [Quieter. Shakes head.] They will not know that I am equipped with the knowledge of the span of existence, that I know all that they will learn, for if I am not able to learn such knowledge, how shall they? They will not know that I do not need the apple. They will not realize that I am the greatest image. They will fall to Christ. He will take their stones, but he will also take their praises-- though I am the only man to know immortality. I am the only one who will never look behind.

ADAM: [A malicious chuckle.] I could stand here forever and they would never come to. My curses would lay upon them before their birth and there would be no retort! There would be no answer. I could stand here forever and name them all, and then change their names, and name their fortunes and misfortunes, and then change the names of those lucks, and it would be that the anointing of God upon me of choice would really be his surrender. I know the serpent; I could slay it before its tongue spread deception into the ears of my rib and then myself. I could turn about and return to the cosmos! [Motions forward.] All of this would never be!

[ADAM turns until all that is behind him is just outside of his peripheral vision, and grimaces.]

ADAM: [Sighs.] But I am the only man who shall never have to look behind. I shall never look behind. And each of my decisions is pointless and worthless, for I will never learn more. I will never gain. [Thinks.] I am established to lose.

ADAM: [Another flash of anger.] I am the real Christ. All that I have now is meant to smashed from my hands and head and heart so that it will trickle down the generations for new men to gain and learn and love.

[His face lightens and he again sighs, before nodding in acceptance.]

ADAM: [Another chuckle. He shakes his head.] Ah, anachronism: Reaganomics.

[ADAM walks toward the statue of PERSUASION and beyond. The SERPENT unwinds itself and follows.]

[End.]

Just a short scene based around the idea of Adam actually utilizing the free will he was given and refusing to obey God. He ponders his power over the Lord and the race of men, because if he doesn't enter the garden, God's divine plan can never unfold, and humanity (with the exception of Adam and Eve themselves) will never be birthed. His notoriety and penchant for blame will never burden his name.

It's not a promulgation of a certain faith, just an exploration of a certain faith's promulgation and exposition.

//Clorox//

2007-06-03T02:49:00.004-04:00

//Clorox//
Sun licks the beach
And smokes skirts away
To leave the girls tanning on terry-cloth spits
The calm and quiet loiters

A firecracker bursts in the heat of the heart,
A puff of sighs

Birds and prisoners
The sun holds both by the legs
At the bottom of never
And shines a shallow bath of bleach

Observations on the nature of summer that came to me last week as the sun shone through some Clorox that I was pouring. The underlying idea is simple enough I guess: Most people look to summer as an escape since they are free of the shackles of their drudgery and at least for a short time (a summer holiday perhaps), and can do as they will.

Ultimately though those pie in the sky dreams are left unfulfilled or impermanent though, in the position of Icarus: a little deluded and a lot to lose or get burned by.

VIII

2007-05-27T02:14:00.000-04:00

The chaplain preached through the camp,
devoured devils with his sanctimonious word,
and with his mouth called out the rust and salt
and wasted, ruined grout from foreign, defeated cities
upon my edged blade.
He spoke and shouted of moths and showers of treasure
held high in heaven.
I replied, to his celestial pride,
of headless Goths and divided hordes and wholesome, holy whores.
Then quietly mentioned a brutal, bellicose religion restored;
shook hands with the heavenly host,
and prayed a path to apathy.
Salvation, and I am sullen, gracious.

Tired of most everything.

So it goes.

VII

2007-05-26T01:27:00.000-04:00

I dream of garlands and gems;
lilting laurels and lapel lambs
cascading and grazing-- erasing-- shivering lands.
Devastation-- stakes driven into eyes and wombs and tears and tongues.
It is a deconstruction of a simple-bare nation.
Impalation and mortal wounds mean nothing but festering
in the fall-- they fall, they fall-- and an awful feast of offal,
for opal worms.
I have dwelt in these realms of oblivion and the pain of Endymion.
(An illusion; a false allusion.)
I have felt the toast of maggot-spittle to the carrion,
and I have carried on with blade and buckler and chivalrous berth.
I am lowly and unholy upon these desolate stretches of earth,
and serve the children of the flies, and they fractured eyes.
They cannot see the ambience of the confident jewels that clatter by, out of grasp
--into the grass--
and I am afraid to reach for my own head, on its platter
in their refractions.
Conceded and discrete, deceit and conceit tangle and shine
as the crystalline lambs bleat for avarice.

This piece is horrible. It ended up being nothing like what I originally had in mind, and there's really not much to say about it. There's nothing to it. I'm not even sure it belongs with the Plain Praetorian poems, but I needed to put something up, because it had been over a week since I had presented anything.

So, my apologies.

VI-- A murder of poor Yorick

2007-05-18T00:51:00.001-04:00

In the countryside, along the wayside, wandering,
I pursued a man who held his soul in glass around his neck.
He sang Aegean rimes and rang Chinese chimes,
and tried climbing the Alps in an autumnal pose
while striving, searching, seeking the Grail and the better part of prose
and valor.
I called to him, authoritative and voluble; volatile.
"Run, alum of our army!
Retreat and desert, and flee into the desert,
where your corpse will refuse to rot--
turned into a seeping, speaking spigot of vitality and failing clot
and will testify to all the testament of truancy!"
He stopped and stabbed himself, and then he fell.
I viewed his face-- I knew him well.
And his prison-prism, the penitentiary and purgatory for his spirit,
came undone.
The shards and slices, as they split, echoed and hinted the prices of being and the devices of life;
reverberated the interest on existence.
The fragments formed shapes of treachery--
perfectly forged for betrayal and the sheathe of a brother's back--
and with corrosive coruscation,
scintillated in isolation.
And my truculence, sated, left me, forsaken--
haloed, hallowed, and hollowed.

//no one on the farms//

2007-05-17T02:19:00.000-04:00

//no one on the farms//
it's all so hazy after a vampire's day
suckling metal straw and
iron cud at fourteen minutes past the hour.
pie. pie and marlees. yeahhh. yippie kay-yo kay-yay.
and suddenly tomorrow is today.
too sloshed to arrive on the morning tide
the dissonance of the sunshine sets off car alarms
and i can’t find my neighbourhood anymore
but i don’t want to go home

One drunken morning as I stumbled in my door thinking to have some pie before collapsing to soak up the alcohol I found a pack of Marlees on my front lawn with two left and decided not to smoke.

Three

2007-05-16T23:33:00.000-04:00

From the Surgeon-General, a dirge-end of derelict vocation--
"Expunge and impound the light of the sky, the sun.
A sponge of smoke to soak
the illumination dry, from the sun and its sky.
Smoke! And invoke, in general, as the surgeon says and elects,
a carcinogenic death that disintegrates our flesh
and frees our forms from falling, failing fates!"
--on every pack to date.

This poem is basically an ordinance from the Surgeon-General, telling everyone to smoke cigarettes so as to create a cloud of smoke and smog over the city, and so that they, in essence, will reach death faster. It's a message that's on every cigarette pack in the city, and much in contrast to the health warning of the cigarette packs of our own reality.

Two

2007-05-15T18:24:00.000-04:00

Mother says to son, who has a grenade in his gut:
"Child, on the morrow I will cradle your marrow.
I will laden it with careful compassion;
neither a sad faction of maudlin mourning
nor a diagram of indifferent retraction from
the Great System that will spread you over the plains.
We have 'til morning-- we have 'til mourning begins.
An evening of weeping and scorning of overt emotion,
of remembrance and nostalgic entrance to meaningless memory and the corrosive motion of time.
Apprehension, and our pension is bestowed grief,
waiting to mourn-- waiting until the morning of the day that you explode.
Your marrow and horror will harrow us tomorrow,
as the black-brittle pin begins to slip
from the death-spittle sheathe within you,
a diagram of destiny's phlegm-- spit and repeat; release so grim.
And while your diagram still pushes for breath,
I will push you to my breast, which will bear the breadth
of the pain; the gory rain;
the reign of glory of the hate and acrimony of fate,
on the morrow, when I embrace your marrow,
steaming-hot and scalding my skin, enacting my sin."
Says mother to son, cries with tears hung
like criminals and convicts on her face,
as she ties him to crucifix, and escapes.
We are a people of mortality, not morality,
and die expertly and the whims of a power impassioned by our suffering.

This poem, once again narrated by the Lacerated Orator, details the role of the mechanical mutations in the lives and existences of the Miscreant people. A child has been born and created with a grenade in his stomach, and it will explode the morning after the poem takes place. The mother of the boy struggles to find a balance of self-control and emotive expression of grief as she speaks one last time with the boy. However, she is overtaken with cynicism, and continues to darkly describe to her son how he will die in the morning, and how she will mourn. Finally, she departs, after tying him to a crucifix of sorts, so that his explosion will do no more harm than is necessary. I think this poem really needs work. It doesn't flow well, has no rhythm, repeats a couple of important words (which I hate to do, in most situations), and fails to get the message and scope of the original idea across to the reader; it fails to execute as well as I want it to. This one will definitely be redone.

One

2007-05-13T23:29:00.000-04:00

I am a lacerated narrator,
an orator and oracle of a people deconstructed, who beget transgression,
transmuted, transgressed.
My lips are cut-away so that I may speak without obstruction
at the cost of accuracy.
I am accosted-- an accusatory, obstinate leech of pronunciation,
who, in my profound instigation,
ekes clarity from the clarion that my ever-salivating smile cannot provide.
It is a trophy of the atrophy of speech, my grim grin-grimiore.
My suffering snarls and malformed moans please and permeate,
seize and sickly sate
the malignancy of the sadist surgeon who slew my syllables with scalpel:
slice and sneer, my anesthesia fear.
General! Admiral!
(Restitution, destitution, and avant-garde admiration.)
Thank you, father; frenzied flesh-fouler.
Dark-browed and slanderous, we persist and subsist beneath your smoke-sullen skies.

The speaker of this poem is the Lacerated Orator, the leader of the Miscreants. I think I'm going to have it as his introductory poem, a bitter manifesto of insubordination to the Surgeon-General (the creator and father of the Lacerated Orator, of sorts). My goal was for it to be as vicious as possible, but I'm not sure that it is. Also, the flow and rhythm is a little off, and the whole thing needs to be a little more cohesive. The content itself may need to be adjusted, as well. Right now, it just seems mediocre and contrived. I didn't intend for it to be a final draft, but I wanted to post it so I get back into working on the project as a whole.

2007-05-12T22:38:00.000-04:00

I've given some thought to expanding Pedestrian Protection outside of the universe of the Plain Praetorian, and I've decided that I'm going to. I have a project I've been working on for a little while, but I've neglected it for the past month or so, and would like to get back to working on it. Posts that are relevant to it will feature a city symbol.

Right now, I call it "A cityscape.", and I'm hoping it'll turn out to be a collection of poems that narrate everything (and more!) that I'm going to describe next:

A preacher/leader of a religious movement has founded a civilization of sorts within the bounds of a garden that borders a great chasm. This leader, the FORLORN MESSIAH, a necromancer, has created a religion based off of the idea of resurrection. His followers are urged to get through life as quickly as possible-- perhaps advocating suicide-- so that they can be resurrected with the full knowledge of death, thus making them more complete beings. It also allows them to, in a way, circumvent the natural cycle: since death has already taken them once, it has no reason to take them again, giving them a sort of immortality and agelessness.

However, the religion of the FORLORN MESSIAH is corrupted and perverted by one of his disciples, the SURGEON-GENERAL. The SURGEON-GENERAL eventually brings ruin upon the garden and the followers of the FORLORN MESSIAH, disbanding 'church'. On the other side of the chasm, he founds a city of machinery, and begins promulgating a religion of his own. It is much like that of the FORLORN MESSIAH, but without the resurrection. The SURGEON-GENERAL, a sadistic, melancholy, and suicidal being, pushes his followers to seek death as quickly as possible so that life cannot torture them-- but without leaving behind a corpse. Bodies are subject to resurrection, and the SURGEON-GENERAL fears an uprising of the resurrected (he was not able to destroy or eliminate the FORLORN MESSIAH, who now dwells in the sewers/cellars of the city).

Those who survived the destruction of the garden, and those who refuse to follow the SURGEON-GENERAL, make an exodus to the plains beyond the chasm and the city. They find no solace, though, as the SURGEON-GENERAL pursues them with soldiers and war. A brief conflict ensues, and the 'rebels', so to say, and in name only, are defeated and bound/forced to worship a great monument of metal. This monolith 'mutates', again, so to say, the inhabitants of the plains, causing them to be infused and born with metal defects. Such an example is the LACERATED ORATOR, the leader of the oppressed people, who has a razor blade embedded in his vocal chords (and whose lips were cut away by the SURGEON-GENERAL to 'enhance' his ability to orate to the people of the plains).

That's some of the background. As for actual plot and story, I'm not too sure-- it'll be something that involves the return of the MISCREANTS (the people of the plains, who I forgot to name in the last paragraph) and the LACERATED ORATOR, and the eventual destruction of the city and the reinstatement of the FORLORN MESSIAH and his religion, which is irregainable and no longer pure. Or, everyone will just die, or something. Like I said, not too sure.

It's all a bit rough-hewn right now, and (obviously) needs some work and polishing, but my goal with it, however ridiculous and unrealistic, is to perhaps get it published somewhere. If I can up its quality significantly and produce a decent number of poems, that is.

I have a number of poems already composed, so I'll post them intermittently, and will be adding new ones as well.

And that's that. Hopefully something good will come of it all.

(I think I made up a couple of new words while writing this entry. And, in regards to the capitalization of characters, I saw it done in Dante's Inferno, and thought it was really cool. So, now I do the same.)

V

2007-05-12T13:13:00.000-04:00

"In droves we drove into the forest,
through its porous black wood.
(Chorus! Chorus! Come narrate our disintegration and defeat.)
Stood, our horses hoarse and hoary-breathed;
breathed in the scent of the bone-brothers at our feet, underfoot.
Their bodies, under soot from the scorched slayings of yesteryear,
only know what maggots and rot festered here, on this spot.
We spit in their memory, ephemeral in prescience but nearly eternal in presence.
The shamans and seers, with their peripheral, perennial sneers,
cast the bones for their auguries and stuffed our arteries
with adrenaline and discreet prophecies of ambivalence and defeat,
then baptized us in sleet
and hurled us as arvingers and warbringers
at the tyrant-lord of the black-forest hordes.
His wards bade us to our bane and brimstone,
gave us grim gravestones of totems and torture,
and death and its throes threw us to mortuary-gore and mortar snows
to complete our brutal burial,"
spoke the messenger-soldier, split-torn and sore from the conflict and war.
The Emperor mourned at the disintegration and defeat of his legion, elite,
and urged me to purge the perjurer, and the massacre:
"Complete it. Tales cannot be told through postmortem mold."
An unclean kill, though pristine my will.

The usual, for this one. The vocabulary and diction/syntax aren't the best, and there's a few cliches that could be redone and improved, so I may come back and fix this in the future. In terms of plot, it's more or less about the Roman legion (not sure which one) that was massacred by German barbarians in the Black Forest. The majority of the poem is narrated by the only survivor from the incident, who has returned to Rome to report to the Emperor. But, since such a startling defeat is simply not acceptable to the world's foremost power, the Emperor orders the Plain Praetorian to kill the man and cover-up the defeat. The last line is the Plain Praetorian sarcastically commenting on his lack of willpower and conscience. I was considering changing it to "A pristine kill, though unclean my will", but, I think the way it is now works better.

That's all. There'll probably be something else up later tonight, to make up for all the days I missed. Shame on me.

2007-05-09T14:04:00.000-04:00

II: In this vignette, the Praetorians, on the order of the emperor, have just executed a troublesome nobleman. The entire household is murdered, and the Plain Praetorian explores the idea of a perfect slaying-- how much is too much, and how much is too little? How much contempt and disdain? How much mercy? How much pain should be inflicted? I've never actually killed anyone, but I meant for it to be a parallel to writing. I made use of 'soundplay' and wordplay, as usual. The rhyming is a bit simplistic, and I think the climax of the piece (if I can use that term legitimately), when the Plain Praetorian is killing the servant, is a bit too short. I may revisit and redo this one.

III: In this poem, a band of gaudy miscreants and thieves are planning to graverob the tomb of a recently-deceased emperor. The Praetorians have caught wind of the plot and plan to ambush the intruders in the catacombs. More wordplay and phonic puns. I'm really trying to build and develop that aspect of my writing, as that's what everything I compose is predicated on, more or less. I'm going to come back and fix this one up. It's a little vague in some points, and the 'marmalade' reference is a little cliched and doesn't really fit in the rest of the poem.

IV: The Plain Praetorian is on guard duty, patrolling the perimeter of a coastal complex/compound/fortress. It's high-up, and there is a cage of birds along the rampart he is stationed upon. The inspiration for this poem came from me pondering on the 'battle' between nature and civilization, and how the environment and animals and all that are being driven out of their element. My thoughts are this: maybe it isn't so bad. Animals can adapt. They can survive. We have several bird feeders at my house, as well as an artificial pond. Both have altered the surrounding nature, so to say, but maybe the animals the handouts, the safety. Maybe they prefer that over the 'purity' of untouched wilderness. It's not a real great thought, and not very developed, but, whatever. I'm definitely going to rework this one: the central idea (animals who remain animals and 'in touch' with nature, but who also take advantage of the benefits of civilization) isn't very strong or apparent, and I think the descriptions could be supercharged and whatnot.

I'm still working on the layout as a whole. I may change around the icons for each post, so that they'll be more appropriate for the content/what they represent. I also need to find some readers, and, since this project was inspired by an art group, I may look for some contributors and compatriots as well. Finally, I may use this for ideas and writing outside of the Plain Praetorian character, but I'm not sure yet. I'd like to remain focused and concept album-like (conceptual?) if possible.

IV

2007-05-09T02:02:00.000-04:00

An aviary, observatory, and place of revelry above the Adriatic, upon exotic shores.
I am certain and sure of serenity as I patrol
the top part of the rampart,
watching down to where the dock starts
as ships and serpents exit to the sea.
Sparrow turns to me, and I mention:
"Sing you wistful odes of wishful liberation
and contention of your caged sedation?"
His face contorts, and he reports:
"Nay, sentry: I opt not for sedition. I partake in civilization
and your nationalism nation, and, in my current condition,
also hold a pretentious position in the natural matriarchy of nature.
My flock-brothers flock to berries, but I have found wine,
and when the citizens whine of taxes and tariffs,
my tact tells me to flap and fly
to the whims of the wind and the way the air lifts wing.
I hold a pact with the wild and the mild,
the caterpillar and the city--
have no pity for me, sentry. My century is not over."
The bird picks the lock of its cage with its beak
and drops from the peak-- like Icarus--
into the sunset, sea, and beach.

III

2007-05-08T12:37:00.000-04:00

Tonight the ardent harlequins prepare a heist of the expatriate emperor, now patron of the passed and exhumed and the fallen lepers.
(He lies laden in leopard skin; the laity and the peity remove his sin.)
They seek a Eucharism of coin and monetarism, but no golden monism or joy will adjoin them in this emporium of the defunct.
Adjunct, we wait and bait the inhibitions of the marquetried performers and pilferers alongside incubators of death,
marked and tried by stone and time.
A guardsman coughs among the coffins, and I envision their marrow being spread between the narrow rows
like marmelade.

More on this later, I think. I just wanted to get something up because I didn't last night.

II

2007-05-07T01:14:00.000-04:00

[A nobleman's vista at dusk. A number of PRAETORIAN GUARDS, including the PLAIN PRAETORIAN, have just ransacked the estate. Several of the inhabitants lay dead or dying on the marble patio at the entrance, where the GUARDS are.]
PLAIN PRAETORIAN: [Prodding a badly-wounded servant, who spasms meekly and weakly on the ground. To the other GUARDS.] This one stirs.
FIRST GUARD: [In regards to a corpse that has been torched; mockingly and sarcastically. In reply to the PLAIN PRAETORIAN.] And this one burns!
SECOND GUARD: [Part of the mockery and jest; pointing to a body that hangs from an overhead arch, by noose. In further reply.] And this one turns! It swings! It sways! It rings in dead-tones and dead-flesh moans! Stench!
CAPTAIN: [To the SECOND and FIRST GUARDS.] Stay your words. [To the PLAIN PRAETORIAN.] Be his savior; slay the servant. We operate on a mercy absolute: oblivion.
[The CAPTAIN exits, moving deeper into the vista.]
FIRST GUARD: [Continuing the CAPTAIN's statement.] From our own position, of course.
[The FIRST GUARD exits, in pursuit of the CAPTAIN.]
SECOND GUARD: Though coarse, regardless of their condition; a meridian of pity and compassion.
[The SECOND GUARD exits, following the others. The PLAIN PRAETORIAN watches after them, watching over the crippled, dying man at his foot.]
PLAIN PRAETORIAN: [To the servant.] Like the hounds we employed to hunt you. They enjoyed the hunt and chase, hardly-chaste as they are. [Noticing the man's wretched state.] You, at my greaves: do not grieve. For you, I will bereave, reap, weep, and weave.
[The PLAIN PRAETORIAN slides his blade into the torso of the mortal servant. The servant expels anguish from his throat.]
PLAIN PRAETORIAN: [In thought.] That was not enough to kill you. The tip can only rip and unwrap your skin, and promulgate your sin. I will press for more. [The PLAIN PRAETORIAN leans upon the blade slightly.] But my weight-- how much? And I wait-- how long for you to die? Shall this blade be dirtied by soil and soul, or soiled by blood alone; sold to the killing hand?
[The PLAIN PRAETORIAN leans heavily on his sword, and the servant exhales and expires. The PLAIN PRAETORIAN tries to pull his blade from the body of the man, but it has punctured too far, and is now stuck between the marble slabs of the patio. He shrugs and prepares to delve further into the estate, but turns and observes the dead.]
PLAIN PRAETORIAN: [To the smoldering corpse.] You gray. [To the hanging corpse.] You sway. [To the once-stirring servant.] You lay.
[The PLAIN PRAETORIAN thinks for a moment, then smiles briefly and subtly.]
PLAIN PRAETORIAN: [To them all.] I will not stay, or even pray for you. You have been hounded and saved. [He exits.]
END

Eh. Not the best, but it's practice. I'm really tired, though, and it's really late, so I suppose I'll just analyze and explain in the (later) morning.

I

2007-05-06T12:11:00.001-04:00

Gladius is glad it must
swing and slay and end the Emperor Augustus, august.
Munity and treachery, and galvinizing constancy
bring republics and republicans
from recluse to reclose.
Disgusting August days bring heat and heresy.
Lord Avaricious, he bows and vows to find the killers
with his equestrians and chivalry.
He rides away on conspiracy and cutthroat coffers.

Augustus was the first emperor to employ the Praetorians, but by the fall of the Romans, they had basically become mercenaries and terrorizers who murdered at the whim of the coin. This poem I guess explores the consequences of Augustus' creation, enacted upon himself.

I focused heavily on 'soundplay'-- alliteration, assonance, rhyme, etc., and their corruptions-- as I believe to be my style ("recluse...reclose", "bow...vow", "conspiracy and cutthroat coffers'. Wordplay is important as well ("Gladius...glad", "Emperor Augustus, august, August", etc.). As for plot, Augustus is killed by the blade of a Praetorian (the gladius, although that may not be historically accurate), and anarchy falls upon Rome as its Republicans are slaughtered too, in a coup by Lord Avaricious. 'Avaricious' is a play on Roman names (the majority of them end with '-us') and the avarice and greed of the later Praetorian guard. Avaricious is the plotter of the conspiracy (the coup), which has netted him a large sum of money (cutthroat coffers). His equestrians (knights) are a more-modern version of Praetorians (rendering them obsolete).

Not the best analysis, but that's why I'm doing this. Oh, improvement.

2007-05-06T11:20:00.000-04:00

Saving Caesar with unspectacular style and skill, the Plain Praetorian proffers pedestrian protection, gaunt and gauntleted guardianship, and a plethora of prose, poetry, and plays depicting his experiences through anachronism and fantastical, phalanxical fiction alike.

Welcome.

This is Pedestrian Protection, proffered by the Plain Praetorian. It's like an archery range of words, in that its central purpose is to provide me with practice writing. May my compositions and creations strike keen, deadly, and true.

Pedestrians (like the one at the beginning of this post) indicate ranting and rambling, swords imply poetry and perhaps prose, and shields are an exhibition of vignettes, drama, and dialogue.

Enjoy.