the pulchritudinous turpitude of medusa in the tub

i. to peek upon the washing is its own secret rite

the first bath of an oddly promising spring
easily births its own peppery cascading joy-
what might have speckled in the constant winter
rushes into the copper stream and, lonely, drifts away:

the pesky mites that might have ravaged bloody roses
clamor onto crafty rafts of golden straw and, clutching, float away-
they will not burrow in the clay-skinned perfection of ageless models,
they only want to, quietly, stroke themselves and drift away.

ii. windows are made of abysmally slow liquid

reflections of a dead branch grasping,
held by green hands that will not let it drop:

these trees inside the water
that hints of other currents.

in the dry season the rooks come out to play-
it is not the dry season now:
the release of pent-up yellow on the weedy hill
has its own inner sense of play.

a shadowy plumb of straightened lines,
in the sinking house of stark soffits:.

skinned knees on cracked concrete are a plum reward.

iii. it's hard to deny the cyclical

there is no mortared vault of berries yet,
inscribed in autumn with the thumbing of beads
or the angled facts of a hooded ghost:
the jeweled sconce of red and blue and green
plastered in a room that has drifted obscene.

through the years no angle stays true:
the pedestal font begs for the dirt of your ablutions
and the adulation only, if at all, reflects back at you.

there may be a green salad at the picnic next door.

Stones

Lately, simple stones have taken on
the heft of enormous boulders.

It could be that our gravity has changed,
or that these rocks are newly made
of a matter with greater density.

I'm ever an enthusiast
for Greek myth, its stories penned far away
in fertile fields of elites bred
from the straying loins of finely flawed gods.

That's what I tell most, but I couldn't
tell you any details about twelve labors,
monsters taken, torn asunder.

Hercules must have shouldered his burdens,
I imagine, froth at the mouth,
drawing on his inner strength to support
the brunt of a weighty world's cares.

Or was that Atlas? The question may be
moot, examining my own thighs.

— Francis Scudellari

Aubade

originally posted 14/09/09

(wo(a)nderings from a night person...)
Dawn sneaks up
on a person like me
who used to drink her way
through the night &
justify to an itinerant conscience
the lines she crossed in the name of surviving
I cut myself
loose & now I sail into golden dawn
on a sea of tranquility
caressed by flickers of early purple
awakening
helpless as water
to the pull of the moon

Tingling

at last...

he pours out, his coctions
conned with too-cunning smile
from these gullible tips of wilting

lips impetuously
pushed by a pouting posy.
Its bunched buds weep chartreuse then slink

off into the waited
years of welcoming swallows.
Their needle wings paired with calls pierce

the sky's purple-black bruise,
revealing light, stenciled clues
he sorely needs to fly himself

up to shivering heights.
Once shin-deep in substrata
routes flooding forth from badly zoomed

maps, his questions run
afoul. Ascot-wrapped but choked,
the relentless sinks to unhealthy

altitudes, and he falls
through stained ceiling of acid
nave where his fancy first took off.

Tingling...

— Francis Scudellari

home grown religion

There's an ellipse beside me
grinning James
I abhor you

not because of your
alcohol intake
the fact that you
never cut your hair
wear white shirts and
frequent knick knacks in your abode

it's because I've
shaved mine short
drinking standard beer
wearing neutral-colored shirts
keeping my habitat colorless

smoldering ash
twice the man I am
seeking faith in inertial observations
snubbing money-making clerics
because they are fundamentally ugly

you’re my
home grown religion

SUSPICIOUS YOUTHFUL JUICE


Suzanne Somers promotes a fountain
That has some doctors upset.
It affords a juice which has been recommended
In order to hear voices far away or of the dead.

I wasn't even suspicious about that place.
You don't have to call the plastic surgeon in a futile fight.

But this truly is a person
Who had gone to gruesome lengths
To keep her pinch of powder out of this skull
And mix the gland juice with the powder.

A raw food is said to be Demi Moore.
It is hard to know whether to be impressed, suspicious or amused.

Mrigashira natives will help you zap your handset back to life
When every juice is gone. Frequently named in the Bible,
Their absence would be famous for the fatness
Of the olive and the sprightly juice
Of this popular new Jamba Juice flavor.

Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
This is a country that has always been suspicious of centralized government.

Wen Chang

I wake monastic
to a morning of spare light,
and an itch to be
tetchy lingering from last
night's candle-lit creeps.

A quick rummage through closets
where I keep hidden
pantechnicons of surplus
garments discarded
by near houses of worship,

finds a never-worn
surplice cut to my liking,
and I slip it on
starched and musty white
atop wrinkled blue

jeans. In the hall, I perk up
primula bouquets
laid at feet of ivory
and I ignite
a joss stick, letting its curls

of fragrance implore
the deity to bring down
his leather-bound book
and nobble my stubborn mind
until its ructions

subside. But Wen Chang keeps words
clutched dear to his breast,
and I'll need another means
of making myself
a muggins with romper thoughts

new freed, ever penned
to bounce about. So I head
to the scullery
and peal yellow and red blotched
skins from twelve pippins

to bake in two tarts, bubbling
up brown: One I'll eat,
the second use finally
to coax a musing
from my still stiff friend, Wen Chang.

— Francis Scudellari

exosat

Feathering Jack
bottolism again
while Spoonful shows adipose tissue
for the man

He'll show the bastard myoglobin
dripping deadly infection
and dark lactic acid.

Endtoxin freezer burn
Jack's rolling into a sphere
while snow falls on leather
and hips naked skin
rotates

yeah, crowded radiant cityscape
breathes hastily icy air
cosmological red shift stays
for a short while
mere dust awaits

no need to kick the center
apastron rules.

N.E.A.T

Years ago, on the Caloris basin
my timepiece congested
manufacturing
perpetuity's silence
without the blast of life
your brown pelt
stopped entwining mine
my wine-colored
room became a hang out flambeau

and you went on and on
I'm a free falling salted sissy
looking for my mug

Radioisotope dating my
man is a bearded fossil
harebrained drained kirkwood
looking for nadir
when she's
gone elsewhere snubbing
your mattress transformation proposal
or my rigid hedgehog

we thought we'd never see you again

cosmic despair (is there any other kind?) enervated frankie grittingly hammering iridescent jackrabbits karmic lethargy mandated nebulousness open the door the door opened ah mr francis we thought we'd never see you again good afternoon palgrave you're looking well i'm a little surprised to see you still here perhaps time doesn't flow so freely after all i've been cloned several times sir overhead penumbric quasars reverberated is madame here? is she well? she finally had her species change operation, sir really and what kind of cat did she finally become she changed her mind at the last minute sir and became a goldfish instead there it is right there every table and chair in the conservatory and most of the floor was piled high with comic books silent tarantulas undulated sluggishly we have every issue ever printed of action comics and detective comics would you like to read some? actually i'd like to read them all would you like to take a closer look at madame? no, a goldfish is a goldfish i'd rather read the april 1947 issue of detective comics i think i missed it the first time around will there be anything else sir please order every issue of batman comics and also adventure comics i was always a secret superboy fan vapor of vixenish wineglasses envelop yet another zeros are beyond counting

PLEEEEEEEEAAAAAASE HELP ME OUT


Let me tell you that I have been masturbating for a long time. PLEASE!
Go clear the room out of Harpies and archers
Check out these screens! Pretty Sweet, huh?
Pleeeeeeeeaaaaaase help, cause I think this MOD looks soooooooo cool!
Greg! Pleeeeeeeeaaaaaase, do me a solid? Please help me out!
Hope there is more help included in the game for users like me.
Please give out some more codes. I could not get one. Would review for sure.
Pleeeeeeeeaaaaaase tell me how to do it!
Then get gun out of safe from the 2 digit number you got earlier

This one goes out to BAB's mum, who has been quite ill
And I would really love you to dance this song pleeeeeeeeaaaaaase!!!!!!!!!!
It didn't help me feel better. But to each his own.

Check it out - finally figured out how to stick you in my top 24.
Pleeeeeeeeaaaaaase don't let this suck. It would be so funny if that happened to me.
It's not a perfect science, but pleeeeeeeeaaaaaase
Come over and search around my house for parts
That would help me keep this thing attached to my pants.

Sony always wins, baby.
Pleeeeeeeeaaaaaase link the Chadwarden soundboard,
One more bowl pleeeeeeeeaaaaaase????? I WOULD'VE BROUGHT MY
OWN MONEY IF I KNEW YOU WERE GONNA CHEAP OUT ON ME!
If so, pleeeeeeeeaaaaaase tell me how to do it!
I am begging now, please help me with this game
Please tell me pleeeeeeeeaaaaaase
I don't like to wait
People living in NYC tend to let everything be out in the open

PLEEEEEEEEAAAAAASE!!! If I have helped you, you like my work,
Want to get me a coffee or you feel like you wish to help me,
Help me poop. Pleeeeeeeeaaaaaase help me.
The dangly bits thing bothered me.
PLEEEEEEEEAAAAAASE HELP! I HAVE BEEN ON THE COMPUTER
Pleeeeeeeeaaaaaase!!!!!! Uh, I said NO, seeing as it's 45° outside!
Whoever told you the TT bikes were being phased out doesn't know his a**
Thanx Steve and all of the above (except for hoverboy) for your help.
Any chance you could put WORM OUT or COUNTRY FREAKS up on here Dale?
Pleeeeeeeeaaaaaase, Please, Please, Pleeeeeeeeaaaaaase

So, really, you're telling me you've got sixteen pound balls. Do
Not give out any personal information about yourself pleeeeeeeeaaaaaase
Give us back our thread. Frown. Burnt toast!
Long story short
Pleeeeeeeeaaaaaase take my number - whoops - her number
And let me know if you find it. Lord help me!
Take your medicine as ordered, and we WILL hold it.
Call out to her. If she wants to see you, she'll be here...come see me, Toy Fairy?
Pleeeeeeeeaaaaaase. (Pause. Nothing...

...should I go?? or should I just go to the CLUB???? Help me out here and

DON'T make me splain it all again...

ascribe to me a body....

ascribe to me a body
easily broken
that I might bear a story for every scar

assign to me a body
hurt so deeply
the only way to cry would be
a howl

ascribe to me a body
shaped by moments
so time with
you
is
carved
into my craft

author me a body
honed by longing
that I might write
of smoke & spark & flame
blissful fire...
sweet pain
timeless twilight
graceful dawns, easy waking
thresholds, moonscapes
oceans, shorelines
hope's wilderness

ascribe to me this body
changed and grateful
that I might die
with you
as my last thought

Talia lit

Talia lit
a candied wick,
her annual try
to melt away
the cherry-glazed
sadness,

but having
no taste for cake
and no fondness
for pie, she drips pink-
blue stings on her
waiting

palm, its cracks
brimming with waxy
rivers, to set
a striped and flamed
believing, where
as when

the tremors
go out, she'll wish
for tears to rise
and curled smoke to close
the black eyes of
heaven

— Francis Scudellari

story with Norse words

window fellow

drags leg

ragged skin

ill kid

freckled gape

root birth

wrong sky

raises muck

lifts gear

scant scraps

slight gauntlet

wants get 

cake loan

until sale

tight thrift

skirting carping

rids trust

calls ill

they ugly

weak skill

ransacks stacks

scores scare

bags egg

casts loose

takes knife

scuffles simpers

hits husband

anger slaughter

clubs both

outlaw law

seem same

low though

bleak crook

wings die

flowers of arsenic

remember I'm square.
Never got to give any
woman anything
before reaching twenty one.

Watching the trained beast
in chains and sweat soaked chemise
engaged in flagellation
I almost cried.
Almost.

There's a killer out there
on the streets
looking for her master
while consuming the wine
in my restful chair.
You're no Nausicaa I
don't need a fucking fig leaf.

Master of the art
negotiate with me, I want it; I'm lacking this
refusing his terms until the trump;
necrophilia, nasolingus, needle play.

Summer's gone now
no dreams of seeds anymore.

Just close the fucking deal
it's a drive by contract
just follow the led;
acid of ants, of arsenic, of air
I wanted the fluid to disband me
long ago,
never asked for the crown galls
never, never

the holy hoax was a hoax itself indeed

The covered path to the redbrick cloister
was overgrown well before acoustic strings
became the dogma of the pilgrim's skulk,
well before the baroque cake of an April down
replaced the simple brick of the red earth
with a hyacinth path that led to furtive tracing.

To have found in the crispy regulus one last spout of glee:
slated into the broken legato of the paving stones,
a flip-book pareidolia tempered in the flickering crypt.

Between the flat gray panels of kerning cracks
the nascent spouts of lime and white
poked with insouciant crinkled laughter,
though the splatter of up-kicked dew
drenched the parted surplice hem
with the haughty charm of lifted habits.

So we conversed into the third of the seventh sext
but we were not to attain the hoary fourth,
heated though we were by the chill of purple snow,
barred by the thin lack of another slippery lambskin.

The repressed pulse of bloody flats but sharply played
with devoted stops stepwise notched in muffled air,
majora chords to minora chords swollen to a key:

an egressive kiss inside the robed and hooded matin
brought our pearly spittle into proud display,
warmed as we were by the gnostic mist of promise
and a pink fascalia wrapped to prime your chords.

Winged cymbals clashed and fey proclaimed
loudly into that brash and heathen season
when we were the power and the glory amen.

From Lesbos, Alexandria, Earth

In despair and sunless

summer heat

think on dry

dark places

In Egypt, infinite

Sapphics hidden

below concrete and clay:

words written in a

language you would not know

by a woman who drank

from cups of wind

 

            Above all spits

the very sun

that shone on her shoulders

that parches your throat

that does not reach

those fragments of verse

that even now

are singing into the

ribcage of the earth

Blood drunk

There wasn't any pain,
no prickle,
nor a tickled pink,
just this worldly feeling
of being pried
to a softer bed,
while twin fangs sank in
and rosy drew out
mere droplets,
planted by the shy
sun's unclotted gleam.
Its golden streams
pulled from primped-up flesh
to fill crimped-down bellows
till they bulged
bronze and round.

There isn't any pain,
no struggle,
nor a muddled shout,
just this bleary-eyed dream
of being led
to a slate-gray patch,
where blood-drunks dodder
and bloated belch forth
queer seedlings
that root at the stray
day's rolled-up edges.
Their crimson creeps
stopped by simple smacks
to spill pimpled oozings
till they sag,
flat and black.

sometimes you can't go home again even though you never left

a friendly fish named frank always stayed near the surface of the tank the vast vistas of human faces in his mind always stirred up traces of an empire that long ago sank if the comte de sade came back to earth and saw the new cosmos giving birth oceans of pornography vampire novels from sea to sea what would his dreams be worth? an unknown prophet named slim couldn't swim he was thrown in the water but old pharoan's daughter just turned up her nose at him blind potato murphy played the blues he walked the hills of ireland in his alligator shoes he drank poteen dreamt of fair kathleen and paid his union dues bob, a humble barracuda sought the path of the true buddha a dinosaur banging a big brass gong followed as he walked along and quite destroyed his mood, ah a sunfish named stagger lee lived in the depths of the sea a sea lion named bob (or was it billy?) thought his paraphilological positions were silly and never invited poor stack to tea an electric eel named ed wore a path to perdition on his head he didn't know its approximate cause so he kept it wrapped in gauze and took another med a platypus named roy was no stranger to ecstatic joy he could feel the earths heart beat beneath his wary webbed feet but his demeanor remained quite coy

What To Expect, When Expecting

He never visits her grave,
Though the fact of her passing rarely leaves his mind.
And the children all hold their secret
On the one whom they wish was still in their lives.
How lovely she'd been on Michigan Ave, in '24
Refusing his hand, and clasping the breeze,
He'd simply known that it was not long for,
When he'd see her walk off with another
Down the street.

It was true and he could not pretend to deny
That he'd lived a life in more fear than joy
And when pressed to forget the realms of the "Right"
He had no other passions by which to deploy...
The warm, kind acceptance of this woman, his wife
(Some of his worst times were some of her best)
And the more dark recognition
That she'd ruined her life
The moment she'd rested his hand on her breast.

Once, he'd consented to the trip of her dreams
While he took a year from his scholarly life;
And they rented a Volkswagon in Brittany
With the map of her finger and the mirth of her eyes,
And while she led her children through the dust motes of the Louvre,
He sat in the tour bus and choked on a Jube Jube;
The candy, of which, even today he thinks he nearly died
The Nike, and  The David, and The Hiemlich Manouver.

To see his sweet daughters, climb into the bus
And his monkeying son, with stories to tell;
And finally his wife's face fall flat, and ask, "What's this fuss?"
"Daddy almost died!" said the boy, and silence fell.
And he'd meet her eye, this news always the same;
When the rainstorms of life would threaten some fun,
And the pleasure of Art seemed to dwindle to shame;
How he wanted to ask her, "How are you my love?"

Since she was with him: the answer remained.

Then one day the dreaded charmer, arrived in her life,
And she finally fell by the comely gestures of a being;
When the words were spoken, that so claimed her fate,
"What will I tell him," was all she could think.
She had no choice, though, she confided in the man,
Who spoke not at all, while listening to her think,
He wore a burlap hoodie, held a sickle in his hand.

"Though he will miss you, he now has your dreams."

And that's what he remembers,
Nearly obsesses about every day,
Since the hooded man, finally gestured
And stole his children's favorite parent away.
For though they'd admired him nearly all their life,
And could list amongst them a few of his ways,
It was the smiling joy and dreams of his wife
That finally made, for such as them, life so great.

Sunday blew in

Sunday blew in
breezily
popping pinstriped
cuff to bare
a cunning and
ill-cutting
hand,
manicured tips
of rounded
pink extending
to un-shake
my seldom firm,
oft clammy
faith.