And be it as such, under no roof of the same shall we meet again, which, to say the least, befits us both. Since that very morning, no longer did I receive word from her; her life had grown beyond the limits of my reach. As of the last word which I did receive, was that she was moving south, to take a home in the town of the university where her newly beloved was to begin his professorship, and be it that one day these pages are to grace her soft eyes, I hope, and with certainty, that within her station in life she is happy, and if it be within his arms, then such is the case, for something within him has, and will have, brought her much joy, and as such, so too am I joyful. Much of course had passed between us both throughout the years which may not as of yet grace these antiquated pages, yet in time maybe I shall tell.

It was not long after that once again I found myself in the in the midst of things, in search of the soft smile of another, who might be gracious enough to bestow upon me a smile back and, as I ever so hoped, the blessing of her lips, yet I saw in every woman I encountered then something beautiful and longed out of its absence to possess that which I had convinced myself I had missed in the days of my youth, and with such brevity thus composed the follies of the dark and dreary days that the next few years of my life they were to become.


 I fell upon the sight of her and to no end would I have traveled for such as was her smile, and in the course of my life thus far it stands to be one of the greatest lessons that a man can learn, if such a man still exists, painful as it is, the boundless possibilities of his own being, being destroyed, from she who he longs to possess. Yet I am ahead of myself and as such shall return...

'My wife with her mirror sex
My wife with her eyes full of tears
With her eyes of violet panoply and magnetic needle
My wife with her savanna eyes
My wife with water eyes to drink in prison
My wife with wood eyes always under the axe
With eyes on the level of water on the level of air of earth and
         of fire'

-A.Breton

(Photo-G.Ball)

(Photo-G.Ball)

(Photo-G.Ball)

1.

Shell of a man who shits sitting; I am the son of my father.

2.

Above the belt a tuft of darkened wool, a bowl, a cup.

3.

Heaven knows only heaven.

4.

He lathers, leaves before the sun has risen.

“‘Sir,’ said Mrs. Crupp, in a tone approaching severity, ‘I’ve laundressed other young gentlemen besides yourself. A young gentlemen may be over-careful of himself, or he may be under-careful of himself. He may brush his hair too regular, or too unregular. He may wear his boots much too large for him, or much too small. That is according as the young gentleman has his original character formed. But let him go to which extreme he may, sir, there’s a young lady in both of ‘em.”

-C.Dickens

In a burl of perpetual bloom, the curr of her curls of her hair unfurl; locks of hair bloom to mourn saliferous morning tongues, unwithered and tender.

Such a dry land and such dry hands, midwives and women and dry dying thighs, dried and died thicket land and hands; ‘Will ever there be a bloom?’

Of roads and grass blades of grass, I have know so many mornings when the sun, so much sun and fresh morning drafts; pillowcases and ears and brown curly hairs, kissed and hugged the sun and toes, our toes and dripping noses dropped atop tea and shared toast, over coffee with cigarette smoke.

Spread across a morning shared and tender, spread across a rug, spread and spared of questions, her brine eyes brown eyelids ebb upon her eyes in the bloom of a rotten sun.

(Photo-E.Zuel)

     2

     A FEW WORDS ABOUT MY WIFE

Along far beaches of uncharted seas

the moon-

my wife-goes driving.

She’s redhaired, my beloved.

Behind her turnout,

a variegated throng of constellations scurries,

screaming.

She weds with a garage,

kisses newspaper kiosks,

while a fluttering-eyed page tinsels her train, the

          Milky Way.

And I?

To me, ablaze, the yoke of brows

has lugged fresh pails from deep-eyed wells.

In lacustrine silks you hung,

an amber fiddle chanting in your thighs?

You threw no baited line

into the regions of malignant roofs.

In sands’ nostalgia bathed, I drown in boulevards;

for that’s your daughter-

my song

in mesh of stocking gliding

by the coffee houses!

-V.Mayakovsky

(Translation by M.Hayward and G.Reavey)

  

'WHAT! You here, old man? You in such a place? You the ambrosia eater, the drinker of quintessences! This is really a surprise.'

-C.Baudelaire

'Amor condusse noi ad una morte.'

-D.Alighieri

----

RR.

I write you this in the midst of a bliss I have not the words for; I myself am an addlepated man and why make matters worse to make a worse man? The warmth with which you brush the pages you have sent my dear is indeed warm and I can feel the heat from the pen as you hold it within your palm which leads me to believe there might be hope after all, and to feel outdated and the tender age of twenty, my my, it saddens me that you feel such and with words I wish I could comfort you but I simply cannot, yet to put a smile upon your supple cheeks, I will try, (for ours is a tragic age so we refuse to take it tragically) and in the midst of all this chaos I find myself most comfortable in the words of those before me and I no longer feel alone, but to feel vulnerable again, what I would not do! I do not know, but such a feeling has been lost within me and how I would love to meet it again within the cool breeze on a lonely summer night, for is there nothing more beautiful than the song of a woman or a man who needs to be needed?

----

'Only in love have I found understanding, for everything else the patience to hope that a sentence can change the hearts of men and women, to want to be better, to love, to have spent the day in awe rather than disgust, that the sun is beautiful even after it has set. To spend nights perplexed at the sky, how it softens our hearts as we lay our heads to rest, pensively, as the mysteries of the world remain mysterious, marvelous, filled with awe, and even in the dark do we smile. That the beat of our hearts are sonorous only as we lay upon the chest of another, reminded of what it is that we share, and though our purpose throughout our lives may shift and change, meanings reestablished, redefined, always will be human, it is that which binds us together, and it is the beauty of this shared uniqueness which change sprouts from. With the sentence we can share with those alive and those unborn, the joys we have known and the love we have in our hearts.'

-G.Ball

'There is a poor woman here who looks at me in great embarrassment, as though she wanted to ask for something but couldn't bring herself to it.  I'm fascinated by her eyes-though her hair is white.  I've gone out of my way four times to avoid meeting her.  She isn't old, but prematurely gray. Her eyelashes are still black-jet black-and give a smoldering look to her eyes. She almost always carries a basket concealed under her apron, which is probably what she is ashamed of. When she has passed me, I turn and watch her go down to the market. She takes a few eggs out of her basket, and she sells these two or three eggs to anyone willing to buy them, whereupon she goes back home with the basket under her apron, as before. She lives in a tiny house down at the dock; it's a one story house and unpainted. Once I caught a glimpse of her at the window. There were no curtains, but there were white flowers on the windowsill. She stood far back in the room staring at me as I walked by. What kind of a woman is she, God only knows, but her hands are quite small.  I could give you my alms, my white beauty, but I would rather give you my help.'

-K.Hamsun


'Oh, why has Nature, maker of so many types and of innumerable individuals of each, given to the world but one being like this?'

-W.H.Hudson

heuristic adj. revealing; leading to discovery; using trial and error to arrive at a solution; n. such argument or process.

paginate v.t. arrange and number pages of (book).

Scandaroon n. kind of homing pigeon.