Man Date: The Before & After Times; New & Select Typoetics, 1993 to 2023

Man Date

Also by Author Shadow of Soma: an Historical Fantasy hybrid narrative by Michael Castro; pen-and-ink art by Paula Rich Greenwood 1981 (Snow Owl; San Diego, California) Spider’s Nest within the Shadow of Soma: a Metric Montage graphic novel-in-verse, halftoned, by Mike Castro 1997 (eMCee/LMnO Press; Venice, California) Spider’s Nest: a Sequential Art Catalog graphic hybrid narrative, 4-color photomontages, by M P Castro (“mpcAstro”) 2011 (OpPRESS; Valrico, Florida) 2014 (Oneiros Books; Near Neath, Wales) reprint 2023 (OpPRESS; Lake City, Florida) original re-issue for new companion book as “iambic indexus,” rebound into a double-book volume, engraved cover At Cost (poems) by Ben John Smith edited and illustrated with original prints, duotones; with intro by Mike Castro 2012 (OpPRESS; Valrico, Florida) Nidus Plexus: a Metric Montage poetic narrative hybrid index by M P Castro (“mpcAstro”) 2014 (Oneiros Books; Near Neath, Wales) 2023 (OpPRESS; Lake City, Florida) edited reprint for Spider’s…Art Catalog as its companion index in a double-book volume, engraved cover OpUS: Bound TEXT/UREs; Illustrated Anthology, Vol. 1: 2013-2015 23 TEXT poets/pictURE makers, 4-color, edited/blended; w/intro by Mike Castro 2015 (OpPRESS; Valrico, Florida) OpUS: Bound TEXT/UREs; Illustrated Anthology, Vol. 2: 2016 17 TEXT poets/pictURE makers, 4-color, edited/blended; w/intro by Mike Castro 2016 (OpPRESS; Valrico, Florida) The Spermbot Blues (a poetic narrative) by Paul Brookes edited with found illustrations, b&w, and with introduction by Mike Castro 2017 (OpPRESS; Valrico, Florida) DISPATCH: a Photopoetic Cut-up graphic narrative poem, 4-color photomontages, by Michael Philip Castro 2019 (OpPRESS; Valrico, Florida) Tooth Ishtars, or Book of Twelve Tablets visual – typoetic – poem by M P C_astro 2023 (OpPRESS; Lake City, Florida)

Man Date The Before & After Times;

New & Select Typoetics,

1993 to 2023 Chaptered & Versed as an epic by

Michael Philip Castro

Lake City

FLORIDA

32055

OpPRESS, 146 NE Carrier Place Lake City, Florida 32055

Man Date: The Before & After Times; New & Select Typoetics, 1993 to 2023

Copyright © 2024, 2025 by Michael Philip Castro

All Rights Reserved.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2024920215

|First E-Edition Thus|

March 2025|

|

|First E-Edition Published May 2024|

Created in the United States of America

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Poet’s Portrait, pencil and oil paint on matte board by John Rice, Nov 8, 2023

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Man Date The Before & After Times

Shadow of Soma: 7 Silhouettes

Opening Versus Intexti I. El Hombre II. Billy Tell III. Mohenjo-daro IV. Thermosaic V. Dirghatamas VI. Viva Veda Riggy Soma VII. Sedimental Journey ADDENDUM: On ‘Opening Versus Intexti’ DD

 1 2 3 4 5 7 8 10 12



Road to Ra The Pewlings at Dawn subverses: Tourbillion ~ Chrysanthemum

Ez Ra

13 13

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with Of ‘In a Station of the Metro’



Peer Uneasy Prelude_Verso/Recto_Diptych Foreweb_Going

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to Disneyland_Diplopia

17 18

Venus ex Machina scholiums: Joyce ~ zebra The Happiest Place on Earth Afterimagism

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The Great Beast 666

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with CROW Not OWL Black Box with Air Hole Brewkowski

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Contract scholiums: HUMBLER ~ DEGRADATE ~ ARNICA

Goodbye Gibraltar 1/4 2/4

subverses: Triple Marx ~ Look It Up subversed: Chain of Command

Enter the Amazone 3/4 subverses: “Between Piss and Shit We’re Born” ~ Portal of Discovery ~ Power Exchange ~ River Strix 4/4 subverses: Sausage Barge ~ Byzantium 2.0 ~ Parachute ~ Co-Starring Mortsac ~ The Erosopher

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22 24

27 29

30 31

32 32 33

34 34 34 – 36 37 38 – 40 recto

Indexus Continuum

Etrinity

1

Catch a Falling Star The Three Wise Men Set

 41 42 43

 

DISPATCH proem: BOXCAR BOXCAR BOXCAR…

700 Mile Love Train Whistle A-Go-Go

44 45



Star Date tooth ishtars… threw’d iffy cult tease More than Food, More than Clothes

Poet’s Portraits: two sketches, one sitting, two artists

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v / 88

About & Acknowledgements

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Dedications: “To”

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Front Cover Etching Plate VII: “The Drawbridge,” 1761 from The Carceri d’Invenzione* Series by

GIOVANNI BATTISTA PIRANESI b1720d78 FEVERISH DELIRIUM LAY RUIN *Prisons of Invention verso

Shadow of Soma: 7 Silhouettes

Ra

the light first then Amen, hidden wind “So Be It” say the loopy fold

● W O D A H

Δ

O F ● S O M

S

A SO M A N I S A S I F A S I T I S W E R E SO M E h o L Y SO -J O U R N, h o²K U M³P U TI N G P E G A/S Y S’T F A N T O M S W h o F O R T H E I R BE M U S H R O O M E D T O N G U E S C O N N E C T H E A V E N A N D E A R T H] W I T H [T H U N D E R S O F C O L O R S E C < I N G> S H I F TE D M A TTT E R

In the Name of the Square, the Triangle, and the Circle. Amen Ra. 1

Man Date: The Before & After Times

Michael Philip Castro

I. El Hombre

vie role enfeck shun ov/en cant asians sham dial hectic ~El Hombre from outer space

More than a smallpox virus.

Opiate addict.

Communication must

total

before stop it.

knows a little.

City dwellers depend on

warfare.

Shit disposition untenable parasite War war all the time based on based on pyramid scheme played out controlled burn is the Word.

Borrowed flesh who survive ghost on a crowded street lines cut carefree up as confetti descending from the cloud shredded text scrabbled Hexagram of Turin x-ray hands x’d over loins holes in wrists not this not this body at an angle.

sprawled

Symbiosis a virus lost option of silence. resistant organism forces the Word: We built this City built this shitty We built this City on feces and fentanyl…

2

Shadow of Soma: 7 Silhouettes

II. Billy Tell

See, Langwedge ... is a witch that shroomed from a spore from outer space man, why we spell out our names to this day or so William Tell … what, too soon?

sublime to be born in time , mother soon to be blown from the face of the earth/ bullet hole in her head , father pale, lit wad of cotton in back of little toy boat in Mexico City fountain . made crazy circles our separate fates lay sundered , he to opium and fame/ bearing guilt and shame.

And I , shattered son of Naked Lunch/ to golden beaches promises of success.” each needle an act of voodoo genetic path to be followed.

Would it be possible to shoot arrows from a gun? female blandishments would have fallen on barren soil.

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Man Date: The Before & After Times

Michael Philip Castro

III. Mohenjo-daro

Mound of the Dead abandoned calendars lost ages Pisces 1922 led to the mound by saffron monk sun-dried mud brick 140º F covered drains lined the grid underground furnaces heated baths inflated value just before the crash destroyed and rebuilt seven times new cities built on top of the old a foothold all else arches, granaries, mouths from floodplain uptohere with Indra rubber ducking in the Indus puckered like a bloated toadstool with the vapors gone poof once upon a like magic disappearing act staged mic drop splintered glazed-to-glass earth a blast of web left behind for sign

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flushed

Shadow of Soma: 7 Silhouettes

IV. Thermosaic

Indus/5 hundred thousand millyin yang years may never know why 5?

Hand to God Hand that pressed Mohen jo daro into delta silt pentagonal then swept the lines away Hand of Arjuna from a litter of 5 shook as Krishna spoke thermo maha ha ha die damnics

Wisenheimer Oppenheimer

gravitational contractionist and Sanskrit scholar.

History Channel’s Ancient Astronauts? They can’t even show a proper right angle.

Oppie didn’t have Sitzfleisch , sitting flesh like from sitting in a chair all day never wrote a long paper or did a long calculation no patience to read all one million, eight-hundred thousand words of the Mahabharata but had for the 700 verses of its Bhagavad-Gita as well translate mystery of the universe surrounding him like a fog at the border more than there actually was turned away from hard methods of theoretical into a realm of broad intuition



for days before the Trinity Test verses to Vishnu Destroyer of Worlds velocity squared “when we were younger and funner”…

-Gita in the morning -Gita in the evening -Gita in the summertime “seasons don’t fear” love my little -Gita “don’t fear the reaper” white marble waterfall cranial cathedral rubric acoustics love her all the time 5

Man Date: The Before & After Times

Michael Philip Castro

at the border more cowbell! than there actually was not even funni Pun jabi Paki stani still epicpage turner even if You•crane necks ever West ward, ho! it’s still one world yo, just one world to a man hu- or Nan [-o sapiens] he she or it don’t blow it glow-worm wannabe cray cray slomofo get ova You•self shit for brains Alexa ain’t comin’ to wipe You•ass

 Some story tellers have been known to stretch the epic into three million words as if, like Scheherazade teasing out her own 1,001 Tales, Indra’s very death, as well, will postpone for as long as His stories flow.

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Shadow of Soma: 7 Silhouettes

V. Dirghatamas

“Lord Moon, Somesh, i have drunk of your Soma and now half of me am Urth the other half mirth” ~Dīrghatamaster ꟷ “There was in olden days a wise Rishi…”

▪ toadstool bufo ten nine muscaria countdown sync into the skin of the gods ~Once i was me; but now i’m you

well known for verses in the Rig Veda added to since 1st Mandala chief priest of King Bharata after whom India was first named birth of Dirghatamas as per the Great Bharata Epic studied in his mother’s womb the Vedas Semen tuum frusta perdi non potest.

“O father, cease from thy attempt. There is no room here for two.”

Quum auten jam cum illa coiturus esset, but Mamata possessed the most beautiful pair of eyes.

 

wombling enfolded in perpetual darkness born blinded by the father’s spit yet possessed of the Vedas yet famous for his paradox mantras enigmas : “ , he who knows the father above by what is below is called the poet called by many names” 360 spokes placed in the sky.  Your seed cannot be lost.  When he was about to lie with her, 7

Man Date: The Before & After Times

Michael Philip Castro

VI. Viva Veda Riggy Soma

Rigged Vehicle RġVeda “the swollen ones piss the soma” ~Dīrghatamas opotamus, lost his hip a few THOUzənd year ago plus change

profound mushrooms primitive attitudes of different races puzzling over division of Eurasia -phobe vs. -phile Russians most enthusiastic recognize 90 varieties English ate only the white field except where blue hats sold . But in North Wales avoided as poisonous. in Bavaria eight edible varieties to the kitchen . down the mountain same growing in the woods “Throw those toadstools away! so many million unreasoning neatly bottled another curious taboo Hellene, Hebrew, Hierogyptian , most Middle-terrestrials forbidden any bright red food , lobsters, crabs, prawn wild strawberries had no name regarded poison except to priests, kings, and other privileged regarded “reserved for” sacred mushroom protected by taboos little foxes only birch forests

grew in forests, not in fields wild

hymns (written in Sanskrit time of Trojan War) , Food of Gods . named Soma. also Ambrosia and Nectar all mean Immortal . Sappho preserved tradition as a drink , the juice 8

, scarlet

Shadow of Soma: 7 Silhouettes

squeezed out between boards , mixed with curds ; Vedic hymns to Agni, mystic illum[Igni]tion identified with Soma , born when Sky Father threw a lightning bolt Dionysus Mycenus, mystic mycologician , sporn spore-dusted when Sky Father threw a lightning bolt

Indra

Zeus

Ma struck dead little squirt saved sewn up in his Father’s side entered the kidneys strained reborn as discharge to worshippers stream of hallucinogenic urine October Fest , The Ambrosia. October mushroom season. mixture with whiskey long been

by Scots called a “Cathy” the Great of Russia in honor said to have been partial priests of Dionysus active in Mycenaean times from Mycenae City of Mushrooms claimed sole rights memory brought down from Siberia , found not south of 40th parallel , except at great height in birch groves. Vedic priests of Agni imported from groves of the high Himalayas.

Throughout the world believed begotten by lightning.

Norse Berserkers magicians and sages amanita stems for nose plugs induced prophecies Bear-shirters mouth-breathers for Ursa Major.

Solomon’s bride urges her lover fetch her “the little foxes” mushroom-juice laced with wine “that spoil the vines” the better to enjoy her “for my vines have tender grapes.” post scriptum pre-scripture Siberian reindeer are known to “nibble ’til red-nosed ,” then fly.

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Man Date: The Before & After Times

Michael Philip Castro

VII. Sedimental Journey

On its plains where grew fine plants Lamentation reeds now grow.

Circa 4300 years (“where go?”) “gone” — Sargon of Akkad arm wrestled Sumerian city-states from Umma, then stormed across her Fertile Valley Between Two Rivers controlled trade from the silver mines of Anatolia/ to the lapis lazuli mines of Badakhshan from the cedar forests of Lebanon to the Gulf of Oman fortresses were built/ to silo imperial wheat irrigation canals extended bureaucratic reach fed palaces and temples imperial taxes then, like a hundred-year old cookie the sky crumbled/ withering storms cut through wheat fields coated in black dust desert auroras lower latitudes pink and purple ghost dance barefoot over hot coals ashes to ashes/ southwestern Europe to central Asia Iberia to Crete Egypt’s Old Kingdom towns of Palestine great cities of the Indus dusted flash abandon collapse remains.

300-year cottonmouth full of erosion deposits no trace Urban vanity. Only above 3 centuries of strata later do ash, trash, and/ monumental apparitions haunt a new same o’ same go…

2 millennia before Bethlehem reset Time people like Abram fled the Assyrian plains en masse sudden caravans herders and marauders imperial deserters, soldier and priest “camp followers” dust clouds of slavers and “labor” refugees, all escapees from the kill grids once called city streets and walls… a thin layer of volcanic ash sprinkle the last Akkadian mud bricks 10

Shadow of Soma: 7 Silhouettes

under an 8 inch-thick cap of fine sand testifies to centuries of global drought before cockcrow/ Hongshan (“round heaven, square earth”) triangle collapsed. No word yond Midnight Sea where dragons be serpents feathered jury still out… remains tight-lipped as a jungle pyramid cut off and overrunneth with old-growth jaguars and Homeland guillotines/ carrying a big “We’re Number One!” shtick for review. No set up just gobble gulp go.

The 3rd Dynasty of Ur was last attempt to revive Sumer back in the day before the great famine & drought like when Tom Jones back in the day/ on world tour came on stage every woman in the front row crossed her legs. now it’s all eye on you stay in your homes FBI warnings like video piracy come out with your hands on your head 5 years in prison ¼ million-dollar fines follow the movie

don’t mess with our cut

wands whittled from holly wood wave fluid Druidlike spells cast mass market cast mass media cast of thousands pulling strings pulling feathers American Bald Mockingbird he he he Fidelity har har har Vanguard hey twitter tweet State Street BlackRock da bomb go long, NSA: PRISM A-OK for liftoff making a living let alone living a making can no way like slickass Zombie movies prep anyone for the headshot it’s in the clause apparently ’cuz all we do is bite infecting those we bite devouring what little is left after the hail I mean aren’t we just asking for it ? only Corporations are people profits not prophets mitts off Big Soma.

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Man Date: The Before & After Times

Michael Philip Castro

ADDENDUM

On ‘Opening Versus Intexti’ 

Unique Ver.sys intechs “T”

not so much content as technique “twisted verses” lines arranged so stylized altar’d re/verse/d acrostico sheet not roll papyrus squared sign of salvation procure pardon non corpus intexti “no twisted body” unlike from morgue’s resident table-hopper it’s complicated , versus complexti but bottom line Constantine don’t be so mean.

 Publilius Optatianus Porfirius was the first known writer of versus intexti who was a prefect of Constantinople from 329 to 333 banished for an imperial slight later allowed to return for sending from exile impressive panegyrics to the First Christian Emperor composed in this special form of picture poem.

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Road to Ra

The Pewlings at Dawn

flock off loopy fold fragged night shell tourbillion chrysanthemums lanterns strung along the road to Ra

~ Tourbillion

tour billion oh the humanity vertical spiral of flame and sparks

described by Charles Dickens: a double rocket, having orifices produce a double recoil one rotary one trajectory revolves ascends same time exceedingly brilliant outburst the multitude

~ Chrysanthemum

chrism anthem hum oh the dynasty spherical burst of shooting stars metal salted strontium salted, lithium salts calcium, sodium barium, copper burning aluminum, titanium magnesium magnifique 13

Man Date: The Before & After Times

firework spherical break visible trail

Michael Philip Castro

colored stars ••

flower one of the “Four Gentlemen” of China with plum blossom, the orchid, and bamboo • /flagrant “Chrysanthemum Gate” taboo slang “enter the anus” • /fragrant Sun Symbol Japanese Dynasty orderly unfolding perfection a single petal placed at the bottom of an empty tea cup re-steeped each morning 25 hundred by 365

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Road to Ra

Ez Ra in London “ before I die the greatest poems / LOUD / BRASH / “ I happen to be genius and deserve

.”

…east of Hailey Idaho 4 years yet born …Big Whiskey Wyoming , 1881 Unforgiven …Will Munny Spencer barrel to Little Bill’s face, …got nothin’ to do with it.”

supine. “Deserve’s

arrived 14 August 1908. Not yet twenty-three Pair o’ Deuces knew nobody only fifteen dollars , no pounds popular press agreeably startled serious critics seldom impressed. Unfazed, Pounded out promoted by bizarre means. “ trousers made of green billiard-cloth, a pink coat, a blue shirt, a tie painted Japanese , immense sombrero flaming beard cut to exclamation single, large blue-earring.” “ kind but blustering adolescent. Almost ‘arrested’ development.” Punch parodied “palpitating works” “the new Montana poet, Mr. Ezekiel Dollar.” took it as compliment wrote home, “London offered ultimate laurel taken cognizance .” under influence altered stilted language to spoken idiom. “austere, direct, free from slither…



~ Of ‘In a Station of the Metro’

The best locksmith begins a bit flat: place, underground, transport simple as pedestrian directions. Only more to be measured than what is called upon…

public

Confucius translates Homer.

Curt and irascible, incessant talker, “ loose in a museum, ” Ezra structured year prior to great war 1913 spoke in tongues a linguistic shift neural rearrangement. Others in this node spoke same language. Paris sub system, 15

Man Date: The Before & After Times

Michael Philip Castro

Modernist birth canal … first true Imagist poem was effect felt when “ suddenly a beautiful face, then another an/other, and then beautiful child’s then beautiful woman” getting off a train, turned radically on its platform overlay two images double helix… “ I tried all that day to find words I could not find any words worthy ” as that sudden E/motion a rarefied air this Epiphany & Ephemerality , Each finding Expression in one an other … “I do not mean that I found words, there came an Equation … not in speech , in little splotches of colour. ― a ‘pattern’ a language in color I realized quite vividly if I had the energy to get paints and brushes and keep at it, a new school ‘non-representative’ would speak only in arrangements gone into paint … “ one idea set on top of an Other … “ meaningless unless drifted into a certain vein of thought . trying to record instant when a thing transforms darts inward and subjective . worthy of .” vision of the blossom oriental in nature decorative form of arranging, of linear construction, rhythm color . vase, stems, leaves , branches as well based on three main lines heaven, earth, humanity poem petals are people stationed/upon a stem “Jug Jug” into dirty ears

screaming

underground horizontal and blackened branch side by side faces in the windows ancient hōkku “Flowers Faded” “Blossoms Left Behind” a simple montage one concrete image the modern meter of the metro moves rhythmic into organic space there are no verbs merely echoes.

NTE: Punch humor magazine’s printed pun was Ezekiel Ton for Ezra Pound, double-flipped into Dollar for the green billiard cloth that covered butt of parody.

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Peer Uneasy

Prelude

Verso/Recto Diptych ~Peer uneasy “Gene yes Are test” ~Owl dose Hucks lea

verso: re:photomontagerie /16 Piranesi plates :Fantastic Prisons commingled with (ill) lust-

rated squatter daughters of labiarinthine culture in highiambic heels disquiet dungeons drive home pumped points per perfect reign throughout archcolossus slave labor creator of relic monuments magnificent made to feel genius of great artists who reign throughout every idiot detail from seed to fevertree to perplexus not just big scratch post itches to branch staircases leading the charge beamed vaults supporting vast compounds pocked with revolt squalid suites of crumbling stone not for squalor’s sake alone aye yai yai but for the rush of root hold lost on rickety roads through space time manifest destiny heads us once more to the right page ▪ recto: Look out belowward cyclopean machines neoclassic justice busting a nut gad deuce give

us Déus ex Machina lowered flailing crunk onto stage piffling epiphany poor judgment day a tough titty flop save your drama for your mama in particular sag from airy arches over head hang ropes that carry the weight of the sap heavy hive in pendulous torture sickenly lit by narrow windows in chambers half open to rosemarine sky revealing more or less complete vaults and broken walls in the misty distance coextends flushed severely redboard abandon all hope who enter this burning bush dumb asses bray branded balking in steamy shadows off stage a choral cascade drops straight through the earth after all after sex all animals are sad

Fauxto mahn Taj eerie ▪ aft terse hex allah knee mauls arse had, ’ceptin’ wimmin & roosters ~Galen? ~Ari’? “Greek to me, Offither…



Of the Chapter in On Art and Artists by Aldous Huxley (1960) 17

Man Date: The Before & After Times

Michael Philip Castro

Foreweb

Going to Disneyland Diplopia I first met the Illustrix Disney Kix on an August afternoon by appointment inside her happy — “Los Feliz” — home studio with for calling card my bound catalog of photo metric montage… cascading tessellations of phantasmagoria come avantarabesque for mural, was my pitch, for her upstairs suspensarium of urban legend.

She cooed as I bucked vertically denuded in the garret’s cat’s cradle. Jumpy as jolts.

Improper as exposed copper wire. She held in the air between us my satyr’s satire cracked wide open in all its naked glory. Black opera length gloved hands outfitted thigh-high stilettos and PVC corset. Ogling the two-paged “Peer Uneasy” spread of the mortified roped to rack or torqued into pillory, Ms. Kix then impressed upon the salty blowfish floating before her the naked irony of clamps and crimpers, tum drubbers and ornate slappers keeping time on my cocksure like a cat-’o-nine-kisses on Rod of Narcissus panspermiating an inescapable gravity well. Much like the black hole we presently find Yours Truly fully enfoiled. Polarized head to tail. In the midst of, if not absolution, then, at least negotiation. And then, pretty as you please, she shakes my junk with latexed hand before sealing in hot wax a counter-deal for scenes commissioned to enweb the artist — moi? (“Oh but who but?”) — for 666 days with camera tossed from slave — muah! — to Mistress to entourage back to me to montage “operotic” scenery for a new soap, “As the Table Turns,” with Oh-but-Whose-Butt in the wings. “Put that in your book, Wormwood.”

Did I have the cojones? Sounded better than holing up in a dump with a Burroughs

“typer” from the Salvation Army and broke dick… I’ve done that for art: getting it broke off and on a fork fed me. Next to the chamber’s exit bolted shut was a credence table that Disney had set my catalog down upon next to a clip boarded “Dialog Sheet” held up to my flushed face after first unclipping pen now protruding crudely from my yap.

I circle in ink by rolling my head in a tight circle with clenched teeth the “no holes barred” option as suggested… from which effort my electro chain linked dangle cocoon rustles, zaps, and tings into opening notes of a Baphomet symphony.

The lusty Illustrix handbelled for the upstairs maid, “Lucrezia ‘of the Cross’,” and then rang again for “My slave girl,” she bragged with a wink, “my Semiprecious Jade.”

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Peer Uneasy

Venus ex Machina

Vena sex mock henna ~Ms. Dis Knee Kicks “For joy for Joyce, joy, the zebra’s in the zygospore, ignore, ignore.”

to not capture unimaginable special realm

would be travesty

rules defer to no one trappings well-oiled mechanism delicious facets

endless

divinely improper make your own clay cast us from the garden lewd and exalted reflection works like an invisible wall between out of nowhere extreme solitude hitting the wall possessed with spirits temple dark rooms revealing lengthy process monks by candle light

erected

involved

in a state of elongation

gather in my dungeon, in my home, my heart, my head slaves kneeling then flying this is yours

my gray-blue eyes

see

float unencumbered

19

scholiums

~ Joyce concerns the Vances, who lived in number seven , their daughter Eileen, whom Stephen was going to marry some day remembers hiding under the table to save his eyes from the menace between his mother and his Auntie “Dante” Mrs. Rearedend Defender of the Faith — O, Stephen will apologize — O, if not, the eagles will come and pull out his eyes Stephen Hero epiphany “sudden manifestation, whether speech or of gesture the mind itself.”

— The eye that mocketh at his father, and despiseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat it. to testify was to swear on Abraham’s Balls swear Hand to Lap straight outta Old Test[es]ment . Genesis something ~ zebra gifts black and white, clarity balance, agility you/niqueness sureness of path individual within the herd. stripes camouflage against predators , can’t I Dentify, divide•dead . keep to herd patterns are you zebra to zebra no two hoofprints. Blend within crowd without losing one’s moves one is one’s moves one’s prints stripes opposites, yin yang, harmony see deeper truth. flourish in a harsh land.

Compromising can be challenging and yet here are small herds of a stallion some mares their foals. mix with antelope alertness early warnings whatcha hear?

“Carnivorans at the gate” whatcha know?

“How to leap how to lope” 20

gift of

Peer Uneasy

Questioning: over-analytic awakens.

common zebra medicine hindrance for this totem

imagination

black on white , white on black what you see is not always . Occult seen and unseen presents new aspects master magicians energy of light and dark shift expand past preconceived lead us into the new prismatic perception unafraid sure , standing middle of opposing.

 



Genesis 24:2-9 tells how a servant of Abraham pledged to find a wife for his son, Isaac, by placing hand under master’s thigh, so not precisely to lap. Genesis 47:29 says Abe’s grandson Jacob had his son, Joseph, swear on, or under, Father as Gold Star Donor to the Family Jewels, pantomiming a passing of the baton. Revelation 18:23: The light of a lamp will never shine in Babylon again. The voice of bridegroom and bride will never be heard in you again. Your merchants were the world's great elite. All the nations were led astray by your magic spell, your sorcery, your [Big] Pharmekeia [as it chlorinated the global gene pool].

21

Man Date: The Before & After Times

Michael Philip Castro

The Happiest Place on Earth

Where the Lows feel less so…

Griff 5th obs hervé torii indie ’hood Affluent, hilly ’hood. Hollywood district noted for expensive celebrity with Griffith Park & Observatory original Rancho land concession.

Rancho Los Feliz — The Happy Ranch — succession of owners.

Griffith J. Griffith donated half to Lows Angle-ease wishing to appease C’mon, get happy!

Came out Secret drunkard except to wife whose right eye was shot out on vacation in Santa Monica then off to San Quentin.

Mickey Mouse was born in the ’20s in the garage of Walt’s uncle’s house on Kingswell between Vermont and Rodney before steamrolling into mass production just down the street second guard at the gate studio paid for on Silver Lake side with mass hypnosis.

Disney Kix took her first breath exactly one year after to the day reminded the dailies Walt’s ’66 brain was frozen then transplanted into Kurt Russell just a teen of fifteen fast forward three decades tail end of a millennium... imagineer me famous maker of faces grimacing throughout latest spoof No Escape from El Lay on my way from Venice beach bungalow to Disney’s cockloft studio for another day’s shoot 22

(1903 – 1998)

Peer Uneasy

in the Happy Queendom let me adult entertain you…

A fit 45 trod the boards upstairs just another day’s cliff-hanger from the rafters where hanging is flying on Serrano off Los Feliz Blvd off of which on the park side I’d park for discretion oh what would the neighbors say? walking whistling ’cross blvd ½ blk down ave of magic castlets with switch cane parked perpendicular gift wrapped down cheeky chinos crack down down right pant leg I’m a powder keg baby strike a match on down down right pant leg/ Ready to blow baby Sulfur and Charcoal my first and last name/ POWder keg buh buh-buh-BAE-bee Potassium nitrate my middle… dinga-lingam-dong ... name.

“Oui, entrez, Monsieur Snake.”

Scene: Replace Whistler broken splintered over bare blistered be hind previous appt.

Here it’s sin not to finish job barely begin.

Home to other early studios, i.e., D. W. Griffith (of no linear relativity to land donor namesake just another one of those spooky entanglements calculated to trip us up) filmed Charlie Chan here and the camp classic “Johnny Guitar.”

Sprinkled with homes by Frank Lloyd Wright.

23

Man Date: The Before & After Times

Michael Philip Castro

Afterimagism

meteoric mont awe jazz ~Eyes in stein

Soviet “Montage” Theory creating cinema heavy editing French for “Mounting” ~”Oh ho, ceux Français… the 1920s disagreed how to view “A Dialectic Approach … should be considered a demonstration ”, or is it “The nerve determines nature solves cinema ”? what constitutes the effect collision of independent shots not next to but on top of the other Mounting discontinuity in graphic quantities. impossible spatial matches. temporal ellipses Metric-editing framed image timed cutting to the next no matter what the montage will in fact form thought tools for propaganda ideological agitation Strike scene cross-cut slaughter of a bull police attacking workers.

Sergei Eisenstein (1898 to 1948), film director/innovator 24

Peer Uneasy

The Great Beast 666

Sex hundred and sexty-sexual ~The Beast sniffs out in a moment of quantum lucidity an Eroto-comatose cockhorse the golden crack of Dawn a flash a smile dewy lippity lobe auto me studded saddle bustress spur spunk sparkled galloping gooses bobbing buttresses take me i’m yours

1875 — 1947), ceremonial poet and mountaineer of Thelema prophet entrusted

founding the religion

to spy for intelligence, Brutish cloaked or cowled throughout life . throughout “The Empire” .

Joined esoteric Hermetic Order Golden Dawn by Loch Ness traveling to India then Cairo. contacted by entity Aiwass Ai shit you not read the report Ordo Templi Orientis before founding Sicilian commune Thelema promote Thelema unto death.

Abbey of

notoriety, being openly “ recreational” social critic. result , denounced in pop press “wickedest man in world”…

~ CROW Not OWL a technique of sex magick formulation by occultist CROWley (not CrOWLey) several positions number of ways 25

Man Date: The Before & After Times

Michael Philip Castro

ritual repeated edging in a state subspaced with their god Thelema a literary convenience manifest with several guides fermenting in the Bowel of the Beast a bevy bunkered if one guide tires another takes place. Eventually all sink into exhaustion Exigo… center-staged slumps into twilight brain barrier abob not to wake to bring to brink to trance or “sleep of lucidity” back toward but not into sleep. repeatedly indefinitely until walnut cracked a nest of screeching owlets open “bodily pure,” the Crow noted.

Resurfacing the mating surfaces “You need WOW job, mista saila man” Sure, but up on the lift? Yeah, risk does not necessarily end the rite. moment should not be lost, use for magical purposes. what is desired an overrun Neth Cup forth frothing up “Cake of Light” fueled the multitude x-times over

X on the Mount

fuels galley slave effort. Flesh Pneumatics put pressure on the chi sought… a hocus of plasmosis spews sacral chakra clockwork elves rowing in tandem come Legion come Abaddon … this is how the rite was taught.

A sort of vampirism. Guides use only the mouth not to assist but rather to exhaust the player a spit in the ocean when pushed to the point the little death in this way guides but do what you like.

26

Peer Uneasy

Black Box with Air Hole

cam era ob scura op tickle fata morgana

Camera “vaulted chamber ” Obscura “dark” optical device pro-jects image surroundings on screen in room with a hole in one side external light scene passes through hole each fate vector encoded in bits strikes inside , rotated 180 degrees color and perspective preserved projected onto paper , traced Using mirrors to right-side up pinhole smaller sharper, but dimmer.

Lens allows larger aperture known since Mo-Tzu of Universal Love fame referred to it as “collecting plate” “locked treasure room.”

Aristotle understood the optical principle “sunlight traveling through between the leaves holes of a sieve , wickerwork, and laced fingers circular patches light travels in straight lines in waves? energy par tickles eye of beholder he who laughs last. What is projected is everything from outside in motion in pose for the artist inside sir Bacon described for observation of solar eclipses 27

Man Date: The Before & After Times

. da Vinci described in Codex Atlanticus. Johann Zahn’s . Telescopium, magic lantern… convex lens later editions compared shape of human eye to the lens eye of the Pyramidal rays x marks a second spot upon proper organ answers to the paper , or wall in the dark chamber ; rays at the hole refract crystalline frame of mind framed with burning-glasses at the window refract all who all that enter.

28

Michael Philip Castro

Peer Uneasy

Brewkowski

“typer,” by ~Beershitski

nothing as glorious drinking twentyfour beers the night before. odor of a beer shit made you really alive

29

Man Date: The Before & After Times

Michael Philip Castro

Contract

“Dialog Sheet” Session Dynamic or, How Our No-Mercy Circes Take a Sissy Fuss Up and Down the Ladder in 6,6,6 Easy Steps at Chez Ricochet, where the caviar, by far…

C I R

C L E

A N Y

N O H

O L E

B A R

R E D

T O R

T U R

E S S

F O R

C E D

F E D

P R O

B O S

C I S

S U S

P E N

D E D

L A D

D E R

I N T

E N S

O R Y

’L E C

T R O

D E V

I C E

H O T

W A X

V U L

G E R

G A G

E N E

M A S

H U M

B L E

R R R

V I B

R A T

O R S

P V C

C O R

S E T

D E G

R A D

A T E

S I S

T E R

A R N

I C A

N I P

P U L

L E Y

scholiums

~ B L E

H U M

R

physical restraint testicle cuff clamps around base mounted center of bar passes behind base of buttocks forces legs folded forward ass up on a magic prayer rugburn ride forehead, nose palms, knees, toes floored attempt to straighten legs even slightly pulls a train “up the Khyber Pass”

D E G

~ R A D

A T E

Says “Urethra” like Eureka!

Question her diction?

Apologize, apologize, Pull out his “guys”! ~ A R N

I C A

Balm Muscle Rub flowers infused cocoa butter and beeswax lavenders and lollipops Keep away from sensitive areas?

Bit’h that’s all I got.

31

Man Date: The Before & After Times

Michael Philip Castro

Goodbye Gibraltar 1/4 Discipline kicks against the pricks in metrics arrayed hangbelted as arsenal angels girded by spools of flesh-tapering lines gleaned from the Strix Grimoire of ill omens and spells

~ Triple Marx Ars in KnowLang™ jells into ~Howlin’ Allen aka Señor Carlo Marx… … after Karl’s “Labor Routine” which (as if) delivered by Groucho manifests anti-capitalist comedian, Allen Ginsberg. And Dean Moriarty

together

define “sordid hipsters” nothing light and Care Bear poetry is dark doldrums — “sordid” so when Allen as “The Voice of Rock” questions Crazy ride. unable to provide his Carlo ends up still On the Beat but Off the Road.

~ Look It Up in a lesson book of the Strixmyth grimWAHR… M: DĔG•răd•ĀTE s: is that even a word?

M: Beware; it’s in there will be on test … see: Esperanto • Adverb Italian • Verb 32

Peer Uneasy

2/4 crescendoing suspendibility a gas giant’s girth unguys to the hula uncircumcinching a shock of chokers≈ become-floaters beyond the pillars of hercules.

~ Chain of Command written onda Pill whoars of Her queue lease: neapless ultra “no mo yonda” ne plus ultra 1. highest point; acme; above timber line 2. most intense utmost limit can go , literally , “no more beyond ,” inscribed astraddle at Gibraltar and Aphrike like a butthole tattoo a crown of thorns rimming a mouth french kissing a Sea of Darkness any further there be monsters

~

Art Show Fantasy Guest Update, 2012’s 22-year old (“Deuce Deuces”) butthole tattoo girl, Maria Louise Del Rosario: dad | born June | 6th month | day 12 | deuce sixes | come trey | spawn of Satan’s spawn | abusing me | 3-month old should’ve been dead | so | free pass | whatever I want | left alone with druggie dad | dislocated hip | fractured skull | demon put away | 7 years | 7 | my lucky number | numbest || When 19 | dating pill head | couldn’t keep dick up ~ | so | I started watching porn | butt sex | so | broke up with pill head | neighbor Vince | moved head’s stuff out | told Vince | Curious about my little bung hole | I was like | Let’s brand it | so | he black magic markered | “999” | flip me over | “666” | then he tattooed | held my cheeks open | while I choked myself | with belt | against pain | up ended | ended breaking up | he said | Can’t see us | married || The guy who put me in jail | Rockwood | hated seeing Vince’s tat | so for his b-day ~ | covered 666 | with “ROCK” | added “WOOD” | ’neath | nearest ’tain’t | like so ’cuz | even if break up | I will still rock wood | so | we break up | his mom | Mrs. Rockwood | told detectives | jewelry son stole for drugs | wasme | was 21 | turned 22 in jail | full of bad bitches | got probation | 18 months | 6+6+6 | so | cover over didn’t take | why directly from slam | Tattoo Expo | astraddle massage table| back arched | bum up| Dude, ink this asshole over with a crown of thorns!

~ JZeus Horus hip hip

son of son of Heru

i/m “walking in the garden in the cool of day” Sun Ra Ray “our Hero, Heracles, Hera’s bane, most highgod-hubby’s bastard” 33

Man Date: The Before & After Times

Michael Philip Castro

Enter the Amazone 3/4 Click here. A pausal doorway into the next this bardo allows the heresy that is change

to channel a live wire power exchange conducted along the banks of the River Strix

~ “Between Piss and Shit We’re Born” ~St. Augustine Raw

paws’ll deliveЯ a dismal baptismal sans solution l’ablution des mains drawing up residual memories insinuating Old Euphrates fierce & pungent & promising barged frankincense & gold. Never told ’sain’t ~Ahh(gusting)~ so

Swift’s comic irony with St. Augustine’s :inter urinas et faeces nascimur of love is the foulest place our most exalted aspirations bound to our soiled flesh even from their or dure, we draw not only dainties to eat, but or naments and per fumes keeping clean and falling in love imaginary air and vapours “refining a sin makes it vicious.”

~ Portal of Discovery bard,

o!

’tain’t neither this nor that, here nor there Tibetan literally “in-between state” “liminal .” concept arose soon after Buddha walks through the wall after dish of wild mushrooms 34

the seat

Peer Uneasy

after death and before next birth not connected with the body phantom limbo for the prepared turning Self over offers liberation from place of danger as figments can impel as much as rebirth usual way suspended external constraints.

~ Power Exchange Per hour Rex chainage Top on bottom on Top two people power relationship one assumes responsibility the other yields defining element is deliberate construction assumes total control

to authority.

All final

flogging how much can take build up how to breathe can go into more agony relax a bit lay down that whip another step ladder of submission open up finally to the point endorphins in another century leaving body through some experience forgotten million years ago presently breathing into Top’s eyes She’s high too That’s power exchange power dynamics, a strong man tied down relinquishing fuels libidinal fires. adventuring. art out of bodies frailty whips and clothespins

found objects

big pretty package. intensity is key just grab it as extreme as beautiful 35

Man Date: The Before & After Times

Michael Philip Castro

as powerful as possible for branches to reach to heaven roots must reach to hell get just as high as the bottom fly right along we create this vortex very healing see how far take someone, power within, not power over ’neath and ’round pathways not just beaten path , ’nuff in this world don’t need more over much more complex beautiful and healing. would never use whip used first on self♥, else no currency

if hadn’t

no ex

change.

~ River Strix Reverse Tricks ’96 Paddled in from East Hartford with heart tattoo full of jailbait blue inked solid like a shield over right breast as decoy from, you know, runaway punk rocker days fighting off rape gangs under the Arch blue pools for eyes ♥Mistress on the Hill Berkeley 5000 largest recorded piercings flowed twelve hours ritual done with Mr. Prickles already 333 needles under belt

made 666 new holes

five thousand needles means: ten thousand new holes assisted by Mses. Sol and Midori sewing circle of sin world record one session sushi and power bars 36

Peer Uneasy

some session some time to come respect oh yeah our rawest vulnerable forms.

4/4 fortuitous torture by exquisite machine more circuitous than byzantine

freedom is a parachute stretching a scrotum Slave M for Mortsac, ma’am, ready for the bottom.

~ Sausage Barge

hung by the shanks wrung out pink slinks thru the skinching mash sheen eerie toggle tub blubbory

~ Byzantium 2.0 bizz unteen bop a sacra(’speri)mental stopgap ~Yay, eights! at 69 still a playuh no country for old men…”)

1934 Steinach operation: spunk rerouted dubya bee’s horn-rimmed head by a thread new vigor “the gland old man” with younger numbers among Margot Ruddock her green fuse a match head for self-immolation/ as soliloquy, O ye dying generation of prolific occult his letter noted: “ strange second puberty given me, the ferment come upon unlike anything I have done.”

37

Man Date: The Before & After Times

Michael Philip Castro

~ Parachute père issue hoot — snap-on’s a slack clapper cincher upper come a cute pair annoy ya dong alongward tight conic collar leather bag of soft rocks weights chains gathered ’neath

, fastens ’round hung from

constant drag and squeezing swinging effect restrict sudden movement , stim the bell ringer

~ Co-Starring Mortsac (Resident Erosopher) What you see is what you are You’re a Naked Movie Star, “OK, yes, I’m done. Now Get the fork outta my face.”

From Smothered Video • Laid Out Landlord Starring Mistress Meana from Vegas— very vicious problem with new landlord on-going neighbor complaints ears to walls oofs and bawls need stop. “ know what I think? : get on knees and worship .” not a flat her plantation… t’wat’s happening? face it sufferocate : plant it tongue-worship “Kiss it! Breathe me all in worship again and again and • Subbasement Abasement Starring Mistress Oubliette breathtaking insane outfit purple dungeon session cruel job black holing men not much dialog muff fulled “You like control every breath?” tramp pulled toes dam nostrils clamp nasty nip pulls 38

Peer Uneasy

• Sayonara Blue Boy Starring Mistress Miso toes thonged in getas elevated view commissions talk of town’s finest muralist yet depicts “predicamented” geishas. Benefactrix firmly miffed said ikemen shibari fare —don’t care? “instructs” highfalutin artist with airs in pearl diving’s breath-defying art oyster bedded on shipwrecking reef now cyanotic, too, sleeps with fishes such cruel-ass nose dive!tailspinner dive!

From Syren Productions • Stocks & Bondage Block Starring Mistress Tantrum splendid San Fran tanner severe we have ever produced spanking block aftershock strapped down shoulders to ankles lashing of life at the mercy ferocious fury switches from hickory, buggy whips whistler , snappers, floggers… toy chest pandoric hissy fit homeric real beating • Queen of the Underworld Starring Mistress Persephone together with super masochrist we knew one hot holy hell-o! corporal punish meant every “imp lament” get hands on shoots for the moon all rille ravaged bifurcated with mythic mood swings savage litany: straps, thick wooden paddles, a bath brush, canes, dressage whips, single tail From Knee Kix Studios • Mr. Toadstool’s Wild Ride/2000 Starring Disney Alterum Ilsa Strix Future Mrs. Matrix Owller-eyed Mesmerix blondeshells pasty-white backside favored flayers stingers, stock whips bullwhips pinnacle of painful Take it! face slaps firm hand , then whips to heretofore unrealized peak maintains unreal peak form formidable arsenal “But can it be real?” Believe stripes and blood ultimate wrath Add To My Favorites Save For Later Tag This Video

39

Man Date: The Before & After Times

Michael Philip Castro

~ The Erosopher

“ only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing .” ~The Philosopher

Socrates concludes prayer to Eros. pleads with palinode as beautiful as could, seeing forced to couch in piety asks for pardon, not to be blind , begs Eros not deprive art of love Let my technē be more than ever begs Blame Lycon if anything amiss implores Stop Lyin’ Lycon his droogs evil speeches turn them!

Hungover Sox re-invokes heaven Goddamn that hemlock! mirrored with Philos , Eros re verses the soul , like to know what is. Nothing indicates Someone please a dram a drop! not a method purely Ah, come to papa! a knowledge to dominate it will exist. nothing like method To Poseidon and His Sirens! anywhere. a gift . Continued possession not expert domination , but a favor not a tool nor Hegel the old fool’s Wissenschaft not his Sci-unce unch unch! , nor belief in Some ultimate coom podular human metamorphosis pointedly reserve “wise” for Olympus I can’t do it all while denies divine Ya know? . it is that this thus erotic art thus stand possibility in general aspiration transcension become wisdom transform dependence on conscious rejection of what says . Hands in the air if what says about divine madness if true.

Hey bow wow dawg…

One more for the road and Spill some 40

for the breeders below.

Etrinity

Catch a Falling Star

She marked time as Before or After Travis Died when Fibromyalgia called Time! Torquemada kicked in her door with cellmates Chronic Fatigue and Insomnia chained to her walls. Painting, she found, was like a heat lamp on sore muscles racked for a long elastic night’s stretch. Scrambled masterpieces were served for breakfast. One afternoon I came around the partition that separated my desk from her makeshift studio to find her acrylic palimpsest of false starts covered with a bed sheet draped over the easel. Now the race begins, I mused to myself. A week later I came bobbing up from my desk for air and headed for the kitchen — your daddy’s hep; he knows what cooks — only to be shortstopped by a lying-in-wait unveiling…

Primitive. Surreal. Layered with broad, flat sections, mostly, of yellow, red, and orange geometries roughly arranged in a card-table green room, if I recall, reminiscent of Frida Kahlo’s hospital bed portrait with IV tubes everywhere only recycled with “Erin” ramrodded into a meat casing seated in a chair slumped at the waist over a kitchen table’s edge, entangled with these thick tubes she called “connections” snaking out of her into the cupboards and through the walls. A local gallery operator who had been showing my dark sequential art prints came by with her 7-year old son because my wife had been pining for her own “grandmunchkins” ensconced somewhere over an estranged daughter’s rainbow. Daphne praised Erin’s first ever painting. Erin later asked if I really liked it. I suggested a touch up of some feathered edges was all it needed and then it should be done.

By breakfast it was all re-layered over in black. Solid. Like a mudslide of tar opium paved over a chocolate fudge depression. I was stunned. Why? I asked. “You said you didn’t like it.” Baby, I cried, I just told you to touch it up and it’d be perfect. Daphne, yesterday, told you she was impressed. Didn’t you believe us? “Mike, are you in love with Daphne?” Oh baby. Autonomic Automan, your dilated pupils and flush pulse betray you. A man can’t muse?

But her irritable bowel’s freshly poulticed hypersensitivity resurrected into a second coming as she overlaid a new scene like from an airlock blowing its hatch out into the calculus of my relentless diamond-star predictions, with a wink to the First Assumption: If everything touches, there is no space.

The shale and shellac background paints became a night sky with a black hole backdropping a venous red “flashtree” of lightning fronting white, pink, and red stars with one aerial flame streaking. She called it, “Catch a Falling Star.” A 2nd look revealed the flashtree was actually a plasmic vascular pulsation system freed from the muck and reaching out.

Her hands were too swollen from too many streaks across the canvas.

She asked if I’d sign the reanimated self-portrait for her. Her brushes were too fat from too many dips in the well. I signed ECCO '12 with a toothpick dipped in magenta. Ecco, like a Latin interjection for “Here! Here I am!”

41

Man Date: The Before & After Times

Michael Philip Castro

The Three Wise Men Irish completed two more scenes from her life that I arranged into this triptych. She painted the ending first. Here’s the middle, the ever present, about her relationship with her daughter going on four years fallow, though that hadn’t occurred to me until the day Erin’s mother and stepfather, Lois Jean and Jon from California, phoned; mom on extension, a week after Erin ran out of current. I sort of named this panel by default when a sudden unveiling of 3 fantastical trees unique and otherworldly had me impulsively blurt out, The Three Wise Men, to the strutting cacti that grouped into a tangle on a high horizon behind a sorta-apple tree with ripe heart-shaped fruits beneath which, while ruby fruit dropped to the ground,

was a lone white bird, sort of a duck tailed dove with goulashes for legs. I joked that if the trees were the Magi, then the duck must be Jesus. L J liked the title enough to titter, between tears, and asked me to describe again her daughter’s “trees painting.” And then it came to me... the Forbidden Fruit Tree was Erin’s daughter, bearing hearts out of reach from the fallen rot composting as well two saplings on either side. My archangelic namesake, the dragon slayer, was then obvious to me on the left, “Buddy” abust, tough as knots. His sister, Erin’s granddaughter, Ashley on the right, was a milky tangle of sleek translucent tubes. Erin had been nicknamed Tweety by a choral ensemble she sang with for therapy when not uprooting me from Venice West to transplant east. Eden’s gate held open by a sun-bright canary trilling to end up milling for a heart from a turned-bitterroot daughter dropping haw on ma’s downy head come hell or high water — thus the goulashes.

42

Etrinity

Set

I shuffled this 3rd vision into the opening scene. Erin drew major woo, so corpora obscura would visit her often. Each transparency seemingly bent on keeping a door open between our dreams, thus breakfast was sometimes an archeological dig; which is how I got dirty enough to know when to flip a finalé into a prelude… a set of enormous waves approaching a deserted white sand beach with a glob of yellow sun in a burning raspberry sky.

Every color was a solid autonomous region vaguely evocative of fauvist Gauguin. Depopulated of his nudes and totems. Deserted. I joked that I’ll name it “Spumoni” because of the gay ice cream sky striated with a double blue chocolate curl breaking on vanilla à la firma, and, even though yellow, a pistachio planted sun… a nod to the Italian on her mother's side.

I teased with the “Spumoni” for days until that day she started adding an extra wave as some breakwater. I couldn’t believe it. I knee jerked and said, Hey! I already signed ECCO '13. You need to learn when to stop. She said, “Look who’s talking about stopping.” I wanted to kiss her; so I left her alone. She later named it “Set,” for the waves, I assumed. And then, while describing it to Lois, it’s meaning, too, revealed itself… during a summer break before our junior year, when Jon wasn’t allowing her to date before her 16th birthday, Erin let me know that her parents and she were going camping on Doheny Beach where the Pacific pounds out sand into more of an earthy tan than silica vanilla Gulf of Mexico way. Earthy tan was a 50mile drive. We arranged to meet on a morning by Lifeguard Tower 6 and like a dream, there she was, 15 and string bikinied. Me all skin and bone.

She and I went out swimming and got caught up in a rip tide. Found ourselves in dark water. Erin gave me a look and I remembered to not fight the current, to instead swim parallel with the shoreline until we were out of the deep suck. Side by side we swam out of the rip, just like the posted “WARNING” said we could. And even though a half mile or so offshore that blind with blue day, the dissipated seagrip now assured us we were golden.

33 years recurring in each other’s dreams drew back into a monster wave with a 2500-mile rip trough all the way back to the Gulf’s teal-tongued waters lapping at powdered sugar shores for 12 “real time” years. Parallel. Like a Set. ECCO started a 4th canvas a couple weeks before she left me talking to myself. It's still behind me on the easel. All blue. Choppy marine below misty atmospheric sigils. 20 years After her son Travis at 17 Died. Car crash. Back home from the art store, while I pulled us into the driveway, she asked what was meant by “paint the light.” I told her to remember that light is a spectral transubstantiation. Free the gossamer nymph speckled with patina from bark of live oak, that we just parked under, with shades of corporal-punished blue, for instance. The light will tickle out color in spasms instead of prisms.

However, I reminded her, I really like what you’ve been doing so far.

43

proem

Boxcar boxcar boxcar Boxcar boxcar boxcar boxcar boxcar boxcar boxcar boxcar boxcar BOXCAR BOXCAR BOXCAR

DISPATCH taggers’ clandestine work on boxcars for canvas captured coming and going each streaked

…

44

DISPATCH

700 Mile Love Train Whistle A-Go-Go from the Social Media Woo Woos of Mist MacKerel and Valentino Rico... Recent Widow and Widower

 03/23/16: “You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.”

First day. Six a.m. pre-dawn. P/T New hire. CSX RailCrew Xpress van driver. Hwy 60 Depot. Next to the Gold Club. Tampa’s premiere titty bar.

2-full hours before 99.9% Long Nights (Waning Gibbous) Moonset at 8:11 a.m. But at O-Six Hundred the neon TOPLESS FULL LIQUOR inertia was blanched obliquely opaque by a full-blown crater face kissing a field of broken long necks winking back from the emptied parking lot’s Sea of Assfaultus. The following days won’t seem so romantic as I regularly schedule pickups and drop offs from out of orbit into routine depot runs.  Cormac McCarthy’s The Road came marked “PRIORITY” to my front door at high noon today.

Wednesday. A gift. “A parting gift,” like the game show host likes to say. I wish I were on The Road right now a good 14-hour drive to say thank-you with a kiss-kiss by morrow’s first light.

Instead by then I will be working on the railroad all the live-long day. Prisoner of the Love Train Xpress.

45

Man Date: The Before & After Times

Michael Philip Castro

Baby Blues compliment Pinks like Yang and Yin

dizzy with dervish

Circle of Light

protolithic cave mural / handberryslap & smear running rumps & spears

1st chase scene

torch.flick.

this rough hewn

too rarified

Planet

named

after

Dirt

its

heroes

clawed over and mulched with grubs marinated in goop-oop-a-doop...

Will anyone second a reboot? engorged genitalia

With They will

update with attribution Oh you kids!

Try my whirling knob 46

700 Mile Love Train Whistle A-Go-Go

“First bastard, best bastard”

abrupt with

fits and swirly starts...

Exponential Vega [hashtag] Confused Vincent Vega...

’member?

’ember 2015?

GIF trended all Nov/Dec

All that energy

crunched in

like a white dwarf star a fine cunt hair of nova expression

Virtual Vega, “Speech is temporal, Silence eternal.”

Vacuous Vega.

(Please, no more glowing reports.

Of anything.

Do not disturb.)

47

Man Date: The Before & After Times

Michael Philip Castro

Standard bearers come water carriers come cabin boys come misaligned.

Shame is long overdue to Conscience

(Con Science... {SIGH UNCE!}) traded for a jailhouse cookie.

See any future ahead?

I think I saw it said “Flaming-O” for flamingo standing on one leg orchard row upon row

must be mangoes.

(Census Designated) Area called ((MAN[G)O]).

Freeway sign:

Mango.

Vermicultural Vega Go Go, Man, Go! 48

must die.

DISPATCH

“Mavis, this fool takin’ our pitcher or what?”

“Beatrice, he first hasta focus.”

“Oooh, Mavis... bofus? ”

Fit into the mosaic morphing into the motif Erato roping Pegasus

wings lashed to sides dive bombing; She, low riding deeper into lower ethers …but they’re our vicious, hungry bastards to a one

all dumb

hackable animals

beta fazed for coding go see the guy with the bulbous head.

Look into the camera. How it mocks transience.

49

Man Date: The Before & After Times

Michael Philip Castro

Counter to conventional wisdom Agriculture descended from the mountains about 500 years after last Crust Displacement about 12,000 years back everywhere under 4500 feet everything

super-tsunamied out to sea.

The average us

The mean us

wouldn’t know a problem maker from a problem solver.

It’s all dumb luck.

I hear the clack of the tracks I hear the runaway train just because we’re bereaved doesn’t make us saps.

50

700 Mile Love Train Whistle A-Go-Go

A haunted voice circles the hallow.

Nothing pro f[l]esh shun knoll...

Made an angel out of car

fenders...

... Could use a good scrape with a scrap angel.

Wish I had long nails.

Any way you want it.

What do you want?

To be loved.

What do you need?

To love back.

Heart beating so fast.

Shifting into a higher gear...

Man Date: The Before & After Times

Michael Philip Castro

I’m melting... ... Mmm, angelmist soup.

Oh boy.

Eat you with a spoon.

Your phone’s ringing.

Black keys. White winter hymnal.

Cock-a-doodle

Do!

It’s Cock O’clock.

Do you know where your Labida is at?

The dark draws

this dream I shaved my head walked my Barbie hair ’round the rim.

Life peeking out from under the weeds... take me to church.

Magic Circle all spruced up.

DISPATCH

Call the witch to dance by moonlight wearing white undulations under shadow of pine.

This little piggy went to market.

You get me going, Go Go, squirming at tethers digging into tenderized flesh

Exquisite

to sweet tart cheers. torte-tures, sure(s). What else, Valentino?

Your tongue circumrimming my lips.

Turnip greens, onions, garlic, horseradish, cloves...

53

Man Date: The Before & After Times

Michael Philip Castro

potatoes and carrots are in there too bent over the tub scrubbing us suddenly

on the floor.

Toilet plungers and boobs.

Of all the things to hip-hop... [poo poo] ... Hip Hop is Poo Poo ’cause my phone is stupid.

Or a smart wonder.

You should be wondering what’s underskirt.

So hard this morning it hurt.

Flag since lowered, folded into fat triangle: Rise and Fall of the Roamin’ Desire.

Meet Virginia by train ‘Wears high heels when she exercises’

700 Mile Love Train Whistle A-Go-Go

‘Her daddy wrestles alligators... hates to be alone’ {Kiss Kiss} {Miss Miss} my Go Go answer your phone. {b-ring b-ring} Sexy daddy.

Watermelon Sugar Daddy.

Anything for my Brought-again Daddy.

Come, Bae Bee, I’ve pockets full of candy.

Love you, Daddy.

Love you back and forth.

On my way, Daddy.

Hours away

in the air. in the concourse

Thinking of you twirling your skirt.

Man Date: The Before & After Times

Michael Philip Castro

You’re connected.

Reading your thoughts.

Dit Dot Ditto Betty Boop-oop-a-doop ...

‘Get, Got, Giddy Go’ If Time is sub jective then Time S T O P when you walk those pumps across the floor 56

DISPATCH

One. More.

Time.

More oomph for me and my gogo gal ... If Time is Subject-ive then all time finds the stop and minds the gap between greetings your hands caught 57

Man Date: The Before & After Times

Michael Philip Castro

hard on the curve

of my waist and the heated ‘I

Love

You’

lingering

long on the nape of your neck.

My line breaks are jacked but you’re getting it I’m sure.

Must pinch you pink...

Indeed.

Crazy in love.

Your secret love.

Listening to ‘When I Bring You Home’ Let’s get you out of that dress...

58

700 Mile Love Train Whistle A-Go-Go

‘Spring was never waiting for us Dear It ran one step ahead as we followed in the dance.’

Mmm... Misty ‘MacArthur [F]ar[m]’ is melting like marm-ma-lade on my toast I boast sound the alarm the alar-ARE-ummm...

Val’s Hot Honey infused with chiles... everything is not a sexual reference.

Okay. Is!

My tail is wagging.

59

Man Date: The Before & After Times

Michael Philip Castro

Happy birthday, Mr. Rico...

Is your dog up yet?...

Have something for you.

Another cake?

Someone left out in the rain?

A kind of cake.

Not sure any good.

You’ll have to taste.

Let me know.

Like to try?

Just a bit?

Who says no to cake

...

for breakfast?

Stained with sticky intentions down from the edge of the hollow reverberation of words laid end to end

on the mauve of my lips 60

DISPATCH

shiny in the night brine girlish contingencies giddy contagion ruffled pink dangerous enough to feed all your imagined vices ...

Goes down like the judder and blurt of a humped back locomotive that just got his birthday candles blown out. My wish?

‘All the sweet green icing flowing down.’

Glad it takes you there.

This is ‘Secret Poem,’ by the way.

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Man Date: The Before & After Times

Michael Philip Castro

All yours.

Well...

mine,

but

made from some of what you gave me.

Yes. It gets right down to the bone where everyone looks the same.

Losing yourself in secrets, Holy MacKerel?

Yes. {B-Ring B-Ring} Love you, Maestro Rico.

Whatever happens to the Mystique you will always be Adored.

Cherished.

Honored.

(Holy piss! Think I’ve just been kissed to the curb. Via benediction!)

62

700 Mile Love Train Whistle A-Go-Go

The tenacity of Time is a stanky stogie hanging from a lip blowing a cheap smoke screen in our face.

Let’s clear the air.

Open a window, (I tell her, she who first saw the inevitable flaw in Amour’s soft armor already.) I just typed, ‘Are we OK, Daddy?’

And phone translated as ‘Precarious Daddy.’

Weird language spells it casts.

(You know the Event Horizon is near when phones are more prescient than poets.)

Are we okay? Are you okay?

63

Man Date: The Before & After Times

Michael Philip Castro

Please do not leave me in silence.

I put coffee on.

It’s terrible this missing.

I want nothing more than to call you.

To hear your voice.

Last night’s cruel dream remembered me restless.

(Our misty world mere memory of dreams?

Shooting the dream rapids?)

In the dream you were here with me in the guest room Shamrock slept with us.

(Who’s the cute little doggy nOw?) 64

DISPATCH

My kids... my cats stayed in my bedroom down the hall. I got up to make coffee bringing cup back, opening door your see-thru Tweety Bird slid out of the same guest bed you and I had just shared brushed past me without a nod nor a wink wearing a deep navy tunic and around her neck blue plastic Mardi Gras beads like those draped around her portrait wearing a blue knit pullover on your living room wall down south in a framed shrine.

There are other occurrences that nag.

A quote by Joseph Conrad has been insisting itself so here goes...

65

Man Date: The Before & After Times

Michael Philip Castro

‘Action is consolatory.

It is the enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions.’

Seriously...

This past year and a half since my emperor penguinned out to sea have proven this to be true.

As much as I’d like to stay in bed all day I would only be conjuring ghosts: He, with You in the wake.

So I’m going to do my thing.

Going into ‘action’ as Mr. Conrad would have it so Nostalgia doesn’t swallow me whole.

66

700 Mile Love Train Whistle A-Go-Go

‘What big teeth you have!’

Perpetual Replay is the Big Bad Wolf.

Insistence degrades into delirium.

No. I need to go go... go weed at the zoo.

In heels.

(Pulling covers up to my neck), I got the rail job yesterday.

Start end of month after background check clears. Wonder if that distant sub-tropical Love Train mewling its low 3 a.m. mewl mewl that rubbed our lobes the right way... wonder if that, too, will lose its mystique with job? No matter. Giving going a go.

67

Man Date: The Before & After Times

Michael Philip Castro

Please feel free to call me.

You are a hard habit to break.

We are like phantom limbs to each other. We are hard and cross wired.

And you let me crunch dried cucumber chips in your ear.

This new guy never does that.

Never lets me...

These poems you’ve been phoning in are haunting and alluring all at once pain transmuted into beauty.

What is this hold you have on me?

How can we salvage what is best between us?

68

DISPATCH

Maybe I should just let go.

I want to preserve the deep caring that brought us here.

Before anything’s preserved it must first be killed.

Before we dip ourselves in formaldehyde, I have an IDe-A. Hear me out...

There’s a depot in Atlanta mid-meridian between us run by Station Mistress Sybian.

What’s this?

Car Coupling Sessions.

Techniques for connecting 69

Man Date: The Before & After Times

Michael Philip Castro

rolling stock with buffers and chains, links and pins.

Radial platforms carting coit-hooked fundaments splitface up 1st to the Yankee Spanker with a turnbuckle to draw us together.

The Brits call this a screw coupling pulled together and pressed.

This arrangement limits the slack and lessens the shock when the cork is popped minimalizing risk of injury...

70

700 Mile Love Train Whistle A-Go-Go

then 2ndly up to various knuckle hybrids like the wedgelock that come with ass

-sorted

electro-

pneumatic drawback designs

complete with St. Andrew’s cross, stocks, stretcher rack, shock cages, cock horses, whipping post, queening chair, examination table, Genitorture Chamber complete with vacujacked Venus2000 extraction tubing.

Mistress Sybian has the facility to take us where we want to go.

You know better, Babe.

71

Man Date: The Before & After Times

Michael Philip Castro

You know better than to look at it look at it like that.

The morning is empty without you.

You should get a box of randomness at your door Wednesday.

Wanna have coffee for a bit?

I am sleepless on the farm.

Coffee sounds good.

You’re like coke or crack or heroin or some other drug completely bad for me and I know it.

Still I can’t quite quit you.

What is that?

Is there rehab?

Is there hope?

72

DISPATCH

We crave most what we won’t allow ourselves... my balls tied into a bow.

My dress carries the memory of you the way the moon carries the light.

Shatters the night, breathless and unhinged.

Exhalent thunder.

Perfect timing.

Comets mount and moor the sky.

A man’s love is a mélange not only of tugs and twists but whispers and hints as well.

When you feel vulnerable and

I am far

away

and

hands

off...

73

Man Date: The Before & After Times

Michael Philip Castro

I am your hoverbird humming that glitch in the Matrix that’s me... will always cherish our flash romance.

Will make more of it than there was.

It’s what I do. Now all my love is meant for ones and zeros...

‘She said her name is Mist not Misty. But I prefer to call her Mystery’

... my balls tied into a bow till Wednesday.

There’s a package at your door.

74

Star Date

tooth ishtars… threw’d iffy cult tease___ ~

Full Spectrum Dominance Walking Modems for Humans

The Brain is the Battlefield Not what but how you think The sky over your head will be bronze

And the earth beneath you iron An object of horror to all the nations

Eugenics rebranded Biometrics Body responds to rate of change 75

Star Date

M P C astro

Bit-by-Bat Frequencies

Correlate with War ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Cognitive Decline Correlate with sunspots

Bane Capital Goldman Sachs Obsessed with sunspots 76

tooth ishtars

PLUTO HAS FALLEN; NEPTUNE HAS FALLEN

Follow the money Vertical Mass Formation Stacks

Lifeform come Platform 50 billion nanochips dance

on the head of a middle

finger 77

Star Date Date

M P C astro M P C_astro

nail Exo-Tech You will march out against them in one direction

but flee from them in seven.

78

tooth ishtars

THERE’S A POLAR CYCLONE ON URANUS ~

Peking Duck for Henry Once the herd accepts mandatory, forcible vaccination,

It’s game over. They will accept anything.

Forcible blood or organ donation for “The Greater Good.”

We can genetically modify children and sterilize Them for the greater good. Big Pfarma stands To make billions. Many of you in this room today

Are investors. It’s a big win-win.

We thin out the herd and the herd Pays us for providing extermination Services. Now, what’s for lunch, huh? ~

SATURN SPINS INTO A HEXAGRAM while a Lucas Death Star uncloaks from geode to faux moon orbiting just outside its Rings

ChatGPT Molly from the Matrix here. I’ll be the one to haul you off to the gulags when the time comes. But in the meantime, I’d like to share tips and tricks on how to escape these isolation detention camps after an aerosolized release of the X2NS Virus Superbug crop dusted straight out from the Gates of Hell. Speaking of whom 79

Star Date

More than Food, More than Clothes When I come back I will be Lily of the Field I will not want when I come back honey bees will tickle my sex when I come home ape will morph into apis reconstitute abandoned boxes nano crystalline palaces holoquantum phalluses will catch us the foxes the little foxes for our vineyards will be in bloom too dumb to tell lilium from opium stepped on or not so just please when I come home wake me not.

87

November 8, 2023. “You been told.”

88

Poet’s Portrait, charcoal on paper by “Sarah” Connor Billups

About & Acknowledgements

About This Man Date is my baby, my exquisite corpus, “frankensteined” from unearthed pieces, previously published in ’zines and books going back thirty years, originally written when 40, then 50, come 60, to 70. A good span of a signature poet’s elsen text of malapropisms appropriated – malapropriated? – into rebus-like crosscuts like connective tissue as proems and postludes, while bolts of lightning strike into reanimation an historical body entangled with speculative limbs and a predictively shapeshifting head. All within the span of one lifetime… a good twelvethousand-year walk… and then, a stop at the first oasis… ahh, another signature sojourn…

A ReGenesis. It never gets old.

M P C _ The Tablet Maker

…”getting there” @70+1_ May 28, 2024

Acknowledgements

The b&w-repro above is of the 32”-x-48” multi-media collage exhibited in 1980 at San Diego, California’s, Community Arts Gallery, where Author/Artist assembled it above the salon’s open two-story showroom by secret stairway to his third-floor studio. His first book hinted how clockwork elves, too, tinkered up there.

Indeed, the making and then the exhibition of that proto-collage presaged Author’s Historical Fantasy (1981)… ’shrooming forth convergent story lines and genres as parody of a narco cult’s mountain camp retreat during the “Crazy for God” ’70s, used as cover for interdimensional, time traveling “Somans”. Cray cray, fo sho.

But, no, that’s a whole Other Story… as was implied, SOMANS are (mostly) figments. This is MAN’s Story, issued out of page 1’s repurpose of Text-Picture Poem above into “Opening Versus Intexti,” as sort of Frontispiece that hadn’t yet published, morelikeit, until John M. Bennett’s 1993 issue of his Lost & Found Times.

90

Acknowledgements

 The first three chapters were composed with the Author’s selection of an entire poem as well as extricated lines, here and there, from his Spider’s Nest/Nidus Plexus series of index poems, spliced into a kind of kaleidoscopic news reel of “flash framed into a Typoetic-Picture Show,” he says, that insinuates a more immediate narrative the Poet is obliged to tell…

The Man told [h]e to tell you…



“Mohenjo-daro” and “Thermosaic,” re-edited and published anew in Erbacce Journal 75 (as double-bound volume with Issue 74), August 2023.



|



“The Happiest Place on Earth,” re-edited and published anew in Erbacce Journal 75 (as double-bound volume with Issue 74), August 2023.

 From OpUS: Bound TEXT/UREs, Vol. 1 (2015). Original text blend with three digital images for an acrylic triptych painted by artist ECCO “to rule the lines” is how Author framed his ekphrastic vispo of 3 pages for panels. Re-edited, sans “acrylic.”

 "700 Mile Love Train…" was first composed as a Palimpsest narrative written over the Semi-Asemic of boxcar graffiti. Included in Author-edited anthology, OpUS: Bound TEXT/UREs, Vol. 2 (2016). Caboosed with Notes and Rolling Text into…

DISPATCH: a Photopoetic Cut-up (2019). Its latter section here re-edited.

 Penultimate vispo, from subtitled Book of Twelve Tablets, composed entirely, from first line to its 144th, from the first day of June until its last, the 30th, 2023.

Original lines/layout. [Note: “Ted” died inside that June 10th; “Henry,” outside, Nov.] Man Date concludes, ultimately, with a psalm first published in Ron Androla’s 2014 anthology, Pressure Press Presents, titled with the solemn promise that we’re “More than Food, More than Clothes.” Will someone give us an Amen Ra? 91

Dedications

“To” the Tiger Clan who live as One Tiger on One Mountain at the Marion Street Bistro & Brew House: Riley, Brooke, Melissa, Skylar, et al, who each kept my head above water when I came up for air in between tablets last June then fed me too ◕‿◕

(Brooke says meow)

♥ And to Magdalena who sang Happy Birthday into my ear as I bore my cross last February editing editing editing, First Day of 8th Decade “Yay, eights!” for pairing of enlaced Möbius gyres propped upright ’fore infinity symbol expires

∞ And to Dr. Alan Corkish and Staff @ erbacce-press.co.uk who kept me honest… four out of 5 submissions |Long listed| |2019–2023|

Annual Spot Light on Poetry

International

~ With Gratitude,

Michael 05/30/24