if you read this, thank you, and farewell!

And waving goodbye is just as significant as waving hello

but as tales are told

the proverbial hourglass has drained too much

and returned too little

in ways that consumed the house of my health

which caused a beige like sadness to invite itself in

on account of this artist’s neurological inability

and sometime frantic efforts

to read the room’s social fruit

and yield structured normalcy,

reaping instead

self provoked

punishing frailty

but…

this artist‘s heart

was captured by the kindness of a precious few

and in this digital playground

accepted both sweet praise

and sour apathy

while always longing

to be kind and to give away something for everyone

until the overload of painting the soul

in words both bold and meek

bore the strength of crushing internal armies

and why this artist makes it urgent code

to know when the social machine

is something too hot to keep on hand

so…today this artist

waves goodbye

to those gentle few

and thanks the ones who showed pleasant curiosity

and welcoming sweetness

be it in sporadic glimpses

or in open eyed constancy

now…

to the sullen apples…

well, you may be bruised

but not rotten

so…

spin your moral compass

to bring you victory in the age worn art of etiquette

because cold unkindness

will only rob you

of that imaginative sensibility

and innocent joy

that you feel trembling in your excited hand

at the ready, to put out for others to cherish…

now once again to my friends here, please take care

and:

STAY KIND.

STAY BRILLIANT.

CREATE A FEAST OF CREATIVITY.

and this is the last thing to be written

says my heart’s murmuring little voice,

spoken loudly to my pals here:

THANK YOU.

-TGG (and friend)

January 31st, 2025

I give

because the discomfort of vulnerability

breaks my bones

to add flesh

(and fill in the lonely parts)

with

self flagellation

rebirth ritual

toward healing

my soul scarred carriage

-and this loathsome necessity

confirms

what I already know

(but surprises me still)

-at how cold and impenetrable

some bone breakers can be.

You can say one thing a thousand ways

or use a thousand ways to say one thing

because 

negative space

harbors both sacred and profane

like galleries of pastel painted suburbia

signed by Nietzsche.

he was killing himself every minute

where years are measured in cosmic calendar days

and near december 30th he began running

even further from himself

but little did he know

that while the 31st had the reaper

on standby

january 1st held open

the arms of God.

Screaming into the void was raw primal therapy

for him and in his higher

than bonded blue beyond mind

he crowned himself a king

of somewhere hung up on ocean eyes and needle cloud skies

but the last time I saw his skeleton face

was when I made an almost tumbling

exit out his getaway hearse because the breaks in his head

had corroded and burst and

I could never say farewell dear friend

to the best one of all but clearly his pride

was a ruined song left soldered sonic melted plastic

buzzing burn that perfumed dirty death on the wingless crippled

beetle breath that spied out his black hole of a mouth

oh the things he screamed made him shake and flattened stars

someplace somewhere other than here and now

and I miss you my sad friend but how I still love you

just as you are

just know that the trade off with your ecstasy of knowing too much

is your inability to survive even the little stones

thrown at your diamond skull and lampshade skin heart

but I love the way you burned your outline

as a piss off to the stars

because the night enlarged itself to accommodate

your unrestrained shadow

and you still cut such a wounded smile

when I need reminders that all was not lost.

They sidled through the hatchery of carcasses and boiled

bounty of plenty, where faceless jars and cans all blurred

into a snail crawl of tedium and blank stares that looked at the

overhead lights like they were thirsting for a mothership or

some golden sun to blast back from eons ago or a dusty voyage

but they kept walking and their pace was like mall cops denied

respect and dates and their pulse quickened.

she was the first to notice his body and he was the first to notice

that nobody else had noticed what was unmistakably clear:

that the deli counter clerk had fallen over gross plastic tubes of

air conditioner absent bologna and sheets of congealing cheese

and the flies had come not for his soul but for the wasted plastic

that was marketed as food.

She started to dart like a fish from being stabbed through the

rippling stream magic mirror and he checked the clerk’s clammy pulse

and the clerk was barely alive or was once dead but crawled back to life.

They started to lose their shinola but realized that fussing to a fevered

scream was about as useful as selling Elvis earrings to Bostonian bankers

or convincing sons of the soil to invest in bitcoin and solar panels

so they carried the poor moaning bastard through aisle 6 right up to 10

and used his ghost like face to batter open the outside door.

They dropped him without grace next to a puddle of piss, checked the poor

bastard’s wallet, raided his pockets and lint fell out like funny cosmic clockwork

to let the detectives on scene have a clue of some sort I guess.

Anyway, they picked up their walk away from marooning the deli clerk who

was 2 days late for his bridge club where he was supposed to get an honor

of some kind and turns out that the deli clerk lived and identified the couple

as the 2 mall cops he had mocked on Saturday night and it was just all a

weird cosmic mind melt that karma grabbed all three by the nuts because

the clerk went to jail for possession and the couple for thievery and all in all

they were the real bad eggs in the grocery store, even worse than that liquid

dog foul they call egg beaters on sale for $3.

All my screamed out regrets have been dug up

from ugly storehouses

best left untouched for the ages

and the mercies I know are silent lips to deaf ear

because nobody cares

if nobody hears.

Half cup empty and half cup full miracles

are where small leaps of faith have their birth

and dance out of my cup

leaving liquid spell trails of both doom and joy for unhatched dreams

hungry for tomorrow’s tide which pulls me out piece by piece

doing a fallen angel’s backstroke in an empty sea

full of great nothing