-. Patrick the typ'a peep who will start shit if you bad-mouth Joan of Arc

A NICKEL IN A PILE OF CHUMP CHANGE Listening is waiting, Audience facing  postured folding chairs, arms folded for some , thoughts broken, crumbling and minutes for most are brittle and the worth of so little for those of us, lonesome and mostly jonesing. Discovered amid his wrecked known effects was this, composed on a phone, one stolen but bought back for a sack. Written as a celebratory narrative. The glorious stories of his neighbors and the theaters of the self created hell people excel in for themselves. A swell little eulogy  PUNCH felt compelled to title “A NICKEL IN A PILE OF CHUMP CHANGE” .A batch of scattered afterthoughts  for THEM who knew him seldom. Day begins, somewhere in this ephemeral universe, BURNING in its eternal purpose, a thundering sun welcomes us with wonders abundant and abohent chores. We segway into the first rays with begging heads and kicking legs. Flinch unfinished wishes and etch a sketch dreams to the ether. Feeling beneath morning addresses mourning, threadbare bedcovers adorning a mess of mattresses scattered in the corner of the foyer floor where loitering royalty and and attending  fiends fend for only themselves as they scurry. . Last evening’s circular prayers were heard with all the resounding fury of the sound of spilled mercury.  Obscured by murmurs, in reticent torrents of intent, rumours are presented first in whispers. This tangible sorrow stirs, this horrible journey through this transitory portal of well ordered squalor,  coursing through discordant corridors going door to door meeting the neighbors up and down the floor. Traipse through its paces, making way down misshapen staircases. There everything smells of misplaced malaise and decorative decay. The waft, unmistakeable of body spray and blood sprayed cotton, oatmeal, rotting proteins and unhappy meals. Count to three, dance this cheated minute, feet kept to the floor, deep seeded steps 1,2.3 then repeat, tangled up feelings of insignificance ever since we began using these substances like a man  words ever since speak with unspeakable eloquence; a reek of dis ease seems to eek from every steamy pore, mine and yours, peeks from behind every peephole blind in the doors. Odious odors routed front to back, wafting door to door, pouring forth ,soaring across the unsafe cracks, flowing forward from the attics through the cardboard floorboards. Last night, several scores of our never bored neighbors were settling unsettling scores with the untoward,  extolling the virtues of mortality strolling around its shores, window shopping in the stores. This morning, billowing smoke pours forth from scored of boarded up, landlord foreclosed Californian street corners. Bypassers, ignorant to the gravity of the tragedy taking place, quicken their pace, averting gaze as the Coroner's panel van in arriving parks nearly in place, escorting another man in haste to the final ride of a like wasted with bravery and graced without a trace of any sort of historical importance. The POPOs have their go at the show, peppering everyone with questions,stepping on toes, while anyone who supposes to know keeps the info even lower down on the down low. Why, as far as these legit detectives see it. Far as any these suffering suffrage can spit is as far as any of this gets or anywhere goes, after all  another boring overdosing junkie won't exactly make it on the morning chat shows. Good morning cyclops cops, propped up at the traffic stops and coffee shops, your Radio Station DJ dropping a song for all you mamas looking to cop, because around here the apocalypse never stops...  traffic sitting static in the lopsided freeway lanes reminds us of dynamic neighbor Cloudhopper Eddie’s veins, shit talking traffic at the standstill, NO FLOW, Jeez, his is another searing egregious register, it’s sinister considering his veins collapsing means records are the only things around happening to be found spinning. Seriously, once the needle fell, settling in upon this son, sinking under his skin, not half finishing, THE RUN HAD BEGUN. Beginning endlessly spinning and to no one’s wonder our son,he was spun!!!  A predator's perdition still young, his funeral journey six feet under already well begun. The “party” is one of greatest celebration and fun, and yet, one thing fucks with his head, it’s the wishing to die when you’re already dead. Here at the only apt at 23rd and will be leading us downhill as we climb to fall. Enjoy a buoyant window inside the lives of the universe rehearsing down the hall. FIRST, we’d show y’all Nowhere Joey waxing poetic to a close knit and stoic audience of clearly enthralled, stoned copesthetic heretics. Clowns in the clouds,warding off their eventual withdrawals. We’d see Joey easily offering broken off pieces of both his manhandled humanity and doses to the pathetic sociopaths and divine pig swine, folks who usually refuse Joey the elopement to finality that comes with suicide, therefore silencing his entitlement to even a bit of peace and/or quiet. Our Boy Joey’s attitude, might and rightly we’ve surmised, is oftentimes not exactly a plethora of flowering gratitude towards the freeloading toads and and flow of stupid students. Some dudes clueless, some don’t come too astute, their name somehow looks cute on their frame.  Amy Relation, making her way in this crazed parade down chastened pavements in a race towards her patient disgrace, she is hastening off the highway to the location of her wasted paycheck and one prays, hopefully a better parking space.   Cents Foolish Susan, a newly ruined usually rent paying tenant in this freak show tent, her soon to be, last penny spent on a quarter sack. She’s a crisis actor and a false flag actress feigning distress. She is hagage, leading a gaggle of depressed fags. Dressed up banging, like she’s alive or maybe tripping, hanging draped herself off a road sign wet and still dripping down on 23rd and Hill Dr.. Meanwhile over in Apt 35, gentile gent, Goodwill Willie’s apartment is drowning in landfill excrement,found smoking crack in the closet, windows surrounded by clown car impounds, paved over holy grounds, $ five hundred a month tenement, where this all goes down, all of this and WOW, a few sweet minutes away from downtown. Cracked neighbors, a cast of the twacked,names already redacted, aren't actors awaiting a call back, they are cast offs after a fashion, passionate hacks, bothered sloths, already aimless,unsteady and practicing their aim. Sharing the same offshore posture, sitting lotus position, pistol-ling poison. Karen Knot. an erased angel, grows distraught feeling her rush, clutching her research papers of string theory and shattered dark matter that much tighter. Muscle Mike, bare haired and bare knuckled fighter winded tightly in dirty white wife beater T, resigned to wandering kite high, wondering where he lost his lighter. Their friends are the casualties having survived the after life, a higher class of lowlife these. indecent innocents who incidentally, enter the room CASUALLY PLAYING WITH A SWITCHBLADE KNIFE Even the most fleeting of non-believers believe these frail walls of this fleabag, and frankly tragic abode so holds a black hole of  the secrets, secretions, depletions, agreements, bandages, damages and thick sacks weighed upon the digital scales of every hopeful lowlife and dopesick misanthrope ever to tie a rope off, feel the cough before wandering off frail and withdrawing down the trail. Tales, legends and stories seldom to anyone tell, treaties of already dope addled thieves and begrieved Ne'er-do-wells, selling and dwelling within slowly roasted and stoned.The loathsome and loaded. loitering without loyalty, where the chicken is stripped bare from the bone. Where the only curse is loneliness and the only thing worse is the company one keeps when alone. Sometimes depression feels so certain even dreaming of happiness hurts. No answers were heard from Saint Sandy Caning, over the sound of her explaining, her misshapen face only appears as if she's always complaining. After all, her neighbor’s ever fainter manners prove exceptionally entertaining and, while always unkempt, the hallways are always kept windswept and raining. In the middle of it all, Fire Starter Carl was himself no martyr, being of seedy late night character, his eyes widening, dimwitted he,blind to his reflection sectioned off and sequestered of direction, Symphony Sid felt safe in the division,Hellen Keller could see he was in need of protection. Hidden amid these outcasts from dignity,those beyond the grasp of sympathy, these infantile nihilists, faint of smile, those whom shame makes no acquaintance, rinsing thin rigs of maintenance ,picking through skinless arms, those needing a bath, elegant gutter trash, the bashers at the bash, survivors of the aftermath, after the garden, poison pigpens guarded by poised shock-collar swine, truant students shooting up parachutes of  tiny little balloons strewn over the avenues,here among the broken and maligned. An address where even in the best of times, one finds laughter only spoken of whilst   jokes land silently bereft of punchlines Drunken Junkies concealing sunken little kitten veins,hard bitten, off topic prophets tossing off at a traffic stop, glad handing  bystanders armed with junkyard canisters, hidden here in the skids, providing dumpster dives and food drives for their kids, yes the tots. The forgotten afterthoughts of the downtrodden. Histories sadly unvisited sons and daughters. Absentee authorities, seen with degrees in revisionist parenting armed with sock puppets and pockets of keys that once upon a time ago,easily opened a little one's golden locket. Children these, latchkey deities obscenely locked out, and it’s all too evident the shock, listening in, and we can no longer tell the difference between parents or the kids through their talk. Babies  teaching themselves to walk, a generation of free range children, should be raised as angels,instead are made to feel since birth in exchange, as worthless as a  nickel in a pile of chump change. Meanwhile what became of those grown tall? Became stolic human frames with interchangeable names, vitriolic and alcoholic. The usual frolic of  two bit users and the abused silently sitting within bloom of RESUMED afternoons, meticulously abusing their spoons. Dead end pockets, lethargic dollars and forwarded postcards from withdrawal in squalor, the candy apple artifice of the bright red register of an artery. Starts with a whoosh and most charing of harm,  fire spreads red and Shipwreck Eric in truth feeble, but he’s assisting today with the needle, starts shaking his head, unbelievable, it's useless, let’s see your other arm instead. Selfish carousel of contemptible unkempt, swept up miscreants together dreaming scantily, scandalous boasts and emotions mostly askance until the closely approaching slant of the early evening has them content with Slamming Sam’s undemanding. grandiose and PATENT PENDING PLANS. Shit stained Satans and dainty saints,paintings revealed by Hollywood Hatfield, his happenstance eyes sadly casting sideways glances for the fiery faces only he sees in the paintings. Spirits appear in semen stained sidewalks with eyes that follow movement he moves past. We see intuitive demons live in the clouds of smoke that we pass, that we pour from a glass. “If spirits did a dance of impending doom in the trash”, Carwash Barbara asks “would you see them?” “Spirit bodies made solid, etched in cracks on sidewalks well heeled” speaks Maybelline Corlina, “stretch of concrete beings, have you seen them”  “This is not eternity”  Carwash Barbara turns to mention,  “are these whispers of furious energy heard?” Least not by Loca Motion, a generous, lotion drenched California informant sitting motionless, entrenched in the corner, silently writing down every name. Ignored also by Victor Eric Noris, a boring choreographer, slowly wasting away beneath the underachiever photographs in four corner frames. Pleas are further unheard by the laughing drug dealer, Unbeliever Eva, living next door, and further ignored by a chuckling bare knuckled fighter Muscle Mike, and one who never laughs, everyone’s best customer insidious outsider , Jimmy Christopher.. clutching his NEW FOUND LIGHTER What of the future for the lovers and dreamers who once kept soundly to each other's schemes?  They sit silently for their boasts have no value. Their sentences thin and intended for no one. A melancholic ghost narrates for hours using only verbs with nary a noun… his mouth simply pacing the grounds, tongue pointing down, drowning in the mess of  blessings swimming around his crown, seen by most, a man A man of decidedly lesser renown a man of decidedly lesser renown There are stories shared of folks, some broken beyond repair, gone and never to anyone fond, some of whom sweetness is a weakness,not to anyone’s trust,held by no one, holding nowhere, treasure nothing, zero matter and pleasure of none, no sense of wonder or original thoughts, never caught off guard by the beauty of a sunset or anything that wasn't illegally bought. Those without any poetry in their souls, art never wanted or sought. Woe be to those forgotten wanderer's with bargain bin jargon, ill gotten,Ill begotten rotten sods with chins sodden,tucked under THEIR MOUTHs. fuckers without a FUCK. Luckless knuckles to place their bonds upon, without last chance loans keeping them barely clutching to that which they jones. consciousness  SLOWLY STONE. Until winds silently QUIET those lonesome chorus of moans,easing the soleum ache held of our bones  only crumbling further into the dust. WITH the slightest bit of a gust all that remains of us and our days is sweetly swept away by the rains as they must for the addicts suffering still tonight, a candlelight vigil of hundreds of tiny fires will be held tonight under spoons.  Fingernail moons flickering in the memories of heathens leaving too soon, these memorial events take place every evening, situated under bridges, in tents, under intense freeways,entrenched behind garbage bins, hidden in sketchy alleyways and shooting galleries. Within insidious dens,and children’s parks, parked inside gas station stalls and vacant lots, ordered over bordered storefronts and within scattered bathrooms everywhere from here to the shores                            Shoot on by and pay your respects, we’re expecting you Usual donations are appreciated We ask in lieu of tears, feel not the need to cry, Don’t all wounded animals crawl away TO DIE? no matter how tall or as small in our time Don’t all wounded animals crawl away TO DIE? Punch wrote this on a cell phone someone loaned themselves, which per legend, was retrieved back for him and for a sack it was settled. He was known to often stare at the glow of the phone as the saddest music would begin to bask after reading this poem a question would form that of his friends he’d ask, “SO, WHAT DID YOU THINK?”

Hope in God

Now, ere this feeble heart beneath youth’s spell, To its illusions bids a last farewell, I fain would keep the old philosophy Which makes Epicurus divinity. I fain would live and love, and learn mankind, In quest of joy, small profit hope to find, And do what men can do, be what they are, Gaze upward to the sky nor feel one care.

I cannot; me the infinite torments, Fearless to dwell thereon hope consents; Heedless of men’s words, reason is dismayed To comprehend it not, though clear displayed. What is the world, what are we doing here, If we, in peace, must veil the skies in fear, To move like sheep, eyes fixed upon the ground, Deny the rest, can that be pleasure found? It is no man to be, degrade the soul. Chance made no part in the created whole; Or happy, or unhappy, woman born, I cannot flee away from men in scorn.

What shall we do? Seek joy, command the wise, Rejoice and die; the gods to sleep advise.

Hope only, answers our firm Christian faith, Heaven watches thee. Thou canst not die, it saith. Between two roads I, wavering, stop and stay, Aloof, would follow easier, gentler way. Not one exists, so speaks a secret voice, Believe, deny, there is the heaven-given choice. And such my thought; for souls with torture burn; Make mere excuses, this, or that, in turn. But the indifferents are an atheist's rout. They could not sleep had they one day of doubt. I yield me then and since the thought has bred, Deep in my heart desire and anxious dread, My knees shall bend, with hope I will believe. What fate is mine, what would high heaven receive?

Held in the hand of God, more dread, I go, Than all the ills combined here below. Alone, a wanderer, frail, wretched man, My deeds that witness eye must ever scan. He watches, follows. Let heart beat too high It might His great divinity defy. A gulf is 'neath my feet. If I fall in, Eternity will expiate my sin. My hangman, judge, with victim plays his game, For me is all a snare, all changing name; Love is a sin, and happiness a crime, Temptation all that work of seven days' time. Of human nature naught can I retain, Virtue for me is dead, remorse they feign. The recompense I wait, the pain I shun, My guide is fear, toward death, my mask, I run.

And still, they tell me, waits unbounded joy The elect. And when those blest without alloy, If you deceive me, will you life deny? If you speak to me, so can you ope the sky? That land of beauty of the prophet’s cry, If it exists above, must be a desert dry. The blest you make you wish them all too pure,

Though joy may come, the suffering more sure. I am a man no more, would not be less, Nor try for more. What shall I then confess? Since I believe no promises of priest, Shall I then go consult the indifferent beast?

And if by haunting visions thus bent, My heart the real seeks some joy to get, With each vain pleasure summoned to my aid, Disgust and gloomy death my sense invade. The very days when impious is my thought, When ending doubt denial full has brought, Should I attain whatever in this life Each man can seek with vast desire and strife, Both power, and health and riches freely give, And love itself, the good for which we live, Let fair Astarte, idol of ancient Greece, Outspread her arms from azure lands of peace, Could I explore the bosom of the earth, To win the secret elemental birth, Transform enlivening matter to my will, Make matchless beauty my desire to still; Should Horace, Epicurus old, Me at their side a happy mortal hold, Should they, in love with nature’s ancient code, Loud sing of joy and contempt of God, My words would come "Whatever we may be done, I suffer on, the world is older grown. Hope fills the earth with infinite surmise, In our despite toward heaven we lift our eyes!"

What then remains? Reason revolts, breaks out, Tries to believe, in vain, the heart to doubt. The Christian frightens, but the atheist creed Despite the senses, shall not hear nor heed. To truly pious men impious seem, Me, the indifferent, merely crazy deem. To whom shall I resort, what voice’s sound Shall soothe this heart when doubt inflicts its wound?

There is, they say, one philosophic creed Which can without a revelation read, Can guide us safely through our existence, Betwixt religion and indifference. I acquiesce. But where are they who frame Systems of truth nor wish the faith to name, Sophistic impotents, believing but themselves, What are the arguments, their reason delves? One shows me here two principles at war, Which, both defeated, both immortal are; Another finds far off within some heaven lone, A useless god who asks no altar stone. I see the dreams of Plato, Aristotle see; I listen, praise and walk my pathway free. Under the monarch find a despot God. To-day he gives a democratic nod. Pythagoras, Leibnitz both me transform. Descartes abandons me in vortex storm. Montaigne, self-student, nothing learns and sees. Pascal, a-tremble, his own vision flees. Pyrrho my sight, and Zeno senses, takes, Whatever stands, Voltaire casts down and breaks. Trying th’ impossible with wearied air, Spinosa finds his God is everywhere. The English sophist cries, Man's a machine, And in the fog a German rhetor's seen, Who of philosophism, ruin wrought, Declares our heaven void, concludes with naught.

So human science then becomes a wreck! Five thousand years of doubt are at our beck, Five thousand years of persevering fag With doubt, as final word, perplexed we lag. Ah! poor distracted, paltry human brains, How intricate your key that all explains; To mount above, no wings upon your back,

Desire you have, but faith alone you lack. I pity pride, that racks your wounded soul. You feel the torments round my heart that roll. You understand it, all that bitter sight Which makes man shudder at the Infinite. Pray we! Forswear the miserable toil Of childish reckonings, petty futile moil. Now that your bodies have returned to dust, Fall on my knees beside your tombs, I must. Ye pagan rhetors, first in knowledge, come, Departed Christians, dreamers here at home: Believe me, prayer is hope’s expectant voice! That God, man answer; speak to Him, rejoice, For God is just and good to pardon send. Your sufferings great, the rest to Him commend. If bare is heaven, to none offense we make; One, if he hears, shall on us pity take.

Oh! Thou whom none has ever known, Nor being false, can e'er deny Who gave me life, 'twas Thou alone, And who, to-morrow makes me die!

By faith alone, art understood. If faith be ours, why doubts of Thee? Why give not faith in measure good, That none may say Thou canst not be?

As soon as man lifts up his head, To that great temple in the skies, He sees a vast creation spread, A glorious temple in his eyes.

When now descends into his heart, He finds Thee there; thou livest in him. He can not weep or love apart, 'Tis God alone, wills every whim.

The highest aim of human thought, The grandest rôle as played by man, To prove Thou dost exist, be taught Thy name, O everlasting One.

Whatever name Thou mayest be called, Jesus, or Jupiter, Brahma, Or Truth Eternal, thus extolled, Toward Thee all arms are stretched, Allah!

The latest of the sons of earth Will give thee thanks, from grateful heart, When misery is turned to mirth, And happiness appears in part.

The whole world gives Thee glory, praise. The bird sings sweetly on its nest; To Thee, for rain of rainy days, A thousand anthems are addressed.

Thy every act astounds our gaze, Nor ray of love divine is lost, No soul so vile, Thou canst not raise, For this we kneel upon the dust.

Why, then, O Master, so supreme, Hast Thou created evil great? That reason, virtue, in its gleam, On seeing it, affrighted wait!

When all the splendid things of earth Proclaim Thy attributes divine, Bear witness to a father’s worth, Love, strength and goodness will combine.

Then how in view of heaven’s sight, Are acts so full of hideous hate, That prayer will die, unhappy plight! On lips of the unfortunate?

Why, in Thy heavenly work of love, Should discord draw unhappy breath? What is it crime and pest may prove? Just God! Why should we suffer death?

Thy pity must have been profound When, with its blessings and its ills, This world with love and horror crowned, Came forth from chaos! Sadness fills

My heart, to think Thou didst submit Thy sons to torture! Can Thy sight Find pleasure in the burning pit? Thy power for good is infinite.

Why shall the misery of earth Conceive of, and divine, a God? Doubt has despoiled our heavenly birth. In place of Thee, we feel the rod.

If these, Thy creatures, are so base, Unworthy of approaching Thee, In nature Thou shouldst leave no trace By which Thou might discovered be.

Thy power would remain no less, And we still feel its heavy blow; But rest and ignorance, we confess, Would make our ills more mild, we,know.

If suffering, and prayer, and praise, Move not thy glorious majesty, Preserve Thy grandeur from our gaze; In Space’s dread immensity.

But if our mortal anguish touch Thy heart with pity, if Thine ear Amid the heavenly songs, be such As can our direst moaning hear,

Shatter that canopy of space That hides our eager quest of Theee. Tear down the veil that mars thy grace, And show thyself, most amiably.

Then wilt Thou see on earth a flame Of firmest faith and burning love. All earth will then adore Thy name, As do the heavenly hosts above.

The years which have exhausted it, The burning tears that dimmed its eyes, Like dew beneath the sun shall flit, And earth will be one paradise.

Then Thou will hear hosannas sung In concerts of celestial joy, Like heavenly music heard among The courts of heaven, which saints enjoy.

Our chants would sound o'er land and sea, And Pain and Hate would howling fly, And Doubt and Blasphemy would flee, And Death itself, at last, would die.