Part I, 
Joyriding, 3, 
A Vignette for Before Your College Sweetheart Leaves, 7, 
The Last Days, 9, 
The Lindner Center of Hope, 11, 
Driving Until the Car Hits E, 15, 
Walkabout, 17, 
Part II, 
Death, tonight, visits, 21, 
Until Death Do Us Part, 25, 
The Shell Gas Station in Germantown, Ohio, 29, 
Laff's Bar (Warm Beer, Lousy Food), 31, 
A Walk in the Park, 33, 
A Midwestern Told around the Campfire, 35, 
An End: A Dream in which I Die, 37,

CHAPTER 1

Joyriding

My gal's beater
and us under the confluence
of booze
and the city ahead
rising-up in the sky
as we joyride
over this bridge
to the University.
My eyes spark-
out to this passenger's mirror
and its image of the Ohio River:
How that river recedes and then diminishes
in this darkness and filth
as tears of happiness suddenly begin to fall,
like beautiful and ancient stars,
from the cathedral
of my mystic ragamuffin's
wonderful,
green
eyes
onto our Jameson bottle
half-empty between her thighs.

A Vignette for Before Your College Sweetheart Leaves

You sit inside your café, and read and reread the early poetry of a dead poet. Your sweetheart sits across from you, clicking away on a laptop. You look from the computers in her tear-filled, occupied eyes out to the oranges and pink-oranges of the new-star-sky floating past the window. And this primitive twilight grandly soliloquizes the art of a heartache you cannot yet write about.

The Last Days

In such boorish stillness,
the wood-tipped
pull
again and again
pings
against the light
screwed
into the spinning ceiling fan.
I sit on a couch underneath this.
As if from a long ways away,
the peculiar movement of a thought
is paralyzed in the mouth.
And the hooker
in the apartment bathroom
closes the door,
runs the sink,
then quietly rifles
through my medicine cabinet.

The Lindner Center of Hope

While killing myself over this book on Greek mythology that I obtained from the inpatient's bookshelf, I glance up and notice a Miss Mundane sitting across from me. She is after an ECT treatment. She stares stonily at her feet; she stares as if pondering Medusa thoughts.

A Medusa turned on herself: Her two feet, now stone, quickly erode and chip-off in misery onto the soft carpet. Soon, stone dust floats into my reading light, floats sleepily into my papery gown, floats into my glasses, floats like a bedtime prayer.

A cleaning lady wakes me. I see, through unsure eyes, her closely studying the suicidal pieces of stone. She delicately picks up bits of face, an arm, a left leg, a stone heart. She places each body part in the trash bag hanging from her cleaning cart. Then, with her spray bottle, she refreshes the fake, rubber plants that bathe in this medicated, surgical light: fossilizing light which crawls into every sterile crevice of this mad void.

Driving Until the Car Hits E

The genesis of dawn's light
strikes
my car's windshield
and
ignites
floating mind-dust
or
the aftermath
of
my
hard
breakdown.
Morning
(a
gathering
of
bright,
bad
winter
illuminations)
mournfully bawls radiance
into the cold,
dead
bone
of my eye sockets
that stare ahead,
emptily,
in wait
for this car's gauge
to hit E.

Walkabout

My nomadic thoughts
run

with the dark magic
of this starry, black sky

hurrying overhead.
I follow my sneakers

down Nameless Street,
and, in curious silence,
turn up the cracked concrete

steps of a run-down church.
I stop, at its boarded-up door,

crucified from the histories of war,
and set my ear against

the forgotten hallelujah
of America.

CHAPTER 2

Death, tonight, visits

Death, tonight, visits
as a warm spring sky
spread evenly
like earth over an April grave,
and these graceless dead heavens
have gone black for miles and miles
until my eyes
can no longer differentiate
sky from ground,
wide eyes which can only surrender
to this binding blackness
that fills my eyes with strange silence.

Life, tonight, rises from the dead
as a sparkling expanse speaking antiquated nostalgias
for the caveman's first dawn,
a bearded man muttering heathen prayers
amongst some kind of sleeping, faded light
until soft-noted songbirds
begin singing morning's serenade.
And as life grasps at such a melody,
at such an existence singing impossible youth,
there's the need to wander back into myself,
and search for the blinding, bright light
a newborn discovers as he is pulled from the womb.

Until Death Do Us Part

He woke up
and sleep-walked out of bed,
feeling like a drunken mutt,
muttering things.
As his habits were,
he turned on the radio,
then stumbled about
the rooms of the apartment;
he turned on the air conditioner;
he set the coffee to boil.

Peering out the blinds,
he sought morning glory.
Yet looking out at all the gold and green spring abundance:
He thought nothing.
Then, having finally lost all ambition,
he watched a stray dog
lift its leg
and urinate on a flowering bush.
"Until death," he said to the dog.
"Could this go on until death?"

The Shell Gas Station in
Germantown, Ohio

The fan by the cash register
rotates, then hits its limit,
rotates, then hits its limit.
The woman working the cash register is cross-eyed.
One eye follows me
and the other goes to a father and daughter
having chocolate malts.
The father has a large Adam's apple.
My own father and I
are not on speaking terms,
while my mother is with her new husband in Spain.
It just stopped raining.
Sun comes through the clouds
spilling onto father and daughter.
A man outside watches his gas pump change meter
switch over.
Someone departs, ringing the bell.
The father stirs his malt.
His daughter, in polka dotted galoshes,
Is hugging herself.

Laff's Bar (W arm Beer, Lousy Food)

Halfheartedly nursing a beer,
I listen to the dulcet tones
of a faraway thought excommunicating
youth's careless exuberance,
gone now,
the lost sound
of a lost cause
vomiting spiced rum and insults in a deserted alleyway,
a rotted disease of the past
past-ripe with bar-stool stories of glory and green rage
that continually morph and change
like philosophies
found in the bottom of an empty beer-bottle
then spoken by me, the patron,
to the keeper of this hollowed-out bar
who stares at the muted television
bolted into the wall.
Halfheartedly nursing another beer,

I listen to the yellowed team photographs,
row upon row of Valley View football players
framed and stuck in tough, adolescent gestures
above the liquor bottles,
stuck here onto these walls, listening,
stuck here until this bar burns down to the floor
from the uncontrollable flames of self-revelry,
or is taken up by a tornado, and even then,
with this bar floating upside-down in the sky,
with this bar floating aflame
and spinning inside natural disaster,
I'd still be sitting here, relying on my disability check,
stuck to this same hard stool, sipping this same beer,
a stiff-upper-lip-of-a-man
waiting for a movie star to slide in next to him,
in the eye of the storm,
and the woman, hair wet from tornado rain, would ask:
"Darling, can you buy me a drink?"

A Walk in the Park

Under such a silver-lined sky I hurry,
small under it,
head bent in deep concern for this park's walk,
hellish and pulled ahead by my hell-bent beagle Sergeant.

With my wind-filled black collar blown back,
with a brown-and-white Sergeant ear wind-turned inside out,
the pup pulls me on by
empty park bench after empty park bench,
empty benches without an old man to catch his hat from blowing off,
empty benches without an old woman to rest her inflamed feet,
empty benches into which lovers' names remain engraved.

We rush past
the melancholic burnt oranges and rusts and deep purples
of the fall trees along this walk

only to overhear our vanquished futures spoken
by the river's dark water trickling over black rocks.

And so we travel from the depths of this night
into the buzzing of Main Street's haloed streetlights

to become infused with
the few townspeople who congregate tonight outside Laff's Bar
with cigarettes lighted and matches shaking
and smoke which hangs purposeful in the chilled autumn air:
life contemplating other life.

But this puppy's
tail works on an absurd mystery

as we make way to our apartment,
to the studio apartment I cannot afford,
to our apartment stricken
with tragedy and with comedy and with my fledgling dreams.

A Midwestern Told around the Campfire

Germantown, Ohio circa 1700

It has been said
Chief Strongstalk's scalp
was ax-sawed from his head, then taken,
like a passion in the moon's night,
by Chief Littlebean
who fled away on horseback
from the buffalo-hide shelter,
Littlebean grasping the scalp,
and its brain and rusted-blade insane jealousies
in his bloody hands
while galloping back down
the valley toward his wife
Dances with Light's
wigwam.

It has been said
Chief Littlebean
leaps off his mare
and stumbles into
Dances with Light's
wigwam
and his Shawnee wife
draws in her breath
and clutches her heart when the bleeding ho we se
of Chief Strongstalk,
her dead lover,
is flung
before her naked feet.

An End: A Dream in which I Die

Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee.
Ernest Hemingway, "A Clean Well Lighted Place"

Black blood soaks and stains my castle towers.
My midnight watchmen's faces are cracked with footprint in mud.
The Jester chuckles while sitting on my throne,
And I hang,
With both my wife and son,
And rant and rave with a tongue
Throttled out,
And listen to the Jester's punchline with two deaf ears dead —
Above the usurped throne of The Kingdom of Come.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from 13 Free Verse Poems by Alex Missall. Copyright © 2017 Alex Missall. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

"About the title" may belong to another edition of this title.

PBShop.store UK

Fairford, GLOS, United Kingdom

5-star seller

AbeBooks seller since June 11, 1999

Shipping rates from United Kingdom to U.S.A.

Item	10 to 20 business days	10 to 20 business days
First item	£ 3.29	£ 3.29

Delivery times are set by sellers and vary by carrier and location. Orders passing through Customs may face delays and buyers are responsible for any associated duties or fees. Sellers may contact you regarding additional charges to cover any increased costs to ship your items.

Payment methods

Store description

**Please note our transit times are from the date of dispatch.** We first started out as “The Paperback Exchange,” a chain of physical bookstores where we would part exchange your beloved books for new stories to transport you to faraway places. However, as shopping started to evolve to online shops and marketplaces, we bid our stores goodbye to become “PBShop.” This transition has only allowed us to blossom as we now ship thousands of titles to book lovers across the globe. We pride ourselves in being a community of local book lovers which allows our passion and devotion to shine in everything we do. In 2020 we not only celebrated our 20th birthday but our 1st birthday as being completely employee owned after becoming an E.O.T in September 2019. We are proud to be different and embrace standing apart on a book mountain by working from a virtual inventory which allows us to provide thousands of books that may be difficult to get for your bookshelf or your studies. Working with a number of different suppliers allows us to explore other avenues such as puzzles, sheet music and even stationery so we really do have something for everyone. Life is about being versatile in all realms of existence. If this is your first purchase with us, or you are a returning customer, we would like to welcome you to the PBShop family, for there is no friend as loyal as a book. We are a company who put our customers at the centre of everything we do as we understand the importance of reading because once you learn to read, you will forever be free. There are a whole lot of things in this world of ours that we are yet to explore, which is why we will forever inspire curious minds.…

Specialty

Hardbacks, Paperbacks

Seller's business information

Pbshop.co.uk

Unit 22 Horcott Industrial Estate, Horcott Road
Fairford, United Kingdom GL7 4BX

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Terms of sale

Returns Policy
We ask all customers to contact us for authorisation should they wish to return their order. Orders returned without authorisation may not be credited.
If you wish to return, please contact us within 14 days of receiving your order to obtain authorisation.
Returns requested beyond this time will not be authorised.
Our team will provide full instructions on how to return your order and once received our returns department will process your refund.
Please note the cost to return any unwanted order to us is borne by the buyer.
Should your order arrive damaged, not as advertised or faulty, we must be advised of this within 14 days of delivery. Please contact us so we can find the best solution for you.

Our Customer Care Team can be contacted by emailing alborders@paperbackshop.co.uk, or by calling our UK Office on +441285 712 917. We are available 9:00am till 5:30pm GMT Monday to Friday.

Right of withdrawal

If you are a consumer you can withdraw from the contract in accordance with the following. Consumer means any natural person who is acting for purposes which are outside his trade, business, craft or profession.

Information regarding the right of withdrawal

Statutory right to withdraw

You have the right to withdraw from this contract within 14 days without giving any reason.

The withdrawal period will expire after 14 days from the day on which you acquire, or a third party other than the carrier and indicated by you acquires, physical possession of the last good or the last lot or piece.

To exercise the right of withdrawal, electronically fill in and submit a clear statement on our website, under "My Purchases" in "My Account". We will communicate to you an acknowledgement of receipt of such a withdrawal on a durable medium (e.g. by e-mail) without delay.

To meet the withdrawal deadline, it is sufficient for you to send your communication concerning your exercise of the right of withdrawal before the withdrawal period has expired.

Effects of withdrawal

If you withdraw from this contract, we will reimburse to you all payments received from you, including the costs of delivery (except for the supplementary costs arising if you chose a type of delivery other than the least expensive type of standard delivery offered by us).

We may make a deduction from the reimbursement for loss in value of any goods supplied, if the loss is the result of unnecessary handling by you.

We will make the reimbursement without undue delay, and not later than 14 days after the day on which we are informed about your decision to withdraw from this contract.

We will make the reimbursement using the same means of payment as you used for the initial transaction, unless you have expressly agreed otherwise; in any event, you will not incur any fees as a result of such reimbursement.

We may withhold reimbursement until we have received the goods back, or you have supplied evidence of having sent back the goods, whichever is the earliest.

You shall send back the goods or hand them over to PBShop.store UK, Fairford, United Kingdom, +44 1285 712917, without undue delay and in any event not later than 14 days from the day on which you communicate your withdrawal from this contract to us. The deadline is met if you send back the goods before the period of 14 days has expired. You will have to bear the direct cost of returning the goods. You are only liable for any diminished value of the goods resulting from the handling other than what is necessary to establish the nature, characteristics and functioning of the goods.

Exceptions to the right of withdrawal

The right of withdrawal does not apply to:

The delivery of newspapers, journals or magazines with the exception of subscription contracts; and
The supply of digital content which is not supplied on a tangible medium (e.g. on a CD or DVD) if you accepted when you placed your order that we could start to deliver it, and that you could not withdraw once delivery had started.

Shipping terms

Orders are shipped from our UK warehouse. Delivery thereafter is between 4 and 14 business days. Please contact us if you have any queries about our services or products.

Privacy and security

We are committed to protecting the privacy and security of personal data. This policy tells you how we will collect and use your personal data, and what you should expect in respect of the personal information about you that we have collected.

We are PBShop.co.uk Limited (registered in England & Wales with Company No: 9366362). Our registered office is at Swatton Barn, Badbury, Swindon, SN4 0EU, United Kingdom.

The person with responsibility for our data protection compliance is the Managing Director and they can be contacted via email at help@pbshop.store.

We are the data controller of the personal data that we keep and use, and we are therefore responsible for making sure that our systems, processes and people comply with the relevant data protection laws in respect of that personal data.

We will act in respect of personal data to comply with the six principles of the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”), which are:

Lawfulness, fairness and transparency;
Purpose limitation;
Data minimisation;
Accuracy;
Storage limitation;
Integrity and confidentiality.
You have rights in respect of how your personal data can be processed; these include the right to request:

a copy of your personal data;
that inaccurate data is rectified; and
that your personal data is, in certain circumstances, erased or restricted.
You have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner, which you can do by contacting the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) directly. Full contact details, including a helpline number, can be found on the ICO website (www.ico.org.uk). This website also has useful information on your rights and our obligations. However, please raise any concerns or issues with us first so that we may deal with this as quickly as possible for you.

COLLECTION, USE AND DISCLOSURE OF PERSONAL DATA
We collect and process data for the following reasons:

personal data collected and created in relation to our selling books and other items; and
personal data relating to our people (which means those people working for our company, or providing services to us, or potentially working or providing services to us, including employees, consultants, temporary or casual workers and contractors).
All of our people are required to abide by our Privacy Policy when handling personal data, and are provided with appropriate data protection training. Any breach of data protection will be taken seriously, and may result in disciplinary action.

Selling books and other items
COLLECTION:
We will collect personal information which may include names, addresses and other information for our customers. This will be done for the management of the commercial relationship with our customers.

We may collect this personal data from you directly, and also from third parties, including publicly available third party sources. Additional personal data will be collected as it is created by or supplied to us in the course of anything we do for you.

USE:
We will use the personal data in the course of making sales and to comply with requirements that we are required to undertake.

We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:

in performance of a contract (the agreement to sell books and other items); and/or
compliance with a legal obligation; and/or
vital interests of the data subject; and/or
where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.
We may also use your personal data in the following situations, which are likely to be far less common:

where we need to protect your interests (or someone else’s interests);
where it is needed in the public interest or for official purposes.
DISCLOSURE:
We may share personal data with third parties as is necessary in the sale of books and other items, including to third party providers who deliver services to support the operation of our company.

In respect of all disclosures of personal data, we will only share the personal information which is necessary for the particular purpose for which it is provided, or where we have another legitimate interest in doing so, and we will ensure that the personal data is appropriately protected.

RETENTION PERIOD:
We will keep personal data only for as long as is necessary to fulfil the purposes for which we collected it, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting or reporting requirements. Normally, our retention period for personal data collected for this purpose is a minimum of 6 years after the end of the period that we are selling books and other items.

Our people
COLLECTION:
We will collect names, addresses, contact details, education and employment history, identity and other background checks (which may include appropriate criminal and financial checks and confirmation of the right to work in the UK), marital status and information on next of kin and dependents, financial information (such as bank details and NI numbers), date of birth, gender, a copy of your passport and driving licence, performance information and compensation history, recruitment information (including references), salary, benefits, pension and annual leave information, disciplinary and grievance information, photographs, information about your use of our information and communications systems and CCTV footage or other information obtained through electronic means.

We may collect and use special categories of personal data as required in the carrying out of obligations and exercising specific rights of us or the data subject in the field of employment. This may include information relating to matters such as health, racial origin, religious belief and offences or alleged offences.

Personal data may be collected from you during the selection process (for example via your application form and CV) and during your employment (including holiday forms, expense claims, performance reviews, any disciplinary or grievance processes), or from third parties, including referees, health service providers, background check providers.

USE:
Personal data of our people will be used for HR administration and management, both in respect of the selection of people to work for us (including suitability, eligibility and/or fitness to work), and those who do work for us, to include learning and development, disciplinary and security (of people, offices and data) requirements, providing and liaising with benefits providers, business management and planning (including accounting and auditing), paying you and dealing with tax and NI deductions, assessing and deciding on salary reviews and compensation, conducting performance reviews and managing performance, dealing with legal disputes involving you or others, preventing fraud, monitoring your use of our information and communications systems, ensuring compliance with our policies, and equal opportunities monitoring.

We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:

In performance of a contract with you; and/or
compliance with a legal obligation; and/or
vital interests of the data subject; and/or
where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.
We may also use your personal data in the following situations, which are likely to be less common:

where we need to protect your interests (or someone else’s interests);
where it is needed in the public interest or for official purposes.
In respect of all disclosures of personal data, we will only share the personal information which is necessary for the particular purpose for which it is provided, or where we have another legitimate interest in doing so, and we will ensure that the personal data is appropriately protected.

In respect of special categories of personal data, we may process this in the following circumstances:

in limited circumstances with your explicit written consent; and/or
where we need to carry out our legal obligations and in line with our policies; and/or
where it is needed in the public interest (such as for equal opportunities monitoring or in relation to our occupational pension scheme), and in line with our policies; and/or
where it is needed to assess your working capacity on health grounds, subject to appropriate confidentiality safeguards.
Less commonly, we may process this type of information where it is needed in relation to legal claims or where it is needed to protect your (or someone else’s) interests and you are not capable of giving your consent, or where you have already made the information public. We may also process such information about our people (or former people) in the course of our legitimate business activities with the appropriate safeguards.

The special categories of personal data may be used in the following ways:

in relation to leaves of absence, to comply with employment and other laws;
in relation to your physical or mental health, or disability status, to ensure your health and safety in the workplace and to assess your fitness to work, to monitor, manage and administer benefits and absences;
in relation to your race, national or ethnic origin, religious, philosophical or moral beliefs, or your sexual life or sexual orientation, to ensure meaningful equal opportunity monitoring and reporting.
DISCLOSURE:
Personal data may be transferred to service providers who support the operation of our business (such as payroll service providers), to other third parties reasonably necessary in the conduct of our business (including insurers, professional advisors, regulators). These third parties may be acting as processor, or controller of personal data in their own right.

RETENTION PERIOD:
We will keep personal data only for as long as is necessary to fulfil the purposes for which we collected it, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting or reporting requirements. We will normally keep personal data of applicants who we do not employ for six months after we receive it.

We will keep personal data of employees throughout your employment and normally for a minimum of six years after your employment ends.

Changes to your personal data
It is very important that the personal information that we hold about you is accurate and current. Please tell us if your personal information changes during your relationship with us.

Data Security
We have put in place measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those of our people and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and where they have agreed to treat the information confidentially and to keep it secure. We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach and will notify you and the ICO of a suspected breach where we are legally required to do so.

Where we store your personal data
We principally store data, both electronically and on file, at our office.

Personal data may be transferred outside of the EEA by processors acting on our behalf. For transfers to countries not considered adequate by the EC, we will ensure that personal data is adequately protected, as required by the GDPR. This would include by use of the Standard Contractual Clauses adopted by the EC to protect personal data.

Your rights
Under certain circumstances, you have the right by law to request:

access to your personal data. This enables you to ask to receive a copy of the personal data that we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
correction of the personal data that we hold about you.
erasure of your personal data.
object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on our legitimate interest and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes.
restriction of processing of your personal data.
transfer of your personal data to another party.
Links from our website
Our website may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of third parties that we permit to make such links. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. We recommend that you check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites.

CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY
Any changes we may make to our privacy policy in the future will be posted on our website, so please ensure that you are viewing the correct version.

Please contact us if you have any questions, comments or requests regarding this Privacy Policy.

Last amended May 2021.

13 Free Verse Poems A Chapbook in Two Parts

Item description from seller

Bibliographic details

Synopsis

About the title

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

13 Free Verse Poems

A Chapbook in Two Parts

AuthorHouse

Contents