Hip Service
By Julian Malek

The zeal of cobblestone tolerance arrayed in fashionable hues masquerading as crimson secrecy, elevates the tide of man but some boats leak in their foundations. Therefore a cork to every exuberance and a triumphant torch for every sorrow lives onward in collective time. Larks that abound because prescience and PUGET sound, that brown has become the new orange which in turn prowls as a concealed swarthy black. To antagonize the willful and frenetic pace, a prodrome of lasting but memorialized disgrace. Should I move to a state by first or last name, or is the final appellation worthy of much more lasting fame. I scurry down the aisles, bemused by shimmering tiles and the beguiled audiences who see much in my limitation but doubt little about my debited elation. Ringmaster Barnum, how much horticulture is needed for assured superstardom, how many cloisters must we evacuate from the incendiary plumes of a metaphorical Harlem..  But know that no virtual reality can supplant the reality that does truly exist, or at least our time is too infernal and purblind to resist. Carrey the tops of mountains in the humor of wellsprings and fountains, we engage a menagerie of egos lilting of an etiolated pragmatic concern. Evicted from paradise, littered with say-cheese demise ensnaring three blind mice eaten alive by snake-eyed vice. To feel good without incorporated tyranny, we must see blue and red as alternatives to the same destiny. A world that reckons with the futilitarianism of pacified malcontent and astroturf monikers that lead the impressionable into a slaughter shed. Established or not, any enchantment under the sea must include fishes once a pastiche of me, but to them I avoid their courtesy flush and never even faintly blush as my egalitarian statements are lavish thrush.

Five TO Won baby one in 99, everyone here aboard the titanic stays alive, you got your boat baby and I got mine, gonna make it with babies numbered in surreal primes. Halt the slots game the nines, a stitch in time is going to turn out to be Mine. Flanger goals, girded piles, liminal like an aborted Harry Styles, we climb mountains we issue tithes, and the turmoil is etched into 45-notched bludgeons and two-tucked knives. Excuse you, where have you been all day, have you been sauntering in a gentle rain or a genteel pain, have you wallowed beyond the mires of doubt and ranked above David Blaine. I hope you tell me of your magic tricks, rather than your other flicks endeared I stand to fight an ineradicable itch. But if not, you placid pond dented by so many rocks and so many ripples give your heart over to me, before I clinch the special Olympics *******, we ran, we span the homespun garments of your left and right hand, but death is a specter that ghoulishly carouses along the carousel terminal disease we call life. I beseech your deepest affection and want to console you for your deepest struggle, to be there every time wed with time rather than a throttled scuttle. Moons make you guarded but maroons leave me desiccated, don’t ever let that wilted flower die, always water it with a rich but gentle ties and widened deck for all to at once marvel and pry.  Monsters of Mars Attacks once flanked my bed, as though the **** brain scared every gooseflesh and restrained every frisson of mystery. I lampoon myself for those cold Dark Knights and the protection ended by the plight of the poor mattering nothing to the deliberately internecine rich. I struck gold in a valley somewhere, an oxymoron of paradox that now you have the privilege to dock, to stay aboard to be a vessel of peace less widely deplored. Even if we don’t sprout wings, we garner the exactitude of measured things and our glass elevator though easily shattered by the glower of enslavement is actually our vista to heaven or listening to brethren tingles for rich mans trinkets and other things. For humanity deserves a legend and a princess, a regimented desuetude and a flanged lust but in our mistakes wildly flouted in momentary moments we become purified by the temptations of an alabaster palace.

***** the left-field wisdom of a pragmatic paragon ellipsis in prison, slip between the cracks and let my suburban muse become your urban ruse. To enchant a caged world beyond a reality delicately and deliberately unfurled. Squirming toads on highways enchanted but dead, are graves for the blue becoming purple in every dignified red. Gainsay assaults me with platitude, a repeated hitter quit on the first bunted ball into foul-line territory. Those gripes are swiped right in all circumstance no matter the plight. The pronged hearing of a trident sensitive to ambient collection, and suddenly we are all in the mad house even though the house of profaned pain is much worse. Glimpses of gambits that gambol for nickels in transit as occult grenades and known dice waddle through without artifice or device, and the laughter and slaughter that trains collegiate minds, differs no more than the tropes of a glamorous violence articled in sordid rhymes. This surfing movie means so much more than Surf Wax America pristine in limited but sacrilege nirvana. Teen spirits smell muskier than 90s pop dreams, the grasp and grunge of gouged eyes becomes a mummified staid, a scarecrow to those who disobey. Childhood flashes with blinding light, and new sight illuminates darkening blight, A blight eradicated only by two magazines and including one that houses the bullets that ***** themselves between death and comatose dreams both within astral sight. Littoral harbor on a seaside town, a shanty with a brackish gown that glides the gourmand to the cosmopolitan eatery on the outskirts of lost & found. But forever lost in embonpoint and forever gained in chavish that exonerates the gaunt, the etiolated prince in heart becomes irrefutable marrow in minded souls.

If I am a spy you are an ESPY, and if I cry than you are a baby,but since neither are the case my wiseacres will cultivate lava lamp dreams for a new generation and suddenly Boston bets on Harvard, but who knows of this piped blather squirming for relevance rather than voguish but temporary chatter. My regatta knows how to swim, my life now knows how to cringe and yet still win and in stilted plays of bungled sincerity the God of peace reminds us of our transcendent personalities. That we in sincerity top the barnacles of invention a novelty but a rarity. But the guillotine quill of emboldened unscripted parvenus ruthless in their eager dues, outdate and outlive the sued swayed blues that indemnify Clinton and make the atomic dog an amazing Winston hill a church often in sheltered disuse. Imps and urchins sting the sentiment, cloy the alimony of repentant betterment, but neither touches the gilded skies of pleonasm striving for raspy disguise as to dissuade further diatribe investigation. Lurking in those scared days of youth, the gore of unalloyed horror scourged me with a limp, that compassion itself could ever become a gimp. Now years later athletics better and scoring goals making the mildew sweat and the years wetter, not a global warming that can be alarmed by global mourning. Take peace at heart if distanced spears of separation make Idiocracy as a pastiche look exceedingly smart. And spar only with the true antagonists bridging malevolence with expedience. Killjoys sure, will joy even more sure, but still boys fluttered heart stopping dead at a stop-watched alarm the worst tragedy of our sordid sort. Give an African Child a real home rather than a spatial roam, a palatial desiccation of momentary Jonas Brothers snapping back at captives with sexualized foam.

Narrative blinds shuttered in an Island among mountains hardly ever wiser to sanitize the sanitarium among the wasps of stung power. Police crumple their uniforms as they prowl down the avenues, looking for misfits and widened platitudes. Somehow that the vigilance of those corrupted by their very career choice, look even worse when megalomania of private is the limelight of public, to their defense few turrets I can muster but castles in the sky will be the apartheid judge. Those that cling to virtue to eradicate Porsche-driven faked or real deaths at the most breakneck speed, that Fast & Furious operation if disclosed completely would turn the Shire of the ring into the hatred curtailed by a song in Sing-Sing. Immunity must not Yoda implore, that livery Liverpool marooned on islands can also to deplore the R.E.D. and still whet the sharpened stead and the fly-by-night Manchester United alights like militant peer pressure for wranglers in tights. But beating the Beatles at a game of Walruses and egg-shelled eyeful towers likely impedes rinkside hockey from anything over bellicose ballyhoo…it exists as a transient fixated glower. But who knows about soccer speculation when love is the transcendent temptation, when nest-egg hens rather than neglecting rig Bens of clockwork and clocked words designed arise better for their token ken. Do I must repeat the subtext of submarines, yellowed as though ugly unused as though unseen, as though the quixotic earthquakes of tintinnabulations Avatar dreams. Wafted souls console the disheartened thoughts of a dashed dream that Berlin hates more than a Furor’s unbridled and useless scream.
Demotic clips slinging from the bedridden silence of a token moon and its token friends, swimming in a shore of ambiguity whether history mellows or whether its furor melts away momentary doubts. I want to avoid the sting rays exorcised by due providence and become the amalgamated talents gentry and of course the upstart swagger of Jack Dawson. But with the psy-op going on, the people manipulated on all sides of a gray picket fence will the relationship bloom without muttered dissent or pretended smiles. Will we take upon the shuffled shuttle and dig with shovels deep-rooted Christmas trees and toast our lives to Dos Equis. We may never go out of style, but the treacle of illuminated imagery when divorced from sentiment bristle shows a swagger that prioritizes rather than amalgamates all love. I love being brash and brazen and honest because when she finally ditches the grandstand of delayed frenemies fandoms of other tinsel decorations without any substance beyond meretricious thrill. You want a roller coaster on some days, but most often you want the nutcracker to elope to secret hiding places. Swim with adventure not just in love, not just in affection with the starlight now matter how luminous, sixpence all the richer is no centuries any poorer and we could be that gilded couple of star and screen and if we ever have to scream, let our screams unite us in passion, rather than a milquetoast deference to pedestaled beauty. but of course the end times don’t laugh at your crumpled wizened relapse. Not out of convenience wed by a discriminating genetic harvest moon but a deeper engagement that flatters when stylish and bristles when romantic but never defiled, never riled of specious pretense. Promise me that you will always remember me in my flaws and my faults, in my scause factory destructions and the penults of PEN-ULTIMATE wisdom that comes before the grace of God in the annihilation of passion for eroded omission. If your goal is to be remembered, check that out…but the most admirable goal is as the propinquities of souls dusted in the wind returning to a spring equinox of passion and if you find in yourselves reservations do not depart from sacred land, and never jilt me because of a boisterous and menacing friend. You are everything to me right now, and I Hope this persists despite the vicissitudes of star-favored afflictions mixed with utter benediction without the pontification of stilted Benedictines  or rather the hyped ludic effrontery of termagants being made of younger and younger women. Leave it at this ,32 leaves the royal secret in royal hands and the Knights Templar and us we altogether hold hands, if only a prelude for a masquerade ball. But the stilted embarrassment of crestfallen time, let that be relegated and emphatically lets embrace what is like to not ever need a real white horse to get back into your favor, because we never go out of style we can brandish the best elements and reject the sentiments of the too newfangled and the too stodgy. We in our crenellated pleonasm can eager ride the lightning to another tomorrow and another yesterday and if even not that, we virtually make an indelible impression of embroidered love not too distant in ivory towers and not to vulgary( catering to popular sentiments) to become a trash glam movement. We soar, others deplore but let their purblind doubts render them blind to our burgeoning love.

Forget the brisk trees dangled in the wind on winding paths through haunted forest or remember them because of ghoulish fortress but with our apotropaic lamp we can avert most evil and call the rest fun and gains and shun but fames never profaned, never inalterable a destiny to magical to be some whimpered catcall. Or we could linger beneath lambent street lights disguised as though wilted garb, attrition of circumstance waiting patiently for the matinee and the vintner to escort us beyond the garb of pretense in a city so abundant with it that it deserves castigation. But I digress, a beachside cliff overlooking tepid waters tumultuous in their power but august in their noises, the cadence of love will sing a half-moon bay on full-moon nights and we will frisk each other like grasping at straws of permanent tracks trammeled of the elite and a sidetracked basque bet. Trim those antlers and instead grow metaphorical wings, to us we all sing but few can match your elegance and everyone would be crazy not to see your ennobled age and together thrilling songs to emulate thriller in sales we will collaboratively sing.
Haughty sneers from lifeless lycanthropy straggling furtively along the pastiched sidewalks of grime, livid because they can’t share the lingering limelight, with as many guarded perks of privacy clambering like a hive of snarky sharks. Lets ditch the big town dreams in terms of posh and stature if only for a caressed moment beneath the unadulterated stars and if you find spars **** to the extent they are amiable than I say guess what my name is Lars! Or wait a second, paused in the big city spotlight our stenciled hearts will guide whatever progeny is yours or mine or ours together we will sing the most comforting lullaby, and caves no longer must we abide. Yearn and earn every inch, as I gripe with my delicate saddened pinch but I think the innuendo speaks . Ripen with our trips to Napa, long afternoon sunsets swim in our hearts as we taste the vanguard’s toast on elegant wine.I console with entreaty to disavow the omen of that San Franciscan church October 2008, the doom implied by Einstein, the raillery of a world grinding down the endless decadence of a railed future inalterable in destiny or partialy amenable to widespread coquetry.

Forget those rumbles in your past that made you feel partial to insecurity and learning the ropes you transcended all and live in all eternity. Thimble and brook, tolerant of all those tokes I took your rebellious side flattens the yeast of Exodus raspy in its begrudged clapping. But the Pharaoh of the modern world sheltered me under his prickly thorns, shielded me from the sickly things that life adorns. We have the numbers on our side, the weight of destiny on our shoulders, dedicate yourself to yourself and I will preen the most vibrant wisdom and love will leap like Apollo across all borders not for camel-****** hoarders. We are culminated destiny in the wings of the best daydream

PASSION PLAY

Ayad Gharbawi




Location: Desert Shore, Bitterly Cold Night, next to strong waves from the ocean.
Characters: Man ((M) and his Lover, a Woman (W).

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W: “Search as I forever do, in manifold ways unknown, I seek but to love thee, and the meagre goodness from Life, with steely ardour - my armour faithful.”
M: “Alone I may be, and still, yes I love thee; these days heavy are and beset I am by burdensome trivialities, but I remain trusting, though my corner so narrow remain.”
W: “My Love! Your speech I hear aloud and thine lips I live within and yet, my Love, all Solitude I am. Man! I am unaided! In this journey of sinful thorns, my love, in this unforgiving journey, this blurred odyssey, I stand alone”.
M: “This trial you speak of, but I do know of it well; so, listen then: within the strength of trusted togetherness we can plough on, though everlasting harm shall do its spiteful tricks, warm to our united truth shall we remain.”
W: (Surprised) “O! My love! This thought I cannot hear! My life, my destiny, is but mine. And all have their own solitary roads of jagged rocks to embrace, like it we or not. We heartbreaking earthly sad beasts, either fiercely clutch at integrity, or we do let it go to perish away.”
M: (Confused) “My Love! I do hear, I do hear. But when Times decide on burdening us, what then can we achieve? To face Reality within the frail arms of solitude is to ignore, to refuse the severe threats of repulsive grins.”
(Silence)
M: (Passionately) “O! My sweet! Only in us, can we envelope, through joined, clasped warmth can we be as one united! The screams that so truly are meant to slice us off, only we, our Unity, can destroy. For mine eyes can only find sleep in your ears, and it is so - for otherwise nothing and no one can be.”
W: (Angry) “My Passion too is bubbling for thine bewildered ears. Am I not your soul? Do we not suffer as one? Do we not reflect as one? Am I not your lover true? Is not our warmth not weighty to our fickle bones?”
(Silence)
W: (Passionate) “But, Lover, this much ought I to formally declare unto thee: For our eyes, and all eyes, envision unequally at one another. Till eternity, in its casual, indifferent flicker, snatches at us all wretched mortals, the gazes from lords to paupers remain veritably mismatched. O my passion! My woeful heart! These words I thunder forth defines love unfeigned, and what mine eyes do pour out unto thine ears is authenticity true.
(Silence)
W: (Passionately) “What joined mem’ries you choose to caress may possess thee, but your exactness for what love is to you, doth not dwell in mine mind. What tears, what weepings you do, fall stormily upon thine own soul’s wildernesses. You choose to be chained by changing visions and indefinite sentiments of light weight – though so poignant at the moment they veritably are?”
M: (Inquiring) “My love! I cherish thee; where hast thou been in thine mind, for now ye talk of that truth you relate to in your heart. Your pronouncements, what depths I do feel! Can it perchance be that my passion has strayed our winds far from me?”
W: “No, my love! Why is anger, I feel, lush on thine tongue?”
M: (Surprised and Frightened) “Anger! I am too distant from that affliction! But yes, I feel my words make only for unstable murmurs in my breath.”
W: (Quietly) “Then, do tell me, lover, who do your murmurs betray - myself or yourself then?”
M: (Quietly) “Perhaps so, perhaps so. But my anxiety wilfully demands of me to eradicate your vision.”
W: (Firmly) “You answer naught from my undemanding question. Or, are mine meanings too violent for you? What aches thee?”
M: (Passionately) “My sweet! In so many moments, I created mysterious planets for thee! Bizarre worlds of contrasts and opposites and musical words of antiquity and sensual ravines. My love! I, my soul, my life, my inner deepest breath, tempted as I am by Fates’ inscrutable cruelties to ashamedly yield, I have yet always expressed to mine eyes’ heart, though they be in bleak darkness, to faithfully fight without pause all shades of vice and still yet - with loving integrity; I have stood with arms of righteousness and love for thee up and never down! Yes, sincere good and venal ill remain joined in life for all to feel, but you knew it was not for me to disentangle them. And so, I pronounce unto thee, still, and yet ever and ever more, my love for thee, though still beholding a thousand mountains before me, I remain sturdy for thee; I remain undisturbed by burly laws, and by exotic dictums, I stand fierce and unhurt, save in your absence.”
W: (With Sadness) “My beloved, your vivid voice stabs the falsehoods for thee, and I say unto thee, unto thee your excessive and unreasonable chains, and for myself my unreasonable and extreme chains remain.”
M: (Shocked) “But I burden thee with no steely chains, nor verbal fetters! For naught I produce for thee save grace, passion and freedom to love for us both to be in Unity Sacred! Dost thou embrace my visions as ‘shackles’, then ‘tis better we agree to class that which we are as but madness! Hear me, for my tears now must truly change their colours!”
W: (Determined) “Your feverish hands clutch only upon mine erratic wings!”
M: (Anger) “Never! Never! For I clutch only to destroy all malevolence; as for thee, Lady of the purest, untouched, guarded, secluded Ponds, I seek to unshackle for you the scattered, scared shadows that yearn for thine sovereignty. And what is this ‘sovereignty’ but our Sacred Union? What curse deemest you I impose? Do you equal my purest passions with atrocities? Murmur unto mine ears, your clearest love for me.”
W: “Ah! You enquire of me my ‘sincerity’ for thee? What demands!”
(Silence)
M: “I see naught but heaving forests of love betwixt us, and yet, you discover my words being ‘demanding’?”
W: (Drily) “Perchance, your visions are indistinct and ever more blurred, through these years cannot be ignored.”
M: (Begging) “My love! All mine life, though it be lengthy, I fought most venal tyranny, and for this moment, you question my righteousness?”
W: (Indignantly) “I have been plunged into seas hostile and I have plunged in a thousand miles of inert minds troubled beyond conceivable comprehension and I have yet to have my Right for my own greedy, ravenous flesh to be vigorously and forcefully embraced by sensuality and serenity. Yes, I do love thee, and yet in our union, as in all unions, I have been adorned with naught, save snickering, gossiping scenes of festive *****, games, chatter and farewells, themselves festooned within silly and sincerely stupid smiles and frowns, and shallow tears and never ending ludicrous chatter unworthy of monkeys conversing. I have met programmed rows of pats, respect and all other so-called decent intents and gestures, but, where, lover that you are of mine, where does my personal heart, throb and manically vibrate, save in your heavenly imaginations?”
(Silence)
W: (Quietly but Determinedly) “My love! I truly thee love and with passions, I tell you, of proportions of precise exactitudes; in your eyes I have witnessed symphonies of exquisiteness; and, I of thee ask: where dwelleth your own love for myself in thine body?”
(Silence)
W: (Passionate) “Do you recognise the changing structures that form this, that I name ‘My Love’? In my solitude eternal, I do evermore and always do pause, and be pensive, and be thinking of questions, such as ‘where’, ‘why’, ‘when’ ‘how’, and ‘which’ should be my path; I am forever and ever more searching, seeking the heavens of every corner, and the irritable tempests, within my changing self as they themselves do try to seek me, and we forever, through inconceivable murkiness, do try to assemble the everlasting entirety of these disorganized puzzles into some measure of comprehensible cohesion that ‘I’ am. That is how the ‘I’ you love is forever changing and thereby formulating itself, and within all these meandering passions, and endless errors, where am I to feel thee? Where? And where do you seek me? In which land? In which forest? You trivialise my beingness as you focus upon my lands as being that which so effortless to find, and yet, you are much too distant from an understanding of my conflicting, emerging civilisations.”
(Silence)
W: (Passionate) If the utterance ‘Never’ is pathetic for thee, then allow me to introduce you to my latest heart: for it screams out that single, protracted utterance! Never! My love, these winds of raging wraths, both within and outside by flesh, must and can only be annihilated by mine own sincerities – were I not to play against my own self. My uncontrolled desires and, yes, thirsty manic passions can only be tempered and thoroughly satiated to the utter brim, by mine own loving, sources of pleasure, my own uncontrollable ecstasies. As for the rest of ****** pleasures, my own erroneous words, speeches and utterances can only be severed and sliced by my tranquillity.”
M: (Resigned) “I hear thine words. Do not abandon me. Do not destroy our civilisation of justice.”
W: “What we share, the bonds, are enjoyment. Listen though to mine lips: enjoyment is what - when it is to be compared with convulsive ecstatic quivers of satisfaction?”
M: (Puzzled) “And what of all our journeys to attain that unity? For all that, is it to be of mere insignificance? And if that be your truth, for what then did we toil and labour for unity of minds and bodies?”
W: (Laughing) “Did you understand from Life itself, that here it was, grandly to proclaim its furtive faces unto thine own awaiting face?! “
M: (Baffled) “It was so far too plain and vastly clear unto me these sceneries we faced before our loving bodies.”
W: “Yes, and I too, did see them with thee. Our four eyes, did see unity for that flicker of time. How true you speak! But, time clocked on, I saw you as you stood there, moving nowhere, unawares that it was your duty to squash onwards whatever vile breaths faced us.”
M: (Desperate) “And did I not? Did I abandon thee in these crushing paths?”
W: (Accusing) “No, you did not. Never, once did you abandon me. I ask of thee; for what sense do we feel a need for a continuation of these gruelling marches? For unity? For love? Or, is love unity? Was that and is this our reason for us to carry on with these shackles?”
M: “For assuredly, yes, and more yes, I tell thee! Toil and gruelling dawns, and unbearable evenings and the whitest of nights are all for the sacred attainment of that heavenly summit of joy I name as blessed ‘Love’.”
W: (Assured) “And, Sire, what if my nerves, blood and ****** hunger tell thee in truth that we, all of us, need no longer, and need never in truth, to undertake these paths, for we find naught that nourishes us at the blessed summit of your definition of what ‘Love’ is?”
M: (Confused & Sad) “So, I falter here and now upon understanding your speech; do I reason from thee that our loving days in unity are frivolously bygone now?”
W: (Calmly & Gracefully) “Do the wandering birds, and do the blind bats, and do the reckless storms, and do the blindly, raging waves and do the supremely arrogant oceans eternally march on in but one direction only with the savage passage of time within their particular lives? You did pronounce that you built planets for our unity; well then, did you not view how planets endlessly revolve along the same path?”
(Pause)
W: (Calmly & with Dignity) “For, Sire, I am not as a Planet - could you not feel that throughout our journeys? You endlessly query and question ‘who’ it is that ‘I’ am? Well, I speak this much on myself; I am as the birds, and the bats, and the storms and the waves and the oceans.”  
M: (Angry) “Woman! I can only then tell of thee that you are naught but feuding clutter and violent disarray!”
W: (Unconcerned) “Those are your words. Not mine. Speak for what you wish, Sire.”
M: (Angry) “And I stand here, before thee, in anger – nay, more, more! In fury!”
W: (Laughing) “For what? For the deeds that created but sticky, and grimy grains of sand for the undoubted pleasure our eyes?”
M: “And so you label our truths, our love so much! Fair indeed, you speak, Woman of Justice.”
W: (Arrogantly) “Man! Express your delights for your own delights. And, alas, there the circle and reality ends – and it ends only for you. That is one morsel of truth for you to ponder. What we ‘created’ and what we ‘loved’ was never and never, ever be the same for you as it is for me. Are you a sincere believer that your personal vision is the same sight all other seeing creatures envision?”
M: (Angry) “Woman, you enrage me! Your arrogance is drenching thine rags.”
W: (Sarcastic) “Tis the Man with no reason who allows his breath and words to be a veritable cesspool of fuming stenches!”
M: “But I, that I am, no longer can define your contours?”
W: (Pointedly) “Precisely, Man, precisely. Perhaps, now you have come closer to the vulnerable shores of reality!”
M: (Confused) “Do you express that you are ever varying and so for that reason there is not a one unified you?”
W: (Calmly) “For we are all ‘varying’, to borrow your word – if you do so allow me, Sire. There was never ‘unity’ of soul, nor mind, nor self, nor of any one personality. This, I desire, that you may understand.”
M: (Aghast) “Then if that be your truth and then, are we naught but multitudes of ever changing confusions, Lady of the Desert?”
W: (Calmly) “Yes and no! For those who are muscular and full of fertile vigour in their flesh, and in their intellects, and those that are severely and strictly scholastic, then they do need and they can succeed in time, in their never ending struggle to bring together the mutually antagonistic factions of that which constitutes our beingness. And, as for the dense brained soulless beings, then, it is equally veritably true that, a descent into madness can be rapidly produced, since from their erratic constituents, they cannot attract together these antagonistic and mutually-hating emotions in some vision of cohesion, and thus mayhem can be fashioned.”
(Silence)
M: (Calmly) “So, pray do tell me, where does Love and Justice and Truth and Morality stand in your universe?”
W: (Serenely) “That has been mine desire to hear the words being produced from your lips, Man!”
(Pause)
W: “So, now perhaps, your sight may be getting clearer, for your question is certainly apt. Foremost, we pathetic mortals, we the be are forever slimy specks of sand that  crumbles, must necessarily seek to survive and flourish within whatever forest, desert, meadow we find ourselves cast upon.”
M: (Startled) “At what cost, Woman? At the expense of Morality?”
W: (Rapidly) “Yes and no.”
M: (Shocked) “Horrendous! How can you spout out such filth?”
W: (Quietly) “Restrain your stupidities, and give more room to your intelligence, Sire.”
(Silence)
W: (Gracefully) “In times of trouble, what can Man do when he be forced to embrace evil, even though he finds the act of the embrace loathsome, but he does what he does for the truth of his vital existence to continue. Only when he need never embrace vile, and then allows himself to commit the act, then he is for certainty to incur the everlasting wrath of God. Evil is thus never one truth to be utterly rejected, perchance you may now see. ”
M: (Calm but Tired) “I follow your words and their ideas therein.”
W: (Gracefully) “When you talk to me on Man and everlasting, conflicting changes within that self-same creature, I tell you with all the earnestness that I possess, of what God has scattered and endowed upon me; for this beast, we all call in unity Man, this creature has far too many a numberless number of mutually self-contradicting, distrusting, loving, hating, inspiring and a never ending number of feelings and emotions that are in constant flow and change – as in any rapid river descending unto its eventual destination, which in its case, is the sea, while in our case, it is Death itself for sure.”
M: (Despair) “And how can this beast ‘love’ anyone within this welter of confusion?”
W: (Rapidly) “He cannot!”
M: (Rapidly, Begging) “But Man and Woman do love with bristling passions! Do you deny that, Woman?!”
W: (Calmly, eyes downwards looking) “Yes, and no. Since the beast has needs, based on his vastly intricate constituents, to ‘love’ his fellow beast, he imagines and believes

PASSION PLAY

Ayad Gharbawi




Location: Desert Shore, Bitterly Cold Night, next to strong waves from the ocean.
Characters: Man ((M) and his Lover, a Woman (W).

----------------------------------------



W: “Search as I forever do, in manifold ways unknown, I seek but to love thee, and the meagre goodness from Life, with steely ardour - my armour faithful.”
M: “Alone I may be, and still, yes I love thee; these days heavy are and beset I am by burdensome trivialities, but I remain trusting, though my corner so narrow remain.”
W: “My Love! Your speech I hear aloud and thine lips I live within and yet, my Love, all Solitude I am. Man! I am unaided! In this journey of sinful thorns, my love, in this unforgiving journey, this blurred odyssey, I stand alone”.
M: “This trial you speak of, but I do know of it well; so, listen then: within the strength of trusted togetherness we can plough on, though everlasting harm shall do its spiteful tricks, warm to our united truth shall we remain.”
W: (Surprised) “O! My love! This thought I cannot hear! My life, my destiny, is but mine. And all have their own solitary roads of jagged rocks to embrace, like it we or not. We heartbreaking earthly sad beasts, either fiercely clutch at integrity, or we do let it go to perish away.”
M: (Confused) “My Love! I do hear, I do hear. But when Times decide on burdening us, what then can we achieve? To face Reality within the frail arms of solitude is to ignore, to refuse the severe threats of repulsive grins.”
(Silence)
M: (Passionately) “O! My sweet! Only in us, can we envelope, through joined, clasped warmth can we be as one united! The screams that so truly are meant to slice us off, only we, our Unity, can destroy. For mine eyes can only find sleep in your ears, and it is so - for otherwise nothing and no one can be.”
W: (Angry) “My Passion too is bubbling for thine bewildered ears. Am I not your soul? Do we not suffer as one? Do we not reflect as one? Am I not your lover true? Is not our warmth not weighty to our fickle bones?”
(Silence)
W: (Passionate) “But, Lover, this much ought I to formally declare unto thee: For our eyes, and all eyes, envision unequally at one another. Till eternity, in its casual, indifferent flicker, snatches at us all wretched mortals, the gazes from lords to paupers remain veritably mismatched. O my passion! My woeful heart! These words I thunder forth defines love unfeigned, and what mine eyes do pour out unto thine ears is authenticity true.
(Silence)
W: (Passionately) “What joined mem’ries you choose to caress may possess thee, but your exactness for what love is to you, doth not dwell in mine mind. What tears, what weepings you do, fall stormily upon thine own soul’s wildernesses. You choose to be chained by changing visions and indefinite sentiments of light weight – though so poignant at the moment they veritably are?”
M: (Inquiring) “My love! I cherish thee; where hast thou been in thine mind, for now ye talk of that truth you relate to in your heart. Your pronouncements, what depths I do feel! Can it perchance be that my passion has strayed our winds far from me?”
W: “No, my love! Why is anger, I feel, lush on thine tongue?”
M: (Surprised and Frightened) “Anger! I am too distant from that affliction! But yes, I feel my words make only for unstable murmurs in my breath.”
W: (Quietly) “Then, do tell me, lover, who do your murmurs betray - myself or yourself then?”
M: (Quietly) “Perhaps so, perhaps so. But my anxiety wilfully demands of me to eradicate your vision.”
W: (Firmly) “You answer naught from my undemanding question. Or, are mine meanings too violent for you? What aches thee?”
M: (Passionately) “My sweet! In so many moments, I created mysterious planets for thee! Bizarre worlds of contrasts and opposites and musical words of antiquity and sensual ravines. My love! I, my soul, my life, my inner deepest breath, tempted as I am by Fates’ inscrutable cruelties to ashamedly yield, I have yet always expressed to mine eyes’ heart, though they be in bleak darkness, to faithfully fight without pause all shades of vice and still yet - with loving integrity; I have stood with arms of righteousness and love for thee up and never down! Yes, sincere good and venal ill remain joined in life for all to feel, but you knew it was not for me to disentangle them. And so, I pronounce unto thee, still, and yet ever and ever more, my love for thee, though still beholding a thousand mountains before me, I remain sturdy for thee; I remain undisturbed by burly laws, and by exotic dictums, I stand fierce and unhurt, save in your absence.”
W: (With Sadness) “My beloved, your vivid voice stabs the falsehoods for thee, and I say unto thee, unto thee your excessive and unreasonable chains, and for myself my unreasonable and extreme chains remain.”
M: (Shocked) “But I burden thee with no steely chains, nor verbal fetters! For naught I produce for thee save grace, passion and freedom to love for us both to be in Unity Sacred! Dost thou embrace my visions as ‘shackles’, then ‘tis better we agree to class that which we are as but madness! Hear me, for my tears now must truly change their colours!”
W: (Determined) “Your feverish hands clutch only upon mine erratic wings!”
M: (Anger) “Never! Never! For I clutch only to destroy all malevolence; as for thee, Lady of the purest, untouched, guarded, secluded Ponds, I seek to unshackle for you the scattered, scared shadows that yearn for thine sovereignty. And what is this ‘sovereignty’ but our Sacred Union? What curse deemest you I impose? Do you equal my purest passions with atrocities? Murmur unto mine ears, your clearest love for me.”
W: “Ah! You enquire of me my ‘sincerity’ for thee? What demands!”
(Silence)
M: “I see naught but heaving forests of love betwixt us, and yet, you discover my words being ‘demanding’?”
W: (Drily) “Perchance, your visions are indistinct and ever more blurred, through these years cannot be ignored.”
M: (Begging) “My love! All mine life, though it be lengthy, I fought most venal tyranny, and for this moment, you question my righteousness?”
W: (Indignantly) “I have been plunged into seas hostile and I have plunged in a thousand miles of inert minds troubled beyond conceivable comprehension and I have yet to have my Right for my own greedy, ravenous flesh to be vigorously and forcefully embraced by sensuality and serenity. Yes, I do love thee, and yet in our union, as in all unions, I have been adorned with naught, save snickering, gossiping scenes of festive *****, games, chatter and farewells, themselves festooned within silly and sincerely stupid smiles and frowns, and shallow tears and never ending ludicrous chatter unworthy of monkeys conversing. I have met programmed rows of pats, respect and all other so-called decent intents and gestures, but, where, lover that you are of mine, where does my personal heart, throb and manically vibrate, save in your heavenly imaginations?”
(Silence)
W: (Quietly but Determinedly) “My love! I truly thee love and with passions, I tell you, of proportions of precise exactitudes; in your eyes I have witnessed symphonies of exquisiteness; and, I of thee ask: where dwelleth your own love for myself in thine body?”
(Silence)
W: (Passionate) “Do you recognise the changing structures that form this, that I name ‘My Love’? In my solitude eternal, I do evermore and always do pause, and be pensive, and be thinking of questions, such as ‘where’, ‘why’, ‘when’ ‘how’, and ‘which’ should be my path; I am forever and ever more searching, seeking the heavens of every corner, and the irritable tempests, within my changing self as they themselves do try to seek me, and we forever, through inconceivable murkiness, do try to assemble the everlasting entirety of these disorganized puzzles into some measure of comprehensible cohesion that ‘I’ am. That is how the ‘I’ you love is forever changing and thereby formulating itself, and within all these meandering passions, and endless errors, where am I to feel thee? Where? And where do you seek me? In which land? In which forest? You trivialise my beingness as you focus upon my lands as being that which so effortless to find, and yet, you are much too distant from an understanding of my conflicting, emerging civilisations.”
(Silence)
W: (Passionate) If the utterance ‘Never’ is pathetic for thee, then allow me to introduce you to my latest heart: for it screams out that single, protracted utterance! Never! My love, these winds of raging wraths, both within and outside by flesh, must and can only be annihilated by mine own sincerities – were I not to play against my own self. My uncontrolled desires and, yes, thirsty manic passions can only be tempered and thoroughly satiated to the utter brim, by mine own loving, sources of pleasure, my own uncontrollable ecstasies. As for the rest of ****** pleasures, my own erroneous words, speeches and utterances can only be severed and sliced by my tranquillity.”
M: (Resigned) “I hear thine words. Do not abandon me. Do not destroy our civilisation of justice.”
W: “What we share, the bonds, are enjoyment. Listen though to mine lips: enjoyment is what - when it is to be compared with convulsive ecstatic quivers of satisfaction?”
M: (Puzzled) “And what of all our journeys to attain that unity? For all that, is it to be of mere insignificance? And if that be your truth, for what then did we toil and labour for unity of minds and bodies?”
W: (Laughing) “Did you understand from Life itself, that here it was, grandly to proclaim its furtive faces unto thine own awaiting face?! “
M: (Baffled) “It was so far too plain and vastly clear unto me these sceneries we faced before our loving bodies.”
W: “Yes, and I too, did see them with thee. Our four eyes, did see unity for that flicker of time. How true you speak! But, time clocked on, I saw you as you stood there, moving nowhere, unawares that it was your duty to squash onwards whatever vile breaths faced us.”
M: (Desperate) “And did I not? Did I abandon thee in these crushing paths?”
W: (Accusing) “No, you did not. Never, once did you abandon me. I ask of thee; for what sense do we feel a need for a continuation of these gruelling marches? For unity? For love? Or, is love unity? Was that and is this our reason for us to carry on with these shackles?”
M: “For assuredly, yes, and more yes, I tell thee! Toil and gruelling dawns, and unbearable evenings and the whitest of nights are all for the sacred attainment of that heavenly summit of joy I name as blessed ‘Love’.”
W: (Assured) “And, Sire, what if my nerves, blood and ****** hunger tell thee in truth that we, all of us, need no longer, and need never in truth, to undertake these paths, for we find naught that nourishes us at the blessed summit of your definition of what ‘Love’ is?”
M: (Confused & Sad) “So, I falter here and now upon understanding your speech; do I reason from thee that our loving days in unity are frivolously bygone now?”
W: (Calmly & Gracefully) “Do the wandering birds, and do the blind bats, and do the reckless storms, and do the blindly, raging waves and do the supremely arrogant oceans eternally march on in but one direction only with the savage passage of time within their particular lives? You did pronounce that you built planets for our unity; well then, did you not view how planets endlessly revolve along the same path?”
(Pause)
W: (Calmly & with Dignity) “For, Sire, I am not as a Planet - could you not feel that throughout our journeys? You endlessly query and question ‘who’ it is that ‘I’ am? Well, I speak this much on myself; I am as the birds, and the bats, and the storms and the waves and the oceans.”  
M: (Angry) “Woman! I can only then tell of thee that you are naught but feuding clutter and violent disarray!”
W: (Unconcerned) “Those are your words. Not mine. Speak for what you wish, Sire.”
M: (Angry) “And I stand here, before thee, in anger – nay, more, more! In fury!”
W: (Laughing) “For what? For the deeds that created but sticky, and grimy grains of sand for the undoubted pleasure our eyes?”
M: “And so you label our truths, our love so much! Fair indeed, you speak, Woman of Justice.”
W: (Arrogantly) “Man! Express your delights for your own delights. And, alas, there the circle and reality ends – and it ends only for you. That is one morsel of truth for you to ponder. What we ‘created’ and what we ‘loved’ was never and never, ever be the same for you as it is for me. Are you a sincere believer that your personal vision is the same sight all other seeing creatures envision?”
M: (Angry) “Woman, you enrage me! Your arrogance is drenching thine rags.”
W: (Sarcastic) “Tis the Man with no reason who allows his breath and words to be a veritable cesspool of fuming stenches!”
M: “But I, that I am, no longer can define your contours?”
W: (Pointedly) “Precisely, Man, precisely. Perhaps, now you have come closer to the vulnerable shores of reality!”
M: (Confused) “Do you express that you are ever varying and so for that reason there is not a one unified you?”
W: (Calmly) “For we are all ‘varying’, to borrow your word – if you do so allow me, Sire. There was never ‘unity’ of soul, nor mind, nor self, nor of any one personality. This, I desire, that you may understand.”
M: (Aghast) “Then if that be your truth and then, are we naught but multitudes of ever changing confusions, Lady of the Desert?”
W: (Calmly) “Yes and no! For those who are muscular and full of fertile vigour in their flesh, and in their intellects, and those that are severely and strictly scholastic, then they do need and they can succeed in time, in their never ending struggle to bring together the mutually antagonistic factions of that which constitutes our beingness. And, as for the dense brained soulless beings, then, it is equally veritably true that, a descent into madness can be rapidly produced, since from their erratic constituents, they cannot attract together these antagonistic and mutually-hating emotions in some vision of cohesion, and thus mayhem can be fashioned.”
(Silence)
M: (Calmly) “So, pray do tell me, where does Love and Justice and Truth and Morality stand in your universe?”
W: (Serenely) “That has been mine desire to hear the words being produced from your lips, Man!”
(Pause)
W: “So, now perhaps, your sight may be getting clearer, for your question is certainly apt. Foremost, we pathetic mortals, we the be are forever slimy specks of sand that  crumbles, must necessarily seek to survive and flourish within whatever forest, desert, meadow we find ourselves cast upon.”
M: (Startled) “At what cost, Woman? At the expense of Morality?”
W: (Rapidly) “Yes and no.”
M: (Shocked) “Horrendous! How can you spout out such filth?”
W: (Quietly) “Restrain your stupidities, and give more room to your intelligence, Sire.”
(Silence)
W: (Gracefully) “In times of trouble, what can Man do when he be forced to embrace evil, even though he finds the act of the embrace loathsome, but he does what he does for the truth of his vital existence to continue. Only when he need never embrace vile, and then allows himself to commit the act, then he is for certainty to incur the everlasting wrath of God. Evil is thus never one truth to be utterly rejected, perchance you may now see. ”
M: (Calm but Tired) “I follow your words and their ideas therein.”
W: (Gracefully) “When you talk to me on Man and everlasting, conflicting changes within that self-same creature, I tell you with all the earnestness that I possess, of what God has scattered and endowed upon me; for this beast, we all call in unity Man, this creature has far too many a numberless number of mutually self-contradicting, distrusting, loving, hating, inspiring and a never ending number of feelings and emotions that are in constant flow and change – as in any rapid river descending unto its eventual destination, which in its case, is the sea, while in our case, it is Death itself for sure.”
M: (Despair) “And how can this beast ‘love’ anyone within this welter of confusion?”
W: (Rapidly) “He cannot!”
M: (Rapidly, Begging) “But Man and Woman do love with bristling passions! Do you deny that, Woman?!”
W: (Calmly, eyes downwards looking) “Yes, and no. Since the beast has needs, based on his vastly intricate constituents, to ‘love’ his fellow beast, he imagines and believes

There is nothing new under the sun, but it was night and the indifferent blinks of gaseous lives above looked down while my friends and I were at a new fast food joint that moved next to a now lonely Wendy's, with a faded sign tarnished by something the new fast food joint had yet to experience—mundanity by time. But I had my notebook with me while we ate outside, but it was in the car. My mind is always in that book, and I remembered something I had written for a novel in progress: 'Nothing is new under the sun. How is it possible to watch stars die? There is nothing new to their dust. We are the flies of the universes.'
It was just when I had finished my BBQ pork sandwich when Ariana suggested visiting a graveyard. I had the idea to visit a Satanist graveyard that our friend, Lanessa warned us against for the better safety of our sane souls—good luck with that. I wanted a revival of fear. How the beast would rip at the roof off our metal can of a car—the greater our barbarism, the greater our admiration and imagination—the less admiration and imagination, the greater our barbarism. But Ariana disagrees with words I never say, Nick laughs with my simple words to that previous thought. How funny it would be to burn eternal.
But then he suggested we should go to the Trussel in Conway. I had no idea or quote to think about to contribute to this idea. I wander, as I like to, into the possibility that his idea is a good one. Like some wanting hipster, I dress in an old t-shirt with of mantra long forgotten in the meaning of its cadence.
That is the march of men and women into the sea—honest, but forgetful and forgotten.
I was wearing a shirt sleeve on my head I bought from a mall-chain hippie store, and exercise shorts, finished off with skele-toes shoes. I was ready for everything and nothing at the same time. And that fits, I suppose. But all that does matter—and doesn't, but it is hard as hell to read the mind of a reader—it's like having a lover, but s/he doesn't know what s/he wants from you—selfish *******.
But there I was,  on the road, laughing in the back seat, sitting next to a girl who was tired, but also out of place. I could see she wanted to close arms of another, the voice of another, the truth that sits next to her while watching tv every time she comes over to hang with him, but never accepts that truth. She is a liar, but only to herself. How can she live with that? The world may never know.
The simple rides into things you've never done before give some of the greatest insight you could imagine, but only on the simple things that come full circle later. That is a mantra you can't print on a t-shirt, but if it ever is, I'm copyrighting it. And if it's not possible, I'll make it possible!
When we got to the Trussel, the scenic path lit by ornamented lamps seemed tame once I stepped onto the old railroad tracks. They were rusted and bruised by the once crushing value of trains rolling across it's once sturdy structure. Now they were old, charred by the night, and more than just some abandoned railroad bridge—the Trussel was a camouflage symbol birthed by the moment I looked into a Garfish's eye as it nibbled on my cork while I was on a fishing trip with my granddad when I was eleven. I remember that moment so well as the pale, olive green eye looked at me with a sort of seething iron imprint—I needed that fear, it branded instead of whispering that knowledge into my ears.
That moment epitomizes my fear of heights over water—what lies beneath to rip, restrain, devour, impale, and or distract me.
But epitomize is a horrible word. It reeks of undeveloped understanding. Yet  I want a nimble connection with something as great as being remembered—a breathe of air and the ideas  thought by my younger self, but I will never see or remember what I thought about when I was that young—only the summary of my acts and words. And by that nothing has changed—am I too afraid to say what I need to say? Too afraid to hear what everyone else hears? Or is it the truth—depravity of depravities that has no idea of its potential, so I am tired of the words that describe my shortcomings and unextended gasping hope. I am tired of living in the land of Gatsby Syndrome waiting for Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy!
But when we got to where the Trussel actually began I felt the fear hit like the day it was born—all hope was drained, and I was okay with abandoning all aspirations of having fun and being myself in the face of public criticism. I was flushed out by the weasel in my belly—the ******* beneath those still waters. I compare it to someone being able to handle Waterboarding, but can't handle being insulted—it's that kind of pathetic.
I stood just on the last understandably steady railroad ties that I knew were safe and watched my friends sit off the edge of the bridge, taking in the cold wonder of the night, and I was told at least I was smarter than my dead cousin who managed to get on top of his high school in the middle of the night, but had to be cohearsed down for fifteen minutes by a future marine, and future mourner who still grieves with a smile on his face.
The future mourner, he laughs at the times he insulted, or made fun of, or chilled with his now dead friend. It's never the bad times he cries about, there are none—just the good times, because they don't make them like they used to.
I watched them in that moment, and I don't know if I can deal with knowing my life is real. I began to blame my morality on this fear even though I already justified the fear just seconds before. But as I write this, I look over my notes and see something I wrote a few days ago: 'Life is ******* with  us right now. You laugh and I laugh, but we're still getting ******. The demon's in our face.'
As morbid as that comes off, it resonates some truth—what is killing us is going to **** us no matter what we do—and I don't want to be epitomized by the acts and words I didn't say.
I was never in the moment as a kid—I was raised by by old people and kept back by my younger siblings. The experienced tried to teach me wisdom, and the inexperienced kept my imagination locked in time. I don't want to go home as much now because I see that the inexperienced are becoming wiser everyday and the experienced are dying before my eyes. My idea of things is enduring leprosy.
But back to the simple moments.
Ariana saw a playground as she stood up and investigated the Trussel. It was next to the river, behind the church, fenced off by the fellowship of the church to keep the young ones in and the troublesome out. Of course, we didn't realize there was a gate and it was locked until Nick stated the probable obvious within ten feet of the nostalgic playground. And that's when Ariana pointed out the bugs swarming the parking lot outdoor lamp that blazed the fleshiness of our presences into dense shadows and more than likely caught the eye of a suspicious driver in a truck passing by. But I was still on the bridge—back in the past, never the moment. Me and my friends are still children inside these ***** forms. I muttered to myself: “Life ain't about baby steps.”
Nick looked over and asked what I said. I turned around, dramatic, like I always like to and repeated louder this time, “Life ain't about baby steps.”
He asked if I needed to do this alone, and I said he could come along. I walked rhythmically across the railroad ties, and heard Ariana comment that getting to the railroad up the small, steep hill was like being in the Marines. I laughed sarcastically. Nick and I had been to Parris Island before, and I know they test your possible fears, but they beat the living **** out of them.
I casually walk into the room where my fear lives and tell it to get the **** out.
When I reached the precipice of the last railroad tie I stood on before, I felt the old remind me that death awaited me, but there was no epic soundtrack or incredible action scene where I stab a manifestation of my fear in heart—a bit fun it might have been, but not the truth. I bear-crawled over the crossings of the ties and the structure of the bridge itself. I felt Relowatiphsy—an open-minded apathy self-made philosophical term—take over me. It is much simpler than it sounds.
There was no cold wonder as I imagined. There was just a bleak mirror of water below, a stiff curtain of trees that shadowed it, and the curiosity of what lies in the dark continuing distance past the Trussel.
Nick sat with me and we talked about women and fear, or at least I did, and I hoped he felt what I did—there was a force there that is nabbed by everyone, but cherished by few—courage. And I thank him for it, but I know I did it. Now I want to go and jump in that still water below—Ariana later says she's happy I got over my fear, but I'll probably have a harder time during the day when I can see what I'm facing, but I see it differently. During the day, the demons are stone and far away—like looking down the barrels of a double-barreled shotgun uncocked and unloaded, but at night is when the chamber is full and ready to go, and you have no idea who is holding the gun with their finger on the trigger and your destination in mind.
Then we threw rocks into the water in contest to see who could throw past the moonlight into the shadowy distance . I aimed for the water marker, and got the closest with limited footing, using just my arm strength. But it wasn't long before we had to leave, making fun of people who do cooler things than us, on the way to the car. I had to ride in the back seat again because I forgot to call shotgun. But on the way home, the idea popped in our heads what we should get my hooka and go to Broadway, and get the materials so we could smoke on the beach.
Nick's girlfriend and her friend joined us.
I missed a few puns against my co-worker as I was sent to get free water from the candy store where I work. I ended up doing a chore because I was taller than most of the people there. Appropriate enough, it was filling the water bottles up in the refrigerator.
All the while I loathed the fact that I would have to be clocked in tomorrow by two in the afternoon. I grabbed the water and got out of there as fast as possible without appearing to be in a hurry.
Impression of caring matters more than the actuality where I work—and yes, that makes me a miserable ****.
Perhaps it's not too late to admit I am recovering pyromaniac from my childhood and the flavoring we use for the taffy is extremely flammable. It would be a shame to drench the store in what people love to smell everyday when they walk in, and light the gas stove. Then, maybe I could walk away real cool-like as this pimple in this tourist acne town pops like the Hindenburg. The impression of splendor is like a phoenix—it grows old, dies, resurrects into the same, but apparently different form, spreads it's wings, and eats and ***** on everything simple, or presumably so.
I forget the name of the beach, but it was the best time I've had in a while. I was whimsy, and high on the vastness of the stretch of beach around us. They could bury us here. But me in particular. I rolled from the middle of the beach to the water, stood in the waves and shouted my phrase I coined when I realize something as wonderful as conquering a fear or realizing a dream;
--******' off!
And I stared at the horizon. My friends came up behind me and I looked back to see it was Nick and his girlfriend hugging. I gave a soft smile, put my hands in my pocket, and turned back to stare at the clouded horizon. What beasts must lie out there—more ferocious than the simple fresh water beings that wait beneath the earlier placid waters. I was a fool to think that was the worst. Nick said as I pondered all that, that I looked like Gatsby, and I tried to give him a smile that you may only see once in a lifetime, but I'm sure it failed.
I wanted to tell him that, “You cannot make me happy. It is usually the people who have no intention of making me happy that makes me smile the quickest.” But I don't. Let me be Gatsby, or Fitzgerald, if to no one else, but myself.

Hell is the deterioration of all that matters, and as the five of us sat around the hooka, and inhaled the thick blueberry flavored smoke that hinted at the taste of the Blueberry flavoring I use to make Blueberry taffy, there was a satirical realization that the coal used to activate the tobacco and flavor in the bowl is sparking like a firework, and reminds us all of where we're going.
It's a love affair between that hopelessness and hope of some destination we've only read about, but never seen.
By this point Nick and I are covered in sand, because he joined me in fun of rolling down the beach. We want so bad to be Daoists—nonchalant to the oblivion as we sit in. Just on the rifts of the tide, he and I scooped handfuls of wet sand, and I lost my fear of making sense and let Relowatiphsy take over again.
“Look at the sand in your hands. It can be molded to the shapes your hands make. We scoop it out of the surf and it falls through our fingers. There are things we're afraid of out there, and we sit just out reach of them, but within the grasp of their impressions. The sand falls through our fingers, and it plops into the tide, sending back up drops of water to hit our hands—the molders of our lives.” I said all that in hope against the hopelessness of being forgotten.
Then he said, “What if this is life? Not just the metaphor, but the act of holding sand in our hands.
I relish in his idea of wiping away my fear of an unimportant life. And by this point, it's safe to assume I live to relish ideas.

The last bit of sand from the last handful of sand was washed from my hand and I looked back at the clouded horizon, pitch black with frightful clouds and said:
“Nick, if I don't become a writer. If I live a life where I just convince myself everything's fine, and that dream will come true after I finish all the practical prep I 'must' do. I will **** myself.
I looked at him, Relowatiphsy in my heart, and he said:
“As a friend, I'd be sad, but I'd understand. But that means you have to literally fight for your life now—regardlessly.”
And he left me with those words. Just the same as my granddad left me a serious heed before he wanted to talk about something more cheerful, when I asked about his glory days fishing the Great *** Dee River. He said: “I wish I'd been here before the white man polluted the river. It would've been something to fish this water then”, then he paused to catch his breath, “Guess there are some things that stay, and others than go.” Then joy returned, as it always does.

But the idea of what was happening to me didn't hit me until we were a few miles away from the beach, covered in sand, but the potential of the night after conquering my fear of heights over water had been shed in the ocean.
Around midnight, when the headache from the cheap hooka smoke wore off and the mystic veil of the clouds over the horizon has been closed in by the condensation on the windows of some Waffle House in Myrtle Beach. There was a wave of seriousness that broke over my imagination. Works calls for me tomorrow by two.
There's not much vacationing when you live in a vacation town.
And midnight—the witching hour—spooks away the posers too afraid to commit to rage against the fear.
But there are others—college students that walk in and complain about the temperature of the eating establishment, and the lack of ashtrays—how they must be thinking of dining and dashing—running from a box, but forever locked in it.

They make annoying music as I write this. That is how they deal.

Amid the verbose magicians
Seeking kinships
And sailing deep into their arduous mists
Watching them peddle their afternoon
To a handful of smiling children holding their breath
Amazed in gentle body trick

The older men of age
Leaning deep into their creased chins
Stroking the grizzled fat
Blinding light of soul
Staring down the barrel of life
Striking the enemy one last time
And yet smiling
sober,
Met of match,
taking care of their kids.

Then there's the cold-clocked dudes
On the phone pushing buttons
In a button-up raglan
Lost indistinct
the promised land
The golden shores swept away by
inconvenient time
Left shopping in an auto mall
"Won't you look at the time?"
7.07 APR
Boy what a steal!
And Steve maddened and screamed
As the lines blurred instinctual between opposing teams
And the oven dinged a great alabaster slant
Leaning towards the new millenitants

Rise up!
***** the wheel
Turn the axel from pistons
To alkaline metal
And doubt with great monumental
Quality
That the machine borders all
And we cannot retreat

And while I sift bouyantly between the waves
Searching the puzzle piece within the molecules
Reconnecting with the things
And representing
dreams on a 66 hertz screen
I call rather failing
Towards a black rocked shore
Towards the sweet Dorigen
Of my dreams
Finding an integral of time
And space

And calculating the intangible *****
Of my desmise
With the imaginary constiutent
Of that lighted mind.

There is nothing new under the sun, but it was night and the indifferent blinks of gaseous lives above looked down while my friends and I were at a new fast food joint that moved next to a now lonely Wendy's, with a faded sign tarnished by something the new fast food joint had yet to experience—mundanity by time. But I had my notebook with me while we ate outside, but it was in the car. My mind is always in that book, and I remembered something I had written for a novel in progress: 'Nothing is new under the sun. How is it possible to watch stars die? There is nothing new to their dust. We are the flies of the universes.'
It was just when I had finished my BBQ pork sandwich when Ariana suggested visiting a graveyard. I had the idea to visit a Satanist graveyard that our friend, Lanessa warned us against for the better safety of our sane souls—good luck with that. I wanted a revival of fear. How the beast would rip at the roof off our metal can of a car—the greater our barbarism, the greater our admiration and imagination—the less admiration and imagination, the greater our barbarism. But Ariana disagrees with words I never say, Nick laughs with my simple words to that previous thought. How funny it would be to burn eternal.
But then he suggested we should go to the Trussel in Conway. I had no idea or quote to think about to contribute to this idea. I wander, as I like to, into the possibility that his idea is a good one. Like some wanting hipster, I dress in an old t-shirt with of mantra long forgotten in the meaning of its cadence.
That is the march of men and women into the sea—honest, but forgetful and forgotten.
I was wearing a shirt sleeve on my head I bought from a mall-chain hippie store, and exercise shorts, finished off with skele-toes shoes. I was ready for everything and nothing at the same time. And that fits, I suppose. But all that does matter—and doesn't, but it is hard as hell to read the mind of a reader—it's like having a lover, but s/he doesn't know what s/he wants from you—selfish *******.
But there I was,  on the road, laughing in the back seat, sitting next to a girl who was tired, but also out of place. I could see she wanted to close arms of another, the voice of another, the truth that sits next to her while watching tv every time she comes over to hang with him, but never accepts that truth. She is a liar, but only to herself. How can she live with that? The world may never know.
The simple rides into things you've never done before give some of the greatest insight you could imagine, but only on the simple things that come full circle later. That is a mantra you can't print on a t-shirt, but if it ever is, I'm copyrighting it. And if it's not possible, I'll make it possible!
When we got to the Trussel, the scenic path lit by ornamented lamps seemed tame once I stepped onto the old railroad tracks. They were rusted and bruised by the once crushing value of trains rolling across it's once sturdy structure. Now they were old, charred by the night, and more than just some abandoned railroad bridge—the Trussel was a camouflage symbol birthed by the moment I looked into a Garfish's eye as it nibbled on my cork while I was on a fishing trip with my granddad when I was eleven. I remember that moment so well as the pale, olive green eye looked at me with a sort of seething iron imprint—I needed that fear, it branded instead of whispering that knowledge into my ears.
That moment epitomizes my fear of heights over water—what lies beneath to rip, restrain, devour, impale, and or distract me.
But epitomize is a horrible word. It reeks of undeveloped understanding. Yet  I want a nimble connection with something as great as being remembered—a breathe of air and the ideas  thought by my younger self, but I will never see or remember what I thought about when I was that young—only the summary of my acts and words. And by that nothing has changed—am I too afraid to say what I need to say? Too afraid to hear what everyone else hears? Or is it the truth—depravity of depravities that has no idea of its potential, so I am tired of the words that describe my shortcomings and unextended gasping hope. I am tired of living in the land of Gatsby Syndrome waiting for Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy!
But when we got to where the Trussel actually began I felt the fear hit like the day it was born—all hope was drained, and I was okay with abandoning all aspirations of having fun and being myself in the face of public criticism. I was flushed out by the weasel in my belly—the ******* beneath those still waters. I compare it to someone being able to handle Waterboarding, but can't handle being insulted—it's that kind of pathetic.
I stood just on the last understandably steady railroad ties that I knew were safe and watched my friends sit off the edge of the bridge, taking in the cold wonder of the night, and I was told at least I was smarter than my dead cousin who managed to get on top of his high school in the middle of the night, but had to be cohearsed down for fifteen minutes by a future marine, and future mourner who still grieves with a smile on his face.
The future mourner, he laughs at the times he insulted, or made fun of, or chilled with his now dead friend. It's never the bad times he cries about, there are none—just the good times, because they don't make them like they used to.
I watched them in that moment, and I don't know if I can deal with knowing my life is real. I began to blame my morality on this fear even though I already justified the fear just seconds before. But as I write this, I look over my notes and see something I wrote a few days ago: 'Life is ******* with  us right now. You laugh and I laugh, but we're still getting ******. The demon's in our face.'
As morbid as that comes off, it resonates some truth—what is killing us is going to **** us no matter what we do—and I don't want to be epitomized by the acts and words I didn't say.
I was never in the moment as a kid—I was raised by by old people and kept back by my younger siblings. The experienced tried to teach me wisdom, and the inexperienced kept my imagination locked in time. I don't want to go home as much now because I see that the inexperienced are becoming wiser everyday and the experienced are dying before my eyes. My idea of things is enduring leprosy.
But back to the simple moments.
Ariana saw a playground as she stood up and investigated the Trussel. It was next to the river, behind the church, fenced off by the fellowship of the church to keep the young ones in and the troublesome out. Of course, we didn't realize there was a gate and it was locked until Nick stated the probable obvious within ten feet of the nostalgic playground. And that's when Ariana pointed out the bugs swarming the parking lot outdoor lamp that blazed the fleshiness of our presences into dense shadows and more than likely caught the eye of a suspicious driver in a truck passing by. But I was still on the bridge—back in the past, never the moment. Me and my friends are still children inside these ***** forms. I muttered to myself: “Life ain't about baby steps.”
Nick looked over and asked what I said. I turned around, dramatic, like I always like to and repeated louder this time, “Life ain't about baby steps.”
He asked if I needed to do this alone, and I said he could come along. I walked rhythmically across the railroad ties, and heard Ariana comment that getting to the railroad up the small, steep hill was like being in the Marines. I laughed sarcastically. Nick and I had been to Parris Island before, and I know they test your possible fears, but they beat the living **** out of them.
I casually walk into the room where my fear lives and tell it to get the **** out.
When I reached the precipice of the last railroad tie I stood on before, I felt the old remind me that death awaited me, but there was no epic soundtrack or incredible action scene where I stab a manifestation of my fear in heart—a bit fun it might have been, but not the truth. I bear-crawled over the crossings of the ties and the structure of the bridge itself. I felt Relowatiphsy—an open-minded apathy self-made philosophical term—take over me. It is much simpler than it sounds.
There was no cold wonder as I imagined. There was just a bleak mirror of water below, a stiff curtain of trees that shadowed it, and the curiosity of what lies in the dark continuing distance past the Trussel.
Nick sat with me and we talked about women and fear, or at least I did, and I hoped he felt what I did—there was a force there that is nabbed by everyone, but cherished by few—courage. And I thank him for it, but I know I did it. Now I want to go and jump in that still water below—Ariana later says she's happy I got over my fear, but I'll probably have a harder time during the day when I can see what I'm facing, but I see it differently. During the day, the demons are stone and far away—like looking down the barrels of a double-barreled shotgun uncocked and unloaded, but at night is when the chamber is full and ready to go, and you have no idea who is holding the gun with their finger on the trigger and your destination in mind.
Then we threw rocks into the water in contest to see who could throw past the moonlight into the shadowy distance . I aimed for the water marker, and got the closest with limited footing, using just my arm strength. But it wasn't long before we had to leave, making fun of people who do cooler things than us, on the way to the car. I had to ride in the back seat again because I forgot to call shotgun. But on the way home, the idea popped in our heads what we should get my hooka and go to Broadway, and get the materials so we could smoke on the beach.
Nick's girlfriend and her friend joined us.
I missed a few puns against my co-worker as I was sent to get free water from the candy store where I work. I ended up doing a chore because I was taller than most of the people there. Appropriate enough, it was filling the water bottles up in the refrigerator.
All the while I loathed the fact that I would have to be clocked in tomorrow by two in the afternoon. I grabbed the water and got out of there as fast as possible without appearing to be in a hurry.
Impression of caring matters more than the actuality where I work—and yes, that makes me a miserable ****.
Perhaps it's not too late to admit I am recovering pyromaniac from my childhood and the flavoring we use for the taffy is extremely flammable. It would be a shame to drench the store in what people love to smell everyday when they walk in, and light the gas stove. Then, maybe I could walk away real cool-like as this pimple in this tourist acne town pops like the Hindenburg. The impression of splendor is like a phoenix—it grows old, dies, resurrects into the same, but apparently different form, spreads it's wings, and eats and ***** on everything simple, or presumably so.
I forget the name of the beach, but it was the best time I've had in a while. I was whimsy, and high on the vastness of the stretch of beach around us. They could bury us here. But me in particular. I rolled from the middle of the beach to the water, stood in the waves and shouted my phrase I coined when I realize something as wonderful as conquering a fear or realizing a dream;
--******' off!
And I stared at the horizon. My friends came up behind me and I looked back to see it was Nick and his girlfriend hugging. I gave a soft smile, put my hands in my pocket, and turned back to stare at the clouded horizon. What beasts must lie out there—more ferocious than the simple fresh water beings that wait beneath the earlier placid waters. I was a fool to think that was the worst. Nick said as I pondered all that, that I looked like Gatsby, and I tried to give him a smile that you may only see once in a lifetime, but I'm sure it failed.
I wanted to tell him that, “You cannot make me happy. It is usually the people who have no intention of making me happy that makes me smile the quickest.” But I don't. Let me be Gatsby, or Fitzgerald, if to no one else, but myself.

Hell is the deterioration of all that matters, and as the five of us sat around the hooka, and inhaled the thick blueberry flavored smoke that hinted at the taste of the Blueberry flavoring I use to make Blueberry taffy, there was a satirical realization that the coal used to activate the tobacco and flavor in the bowl is sparking like a firework, and reminds us all of where we're going.
It's a love affair between that hopelessness and hope of some destination we've only read about, but never seen.
By this point Nick and I are covered in sand, because he joined me in fun of rolling down the beach. We want so bad to be Daoists—nonchalant to the oblivion as we sit in. Just on the rifts of the tide, he and I scooped handfuls of wet sand, and I lost my fear of making sense and let Relowatiphsy take over again.
“Look at the sand in your hands. It can be molded to the shapes your hands make. We scoop it out of the surf and it falls through our fingers. There are things we're afraid of out there, and we sit just out reach of them, but within the grasp of their impressions. The sand falls through our fingers, and it plops into the tide, sending back up drops of water to hit our hands—the molders of our lives.” I said all that in hope against the hopelessness of being forgotten.
Then he said, “What if this is life? Not just the metaphor, but the act of holding sand in our hands.
I relish in his idea of wiping away my fear of an unimportant life. And by this point, it's safe to assume I live to relish ideas.

The last bit of sand from the last handful of sand was washed from my hand and I looked back at the clouded horizon, pitch black with frightful clouds and said:
“Nick, if I don't become a writer. If I live a life where I just convince myself everything's fine, and that dream will come true after I finish all the practical prep I 'must' do. I will **** myself.
I looked at him, Relowatiphsy in my heart, and he said:
“As a friend, I'd be sad, but I'd understand. But that means you have to literally fight for your life now—regardlessly.”
And he left me with those words. Just the same as my granddad left me a serious heed before he wanted to talk about something more cheerful, when I asked about his glory days fishing the Great *** Dee River. He said: “I wish I'd been here before the white man polluted the river. It would've been something to fish this water then”, then he paused to catch his breath, “Guess there are some things that stay, and others than go.” Then joy returned, as it always does.

But the idea of what was happening to me didn't hit me until we were a few miles away from the beach, covered in sand, but the potential of the night after conquering my fear of heights over water had been shed in the ocean.
Around midnight, when the headache from the cheap hooka smoke wore off and the mystic veil of the clouds over the horizon has been closed in by the condensation on the windows of some Waffle House in Myrtle Beach. There was a wave of seriousness that broke over my imagination. Works calls for me tomorrow by two.
There's not much vacationing when you live in a vacation town.
And midnight—the witching hour—spooks away the posers too afraid to commit to rage against the fear.
But there are others—college students that walk in and complain about the temperature of the eating establishment, and the lack of ashtrays—how they must be thinking of dining and dashing—running from a box, but forever locked in it.

They make annoying music as I write this. That is how they deal with the inevitable death of the night. They bruise the air I breathe with love and faith and trust with no meaning—without even meaning it. But what do they know what I didn’t feel when I sat on that bridge or cowered on the fringes of the ocean? Their hands aren’t ***** like mine—their confidence does not seem fractured by these words that will never reach them, or their kids, or grandkids.
As day begins to move, I know I work at two and will be home by midnight again. The witching hour—where some stay and others go.

It's as if a storm blew in, torrential rains, metal bending winds and standing in the eye was you.
Waves crashing. People locked up for days, hours, as time danced around -- the clocked stopped ticking.
A foolish venture to see the cause of such array. To see. To touch. To feel. Your sight penetrating through the clouds, ripping apart my seams. You watch as I came undone; undone by the velvet in your eyes, the bend in your smile. I twirl as I am stripped clean in your eyes. You see every scrape, scar, bruise and every moment I have tried to sew back together. Your touch burns my flesh. Sear into me a moment I cannot forget, a moment I grasp for in the darkness when I am all alone.
It's as if I can feel your fingerprint on my heart with every beat. As I stumble towards you, exposed and raw --- you absorb me. Absorb my pain, struggles, my darkness. You hold me so tightly it's as if when you breathe, I breathe the same breath.
Your embrace calms the storm. Calms the rush of thoughts, fears, worries and emotions. As I look up into your eyes, you see my future. My happiness. My vision of happily ever after -- holding hands in the sunset, in the rain, in the snow. As the winds die down, as the rain lets up, as the oceans settle -- I see you clearly. I feel your heartbeat. I know I am right where I should be. The eye of you.

Time is teasing along with lush earth so pleasing,
The minutes of our youth are spent in toiled days
And sands are blowing the weld of our sold means,
Foundations of dust, the cries unheard, of the aged.

And then, as dream, you came from the starry skies
Blue and small as the ocean dot, forever fixed—
Reigning over the frozen, revolving moon that lies,
Dimly wakes in your fabled orbit, my fated ellipse.

Now, time tables and splits, renders me to eaves
Undone, my squandered youth was but a sad play
And I am clocked with wind, the geld of my dreams,
Had shiftless hands been more solid than my days.

At the end of the day when I'm spent and expired,
and all energy has clocked out and retired.
I long for your warmth and tender embrace,
my weary eyes to rest upon your face.
A caretaker that without I cannot thrive.
I don't need you to live, but to make me alive. Alive
I can change the world with what you help me to feel.
You are fuel and rest, rejuvenation, zeal.
When my strength is gone and my mind is drifting to sleep,
know that my last few thoughts my mind struggles to keep,
are of you and my family that share my name,
and lastly, how soon they will be one and the same.
I love you. Goodnight.

The inaugural bang swiveled with the vacant expressions of a muted feral crowd indignant about ethnic identity and swift in the recourse of tyrannical thugs pandering withered abuse

I solemnly abided in a chirpy itinerant glower against the exclusive system for stranding the disintegration of lyrical integrity for the Potemkin cheers of the culmination of too many jeers

Withered words for the abeyance of silence I incurred with wistful pleas for resurgent clarity beyond   sheepish fears

So I loitered in the evanescence of words..

Watching with alacrity as the strident ignorance of grafted wretchedness writhed its last mustered exsibilation at the sound of windbags bloviating beyond prodigal extravagance without a visible tweeted word

I measured my pause…..as I considered the heft of poignant exposures to a dismal serenade of miscegenated politics and garbled breaths of wheezy mendicants seeking participation in the trophy of smothered compliance

But I marveled simultaneously at the extinction of the shriveled crowds as they sized up the minutiae of wastrels glamorously inviting a frozen recapitulation of sorrows borrowed and wasted on minced platitudes that swindle still the votive confidence of regimented sympathy pretending empathy for soured hearts professedly defiant at their bereaved will

My pulse I clocked at 120 as I wondered where on earth the 140s and 150s have frittered their patience on with such brazen alacrity for the garish snarl of a sojourn into the ineffable effrontery of aureate mutiny against the tyrant of deaf spoon-fed indignation without the luxury of shared ignominy of memorable cadence for frippery in sparse blurbs registered in braille rather than brawn

Then I remembered my vociferous persnickety temperament and the curdled hatred of procrustean swan songs to an etiolating standard of ethical entanglement in aloof issues delivered with a decisive swoon too swift in earnestness to outfox with a quipped rebuff or a calculus of classical spoof

Then I wondered with a problematic but inherent prolixity…..
I too could adorn the adoring moon with a lyrical lampoon geared for a clockwork punchline or a winsome rebarbative tune….OR…. enchant with an incisive acerbic rant about how pasquinades outstay their welcome because of the clambered insistence of happenstance years ago in a blinkered mirror but never rehashed too soon

But where would affection heap its laurels if I dared to swindle the spotlight away from frisky poetasters who proved a renegade inspiration for fluttered triumph in a seaside tragedy only the crestfallen waves of pestilent Idiocracy could steal from my outstretched tenacity in verse and verve

Boom went a fulmination of hatred at my labored words! And then I swerved to avoid potholes of tenuous gainsay…. and other miscreants littering the world with misappropriated labels for laments belabored with publicity for displaced enmity distilled from a cauldron of mismatched ignorance….tethered to the vagrancy of gripe plucked at the ripe time for a twenty-dollar prize give or take a dime

But that dime separating 1990 from 2010 meant more than anything to a life littered with hallowed word crimes…. against the sanctimony of syncopation with cheap bleats too arrogant to be sheepish at the lavish indulgence of the marginalized wines…. brewed in a castle flickering on fiat worth rather than the simplicities of minutes of warbled time

So I currently warp minds with the proctor of a gamble too garish to finesse the quicksand of attrition but jaunty enough to bypass the limitations of a linear self-referential memorial about the circular nature of irony espoused by divorced rhymes

Now I stand ascendant….waiting for the retinues of retinas to absorb the wavy rigmarole of the serpentine pathways carved beneath the buzzwords of race and division and towards soldered unity with a human race beyond racism…. and a class divorced from socioeconomic crass division

Just then I arrived at serenity…. as I realized that the BAR exams that encage so many aspirant hearts are counterfeit in the court of the highest judiciary art that believes that insidious artifice is an embezzled venture of frolicsome guttersnipes wallowing in division can never revive a lifeless heart…. even if quick-witted credentialism rattles the slaves to vapid artforms that any humanism would never deem smart

Ditch the agitprop as a human frailty indentured to endure the curated disease without a cure to make the snollygosters in Washington ever so cocksure with their cockalorum disregard of the palatable consensus to make news real again….Finally for the fraternity of an enlightened human race in a benighted world of trendy fatuousness that infests the planet with the debauchery of glorified urchins jerking the levers with severed brevity to promote infectious foofaraw with cultural indemnity

I leave you with this

What is ornate complexity without the luxury of concerted beatific bliss that the parsecs that flummox your minds throb vehemently with cohesiveness in my internal design are not remiss

And remember the benighted standards of kitsch for the kitchens of penury bewitched don’t stand a chance against the overriding itch to vanquish mountains one after another to cross them off the list

This waiting room is painted of pain,
featuring faces with mouths down-turned,
impatience taking up these empty seats,
of family members already lost,
we feel like the least loved
in the mighty grasps of almighty fate's
crushing hands,
we feel like the last patients
to be visited during the night shifts,
by nurses and doctors,
the times of day when the most dust
is swept back to the humble soil
by an unseen, yet not-so-invisible bashing broom.
the old fan - barely hanging -
is closing in full circle,
a whole life lived.
dull curtains, some unhooked and five minutes to falling,
alongside the walls' stripes
designed with a print of doctors' usual words,
"I'm so sorry for your loss."  

If life truly begins at forty,
then hers ended at the starting line.
this would be a misplaced and mixed metaphor
if it weren't for olympics silently running in the background on the tv
reminds me of my mute cries, surprised eyes bulging, gaping mouths with no sound.

It ought to be a preventative measure; just a routine operation
a possibly cancerous lump.
I am flipping aimlessly through these magazine pages,
each catching a tear-drop for the dog-ears
(whoever reads them next will turn the pages over better).
Some puzzled maze pieces fall out of a box,
my baby cousin tries to gather the cardboard paper of a family tree picture,
but the least important twigs are lost, and the last friendly branch found missing.
The many portraits that make up the landscape go away from time to time.
It was just a little, smallish lump.
these news are hard to swallow.
my eyes are peeling onions.
my throat is winter-hands dry.
mum says she saw her the most alive
a few odd minutes before time clocked aunt out.
Grandma's sister blames herself for suggesting, advising, and in retrospect putting "pressure".
neutral colours ***** the Scrubs' floors,
hypothermia lurking in the corridors,
but the coke from the vending machine is medicine lukewarm.

It was a game of musical chairs,
But when the seven trumpets sounded,
the stools remained still, they stood facing eastward in hexagonal formation.
An angel ascended, the remnants were six shadows now.
With a plot twist, it's less players each round.
Who dies first wins, I've tossed too much soil on dust, my hands are *****.
We wash our hands clean with this paraffin.
Open-casket, the last sight took my breath away - the whitened clay still one,
but with the breath of life taken away, by the One, who giveth and taketh.

It's also winter our hearts,
dips of grief, dabs of black clothing, grim-reaper the thief, we still loath him.
another weekend
another sad-a-day
another funeral.
And his life was a summary,
too brief a breath, as the contraction is.
No sympathy to bother saying
"I am".
Public or private hospitals, dark clouds gather above all.

Twenty-twelve was a scar,
for four years now we are still scooping our scabs, from the bottomless pits,
that fell from ever-fresh wounds picked at a tad too prematurely,
so very early.
Some of the things we will take to our graves
will take us to our graves, as we exhume our pre-mourning selves.
And hurt still drops in drips,
red-bottomed-sticky feet from the blood-washed tiles,
the pain and the paint in permanent.
Some matters you can only think about
when you are half-awake and half-asleep, because these nightmares
are too real to be dreams.

uThixo Ovayo unoNobantu, nabantu bakhe bonke ngamaxesha onke.

~ by New-Black-SoUl #NBS

Captured in the psych ward Part 11



You see Ron's grandfather died 10 years ago, and he was having these weird nightmares
As he was sleeping on the couch. And suddenly the phone rang at 4-30 in the morning
And it woke him up in a way that he fell off the couch and he ran to the phone and it was
The hospital and an 8 year old boy was rushed to the emergency room who had bipolar
And yes, he was saved, but he started to have these weird dillusions that Ron was his
Grandson, and yes, he demanded that the hospitals call up Ron cooper and when Ron arrived at the hospital the staff brought him to the operating theatre and Ron said hi
And the boy said, hello grand son and Ron was shocked, and said back to him, no buddy,
I am not your grandson, I am older than you, anyway, and the boy said he is Abriaim salie
The spiritual Buddhist leaders son, and he told me that Ron Cooper is your previous lives grandson and Ron said, ok your a Buddhist, well, they are really peaceful, but, what makes you say I am your grandson, and the boy said well, my dad said, he has the power to put a
Doctors grandfather in his wife's ******, to keep seeing them and Ron said, no I know nothing about your fathers beliefs but I know reincarnation as something that nobody can guess, but I would love to hear more about your beliefs and the boy said no dad said, no son of his is ever going to the psych ward, you see that is the nut house, and being a Buddhist
I mean that in the nicest kind of way, you see, Ron cooper is my grandson and the boy
Shared this with everyone and Ron went to the HDU to get Pete, who had these dillusions
That Jesus has healed him and the beliefs that came from an 8 year old boy were better than this messed up old man, but Pete, wanted to actually know, how he knows that for sure, he is only 8 and then his Buddhist father said, he had voices that no kid has ever heard before, and Ron asked him, how much TV do they watch, and his father said, I
Try and discipline them about what they watch on TV, but I am sure there is nothing on
Between 3-15 and 5-15 and I don't let them have a TV in their room, only because TV
Can spoil aura, of a child's beliefs, but then Ron said, it is great to see kids with an imagination, and TV is good for that, and the Buddhist said, yeah mate yeah, imagination
Is great but, being good in a spiritual way is great, so I want to find out more about your
Grandfather, because I don't want my son growing up, fighting me and breaking Buddhist
Code and be disrespectful and Ron left him and took Pete back and told Pete that not
Everyone has the same beliefs as you, I was trying to tell you that yesterday and then
Went into the HDU and Charlie said hi di partner and Ron said howdy mate, how did you sleep, and he said fine how did you sleep, well the Buddhists said my grandfather is an
8 year old boy on the operating table and Charlie said, he is crazy hey, and Ron said
He is about as crazy as you, saying you are silent movie actor Charlie Chaplin, and
Charlie said, but I am, Buddha said, in a dream, a few years ago, that I was Charlie Chaplin
And I lost my kid at the age of 23 and I wss devastated, I mean I was 23, and he was 6,
Mind you Ron, Buddha told me, my kid, is too much for me and my wife to handle and Ron
Said, it's hard to lose a child, and the new foster family thought so too, and Ron thinking
He lost his kid through death and said, have you thought, of trying to find your kid, and
Charlie said, I broke off with that ***** and started to have visions of being Charlie Chaplin
And I have no idea of if I ever see him again, but if you can find a way, I would go with you
Mind you it give me closure, cause really all I did back then was just drink beer in front of the television, watching the footy, and I was at the MCG for the 1996 grand final when
The kangaroos beat the swans, and I cheered and partied all night with the Roos, and
When I got my kid, I said one day, I will take you to a grand final,one day, but, we never
Made it, and it looks like we never will, and I have been in this ****** psych ward for
So many 3 weeks stints, cause I really want to be with my son, but, the adoption agency
Keeps ******* me around and it drives me really crazy, Ron told Charlie, what is your real name, if you feel safe enough to tell me, and Charlie said it is Noel Gordonsmire, but I hated
That name as a kid, but I grew to like it, but when my kid and wife left me, I said **** Noel
I am Charlie chaplin, and I am a real person, and I really did do a silent movie, my parents
Tried to get me into a few groups of today's silent movies and I enjoyed them, and that is why I am Charlie Chaplin and Ron said goodbye and clocked off and went to the coffee shop and had a milkshake a cappuccino as well as a vanilla slice and Fran said how was your day, and Ron said, this kid, was brought into the emergency room claiming to be my
Dead grandfather and his Buddhist father gave me a Buddhist teaching and I found out Charlie chaplins new name, who is another Noel, and he had a kid taken from him by an adoption agency, mind you, this man, looks to me, he could be a great father, and he is
Heavily into the kangaroos footy club, when he gets out, I am shouting him to a footy game
I am promising that tomorrow and Ron went home and half left over Chinese and sat
On his balcony and watched the cars down on the road, you see, he really had a change of heart, or maybe a spiritual change, Buddhism really sunk in today, he say there, for hours
And hours, looking really serious,


Sent from my iPad

Captured in the psych ward part 5


You see Ron cooper and his ex Sally went on a cruise around noumea and New Caledonia and they really enjoyed that a lot and while they were on that cruise, brad was in a fowl tenoer cause everyone was watching the shows he doesn't wanna watch and Robert told brad that in life **** happens and brad said ******* and started to argue with the nurses saying he is the Buddhist messiah and needs to be given a special drug to take him to nirvana and he had a smart alek nurse say, I ain't religious, so I don't care and I think nirvana is a rock band not eternity ok patty walked in and said, I wanna see the nurse. And when the nurse came patty said, I have just came from Washington DC
And I saw president Obama and introduced mysrlf and he was proud to meet good old George Washington. You see. Well anyway thank you for that ticket to the states, it was muck appreciated and
Martin Kelly was banging the wall very loudly and saying you **** you **** you **** and Anne who was on the other side said as she walked past said you fucken stop banging on the wall you kid grabber or phedaphile yeah stop banging ya phedaphile or I wlll bash you up, I am going to bash you up, you see you can't hide here forever, one day the hospital will say your fit to go home but when I see you our there. Mate I will bash ya ****, ya stupid ****** phedaphile and Robert got up to take a **** and they bought lunch out and a fight between Anne and brad and Susan started to erupt and the nurses were having a hard time, they had to bring in the doctors with the ****** and lock them in their rooms abs Ron and and Sally are having a great time in New Caledonia waking around and Ron'a leg is getting better and you see Ron and Sally are really beginning to hit it off as they are in a pub having a scotch and back at the HDU. Brad and Anne were cursing at each other through the walls but both wanted enough power to break the walls
But they couldn't hear each other cause thru were on the opposite sides if each other and Susan went our and said shut up abe went over to the TV and said to Robert, we are watching TV, please don't talk to me. I ain't into talking to kids, so just keep your conversation. To a minimum and Patru roe said.  How about you shut up Susan, Robert is a funny little kid, I line him and dusab said ******* ya **** and then Kate walked around the whole psych ward and as she passed brads room she said. Why don't you shut the **** up snd Ron and Sally were having inter course in the cruise and
The new patient was being driven by the police to the HDU but this was going to be a strange situation you see young 19 year old jack Drendlw had ******* a 10 year old who teased him and it ended up killing him abd to that day the police have been trying to crack this ****** case and the boys parents were told that jack is mentally ill and isn't going to jail
And going  to the HDU and the boys parents couldn't except it so they stole a police paddy wagon dressed up as police men and took jack hostage saying he is going to the HDU and instead they took jack into
Their house and tied him up in their sons room and this was part of their plan to really make Jack suffer for what he did /and this is going to be sweet revenge and back at the hospital when they got the phonecall saying that jack wasn't there, well they rang the police and yes they knew where he lived but it would be a nightmare to get there and the next day Ron and Sally's ship was arriving into Sydney harbour and when they arrived there, Ron said goodbye to Sally who lived in Sydney as she drove him to the airport and then Ron boarded the plane for Melbourne and when he touched down, in Melbourne Ron gor his luggage and gor a taxi home
And dropped off his bags and before he unpacked he put the 3-00 news on nine and heard about jack being tortured by his victims parents but the police said jack was supposed to be at the rmh HDU  and Ron went straight there to see if everything is alright and he got theu and clocked in and went to the HDU and said what had happened, how did thus one fall through the cracks and the nurses seid that the family of the victim didn't like the idea of him bring sent here. Ya see it's too nice for him and Ron said they can't think they taking the law in their own hands like this and Ron went into the HDU to check our the patients and
Saw Robert and patty in rte common room and Susan and Kate knitting together in the dining room and Kate asked how was your cruise and Ron said, it was ****** good and my leg is healed and are you feeling alright
And they said yeah and then went to solitary to say hi to Martin and George and Anne and they said ******* **** and ajnne said did ya enjoy ya cruise and Ron said I Did and them said hi to brad and brad said ******* and when he found our it was Ron, the first question he asked was how was your cruise and do you know it's great that you can go on a cruise whole we are locked in here, you see you are like fucken Rupert Murdoxh with those poor foxtel suckers and then the dinner cart was coming out and Ron clocked off and went home and made some stir fry
And Singapore noodles and looked our the window and two young people were having a domestic and at first Ron said, I roll leave then alone but suddenly the bloke gor out
His gun and threatened to **** her and calked the cops and went down
To save the woman and the man has paranoid schizophrenia which was ****** obvious and it took 25 minutes for the cops to arrive and when they did the man was arrested and sent to the staton and the lady thanked Ron and Ron asked are you going to be ok and and she said yeah. And Ron went up yo her unit and sat on the couch and watched the TV and fell asleep on the couch
He has had a hard day


Sent from my iPhone

He topped coffee with melanin
as if there wasn’t even blackness
set in rigid processes and routines
days in and out of smoking
numbed his brain to senseless cells
and he dreamt of dreams I never hold
poetry was just pretentious to him
a narration of my soul and heart
every word I wrote to him was a spell
the curse of his native Englishness
every adjective was a clocked tense
and he never understood my words
nor heard my melodies and rhythms
and as he rode, sure it was like a dog
lost in sense, an escapism of reality
the puffs turned to paranoid tales
those sudden withdrawal and panics
drove me away to the deepest forest  
and my very bones felt his distaste
collapsed in manipulation and new age
his push always became my push
and the pulls up became my polar
Such a little boy with no ultimate direction
Locked in the abyss of the faded memories

captured in the psych ward, meet olly thomson



in the dark night a good samaritan named olly thomson was having a lot of problems

with his mind, you see it all started when he was visioning his little cat diamond was turning

wild to his eyes, and he had this vision from god to heal diamond, with his voices telling him what

to do.   first diamond jumped onto olly’s computer, like he was sending a message, and the first

voice came saying, you must get rid of diamond, cause you see he is not diamond, he is much more

than that, you see at first he thought it was his best mate brett who died, and wanted to save him

and he was saying come on calm down diamond, calm down diamond, you have to remain calm

i will heal you diamond and then diamond started to fight back and another voice from an old school mate peter

saying, it’s a raccoon, **** it, we don’t want any of them in this country and then diamond let out a little meow

as if he was very scared and then linty chamberlain came into olly’s head saying, you must **** your cat, for it

is the dingo that killed my baby daughter Azaria, and olly’s dad said, it’s our cat diamond, he could be brett

he could be a raccoon and he could be the dingo that killed azaria, and diamond was dead and olly said, what have i done

and olly’s parents came down after they called the police, and they wanted to know what was bothering olly, and when

the police arrived, first they had a word with him, and then they carted olly off to the HDU, to get a mental health assessment

and as olly got caught the old mens kids who used to be his friend said, your not like us anymore olly and we don’t like you anymore

olly and illy said one word in the back of the paddy wagon, which was, i am the guy, your mother warned you about, you see olly

got that saying off the movie cabin by the lake, and the police ?shut the paddy wagon door on olly and drove him off to the HDU,

and when he arrived, all the mental health professionals were there, and olly was kicking and screaming and ron gave him a shot

of ****** to calm him down and then when he was completely calm the nurses allowed olly into the HDU, where olly did nothing

but watch the television, and talk to the nurses and also olly got on very well with charlie chaplin and patty roe, who had very good

conversations, and harry at the first glance of olly said, i am going to **** you, and ron went over to olly to ask him some questions

about why he is in there and olly said i am 323 years old and born on christmas day, and i lived underground while the dinosaurs

were roaming around the earth, and ron then brought out the breakfast trays, and then handed out the morning medications

and illy was handed risperidal, which was made to calm him down and he stayed on melleril as well, and at first risperidal was

helping him write stories, fact or fiction and he wrote a story which one of the nurses read saying, olly was the great don lane

and the don lane show was olly’s way to escape his painful voices, although none of that was in the poem he wrote about

him being don lane and then tommy came out to watch TV and olly touched tommy on his ***** saying, you are my best mate

on my pirate ship, and i remember tying you up in the bottom room on the deck and tommy said LEAVE ME ALONE YA ****

and went over to the nurses to put in a complaint about olly and every time olly’s parents came, and at the second they leave

olly jumped up and threw a very big tantrum needing four doctors to calm him down, and then olly went back to his chair to

watch TV and wait for his next visit by his parents, you see olly was a bit of a loner, you see his only real friends are his parents

and that was the reason why he killed his cat diamond, and he said to harry, ya know i am 323 years old and born on christmas day

and harry said, can you shut up, i don’t want to hear your constant chatter, because i have killed many a man, and i am devious and

cunning enough to **** you, while your in here, and olly said, i was the original santa claus and harry said ******* ****, i don’t care

who you are, you are fucken bothering me and then harry got up and walked over to hassle the nurses and then ron came out with

the lunches and olly said, thank you, i can do with a decent feed and charlie chaplin said yeah, but it’s not a decent feed here

and harry said, you expect me to eat this slop and threw his lunch all over olly and he said, is that any way to treat your ancestors

you see i am 323 years old and born on christmas day and my first life was your great great great great great grandfather and harry said

shut up **** and get the **** away from me, olly wood and olly said he was a hooligan after that, robbing banks and stealing ships

i even stole blackbeard the pirates ship, and chopped blackbeards head off and harry said SHUT UP **** and after lunch, ron went over to the TV room

to talk with olly and said, do you know you are ******* people off here and olly said, of course, but it ain’t my fault, i was merely stating out i was

harry’s ancestor and ron said, here is a eppelin, ok, it will control your overactive imagination and olly said, i am 323 years old and born on christmas day

and then said, i could be, you don’t know, your just a lousy psychiatrist, i am the spiritual healer of the land and ron went into his office to search

the web to find out olly’s problem and there was this new drug which can calm an overactive imagination which was seroquel, you know 700 mills

will control your mind, but it can hype your overactive imagination, so we may need to give you another drug called serenade, and keep

him here in the HDU for a few weeks to be monitored, as this medication mightn’t work and then at 5, ron brought out the dinners and ron spoke to

olly about changing his medication, to seroquel and serenace, but you must cooperate with us, because for some people seroquel can hype

you up, and the serenace is there to calm the seroquel down and olly said, when i was a kid, i was treated like an llke an old fogies kid  or a hooligan

and i reckon that i need something for that because, i know my mates have moved on, but my illness says they moved on swearing to never muck

with the old fogie, olly, he’s not like us, cause he goes to bed early and olly said, there is another name he was called, a old bludger or a dole bludger

which could be because he had no cool friends when he was at school, and olly considered himself very cool and in 1 hour, ron brought out the nightly medications

and first to tommy, then to charlie and over to patty and over to harry and then he gave the seroquel and serenace to olly and olly said can i have a coke please

and ron went away got olly a cup of coke and clocked off and bought a pizza and went home to watch TV, and falling asleep on the couch, as usual, thinking

today went very well, he THINKS.

you are not twenty seven years old. you are twenty seven sorrows, twenty seven apologies, twenty seven broken pencils in a coffee mug. you used to keep memories like fireflies in jars, but now, you harvest them like organs, and you can't shake them to make you glow. i stuck a bird in where my heart should be but my pulse still sounds like a dial tone. the way a ticking clock drives a person insane is the way everything falls in love with you. the way everything falls in love with you is the way that delicate things break, and everything is delicate in the presence of a hurricane. you know how to be a storm, but no one loved you enough to show you how be a home, and the foundation you are built on is a broken as our mind - you are held together by tape and tiny hands , you are bound together by apologies and if anyone forgave you, you would simply fall apart. we must fold ourselves seventy seven times and tuck ourselves into the arms of the people we love, in hopes they never learn to read our language, and you are words written in a way that leaves everyone hanging onto each one by the skin of their teeth, even if they don't understand. I hope it's fine if i still try. if you are brave enough to touch the world, you will find that it is constantly on fire, and you never have to ask for a light.
you are not twenty seven years old, you are twenty seven wet matches, twenty seven empty rooms to scream in, twenty seven breakdowns in the bathroom. sometimes you are the sun and you can rise, but you are a deadly comedown (in any event, you are always glowing). I can hear you folding and unfolding like an origami flower, my hands know where you bend even though i have never touched you. i have seen the fear that drips through the cracks in your tough exterior, and i pried apart my own innocence to slip my way inside.  
  how many times do you groan before you finally heave and let the weight **** you? you know, contrary to what is generally believed, love knows bounds very well. it knows them and, it plunges over them, spills and overcomes you and foams around your feet before dragging you out to open see and mocks your cries for help until you finally stop thrashing and succumb to the sick trick that you have fallen for. i used to think love was a steady push and pull, but then i love you; when play tug of war with a ghost, you always end up with enough rope on your side to make a noose out of. i wanted to turn you on, not disgustingly, but in the way that i stumble in the dark, groping the wall for a switch. all of my nerves were hair triggers when you opened your mouth, now they are loud sirens and they scream when you are gone. a barely present as you would like to paint yourself out to be, i have felt you in places that are four dimensional, in the depths of my own murky consciousness that not even i know how to reach. the way a storm busts down a wooden door is the way that you enter a room,  the way you enter me. you know how to bend the light and you know how to break it, too. allow me to envelop myself in you like words in brackets, but never let me speak aloud. how many times can someone caress your jaw until it feels like you've been clocked repeatedly, and how many times can you fall in love with same person before you bust your mouth completely on their shoulder?
even after you have dragged me through this fire and made me bite all of the dust and all of the concrete beneath it, i have still loved you with a mouthful of broken teeth. now i am here to spit them out into your hands and make enough room in my throat to cough up my stifled pride.

July 4, 2015
Grandson Tony and Grandpa went to Mickey D's for breakfast. Grandpa was ready to vacate the premises when Tony barred the door. "Just a little while longer Grandpa." So Grandpa sat back down.

Soon a cake and five of the Mickey D people appeared and sang happy birthday. Tony was apparently being a little secretive and alerted the establishment when we clocked in. Grandpa cut four pieces of cake. Two to take  home for Lucy and Grandma. Two for Tony and Grandpa.

Tony then ask if he could give his piece of cake to someone. "Sure you can." grandpa replied. There were two tables with grandparent types and parents sitting 10 feet away. Tony picked up his piece a cake and a fork and squeezed in between the two tables and  placed the cake in front of the young fella who eagerly began eating it. Grandpa then noted the boy had Downs  Syndrome. The people at the table were pleasantly surprised at what had just happened. A grandmother came over where Grandpa was sitting and express that  it was a very thoughtful thing Tony did. The whole thing rather blew Grandpa away. But that's the way Tony is.  Full of surprises.

Even though you know some tea, you aren’t automatically pressed to spill ALL of it. Today’s tea features our roommate Sophie and two grody flavors of betrayal. BTW, I’m being magnanimous by changing the names and not doxxing the creeps.

To set our stage, a doe (we’ll call her Britney) high-school friend of Sophie’s is a Yale freshie this year. They were buddy-hollys back in the day and they’ve been clinging since their reunion.

On another track, Sophie’s been talking to a guy (we’ll call him Cory) in her English class recently and it was clear they were “in-like” but their clocked-up schedules were corking their algorithms.

Sophie and Cory finally got a shot last weekend when they attended a party together. However, it turns out later, at that party, Britney snuck off with Cory and smashed him (they were observed, and everyone carries a camera these days).

So, poor Sophie suffered two betrayals in one night. Cory went-hiking on her and Britney - who she'd told about Cory - did the other woman chisel.

Of course, Cory (just another dog-boy) is already forgotten but the broken friendship drama will live on forever. Why Britney chose to betray Sophie we’ll never know, because that ***** is dead to us.

Captured in the psych ward part 10



Ron hasn't had *** for a long time, actually the cruise was the last time, but
It was hard as he was sleeping on the couch, and suddenly was woken by a
Phone call by Sally saying she has just found out she is pregnant, and the dates
Match the cruise ship and well, this news was hard for Ron to take, cause he
Wasn't ready to have another kid, and got into the shower and went down to the cafe
To deliver the news, and still Ron didn't really know if it was good or not, and Fran
Said, is that wonderful for you, and ron said, well, I love children but I don't think
I am in the mood for them, right now, but I still have to realise if I don't want kids
Use protection while having *******, and Fran said, how about you getting
A DNA or paternity test, cause you have to make sure the baby is yours, you see
I have seen these kind of situations so many situations of *** on a cruise ship
And I am just saying have a test, if Sally isn't guilty, she won't hesitate, but Ron
As I said, have a fucken test, and after Ron left he rang Sally about him wanting a
Test, to make sure the baby is here, and then arrived at the hospital, and clocked
In and went straight to the HDU, to see Charlie and he said howdy partner and the teenager was there and said, I am going to bash ya up, and Ron said, hey, oh hey baby
If you don't leave Charlue alone, I will punch ya head in, and Pete said, hi Ron how are you fucken going and Ron said, I am fine, and I will have your medication, ready in 10 minutes
And Pete said, last night in my dream Jesus Christ told me that my mental illness was healed, so I am checking myself out tonight and Ron said, well, how do you figure that one
Out, well, I woke up this morning and I went out of my room and saw Jesus there, and he was with the doctors and as I walked towards him, he said, you are the, and I heard one, but he said, the biggest **** in this ward of fucken hospital, and then I went back in my room
And came out about 3 hours later, and this man said, he was Jesus Christ, and he said
To Pete, that he was healed from his mental illness, and the doctor said, you will be realised
This afternoon, but of course it was all just total bogus, and Pete always walked towards the door and kicked up a fuss, every time someone went  through either door of the psych ward, and then Ron walked into the door and said, hi Pete, are you still seeing Jesus, cause, we have our hospital Chaplin with us, to tell you, the truth of what you ****** well saw and Pete said, Ron, I saw Jesus, and this man knows nothing about religion, he just knows what he is allowed to tell us, he isn't allowed to believe us, I personally think that
The mentally ill knows more about religion, and I know I feel fine mentally and just because
I have a different view of religion to them, doesn't mean you doctors know anything about
The mental well being of me, I am not taking anymore medication, and I want to be released from here, you see, I will hassle you in your flat if you don't grant this to me, Ron Cooper
But for you to keep me captured in this psych ward, when you know nothing about what
Is inside my head, well, Ron, I want to go home and the nurses put him in solitary and Ron
Clocked off and went to the cafe, and said, today my neighbour said today, he saw Jesus Christ and he claimed he cured his mental illness, and obviously he spoke bogus and we put him in solitary and then it was time to finish work, and Fran said well, it's amazing what
You can vision in there, and how is our silent movie actor going and Ron said, he is going really well and he yelle a lot in there, but I support him and Pete needs to understand that
I care for him to know that his beliefs are real but he is in there on a violent charge and
Needs to be taught that just because Jesus said he is cured, Jesus is no doctor at royal
Melbourne hospital and Ron went home and bought some stuff to make stir fry with
And went home and made stir fry and Singapore noodles and relaxed on the couch
Watching TV, yes, Ron was worried about Pete's safety so he rang the HDU to constantly
Check on Pete and ask him questions about his brain, and let me know tomorrow.


Sent from my iPad

Every morning I greet the sun smelling like jasmine and spice
the rays roll through my window
bend nicely and tip their hats like good gentlemen
Only to figure out that I am a man

Surprised and Bent waves stiffen up in their stride
as they switch between reaching down to kiss my hand
something they subconsciously planned to do
ever since that smell of sensual perfume heated up
even the hottest, and the coolest
made them too woozy to stand
to giving an improvised hand shake
A clumsy dance between the fingertips of the prejudged
And the disappointed
As if the swirls in their palms anointed my unexpected presence
Uncomfortably appealing

Their mothers told them not to place judgment on a first impression
that they made, drowned in a sensual stupor
Of pretty scents distributed into the atmosphere
but then my personality
my mannerisms
And the way I walk and talk
WAFTED into their nostrils
like some woman dolled up before a date
with no one
to sit alone and wait
for some wreck of a man to pay a visit
It’s a chauvinistic *******
This scent is
Until they see that this jaw line
Is what it clings to
their nostrils and their eyes
seem to not agree
on what is
me

I tell you I wake up smelling like jasmine and spices
like a woman who spent all night in sin
taking pleasure from her vices
With sweet smelling oils contained in florally adorned vials,
and i waft into every man and woman’s nostrils

and eyes say man
but noses always seem to quarrel with eyes
Because to nostrils sensory surprise
It smells woman so it seems
the only logical compromise must be something in between
these sensory organs so caught up in stereotypes
Eyes bicker with ears and noses
And fingertips
Quick judgments followed by
Categories
trying to
make the puzzle piece
make sense Or
make do with what
makes people feel at ease
To make the absolutely effeminate straight male
Fit
With all the other puzzle pieces

It seems I’m a scratch and sniff
Where you scratch the picture of cinnamon
And smell jasmine
So was I packaged wrong?
No I was manufactured just right
The smell was an add-on
That was added one night
where i spent an entire evening in love
with someone I lost the next day
and in our own way
I slaved her body with oils
That smelt of jasmine and spice
And I wasn’t ashamed of it
they caressed us
and gave every motion an unstoppable velocity
every situation was slippery
and things that shouldn’t have been
almost came to be

as we slept the oils clocked out
and slid down our still interlocked bodies and into the bedspread
where it opened up its homestead
buried its dead, started families and grew in number
until the population of the smell was too strong
too strong and the one I shared the smell with
was gone

but i hold that night fondly
i hold it above my head in all its glory
and when i am judged by my scent and
questioned of my sexuality
i just tell them
I am being the scent i smelled when i discovered my masculinity
and that smell sank into my bed sheets
As an non-removable reminder
Of days past embracing my own tendencies
And a girl who I waved farewell to
And never gave that part of myself to
i am 100% man until i find the right person
a beautiful sight in the sunlight
and when night falls and i can’t see them at all
i can find even more things i like
to take that from me
and i will give it up gladly
and find what it really means to be truly in-between

I’ve found
no one is in-between because of their scent
There is no in-between except
In between man and woman
Man and man
Woman and woman
a subtle in between that you can only find
When you gaze into another’s eyes
And read three letter words imprinted on their iris
Only written for you
And discover what can really exist between two
So let’s all realize that whoever we are
We all strive to be in-between

I thought when I watched you the clocked stop
I was only breathing too hard
your bony fingers are around my heart
if feels so good to feel them there
they are cold
but I will make them warm again
I wear my skeleton like a spider
or an ant
touch my back
my body is an electric fence
the ghosts of the sparrows that flew out of your mouth
only know where sunsets grow
we fallowed them to the trees
where they are skinny and bare
and their roots are as cracked as ours
I was holding your hand so gentle
I thought that I was going to lose you
I was whispering to your ears
telling them not to worry
you thought I spoke in madness
it was only my smile
that magically tricked you into loving me
my magic tricks are a musical garden I tried to grow you
but the sun never came
neither did the rain
one night you tried to not let me see you crying
but I knew you did
cause your heart stung me like a jellyfish
my hands
are still raw and numb from the sorrow
but I know that you had forgiven me
when the bleeding finally stopped
I still haven't shown you the scars
but I was only speaking in madness

santa claus is captured  in the psych ward



it is the year 2015 and ron was decorating the HDU with christmas decorations

and while he was doing that, 67 year old billy thomson got dressed up as santa and

went around giving lollies to the children of the land and one mother complained and

said, this man has no right to hand lollies to the children without a permit and billy said

why don’t you get ******,you see i am the feral santa and i lived on the north pole before

the blizzard that wiped out all the north pole, and there is still a north pole but it is trapped

in children’s imaginations never to be seen again, and i who put my good name on this town

decided to free the north pole and this mother left and called the police on her cellphone

and in about 50 minutes the police arrested billy and took him to ron’s HDU, and billy said

i am santa claus and if i stay here i can’t free the north pole, i am a nice person, and i don’t deserve

to be in a place like this, and jesus claus went up to billy and said, your not the real santa, and billy

swore at jesus and said, your mother is the only one who thinks you are special, your about as special

as a hole in your heart and jesus swore at billy and suddenly a fist fight broke out and billy said, mate

i am the real santa and you are my son, but the blizzard stopped you from being the real santa

so, i made you stuck in people’s imagination and ron took billy aside and said what is on your mind, and billy said

i lost my job at the factory and then i got a calling from the almighty one to spread christmas cheer all over the land

and i did that by giving lollies to children yelling ** ** ** MERRY CHRISTMAS, and ron said, ok, you do know it’s 2015

and it’s not appropriate to do that and then billy said, you see i believe that if i can start a santa claus website, where

we can play christmas carols and kids order their presents, we can take the myth of santa out of kids imaginations and

into the real world and then ron asked, are you going to charge a fee and billy said, we don’t need a fee and jesus claus came up

to billy and said, you can’t get santa through the computers, it’s too early to do that without a fee and billy said, why don’t you

just get ****** and ron gave billy risperidal  and seroquel, to settle his delusional santa claus mind, and jesus was walking around the

psych ward i am killing off santa and billy walked around the ward saying, i am going to give jesus a lump of coal, which made the nurses

come out and try and settle them down but that was difficult so ron decorated  the psych ward and billy started yelling ATHENA BROUGHT

THE BLIZZARD THAT DESTROYED THE NORTH POLE, ATHENA BROUGHT THE BLIZZARD THAT DESTROYED THE NORTH POLE

and jesus claus yelled THERE WAS NO NORTH POLE, NO PREVIOUS EXISTENCE, WE WERE THE FIRST PEOPLE ON EARTH

then billy yelled, WHAT ABOUT THE FUCKEN WAR, OK, I WAS THE REAL SANTA, and jesus said OK, AND *******, and went back to his room

and billy went to his bedroom to have a lie down, and get the presents ready for christmas and then lunch was ready and ron woke up

billy and billy said, i am helping my elves prepare the presents for christmas and ron thinking he was loopy said, even santa needs to have lunch

and ron bought billy to the table, and the meal was lesagne and salad and chocolate mousse and then ron bought jesus his lunch as well and after lunch

there was a christmas special of yelling, billy and jesus said jingle bells jingle bells jingle and root the chick, and billy said, oh what fun it is to say

leave and never come back, and jesus sang, dashing through the psych ward yelling out our stuff,trying to point out to the staff that these side effects are

wrong, you see we need settling down, so take our drugs away, and please allow us to be the psych ward santa, that’ll be so cool and then as billy sang jingle bells

jesus said *******, I AM SO TIRED and billy watched the nurses work, discovering the naughty and nice, but to not blow his cover billy asked, can i get a pass out

so i can buy some egg nog, i will not be buying brandy and the nurses said, sorry but you are too sick for pass outs and billy through his boot at the door and shattered

the glass and the nurses gave billy some ****** to settle him down and billy went off to his bed and jesus came out and bashed his hand on billy’s door and yelled

YOU LITTLE ****, THERE WASN’T EVER A NORTH POLE and ron brought out the dinners and this time jesus and billy ate their dinners in their room and

in about 1 hour and a half, ron brought out the medications and after that the clocked off and bought wok it up and went home to lose himself in the televised

carols by candlelight from the sidney meyer music bowl hosted by david and lisa and back at the HDU, jesus was watching the carols and so was billy

and every child was happy it seemed receiving presents, but ron still had to play atheist with billy and tom, because for the simple reason, they are going about their santa

duties the wrong way.

he said 'wedlock' anti-amorous lead clocked signing them contracted away from their grieving animal truths boothed in a partner grip that'll mend them toward social safety

The current day is May 1st, 2024. I believe I might have found Brianna. And she’s gone. . .

About eight years ago from this date, I would have my first encounter with this mysterious girl. With all of this having taken course over such a long amount of time, a lot of the details are blurry compared to how solidified they used to be to me. But, back to the first encounter, although encounter sounds more like a passive aggressive frightening experience, I’m not sure what other word I might use to describe it. Maybe it was a chance meeting or divine intervention, but encounter gets the meaning across a bit more fluently, as every time I would find this girl I would be in total shock, utter disarray, and my heart would beat so fast I’d feel as though a heart attack was right around the corner.

The first time I ever met her was through a dream. . .

I can’t remember what this particular dream was. I’m not exactly sure what happened in it, why I found it so profound, or how it even got me to begin thinking about this girl. All I know was that it got my attention and I began to pay attention to this idea, this one night miracle where I first met this mysterious woman.

The night I had that dream, I’m pretty sure I thought nothing of it. Who doesn’t have a dream every so often where they’ve met their true love, their other half, their once in a lifetime love of their life? I’ve always been a bit of a hopeless romantic and I’ve always known that this was one of my deeply ingrained character traits. From my first ever year in school in first grade, I had a very large crush on this girl, Ashley Amaya, and I remember wanting so badly to be her crush as well. I even remember a moment from school when I saw a spider crawling towards her and me while walking across a paved walkway to get to our next class, and I leapt towards it and crushed it, despite having a massive fear of the little demons at the time. But, I did it to impress her!

All that to say, the first dream wasn’t extraordinary, and instead it was just another more than usual somber morning when I woke up only to realize the beautiful woman I had just met was probably a mixture of something I ate and some tv show I’d probably seen the afternoon before. Time would go by, the memory of that first dream fading to the farthest recess of my mind with only a hint of any remote recognition still reminiscing in the deepest abyss of my head.

But, this is when what started out as a dream began to become a bit more substantial. This is when Brianna began to plague my mind.

Over the course of the next few weeks, I began to have recurring dreams of being in love with this mysterious woman. She began to become more familiar in a very inconvenient and unreliable way which was of course through the remembering of my dreams. In the beginning stages, I’d only ever catch glimpses of her face and the reset was usually a silhouette or a very rushed moment. The rushed moments were hard to describe but they were full of light, always this wonderful warm yellow light and though they were rushed, time also slowed down significantly in a perplexing way that I still can’t really understand to this day.

I’d see her dark brown hair flowing and filtering the light into these tiny and magnificent rays making a twinkling in what was usually a dark atmosphere. I’d catch the corner of her mouth turning ever so slightly into a warm beautiful smile as she looked away, something else in the vicinity stealing her attention for the moment. There were intense feelings of joy and tranquility and there was a warmth about the situation I could only hope to ever feel in the true cold and lightless world we all collectively call home. Something about her was so intensely special, and the fact that I even got to share a dream with her was the highest privilege I could’ve ever received.

As time would go on, I’d continue to have these dreams. She always stayed the same, with her long dark brownish red hair flowing ever so gracefully. It got to the point that when I would have these dreams, I would’ve preferred to not wake up, just so I could spend more time with her.

Over a year would go by. At this point in life I was still just in high school and still brand new to learning life in the real world compared to the sheltered view I used to have. I had just gotten a job at the local Home Depot as a cashier, literally a few weeks after I got my license since my parents were unwilling to pay for gas for me (as good parents should do!) I was still figuring out life with my friend groups and trying to balance the reality of starting to become more mature and take on more responsibilities while still trying to cling to my childhood of digging holes and bashing legos against the wall with my brothers! It was an odd time, which I guess many can easily familiarize themselves with the timeframe as we’ve all at one point been teenagers.

One of the biggest things in my life I remember being a bit troublesome though, was all my friends I had made and my groups of people I had become so entangled with. With going through these changes, I had some friends that were still absolute children at heart and some friends who were practically ready for college! I had loads of moments through those years where these friends I had grown up with would start to feel like strangers and I’d begin to not really feel as though I had a social place to call my own.

Work was a new outlet, and I actually used to love talking to people as a cashier, ringing up their items, and learning the social norm of small talk that would amount to nothing less than an afterthought. I made a lot of friends with people who were retired and with college kids who seemed to be the coolest bunch around, who knew how to live life and have fun doing it. It was such a variety of friends where I’d talk to Tina about her granddaughter or Jim about his retirement and stock options and then I’d go up to Isaiah and he’d tell me about all the dates he’d been on or all the party stories of him and his friends living life to the fullest. It was a pretty great time in my life though, because one thing especially it taught me was how to be social, though this process would still take years and years to fully develop until I was in my early 20’s to be fully confident in my ability to put it on and be charismatic if need be. The reason I mention so much about this job though, was there was still a deep  and unrecognized subconsciously aware desire in me to meet the one.

Home Depot of all places was the first time I saw her. In person. . .

I remember it was a day much like the rest of them. After having struck up some conversation with our customers and being a little groggy from waking up at the crack of dawn for the early shift, it was time for me to finally get some lunch. While taking my usually route from the front of the hardware store I stopped at my usual coworkers stations to say hi or make a passive joke as I strolled happily on my way.

I can’t exactly remember why, but I had the need to talk to one of my managers, and it was something I needed a response for by the end of the day, so I figured before I clocked out for lunch, I’d get that little task out of the way. But, on the way back to my manager’s office, which was this little 10 foot hallway with doors on either side, one leading to a bank of sorts, and the other side hosting two doorways to offices, I was stopped in my tracks. Right next to the old clock-in machine were two seats where you’d usually sit and wait if the manager’s doors were closed so you could catch them as they walked out. They were also the seats I had sat in when waiting to get an interview for this first job of mine, where I nervously and anxiously awaited the outcome so many years ago.

In one of those broken down, flat cushioned little seats was a girl so beautiful, I literally lost my breath at the sight of her. I knew immediately who she was. She was the girl from my dreams I had been having over the course of that past year or so. Recently through my dreams, I had learned a very crucial detail about her and that was that her name was Brianna, and there sitting right before me within a few steps walk was the girl.

I froze. I made eye contact. And I immediately turned around and walked away. How I wish beyond wishing I would’ve said hi now. . .

Seeing that my manager was currently in the process of onboarding her as a new employee, I decided to take up my little question with my manager a bit later and I went to lunch. While walking into our break room, I ran into one of my new co-workers who I had become pretty good friends with. His name was Brad Brad.

At this point in time, I had more of an idea and more of a recognition of the fact that these recurring dreams of mine were something special, though I hardly let anyone know because of how embarrassing and odd it was. I mean, who would go around blindly telling people about some chick that they’d been dreaming of that they were totally in love with?? (Definitely not me eight years late. . . ) But with Brad Brad, I trusted him and had told him about the story a few days prior to running into her.

Not knowing her name and only having seen her face, I walked up to my friend and asked him about the new possible employee. He immediately knew who I was referring to her as he had seen her just a bit ago and apparently gotten to know her slightly! I asked him if her name was Brianna, being almost definitively sure that that was her name, and just wanting to check to see if I was either certifiably insane, or possibly blessed with this odder than life knowledge.

Brad immediately confirmed her name was Brianna and asked if I had spoken with her, and this immediately had me out of breath, terrified of how the girl from my dreams was truly true and realer than life. I don’t remember exactly how the rest of the conversation went down, though I can safely assume I was blabbering like a lunatic and telling him every single detail of every single dream I had had of her before. I walked out to get lunch knowing that I’d finally become acquainted with Brianna over time in the work atmosphere which was a relief to me, knowing how social I was at work while in comparison to how introverted and quiet I was at school. Life was looking to good to be true.

Brianna, didn’t get the job.

A few days would go by and my excitement to go to work was through the roof. Never before had I had so eagerly gotten in my car, driven to work, and immediately clocked in in hopes of seeing this new girl around the work place. A week would go by and my thoughts of her were still as excited as ever, but I began to realize that there was still training, a full on hiring process, and that it would most likely take time for things to get in motion. A few weeks would go by and then a month and an unsettling worry began to haunt me as I started to wonder if she didn’t actually get the job.

I started going around asking all of my fellow co-workers if they knew her or if they had any ideas of if we were hiring anyone new. I became obsessed with what we called the, “war board,” which was a schedule of all cashiers’ schedules for the day, what departments they would work in and so forth so on. But, I never saw Brianna’s name pop up, and I began to realize that I might have missed my one and only chance of getting to talk to Brianna.

As time progressed I finally decided it was time to talk to Brad about this new girl since he had been the only one I had talked to about her, and this is when the strangest thing ever happened. Brad had absolutely no idea who I was talking about. He could tell I was obsessed with the idea though and he saw how persistent I was that I had had the conversation with him before, and he even sympathetically lied to me about knowing her just to appease my insanity by saying,

“Ohhhh yeahhhhhhhhh! I remember who you’re talking about!”

I was crushed that the only person who knew her didn’t remember her and at the time I’m unsure of why I didn’t ask my manager to see if they knew who I was talking about. Maybe it was embarrassment or the thought of not being able to see other potential employee’s information that scared me. Either way, I wish I had asked more and been more determined in finding information on what had happened to Brianna.

Months and months on end would go by and the fascination with work would disappear as I got older. I’d check the war board on a pretty consistent basis always hoping that by some miracle, Brianna would show up to work for the day! And even though we eventually would go on to hire an incredible Brianna that I’d become such dear friends with, she wasn’t the same one.

I remember how I used to day dream about Brianna walking into the store and how I would recognize her and how we’d instantly fall in love. Especially on those hot hot Summer days when I was stuck in the garden department with nothing but my thoughts and a dream. As life began to progress though, I realized I didn’t want to only dream about Brianna. . . but I wanted to find her! What good was all my wallowing around if I didn’t make any active attempts to find her!

Thus began, the searching for Brianna. What might just be an everlasting one. . .

I began to take a reality check on this recurring girl who haunted my every thought and when wondering on how I would find a girl from my literal dreams, I thought maybe the first best place to look would be there! Literally in my dreams. I took on an idea I had borrowed from the movie Inception where first thing in the morning, if you try to remember your dreams you’d have a better chance of seeing more details.

Doing more research into this line of thought, I read about dream journals and how some people keep entries of their nightly subconscious activities in order to become better at what’s called lucid dreaming, where basically, you have full and utter control of the dream and realize that you’re in it while still sleeping. My dream journal over time would start to slowly fill and fill with some pretty crazy stories and hilarious dreams. Actually, I wonder if I still have it. If I can find it, I’ll drought down one of my entries here for you to read. . . whoever “you” might be.

I won’t lie when I say I found it in about one minute. It was sitting on my desk right next to me. Oddly enough, my first journal entry is far further in this story than I thought as it was written on October 9th, 2022 (thank God I wrote down dates!) Here goes my first entry.

10-09-22 (#1)

My first dream, I remember being at Home Depot, working while pushing carts. I was very sick and delusional and the atmosphere was rainy and dark. All I could feel was gloom and sadness. There was no one to help me which added to the exhaustion. A customer managed to break 3 carts in half and I had to try and fix them, but I couldn’t. The feeling of wanting to go home was very strong.

10-09-22 (#2)

This time I was in a small class with two other men. It was our first day and our professor was already making us write books worth of homework. But, she soon assigned us Minecraft assignments and the rest of the class was devoted to playing Minecraft. A mixture of falling while playing the game repeatedly occurred and was frightening, yet exhilarating and fun.

Though my timeline of the dream journal and me beginning to write it might be skewed in this story I’ve been telling, as you can see from October 9th’s dreams of the year 2022, it was in fact something I started to do. There were quite a few pages from this journal missing and I can’t recall if they were pages of old homework from school and the notebook was one I self-recycled or not. But, I thought I had started writing these way earlier in my life. Maybe one day, I’ll write up all of these dreams into some sort of official funny document, but as of right now, they’ll all stay in that book. It might honestly be for the better!

Either way, it’s obviously apparent that I became obsessed with this idea of Brianna and I began to play my life events in my head over and over again, and this might have been harmful to me later on, but at the early stages of these occurrences, I was very much into reading. Being the introvert that I was in school, and having no access to a smart device, I used to read so so so many books all the time! My best friend in high school wasn’t any other student really but the faculty and staff, specifically our school librarian Mrs. Hogue.

Every time I’d walk into that library which was probably like twice a week, she’d see me and know it was time for me to become obsessed with a new story or spend the next however many months of my life engrossed in a series. I absolutely loved Mrs. Hogue and while she was very strict with all the other obnoxious kids, she loved me too. We used to talk about life and such and the day I graduated, she was one of the people I made sure of to talk to her and wish her a goodbye to.

Anyways, this obsession with writing and reading of mine was one that really flourished during high school due to these circumstances. It feels rather odd writing now when I haven’t gone about it aside from formal essays and school work since specifically 2018.

2018 was the year that I decided to run with a lot of these creative concepts my mind had created over Brianna and turn them into an actual book with full on character development, a family for Brianna, a place to live and friendships and occupations of all sorts! This is why I mentioned just earlier that this might’ve been more harmful to me, because, sometimes I can’t remember with Brianna what’s memories and what’s a figment of my imagination developed by a creative and passionate former younger writer of myself.

Either way, at this point in my life you could tell I was so devoted to the idea of Brianna being a real person, and this one specific idea plagued me like no other.

The idea was that Brianna was also dreaming of me and that we could only communicate through our collective dreams.

This idea for a young hopeless romantic was intensely alluring and from this idea became the now published and only book of mine, “The Fracture of Reality.” In this book, there’s two main characters named Ian and Brianna. Ian oddly enough matches almost identically all my physical and intellectual traits, some of the only differences being him having a place of his own, a pretty successful job and a bit more muscle, almost as though he were a version of myself I hope to one day be.

Brianna, well, she was and is the Brianna that I know.

The premise of this book was, well how should I put it? Better yet, I’ll just plug in the summary from the back of the book I wrote many years ago!

“Dreams and reality are relatively similar terms. Dreams describe and amplify events that occur in reality whereas reality can capture what little glimpses of the dreams remain. But, it never occurred to me that the two could blur together. Only when it was too late did I start to realize that reality was fracturing…”

Although this summary doesn’t really expound on what the book was about, only now do I find it so profound that I established this saying, this line of thought while I was still younger. I’ll write to you now that the basic premise of the story was a bit of a thriller! Ian begins to have these dreams where he meets and speaks to this mysterious tranquil and beautiful girl. He starts to fall in love with her as he slowly begins to realize that she is in fact real and having dreams of him also. But, with his dreams comes the slow beginning of his down fall where his dreams start to predict horrific events that will occur relatively soon. Along with the dreams comes the mental breaking down of his sanity with a deadly progression exponentially on it’s way to happen far too soon. Through the connecting of his dreams, he needs to find Brianna who he hopes when finding her, will stop the terrifying decline of his conscious nature.

In the end, and [insert spoiler warning here hehe], Ian finally meets up with Brianna only to have one of his dreams predict a horrible event of him and her being hunted by some men that Brianna had gotten in bad with during her youthfully naïve years. The story ends with Brianna and Ian in a cottage after Ian in real life has been shot. The story ends with Ian being unsure as to whether or not his dream reality is real life, or if his reality with the pain of the bullet in him is the truth. Brianna tells him that it doesn’t matter, and tries to convince him that the current peaceful reality that they’re currently in? That that moment and that present feeling is real, and that’s what really truly matters.

Look at me, doing a synopsis of my own books six years later! Writing this book and creating my dream journal and doing research was really the first phase of my obsession with Brianna. The older I’d get though, the more it’d become real to me. I’m unsure as to whether the past eight years of my life has made this idea so authentically real to me, but now I see this all as fact rather than speculation and a possible decline in my sanity that I used to be subconsciously aware of.

More years would progress in my life and would lead to the graduation of my high school and the starting up of college at my community college. There, I’d me one of my best friends which will most likely be my best friend for life KJ, but it was also a time of maturing and shying away from the ideas of Brianna as much. Rather than focusing on the idea of her, instead I got so busy with work at Home Depot, balancing friendships at community college, and still trying to socialize with my family that I hardly thought of her.

But, circumstances would change and even though I went a while without thinking about her, she was always there. When I began my first semester at Columbia State and accidentally sat next to this absolutely beautiful girl named, you guessed it, “Brianna,” I thought that she was her! Only to find out like literally two days into the semesters that she was married, whoops! But I still became friends with her and weird stuff like that would occur every so often, but at this point in time, life was changing so rapidly and my mind was always so distracted that Brianna began to fade.

I’d still have my occasional dreams and when those hit, it’d be more difficult than it used to be. The feeling of wanting to stay in those dreams was so strong and so hard to swallow when I woke up and realized it’d only been in my head.

With school starting though, my priorities changed a lot in life! My job was the least of my concerns at Home Depot and I’d more often than not skip all of my shifts as it always drained me of all my energy having to socialize with a bunch of people I didn’t care for or care about. All the small talk became irritating and whenever I was there, I guess I had come to associate that little hardware store with the idea of loss and gloom. I mean, if my dream journal didn’t speak enough for itself, I think it’s because I missed out on my one and only chance to actually talk to Brianna.

My new priorities were to make as many friends as possible and to turn this new page in life and that’s exactly what I did! I was incredibly social and went out of my way to introduce myself to total strangers just to try and escape the old Mike and pursue a new version of him.

It wouldn’t take long for Brianna to come back to me though.

Nobody that tells you how quickly life goes by can truly explain the depths of what that means and you sort of need to experience it yourself, and with the pandemic of Covid-19 happening around 2020, those two years at community school and the two years at MTSU would go by like a wisp of air. Like a breath, **** the time went by. Sure there was quite a bit of stuff that happened throughout that time, like me beginning to fall in love with creating content through YouTube about Minecraft, getting internships and freelance work for my degree as a Graphic Designer where I won competitions and published my art in many places and had the opportunities to be in a crazy high end internship.

But the amount of time, was just literally gone. I was too busy. Brianna became an afterthought.

That is, until fairly recently. To drop some dates for you, I created my first official youtube channel on September 18th, 2019 and published my first video four years ago a day after I made the channel. At first, my channel of Minecraft specific content was created both to prove to my brothers that I could create content as incredible as the youtubers we watched, but it was also just in hopes of turning it into an actual career since it was something I genuinely was okay at. Having had architecture for for years in high school Minecraft felt like a more creative and liberating way to express those abilities and live them out in an actual environment I had created. But also, Minecraft was an excuse for me to turn off my mind.

Covid and the pandemic was sort of the greatest thing to ever happen to me, because it gave me so much time to think and play this wonderful game. I know I mentioned above how I didn’t think about Brianna that much, and that part is true, but when I had those dry moments of playing Minecraft and grinding out some simple tasks of literally just breaking and placing blocks, my mind would wander to her. I used to choose the most essentially mind numbing tasks of mining for hours upon hours which only consisted of holding down a button and occasionally moving your character around to mine some more. But though the task was completely and utterly boring, my mind was active as ever thinking and wondering about Brianna.

Finding these quiet moments in life were far and few between, but I began to cherish them. All the moments from day dreaming while mowing the lawn and sweating to death in the 100 degree sun, to sitting in my car after a long first four hours at Home Depot while staring at a semi-vacant parking lot, to even just the long walks across my enormous campus at MTSU or the long walk from parking spots I chose purposefully to be super far away from my campus at Columbia State. These moments while rare, gave me a chance to keep Brianna at least in the back light of all the real life moments I was constantly distracted and thrown around with.

But, going back to Minecraft when I got into youtube, this changed everything.

I went from having at least some spare moments to having literally no moments at all. The only time I would rest was when I had experienced such bad burn out from trying to do everything everywhere all at once, and between that and the occasional sleep I would get, my mind had no time to think. I still can easily get into that workaholic mind set sometimes and it’s a dangerous one to be in, but I’ve gotten better as I’ve figured out why I believe I fell into that mindset in the first place.

The reason was to escape Brianna’s grasp.

As I went through school hanging out with friends and making new one’s internationally through the development of an ever expanding youtube channel, I had just about no time for anything. The only time I had to stop and think was my 10 minute drive to get food and even in those moments, I had no time to think, because I was too busy driving trying not to get killed by crazy drivers.

Three years of school went by before I finally said that enough was enough. With school being as difficult as it was, I decided to “retire” from my newfound love of youtube because in all honesty, it was driving me mad. My retirement video from Minecraft came out on December 5th, 2022. I stepped away from the never ending grind and set out to enjoy life and the little moments that life offered.

The only problem with this was that my mind began to ponder Brianna once again.

At this time in my life, after retiring I was actually working for a famous youtuber named PrestonPlayz. It was a random freelance job and for the past year or so I had been jumping from freelance to freelance work with little regards to cost and payments real life had always waiting around the corner for me.

This would make me end up ultimately getting a job back at Home Depot for a few months to pay off debts I had incurred from being financially stupid and buying stuff I didn’t really need. But, between all the financial problems and weird life situations I had so much more time to think about Brianna. The dreams of her still occurred every so often but the frequency at which they had started to occur was less and less. Maybe this was all due to me reaching a new level of maturity, but I’m still not entirely sure what caused it. Maybe it was the distraction of a busy workaholic life or the hopes to find someone, really anyone that was a girl that would love me that I could love back.

But, like I said my mind began to think about her more and more. I began to see her in my thoughts like I had years ago previously and it almost felt like I was back sliding into some weird territory I had just grown oblivious to with the amount of time that had passed. Either way, that was my life. A jumbled mess of thoughts and ideas all scattered in a brain far too busy to stop and breathe coming to the new age of silence and habit.

With my mind able to breathe, I thought of her again. . . and then I saw her again. . .

I can’t remember the exact day or time of year, but on one of these days of my “retirement” I was driving home after having just gotten some taco bell. (I was obsessed with the place back then) Driving up my street, I saw a girl with long dark curly hair and bright pink clothes, what might have even been pajama pants on her, walking up my street! I didn’t think much of it until I looked into my sider mirror and saw her face and saw that it was the one and only, Brianna.

Brianna was walking up my street right next to my house. In person. Alive and breathing.

I panicked and jumped out of my car with my taco bell nearly crashing to the ground as I roared into park in my driveway with my car. With bare feet, since I used to drive with no shoes when I went to fast food place, I dove onto an aggregate driveway and started running down it, knowing that there was no way on earth I was missing my chance to finally talk to her. I had nothing but time that day, and I was overly excited to finally introduce myself in person

But when I turned around, Brianna was gone. She’d simply vanished into thin air? I still don’t know how or why, but she was gone. . . possibly gone forever. . .

This experience drove my efforts to find her to another level of passion as I began to research through many google forums and sites and social media platforms praying to God that I’d be able to find her. It didn’t matter if I had to cross the entire ocean to get to her, I was going to find Brianna, no matter what.

I started to revisit old ground and went to the Home Depot I had worked at, asking the new manager there if he could search records and being able to find her that way. I found old coworkers I used to work with and asked around trying to find any trail or any lead and couldn’t find a single thing. I even managed to find Brad Brad’s Instagram and messaged him only for him to have literally no idea what I was talking about, go figure.

With nothing working and having literally no idea on what else I could do, I began to passionately work on a project called, “The Bri of My Dreams.” What this basically was was an ARG or alternate reality game which was a puzzle game I setup for my prior youtube community to solve and have fun with. But, it was more than that. It was the telling of the story of Brianna in a way that I could hopefully publicize and gain some popularity on so that maybe instead of me finding Brianna, she’d be able to rather find me! So, I started working on it behind the scenes unbeknownst to anyone in my community that I was going to use this new found passion project to hopefully find her, but also to bring me back to youtube content creation.

To this day, I’m still not sure why I wanted to go back to youtube. Well I know some underlying reasons, that being tied loosely to Brianna, but now many months later still being at it, I’m unsure as to the real reason why I still create stuff on there.

Either way, after creating an entire animated short film with a script and what I consider to be one of my greatest projects of all time, “The Bri of My Dreams” project was finalized and ready to publish. I put it out there hoping that it was only a matter of time before I finally heard from her.

Hardly anyone noticed I’d returned to youtube, let alone my project failing horribly as only close friends I knew even attempted the puzzles.

My final efforts produced literally no results, and well, this brings me to about right now, this moment that I’m actually writing this all down on May 1st 2024 at 4:21 p.m CDT. For the past few hours I’ve written down all of this while listening to The Caretaker album on youtube, a depressing soundtrack meant to represent the stages of alzheimer's.

This morning while sitting around doing nothing really, I looked up Brianna one last time, despite me telling myself I would be done with her after my ARG project. I found a girl, about the same age as me that matched the name and the description. Her father’s name was funnily enough the same as my own, Michael.

What I found about her and her father were obituary statements.

I’m unsure if it’s okay or morally right to even think that might’ve been her, but something I noticed when doing research about Brianna in my earlier days. . . For some odd reason there’s a lot of young beautiful Briannas who unfortunately die in their early 20’s. It’s an odd and horrifying fact I’ve come to know over the past few years through my odder than odd research.

But, this case I found today? Well the exact date this Brianna died on correlated almost exactly when my dreams stopped of her.

I don’t dream of Brianna anymore. I haven’t for years. . .

I think the reason I’m writing this, is my own way of finally saying goodbye. Wherever she is, I hope she’s okay. I hope she’s well. But as for me, life continues to go on and it’s finally time after these past eight years to finally say. . .

Goodbye Brianna. I’ll miss you. . .

This one here, why I got it from a Pirate,

He stood with a peg leg and a beard full of knots,
The deck beneath him was littered with hefty dots,
A rather peculiar sight, if I was to be asked,
Which I was, and with that, this eye became glassed!

The one over there, I suppose was from that Siren,

Her skin was blue, eyes a shimmering gold,
Her chest was bare, a sight that the sailors adored to behold,
Excuse me, miss, I inclined my head, "While this is all well and pleasing,"
She clocked my tooth out, when I continued, "In this air, you must be freezing!"

Why that one there, that's from a Queen,

She stood with regal grace and beauty,
Though in my opinion, her dress and manner was rather snooty,
When asked in regards to a task appointed to me,
I informed her that if it was so important, SHE could go water the overgrown tree!

That one there, why that's from a Fairy,

It resided within a nest of glittering gems and jewels,
Each of course, lifted from some wandering fools,
Eyes gleaming with desire and greed,
I soon found those little Fairies are capable of bites to make you bleed!

Over here, you'll see it plainly, is from a Dragon,

It was a plague on the town, its wake of destruction spreading wide,
With grasping claws and snapping teeth, it gobbled up my bride,
I hunted it where it slept, and moved to strike it dead,
And with that, I lost my head!

Captured in the psych ward part 7




You see the HDU was in turmoil , you see with Pete constantly walking around claiming He
Was the messiah, and patty Ros saying he was the first president of the united states and
The mere fact he kept on saying that,'made Pete think, patty was crazy,,and big Anne was
Really stressed, mainly because this was the day of her tribunal and it could mean that she is free, and brad got out of bed and sent into the TV room and watched the morning news
And Susan got up after being in bed for 15 hours, you see for her things got a bit chaotice
And Pete was still hearing Woosey Woosey Woosey over and over, and Ron got up out of bed, and went into coffee palace to have a cup of coffee and started to talk to the workers there, you see the server is named Fran and the waitress is named Dan, and Ron loved to talk About what kind of things he did last night.like waking up with Godzilla looking at him,
But the main reason why he goes there, cause his job is stressing enough, and he can't cope with all the aspects of his job without his morning coffee, and Fran said, ok how was your night last night, and Ron said, well, I was a bit ****** on friday night, and I was called into
Work, which I wasn't expected, and Fran said what happened, and Ron said, well it turns out that Martin Kelly was under suicide watch as well as Pete was giving the staff a hard
Time, you see that man lived in the same area than me, I was in the area, when he was taken into custody, and I had no idea he was going to be put in the HDU, and what I hate, that Robert is 14, and he is in with these crazy people, no I think it's weird, and one man says
He is George Washington, and wanted to meet Obama,  and needs medication to calm him
Down, I have no idea, whether he really believes that or not, and frankly I don't care, and
After finishing his coffee,,he said thanks and tipped the staff and then went to the hospital
And clocked in and went into the HDU, and the nurses were saying, that, where have you been, you see, we need to get Martin ready for his hearing, and Anne can't wait for hers,
And Ron said, how is Martin going, and the nurses said, well , he still is banging on the wall
And last night the nurse tried to calm him down with ******, he snapped at her and threw a
Series of threats her way,,so, she said eventually **** it,,I am getting out of here, and Ron said, that nurse, is she still here, and the nurse said, no she is home, why did she do the wrong thing by running out,,and Ron said, yeah, you see, night time is the worst time, to
Be in a place, like this, and if she can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen, and then Ron
Said, you see, if she can 't handle it, I think she should have her job in the HDU at night reviewed, cause Martin Kelly needs to be settled down,,and it is putting patients and nurses and him in danger, so just think about it, ok, now then Ron went into the HDU to
Do his rounds and he saw Anne, and she said, am I still getting out today, I have been
Ringing my family, and they are looking forward to it, and Ron said, how about we give
You a brain scan, to see if there is any sign that your brain is malfunctioning, like patty
Who happened to be walking around at present saying George washington's initial speech
And he drove the nurses crazy, and mind you he drove Ron crazy too, and after finishing
Talking to Anne, he went into the common room to talk to Robert and brad and brad said, I hear that Anne could be let go, why don't you let me out too, and Ron said back to him, well
I will see what I can do,,but I need to see positive results that your medication is working for you and Robert, said to Ron, how about my release, you see I have been here too long, I am
Only 14, I want to get out, and besides which Pete is another phedo, who wants to *** me up, and Ron said, well, I will see what I can do, but I might just do what I did for Jamie, and
Bring you to the IVU, but at the moment I ain't sure if there a bed available, but I will do my best, and robert said, well sometimes your best isn't ****** good enough, you see, I am stuck here, and, if I had a gun, I will aim fire at this entire psych ward, and I will **** you first, Ron, and Robert meant that from the bottom of his heart and after he left there, he went into Pete's room and said how are you, and Pete said, why do you care so much, I shot you
That night, and it took you away from work for so long, and then suddenly there was a very loud noise, of someone screaming and Ron went out of Pete's room and they brought in this 17 year old girl named Naomi Jensen and she was brought in for attempting to drown her little brother at st Kilda beach, and she has been diagnosed with schitzophrenia and
Also there could be a hint of bipolar there as well, and Ron tried to settle her down , by
Giving her ****** and Naomi said, I am not a ****** so you get that drug away from me, ya
Stupid fucken ****, and Ron thought this girl needed help, and dedicated the next 3 hours for her, cause she was young, and needs to be heard, mainly because, Ron knows nothing
About her parents, and they talked about everything, and then when it came to the topic of parents, Naomi went crazy, and said, I have no parents, well none that actually care for me
Anyway, and Ron kept on talking to her, untill Naomi told Ron to F off, and Ron went to organise Anne's tribunal to see whether or not she gets out or not, and Ron told the nurses
To keep an eye on Naomi, she could be a danger to herself here, and went to his desk to
Get the paper work necessary to help Anne and at 11-20, Ron asked Anne to come with him and for Anne this was becoming exciting cause she could be coming out of hospital for
The first time in 2 years, you see she has been good for a while, and Ron read out his report, to hopefully make it good for Anne and then the nurse who knows her at night said
Anne really, is learning about, how to keep quiet. At night, she has not been in any fight for
3 days now, and I personally think she is ready for society, and the psychiatrist asked her
Now, are you still wanting to hurt someone, if they **** you off, and Anne said, well, no,
I would prefer to understand why they did this to begin with and the psychiatrist released
Anne,,and said, I am putting you on a two year of good behaviour, cause, you still show your temper, but you are a person, you need to be given a go, you see, after Ron left
Anne's hearing , he told Anne to go back to her room, to pack her things, and when she went into her room, Naomi was reading her journal, and Anne said, get the **** away from my stuff
You stupid teenager, ok, you might be moving in here, but ******* ya ****, ok, and in 20
Minutes Anne was packed, and then said goodbye having lunch together, and the nurses got all the patients and staff to sign a card, to wish Anne on her way, you see, Anne was feeling happy about being given a card from everyone here, and then after lunch Ron took Anne out of the HDU, to the front doors of the hospital, and said, have a nice day, and Anne went over to catch a tram, to her old friends house, and Ron, bought Martin Kelly to the tribunal, for him to hear of whether he goes to IVU or stays in HDU, but with the way
He behaves at night, he could be taken to a maximum security prison, but there is no way
Martin Kelly is getting released, cause he isn't ready for society yet, and Ron went to his desk and got Martin's file and grabbed Martin and took Martin to his tribunal, and first
Of all the nurses tell the tribunal of his outbursts at night and everyone being sick of him
Making noise at night and Ron said, that, he thinks, maybe Martin needs to go to a maximum security prison, the night staff, can't deal with too many more nights of this,
And the 2 psychiatrists said ok, well, for the safety of the other patients, I think prison is
The best option for you, and Martin said, I am too mentally ill for those people in there, please leave me in here, and Ron said, no, I think you need to stay in prison for a whole
And the psychiatrist said, we will give you a proper hearing in 2 months, but you will spend
The time you have till then, in the maximum security prison, and I think that is better for the
Other patients as well as for the staff and yourself, and then Ron, asked the rest of the
People how are their days, and Robert said, thar be is so fucken *******, you see you look after that phedaphile, and you treat us like **** and Ron said, for your information,
We are moving him to prison to keep you all protected here in prison and then Robert sat there watching TV and Naomi came out to watch TV and said, she wants the **** out of there, and Robert said, nobody wants to stay here, but we all have our reasons for being here, and Naomi said, my boyfriend was bashed by another person in a nite club and I picked up a dinner knife and stabbed that man, but I did that, cause if you mess with my boyfriend I will mess with you, dude, and Ron, who has had a tough day on the job, clocked off and went into the cafe, to grab some food, and he said. And Fran said how was your day and Ron said, one kid who is totally angry with the staff cause he is too young for this place and I released a person who gets violent, and I just know I will see her again, but I have to keep it positive for her and Martin Kelly was taken to a maximum security prison
Today, he is so unhappy with me but in hindsight I think it's for the besom and then there is this nightclub riot, where, this girl stabbed a man for fighting her boyfriend, mind you, she
Has had a lot to deal with, and then Fran said what do you want, and suddenly the phone rings, and when Fran answered it, and it was the maximum security prison saying that
Martin Kelly, was found hung in his cell, he is now on the way to hospital, but it's touch and go, and Ron said, he will be there straight away, and when he got there, the nurses said, t butthey tried their best, but Martin Kelly is dead, and now they have to find the next of kin and Ron said, that he will do it, and went into his office and looked in Martin Kelly's chart for the closest next of kin, and in Ballarat, was the closest, his mother who was in a nursing home, well yeah she needs to know, and decided to call his daughter, but that opened up a can of worms, you see Martin Kelly ***** his kids out of him, so maybe mum in Ballarat
Is the best option and Ron rang the nursing home, and spoke to Ruth Kelly, but she was so out of it, he decided to look after the body himself, so he arranged to put him in the morgue
And tried to call his brothers and sisters, and he made these calls at home, after passing by the cafe with a coffee and a cake, with a bit of red rooster, and it was hard to find anyone
Who liked Martin Kelly, and there was a party around his house and everyone was making a lot of noise, and Ron shut his window, and eventually found his sister in London, and decided to ring her up and told her that her brother Martin was dead, she hung up, and rang
Back in 5 minutes, that she will on the next plane, to arrange to bring the body here to England, and Ron went to bed, and felt ****** good, about getting in contact with the sister, the next day will be tough, everyone will say, good riddens to the ugly mug, but that is part of Ron's job


Sent from my iPad

wednesday  ..
                      is faded black jeans/old white tank (too big) (hole from belt buckle centre front)

glass of water stuck into the rings left by past week's mugs of beer
sitting by the ashtray. and you are better than a nip of rye in the truck cab heading to work.
the dust in my lungs (wide open saskatchewan fields)
is not as important as watching the clouds stain purple with the sunrise
patting two gorgeous farm dogs who run over from behind a silo turned to bronze in the light
(there is an angel laying naked in the wheat grain)
to nip playfully at my calves while i unchain the derrick,
somewhere in my mind's recess it feels like i am loosing atlas from his *******
tho i do not register the thought until later upon waking from a nap.

saturday // 1:15:44 pm
i am in only briefs now working on a song/i clocked 4
                                                               ­                                       hrs greasing truck 1117 this morning and
hauling pallets.
daylene from dispatch brought in donuts.

i'll spend the afternoon listening to kanye and talking to women online.
—there are no girls in estevan. i have (kind of) looked.
                                                       sometimes i believe this to be pathetic but then i think further ahead
and it's not so bad.
you do really meet some nice girls. phone is replete with their numbers &
they keep me company on long rides to and from leases,
asking about work. hoping that i am well.
(once back home by christmas account will be deleted and i can
take them out at my leisure. you'll understand i hope that i am not
a desperate man. but one has to work with that which he has.
would you rather i go lonely? make my home in the mud to croon hank williams to crows?)
(temporality.)

15/10/2012
there are now three beer cans on the carpet & one on the washing machine by the
bathroom door which i will drink in the shower.
it was sort of a long day.