You can hear the voices of our peers being silenced, ignored, shunned and distorted.
Staggering out of their bedroom doorways to the street corner to score a dime bag.
Bright, insightful millennials freezing in search of warmth from something to believe in that will encourage them to look forward to see another day.
Where our economy has made financial prudence clear when talking about education, yet price tags of university tuition's skyrocket.
The refused, the ones with hope but no money or scholarships; tread the streets with the echoes of electro house pulsing in their skulls.
Those who strip themselves down and shred their own morals to scraps just to find themselves and to see their own limitations.
Searching for answers to the unknown, to ascertain what they are, who they are and why.
Timid in high school, pushed along with nothing and no one to put their creative vigor into.
The squeakiest wheels that were never even considered to be given a good greasing.
Faculties giving them lethargic hellos on the first day of school, bestowing celebrated goodbyes to them on graduation day, diplomas in hand.
Now are the ones slumped over in a lackadaisical position contemplating how they can afford an education.
They work eight to ten at seven twenty five an hour Monday to Friday; and weekends staying in as not to blow their earnings.
Those who commute to university and balance a job with it, I applaud you.
The bewilderment of adulthood, the overabundance of pressure and responsibility.
Awakened from nightmares of lost opportunities, missed trains and lost contacts.
To step out of bed and splash water onto a severely distressed face and staring into a mirror with a despairing look.
Then hoping a bus to Garfield to bring back weight for all the embryonic smokers not yet at the point of make or break, just save up enough to pave my own way.
Gazing at the town on a roof top, chugging down the tenth…no…twelfth beer of the night wondering how this all happened.
Wild sensations of kissing an attractive stranger, the rush of touching on things never felt, tasting pleasures only the lucky have known.
The passionate, yet dissolute yearning for that ever eluding ******* adrenaline. Pounding, Pounding, Pounding until the culmination of energy has come.
Flip sided to those dizzying, tear jerking thoughts of suicide, annihilation of ones being, the contradictions of their faith in themselves and the people around them.
Unexplainable waves of anxiety crashing onto the shore of a diminutive island of optimism
Striving to look past the panic, the gloominess and fury that may or may not be present. But to remain composed and press forward to what awaits them.
Coffee keeps them going. Cup after cup, late night cramming every bit they can; into their caffeine driven psyches until the indisputable crash and failure.
Packs and packs of menthol cigarettes to calm their rattling nerves but at the same time killing them slowly. Their lives will seem shorter than the time it took to finish one bogey when death is near.
Marijuana induced ventures to run down burger shacks, laughing hysterical in the car ride, eyes heavy with a most ridiculous elastic grin extending from ear to ear. While inside millions of thoughts and realizations of consciously simple speculations and troubles become clear and unproblematic. So the joy is mirrored outside in.
LSD trips in Petruska dancing and singing in the rain! Making music, making love; playing pretend and creating art. Becoming a family while kicking back under the warmth of an illuminated tree on a cool fall night.
MDMA streaming through the body, everything is as it should be
Beautiful, lovely to touch, wondrous to stroke, marvelous to move.
To contact and connect, converse and converge with the dwelling desire to share what you feel with everyone for it would be selfish and unpleasant to keep it in.
Mushrooms oh the emotional overflow I need not say more but ****.
Then there are over the counter candies, Oxycontin, ******, Adderall and Xanax, painkillers and antidepressants. Ups, downs, side ways and backwards.
Selling addiction and dependency legally to kids. Making heroine, ******* and speed easily obtainable to them. Changing the names and giving out prescriptions so the parents can feel like they're actually helping their children but are subconsciously making it easier on themselves because they cannot handle the way their offsprings actually are. Some parents a feel it is the only way, I wish it wasn't so. Becoming zombies, mindless addicts before they even start to mature into puberty. I've seen it, firsthand front row.
Oh, the monotonous, mundane rituals and agendas of our lives. School, work, sleep eat, the sluggish schedules and repetitions of yesterday's conversations and redundancy of itineraries we had plotted months prior.
Same people, the constant faces of boredom that groan in apathy and hold the fear of complacency.
We talk about how hum drum out lives have become and what we could to put some color in our world but don’t.
We speak of how unfair the system is but ultimately confuse ourselves and everyone else due to lack or organization and dedication so nothing is changed.
We speak of breath taking women we want to share ****** fantasies with but can’t even muster enough courage to send a trivial friend request.
Texting away for hours trying to court those who now occupy our minds and possess our hearts hoping they may allow us to acquire their attention and affection. Calling them only to receive futile dial tones and know we are being evaded.
Weeping on and on for seemingly endless time frames of a dilapidated relationship that was so strained that a miniscule breeze could cause it to collapse but still clinging to every memory as if they were vital hieroglyphics depicting your very essence.
Brilliant theories blurted out in a drunken stupor.
Ingenious hypothesis shrouded in marijuana smoked out room.
Remembrance of friends long gone.
The marines, the navy.
The casualties of drug addiction.
The conquerors or their afflictions.
The scholars.
The insane locked away on the flight deck never to be seen again.
Teenage mothers unsure of themselves, abandoned by their families for they believe that they brought fictional shame upon the family’s name. The fate of the child is unclear but the mother’s everlasting love shines through any obscurities in its way.
Dear mother of the new born winter’s moon may the aura of life protect you and your baby.
The father gone without a trace.
He will never know his daughter.
And it will haunt him forever.
Parents bringing up their kids with values and morals, The Holy Bible, mantras and meditation, the Holy Quran, The Bhagavad Gita, and Upanishads. Islamic anecdotes and Jewish parables.
The names all different
The message the same
The stories unlike
Goals equivalent
Faith
Kabala, Scientology and Wicca
Amish and Mormons
All separate paths that intertwine and runoff each other then pool into the plateau of eternal life.
But do we have faith in our country, our government?
They do not have faith in us. Cameras on every street corner, FBI agents stalking social media, recordings of our personal lives and police brutality. 4th amendment where have you gone?
We say farewell to Oresko the last veteran of the last great war. And revisit the Arab spring, Al-Assad’s soldiers opening fire on innocent protesters, one hundred fifteen thousand lay dead. Bin laden dead, Hussein hanged, Gaddafi receiving every ounce of his comeuppance. War, terrorism, the fear of being attacked or is it an excuse to secure our nation's investments across the sea? Throwing trillions of dollars to keep the ****** machine cranking away, taxes, pensions, credit scores, insurance and annuities all cogs in the convoluted contraptions plight.
My dear friend contemplates this every night laying in bed, fetal position; the anxiety if having to be a part of this.
Falling apart on the inside but on the outside, an Adonis, *******, Casanova wanna be. Who worshiped the almighty dollar, gripping it so tightly until it made change, drank until he had his fill falling face first into the snow. The guy who lead on legions of clueless girls wearing their hearts on their sleeves not knowing he had a girlfriend the entire time. Arranging secret meetings in hidden gardens, streaking into the early morning. Driving to Ewing in his yellow Mustang to woo a sado masochistic girl. The chains and whips do nothing to him he is already numbed by the thrill. Then he comes home, lays in bed until one, with no job and having people pay for his meals.
He knows what he does and who he is wrong. He recites and regurgitates excuses endlessly. He cries because he knows he is weak, he knows he must fix himself. I sit on the edge of myself with my fingers crossed hoping maybe, maybe he will set himself straight.
My chum who can talk his way out of any confrontation and into a woman’s *******. Multitudes of amorous affairs in backrooms, backseats, front rows of movies theaters. Selfish, boastful and ignorant, yet woman fling themselves at him like catapulted boulders over a medieval battle field just to say hello. These girls blind to see what going on, for their eyes were taken by low self esteem. A need to be accepted, to feel wanted even only for fifteen minutes. Poor self image, daddy issues, anorexic razor blade slicing sirens screaming on about counted calories and social status. Their uncontrollable mental breakdowns and emotional collapse. Their uncles who ***** them, their parents who split up and confusing their definition of love and loyalty for the rest of their lives. Broken homes, domestic abuse and raised voices, sending jolts of fright into the young girl’s fragile minds. I send my sorrows to you ladies, to see such beautiful creatures suffer then be used and thrown away with the ****** that was just ****** deep into their *****.
Then I see women and men of marvelous stature, romantic in the streets holding everyone and everything in high regards. Finding beauty in anything and anyone. Enjoying every second as if the rapture was over head eating exotic foods from unheard of countries and cultures. Bouncing to the sound of whimsical , reverb ricochets and sense stimulating music. Huffing inspiration to create something out of thin air. Dancing to retired jazz and swing albums as if no time had past since their conception. Wearing bold colors and patterns, thrifty leather shoes or suede.
Dawning pre-owned blazers because why spend hundreds of dollars on new clothes just to look good but feel uncomfortable with a hole in your pocket. Dressing up but dressing down, so class yet urban I love it, chinos, pea coats and flannels so simple but chic.
At night they go to underground dens, sweaty bodies, loud music and freedom. Expressive manifestations glowing fueled with MDMA and other substances to further their enjoyment of the dark glorious occasion. Kandi kids sporting colorful bracelets, not watches for time is of no concern to them, they have all eternity they know that.
Going to book stores, coffee shops just to have some peace of mind and a moment of silence to themselves so that can weave the tapestry of imaginative innovation. Writing their own versions of the same story, endless doors of perception, reading news papers and taking it with a grain of salt. Watching the news on TV with a hand full of salt. Searching for the real story so they can know if the world they all live in is actually safe.
She who made her own way breaking hearts, rolling blunts and making deals. The flower child of the modern age, left the rainy days in search of radiant sunshine, idealistic. Reality was subjective, purple dyed hair, multicolored sweater with sandals on her feet. A ten inch bowl with bud from California packed in tightly. Coming from Dumont to Bergenfeild then on to Philly to Mount Vernon. Off to Astoria and the Heights. Now to Sweden laying in the grassy plains below the mountains. Good for you my friend whom I have loved, may fortunes of unsullied joy come to you and all you meet.
Since you’ve left I have encountered drunken burly firemen just trying to have a good time. Pounding down Pabst Blue Ribbon as if it were water; as if it were good tasting beer. But heroes none the less.
EMT's, young eighteen years old high school graduates, saving lives reviving people who are a mere inch close to death.
Sport stars getting scholarships thanks to their superior skills and strength.
Striking beauty school students who are into making the people of this world a little bit more beautiful on the outside.
All these people, successful, doing things. Departing to their desired destinations. I see inside them, they carry baggage, loneliness and insecurities. I can feel their guilt slowing them down. All have their loads but it’s the way they carry them that shows who they really are. And to me their all gems.
Not far in Paterson I watch the junkies limping across busy winding street, perusing a severely needed fix. “Diesel!” they shout beneath flickering streetlights, asking for spare change and if bold enough a ride to some shady sketchy place. I give them a dollar and politely decline. They’ll die without it. Vomiting up bile and blood, twitches and shivers are all you feel when it’s not in you. They cannot stop, they need help. Why not help them instead of “assisting” those who are homosexual? Cleansing so they can be granted entry to the kingdom of God. Looking down on people who have found love and understanding and a deep attraction to others who just so happen to share alike genitals.
Narrow minded uproars about the spread of AIDS, nonsense! The puritanical onslaught of those who want nothing more than the rest of us, love. "Gay", "****", "******", "queer", how about "kind", "funny", "genuine human being"? The right to be married and divorced should be an option for everyone to enjoy. The strains and hardships of matrimony are yours if you want them. If you don’t agree don’t hate or harm just allow them to be peacefully. Same goes for anything for that matter, Jehovah's going door to door, Mormons from Burbank. New ideas are never a bad thing, they’re not a waste of time. On average you have about eighty years to mull over your options.
Some people don’t live long enough to do so, cancer is rampant, blood diseases, ****** diseases, natural disasters coming right out of left field and blindsiding the innocent bystanders of both hemispheres. Some go through life handicapped, autism is apparent these days. Schizophrenia, Asperburgers, ADD and ADHD. Some lose their golden memories of their many valuable years walking down Alzheimer's Lane, not being able to remember whatever transpired only a few moments ago but revisiting gold nuggets from from fifty-some-odd years ago with ease. Some go through life delusional or bipolar. Some can't even sleep at night but they still carry on. And if assistance is needed it is our job as a race to help our brothers and sisters, no one deserves to be excluded from the gala of life. Or be denied by society and pumped with brightly colored pills from doctors promising a cure but prescribing a crutch.
Finding solace in sincerity.
The serendipity of it all hasn’t been uncovered and that keeps me going.
“Radiate boundless love towards the entire world above, below and across. Unhindered without ill will without enmity.” Oh Buddha the truth as it ever was.
Who is he who keeps these thoughts from the conscious minds of the population?
Who is it that distracts us from the humbling beauty and overwhelming devastation of this place of existence we’re in?
It’s they who do under the table parlor trick behind our backs.
Those who broadcast mind numbing so called reality TV shows without an underlying value or meaning.
Those who produce music, proclaiming extravagance to be the end all be all gluttonous goal we all should aim to achieve.
And those who turn noble causes into money making scams and defile pure ideas.
And of course those who give false promises of easily obtained  bright futures, those who don’t care, those who steal, ****, curse, bad mouth and lie. But still manage to get elected into positions that more or less decide out fates. Monsters, demons, banshees howling inconsequential worries and leaving us deaf to hear the real issues.
The

A Poem for Three Voices

Setting:  A Maternity Ward and round about

FIRST VOICE:
I am slow as the world.  I am very patient,
Turning through my time, the suns and stars
Regarding me with attention.
The moon's concern is more personal:
She passes and repasses, luminous as a nurse.
Is she sorry for what will happen?  I do not think so.
She is simply astonished at fertility.

When I walk out, I am a great event.
I do not have to think, or even rehearse.
What happens in me will happen without attention.
The pheasant stands on the hill;
He is arranging his brown feathers.
I cannot help smiling at what it is I know.
Leaves and petals attend me.  I am ready.

SECOND VOICE:
When I first saw it, the small red seep, I did not believe it.
I watched the men walk about me in the office.  They were so flat!
There was something about them like cardboard, and now I had caught it,
That flat, flat, flatness from which ideas, destructions,
Bulldozers, guillotines, white chambers of shrieks proceed,
Endlessly proceed--and the cold angels, the abstractions.
I sat at my desk in my stockings, my high heels,

And the man I work for laughed:  'Have you seen something awful?
You are so white, suddenly.'  And I said nothing.
I saw death in the bare trees, a deprivation.
I could not believe it.  Is it so difficult
For the spirit to conceive a face, a mouth?
The letters proceed from these black keys, and these black keys proceed
From my alphabetical fingers, ordering parts,

Parts, bits, cogs, the shining multiples.
I am dying as I sit.  I lose a dimension.
Trains roar in my ears, departures, departures!
The silver track of time empties into the distance,
The white sky empties of its promise, like a cup.
These are my feet, these mechanical echoes.
Tap, tap, tap, steel pegs.  I am found wanting.

This is a disease I carry home, this is a death.
Again, this is a death.  Is it the air,
The particles of destruction I **** up?  Am I a pulse
That wanes and wanes, facing the cold angel?
Is this my lover then?  This death, this death?
As a child I loved a lichen-bitten name.
Is this the one sin then, this old dead love of death?

THIRD VOICE:
I remember the minute when I knew for sure.
The willows were chilling,
The face in the pool was beautiful, but not mine--
It had a consequential look, like everything else,
And all I could see was dangers:  doves and words,
Stars and showers of gold--conceptions, conceptions!
I remember a white, cold wing

And the great swan, with its terrible look,
Coming at me, like a castle, from the top of the river.
There is a snake in swans.
He glided by; his eye had a black meaning.
I saw the world in it--small, mean and black,
Every little word hooked to every little word, and act to act.
A hot blue day had budded into something.

I wasn't ready.  The white clouds rearing
Aside were dragging me in four directions.
I wasn't ready.
I had no reverence.
I thought I could deny the consequence--
But it was too late for that.  It was too late, and the face
Went on shaping itself with love, as if I was ready.

SECOND VOICE:
It is a world of snow now.  I am not at home.
How white these sheets are.  The faces have no features.
They are bald and impossible, like the faces of my children,
Those little sick ones that elude my arms.
Other children do not touch me:  they are terrible.
They have too many colors, too much life.  They are not quiet,
Quiet, like the little emptinesses I carry.

I have had my chances.  I have tried and tried.
I have stitched life into me like a rare *****,
And walked carefully, precariously, like something rare.
I have tried not to think too hard.  I have tried to be natural.
I have tried to be blind in love, like other women,
Blind in my bed, with my dear blind sweet one,
Not looking, through the thick dark, for the face of another.

I did not look.  But still the face was there,
The face of the unborn one that loved its perfections,
The face of the dead one that could only be perfect
In its easy peace, could only keep holy so.
And then there were other faces.  The faces of nations,
Governments, parliaments, societies,
The faceless faces of important men.

It is these men I mind:
They are so jealous of anything that is not flat!  They are jealous gods
That would have the whole world flat because they are.
I see the Father conversing with the Son.
Such flatness cannot but be holy.
'Let us make a heaven,' they say.
'Let us flatten and launder the grossness from these souls.'

FIRST VOICE:
I am calm.  I am calm.  It is the calm before something awful:
The yellow minute before the wind walks, when the leaves
Turn up their hands, their pallors.  It is so quiet here.
The sheets, the faces, are white and stopped, like clocks.
Voices stand back and flatten.  Their visible hieroglyphs
Flatten to parchment screens to keep the wind off.
They paint such secrets in Arabic, Chinese!

I am dumb and brown.  I am a seed about to break.
The brownness is my dead self, and it is sullen:
It does not wish to be more, or different.
Dusk hoods me in blue now, like a Mary.
O color of distance and forgetfulness!--
When will it be, the second when Time breaks
And eternity engulfs it, and I drown utterly?

I talk to myself, myself only, set apart--
Swabbed and lurid with disinfectants, sacrificial.
Waiting lies heavy on my lids.  It lies like sleep,
Like a big sea.  Far off, far off, I feel the first wave tug
Its cargo of agony toward me, inescapable, tidal.
And I, a shell, echoing on this white beach
Face the voices that overwhelm, the terrible element.

THIRD VOICE:
I am a mountain now, among mountainy women.
The doctors move among us as if our bigness
Frightened the mind.  They smile like fools.
They are to blame for what I am, and they know it.
They hug their flatness like a kind of health.
And what if they found themselves surprised, as I did?
They would go mad with it.

And what if two lives leaked between my thighs?
I have seen the white clean chamber with its instruments.
It is a place of shrieks.  It is not happy.
'This is where you will come when you are ready.'
The night lights are flat red moons.  They are dull with blood.
I am not ready for anything to happen.
I should have murdered this, that murders me.

FIRST VOICE:
There is no miracle more cruel than this.
I am dragged by the horses, the iron hooves.
I last.  I last it out.  I accomplish a work.
Dark tunnel, through which hurtle the visitations,
The visitations, the manifestations, the startled faces.
I am the center of an atrocity.
What pains, what sorrows must I be mothering?

Can such innocence **** and ****?  It milks my life.
The trees wither in the street.  The rain is corrosive.
I taste it on my tongue, and the workable horrors,
The horrors that stand and idle, the slighted godmothers
With their hearts that tick and tick, with their satchels of instruments.
I shall be a wall and a roof, protecting.
I shall be a sky and a hill of good:  O let me be!

A power is growing on me, an old tenacity.
I am breaking apart like the world.  There is this blackness,
This ram of blackness.  I fold my hands on a mountain.
The air is thick.  It is thick with this working.
I am used.  I am drummed into use.
My eyes are squeezed by this blackness.
I see nothing.

SECOND VOICE:
I am accused.  I dream of massacres.
I am a garden of black and red agonies.  I drink them,
Hating myself, hating and fearing.  And now the world conceives
Its end and runs toward it, arms held out in love.
It is a love of death that sickens everything.
A dead sun stains the newsprint.  It is red.
I lose life after life.  The dark earth drinks them.

She is the vampire of us all.  So she supports us,
Fattens us, is kind.  Her mouth is red.
I know her.  I know her intimately--
Old winter-face, old barren one, old time bomb.
Men have used her meanly.  She will eat them.
Eat them, eat them, eat them in the end.
The sun is down.  I die.  I make a death.

FIRST VOICE:
Who is he, this blue, furious boy,
Shiny and strange, as if he had hurtled from a star?
He is looking so angrily!
He flew into the room, a shriek at his heel.
The blue color pales.  He is human after all.
A red lotus opens in its bowl of blood;
They are stitching me up with silk, as if I were a material.

What did my fingers do before they held him?
What did my heart do, with its love?
I have never seen a thing so clear.
His lids are like the lilac-flower
And soft as a moth, his breath.
I shall not let go.
There is no guile or warp in him.  May he keep so.

SECOND VOICE:
There is the moon in the high window.  It is over.
How winter fills my soul!  And that chalk light
Laying its scales on the windows, the windows of empty offices,
Empty schoolrooms, empty churches.  O so much emptiness!
There is this cessation.  This terrible cessation of everything.
These bodies mounded around me now, these polar sleepers--
What blue, moony ray ices their dreams?

I feel it enter me, cold, alien, like an instrument.
And that mad, hard face at the end of it, that O-mouth
Open in its gape of perpetual grieving.
It is she that drags the blood-black sea around
Month after month, with its voices of failure.
I am helpless as the sea at the end of her string.
I am restless.  Restless and useless.  I, too, create corpses.

I shall move north.  I shall move into a long blackness.
I see myself as a shadow, neither man nor woman,
Neither a woman, happy to be like a man, nor a man
Blunt and flat enough to feel no lack.  I feel a lack.
I hold my fingers up, ten white pickets.
See, the darkness is leaking from the cracks.
I cannot contain it.  I cannot contain my life.

I shall be a heroine of the peripheral.
I shall not be accused by isolate buttons,
Holes in the heels of socks, the white mute faces
Of unanswered letters, coffined in a letter case.
I shall not be accused, I shall not be accused.
The clock shall not find me wanting, nor these stars
That rivet in place abyss after abyss.

THIRD VOICE:
I see her in my sleep, my red, terrible girl.
She is crying through the glass that separates us.
She is crying, and she is furious.
Her cries are hooks that catch and grate like cats.
It is by these hooks she climbs to my notice.
She is crying at the dark, or at the stars
That at such a distance from us shine and whirl.

I think her little head is carved in wood,
A red, hard wood, eyes shut and mouth wide open.
And from the open mouth issue sharp cries
Scratching at my sleep like arrows,
Scratching at my sleep, and entering my side.
My daughter has no teeth.  Her mouth is wide.
It utters such dark sounds it cannot be good.

FIRST VOICE:
What is it that flings these innocent souls at us?
Look, they are so exhausted, they are all flat out
In their canvas-sided cots, names tied to their wrists,
The little silver trophies they've come so far for.
There are some with thick black hair, there are some bald.
Their skin tints are pink or sallow, brown or red;
They are beginning to remember their differences.

I think they are made of water; they have no expression.
Their features are sleeping, like light on quiet water.
They are the real monks and nuns in their identical garments.
I see them showering like stars on to the world--
On India, Africa, America, these miraculous ones,
These pure, small images.  They smell of milk.
Their footsoles are untouched.  They are walkers of air.

Can nothingness be so prodigal?
Here is my son.
His wide eye is that general, flat blue.
He is turning to me like a little, blind, bright plant.
One cry.  It is the hook I hang on.
And I am a river of milk.
I am a warm hill.

SECOND VOICE:
I am not ugly.  I am even beautiful.
The mirror gives back a woman without deformity.
The nurses give back my clothes, and an identity.
It is usual, they say, for such a thing to happen.
It is usual in my life, and the lives of others.
I am one in five, something like that.  I am not hopeless.
I am beautiful as a statistic.  Here is my lipstick.

I draw on the old mouth.
The red mouth I put by with my identity
A day ago, two days, three days ago.  It was a Friday.
I do not even need a holiday; I can go to work today.
I can love my husband, who will understand.
Who will love me through the blur of my deformity
As if I had lost an eye, a leg, a tongue.

And so I stand, a little sightless.  So I walk
Away on wheels, instead of legs, they serve as well.
And learn to speak with fingers, not a tongue.
The body is resourceful.
The body of a starfish can grow back its arms
And newts are prodigal in legs.  And may I be
As prodigal in what lacks me.

THIRD VOICE:
She is a small island, asleep and peaceful,
And I am a white ship hooting:  Goodbye, goodbye.
The day is blazing.  It is very mournful.
The flowers in this room are red and tropical.
They have lived behind glass all their lives, they have been cared for
        tenderly.
Now they face a winter of white sheets, white faces.
There is very little to go into my suitcase.

There are the clothes of a fat woman I do not know.
There is my comb and brush.  There is an emptiness.
I am so vulnerable suddenly.
I am a wound walking out of hospital.
I am a wound that they are letting go.
I leave my health behind.  I leave someone
Who would adhere to me:  I undo her fingers like bandages:  I go.

SECOND VOICE:
I am myself again.  There are no loose ends.
I am bled white as wax, I have no attachments.
I am flat and virginal, which means nothing has happened,
Nothing that cannot be erased, ripped up and scrapped, begun again.
There little black twigs do not think to bud,
Nor do these dry, dry gutters dream of rain.
This woman who meets me in windows--she is neat.

So neat she is transparent, like a spirit.
how shyly she superimposes her neat self
On the inferno of African oranges, the heel-hung pigs.
She is deferring to reality.
It is I.  It is I--
Tasting the bitterness between my teeth.
The incalculable malice of the everyday.

FIRST VOICE:
How long can I be a wall, keeping the wind off?
How long can I be
Gentling the sun with the shade of my hand,
Intercepting the blue bolts of a cold moon?
The voices of loneliness, the voices of sorrow
Lap at my back ineluctably.
How shall it soften them, this little lullaby?

How long can I be a wall around my green property?
How long can my hands
Be a bandage to his hurt, and my words
Bright birds in the sky, consoling, consoling?
It is a terrible thing
To be so open:  it is as if my heart
Put on a face and walked into the world.

THIRD VOICE:
Today the colleges are drunk with spring.
My black gown is a little funeral:
It shows I am serious.
The books I carry wedge into my side.
I had an old wound once, but it is healing.
I had a dream of an island, red with cries.
It was a dream, and did not mean a thing.

FIRST VOICE:
Dawn flowers in the great elm outside the house.
The swifts are back.  They are shrieking like paper rockets.
I hear the sound of the hours
Widen and die in the hedgerows.  I hear the moo of cows.
The colors replenish themselves, and the wet
Thatch smokes in the sun.
The narcissi open white faces in the orchard.

I am reassured.  I am reassured.
These are the clear bright colors of the nursery,
The talking ducks, the happy lambs.
I am simple again.  I believe in miracles.
I do not believe in those terrible children
Who injure my sleep with their white eyes, their fingerless hands.
They are not mine.  They do not belong to me.

I shall meditate upon normality.
I shall meditate upon my little son.
He does not walk. &n

Man life know just set eyes way like young world soul day hunger space mouth earth thoughts ignorance blind things mind knew final moment human creation kind creatures souls high forgotten dream love spoke self existence face holy deep bound think home void say surrender ear forever called held ephemeral red state end shall heed hope edge living waking fall sea wake garden need February thought past wanderer got men page colored tepid terrible **** proudly untitled features point painted faceless box forgot render wild spring splendor  handfuls looking half brain lost torn ancestral  unseen vision inner summer honor mister owned banner save today fear groans wasn't smoke  street fable strange year contrast black years  able pain body spoken word known motion  palpitate reeling nature culture disclaimers  cancer beg attentive frames ****** base profound double remember wholly finger death token  cries continue folk oh fishing form broken true  divides spread ah twas away breathe wait warning hallowed wish closer lens turn eye live  constant current author hung theory dangle  bramble chemical new force changes adderall  anymore giving beneath possess pardon commentaries eternity internal walk reason  long change does idea glimpse consciousness  wandering simply wonder physical dreams war  sleep told rest benign prior begging truth little  2012 born tale crow bowels allegory animal rule  exasperate making horse curse hands ones read  rearrange capture doing command fail awake  aperture seedlings shift steely sir nap spead ****** demons slits clever telling loud spits la-la-di-dah killing slip game reflected nameless ask  lovers rabid bear salivate plunder shameless  famously savior mint rides menthol bully fate traded melodies play misunderstand mammals gentle witless fine utterly savage silt tongue-less  dirt dilutes pure non-sensory taste briefly ravage dismember it''ll shedding ruined curtain  knots offers plot fulfills munificent two-act  relegates boxz bug altruistic wintergreen tossing  callously guise grovels one's singers treachery ashes mid-life mutter fashion parading  ambiguity separatist liars staple steeping neath  guidelines scoffing stitch moans civil wrote  Fictitious undoing fables table effigies serve  sonnets staged remark psalm swoll praise harken  beggar verse bread lines heavily electricity detection snow sack-happy preaching credit  spotted wicked best gravity gun campaign owe  barge choir revelry celebratory satiated sinking  headline pack hound persistently propaganda  gentlemen excluding diminished ******* run idles  occupied levies wolfishly honestly misinformation cuba vehemently dumb grace spectator erasing  toned sage crowded secrets inter-connectivity  loaned prayer hymns grave mistaken magnified  vandals selective jump leak escapes says minister  buckle mass honesty shut tar children's hats  monument doping long-lived electrical ladle  exaggerated cartoons address seconds cool cradle bleak yang's mind-framed hypnotic  walker caps folly treble claim streaks mixtures  swelled interstate elapse teasing spoon mobile  succulent witchcraft borderline fatal 99 temple stacks sups plastics creeps neurotic ills tossed  meek sipping old crack interlock wax alleyway  coughing blown freak clock birthdays societies  slow flashing viscous candy argument toothless  pills cerebral rapt wall bisect lives wheezing  photo kid starter foiled pair saturated self-castrating pre-packed naked uncertainly pill  used came chaos coated reprisal fells wrack  irreverent mirth sickly disinherited proudest  collate wheeze appearance palette disharmony  discontented bastardized emotive bio inhale diction beat spoiled reclamation loudest tempo  totally disembodied matte imperfect shells flat  struck sounding imparts flak origin severance remarked bone walls snared leaflets mocking  hot scripting adjective noun agape seemingly  resistant gawk calamity passage paintings wind  trashcans signings sits cheap makers poetry persist scrap slipping individual talk wonders  leaving questions fold actor fancy parchment  fates engenders flown jaws stripped longer music  sacrifice fakers book boldly frown sigh atop patient hang trade occupation blows spectacular  whispers worthy backward waving certainty danced suppose needn't ‘drawkcab’ second-guessing  boys forget marched motto heads tightly lies two-tone earthbound harp twice turns goodnight  lying ***** internally indiscriminate nickname  drunk convictions myth steep  in-consumption  fitting artist **** universal sick expressions bad  du spell melody big siphon proud learn sprawls song spastic something temperaments utter check  fissures stomp totality blend definitely thrall sing rug voice shade pestilence ties commiserate round devil steady brains emotional certain gate  suckling gates dearth decay weight bounce pound  carrier pangs glass startle contest earthen web  tug pressed air patience flush amassed guest gone apprehension staring empathize captain believe fading in-perceivable deathbed guarder makes surrounds scatter drooling ebb blink cob tome  venom near door lair derision draws host stairs scent parts curiosities spider webbing surprise wares tips stepping ascetics starkness realize picture surroundings dictations grand pillars  deaf limited comparisons greet visual residents  personal settings dismiss alien law stability common earthly shiftless places prelude  understanding mosaic keen trifling embodiments  geared inception whisper visible jowls kiss murky  puddle rank dawn dichotomy single faithful fraying pays tailor veil climb mores pence whim  breath wellspring samara god stony pear  shadows fruiting forebodes moonlit looming  shown passed bog gold wracked faint tongues  noble preachers mirror shifting layered depth  threads jungle narcissus bemused seamstress self-worshiping architect's wore slumber anomalous  opened barren seam lip caustic scene coupled brick gardener's clenches -with forms idle breed  embodied lore starving empathy design illusion  tree coat fabricate lucid mason scatter-all  narrative seeking imbued 16th shivering chemicals 17th 15thrisk improperly dare  deliberate plan purge try brought chapter speed  aide utmost spirit leading intervention felt  recall recent advent sincerity times diary  lackluster piously lasting happy holding hear  stem tasteless whimpers wet spine monstrosity  dripping causes position quite softly claws pallet  answer digging tearing beast satiating circle breaks skips redwoods beckoning rotted hushed  gray lapsing monoliths deities creborus  imbuement hand stroll paradigm rendered chorus shy whispering forest residual tension  surrenders tolerance lull anew sentenced  bearing tide birds dirge divergent rim joined  cogs wood hesitant mist emergent towering offer  awareness confinement inverted faultier stowed  plane sanctified blanketing trusting memory fossil flash twists laden self-indulgent fleeting invitation agony grip shore impetus lingering  crows promise gift union swallowing endless floor supposed ecstasy sensory intent  psychotropic cradling placement interned  jagged connectivity exchange congenial begun  summons singular spiral assumes ambient reciprocates re-entry fruition reached aggregate lifetime limbs birthed instinct  frightening tarry proper entire light  boundaries innocence pursuit ago discover left  youth's unknowing sacred time place meager  simple fact cast ceaseless wide-eyed literal  apparent coincidence create boldness morphed  crooked kempt mere stumble buried shutter fairy  pivotal definitive months worth shear ambition sound required journeyed self-reflections title  facets vague restless intimation gut wanderer's  leap motivate path account boy soon bears faith  question tripped reasons uproot awaited confronted days step heal provocations wisps crushing transcend chronicles instance  directness raw drove occurrence objective-less  real enters slightest confident nondescript  typify  foreshortened interment paradox bitter heart  devoid jeopardy angry sensation confidential guilty arrogance mercy compliance reprieve  vincent deadening factual sign emotion awe  inhibition shackled butterflies absence actual sciences acknowledgement violent stagnant  spiritual American doors roots lack matted fore  gestures society cause streams intensity hair impossible discord lonely hearts resounding  jest  what's flavored pains closed toxic contented  happenstance scientific knowledge yeah  wizardry shaking stifled withdrawn bloom  jitter dreads settle asocial hulton make  predisposed figurative reflections demeanors  wondered affect hulton's projected sense  morning industry arrays ghosts feeling  certainly endomorphic where's partially wrath  passer mornings jovial unease advertized asking  trash onward wished tempers media mentality connect pasts sharp-toothed scramble great colours trial test salvation continually lent  degree secretly subjection social waned  disconnected colors grimly intellectual civilization cash trading baffling particular  digest myths monumental ending seasons winter  repetition introducing agent everlasting  shoulders delivered honestly-- possession funny  continence history unsightly function suffering propulsion profession divulge familiar tugs era  importance capability perpetuation spite inventory words entirety leveling fray insight  date record continues writer getting evermore fellow tongue possessions identical proof accuracy education similar sack admittance  favor unravel conveyance guilt gives beginnings  predicting audacity definition bobby heady eaters frameless learned release stone grandeur sang  speak molds sleeps split built seats people folded  sheer pour evoked playhouse liquid boring  tellers frayed stark walked reality pleas doth  preformed shows beak pride squawks opinions  greatest bold stunning sightings he'd loudly slain  sunk watch legend precipice theater deeper compound commentator civility justly silly sin  reverent seen prophetic moral confounds notion  lacking explain attempt prolific viral estrange proclivity scorn hide blur pious strung eden's  horror cut skin arch cruel twig mother vile  pass lend woods peach shrunken trail man's canopy worn 434 eat warm limb familiar father delete.

You are what your reading lady. Now would you hold this gun?

A pocket of thought, ideas.
Impulses, has beens

epi-phenom-enal-con-currencies-synchron-icity
sorting places, thens and nows vying for attention

you see
we till stories in search of true tomorrows
not true
yesterdays (till, I said, not tell)
we **** the hard rows no one else will ***
so seed lies sown are never lies told, if the lies are never taught
or if the liars are caught before convincing the
intended crop to lie and swear a common liege Lord,
or die
for lack of knowing. Non-nascence, simplest
symptom to not see.
Whose death is yours to respond responsibly
to? My child's, or yourn?
In the early days, we knew less than we know now
about how knowing and growing were all
intended
to cost time. Ticks, ono motto whatever, the sound
gears and spiral springs pushing cogs
tick, one tooth tick at atime make

this rough, un polished, un glossed, is it wrong or

as I imagine a diamond in the rough must seem to a share cropper
experienced in diamond hunting, diamond prospecting,

prospecting expecting inspection to permit
seeing a 3.52 specific gravity,
specific
specify

species or spectacles,
spectators or special-if-eye-cation
value-en-abled. Weigh your mind in balance
with mine. I claim the mind of Christ.
What are the odds?

A wandering path, injoyable enable if-i-abble,
pacing is

everything, timing is everything, time is the test.

Time is the metagame.
Take your time. One word formed sylabble at a time.
Babble on, your confusion makes you mortal, to my mind.
Tick.
A quanta of time. Does time come in bits and pieces cernible,
but undiscernible from reality?

Babble.

Of course, time will tell. We learned that in our sleep, did we not?

Aesop taught us more than Moses, no,
Aesop taught us less than Moses.

But, we could learn to walk bearing the weight of knowing what
Aesop taught,
while we could not stand under the weight
Moses was said
to have taught.

Caught you, Jewboy. Whatchewknow?
The moral of the story.

THE IDEA is to win.
Beware the concision decision.
incisive devices, witty inventions.

Flip the shell, roll the bones, cast the runes and,
as luck might have it, die before your time.

Why factors are lies more oft than how factors.
Benefactors rule malefactors or
how or why would we invest our time in seeking reasons
to believe?

Is this the polished piece, the gemstone of specific gravity
(which currently means nothing to you. Here, you find too light
or too heavy, too weighty on the scale of specific value.)

Hard. Value hard, diamond hard, on Mr. Moore's scaled model of
Knowing exploding for reason's sake, raison d'etre, eh?
Too hard?
Not Mohs,
don't get me wrong.
We been Moore's law breaker all along.
We be manifested destinatory stories of heroes gone wrong.

Outlawed
knowing exploding to be reasoned with, by kind
children destined to become
written in stone, scarred by lies

Diamonds cutting diamonds, iron whetting iron
on eternity's edge.

Babylon, was it Bel's gate or fusion from below rising?

Magma fountains with diamond claws tearing the lands asunder
Is asunder still a word?, let me, allow me to define...
"into a position apart, separate,
into separate parts,"
mid-12c., contraction of Old English on sundran 
Middle English used to know asunder for
"distinguish, tell apart."
From <https://www.etymonline.com/word/asunder>
----

mumbler's humbler PIE, bowing before the knowers who
know nothing of my work.
Set apart, art thou holy aware?

Hermit me, meet the rest of me. The true rest that remained.
We live, you and I. Trust me, next is worth the wait.

Suffer needs no pain to make its point. Waiting is.

Grokk. WHO would believe that idea could live
through telegraphese to be tweet meets for the
Cosplay clans. How never grokked a rock,  why even less.

Strange, be not long in this
place. if
place this be. Odd
set aside
torn asunder
blown away.
Awake, little birdie, tell me true,
what's a man like me to do?

Did you meet the famous Mr. Blake?
I cleaned his chimney, way back when, chimbly's whut
we called em. Smoke stacks belchin' black
makin' black moths invisible to voracious
gulls.
Now the peppered moths are free
to be white-ish, for better or worse.

----

right, now, do right or

miss the mark,
the specific mark you made, maybe,
imagining, abstract obstructions missed
by the skin on Job's teeth as you run past

right now to more. You know?

----=

Story telling was the same as lying when I was a child, to me.

Telling stories was my gift I never took. Or am I lying? or mad,
in the old way.
Chaillot's rag picker was my best friend.

No noble thought ever found it's home in my head, once
I thunk it, it stunk to high heaven, for me stinkin' thinkin' it.

Po' ems sang sour to fiddles wit' one strang and drums with no
cymbals
Screamin' he owed m' soul the comp'ny sto' bang bang thud.

I died, he lied, and lived to tell this story, ****** if I know,
****** if I don't.

True as true can be. I am lost, but once was found,
lyin' rough, uncut in acres of unseen gems.
----
* Voltaire refused to teach me any thing I could not define:
late 14c., deffinen, diffinen, "to specify; to fix or establish authoritatively;" of words, phrases, etc., "state the signification of, explain what is meant by, describe in detail," from Old French defenir, definir "to finish, conclude, come to an end; bring to an end; define, determine with precision," and directly from Medieval Latin diffinire, definire, from Latin definire "to limit, determine, explain," from de "completely" (see de-) + finire "to bound, limit," from finis "boundary, end" (see finish (v.)). From c. 1400 as "determine, declare, or mark the limit of." Related: Defined; defining.

So, imagine facets unseen, I am at least a meme, a bubble rising on the tide. Think, as you will. Amen?

You're the Wacky Wolf-man,
Tearing through our pages with a single huff.
Breathing life into us little piggies,
Blasting your way through the daily fluff.

You're the Word Wizard.
Leaving us in awe and in dribbles.
Waving your wand,
Conjuring magical and spellbinding scribbles.

You're the Living Legend,
Almost like a deity of some sort.
Garnering shiploads of admiration,
Through words of encouragement, banter and retort.

You're the Bad Boy Bard...
Never mincing your words.
Unconventional, you howl amidst the flocks...
You never did chirp like the birds...

You're the Minstrel Mobster,
Shooting your Tommy, never missing.
Flicking forward your fedora,
Strung lute ever smoking.

You're one Cool Cat.
Fending off haters with a bat.
Everyone just wants to be that.
Like a superhero whose symbol is a bat...

You're a Gem Generator.
Cogs and gears churning the jewels laid
Machine malfunction! My system's jammed!
Well I guess that's just it... Enough said!

Where do I land, in the cogs and gears?
I observe all around me, a machine,
turning, churning, grind, pop.
The tenacity of the hive-mind.

My presence could go forgotten
if it weren't for my pathetic attempts,
to connect,
to plug-in,
to that vast unconsciousness.

We are all caught in this "world",
This world of dog doesn't get to ******* eat at all.
They say, "Welcome to the real world."
This is the real world as surely as our fertilizers make the ground fertile.
And as surely as our "freedom fighters" fight for freedom.
No, this is not the real world,
and it never should be.

This is our false reality.

We are not who we are meant to be.

The Mother beckons us home.

These cogs and these gears,
they are not for me,
and they are not for you.

I do not land in these cogs,
I would not land in these cogs,
I could not land in these cogs,
I should not land in these cogs,
I will not let you land in these cogs my fellow being of glorious stewardship, charged with the protection of this great planet and its balance for all who were and ever will be.

Awhile ago, I had been at a party. I’d listened to someone talk about Kate Moss for ten minutes straight. I left the room, found my flatmate and asked why anyone was interested in anything at all. We’d come up with no answers.

All this started a month ago, and all that started long before. I will not bore you with trite aphorisms about how I survived, or how wondrous life has become since. At some point my mind broke. This is a collection of memories about my attempted suicide and the absurdity of the entire experience.

Wednesday, 26th of April, 2017, midnight.

Couldn’t sleep. Surfed the internet. Fell into ASMR sub-culture.[1] Meta-satire, transitioning to post-irony, before pseudo-spiritual out-of-body transcendence. I thought, *this is the most ****** experience I’ve had in half a decade, while a woman spun spheres of blobby jelly around my head and whispered elephant mourning rituals into my ears.

Tuesday, 27th of April, 2017, afternoon.

Woke up mid-day. Looked at all the objects in my room, unable to understand why any of them mattered. Milled around the flat. Went online to order helium so I could make an exit bag.[2] Cheapest source was The Warehouse, though the helium came with thirty bright multi-coloured party balloons. I kept imagining one of my flatmates walking in later that day, seeing my crumpled body surrounded by these floppy bits of rubber and a note saying this life is absurd and I want out of it. There was no online purchasing option, however, and I couldn’t be bothered walking into town. I began reading suicide notes. One was from a kid who’d slowly taken pills as he watched TV, culminating in a coma. That sounds pleasant, I thought, whilst at the same time knowing that it takes up to three days to die from painkillers and that the process is anything but painless or final. I opened my drawer, found a bunch of paracetamol and began washing them down with water, whilst listening to the soundtrack of End of Evangelion.[3]

I’m not sure why, but I began crying violently. I knew I’d have to leave the flat before my flatmates came home. I hastily scrawled a note that said, donate my body, give my money to senpai, give my possessions to someone I don’t know, it smells like burning, it was good knowing you all, before walking out the door with Komm Süsser Tod playing in the background.[4, 5] I’d already written my personal and political reasons for suicide in the pieces méconnaissance[6] and **** Yourself,[7] so felt there was no reason for anything more substantial.

I wandered the back roads of my neighbourhood. My body shook. I felt somnolent, half-dazed. I wanted a quiet place to sit, sleep and writhe in agony while my organs slowly failed. My legs kept stumbling, however, and my head was beginning to feel funny. I found a dead-end street and sat on one of those artificially maintained rectangles of grass. There was a black cat lying in the middle of the road, just bobbing its head at me. I zoned out for a bit and when I came to a giant orange cat was to my left, gazing intently into my teary face. I tried to refocus on my crotch. I couldn’t help but notice a white cat across the road, pretending not to be seen. It had a dubious look on its face, a countenance of guilt. What the hell was going on? A delivery person looped round the street. People returned home from work. Garage doors opened, cars drove down driveways. Here I was, slowly dying, surrounded by spooky ******* cats and the bustle of ordinary existence.

“Uh, hey. You look, uh, like something isn’t . . . do you need, uh, help?” a woman asked, crossing the street with a pram to reach me. I groaned.

“It’s just that, you know, ordinarily, um, I mean normally, people don’t sit on the sidewalk,” she continued, glancing down with the half-confused look of a concerned citizen who is trying to enter a situation outside of their usual experience. I mumbled something indistinct and went back to staring at my crotch.

“You know, I can, er . . . I can . . . I can’t really help,” she ended, awkwardly. “I have a daughter to look after, but . . . if you’re still here when she’s asleep . . . I’m the red fence.” She darted off without another word.

Had she wanted me off the sidewalk because it was abnormal to sit there, or had she seen the abnormality as a sign of something deeper? Either way, she’d used abnormality as a signifier of negative change. Deviancy as something to be corrected, realigned with some norm that co-exists with happiness and citizenship. I was being a bad citizen.

I thought, I miss those cats. At least they had judged me in silence. Wait, what the hell am I thinking? This is clearly a case of deviancy associated with negative feelings. Well, negative feelings, but not necessarily negative change. Suicide is only negative if one views life as intrinsically worthwhile—

I could hear pram lady in the distance. She was talking to someone who’d just come back from work. They thanked pram lady and began moving towards me. Arghggh, just let me die, I thought.

She introduced herself as a nurse. From her tone and approach, it was clear she’d handled many cases like me. I’ve never hated counselling techniques. They seemed to at least trouble neoliberal rhetoric. There is little mention of overcoming, or striving, or perfecting oneself into a being of pure success. Rather, counselling seemed to be about listening and piercing together the other’s perspective. Counsellors tended not to interject words of comfort. They’d tell you mental illness was lifelong and couldn’t be fixed. They’re the closest society has to positive pessimists. Of course, they’d still want you to get better. Better, as in, not attempting suicide.

I talked with nurse lady for an hour about how life is simply passing. Passing through oneself, passing through others, passing through spaces, thoughts and emotions. About how the majority of life seems to be lived in a beyond we’ll never reach. Potential futures, moments of relief, phantasies we create to escape the dull present. About how I’d been finding my media and politics degree really rewarding, but some part of my head broke and I lost all ability to focus and care. About how the more I learnt about the world, the less capable I felt of changing it, and that change was a narcissistic day dream, anyway.

She replied “We’re all cogs. But what’s wrong with being a cog? Even a cog can make changes,” and I thought, but never one’s own.

She gave me a ride to the emergency clinic because I was too apathetic and guilt-ridden to decline. Why are people so nice over things that don’t matter? Chicks are ground into chicken nuggets alive.[8] The meat-industry produces 50% of the world’s carbon emissions.[9] But someone sits on the side of the road in a bourgeois neighbourhood and suddenly you have cats and nurses worried sick over your ****** up head. I should have worn a hobo coat and sat in town.

Tuesday, 27th of April, 2017, evening.

I had forgotten how painful waiting rooms were. It was stupidly ironic. I’d entered this apathetic suicidal stupor because I’d wanted to escape the monotony of existence, yet here I was, sitting in a waiting room, counting the stains on the ceiling, while the reception TV streamed a hospital drama.

“Get his *** in there!”

“Time is the real killer.”

“It wasn’t the cancer that was terminal, it was you.”

Zoom in on doctor face man.

Everybody hugging.

Emergency waiting rooms are a lot like life. You don’t choose to be there. An accident simply occurs and then you’re stuck, watching a show about *** cancer and family bonding. Sometimes someone coughs and you become aware of your own body again. You remember that you exist outside of media, waiting in this sterile space on a painfully too small plastic chair. You deliberately avoid the glances of everyone else in the room because you don’t want to reduce their existence to an injury, a pulsing wound, a lack, nor let them reduce you the same. The accident that got you here left you with a blank spot in your head, but the nurses reassure you that you’ll be up soon, to whatever it is you’re here for. And so, with nothing else to do, you turn back to the TV and forget you exist.

I thought, I should have taken more pills and gone into the woods.

The ER was a Kafkaeque realm of piercing lights, sleepy interns and too narrow privacy curtains.[10] Every time a nurse would try to close one, they’d pull it too far to one side, opening the other side up. Like the self, no bed was fully enclosed. There were always gaps, spaces of viewing, windows into trauma, and like the objet petit a, there was always the potential of meeting another’s gaze, one just like yours, only, out of your control.

I lay amidst a drone of machinery, footsteps and chatter. I stared at ceiling stains. Every hour or so a different nurse would approach me, repeat the same ten questions as the one before, then end commenting awkwardly on my tattoos. I kept thinking, what is going on? Have I finally died and become integrated into some eternally recurring limbo hell where, in a state of complete apathy and deterioration, some devil approaches me every hour to ask, why did you take those pills?

Do I have to repeat my answer for the rest of my life?

I gazed at the stain to my right. That was back in ‘92 when the piping above burst on a particularly wintry day. I shifted my gaze. And that happened in ‘99 when an intern tripped holding a giant cup of coffee. Afterwards, everyone began calling her Trippy. She eventually became a surgeon and had four adorable bourgeois kids. Tippy Tip Tap Toop.

The nurses began covering my body with little pieces of paper and plastic, to which only one third were connected to an ECG monitor.[11] Every ten minutes or so the monitor would begin honking violently, to which (initially) no one would respond to. After an hour or so a nurse wandered over with a worried expression, poked the machine a little, then asked if I was experiencing any chest pains. Before I could answer, he was intercepted by another nurse and told not to worry. His expression never cleared up, but he went back to staring blankly into a computer terminal on the other end of the room.

There were two security guards awkwardly trying not to meet anyone’s gazes. They were out of place and they knew it. No matter what space they occupied, a nurse would have to move past them to reach some medical doodle or document. One nurse jokingly said, “It’s ER. If you’re not moving you’re in the way,” to which the guards chortled, shuffled a metre or so sideways, before returning to standing still.

I checked my phone.

“Got veges.”

“If you successfully **** yourself, you’ll officially be the biggest right-wing neoliberal piece of ****.”[12]

“Your Text Unlimited Combo renewed on 28 Apr at 10:41. Nice!”

I went back to staring at the ceiling.

Six hours later, one of the nurses came over and said “Huh, turns out there’s nothing in your blood. Nothing . . . at all.” Another pulled out my drip and disconnected me from the ECG monitor. “Well, you’re free to leave.”

Tuesday, 27th of April, 2017, midnight.

I wandered over to the Emergency Psychiatric Services. The doctor there was interested in setting up future supports for my ****** up mind. He mentioned anti-depressants and I told him that in the past they hadn’t really worked, that it seemed more related to my general political outlook, that this purposeless restlessness has been with me most of my life, and that no drug or counselling could cure the lack innate to existence which is exacerbated by our current political and cultural institutions.

He replied “Are you one of those anti-druggers? You know there’s been a lot of backlash against psychiatry, it’s really the cultural Zeitgeist of our times, but it’s all led by misinformation, scaremongering.”

I hesitated, before replying “I’m not anti-drugs, I just don’t think you can change my general hatred of existence.”

“Okay, okay, I’m not trying to argue with your outlook, but you’re simply stuck in this doom and gloom phase—”

Whoa, wait a ******* minute. You’re not trying to argue with my outlook, while completely discounting my outlook as simply a passing emotional state? This guy is a ******* *******, I thought, ragging on about anti-druggers while pretending not to undermine a political and social position I’d spent years researching and building up. I stopped paying attention to him. Yes, a lot of my problems are internal, but I’m more than a disembodied brain, biologically computing chemical data.

At the end of his rant, he said something like “You’re a good kid,” and I thought, ******* too.

Friday, 28th of April, 2017, morning.

The next day I met a different doctor. I gave him a brief summary of my privileged life culminating in a ****** metaphor about three metaphysical pillars which lift me into the tempestuous winds of existential dread and nihilistic apathy. One, my social anxiety. Two, my absurd existence. Three, my political outlook. One, anxiety: I cannot relate to small talk. The gaze of the other is a gaze of expectations. Because I cannot know these expectations, I will never live up to them. Communication is by nature, lacking. Two, absurdity: Existence is a meaningless repetition of arbitrary structures we ourselves construct, then forget. Reflexivity is about uncovering this so that we may escape structures we do not like. We inevitably fall into new structures, prejudices and artifices. Nothing is authentic, nothing is innocent and nothing is your self. Three, politics: I am trapped in a neoliberal capitalist monstrosity that creates enough produce to feed the entire world, but does not do so due to the market’s instrumental need for profit. The system, in other words, rewards capitalists who are ruthless. Any capitalist trying to bring about change, will necessarily have to become ruthless to reach a position of power, and therefore will fail to bring about change.

The doctor nodded. He thought deeply, tried to piece it all together, then finally said “Yes, society is quite terrifying. This is something we cannot control. There are things out there that will harm you and the political situation of our time is troubling.”

I was astounded. This was one of the first doctors who’d actually taken what I’d said and given it consideration. Sure we hadn’t gotten into a length discussion of socialism, feminism or veganism, but they also hadn’t simply collapsed my political thoughts into my depressive state.

“But you know, there are still niches of meaning in this world. Though the greater structures are overbearing, people can still find purpose enacting smaller changes, connecting in ephemeral ways.”

What was I hearing? Was this a postmodern doctor?[13] Was science reconnecting with the humanities?

“We may even connect your third pillar, that of the political, with your second pillar and see that the political situation of our time is absurd. This is unfortunate, but as for your first pillar, this is definitely something we can help you with. In fact, it’s quite a simple process, helping one deal with social anxiety, and to me, it sounds like this anxiety has greatly affected your life for the past few years.”

The doctor then asked for my gender and sexuality, to which after I hesitated a little, he said, it didn’t really matter seeing as it was all constructed, anyway. For being unable to feel much at all, I was ecstatic. I thought, how could this doctor be working in the same building as the previous one I’d met? We went into anti-depressant plans. He told me that their effects were unpredictable. They may lift my mood, they may do nothing at all, they may even make me feel worse. Nobody really knew what molecular pathways serotonin activated, but it sometimes pulled people out of circular ways of thinking. And dopamine, well, taken in too high a dose, could make you psychotic.

Sign me the **** up, I thought, gazing at my new medical hero. These are the kinds of non-assurances that match my experience of life. Trust and expectations lead only to disappointment. Give me pure insurmountable doubt.

Friday, 28th of April, 2017, afternoon.

“The drugs won’t be too long,” the pharmacist said before disappearing into the back room. I milled around th

"Back from vacation", the barber announces,
or the postman, or the girl at the drugstore, now tan.
They are amazed to find the workaday world
still in place, their absence having slipped no cogs,
their customers having hardly missed them, and
there being so sparse an audience to tell of the wonders,
the pyramids they have seen, the silken warm seas,
the nighttimes of marimbas, the purchases achieved
in foreign languages, the beggars, the flies,
the hotel luxury, the grandeur of marble cities.
But at Customs the humdrum pressed its claims.
Gray days clicked shut around them; the yoke still fit,
warm as if never shucked. The world is still so small,
the evidence says, though their hearts cry, "Not so!"

Chapter one:

  The strange entanglement of the sun, twisted in kooky bedlam with The Great King Moon in winter.

Have you ever looked down at yr feet on the long walk home & wondered if you’re really moving forward any more or if all your really doing is just moving the ground? Don’t answer that, its a rhetorical question. Of course you have. We all have. You think you’re moving in the right direction, following the north star or the compass in your brain or maybe just your nose or your thumb and fore finger. You  believe that you’re gonna make it somewhere, you have to believe. What else is there. The truth is, you’re going nowhere, we are all going nowhere, we just spin on the slanted axis & never really go anywhere. We have been conditioned to believe that this is the way the world works but I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t, you gotta buck up, **** up or ******* ‘*** let me tell you, yr ‘dreams’ mean nothing to anybody ‘*** living, real living is not connected to REM. That’s all just more ******* you’re gonna have to put up with people trying to sell you. Lick the boot, get over the barrel & bite down on your watch strap. That’s all there is to it. The mind is a magnet. If you find yourself staring in to the abyss: Jump right in. Swan dive. Hold your breath & wait. Everything will be OK. I promise you.

I’m writing, ah writing! Writing this worthless piece of *****// manuscript of means for you. For me, for the future, for love, for lust, for hatred of all things hating, for your mother & farther, for my friends, my beautiful angelic, clinically insane friends, for time, for the soles of my shoes with hundreds of miles under their laces, for your fat greedy pockets, for the moon, for the sun to spit on, for the wind to taunt, as he does like the great cowardly, perverted invisible fiend that he is, for nothing, for not quite everything, for your aching lovers, for your broken hearts, for the worlds water, may you always be clean & run free, for the great biblical liars, for the sorrowful wonder of the great homeless & may all their wants come to be wanted, for *******, for fumbling, for the vast oaken heavy doors on bars that keep us safe from the  horrors outside, for guilt, for sugar-blue smoke, for all the kids sitting in **** stained squat houses with half a horse embedded in their face, for my schools that gave up on a bored child, for warmth & fire & woollen clothing, for Paris where I can fulfil my great dream of becoming a sullen cliché, for the gravel-mounted marching marvel, may you never lose your way, for the Parthenon, for Aubergine, for The Firefly, the swan, bleeding,for growing up, for all the music makers,all people should play all instruments to any degree(rather than just, age & shrivel), for Howl for Carl Solomon, for every down & out that ever clawed his way up the street & through the yellow door, for all the animals that gave their lives to keep me fat & red faced, for Christ sake, for the invisible man in the sky, causing all war & so much death-thank you, for the wild west, for Bert & John, for the great literary mastodon to look down his reset nose at & ask me why. Why?

The way that old dial telephones look & feel. The questions that need no answers. Feeling down, down & out, upside down & inside out,upside in & downside out on the pavement at five am. Waking up in unknown beds & crawling down drain pipes. Getting lost in a place you have lived your whole life. Being in the woods simply to be in the woods. Drinking coffee even though you hate the taste. Never telling a stranger the truth. Living under a false name. Drinking yourself to death in the dark lonely-crowded corners of ***** stained wood floor warehouse floors. Feeling solid-sterling-gold for feeling so terribly horrifically half-corpse-like the only way you can really feel is completely statuesquely angelically magnificent and the only way is down(you really have no idea how far I fell that morning) , Only going out when it rains. Only going out in the dark. Staying up all night dreaming and sleeping all day. Remembering to forget, forgetting to remember to remember to be forgetful. Understanding that you and no one else understands nothing but eat-drink-sleep-****-death. Smoking until yr tongue bleeds and yr eyes burn like that fire in the sky in the fearful month of June. Wishing you knew how to tie a noose & writing ”suicide” on yr calender on a day you have no planned engagements. Shooting to the moon & back in the bee-bop-bo-bo-batter-batter-chitter-chatter like jazz on the neon streets of the earths mother. Crawling in to a stone cold bed after walking for six days & feeling bored & lonely again in ten minutes.

That’s why, I’m glad you asked. If I’m going out, then I’m out going with some steeze in a cloud of smoke, yr wife & I’m not taking you with me.

For all these things & more is the reason I write. To write for the sake of writing. For, some people write, just to write & they are truly the the lost meaning of it all.

Automatic travel rambles to plug up the holes in yr lonesome pockets. Blues.

Chapter two:  

Creeping moss-stick under-flowering the useless but grateful Tuesday poet, Jim Gravestone Sr.

The ghost of the monorail, living only in upturned memory sits slow & smooth/low against the Sunday evening rapture. You gotta know which way is down. Down. The dew on the grass & the creamy-green residue of the night before is just too close to a real drama. Absolute dahma. Down in the cold rising damp & the stain on your shirt.

He sits , sits like you, like me & like old Tom Mooney the prison king. If you ever saw such a sad sight as he, I do believe you would roll out your tongue on the pavement right there & then & wait for the road sweeper & all his secret, early morning charms & the great wolf man, pork chop sideburns (lupine dreams)to clean you up & clean you out. I do declare!

For he knows-for he has seen. Seen the sun rise from his pearly throne up on the dark side of the moon, the very face of Bowie, right there in the eye socket. He sees all. You can live your life, & you do, & you should, but he, O’ he, he has really been there & where & back again. You carry on with your sleepy routine of mule-back coffee office doom death jobs(you sleepy Bohemian, you)  & in you spare time trying to keep your nose from filling up with water & your private parts entwined with somebody else’s most private of parts, & on the side lines of you spare time you can deal with your family & all the friends that you’re sick of but hold on to, only for the fear of being left alone in the dark with nothing but all of the above. Then again you always have your studies(STDS)all of the ologies, of course.

Sleepology, cocaineology,rainolgy, sunology, lonleyology, depressionology, suicideology, talkology,empypocketsology, meaninglessology, masterbationology, coutntingyourmoneyinpintsology,walkology, onenightstandology, jumpthetaxiology, begology, borrowology, stealology,feelology, upallnightology, sleepalldayology, Xology, ologyology, etcology etc…ology etc.

Just find something you can care for ‘*** [insert atheist god/idol] knows that nobody is going to do your caring for you, even I they do in fact care for you.

I have been beginning to notice,that I(and I may not be alone)

always look at the past through a marigold monocle.

This, meaning nothing now ever seems to be joyous or gay or splendiferous until it is a past memory.

A cobweb. A rafter. A leaf on the ground. …I guess.

         Chapter three:

I know you know it but people that you don’t know, really are a funny, funny thing…

I stand outside the rain & watch the people passing by; really the most depressing experience of my ever increasing years. Un-jolly fat men with whiskey-nose & scuffle-feet stanzas of gibberish, talking gibberish & gibberish being their inner most self. Pre-war women with Arctic-blue hair, faces melting, everything pointing down, shuffle. Kids pushing prams full of ugly babies towards a house of who-gives-a-**** & ******* & I’m-gonna-die-here and what of it. Is there really no more to life. Listen to the top 40 on the radio, clueless, oblivious. Cogs. All cogs. Military troglodytes following them back in a dead eyed daze, dreaming of killing in the real and virtual. No you may not have a cigarette. Leave me alone, please. Let me listen to my watch ticking in peace & at least pretend that you don’t exist.

The human body is comprised of several ‘substances’

including..

Mercury,

hydrogen hydroxide,

fountain pens,

the lost dates of calenders,

various small woodland animals,

including…

Voles,

rabbits & field mice.

Other such things as…

Misplaced birthmarks(of the brain)

feelings of remorse and regret,

the stolen trinkets of past lovers,

and of course,

white blood cells,

pesticides,

and the second hand

from a 1956 ’Hamilton Rail road’ pocket watch.

E.L August 7th

           Chapter four:

Last night, last night was the last night it was the night last

Picasso raincoat. Imagelessness. Bottomlessness. I lost my umbrella & my Holden Caulfield head-wear, again. I was skipping on a rain cloud, corduroy boy and scarecrow girl, reunited in a soft entanglement sticky in the senses. Hoof! The only way is up when you walk down these stairs, snakes and blisters, but you’ll sweat it all out in babble cream conversation and love in your eyes. Tell me a story, tell me a story, tell me something to prop my chin up in this brown tunnel. Your name it is something I cant care to remember but of course I never really had a name of my own either, so we shall be the great wonder of the nameless masses, the ones born to no name and never wanted one anyway. A name is nothing but a label, a calling card, call me anything, call me king Charles II just as long as you do call me, the sound of a voice, your voice, any voice reeling off a comprised anagram of the alphabet is enough to get my short attentive ears to perk up and twist my noggin backwards towards the direction of my inbuilt gypsy sonar. So anyway, I was going to talk about something, something great… but now its gone and all I have is bloodshot eyes and sweaty liars palms to prove to the world that I had an idea once, I swear I did.

Here’s an idea for you to dig you heels into:

The world keeps making mistakes, everybody makes mistakes, its natural, nothing to fear, it happens all day every day. BUT, with every mistake we make, we then proceed to learn from that mistake, so.. stay with me here… Once the world, the whole world meaning everyone in it, has made every mistake they can make and of course and one would hope of course, that they have also learned from all of these mistakes; once this has happened, there will be no more mistakes to make, right? Therefore leaving the world perfect as a whole, no mistakes to make, learnt their lessons on every lesson and we can all go on with living a perfect existence, yes?…

No.

I’ve really thought long and hard about it -could never happen, people are not perfect, they never will be, if they were I wouldn’t want to know any of them, and the world, well the world is an imperfect place, and the same rule applies.

But let me hit you with another bit of knowledge to round things off and maybe put a positive spin on things. Hoist ye marrow-thumbs around this;

One of the many few early times that my legs forgot how to use them selves, I was sitting on the pavement, trying for one to reattach these two now useless appendages stuck like butter to my lower torso, but foremost trying to light a cigarette with my useless cold hands and equally useless matches, fearful of the sneaky clear coward, invisible old Mr wind, when a kindly stranger, half my size, red my hair, opposite my *** and now opposite my broken legs appeared like a person will appear when you mind is in other minds, a smile, a sympathetic look and two working hands to fire up the stick in my mouth. I said my thanks, babbled about babble and the generation of gibberish and im sure many other things inconceivable to the sober ear of a dame such as she, the bringer of flame and enlightenment, not of the smoke but of the simple mind, an idea is what she left with me and it never left. She stopped my rambling typewriter of a tongue and said ‘shush’ she held my head in her hands, looked at me straight,so I thought she might be death or god or that I was passing out,she all green eyed and like the woods, looked at my eyes like they were tethered together and dropped the bomb on me, she said ”if you are looking at the moon, then everything is alright” kissed my warm on frozen forehead and was gone into the night, never to be seen again.

That’s all the advice you will ever need, & so ll I will leave you with.

You never left a name, but I never wanted one anyway.

Midnight moment

beautiful rags

midnight joy.


Nevermind your little light,

set apart your golden dreams

that offen break,

& come to play.


Chapter five: There are things I want to write but I am not going to write them.

The End.

‘Stay gold, Pony Boy’

Everyone Has a Story… Here’s Five.


Part I: Cousin

I remember
That daze I felt those days
Those days that were fixtures
In my life at the time
But like all good stories
They come to an end
Sometimes abruptly

I was on the island,
At the very top,
Looking down from our mountain,
It was night time,
And the lights shined clearly,
Little holes from the bottom of heaven were penetrating the world,
As they did so I peered on,
Never truly understand what heaven was,
This was my element,
The curiosity which was placed in me,
Since the birth of my being,
Has never been one for being quenched,
Even if my parents tried to beat it out of me,
After a time they kind of hit a fork in the road and decided to go right,
But at the last second I side stepped and ran my behind to the left,
Because the right side isn't always the right way to go,
I felt that their minds died some time ago,
But I was a kid, in the hoods of Puerto Rico,
Only visiting, never witnessing,
The day to day realities,
That came from living so rapidly.

I met my cousin for the second time the days before that night,
He took me under his wing almost immediately and I was happy to follow,
He was a tall man, tattooed from head to toe,
I thought the second I laid eyes on him, that this was my role model
As a lover of Hip-Hop I thought this was how everyone should look,
He would cuss, and spit, and drink, and have several women on deck,
While rolling a couple of joints,
This was the MAN!

However, this view didn't last for very long,
Because on that night,
I witnessed the devil for the first time,
I crawled from beneath my covers,
That my mother had so carefully put into place,
As a safeguard against the realities of the world,
That would come true in my childish fantasies of the boogie man,
The only bad I knew was what was told to me by the news,
People falling left and right cause of wars and other endless fights,
But in my mind they could be brought back to life by the Dragon *****,
Unfortunately Goku wasn't here this night,
I snuck through the house silently,
As the noise would be drowned out by the singing of coquis,
My bare feet hit the humid pavement following the rush down the stairs,
I only wanted to see my view,
The view of heavens holes peering through the vast and dark sky,
It was located at the edge of a cliff that looked over a ravine and then the wilderness,
At the precise moment I stopped to realize my will,
My dream was disrupted by a voice,
Followed by a sound that sliced through my mind and deflated my childish intuition,
A sound that penetrates my adult mind and echoes in the silence to this day,
Muffled screams echoed out after I heard the gunshots ring,
Beneath the sounds of the forests singing,
My heart was pounding slowly,
I was strangely calm rather than panicky and fearful,
Not that I was a brave child, but I remained curious,
Until I saw the blood…
It was then that I saw the dimly lit lamp beneath the moon light,
Resulting in the two bodies casting elongated shadows against the dank Earth,
Followed by a larger body standing over them,
One body was completely still,
While the other one was rocking back and forth,
The terror that took me was shear and raw,
The only other time that I had witnessed such a fear,
Was through the appearance in a pig’s eye,
As my grandfather drove a machete through its heart,
I heard the second shot ring out,
In the same amount of time that it took me to blink,
The other man had been murdered just the same,
And before I knew it the gun was pointed at me,
I stared back and started shaking,
This had to be pure fiction,
But no, this was reality,
I turned to run, but stopped when I realized who it was,
Looking up at me as he exited the thicket and the shadows,
Was my cousin, my role model,
He cocked his head up and looked at me with concern,
But said nothing,
As I ran home breathlessly,
Under the holes into heaven,
That had been put there by bullets,
My childhood was finished…

And I'd never see him again.


Part II: Brother

I remember
That daze I felt those days
Those days that were fixtures
In my life at the time
But like all good stories
They come to an end
Sometimes abruptly

As a child,
I thoroughly enjoyed,
Playing around outside,
I enjoyed getting into play fights,
I loved feeling like I could overwhelm any opponent, but I couldn't.
My brother was way stronger than me,
He had the height advantage,
And best believe he had the weight advantage,
But still, I thought I could manage,
It never really crossed my mind that my brother was a bit off,
To me he was a big kid,
A quiet companion,
My best friend,
My heart.

That was more than enough,
Until one day I went too far,
See my brother had one toy that he loved,
It was string; he'd tear up clothes to make string,
He'd cry up storms at department stores if he didn't get his string,
He'd hit my mother and punch my father if he didn't get string,
I just always thought the exception was me,
I was his play mate, he smiled at me,
Something quite rare for my big brother to do as a result of his condition,
And the medication he was taking,
You see when a child has autism they kind of want to do their own thing,
They want to be on their own,
Enjoying whatever it is they enjoy doing on their time,
But I had a child's mind and a child's ego,
His toys were mine too,
Share with me,
Play with me,
Look at me,
ME, ME, ME!
So he punched me right across the face,
I went flying into a sliding paneled glass door and began crying,
When my mother entered the room,
She asked what was going on and tried to calm me down,
I wouldn't listen so she told me shut up before the neighbors called police,
And we were both taken away,
Being that my mother was a single parent, I believed her,
With that being the case, I closed my eyes and didn't look at my arm,
Nor the blood slowly dripping down it onto my fingertips,
Down to the floor below,
I didn't play much anymore after that,
I was too childish to blame myself,
So the fault was his.

The fault would end up being mine,
As this action being a culmination of things done by my brother,
Led my father and my mother to do what I thought was unthinkable,
They chose to let him go,
Giving him to a group home,
My young mind couldn't even begin to comprehend the pain they felt,
But to me all I could see was two adults giving up on their son,
I saw love and hope dissipate right in front of my eyes,
He was playing with his string in the back seat of the car,
While I sat beside him just watching him,
Saving every movement of his,
And his joy into my memory banks,
To be left to gather dust; because the pain was too much to harness,
But with respect I chose to re-open the chest,
And hold my brother in my arms once again,
Before he was ripped away from me,
And given away to the monstrous people,
That wouldn't let him hug his mother nor me,
I didn't care if this is what was needed to be,
I was losing my brother!
My blood!
My playmate!
My best friend!
My only friend!
My HEART!
It didn't matter that he hit me,
It don't matter if he hit my mother or father,
Because the beating my heart was taking was too much,
For my slim frame and still developing body to handle,
As such my growth was stunted and I gained heart problems,
On top of the asthma,
Autism meant nothing to me,
He was everything!

But it ended with me sleeping alone,
At home he was gone.


Part III: Father

I remember
That daze I felt those days
Those days that were fixtures
In my life at the time
But like all good stories
They come to an end
Sometimes abruptly

I never felt much towards you,
I was taught to love my mother solely,
As she was the one always there to heal my bumps and bruises,
The only memories I have of you from my childhood,
Are of you feeding me God awful food and teaching me to ride a bike,
But I forgot how to ride a bike,
And I could cook what you cooked on my own,
Burnt hotdogs, and pasta, and cereal never really fazed me,
Every other memory is a blur,
Your love was like a line or two painted upon a Mona Lisa of love,
That I had gathered from the various sources of inspiration in my life,
I could always gain appreciation for them,
But not for you.


As I entered my adult years,
You tried to make up for it,
I knew you had pent up guilt inside from not seeing me,
Yet you bought presents and rose up the seeds of another tree,
Seeds that I don't blame,
I only wanted to smell the same flowers that you gave them,
So you were trying to give them to me while I could still smell them,
But that sense was long gone along with my sense of sight,
Literally my vision was fading, but my mind was expanding,
As I was witnessing the world around me quite clearly, and the soul within me,
Just wouldn't release me, from the overwhelming feeling of needing you,
A father figure I could depend on,
A monument for what a man should be, and truly believe in,
As it comes to issues of morality, love, and loyalty,
Up until this point you had only taught me resentment,
Resentment leading to hate,
But I wanted to honor you in place,
So I hide the parts of me that you don't care to see,
I hide my relationships,
I hide my true feelings,
I hide my poetry,
Because if you found those things,
I would no longer be free,
And I refuse to submerge my soul into slavery,
Just for you to feel like you rose up the brightest son,
When truly the darkness is where I was brought up and where I belong,
Moonlight is the only thing I can touch with my pen,
As I compose the paintings residing in my head,
Of wordsmiths and demons battling,
Because words are my angels,
And they have always been there in every instance,
Whenever I've needed a piece of wisdom,
Or a calming presence that would come from the essence,
And recollections of stories of glory,
Stories that helped me forget you,
I love you, and hope our relationship can bloom,
But I no longer wish to speak on you.


Part IV: Mother

I remember
That daze I felt those days
Those days that were fixtures
In my life at the time
But like all good stories
They come to an end
Sometimes abruptly

I was taught to feel love towards you,
And it still remains as strong as ever,
From when I was a child,
Your sacrifice made my life exactly what it is,
Exactly what I needed it to be in order to grow and explore my soul,
To reach for my dreams,
You have always given to me,
Even on your last two cents,
Both would be for me,
You were my mother goose,
Even if I seemed like a young rooster,
Because we were always so different,
You always wanted to mold me into your vision of me,
While you instilled in me many things which cling tightly to me,
You've made someone completely different from what you expected,
I hold different views and truths that are separate from you,
Which is fine, but for a time it would keep me from being who I desired to be,
Because you could never cut the umbilical cord.

In fact, it was wrapped around my neck,
The death of me was coming slowly,
Due to the inhibitions of my creativity,
You loved that I would write, but you hated what I was writing,
Hip-Hop, home to me, was looked at as purgatory,
You couldn't see why I would want to listen to these stories,
Stories of struggling and hustling and juggling jobs, drugs, women, and friendships,
These ships were all sailing gallantly through my mind; the wordplay was so sublime,
And the fact that the words blended with their worlds were so unkind,
Appealed to me, but you were blind,
This changed my perspective,
However what really taught me to be a man,
Was when you began pushing opposing women out of my life,
I would be deep in love, buy-a-ring love,
But one thing would be enough to trigger a string of insults,
And a manikin-like regard for the person of whom I adored,
This was too much for me, you were systematically ending my dreams,
I thank you for your love and for everything that you continue to do for me,
But the cataclysm that was forming in this poets mind,
Was becoming too much to bridge,
If this feeling was to be ongoing,
So as a desperate act of love and care,
I left you behind,
But the love is forever there,
I'm a man because of you,
Your heart will forever reside with me on my journey,
You’ve no need to be frightened,
I’ve got you, I’ve got us,
My senses have been heightened.


Part V: Lover

I remember
That daze I felt those days
Those days that were fixtures
In my life at the time
But like all good stories
They come to an end
Sometimes abruptly

We met after a string of accidents,
Accidents that nearly cost me my life,
These were love losses, blood losses,
Things I’d never thought I could recover from,
The experiences had me going numb,
Until you found me… or did I find you?
It's hard to tell it just seemed like we were two lost souls,
Looking to quell our young hunger for the opposite ***,
Each and every day was spent together,
First on the stoop in front of your sister’s house,
The place where I first kissed your mouth,
Second on the park benches,
This is where hours flourished from minutes,
Third was along the streets of the world,
You were my diamonds and my pearls,
Indestructible and irreplaceable,
Once you met the paper you were there forever,
With that ink blood that flows through your veins,
A fellow poet whose love would stain my mental,
Instrumental in gifting my simple world with a new understanding,
It wasn’t how I imagined, but God laughs at notions of planning,
I finally found out what it meant to be in love,
I never had two people show me what it was,
Honestly the many descriptions of hate,
Is what would be seen at the gate of my consciousness,
As such, I believed this same fate would await me,
It was once the singular feeling with which I could relate,
But the euphoric hands you laid on me,
Made me lose an awake thought process,
As I was in a lake filled with your waters,
That would flow to rivers,
Followed by seas of your loving,
Seas consummating your body,
As I laid on the beach,
Believing it to be a dream.

But it wasn't, and it shouldn’t have ended,
In reality, love has ways of being reprimanded,
I was so lucid, and the picture was candid,
It was the simplest of pleasures that I'd ever been handed,
I learned right away the right things to do,
To flow from my heart and work my way into you,
To take care of my lips,
A rough kiss can't ******,
Nor find proper pleasure,
Along a woman's surface,
You’d allow me to peruse your mind,
Sending shivers up your spine,
As I embarked on my conquest,
Explorations of lustful aspirations,
Symbolizing and synthesizing,
Each and every stroke,
Representing a new letter,
In the alphabet of love,
Allowing our tale to unwind,
To combine the breathlessness of our exploits,
With our hearts desire for choice,
Which declined to lend voice,
To the greater work to be done,
The acquisition of newer positions,
Are symptoms of the journey,
Keep going, never surrender,
Be tender and conquer,
Mental foreplay is stronger,
Than any physical touch.

Love of a poet both bold and stoic,
Is a simplistic view of unfolded vibes and rhythms from the inside,
This could never subside to anything less than genuine spirit of heart and signs,
Among the winds, trees, stars, because you are the art,
You are Moses parting the red sea of my subconscious,
You are the dark sphere which encircles me,
You are the light that penetrates me,
You are harmonic melodies and sweet remedies,
You are rude symmetries and cool symphonies,
You are a lesson learned and an angel untouched,
With exception of me,
Hushed whispers or high pitched screams,
Mean nothing, without the mind following the body to finality,
The fluidity of our ****** motion,
Is a reflection of our mental state,
I seek not to pass through you,
I seek to become one with you.

That's how I feel about poetry,
That's also how I feel about ***,
That's how I feel about you,
You showed me the way,
You are my soul mate,
One with the words I write,
And the memories that I seek the convey,
You are the sun pouring through with the rain,
You are my miracle, one year my junior,
Fifty years older under the skin,
Deep within, your soul, my solar,
Not an eclipse, but a shimmering glow,
Always for my love and never for show.

I fall in love with people's honesty.
Their smile.
Funny jokes.
Tears.
Scars.
Passions.
Eyes.
Dreams.
Their spirit.

Word to Marley Soul.

Five steps in my growth,
Five indispensable cogs of my sou

critical thinking
as you call it;

that which
I seem to lack.
need to
improve
upon.
and I agree in ways.

you said,
it is observing
the situation,
the pieces,
I have at hand,
and deducing
the best possible way
in my knowledge
to make them
fit together.

sounds
quite simple -
common sense.

simple,
if my mind
ran as smoothly as your own.
a trait of yours
I admire greatly.
a trait of others
I am envious of.

but critical thinking
is different when
my mode of
thinking
is not the same

I do not see
my surroundings;
my life,
my reality,
as cogs and gears
that progress
this existence.

I admire
the way you,
and others
pick up on the
little
small
hidden artifacts
that allow yourself
to discover
the best
possible way
to proceed.

if I were to say,
you noticed
the overlooked
and finer details,
I would say
I notice-
no-
I experience awareness
of it's entirety.
how it feels
to me
and how I feel
about it.

if our
individual
thought processes
were placed
in an ever changing river,
whose currents
vary
and are unpredictable?
yours
would be
picking up the driftwood
the sticks,
and objects in grasp.

and as the current carries it,
it would be constructing
a raft
to stay afloat:
safe
and
in the most
comfortable way,
so it could eventually
construct
something suitable
and sturdy
to rest upon,
and relax with content,
while enjoying
the splashes
and warm sunlight
from a safe spot.

instead of
deducing the situation
as yours did,
my thought process
would drift along
the same river,
letting the current
take it under -
if that is where
it felt like going.
finding logs
and debris
to hang on to
when the current
became too much
and it needed a break.

yours may be
high and dry,
but mine has felt
the pebbles
along the bottom
of this river -
the depth and pressure
almost frightening,
but the experience
in itself
always beautiful.
mine floats upon it's back,
like an otter,
enjoying the sunlight
as yours does,
experiencing
this journey through
the rivers path.

and maybe,
if the current gets rough,
if mine is struggling,
it will find the hand
of yours
lifting it up
to keep it safe
until the rocky waters
have passed.

I experience
as I feel,
which may not
be the best approach
all of the time.

but with this,
I am able to
feel
what I believe
is the best choice,
based
on my experience
of the whole.

you make me
feel
and want to
try
new ways of thinking,
new ways
that may help.
you are always pushing
pushing me
to do more
to be more;

which is just one
of the many reasons
why I love you.

It's time to enter a sleepless mind
The cogs and wheels spin and grind
I hear the whistles and the chimes

My head racing faster than a v8
Thoughts are larger than a U.S state
For my sleep I am ever so late

Clocks in my head, tick tocking
Side to side my head rocking
Chains pulling of the ship docking

Inside a war is going
Bullets and missiles a throwing
Explosions is all, lost for all knowing

Eternity lost in void of thought
Reminiscing on all I was taught
Consistent darkness you haunt

A sleepless mind is what I see
It is all I know how to be
So if don't you mind, come join me

There is beneath us the progenitor and we call it “Mother”. Above us is the progenitor and we call it “Net” for it takes us and tosses us into the known and the unknown.

Our home star is not as bright as yours. We prefer your temperate lands when we visit, where the vegetation is lush and green. Those of us who remain inhabit your deserts and open spaces.

We are your brothers and sisters. Our development has been to grow in awareness and the development of our power. You have the potential to develop as we have, but your instincts are of a social group who need dominant members. You develop your material reality and your physical world. Your anchor is fixed and you grip the familiar and reject the unknown. There is a comfortable point where you feel the fullness, that is the anchor. In order to maintain this as a static point you develop belief systems to support it. This is your weakness, you are innocent children.

We grew and developed along another pathway, our anchor is not  rigid. We use Net for our anchor and so are able to change our perceptual reality. We move in ways that you do not understand and in any direction. We draw the fibers of Net around us and jump and fly. You see us only from your anchor point so that you see us change shape, appear and disappear.

Our voices and languages are barely accessible to you. You hear deep sounds and high pitched chirruping and whistling. Very few among you have remnants of language incorporating any of these. Those remaining are as clicks and whistles. We prefer direct communication.

We are masters of illusion. Our survival has depended on it and it is our instinct.
Our power developed so that when we pull around us the fibers of Net we create a shield and throw an illusion before those who depend on vision. It is one of our protections and also our hunting technique. We are hidden from your material probes and instruments of increased sight in this way.

Although we have been close neighbours for aeons, you have hardly seen us, except for the Few. Your interpretations have created problems for you. Your reliance on the anchor is so great that some among you do go to great lengths to maintain it. There are those among you who will silence the Few rather than lose the fixed anchor.

You are infants only, a seeding coming to fruition, and you play with dangerous toys. Your anchor is geocentric. You are in danger as is any youngster who plays with fire. If we showed you ourselves openly your rulers would not be gentle in their curiosity. We have technology and use material tools but we have had less to restrict us. We held back your development as much as we were able to enable you to develop power of the mind and independent thought.

Your grasp of Net is strong but you are rigid and anchored. You have learned to stand up and hold on. Now is the time to let go and walk, let go and run, let go and fly.

Around what you name “body” and believe to be “All” is more that you do not perceive with your restricted vision sense. You are aware of this. If you will learn acceptance and filter less from your senses, you will find the beauty of the universe of energy around you and available. A small perceptual shift would show you how you appear to those of us outside your narrow sphere.

Your body has filaments, which when translated to sight, appear as small moving threads which shine with rainbows. They move and ripple inside an energy body of light. This is your true body. It has abilities and senses that are dormant as you do not access them. They are accessible but as your anchor renders you blind to this you do not use them without intense effort or instinctively in extremity. The filaments are drawn together and pass through the anchor. Depending upon your ability to select filaments of the Net, your habitual plane and reality is selected and determined.
Those among you with abilities in your energy senses you ostracise and even ******. You succumb to misinformation to treat them as fools or freaks. This may be instinctive but it is a control mechanism to perpetuate the anchor and maintain the hive of your artificial society. So due to this, you have even less sense of true reality as it could be to you, by breeding out and suppressing your gifts. We have attempted to rectify this with limited effect in successive seedings.

You may notice that our words to you have reference to sight. Your terminology is geared to vision. You rely on visual information  so much that you have neglected physical senses of taste and smell, hearing, touch and proximity. Compared with our perceptions you are as blind as a mole is compared to to your visual abilities.

Your construction of reality is so anchored that your dangerous inclination to gather around you artifacts gives to you a sense of permanence. You are anchoring yourselves in time, yet to you it is dead because your senses are dead. There is an opportunity for your predators to use this to enforce your perception of, and control you within, your anchor's limitations. In this way, producing written or pictorial and symbolic records in permanent form is beneficial only so far as understanding continues to exist of the conditions under which these records were left. By changing current understanding and language to suit their purposes, your enforcers are able to manipulate your branch of humanity on a large scale.

You seal yourselves into the rejuvenation plane of the Mother progenitor where you feed and breed. It is so pleasurable to you to stay within this cocoon of reality that you fail to open your cast and therefore fail to fly into the spaces of Net outside where your true inheritance lies. The end result of this is greed and unrest. Your greed is paramount to you as you seek ever more pleasurable gratification. You enslave one another, buy and sell time and forget what you are. You are allowing the destruction of your home world. Without the home world you will have no place of rejuvenation, and worse neither will the myriads of others who share this progenitor.

There is a song from each mother progenitor within Net. It is a combined song and made up of the host progenitor together with silent voices of each and every life form. Together from each home world, the inhabitants send out a pulse. This is not a song from one species of a world but rather it is a song from all species, in fact every particle of every organism that lives.

To our developed senses the song of a world is brighter than the star it orbits. They are filaments of Net. The varied forms of life all send out their unique song. Many of us interact, harmonise, visit, commune and combine. You feel isolation only because you fail to harmonise and join your own song.

In your past and present we have felt the song of your world. Those of us belonging are part of that song. It is the song of being from the many. It does not end at the perimeters which you imagine. You have a problem in that, for the majority, you do not join your voices to the song. Mainly it is in dreaming, in childhood and in old age that we hear you.

We attempted to observe and commune and found many of you receptive to us. We have taught to you methods of development and given you gifts and tools. You have kept and preserved some of this knowledge only for a select few. Fears and distrust among others has caused destruction of a great proportion of the gifts that we have given to you. We found many lines of breeding where potential for development was possible. Your greed and your predator class destroyed many of them due to the competitive desire to have power over others.

In past seedings upon your progenitor and in the oldest times of your present incarnation, we have been known well and respected. Acknowledged for our seniority and loved as cousins. You did call us gods to distinguish our abilities. Then what did you do? Your control mechanisms changed the meanings of your language, whole languages were lost in wars over territory. You developed power structures and religions. Powerful rulers accumulated and isolated your shared knowledge.

You reduced your development by selective education in the Way. Territorial disputes and greed over resources divided you. You ceased to listen to the Mother. Instead of harmonious living which you had managed in agreement with each other already, you were divided by hormonal impulses, insecurity, violence and greed. The natural openness of the female within it's central domain became enclosed, imprisoned and the natural desire of the male to outwardly discover and interact was turned inwards until it became a sedentary desire for dominance within the female domain. You lost the harmonics of the song. Your religions underestimate the power of borrowed tools. Your ruling classes made deals that they didn't understand, with predators they didn't recognise, in order to save themselves.

We stood on ground over ground and were called Immortals. We gave you wisdom and were called Kings. We moved and played among you and were called Jinn. We moved among the small folk and were called Faerie. We appeared in light and were called Angels. We wandered in places where you too did once wander and were called Ghosts and Demons. Those who spoke to us and attempted to impart to your hive our knowledge, you raised as prophets or slandered and ridiculed. You stole their words to make them your own words of power, changing them to your own ends or you murdered the messengers because you feared the changes that increased understanding brings.

You incorporated the experiences of your murdered victims into a celebration of your own power structures, twisted and out of synchronisation with the song. There are some among you who are in communion with the Great Spirit of life. We seek to heal your song, your complete home world song for the benefit of the myriad sentient beings who rejuvenate here, including yourselves. We seek to set you free to wander the threads of Net. It is within your reach but not in the ways that you  are taught.

Your world is about to change and you must change with it as you are a small part of it. Holding the threads into your own anchor point will break them. You have reached inertia, entropy. The movement has to come, it is inevitable. Imagine one of your large machines of cogs and wheels and bars. Your insistence upon a rigid anchor is like a bar within the machine that doesn't move. A point of inertia in a moving system will be removed. This has happened over and over among your kind and our kind in many places and worlds. You do not remember when worlds underwent cataclysm, forgetful of trauma you have followed a similar path.

We travel along pathways of energy, both upon worlds and in the Net. Moving bodies follow these paths. We follow comets and small bodies able to move freely within Net. Net permeates your mother progenitor.

Survivors mapped the movements of Net after the slate was wiped clean and you were reseeded. There is a secret that your rulers are aware of and you are not. The secret is that there are no rulers within Net. You all have the freedom and capability to access true harmony of the song. You allow a faction, to call themselves an elite class. You fear this as a hidden power, a predator. It's aim is to amass Time: a power based on material wealth. They take this power easily as they have taken and twisted truth and history. The gifts are shared among you equally and these few know this. Resources are plentiful and yet you succumb to their restrictions. A predator cannot survive without it's prey. We are not your predators although we move among you. Your predator is within and feeds upon your fear.

You are not in the tribes now, you have no shaman, no guide to take you in and out of the gate and this role cannot be allocated to parasitic Blind Time Hoarders. These whip up your passions and lead you into war and destruction to further their material wealth. It leads you away from the song, as these think to enhance their own survival which it may do but never can as they understand it. They seek to steal your dreams and make them their own, they are helpless without you. They care nothing for the song because they are aware of successive seedings.

Net is a dream reality, changing, immeasurable, boundless, filled with infinite possibilities and you are creators. Blind time hoarders drive you by combining the minds and dreams and belief systems of many to focus onto what they themselves desire, in order to bring it to fruition. They employ dream stealers to prevent your development. They believe that their own song can exist independently and they guide you only to anchor yourselves into your own prison.

All is a dream, all is ephemeral, changing, dynamic. There is no death after death, no damnation on any particular plane. Reality is how you construct your song. Your rulers create inertia for you the many and profit for themselves using you as the tools of your own entrapment. There is no death and no damnation, they are constructs of your reality made by material anchor points and you are controlled by fear of the inevitable. It is a statecraft to use belief systems to control perceptions of reality in order to fix the anchor point to a rigid point of convenience. In this way you are farmed, you are a crop in each seeding. Who seeds you? You seed yourselves. Sentient beings are all naturally regenerated by the mechanisms of Net when conditions exist that are compatible, world after world, in each growth cycle of every celestial body. In the regeneration, holding to your rigid anchor point, you seed into your prison after each cataclysm, each breaking of the inertia.

If you would be open to the mechanisms of the place you inhabit with it's creative forces, it's sentience and it's dynamics you will learn to fly the progenitor Net's pathways and return home for rejuvenation to your progenitor Mother of the tribes.

You are my
Ensorcelled Elysium,
You are my
Eden Dream.

You cascade
Upon my Dreamscape,
Enshrine my slumber in
A flowered gale of aromatic petals
That envelop me, beckon me
To herald the rebirth
Of Days of Yore.

You vein
The Glistening Glade of Memories
With your
Brooks of Aqueous Emerald.

Tis' the
Phantasmagoric Plane
Where still
My wayworn spirit wanders, wearily
In search of the magic
To enfetter
The Hands of Fate
(For they conspire against us).

Swifter than your descent
Into my soul
(Five seconds still and flat)
By
The nexus of your affections,
You evanesced
Like vapor,
Yet
I shall not concede to
The Malevolent Matriarch of Destiny.

For you
O, Breath of Life,
Forsook me not
So I sublime all stains
Tarnishing my flesh
By cries to The Ethereal.

At midday
Awaiting the Twilight
I long for
The birth of The Womb of Aether’s
Progeny,
Starlit winds.

I muse
Swimmingly in Seas of Reminiscence,
Banished from that Blackened Bastion
Of Shadowed Heavens,
For when darkness shrouds
My dreams can be seen
Draping the skies.

I then fathom,
You must not be far off,
Wishing,
Hoping,
Believing
That perhaps
You too
Wonder upon stars
Longing to find that one
That entwines us anew.

You shall alight,
Upon me once more
As
August Sun’s Nimbus
(If only for a moment)
Is thwarted
By
Ebony Miasma
That drenches Cimmerian skies.

In search
Of Ardor’s Light abiding in
The Sylvan Shrine of Your Numinous Eyes
I plead that
The Crag oppress
The Coals of Tribulation,
Until my anguish is
A Diamond Heart.

The pilgrimage
I must bear,
Must be traveled by
The Adamantine alone.

Where have you gone,
Tree of Life?
Why have you withered,
Yggdrasil?

Do I possess
The Eradia of Souls,
By which you shall
Effloresce?

I would halt the cogs of time,
Relinquish my liberty,
To slumber for eternity
In crystal stasis
By your side.

Even in that crystalline quietude,
I would be eminent,
I would be exalted,
I would be ennobled,
In the knowingness that
Your
Stalwart Heart
Radiates
Just beside me.

I exhale Empyrean Winds
When rapt in reverie,
Yearning to be
Captive to your devotion,
Yours alone.

The Bliss of Your Most Holy Kiss
Would signet me
With the
Bounty of Your Name
Burnishing the skin
On my lips.

Though ephemeral,
Your presence divined,
Your presence
Was my anointing.

To be solaced
By the astral resonance emitted
By your touch
Sent the
Pulse of Nirvana
Surging, rippling,
Like a kaleidoscope tide,
Down my spine

You are
The Waters of Vitality
That floweth from
The Creeks of Eden,

You have been
Poured upon my palate
From the
Goblet of Redemption
That I may drinketh
Of
Supernal immortality.

When once again we meet,
Perhaps the tears you summoned
From my spirit
By your
Stirring caress
Shall have absolved me
Of the pangs
In loving a man
(And man alone).

Perhaps then,
The sentiments
I pine to profess,
Will resound.

A melody
Sung in legato,
A  mellifluous melisma,
Flawlessly delineated
And
Intonation in deiform
Or perhaps,
Flowering fioritura
Lacing airwaves,
By the Empress Coloratura.

Perhaps then, piety
Betwixt you and I,
Will waft the air
And I might then,
Permit my quaking body
To succumb to
You alone.

Until that morn,
I shall be vigilant,
Counting the Dawns,
Counting the Twilights,
Until
I can gaze
Into your forested eyes
If even for but a moment.

For even but a moment
Spent with you,
Will bleed a nostalgia
Across my mind's sky,
Painting clouds crimson with passion,
And
That I shall revere,
And
That shall last
And last
And,
Last… And
Last.

O, it will last,
To Elysian Infinity.

∞
            I am a vestige,
               But I shall live once more,
                  In the light of memories
                       That blossom, are perennial,
                           And imbibe the dazed glory of the past
                       Until the past is vanquished
                 By a future that is fragrant
             With the mist of romance
          And eclipses the simulacrum,
       A fictitious sun of the infernal masquerade,
    The antithesis of the truest holy,
Then, rapture of life shall mystify no longer,
For the Numen of Truth,
  Shall cleanse creation without a drop of façade,
      His Providence shall emancipate the hollow,
             The Death of Dreams shall writhe
               In everlasting abeyance,
                 Absolving our wayward spirits,
                  The Winds of Change,
                  The Scourge of Pain,
               And
          The Loveless Wraiths
        That haunted our husks
      Shall be transcended for aeons,
  And tribulation made distant, made nebulous
As the Genesis of Time and Space itself
  For we embark on an exodus,
     Beseeching salvation to redeem us
        When the Requiem of Iniquity
           Is triumphed by everlasting cadence.

Be Valiant,
                 Be Sapient,
                             Be Love
                                       And
                                          By this
                                                You shall conquer the world
                                                           ∞

This is an ode to Adderall,

that wonderful mixture of

dextroamphetamine sulfate

dextroamphetamine saccharate

amphetamine

aspartate monohydrate

and amphetamine sulfate capsules

that all combine together

to form a prescribable pill

questionably similar to the Schedule II controlled substance street drug

commonly refered to as "Speed."


This is an ode to the children

who are bundles of energy caged in a classroom

incapable of concentrating

on the miniscule tasks given to them

by pedagogical authorities that

promise societal success and economic happiness

to those who complete their work on time

without a fuss or a doubt as to why they're

filling in bubbles on paper in the first place.

The confused children who watch

as others with calmer brains

fixate eyes on textbooks

rather than out the window.


This is an ode to Society

deeming these individuals as broken

choosing to wound then medicate

rather than proliferate.

That took their inquisitiveness

and locked it in a book with the label "DISORDER"

stating that you will never be anything

unless you think and feel the same way we do.

And much like a mad doctor

lobotomizing those whom he thinks insane

they synthesized a pill

to dampen a torrential brilliance

allowing them to place their sedated children

back in the box where they belonged.


This is an ode to the college students

chained by academic standards

expected to excel towards great things

if only they reach that ethereal diploma.

The students who crave the artificial focus

the increased capacity for concentration

with the broadened spectrum of perception

the sense of purpose in the tedium

the ungodly ability to think clearly

and perform the meaningless tasks they expect of us.

The students who go through illegal means

to purchase said drug

to swallow or snort

and dive back into the mountain of responsibility

with a new found sense of productivity and motivation.

An ode to the students

unable to find purpose in studenthood

the ones who find more virtue in watching the sunset

burn clouds into firework oblivion

before then blessing us with uncritical night.

An ode to the students

who discover more education

in climbing to the top of a mountain

and yelling a nonsense decree of passion

just to watch the echo

bounce from shore to shore

in cathartic reverberation.

The ones

for which our pill

is the only possible manner

of assigning purpose to purposeless assignments.

These are the ones

who must binge

cram for days before

the big exams

going whole nights without sleep

or food.

The ones slowly cracking under the increasing pressure of academia

spending more time questioning why they must complete their homework

instead of actually completing it.


This is an ode to my brothers and sisters

who stand in horror at the mold we must fit into

crafted by an unknown unshakable entity.

The ones who lost the appeal of cookie-cutter success

in exchange for a small understanding

of the way things really work.

The cogs that twisted off the machine

and now sit lotus-posed in the corner.

My fellow birds with broken wings

still expected to fly.

My fellow carpenters expected to build their estates

yet not given the proper tools to do so.

The ones of cursed cold clarities

perfectly capable of clutching

those fifteen minutes of dynasty

yet refrain from doing so due to

the immaculate futility of it all.


This is an ode to a drug induced rant

that no one will read

the one that I chose to write

instead of doing my **** homework in the library

like a compliant student.


This is an ode to the pressure-oriented procrastinators

that delay and yet again delay

their petty necessary obligations due to purposeless and exhausted motivation.

Swallowing substances to summon some sort of incentive

to fill in the bubbles

and cater to the Society they find so confusing

the ones who only under influence of synthesized chemicals

find reason to squeeze into that culturebox

that cascades down a bumpy man-made conveyor belt

branding a diploma onto your forehead

injecting an occupation into your veins

transforming your pupils to dollar bill signs

demanding you breed children

to do the same as you have

and you'll never be happy unless you do these things

right?


This is an ode to those who reside in the shadows

of our broken social system

and conjure up great conversations

pertaining to everything and nothing

that are as wonderful and necessary

as the prints of your fingers

caressing down a comfortable torso

just before the sun rises

the untouchable indescribable realizations of life and love

that are completely irrelevant in their eyes

but are entirely necessary for our survival.


This is an ode to the overwhelming feeling of love

greatly exacerbated by a pharmaceutical delight

whereupon connections with other humans

become both incredibly appealing and oddly magnetic

for a few electric hours.

The oxygenating satisfaction felt

the instance just after the small talk architecture masks

fall to the floor

and right before we put them back on.


This is an ode to the minutes before the amphetamine crash

where the world still doesn't make sense

but we briefly don't mind

because a few fleeting moments of energy and purpose

in this otherwise detestable confine of reality

are all you can really ask for

as you complete the assignments

then step outside

to smoke yet another cigarette (they're absolutely wonderful on Adderall try it some time it'll **** you slowly but then again what won't?)

only to witness our Sun

breeding fire clouds in the east

illuminating the Western Abyss into purple-gold spectral oblivion

and in consequence therefore

between puffs of a necessary cigarette

you grin to yourself in quiet victory.


This is an ode to misaligned priorities

to those who when walking to everimportant final examinations

think not of the curriculum beaten into their skulls

but take careful measure to step on every crack on the sidewalk

who stare not towards the future

but to the beautiful reflection reflecting back from the broken mirrors

that are the weary days and weary ways

of this curious existence.

To those when stepping into the absurd spotlight of Society

unapologetically proclaim:


"Though I must play your game,

you will never win."

Your childish lies have nothing of a true meaning
because you never saw what truly went on inside my mind.
The cogs were turning, but the wheels got stuck in the muck
that you had left behind when you decided that it was time to bid me adieu.
That child inside me broke
Like the Bay Lake dam that came crashing and tumbling down,
the waters swirling into the ever after.
Leaving me behind, alone, with the lonely company of the silt and the sand.
And then, I wept.

My days are for me,
As yours are for you,
I'll be what I'll be,
You'll do what you do.
Exchanges of dust,
Embraces now changed,
Glances of lust,
Still taunting my brain.
But love keep your distance,
For I have concern,
It is this you must know,
This you must learn:
Relentlessly vicious, the cogs are that turn.
I erode and I sting and I drown and I burn.
And a dark orange rust drops as they grind.
Leaving a trail of flakes of a furious mind.
But the oil continues,
Continues to drip,
And greases them further,
And further I slip.
And the cogs gain momentum,
As my feet tell me "no!"
"No further, no further, no further we'll go",
So the pillows start grinning,
The blankets smile too,
The matress opens its arms for me to sink into.
And I know that as soon as my head touches those lips,
And I surrender myself to that feathery grip,
It could be days,
Who knows, maybe weeks,
Before I'm back out again walking the streets.
With two steps of a waltz that I couldn't not start,
All those caged birds flew out of my heart.
And what of the third?
The cogs have now turned,
And my feet cannot move,
What a lesson I've learned!


May 2010

I’ll never be a king, so you’ll never be my queen,
We’ll never be two cogs in the same big machine,
We’ll never be a cliché, but I tell you something, doll,
I can be a gangster, and you can be my moll.

Walking through the means streets, my hand in yours,
And a Tommy gun in the other, between my sweaty claws,
As my seniors die, I’ll climb to the top of the pole,
I can be a gangster, and you can be my moll.

There’s a certain premonition floating in the air,
That I’m a hardened criminal, far beyond repair,
But I’m just doing what my upbringing makes me know,
Because I can be a gangster, and you can be my moll.

And you can have me forever or ‘till I’m locked up in jail,
And we run out of money, and the mansion goes up for sale,
But even if we’re broke and poor, my love will never lull,
I’ll always be a gangster, and you’ll always be my moll.

If fools could speak of geometry,
you would be the right angle,
while me, obtuse,
I find light in the darkest places,
where the glint of the moon turns back time,
I look back,
And find you cloaked in fog,
traipsing towards me,
with no rhyme,
strafing while they bleed,
we are cogs in the handset,
we are all lost teeth,
broken and shattered,
fallen to those underneath.

Inside: rot,
      outside: youth,
                        a black heart;
                              beating just for you.
          You love the man
          under the mask;
           that ghost vvhom nobody else knovvs.
This front rovv seat to the cogs:
I trust you in degrees,
that leave me exposed to your fancies.
Cut me open; non gingerly,
tonight.

It isn’t easy to walk, gravity weighs.
The biosuits lock the mind
in a narrow space.

An interpretive blow is crucial:
Does being on the other side of the mirror
truly want it, or only think it does?

A thumb drives into the right temple.
The heart pumps hectoliters of warm liquid.
Colours, sounds, tensions in the eternal swirl.

Delay in processing—eighty milliseconds
it isn’t a flaw.
It takes that long for all the cogs to turn.

Everything I do now is already in the past.
Decisions made long ago spit me out
into this reality with some name.

I am the last, but not least,
in the collective dream and blink of time.

Minds sway like golden grain, ready to be cut.
I can stand up or lie on the ground.

I walk—
toward the next stumble,
the next wound, and maybe healing.

Insights glow like yellow lanterns,
giving me some light.

No justification, no understanding.
My self-awareness is not a cozy couch.

One day,
I will stop existing, and I accept that.
I’m just afraid to leave those who still love me.

A note of seeming truth and trust
                      Hid crafty observation;
                And secret hung, with poison’d crust,
                      The dirk of defamation:
                A mask that like the gorget show’d
                      Dye-varying, on the pigeon;
                And for a mantle large and broad,
              He wrapt him in Religion.
                   (Hypocrisy-à-la-Mode)


Upon a simmer Sunday morn,
     When Nature’s face is fair,
I walked forth to view the corn
     An’ ***** the caller air.
The risin’ sun owre Galston muirs
     Wi’ glorious light was glintin,
The hares were hirplin down the furrs,
     The lav’rocks they were chantin
          Fu’ sweet that day.

As lightsomely I glowr’d abroad
     To see a scene sae gay,
Three hizzies, early at the road,
     Cam skelpin up the way.
Twa had manteeles o’ dolefu’ black,
     But ane wi’ lyart linin;
The third, that gaed a wee a-back,
     Was in the fashion shining
          Fu’ gay that day.

The twa appear’d like sisters twin
     In feature, form, an’ claes;
Their visage wither’d, lang an’ thin,
     An’ sour as ony slaes.
The third cam up, hap-step-an’-lowp,
     As light as ony lambie,
An’ wi’ a curchie low did stoop,
     As soon as e’er she saw me,
          Fu’ kind that day.

Wi’ bonnet aff, quoth I, “Sweet lass,
     I think ye seem to ken me;
I’m sure I’ve seen that bonie face,
     But yet I canna name ye.”
Quo’ she, an’ laughin as she spak,
     An’ taks me by the han’s,
“Ye, for my sake, hae gien the ****
     Of a’ the ten comman’s
          A screed some day.

“My name is Fun—your cronie dear,
     The nearest friend ye hae;
An’ this is Superstition here,
     An’ that’s Hypocrisy.
I’m gaun to Mauchline Holy Fair,
     To spend an hour in daffin:
Gin ye’ll go there, you runkl’d pair,
     We will get famous laughin
          At them this day.”

Quoth I, “With a’ my heart, I’ll do’t:
     I’ll get my Sunday’s sark on,
An’ meet you on the holy spot;
     Faith, we’se hae fine remarkin!”
Then I gaed hame at crowdie-time
     An’ soon I made me ready;
For roads were clad frae side to side
     Wi’ monie a wearie body
          In droves that day.

Here, farmers ****, in ridin graith,
     Gaed hoddin by their cotters,
There swankies young, in braw braidclaith
     Are springin owre the gutters.
The lasses, skelpin barefit, thrang,
     In silks an’ scarlets glitter,
Wi’ sweet-milk cheese in mony a whang,
     An’ farls, bak’d wi’ butter,
          Fu’ crump that day.

When by the plate we set our nose,
     Weel heaped up wi’ ha’pence,
A greedy glowr Black Bonnet throws,
     An’ we maun draw our tippence.
Then in we go to see the show:
     On ev’ry side they’re gath’rin,
Some carryin dails, some chairs an’ stools,
     An’ some are busy bleth’rin
          Right loud that day.
…

Here some are thinkin on their sins,
     An’ some upo’ their claes;
Ane curses feet that fyl’d his shins,
     Anither sighs an’ prays:
On this hand sits a chosen swatch,
     Wi’ *****’d-up grace-proud faces;
On that a set o’ chaps at watch,
     Thrang winkin on the lasses
          To chairs that day.

O happy is that man and blest!
     Nae wonder that it pride him!
Whase ain dear lass that he likes best,
     Comes clinkin down beside him!
Wi’ arm repos’d on the chair back,
     He sweetly does compose him;
Which by degrees slips round her neck,
     An’s loof upon her *****,
          Unken’d that day.

Now a’ the congregation o’er
     Is silent expectation;
For Moodie speels the holy door,
     Wi’ tidings o’ salvation.
Should Hornie, as in ancient days,
     ‘Mang sons o’ God present him,
The vera sight o’ Moodie’s face
     To’s ain het hame had sent him
          Wi’ fright that day.

Hear how he clears the points o’ faith
     Wi’ rattlin an’ wi’ thumpin!
Now meekly calm, now wild in wrath
     He’s stampin, an’ he’s jumpin!
His lengthen’d chin, his turn’d-up snout,
     His eldritch squeal and gestures,
Oh, how they fire the heart devout
     Like cantharidian plaisters,
          On sic a day!

But hark! the tent has chang’d its voice:
     There’s peace and rest nae langer;
For a’ the real judges rise,
     They canna sit for anger.
Smith opens out his cauld harangues,
     On practice and on morals;
An’ aff the godly pour in thrangs,
     To gie the jars an’ barrels
          A lift that day.

What signifies his barren shine
     Of moral pow’rs and reason?
His English style an’ gesture fine
     Are a’ clean out o’ season.
Like Socrates or Antonine
     Or some auld pagan heathen,
The moral man he does define,
     But ne’er a word o’ faith in
          That’s right that day.

In guid time comes an antidote
     Against sic poison’d nostrum;
For Peebles, frae the water-fit,
     Ascends the holy rostrum:
See, up he’s got the word o’ God
     An’ meek an’ mim has view’d it,
While Common Sense has ta’en the road,
     An’s aff, an’ up the Cowgate
          Fast, fast that day.

Wee Miller niest the Guard relieves,
     An’ Orthodoxy raibles,
Tho’ in his heart he weel believes
     An’ thinks it auld wives’ fables:
But faith! the birkie wants a Manse,
     So cannilie he hums them;
Altho’ his carnal wit an’ sense
     Like hafflins-wise o’ercomes him
          At times that day.

Now **** an’ ben the change-house fills
     Wi’ yill-caup commentators:
Here’s cryin out for bakes an gills,
     An’ there the pint-stowp clatters;
While thick an’ thrang, an’ loud an’ lang,
     Wi’ logic an’ wi’ Scripture,
They raise a din, that in the end
     Is like to breed a rupture
          O’ wrath that day.

Leeze me on drink! it gies us mair
     Than either school or college
It kindles wit, it waukens lear,
     It pangs us fou o’ knowledge.
Be’t whisky-gill or penny-wheep,
     Or ony stronger potion,
It never fails, on drinkin deep,
     To kittle up our notion
          By night or day.

The lads an’ lasses, blythely bent
     To mind baith saul an’ body,
Sit round the table weel content,
     An’ steer about the toddy,
On this ane’s dress an’ that ane’s leuk
     They’re makin observations;
While some are cozie i’ the neuk,
     An’ forming assignations
          To meet some day.

But now the Lord’s ain trumpet touts,
     Till a’ the hills rae rairin,
An’ echoes back return the shouts—
     Black Russell is na sparin.
His piercing words, like highlan’ swords,
     Divide the joints an’ marrow;
His talk o’ hell, whare devils dwell,
     Our vera “sauls does harrow”
          Wi’ fright that day.

A vast, unbottom’d, boundless pit,
     Fill’d fou o’ lowin brunstane,
Whase ragin flame, an’ scorching heat
     *** melt the hardest whun-stane!
The half-asleep start up wi’ fear
     An’ think they hear it roarin,
When presently it does appear
     ’Twas but some neibor snorin,
          Asleep that day.

‘Twad be owre lang a tale to tell,
     How mony stories past,
An’ how they crouded to the yill,
     When they were a’ dismist:
How drink gaed round in cogs an’ caups
     Amang the furms an’ benches:
An’ cheese and bred frae women’s laps
     Was dealt about in lunches
          An’ dauds that day.

In comes a gausie, **** guidwife
     An’ sits down by the fire,
Syne draws her kebbuck an’ her knife;
     The lasses they are shyer:
The auld guidmen, about the grace
     Frae side to side they bother,
Till some ane by his bonnet lays,
     And gi’es them’t like a tether
          Fu’ lang that day.

Waesucks! for him that gets nae lass,
     Or lasses that hae naething!
Sma’ need has he to say a grace,
     Or melvie his braw clathing!
O wives, be mindfu’ ance yoursel
     How bonie lads ye wanted,
An’ dinna for a kebbuck-heel
     Let lasses be affronted
          On sic a day!

Now Clinkumbell, wi’ rattlin tow,
     Begins to jow an’ croon;
Some swagger hame the best they dow,
     Some wait the afternoon.
At slaps the billies halt a blink,
     Till lasses strip their shoon:
Wi’ faith an’ hope, an’ love an’ drink,
     They’re a’ in famous tune
          For crack that day.

How monie hearts this day converts
     O’ sinners and o’ lasses
Their hearts o’ stane, gin night, are gane
     As saft as ony flesh is.
There’s some are fou o’ love divine,
     There’s some are fou o’ brandy;
An’ monie jobs that day begin,
     May end in houghmagandie
          Some ither day.

Whining dog...we just went outside.
Wading through internet DATs and cogs and bandwidth hogs, outside still raining cats and dogs.
double-click trawling pics and blogs searching for remedies and laws that inhibit logs to saw.
Wide-eyed, face down I sprawl still awake, redefining  my character flaws,
fearing my falling into the trappings of urban sprawl or
investing your mind then hitting the wall.
Lose or draw,
a new artistic affair or creative outlet dares you daily to fall.
"Late" is now "Early"
Dawn's illuminating looming, night to be soon consumed.
Insomnia vacuums,
drama typhoons,
crooning tunes....
It'll be June soon.
Feeling marooned waiting for the opportune...well, I'm still waiting,
Whining dog...we just went outside...Fine!
Rain drains backlogged in the AM black...****** dog. Decide! He takes his time.
Three nights of showers,
cowering under this street corner lighted power tower,
unrequited efforts to stay dry.
Moon still high, clouded bright behind the wetness...
Wait, what if I see "her"?
Should I dare bare my soul, take control, or say simply "Hello?" just to know?
Do I want to know "yes" or "no"?
Grandmother always said "The truth is the most powerful force you'll ever face, trace, disgrace or embrace"
I remember my last pursuance of the truth.
You remember college...
The ubiquitous responsibility of apologies for the skewed knowledge sleuth colleges preclude.
A four, no five year matterless smattering reviewing the hows, whys and whos who of Impressionist imbued hues;
the politics of subdued Katmandu coups,
Homer's muses; many a Siren sank the boats I crewed;
news crews that flew the bird flu news coop and recouped,
skewed suing over Golden Arch morning brew,
tragedies, sonnets, and nothing adieus,
spewed formulas and equations notecard ques,
standing in long line registration cues every time we change Major views,
all fueled by a boozing, smokey ballyhoo of Tullamore Dew, hopped brews, tattoos, crude food, music muses and quoted virtues.
What’s even true and what would you do if you knew, ****** logic class…
And alas, you're through! “Here’s your paper, now choose.”
The ****** inequity of iniquity dams me so I can't break free.
Such an abrupt disruption could erupt great corruption,
the self-destruction is tempting, but doesn't pay rent.
Not today, but maybe soon.
June's coming...dryer and higher noon.

R.Craig David- copyright 2008
Redux Edition April 1st, 2013
Inspired by rain, blame shame, the game and a cute girl just 3 doors down that still remains a stranger in my old college town.

Ancient people, ancient ways
Protracting back through time,
The culture of the Chinese race
Far predates Roman line.
Before the Huns and Visigoths
Cascaded forth to burn,
Confucian bred conformity
Did budding scholars learn.
Astronomy, anatomy,
Philosophy and law,
The ancients sought the knowledge path
Wide open lay the door
To secrets, mystic and arcane,
They plied their trade craft well
...Then broke into another age
Of red chaos and hell.

Swarming by the millions
And dying by the score,
Brother slaughtered brother
Until Chiang said,"No more!"
To Taiwan's craggy shores he fled,
He fortified it then
And left the Marxist mainland
In the hands of Mao's men.
The red tide swept the nation.
To militarily expand
And the cruelty of a massive force
Descended on the land.

Oh your heart should weep for China
The sensitivity and grace,
Is lost forever in the ******
To revolutionize this place.
The educated strangled,
The policemen didn't care,
And the little children running
With that red book in the air.
Oh your heart should weep for China
With her golden history torn
And her future in the sewer
Where the filthy vermin spawn.

The Chairman died without a God
Praise Allah, let it be.
And Jiang Qing, his willful wife,
Was jailed for treachery.
Deng Xiaoping rose from the dead
An elderly, wise man
Who galvanized the nations will
With a workable great plan.
Gradually, the people breathed,
The terror disappeared,
And hard repression from the top
Was nervously unfeared.
The cogs began to mesh again,
Commerce began to flow
The Red Brigade was over
And NEW CHINA was on show.

In recent years the old men
Still retain the reigns of power.
The Communistic system
Commands to this very hour.
But the rigid hand of commerce
Has loosened up a lot
And the capitalistic system
Allows profits to be got.
And the flow of information
Issues freely from the west
Influencing aspirations,
Putting systems to the test.
And the leaders know with certainty
That just around the bend,
There will be younger challengers
Who plan a different end.

The Olympics are in Beijing
In the coming August moon,
A showcase for the nations best
A demonstration soon
Of advancements that will show the world
Just how well that we have done
And that the hand of friendly comradeship
Is well and truly won.

But there is trouble in Tibet!
The saffron runs with blood.
The monks and soldiers trading blows
Are dying in the mud.
Agitation to be free
Is Tibet's distant call
And the rage of hot embarrassment
Demands the brutal fall
Of the troublemakers...Old men say

The saffron legions die.....

The howling Prayer flags scream their rage
To a lonely, cold, blue sky.





Marshalg
Mangere Bridge
1st April 2008