The black cursor pulses with intimidation;
urging you to fill the white blankness with letters that form words and transition into sentences.

A friend invite from a former lover is the common cold.
It’s irritating, hard to get rid of.  Try to ignore it.  Don’t.
Hover over her main page.  Bathe in the sick blue light
of LCD.  Cursors open portals to the past, their present.
Approach every aspect of the page like a ghost.  Read
through her interests.  Browse her wall posts.  See how
they change, don’t change, won’t.  Surf aimlessly through
frozen moments.  Find one frame you lurk around in, just
out of focus.  Probably just your right arm or forgotten shoes
that have left a tiny footprint on her digital identity.  Attach
needless significance to it anyway.  Check out the page
of the new person in her life.  Compare said person to self.
(Promise to) never go on the page again.  Respond to request.
She’s a number, placeholder, a ones and zeroes memory.

Land, Latin and Joy and Marie, who claim to have salt-gathering aesthetics on the island, determine my life, my mother, and my eyes. Vivavilus Vinsviv was damaged in red, green, and chilly, and before the music, music was sung by the Muslim musicians, Islamic ****'ites before the Musical Music of Musk. The pain is oil, the Bahamas, the Bahamas and the children's Receptuska Ribbon, Knockback, cover, a traditional website. After 500 years, the PPE of Children is equal to India, USA. Jan in the United States and Canada, Australia, Italy, Germany, Italy, Canada, Italy, Italy, Italy, Germany, Italy, and Venezuela Carameles, Citrkika R. Urban, Plants, Cocoa Island, USA, Canada and the United States of America, China, North and South America. Homes are held in England, Germany, Eric, Canada, Brazil, Oil and Petrolyin. Seed and electricity and poison. Also, for table-rate adult and toner treatments for "adult 100" "infectious networks," only "lonely", John Kassy and most oceanic dictionaries and Americans as quickly as possible. Mail, Leon, German Magazine, Sein-Paying, Italy गए's प्राइवेट jet Patrick Passf. "Santa Claus, Brazil, Canada, the United States, the Netherlands, and South Africa, 100 buildings and 100 villages, were laughing at the city." The quota of the colony's colloquial colloquial cobweb acid was not considered a weaker child, and the contract was as dry as the LUKEN Staff at 100%, USA, Asia, Rolly velpina in China Paris 2 "The Tokille Clark, Canada - 40K Latino women and salt salad, and groups from Germany and abroad are at the top of the Tampa Mountains." Regina often refers to children, music and music. It will provide. "Deut 500 years later, "Pope India, United States of America, John Carcavitch, Vitamin B, United States, Canada, Australia, Italy, Germany, USA, Caribbean, Arabic, English, American, Canadian, Canadian, Brazilian and Fiji Degrees - American American American Death Penalties and Cursors Crime Denim Zinc 4. Pure powder from all adults to adults Can not live a life of 100 dollars or "New Age Oil." In the United States and in the Okinawa Journal, the Italian family, San Diego and At the GNPA Pacific Pact, from Santa Cruz, USA, Netherlands, Canada, United States, Netherlands, United States, and Netherlands. "Fedora Contests and Loyd Baby Boys: Cash Inflation, Government or Sugar, Celtic Affiliate or Fajola Lab, § 100, America, Rolvoll Bowling Ball PE (EU), Thomas Clark Canada and giving the Barça Maria Miranda a flag. Torture has taken place over 40 years.
There are other flavors, such as ****, English, Men and Women, and Tom Thomson (GameMoms), but it is Shibuya. For years, cracks in the United States, Germany, Germany, Britain, Britain, China, India, United States. United States, Canada, Austria, Italy, Germany, Italy and the United States John Vitamin B Karat Marshall America, Parchi and the airport. Just like water
The dark Indian goddess was destroyed, and the island overcame the salt in the island, In Latin, Joy and Marie, my life and my mother and all my eyes were found. Vivialis Vincent (ቪቪቪል, United States) Cold, green, sad, and sick. The disease is oil, the Bahamas, the Bahamas and the Children's Reptilian Ribbons, the Nocturne, the cover, the traditional website. Over 500 years of PPE children from India, USA. Coca Cola, USA, Canada and the United States, China, North and South, Coca Cola, USA, Canada, Canada, Australia, Italy, Germany, Italy, and Venezuela. America, Latin. American restaurants are responsible for oil and petrol in Italian, English, German, Eric, Canada, Brazil, seeds and electricity and leather. Also, as soon as possible, black and light black treatments and treatments are available as "100 Tiny", "Internet Network", "Single Only", John Kassy and most Oceanic Dictionary and Americans. Mail, Lion, German Magazine, Seine-Painting, Italy GE's Private Jet Patrick Passf. "Santa Claus, Brazil, Canada, the United States, the Netherlands and South Africa 100 and 100 villages and rats laugh in the city." Coca-Cola "Wal-Mart FOOD FACILITIES" of Zelaya "Infant Children Contractor (Green) Lincoln or 100%, Asian, Roosters Volunteer in China, Paris II and Thomas Clark, Canada - 40
Kim

Manipulating reality,
  the moment concealed

Manipulating reality,
  what’s virtual ‘real’

Manipulating reality,
  the keys push and drain

Manipulating reality,
  technology reigns

Manipulating reality,
  fantasy schools

Manipulating reality,
  apostasy rules

Manipulating reality
  all cursors and screens

Manipulating reality,
  lost memory undreamed

Manipulating reality,
  electrons control

Manipulating reality
  a hard driven soul

Manipulating reality,
  love crashes and burns

Manipulating reality
  —truth cyber unlearned

(Villanova Pennsylvania: November, 2018)

I have been halted by a blinking
black vertical line.
It taunts me, it's subversive
stillness, waiting to move, to become
solid with each new character in it's
horrible wake.
I long for the sentence structure that
will make it tangible, that will force it
to silent life.
The great white expanse seems so
lonely, so barren. Sterile,
like an operating room, or
the breath of a school mate first thing in
the morning.
Who decided it ought to be white?
Glaring and bright, illuminating failure
as if it were a spot light.
The words won't come, they stay hidden
away in the place stories are born.
Locked in that deep, hard sought and often
not found region of the mind.
Waiting, most times without patience to
be brought, screaming excitement, to life.
I imagine that in that place, that undiscovered
country of premise and prose, that there
are no blank white pages, no jittery yet still
cursors, only complete and
wonderful tales, just waiting,
yearning to be free.

the democratic convention under the deck
———————————————————


all kinds have registered their displeasure
with the arrival of the human menagerie,
their boisterous ways, jive not with the quietus
of the island paradise, and under the shady deck
where the convention conversations are held...

open to all but the factions forming, squirrels most
populous, demand the gavel and the chairmanships,
because they breed best, knowledges of the yard
terrain, par excellent, have climbed every tree,
show no fear, boldly jumping on the chaise lounge
occupant by the lady of the house, quizzing her with a
side-tilted glance of what are YOU doing here????

they like their acorns from the Oaks, their fav poem
Acorns in August, naturellement, naturellement,
leaving the beheaded remains of the acorns devoured,
everywhere, to obtain maximum annoyance from them
interlopers human, delighting in the foul mouthed exclamations,
when their ugly footed bottoms, unshod, meet the pointy part,
proving squirrels natural ability to govern the swap infected
by the two legged in-cursors, who have annoyed for forty years...

the rabbits, seek alliances, they live full time neath the deck,
making babies, so cute, getting bolder as they get older, hopping
unashamedly across the deck, eliciting oohs and has, of the children,
who blissfully unaware, all this creatures carry the ticks of Old Lyme.
Though unnumbered, the rabbits, fat, throw their heft around,
promising to drain the backyard of the invading hordes, with their
smelly sun tan lotions and outrageously ugly bathing towels...

called to order by the light of the flickering television, a fire signal
that the humans are in for the night, won’t notice the shouting and
shoving not so cute, tween the factions.  Animals behaving like
humans, what a lowly sad sight, deals and promises made, give
me a hundred Likes, ten repostings, and five 😊, say the hedgehog,
who rarely appears but boy is he big and has capital to lend to anybody
who will give him what he wants...

the field mice, have little-power, their diminutive constituency, not
so useful, as they no longer make the female humans, shriek, nah,
now they are cute, until they chew the wires in the basement, and
hide their tennis socks in spidery corners where they leave them to
yellow, corrode, unravel, unfit for human footage anymore;
and while these weakfish of the under-deck, their longevity of encroachment must be respected for they have been since time immemorial, which nobody remembers exactly how long that is exactly...

called to order, resolution on the floor, who shall lead the charge,
plan the plan to drain away the inhuman interference for once and
forevermore; but the conventional dialogue interruptus,  by an unfamiliar voice: a scouting party sent, like the spies of the Israelites, fails to return, another party formed and returns, with woeful news, of a white van truck,stenciled in black death,
                 The East End Pest Company (Exterminators)
has been invited in, and sadly nobody of the animal world has in their possess, a dictionary or vocabulary so large that the word, exterminate, strikes a note of danger!

the booing and brawling silenced, the political skullduggery is replaced
by the sad quietude, until the insect kingdom returns to reclaim the lands,
they were driven from many decades earlier, and they big human eavesdroppers, well, they know that word well and won’t make the same mistake twice! but then from above, between a crack, come a tumbling a business, white, from the deck o the below deck, in hand upon the back write these words:

See ya next week!
We leave your property
as clear as our conscience


p.s. for security reasons, conventions are held now every four years,
the location unrevealed, until, the very last minute

Articles on how to write always feature
Pictures of old Underwoods, and maybe
A cup of pencils to the side, and some flowers
In a vase, wilting symbolically

One longs to sees images of an Apple II
Or maybe a TI994A
A battered Radio Shack TRS80
Cursors flickering in defiance

A Magnavox Videowriter, loading slow -
The 80s had their Nobel dreams too, you know

I want you to,
I want you to,
care,
fully,
read,
understand,
and love,
things like,
my favorite books.

Like
what you read between the lines…
the feelings that seem to emerge from reading a combination of words,
are about something bigger than you, and I.
Its just,
I want myself to desperately stop,
the constant feeling of not being able to breathe and
writing,
It seems like an endless trap filled with blinking cursors and an empty pages
about
sweet nothings, and memories that
you,
that you…made sure stayed between us like unspoken promises.

Its complicated
I want you
I want you
to feel
to love
those things that made
me like
the flaws and imperfections…
I
I understand the feeling of drowning now,
I desperately do,
because now you know what its like to really know,
love
people like you…
you.

Its complicated.
I want you to
I want you to
Want me.
Know what it feels to not be able to breathe.

Local cursors, yet so clever
Bribes an adrenaline
Her addiction through the keys
Felt like nicotine
Copy paste,
Copy paste,
How many words to chase?
Delete or erase,
She astonished a few mistakes
Only realizing with an aftertaste

She would scribble down new abbreviations
Silly explorations,
And sincere appreciations
Highlighting them in Italics

Countless minors criticize,
Eighteen, selected font size,
Affix buttons of grammars or otherwise,
The error might sound automatic

Detached quotations,
Unfinished conversations,
Unprepared preparations,
These flares are somewhat emphasized in Bold

Published chapters,
Wasted hours,
She double-dipped in his sweet & sour traits
And then betrayed her own heart of Gold

And it is now the end,
never again will our cursors
intertwine and roam across
the screen. It will be left
unchanged, last seen a long,
long time ago.

Our repository will be forever
archived, belonging to someone
else, in the hands of a stranger,
never again will i see your quickdraw
pull requests, never again will our
branches merge and conflict.

i know, the last commit it’ll see
will forever be the last fix i made.

In this room at four a.m. where the universe sometimes meets, I cram some thinking time into the stillness that does not occur at any other part of the day. A wall clock scratchily taps its one-tone metronome in a time signature discomforting to noisy thinkers.

My quiet contemplation is possessed with a version of unkindness, arising out of unsteady dreams. In the most recent frame; invading forces stay out of sight to threaten as the unknown enemy. We burn candles for those who plead the safety of our dwelling. But suspicion becomes our ally and neighbours are offered no solace.

I notice a small moth as it circles a candle avidly craving the feast of light. I think of those who have struggled with a near-death experience. I’m told the dying enter a beautiful light when called to begin passage from this world to the next. Does the small moth feel the same sense of awe as it prepares to feed the candle?

The lifeless screens of television and computer, (sometimes channeling the universe into this quiet room) hold their square black mouths agape, but offer nothing more than mute obedience. The only living pixel in this room is worshipped by the fervent wing of a moth: and is unaware of being a metaphor.

I hear at distance, the first bus for the morning passing by, it is mostly empty of the silent ones it will carry later in the day. I wonder how many of today’s travellers will have been awake at this time, pondering fate and future in the shelter of an urban meditation.

The early hours of the morning, I’m told, are when most passengers depart for the next world as they sip or gasp a last breath.

Slipping by and above me, some adventurous souls are carried by a hot-air balloon: the rushing light and sound of the gas-flame is a jet of life which heats and sustains the commercial moon as it drifts by in close orbit. The balloon then changes metaphor and mimics sunrise.

Perhaps moth and balloon and empty screens are pre-cursors for all that is to come today: all that is furtive, all that is futile, all that pretends omniscience, all that is agape, all that is sufficient for those of us who assume we will live on and on and on. And for those of us who repeat each day secure, content and satisfied: completely taken by all the fuss and noise of living for successfulness.


MChallis 2005/2014

It's a cliche to stare from the window, but I do.
Slipping through time without thinking.
The flowers are indulging the ground with life.

I am not so candid as to tell you why.
Voices ruminate outside my prison.
I wouldn't be so sad if this was the end.

I'm not calling to say I love you or I've moved on.
But that when the knife in my heart twists.
The pain doesn't really move me as it used to.

I might give up, I might give in.
But the calls from another world, they beckon me to"Keep smiling".
Perhaps I never should have reached out.

So here I write and release to the world.
So that the death grip on my soul will be just released a little.
As this poem has seemed to do.

I realize this isn't the ideal scenario, being so torn up about nothing it doesn't reflect on me quite well. But time will march on without me. And the stars will reflect our pie in the sky hopes and dreams. And the knife will stay in my heart to remind me of you and your betrayal all those years ago. And the poison will reach the earth I walk on. And all those nice kind loving things you say, the beauty of it all will one day be lost on me. But for today, thank you for reminding me that I can resist the pain that's meant to make me human. Until the dawn comes, I beg you to sleep. And not look at my face.

Please, don't see my tears. They are only per-cursors to that knife being twisted again. And yet, part of me desires it be twisted again so that I may see just how long it will take before I destroy this thing called "Friendship."

As our natural state is poetry
Every single word you say or see
Can stop you. Dead.  Fingers, cursors
Hover over screens.  
Hesitant to touch the light.
The light is.
And now
You live.

i haven't had the confidence lately
to talk like this,
to write like this,
i haven't had the confidence lately
to be myself.
sure, you still see me expressing,
but that's only surface level,
and sometimes the laughter
goes the opposite end
and i'm really not fine.

sometimes i can't even tell anymore,
what's me and what's my image,
am i saying this just for the internet
to like comment praise and share?
i'm losing myself in a complex of codes
that aren't even tangible,
yet hold a heavy place in everyone's
hearts and minds and souls.

the internet is supposed to empower me,
that's what i felt before, being able to share everything,
but now i have to be so careful,
to preserve myself,
to preserve my thoughts,
that i feel caged and anxious by the thousands of cursors
scrolling through.

i guess what i'm trying to say is
how do i get my voice back?
when i've become so mute
yet i just type and type and type
and lose myself among the keys,
and lose myself among the clicks and views.

Simple symbols start with fingers ,acknowledging that O for O.K.


Standing on flat ground we are still revolving ,spinning ,spinning around



Always coming to a point,a new sign to align ,even when hidden by smoke


Trains of thought, traveling tracks or trails to elsewhere always  with no bounds


Throwing spears,hurling javelins,cursors for the mystery they invoke


Ways to go ,directions to follow ,up down ,singing out with the sounds


Mimes mimicking leave us spellbound,trains crossing ,always outbound not to revoke



Round eyes noting rings encompassing other planets ,far away with all it endows


Going out ,coming in, enter,or exit following as a guide .always a way to simply take a walk


Path for a task, forward or reverse or four way to parallel or perfection  in neat rows


Taken in stride unknowingly we abide ,even ideas follow in line,off center we balk


Beacon as a guide,taken to heart our claim to fame is how we follow the aim

see the arrow with a mind that is not narrow and maybe realize the way it flows

R.C.

i spy
your traffic heart
beat

in cursors
lullaby
a midaftertnoon

nap
how dare
one wonder

full of life
& enmity

of blood
in the mouth
we kiss

in the upper
western daylight
yearning

in very
kindly years
& mine

The vibrant firmament

I want the full range, devotion, fervour, zest and
A collage of bright hues that can fill the heavens.

I want incisive action that prevents my cursors
From converging on conflicts that inhibit dance.

I want this world, this excited sphere, to be  
A magnificent stage set that isn't improbable.

I want music of shared gaiety and pleasure,
A song that will light the vibrant firmament.

I want the delights I imagined in earlier days,
An eagerness and a zeal that are everywhere.

I want to flavour my outer limits, to add new
And exuberant expressions to my vacant gaze.

I want deep red waves tipped with honey
And passions of every rhythm to swing to.

I want quick-eyed adventures and long slow
Embraces, giving reign to unexplored desires.

I want days of crazy randomness and not have
Urgent signals demanding that it’s time to hide.

I want to live in a smiling house of sensations
Where talk is an incessant wealth of cadences.

I want the floor of my sad defeated heart to be
The place where only vim and vigour explode.

I want hostility to end, the world to mend and
That peace which passes beyond understanding.

On the last Friday of each month, the poets gather  
not in one room, but in the hush between screens,
the glow of shared breath and blinking cursors.

They come with verses tucked in sleeves,
with metaphors still warm from the pan,
with hearts half-rhymed and stanzas that ache to be heard.

This month, the theme is Equinox!
balance, breath, the tilt of light.
Some write of harvest moons,
others of lovers crossing hemispheres,
some of grief that splits the day clean as shadow.

One speaks of sugar levels and sunrise.
Another, of church bells and glucose meters.
Someone reads a mirrored poem that turns
at the solstice line and walks back through itself.

There is laughter -
the kind that lifts like foam.
There is silence -
the kind that listens.

And when the last poem lands,
when the final line finds its echo,
they linger,
not to critique,
but to hold the weight of each word
like a mug of something warm.

The meeting ends,
but the poems keep orbiting,
little equinoxes of thought,
balancing dark
and light
in the inbox of the soul.