Within creased paper lie binded souls
Firmly held within my clutch ,
Ideology hemorrhaging as non-opposables only bend so much.
Thirsty i reached for a swig of your cup 
Open palmed 
This vessel mishandled 
the contents soaked through bedrock
Its remains a drink for the decrepit.

You were the boy always drinking and high on drugs
and I was the girl always falling for bullies and thugs;
in our toxic relationship you smashed me into pieces time and time again,
yet still I chose your "love" regardless of the torture, abuse and the pain.

The human soul, as vile as bile,
Savage Cruel disturbed infected and distort,
The human soul, obsessed with foul style,
Sinful confused mishandled and extort

Devoid of ethical human feelings,
Inflicted with raw sadistic hatred,
Grotesque depraved dismembered killings,
Ungodly occultism, unsacred

Sickness requires resolute treatment,
Stitches to repair ripped incisions,
Reducing the risk of dismemberment,
Catastrophe fractured by excision

Ceased decaying crippled in dreadful despair
Emerging from darkness, disturbed and aware.


William James

You would be my sculpture.
I'd spend hours on you.
Your face had taken shape,
Your neck was molded new.
I formed your pale legs,
My clay perfect for the fit.
For days I worked on your torso,
For days I only patiently did sit.
Solidifying was real quick,
And I had to be careful.
You could break if mishandled,
I needed to be gentle.
You still had your eyes closed,
So I kissed your dry lips.
But you still couldn't hold me well,
Despite your arms around my hips.
And so I carved your hands,
And caressed them in mine,
Then finally you entwined our fingers,
At last we held back time.

PROCRASTINATION
By
Joe McDonald

Part I:

How often can I keep putting off everything in life that must be done to the point of frustration and despair?  

How often will my work sit and stare at me with the eyes of hungry children always whining their demands for my attention to each task always wanting my full being beyond my own inner abilities and doubt?

How often can I walk past the damaged concrete step on my own house that sneers at me everyday as I walk up to my front door?

How often can I make promises to old friends to get together, celebrate life, and not expect them to wait on my return call of cancelation because of illusionary diseases?

How often can I feign in my backyard the beauty of my roses, sipping white grape while the grass under my bare feet remains brown, coarse, and over grown with dandelions stifling all vegetation?

How often can I pledge my good faith to a worthy cause by ending up watching from the back row as the needs prosper or fail regardless of my lack of motivation?

How often will constant kicking of the can down the yellow brick road be considered the excellence of a long line of Shakespearean resumes?

How often will my lack of courage blind me to opportunities of abundance and force my family to a life of stagnant economic asperity?

How often will I consent to others disrespect of my mastery of skills to the verge of closing my mind to all that is important to dwell in a soup of anger, self-doubts, and ache?

How often will the peeling paint, blistering off of my house like shards of cheese at my wedding feast, augment my anguished indifference finding every physical, spiritual, and any other of a multitude  of “…Why not’s…” festering in my dome of “..Do it tomorrow’s…”?

How often can I rattle my saber of position, roar my battle cry of “Tomorrow” to postpone today’s tasks? Bundling them all into neat piles of future promise completions. All the time smiling a grin of a used car salesman.


How often can I sit on my couch on sunny Saturday mornings enjoying the sun rise? Its beams slowly sliding across the finished oak; warming my unkempt hovel to the boiling point that tuffs of unwanted cat fur dancing over the varnished grain like tumbleweeds in a Sam Pechinpah film. Yet, I sip my morning brew, acknowledging their existence but, my head movies are of other unattended illusions.

How often can my inability to act or respond be accepted by those who expect perfection in all things?

How often can I permit the disappointment of a moment fire the indifference toward the needs of the here and now?

How often will my journey up my front walk be changed from the joy of daffodils and hyacinths filling the air with aromas of lung cleansing delights only to rediscover the pine foliage  are still dressed in the lights of Christmas past?

How often will I put off leading because of failure of seeing the needs of those who need leadership? They cry out for direction but, plead for independence. I use the pleas to drown out the cries.

How often will I have the epiphany of a lifetime only to have inaction and fear
drag it down to the bowels of an enlighten brain ****?



Part II:

I keep plugging in the mechanism of delay to power the animal of the moment.

I blind myself over and over and over and over again again again again to my abilities of now in favor of promises of later.

I smell success in the air every time I do the nows but, the stench of celebration’s to come is easer, sweater, more in line with who I am and not who I want to be.

I hear the praise and accolades of present victories and in time I’ll drag my triumphs out over the gravel road of time until they have lost their luster.

I’ll blindly stare at the tube of adult babysitting, at images of various eye candies trying to escape my own drive to do and yet failing in this as well.

I can’t spit out the bitter taste of the act of putting everything off nor drown it in the wine of determination without repeated reminder that I am drinking from the same cup of vintage to come.

I spend much needed dollars and valued hours gorging myself on self-help aids and assistance. Only they too become part of the beast’s feast of my misused time.

I awake every Monday with dreams of a new but, I’m so accessible to countless distractions. By Friday I face the inevitable doom of looking back over the landscape of a week gone up in the flames of the undone.

I try to grab each day by its throat. Choke out the desired results. Only it offers the slights resistance and I let it go to torment me from its lair growling “…not now, not now, not now…”

I’ll spend time with my mate for life. Half of me is relishing the moments with her. Half is wandering over the tablets of what I haven’t done.

I have mismanaged, misused, balled up, blundered, fouled up, mishandled, muddled, muffed, spoiled, and fumbled the footballs of my life again and again avoiding all that has to be done now driven farther down the boulevard. Constantly stopping at any insignificant store front; staring at juvenile trinkets of distraction.

I have sinned over and over again. I offer prayers to anyone who will listen. Begging for the enlightenment to solve my weakness. “… quia pecccavi nimis cogitatione verbo et in cogitations, et in hoc opera, quod ego facere non, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa…”



Part III:

Who else do I have to make suffer in confused patience waiting for the promised end results of my superficial excellence?

What has to be done to make me arise from the ash of self doubt, indecision, and fear to conquer this demon within my psyche?

Where are the answers I seek in my time of apathy?

Why has this inferior deity have such a grasp on me?

When! Again, when!!! When will I face this issue and start to find the peace of timely attainment?






(“… that I have sinned through my own fault in my thoughts and my words, in what I have done and what I have failed to do, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault…”)
Part IV:

I have lived with this for over a half century.
Trying to climb out of the hole of misused time.
Falling back into my penitentiary.
Serving a sentence of intimate crime.


The venting is complete, pity-pats written down.
My confession exposed for all to share, witness.
If this public sacrament exposes me a clown.
Mock away; have your jest. For I could care less.


My Ginsberg rant is to open doors of avowals.
To aid in my cure; in hope start my salvation.
To trust myself; to believe in oneself. I am all.
To look into the morning glass willing a reincarnation.


Only I can face the beast and make it heel.
Down inside I have to find the straight for each day.
Try a new, lighter approach; a new Don Marquis feel.
“…procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday…”




April 2014

We are free to use our blinkers
Or maybe not, to switch lanes
We're free to lose, of course to gain
Most give less than they share
But we all have freedom to wish, and that of despair

I need some ******* space here, people
I don't care about the extremists in that Texan steeple
I need to think, I need to know
Because apparently we're all given a chance to succeed
Chances to grow
But that's some ****, I'll tell you, and the nation
Where there are chains, no one finds your liberation
You must fight for yourself
Unlike those ignorant to an outside situation

I live life as well as I can conceive
I come, and I'll go as I please
I have struggled, ****, and some things done with ease
But it's hard to accept things
Stop from beginning to plead

With life, dreaming of a non-failure tattoo on my chest
Freedom of denial and maybe of access
But dreams can be illusions, rather than reality
But it's on the individual to make dreams an actuality

I've seen so many live, and I've seen too many die
But I've found the freedom to laugh loud
And I've let myself cry
But sometimes it's easy to hear,
And harder to listen
For me especially
To act after having made decision

If I hold a gun in the war of revolution
There will be freedom in war, and freedom in peace
I guess we all have things to learn
Like when to start
When to cease
I wish we could all be free some disease
Chronically in perfect health
But that's a fantasy, unlike poverty
And manipulated, mishandled wealth.
An honest politician is an idea I can't conceive
If I'm ever that powerful
Well, it'll have to start with me, I believe
Americans will find freedom from greed
And maybe jealousy, we can keep some pride
But me, just me, I don't have anything to hide.
I'll never be free from space, but maybe from time
But there's things that will happen around me:
Hunger, and crime

If I can find freedom from my body and mind
Then I'll have found what I've been trying to find
To see true colors, looking ahead, forget what's behind
Maybe there's rebirth, being of the spiritual kind

Universal freedom might be nothing left to lose,
But fighting for my freedom is the path I look to choose
The rich old white guys keep driving their Benz's
While I look at my world, my freedom
Through my $20 lenses

v.xi.xi

i try to accept that i’ll walk around with this emptiness in me forever
maybe when you mishandled my soft clay body, you left holes within me that can’t be filled
ive never once grown up, have i?
im scared day in and day out, one wrong move
and my aged and hardened body will shatter

the hands that formed me were loving
soft caresses sculpted me into a beautiful being, the image of the divine
entrusted in the arms of children, my malleable body was abused
and mishandled  
so i hardened into an ugly ugly thing
gentler, i beg, because im not as soft as i used to be
if you toss me around like that ill surely shatter under the weight of ur anger
i am not the image of my Father
but a reflection of the devils He left me in the care of
you are all i’ll ever be, aren’t you? i see you in me, you’re in me, more and more everyday and my insides collapse at the weight of your sins
and your father’s sins
and his father’s sins
weren’t you supposed to protect me? your hatred has warped my soul into an unsalvageable, unloveable thing, i know it too well
i once thought that my Father delighted in molding my soul in His image
that He gave me His hands, and His ability to create beautiful things
now i know these hands will only destroy
like you did to me

"...Love is more like war than a rose.
They are both deceptively beautiful,
But love spills more than just
One drop of blood when it gets mishandled.
And unlike a flower, love is resilient.
It takes more than a few ****** battles
Fought deep in muddy trenches
To break the bond between two soldiers.
Against all odds, love finds ways to survive
Even the most disparaging circumstances..."

I don't find limiting myself with a title,
There are no boxes left for me to fit in,
Or burst out of....
I find it's excitingly horrifying to be,
This lost.
There's a similar difference between identity and persona,
I am what I am, am I?
What am I?
Do you think the men I have only half loved,
But stroked their meek egos of,
And the woman I have cowered at,
As they screamed my name,
Know what I am,
Is not who I am?
There is a solace to be found in being wanted;
Are you the one they fall to on a late night,
When they are alone and drunk?
What about when their beds are cold?
When they cannot see you because, they are blinded,
By their quest to find themselves more, and you,
And you,
My dear,
Oh my sweet you,
Who is no one in this world,
Are a literally stepping stone in under their feet,
As you wish to be a moon in their stars.
What they don't tell you,
About surviving trauma when your brain is developing,
Is that your world turns to opposites,
Chaos is home
Drugs are home
Hate is home
Fear, is home;
Here secreted beneath my pallid skin,
I try to find them all a home,
Knowing I'll never find mine.
If self care and therapy was literal exercise,
I could bench press all of you, and more,
And save you all;
My motivation to not be broken is stronger than my will to die,
And they'll never know that,
As they try to break me,
Over and over, and over,
And over again.
Everyone's broken.
No sorry, everyone has cracked edges,
Worn
Rusty
Mishandled a few times
Repainted
Cracked
Not broken, slightly damaged.
We, the ones filled with gilded light, and songbirds,
We know the ******* difference between depression,
And eternal internal sadness,
From not understanding love, to
Loving EVERYONE
From seeking solace in the extreme,
To running away from arms that seek to confine.
Where for art ******* thou?

We are not here for your pleasure.
But we are.
How could we be, but anything else?

I tired.
Sorry...
I tried.
Men.
Women.
Whisky.
*******.
Driving too fast.
Telling them.
Saving them.
Being everything.
Hating.
Fighting.
Drowning.
Breathing.
Exalting.
Cryi­ng.
Pain.
Pleasure.
Writing

This isn't a shopping list.
It's. Not a bucket list.
It's what we do to survive,
When you're born without love.

Some days my body is a trophy.
a dusty display in which I placed all recollections
of sorrowful evenings and birds with broken limbs I collected from the porch
Some days my body is a trophy
a tribute to my skin having smoldered
and made stony by fire-polishing
which may have brought on blisters and a chorus of
"i can live, I can live, I can live"'s to erupt at the mere thought of heat.
Some days my body is a trophy
it is for the one who says
"i went so far beyond her expectations that she lost sight of me"
i cant see him, my vision is hazy after spending an eternity with dust on my corneas and curtains drawn across my forehead,
I hid in myself, detaching skin from muscle and using my armor like a blanket in which I could block out the peering eyes of strangers
Some days my body is a trophy, because
instead of cutting away my blanket like I had,
you folded me back into a swan and I was no longer
crumpled rice paper that had been incorrectly origami-ed
by a fat fingered hurrier.
I was an image.
I am  your trophy to the world telling them all
I restored a masterpiece that had been mishandled and cast away
Some days my body is a trophy
That I hold up high
that says
I am worthy
and I will not be left behind

This is how you set a circle with the switchblade someone shoved in your purse at a party; remember how even in your sticky-haired, belly-foaming, hot-breathed drunkenness you knew its potential,
Finally an amulet.
Finally a flashlight.

How you would coo a greeting to it and let a centered, solid voice, (frying a bit at the end of most words, softening them like frayed denim)plunge down cold metal like a rickety ice luge that’s long been disqualified.
How you came to learn the weight of it in your hand,
all the ways to open and close it-
how to threaten,
how to strike.

These were the dewy-dank months of frozen toes shrieking in boots because you never got it together enough to dress in proper socks.
These were the mornings when your alarm blared alive from across the room because you could not be trusted with the snooze button.

Remember how you would wake up terrified, day after day,
with a stinging heart and metallic mouth?
How; dreading even the smallest bit of duty, you’d take a panicky inventory of the day’s looming obligations and graph the ways you might avoid them.

These were the stretches when even a full night’s sleep left you sunken eyed and exhausted-
when the idea of being anything,
even just being,
was too much to take.
These were the days you realized; with little alarm, that you might prefer sinking into death
over lifting up your head and getting dressed.

There were a few weeks that winter when you wondered if the snow would ever stop falling and the calendar was clean. You set your hair into two braids and cut them off with fabric scissors, fully intact.
You tweeted a picture of them with no caption then threw them away.

You were sad and putrefying, slowly collecting candlesticks and diligently keeping track of the moon.
You were color-coding post-its for each lunar phase, plotting; with a thawing-thick body and knotty spine, where your mishandled energy and menacing hyper-focus should be applied next.
These months were so heavy- dragging your feet through them made your skin crawl with static. Your shocks cracked rooms. Your clothes never felt completely dry.

This was the season you halfheartedly turned to nature, searching for a pulse in the barks and rubble of the surrounding land which you might mirror into something almost alive.
The days were bright and white and the nights were swaying and L.L. Bean navy blue and you didn’t smoke but your hair always smelled like Marlboro reds.

When the moon was highest you called out to it, asking for favors.
These were the hours where you could swear you were the only living soul taught to bite down.
These were the hours where you knew for certain what it is like to be dead.
Drinks up to the year you read poems aloud to storms and set fire to handwritten letters with your best friend in the middle of your white collar condominium unit at 1pm.
And smile because at the time it was exactly what had to be done.

Now comb out your tangles and bury the switchblade deep in powdery dirt below your bedroom window.
Do it unceremoniously and fast- it belongs knotted tight in orbit to the year you are now galaxies removed.
Though you may unpack your telescope and salute that tiny hell from time to time- you will never call it home.


That year; however heavy, is the year you must carry with you.
It will be trekking along, a step behind, across every mountain you climb and it will race you to catch dreams in every room to decide to sleep. That year; tinsely-light and braided tightly into veins, sings softly to you from below the defaced skin of your wrist in a language you're just beginning to understand.

Lesson number 1: a web of scars arranged by and for oneself can be a compass. In fact, it may be the ideal tool for orientating oneself to a clear-eyed world where presence is not shameful and the terrifying decision to exist should not require apology.
Lesson number 2: A road map etched over your body, charged electric by the intensity crawling through your marrow and planted by bits of you now reconciling-
This map can guide you well.

And your compass pulses with the life within you. Instead of pointing north, the needle will spin wild and fast until your bloodstream rocks a calm tide up and down the coast of your chest, bathing your lungs and conducting  your breath into a rhythm swaying low.
You’ll think you hear the vague sound of something almost hopeful; something that reminds you,
giggling and bluntly, that there's a mystery of years ahead of you
and to wholly exist in them.
I finally see that whether I’m on a giddy spill south by southwest, housing a heavy sorrow in my kneecaps or walking in rain boots Due North while wiping away tears with my ponytail-
the very fact that I’m still trusted with years to travel through and a world to inhabit will be more than heaven on earth.

i guess i never loved you. i just
needed you. you read my journal
it was written that i
“i hate you”. “no one cares
if you were gone”. you

broke. i broke you
down, to watch you hurting and
tears rolling down. i saw that
you cared. you loved me.
sorry, i said so many times

while you just covered your ears.
i realized, i wielded that
knife to shatter you.
maybe that was why when you
snuck the $6.90 honey-baked

chicken from Cold Storage into
your bag, you said “i’ll look
after us”. leading us illegally
into USS, you said “anything
is possible

just stay with me”. and i did.
slowly, you slipped the reigns
i mishandled from my grip.
there it was yours now to hold,
the beach, carpark, stairwells saying

“the future’s an unpredictable
nature, no matter how hard you try”,

i suppose you knew how
things would have turned out.
easy for you to say, you predicted it
for us. that was how we broke
one
another to pieces.

We met just before society began it’s well rehearsed day,

no expectations were discussed,

just pure human interaction was what we could count on,

although we continued to see each other.

somewhere between tropico nights,

and days full of communication crimes,

I began to feel something I couldn’t put a finger on it,

you shut me out as if I were just a dream.

I let it go because as they say if someone cares

they will be back. sure enough, you came back.

apparently that was enough to let my heart drop,

further, than I ever thought it could.

I truly believed in you…….my bad.

one person out of dozens I’ve met since the first

I wish I would have questioned us, questioned, you.

but love doesn’t allow itself to be hindered.

I wish I wouldn’t have allowed myself

to invest any further consideration of possibilities

the pride you hold is so absorbed

the protection tactic you use isn’t fair

especially when someone’s heart is now in your hands,

a heart is not something to be taken for granted.

it should be something held like a mother holds

her premature baby that she is unsure if it will live.

I handed over my clearly recently mended heart,

put back together with a couple pieces missing.

this wasn’t unbeknownst to you,

the lack of humility you carry you place on top of a fragile human life.

someone’s core, especially one that has already been mishandled

by those before you should never be juggled like a grenade with the loose pin,

ready to completely explode and break into just a fine dust.

the clarity through action has made it clear I can’t leave the one part that keeps me breathing to such careless hands.

I just would love if you would let down your half-witted sense of protection.

Like myself, you will learn that it only works so long.

Those who do end alone, because all the companionship graciously given won’t be there. Due to your tall walls surrounding your screaming heart.

I have a plenty of love overflowing inside me, that you knocked out of my hands when presented to you. Scoffed at experiences that mortified to me to points most can’t even fathom. And disrespected someone that respected, and ultimately chose you.

Please be kind to the next, I know that this act won’t last for long if you continue to prey on those weaker than thyself. Granted, we know you attack those stronger, so feelings inside of inadequacy don’t surface.

but, just know if I disappear one day, I genuinely loved you and never want you to forget that, because I know I won’t.

Love & Art, 1991,

Henk Holveck

The term “love wins” is true,
Though gravely misused.
The worldly kind of love,
Which is often the attached definition to this term, never truly wins.
This love, which is ****** in nature,
Only leaves it’s participants more empty, and loveless than before.
****** love, when abused and mishandled, taken outside of its intended context, leaves you more empty, drained, used, and void of TRUE love than before you engaged in it.
You will never feel completely fulfilled with only ****** love, and how sad, to base your entire identity on how you like to have ***. How empty a life, to march under a flag of your selfish, ****** preference, rather than something truly meaningful.

Love wins, yes He does. love wins, because Jesus Christ, who was love in flesh, won, when He died on the cross and paid for the sin of the entire world. Including the ****** sin mentioned above. Love wins, when you ask Him into your heart, and believe in Him as your savior, the one who made the weighty payment for your soul, so you could spend forever in the presence of God, where the Bible says, there is “fullness of joy and pleasure forevermore.” Don’t chase fleeting pleasure, that lasts only for a moments at a ****** ******. Choose pleasure that nourishes your soul, gives life to you spirit, opens your eyes to perceive the kingdom of God. Choose that. Choose Jesus. Choose love.
Love wins.

" I've been abused, mishandled and
Confused.
NOW I return to me, backed to
person who I used to be.
She took me away, Because of her
beauty, and her age.
The elder in me was like a Tiger being
Let out of a Gage.
It had nothing to do with lust.
I'm a man of God . He appointed me
to life up her life. A matter of must.
The months went by very quickly.
I was doing as much as I can, but
Feeling unappreciated wasn't in my
Plan.
My silver hair was dyed brown, to
Look as young as I can.
Finding myself in shopping malls,
NOW never even holding my hand.
This went on for month's.
Dinner's, and lunches was not enough.
Now on her menu, she added brunch.
There's a lot more to be said, but I think
you all got  my point.
Maybe I should have stayed in the
Gage.
A man of my age."

At the impasse.
Sometimes, one wishes they never let go of the dismay they feel when leaving love.
For it is this pain that reminds us of things said,
Things felt.
A truth split between two beings leaving nothing but a pure trail of destructive emotion between them.
We never felt the wake we left,
We always felt the earth move when our lips touched.
As forgetful as the moments we confessed in that motel bedroom,
To the blatant attraction we shared as we stared into each other's eyes under the sunrise,
And the note you left for me.
I promised this moment would last forever.
You swore this was reality,
But it was really just a fantasy.
Delusions lead us to a promised future,
But we were really just trading away false dreams for a mutual benefit.
A mended heart will eventually shatter again.
Until we meet again.
Maybe I gave too much to you at once.
An art form in courting lost,
I thought I had a hunch.
Just a mishandled bunch of actions with no conclusion.
Now we depart and tell our own monologues.
And we will always remember our unwritten epilogue.

Its been fun.
Genesis.

I have finally found my way back to land and though 20 years have passed,
I have the ability to adapt and will find my own way.

All my notes have come to you, and we have spoken back and forth through the whispers of the night air becoming a chilling wave of numbness.

This was never my story, this was always ours.
Told two voices over with no true connection,
Other than the ink that was bottled up and threw out to sea.


This is the story of Genesis, and how I was able to find me.