This is art of simplifying love.

If you have no friend,
You don't have to go to the club,
And get drunk with strangers.
Let's get drunk together.

If you have no time,
You don't have to talk to me for hours,
Just simply text me,
And tell you're okay.

If you have no money,
You don't have to buy me fancy food,
We can eat the instant noodle instead.
Or I can cook and eat by myself.

If you're bad at remembering,
You don't have to remember our anniversary date, nor my birthday.
Just remember me,
Or simply remember my name.

If you're not in love with me,
You can start learning it,
Or simply throw me away.
It's way more simple than faking love.

bitterly i remember
in my first simplification class
i forgot BODMAS.

boys around me
solved gleefully
while my pencil
showed no will
to budge with the clock
bent on making me a laughing stock
before my peers.

it's such times in life
when devils raid
to come to your aid.

i gave a furtive look
to the notebook
of the boy next to me
put an equal to sign
and to the sum's next line
wrote nine.

what followed i would keep to mine.

Sunrise nearing its death,
the end of today
complementing the beauty of a pen stroke,
harsh scratching alleviating indelible ideas
showing selves in hues painting our last moments
allowing me to trace timelines
in the contoured caresses
of this silent instrument played
to blend melody with beginnings,
each progression scaling further along
the passing hours left settling
to minutes from now,
purpose elaborated in contrasting
blues and oranges and purples
composing the elegance of utility,
colors not enough to excise the excesses
of depicting days in dimensions,
of simplifying it to degrees of time.
Laying alongside this current
to shape clouds
and animate constellations,
my faux-corpse stares again into
the memory held in galaxies
only glimpsed at twilight.
Sharp cuts of consonants
and vowels' smoothed corners
try to rid me of
stream of conscious thinking loosed,
the inner struggle hoping for reprieve
from that constant combative nature
of inward disagreement
and dialectic digression
deflecting the question of
what if we'd only spoke
instead of being lost
to foreign type-faces designed by
some soul never to see
the dying day my way.
If only we'd spoke,
I would have had the chance
to stumble on a goodbye.
Rather we are left
to flourishes of unfamiliar weapons
sitting askew on these pages,
the balance shifted due to
us degrading to another's personality,
and writing out those lines
we couldn't come to say.

You spoke to me with your
voice like Mia Farrow’s and
your eyes not at all like
trampolines. A tar twig
bobbed between your lips;
you spoke of self-destruction
and smoked your commas
and semi-colons. You asked me
questions with the least amount
of answers and the most amount
of space, like a widow’s home
adorned in compromise. The six
o’clock sun sprawled through.
You said I reminded you of how
we’re always treating people like
fractions, simplifying where we
should be unfurling equations.
I saw the dawn illuminate your
hiccups and your hesitations. I
took a kiss; I thought there’s
nothing more fleeting than
moments like this, but at least
you can’t run quickly with a
heart so full.

You know that bowl that I carry around in my belly?
Too heavy for my frame, I've carried it precariously, trying not to spill.
I've used it to catch the steady drip that's been there since forever. I've used it to catch the rocks that I hurled up like a juggler (to find where I begin). You've taken it, and now you're swirling the contents, rinsing them with your own feelings, your own words (yourloveyourloveyourlove). All the garbage, the petty insecurities and fearsfearsfears, wash out and leave behind the heavier stones and metals that I've used to construct myself, contain myself.
The material of my foundation exposed, you continue to rhythmically, relentlessly reduce me to the shimmersilt at the bottom of the bowl.
Eroding.
Simplifying.
Until you're left with the specks of gold that you say define me.
The evidence of treasured trust that remains after I've allowed you to dump out my contents with gentle, sweeping motions.

I will ignore all concepts of adherence and maybe, just this once,
be blunt about my fear;

I’m a stuck oriole in a window.
I’m a pedestrian somewhere in VV Soliven underneath the pouring rain
with my parasol jammed, won’t spread out.
The petrichor from the ground rises and like dust,
I settle and cave in, like an unsuspecting dagger making its slow crawl
towards the back of the next face I see in this deadlock.

They say when you stick it to the man,
stick it good, and whatever beating or punishment may follow,
face it like a man.

but what is a man to do to the higher man
when he has his guts spread on the floor like an inkblot
from a shattered glass?
this working classman status isn’t for the weak,
and it sure isn’t for the brave either – what will become of the fools
sitting atop our heads when we have learned to outgrow them?

Sooner than it is later, I will go back to the pit like some soldier
cleaning his Lee-Enfield in the endless snow.
I will be faced by inbreds, imbeciles, rebels,
dilettantes, proletariats who have their necks leashed, their arms
puppeteered and their voices mellowed down by some defunct ventriloquism.
I will crank open the mailbox of my home and see that there
are notices: some from the bank, the loans, and the bills – all of them screaming
pecuniary, all of them bludgeoning soul.

If this is what a man has to deal with when he comes to
learn that life’s no downtown street promenade, then I’m willing
to slit the throat of the next child that’s giddy enough and filled with life
to search meaning through the bleared image in front of him.
I see high-stake rollers and proletariats, bigshots, and darling boys
roll down their car windows and flick the smoke out in the **** freeway

while I am here, watching myself slowly rot in the cubicle mirror next door
wary of my somber entrails. I think of a pub somewhere in Magallanes, and I dream
heavily when I am awake. The beaded body of the Hefeweizen is waiting for me
like a paramour, but I have to clock-punch my way out first before I can reach
some sort of truce: as long as I have myself sign these contracts, as far as my freedom is
concerned, what keeps the ball rolling for me might be something I would
despise as long as I breathe in this disgustingly thick air of deceit and consummation.
There is no life in here. All of us are dead.
Buying things we do not need, doing things we don’t want, fooling ourselves
in the complete process, marry wives and husbands and breed children
who will do the same in this cyclically deadening circus. My god is filled with
cotton and the streets scream ****** ****** against the spring.
There are enough violence in the thoroughfares to cast me back to my
home and coil, fraught with unrelenting demand.

There’s no other way to look at it rather than simplifying the equation.
Some do it for worth, that’s your tonic.
Some do it for fun, that’s your senseless beating.
Some do it because they have no other choice: they are not looking far enough.
As long as you have yourself beaten to slave-bone and driven mad with
downtime, then you have yourself laid down on a silver-platter catching
the swill of such riotous rigor: to be shaken out of sleep and shove
meat down your throat and thank the Gods for a wonderful day when all I see
outside are streets blackened to the teeth with distortion and the automobiles
like limbless children leaving no trace.

Some take the easiest way out, but I am not crazy enough to bring
myself to sanity. I have other caprices to go with.
This is enough a suicide than it is on the other side.
Whenever I look at my superior, I see nothing,
and whenever I gaze at the surrounding scenes I see people
sticking knives at each other when backs are turned.
I see people swallow everything that is given to them without
the slightest inch of askance: to complain is the inability to withstand
the current situation – but I am no fool to close my eyes.
I have still the guts to face everyday like some old friend, death, in my arms,
singing blues from the 1980s. When this is done,
I will go back to where it usually does not hurt: in the silence.

where no faces bid me hello – they do well in their own discomfiture,
and I do not wish to see them any longer.
where no automobiles tear the streets and cleave the moon farewell.
where there are no sparrows outside, where there are no laughing children,
where there are no hollow men and women greeting each other tenderly
and blighting each other safe in the resignation of some dull home.

if I am mad, then what does this make you? better? privileged?
I’ve had other people look deep into me like some deepwell without
water and they tell me, “there’s something about you, something about you.”
and when I turn my back to search for some sameness,
I figure there is nothing else to find but the same trapping fate in this
burning cylinder of a home.

Waking up and filling in shoes and dressing up for nothing,
earning money and throwing it all at our own expense,
buying thrills and wasting away as time lounges like a cat
at the foot of the Victorian. If there’s better enough a fall than this,
I will sign myself to have my bones broken, my ribs opened

to let go of my famished soul while all the others
keep themselves clean, putrefying themselves viscerally.

Simplifying

I think the isolating medium -
(Pandemic’s global impact)
Has done the job for me;
Few demeaning ultimatums;
Calls returned, lunches met,
Malls paraded through
With nought of worth to do.

Oh, the benefits of saying in!
Throwing sins of wasteful time
Into the garbage bin of slime and time.
Everything brings inspiration.
Anything a motivation,
Open to inventiveness of one's creation
Which, in turn means making choices
Truer to an inner voice;
Not fiddling, waiting for some muse
To lift you from your busy-ness.

There is a principle I hold to:
Everything you wish to do
Will always be simplicity
But never easy.
That, my friend
Is, you could say, the end.


Simplifying 5.22.2021Circling Round Everything II; The Processes: Creative,Thinking,Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

And if I stop.
If I stop doing,
and working,
and perfecting,
and working,
and complicating,
and simplifying,
you're there.

Unconditional love.

This giant truth on my back.
That I carry and ignore-
simply:

Unconditional love.

You are.
Just are.
No to do:

But stop.
And breathe.
And believe.
And be.

Unconditional love.

The mind
picked up an idea
from reading
to just relax
and vibrate with it
so the mind
since it likes to add
thought just relax
and harmonize with it
and then
just relax
and resonate with it
and I am in favor
of all these techniques
but it strikes me
that this additive nature
of the mind
creates too much
so what I have been doing
is simplifying.
I just harmonize
with everything.

the human body
has three hundred and fifty bones
when we are born
which fuse together
as we grow
to two hundred and six;
further simplifying
down to condensed calcium
and summated marrow,
growing our skeletons down
to simpler beings as we grow.
if only the human soul
was not the opposite;
******* into
spreading stardust
particles so quickly that
we cannot put a simplified
finger on exactly who we are.
black & gold.

What if the people in this room were the pages upon which we wrote: documented with our travels, or inscribed with our beliefs. Our stories, once secrets, become legible. We carry them in heart to heart conversations both trivial and deep. We brainstorm, helping each other write the missing parts and next chapters with our actions as much as our words. We read those around us in the quiet company of our thoughts- our dreams- sometimes loosing ourselves in the blank spaces left by those we once loved. We look up briefly from our reading with renewed perspectives, and we move. Our hands both reach for the same pen at once to rewrite the narrative, passing late-night notes to each other if only to keep ourselves woke. We don’t name what we’ve written, but we sign our names at the bottom and call it ours for the time being. We are impermanent. Still, we leave our marks like fingerprints on the pages of each other -  happy thoughts and revision comments color coded in the margins- our own jam session hidden between the lines we stay writing with no idea or expectation of how it will sound in the end. We utter mysteries and we’re misunderstood, simplifying our confusion into basic metaphors or parables, so that those who pick up where we leave off can understand them, or find some common ground; some shared chapter. We borrow pens and finish each others’ sentences as we collapse on the same endings. Our dialogue subsides into unspoken movement: into silent eyes reading. We are campfire surrounded by the stories we stay telling — that without, we'd be left to scratch the indiscernible signs of love on cave walls for only the darkness to forget.

We tend to separate monsters and men
Simplifying and beliving that such things can't happen again
But if we could only resurrect the dead
The sole answer would be "that's what we said"

We call abhorent acts of criminals "inhuman"
Thinking cruelty only comes from ******* men
But animals never threaten holocaust or world war
And even big brother was a child before

Sophistication stems from subtle simplicity
So stop sophisticating simplicity

Silken streams of sense swirl silver shadows deep
Simplifying the sophisticated, in slumbering silence keep

Which is my church with its green leaves, brown grass
and pine’s bark, all foresting in one motion.
I shall forest rituals of sacrifice,

but without Catholicizing faces drawn
from dark Crusading and my exiling.
Annaling to mark the sun’s solstice for Eastering
and holying days, the dew
coalescing upon the darkening and browning grass
at midnight and cooling air
arching constellations
and the mooning of the night: the cue
to lying for rest
by the small pool in this placing or
to strike, savaging at prey.

Owling as it does, darting as it does,
from a bed of branches, crying,
soundlessly shooting at a forest mouse, leaves
rustling for this night’s Nativity,
this one lifts its butterflying wings
like the soul’s silhouette
taken by an angeling force to heaven.
After owling, angeling, butterflying,
one must create Jesus as a verb.

Having witnessing these things,
limits are paining, as are knowings and doings.
The mouse must have been distracting
this owl from its offspring, thus it was Christing:
sacrificing itself for its children, thus fathering.

Seeing angels fluttering under the moonlight,
Hairshirting is my Church after living here,
after travelling through East of Eden in daylight.
  
Simplifying the Word---so heartwrenching---near
dawn or dusk, being as a penumbra’s cusp
I am Giotto’s halo in human form, keeper

of the haze, smoke, storm, and most of all, cup
from my own despairing.

Always there more to God than pain.

Churching myself is my work, thus by expressing
this foresting, owling, angeling, butterflying,  
I narrate my life’s kingdom.
Only beautiful words for my Beatrice, Florence,
and re-Edening.

The deception of reality
Distorts and purports a dystopian image
Contrary to the utopia of our imaginations
This contradiction necessitates a division
And separation from the here and now
To the then and there versions
Of ourselves that depict and depreciate
In awareness of the real issues
That can move a generation to greatness;
To achieve the unachievable,
To tear down the corrupt walls
That constrain and obtain your identity
From the beautiful world around you
Simplifying your nature into a collective
Herd of obedient beasts
That never questions reality
Or its obscenities

Simplifying
helps you reach
a solid ground,
and the blue sky
behind

Drawing patterns
of life,
with a tips of fingers,
mixing colors
on a palm,
without having a strength
for a firm grip
knowing things,
deliberately letting go

And, why asking
questions, when
everything is so simple?

Even the blue sky,
highlighting
all around
Just ask, simple
why?

Poem 19
19.05.2016,

Explanatory poems with paid advertising included
Facebook, 21.44 scrolling back to 22.24


far away
buzzing
displaying myself and
things alone.

stereotyping
while mocking
stereotypes

a guy named by a famous poet
took pictures of me
somebody pays me to be and so I am in
this
landscape.

I paid the new God to advertise here.
21 of your friends like God,
his digital skills
In my online
free courses.

The burden of too much, I say.
Simplifying childhood may
protect us against mental health issues.
Raised well.
This life hurts
the bright side of me
I no longer have patience for.
Please, somebody give me a lemon
Just in case.

I feel sick of him
talking about bribery
but I eat news.
Arterial pressure.
How not to…it’s almost a miracle.

A fox is licking a screen.
falling in love with foxes.
it's funny that
my favourite place to see
my own photos is
a radio station,
at least so
far: a
military footprint.

Saltwater battery
can power your off the grid home
for 10 years. My dear, I
love you! Your daddy loves you. I’m sorry I
was trying to do something I
am writing it now
so I
can make myself heard.
Herd
live politics.
my life seems rich and unhappy
for a reason.

I’m El. so I paid
and I’m here.
Gigi Hadid analogy
with curves.

An image stuffed with birds.
Flying. Eating. Flamingo.
Wow.
I share memories.
Of my life. I
live from my memories. I
eat them. Insights
that become reality
thanks to people
they get a super network,
with generosity.
I work.
Tragedy happened.

Sold out
I support
victims of ‬fire.
There will be no fish in the ocean
in less than 40 years.
What is in essence
the difference between
the USSR
and
Germany during World War II
As a very witty response
to popular safety myths.
I should let my kid do at least 5
dangerous things.
Hopper.
I see pictures of
overpopulation and overconsumption
Tamara in Beverly Hills
advertising herself and her paintings
in black and white.

I’m new Y. I paid to be here.
Like me.
Subscribe and
get 12 weeks for just $12.
Plus, get a free tote bag.

Happiness is
reading a book
Drinking tea
I acknowledge somebody wrote
something about
what I imagine I successfully perform
so I’m writing
something about
making a popcorn live show.
Artists. Celebrities.
Love. Amazing.
It’s so great these people exist
so I can share
words of wisdom and beauty
A selfie of
my mom.
I put flowers in her hair.
Kids are educated in centers
meanwhile
Somebody important with
a name
we all know
once said
something
significant
so
I’m posting it here.

When a girl loses her hope,
She becomes the most dangerous creature.
Fairytales and happy endings
Have lost their appeal.
'Mr Right' has been buried along with
All the other prince charming's from her childhood story books.
She visits him only in her dreams.
Boys with smooth tongues and gripping fingers trail after her.
Her bright smile and piercing glare
Spell the words: "enter if you dare"
She will laugh at all your jokes and burn your skin with her touch.
And her hands, oh they're so soft and gentle,
You don't even notice your arm is on fire.
Cheap compliments spill out of your mouth one after the other
And when she does not say thank you,
But instead chuckles to herself
You cannot help how enticed you are.
Every word she utters is
Daring you to come closer.
You see the way she's looking at you,
With those cumbersome doe-eyes
And you think you know what
She wants  
And you think you have what
She needs
And you could not be more wrong.
She knows exactly the right witty remark to make, how to bat her lashes just right and how to laugh with just the right combination of coquettish and cute.
Stupid boys always like to think they can save girls who in their minds are 'too adorable for their own good'. Stupid boys are always trying to make themselves gentlemen by simplifying a girl to being 'pretty'.
The hopeful little darlings will swallow all of these unsavoury sentiments and store them in their naïve little hearts.
But not this girl.
Beware of the girl with no hope left.
To her, this is a game that she cannot lose anymore.
To her, you are nothing but a pawn;
Replaceable
Invaluable
She is a luxuriant forest
drenched in gasoline
A beautiful disaster waiting to happen.
She is so deceiving, so alluring,
You simply must have a taste
And you may.
But take warning:
She will light up in flames,
devour your little boy soul
and burn both of your bodies
to the ******* ground.

(It’s that vernal, infernal, tax season. How about a tax avoidance vignette? It’s poetic—in it’s own way)

Some students at a table near us in the dining hall were discussing America’s financial inequities. One guy was saying that we ought to “tax the crap” out of billionaires and their billions—and there was agreement all around—the consensus was downright mob-like.

I had to chuckle though, because these guys have no idea how wealth is managed in the world today. I bet, for instance, they think Musk has 200 billion dollars in his basement somewhere, but no, Musk’s 200 billion is his ‘net worth,’ the theoretical value of his stock portfolio (or his unrealized assets).

Just between us chickens, I’m related to a few ‘filthy rich’ people, (no, NOT my parents) and I’ve met many others and I can assure you, dear reader, that the ‘filthy rich’ have nothing you can tax. Now, I’m not a finance major. Everything I know, I learned from my Grandmère and my parents who thought a girl ought to know about money. So anyway, just for fun, here’s a quick (I’m condensing and simplifying), lesson on how taxation and wealth work in 2025.

The wealth of the rich lies in their assets—the value of companies they own or stocks they’ve invested in. Those “paper assets” can only be taxed when they’re sold—or, in tax terms, when their intrinsic value is “realized.”

Now instead of selling off (taxable) assets to live, the superrich use those assets as collateral for “securities backed loans” which are nontaxable. Elon Musk, for instance, takes no salary. He uses his ($94 billion) Tesla stock as collateral for loans he uses to fund his lavish lifestyle and provide ready cash as needed.

Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, Warren Buffett and Jeff Bezos—to name a few billionaires we all know of, take little or no salary—their compensation comes in the form of untaxable stock options they can leverage.

If you think this can’t go on forever, you’re wrong. Even when these billionaires die, the value of assets gained during their lifetimes are immune to taxation. At that point, some assets can be sold by heirs to pay off the outstanding loans, again, without worrying about taxes.

TA DAAAA. Now you know how the rich do it. How they avoid taxes in both life and death, and manage to leave massive fortunes to their heirs.
.
.
Songs for this:
Done Changed My Way of Living by Taj Mahal
Run On by Elvis Presley

The letters I never sent still sit and collect dust.
An novels worth of thoughts filled with you.
The time taken, conveying something not so easily read aloud.
If by the time I do send these letters your thought will still be present.
Sealed with the accordance that I imagined your lips before licking and sealing it shut.
Of course not every letter is of a serious tone.
There has to be some silliness somewhere.
Smiles scribbled to and from the end of the flap.
Letters nicely tucked, a hint of cologne still lingering about.
Words floating from one page to the next.
Hoping you see my face in every line in the letters I never sent.
Simplifying the significance of how much I thought of you.
Facing a blank sheet of paper soon to be filled.
Attempting a million and one ways to confess all the unique and special
things that make you, well.
You.
No one is you.
Remember that, as by the end of this letter I'll imagine placing my lips against your forehead.
That's enough for me.
As the letters I've never sent will soon become a novel devoted to the many times I've sat and thought of you

for my darling jan*

I woke at 2.30am and left you sighing gently as you slept,
checked the trap but found only droppings on the floor
I set the trap again and hoped the rats would leave –
I would prefer not to **** anything.
The dog mawed and moaned at its fleas
rubbing against the rail on the back verandah,
it settled when I whished it back inside to sit
(my mouth made that wist noise, the one you know the dog will hear but won’t wake the sleeping).

I lay on the red couch in the study and read Ray Carver.
A return to Carver simplifying me. If not by sleep I was
comforted by his weave of innocence and knowledge.
Ray started writing poetry in the year I was born (1957),
I don’t know why I mention this, perhaps I feel him like a kindred
spirit and am warmed by even the slightest connection.

Between the living and the dead are the sleeping. However being at rest
is no excuse for ignorance. Ray is at rest - some 18 years.
His poems like me are alive and breathing.

The magpies begin their morning carol as I return to bed at dawn.
Your breath and skin have waited for me.
When we wake, I tell you,
I am grateful our poem continues.



MChallis © 2010/2014

Simplifying
helps you reach
a solid ground
and the blue sky
behind

Drawing patterns
of life,
with a tips of fingers,
mixing colors
on a palm,
without having a strength
for a firm grip
knowing things,
deliberately letting go

And, why asking
questions, when
everything is so simple?

Even the blue sky,
highlighting
all around
Just ask, simple
why?

why you gotta be so mean?
despite my hopeless creative knocking
dead air
is
dead air...
   just why you gotta be so mean?
   simplifying explanations
    to the point of
     a b s t r a c t i o n