He has taken rake and shovel in hand,
Taking advantage of the light,
Rare in these climes this time of year,
Still welcomed, though rendered severe
By the sun's reluctant trudge above the horizon,
The type which, sauntering through a window pane
(Falling upon a crucifix anchored above a cradle
Or some ancient, gilded frame
Containing a photo of some grandparent's wedding day,
Exploding into full undifferentiated diffusion)
May possess a dram of warmth, albeit resigned, nostalgic
A bittersweet reminder of what has gone by
(And in the shade, the air is filled
With the portentous chill of what lies a few months hence)
But there nonetheless as he tends to those final farewells
From the trees bowing to December's inevitability,
The droppings not the *******-esque bursts of October
(Those having been collected and consigned
To the normal corner of the back lot)
But dreary brown-hued things, not welcomed by eye nor heart,
Simply corralled perfunctorily and dismissed.
One could contend that such activity is unnecessary,
The mere vanity of all endeavor,
As the snow will come soon, and steady as well,
Performing the seasonal, cyclical function in its own time,
But he soldiers on nonetheless, a unseen one-act nearly-farce,
Painstakingly raking and bending and scraping
To leave his patch of green uncovered for a little while
Until the locking time comes to seal the earth's secrets once more,
To be revealed to those
Who shall receive the teasing ministrations
Of the fickle, fitful March equinox.

The Ache is leaving. Three years languished by dead end jobs, drugs and friends. Last week above a bagel store, the sun morphs mute amidst travelling clouds, indifferent fluctuations of light on an otherwise featureless day.

You arrive a tight knot of anxieties over a moment in time that could only have arrived after its departure. The Ache welcomes you into their sparse interior. You trace last month’s 21st across the black mould complex; navigate piles of stacked boxes, unsure if anything is inside of them.

“I always make the best friends in departure,” the Ache says, flipping a plushy up and down by the waist.

“Maybe you can only love that which is already lost,” you reply, with an insight a friend will give you a week later.

The acid tastes bitter under your tongue. Small marks your body bursting, a glowing radiance of interconnections you’d always had but only now begun to feel. The Ache follows suit and you sit on the couch together to watch .hack//Legend of the Twilight. The come up entangles you in the spectacle; the screaming boy protagonist, the chipped tooth gag, the moe sister in need of saving from the liminal space of dead code. You take part in it; you revel in it. Bodies morph on the surface of the screen in hyperflat obscenity, their parts interchangeable to the affect of the drama. Faces invert, break and disfigure, before reformation into the self-same identity form.

A month earlier, you’d hosted a house show at your flat. Too anxious to perform you’d dropped a tab as you’ve done now. An overbearing sensation of too-much-ness — of sickening reality — washed through the nexus of your being. You writhed on the ground screaming into a microphone as a cacophony of sounds roiled through you. Everyone cheered.

The floor rose later that night. A damp, disgusting intensity that triggered contractions in your throat and chest. Pulled to the ground, you fought off your bandmate’s advances, too shocked to express your revulsion and horror, to react accordingly, to reconstitute a border of consensual sociality. You broke free and slurred “I’m no one’s! I’m no one’s!” before running out of the room. Hours later, you tried to comfort them. Weeks later, you realised how ******* ******* that had been. Months later, you learnt their friend had committed suicide days before the show.

Back in the lounge, a prince rides onto the screen on a pig. You turn to the Ache and say “This is ******* awful.”

The Ache responds “I know right?”

Outside the world burns blue with lustre. The Ache trails you and falls onto their stomach. “Oh my god,” the Ache blurts, “this is why I love acid. Everything just feels right.” They gaze wistfully at the grasses and flowers before them; catch a whiff of asphalt and nectar, intermingled. “Like, gender isn’t even a thing, you know? Just properties condensed into a legible sign to be disciplined by heteronormative governmentality.”

“Properties! Properties!” You chant, stomping around the Ache with your arms stretched out. You wave them in the air like windmills. You bare your teeth. “Properties! Properties!”

“You know what I mean, right?” The Ache asks, pointedly. “You know what I mean?”

You continue chanting “Properties!” for another minute or two, before spotting a slug on a blade of grass beneath your feet. You fall to your knees and gasp “It’s a slug!”

You and the Ache stare at the tiny referent for an indefinite period of time, absorbed in its glistening moistures. Eventually, the Ache says “I think it’s actually a snail.”

You used to read postmodern novels on acid. You loved their exploration of hyperreality; their dissection of culture as a system of meaning that arises out of our collective, desperate attempts to overcome the indifference of facticity. Read symptomatically, culture does not reveal unseen depths in the world, but rather, constitutes shallow networks of sprawling complexity — truth effects — illusions of mastery over an, otherwise, undifferentiated and senseless becoming.

Then one day, the world overwhelmed you. Down the hall, your flatmates sounded an eternal return. As they spoke in joyous abandon you traced the lines from their mouths — found their origin in idiot artefacts of Hollywood Babylon. The joy of abstraction you once relished in your books took on an all too direct horror. You recoiled. You bound your lips in hysteria, for fear of becoming another repeating machine of an all too present culture industry. Better dumb than banal — better to say nothing at all, than everything that already was and would ever be. You cried and cried until everyone left — until you were alone with your silence and your tears and your nonexistent originality.

Dusk falls in violet streaks. You reach your room on the second floor of the building, open the bedside window and stick your legs out into a cool breeze. The Ache joins you. Danny Burton, the local MP, arrives in his van, his smiling bald face plastered on its side like an uncanny double enclosing its original.

“Hey look, it’s Danny Burton, the local MP.” Danny Burton turns his head. He glares at your dangling feet for a few seconds before entering his house. “You know, this is the first time in three years he’s looked at me and it’s at the peak of my degeneracy.” You turn to the Ache. “One of my favourite past times is watching him wander around the house at night, ******* and unsure of himself. He always goes to check on his BBQ.” You bounce on the bed in mania.

“See this is what people do, right?” the Ache says, mirroring your excitement. “Like, look at that lady walking her dog.” The Ache motions, with a cruel glint in their eyes, to the passerby on the fast dimming street. “What do you think she gets out of that? Doing that every night?” Without waiting for you to respond, the Ache answers, in a low, sarcastic tone “I guess she gets enjoyment. Doing her thing. Like everyone else.” The lady and the dog disappear beyond the curve of the road. Another pair soon arrives, taking the same path as the one before.

A few months back, you’d met an old friend at an exhibition on intersectional feminism. After the perfunctory art, wine and grapes, she drove you home, back to your run down flat in an otherwise bourgeois neighbourhood. She sat silent as the sun set before the dashboard, then asked how anyone could live like this; how anyone could stand driving out of their perfect suburban home, at the same time every morning, to work the same shift every day, for the rest of their stupid life. The dull ache of routine; the slow, boring death. You said nothing. You said nothing because you agreed with her.

“Life began as self-replicating information molecules,” you reply, obliquely. “Catalysis on superheated clay pockets. Repetition out of an attempt to bind the excess of radiant light.”

It is dark now; a formless hollow, pitted with harsh yellow lamps of varying, distant sizes. The Ache flips onto their stomach and scoffs “What’s that? We’re all in this pointless repetition together?”

You respond, cautiously “I just don’t think that being smart is any better than being stupid; that our disavowed repetitions are any worthier than anyone else’s.”

The Ache returns your gaze with an intensity you’ve never seen before. “Did I say being smart was any better? Did I say that? Being smart is part of the issue. There is no trajectory that doesn’t become a habitual refrain. When you can do anything, everything becomes rote, effortless and pointless.

“But don’t act as if there’s no difference between us and these ******* idiots,” the Ache spits, motioning into the blackness beyond your frame. “I knew this one guy, this complete and utter ****. We went to a café, and he wouldn’t stop talking about the waitress, about how hot she was, how he wanted to **** her, while she was in earshot, because, I don’t know, he thought that would get him laid.

“Then we went for a drive and he failed a ******* u-turn. He just drove back and forth, over and again. A dead, automatic weight. A car came from the other lane, towards us, and waited for him to finish, but he stopped in the middle of the street and started yelling, saying **** like, ‘what does this ******* want?’ He got out of his car, out of his idiot u-turn, and tried to start a fight with the other driver — you know, the one who’d waited silently for him to finish.”

You don’t attempt a rebuttal; you don’t want to negate the Ache’s experience. Instead, you ask “Why were you hanging out with this guy in the first place?”

The Ache responds “Because I was alone, and I was lonely, and I had no one else.”

It is 2AM. Moths dance chaotic across the invisible precipice of your bedside window, between the inner and outer spaces of linguistic designation. There is a layering of history here — of affects and functions that have blurred beyond recognition — discoloured, muted, absented.

In the hollow of your bed, the Ache laughs. You don’t dare close the distance. Sometimes you find the edges of their impact and trace your own death. All your worries manifest without content. All form and waver and empty expanse where you drink deeply without a head. Because you have lost so much time already. And nothing keeps.

Months later, after the Ache has left, you will go to the beach. You will see the roiling waves beneath crash into the rocky shore of the esplanade, a violence that merges formlessly into a still, motionless horizon, for they are two and the same. You will be unable to put into words how it feels to know that such a line of calm exists out of the pull and push of endless change, that it has existed long before your birth and will exist long after your death.

The last lingering traces of acid flee your skin. Doused in tomorrow’s stupor, you close your eyes. You catch no sleep.

|♀︎|               The id (Latin for "it",German: Es)                     |☉|
                    is the disorganized part of the personality
                    structure containing basic human ♀︎
                                instinctual drives:    ☉        
             ♀︎                Id is the only component
                     of personality that is present from birth;
     it is the source of our ****** needs, wants, desires,
    & impulses, [          |     ♀︎  ] particularly our ******, aggressive drives.
The id contains the libido, which is the primary
  source of instinctual force that is unresponsive
  to the demands of reality:
The id acts according to the "pleasure principle"
—the psychic force that motivates the tendency
                                 to seek immediate gratification of any impulse—
    defined as seeking to avoid pain
or un-pleasure  (not "displeasure") ☉♀︎  
aroused by increases in instinctual           tension | ☉ | According to Freud
      id is unconscious by definition:
                                            ♀︎♀︎♀︎♀︎
­It is the dark,          supposedly                           inaccessible part of our brain; the personality,
                                 what little we know of it, we have learned
                              from our studies of dreams      and of course
                                      the construction of neurotic symptoms,
and most of that                                                      of a negative character
                                      can be described       only in direct contrast to the
                                      ego; [              ],
we approach the id with analogies: [                          ]   ♀︎
                              we call it chaos,
a cauldron            ☉♀︎         ♀︎        full of seething "excitations"
                                ...It is filled
with energy reaching it from the instincts
but has no organization,              producing a unified           collective will,
w/ only the striving                                       to bring about the satisfaction
                            of the instinctual needs to subject
                                                     to the observance  of     & compel
  obedience to
  the pleasure principle:
                                                      ­      ♀︎
  In the id:
                              ...contrary impulses exist side by side,
                                   without cancelling each other out. ...
There is nothing in the id that [             ]  could be compared with negation;
                              nothing in the id
                              which corresponds to the idea of time.

              Developmentally,                     ☉      ­                    id precedes
              (                 ), ego;
                                   i.e., the psychic apparatus begins
                                    at birth as an undifferentiated id,
         part of which then develops into the       ☉           structured ego
         Thus, the id:♀︎
                                                           ­                      ♀︎                  ♀︎    
...contains everything that is inherited,
that is present at birth, & is laid down in its constitution—
above all; therefore, the instincts,
which originate from the somatic organization,
and which find a first psychical expression here
        ☉          (in the id) in (ideal) forms unknown to "us"; [       |           ]

The mind of a newborn child is regarded
as completely "id-ridden", in the sense that it is a mass of instinctive drives and impulses and needs immediate satisfaction; ☉

The id "knows no judgments of value:
no good and evil, no morality;    ...Instinctual cathexes seeking discharge—that, in our view,             is all there is in the id."
It is regarded as "the great reservoir of libido",
the instinctive drive to create—the life instincts
               that are crucial to pleasurable survival;
               Alongside the life instincts come the death instincts—
                                       the death drive which Freud articulated
relatively late in his career (                                                                ­          ♀︎
                                                    ­       ) in "the hypothesis of a death instinct,
the task of which is to lead organic          life back into the inanimate state."
For Freud,                                               "the death instinct would thus seem
to express itself                                          —though probably only in part—
as an instinct of destruction directed against
the external world and other organisms" [Many religions use images to
                                            "represent" God in icons for art or worship]
                         The monad, an ancient symbol ♀︎
for the metaphysical Absolute.      ♀︎            Early science,
          particularly geometry and astrology and astronomy,
          connected to the divine for most medieval scholars;
         many believing there was something intrinsically ☉
           "divine" or "perfect" that could be found in circles:  ☉
                         In monotheistic thought, God is conceived   ♀︎  ☉
of as the Supreme Being and the principal object of faith:  ☉
The concept of God, as described by theologians,          ☉
commonly includes the attributes of omniscience                (all-knowing),
      ♀︎                     omnipotence (unlimited power),
                       omnipresence (present everywhere),  
       as having an eternal and necessary existence;
    Depending on one’s kind of theism,      ♀︎♀︎♀︎♀︎♀︎              ♀︎
    these attributes are used either in way of analogy, or in a literal sense as
                                   distinct properties of the God;       ♀︎♀︎♀︎
       ♀︎                         (                  )
God is most often held to be incorporeal                      (immaterial)
     In-corporeality   &       ♀︎        ☉                        corporeality of God
             are related to the conceptions of a transcendent
                     being outside nature & immanence;
                     the being in nature & the world of God,
  with positions of synthesis such as the
♀︎                 "immanent transcendence":  ♀︎                                  |       ♀︎♀︎♀︎
♀︎
Some religions describe                          ☉
                   ♀︎        ­                God without reference
to gender, while others use masculine terminology,
                    using such terms as "Him" or "Father,"
         |  and some religions (such as Judaism) |                                |
         |  attribute only a purely grammatical "gender" to God:       ♀︎
         |  through [                                ] aggression; ♀︎ Freud considered that
    "the id, the whole person, originally includes                            ♀︎
all the instinctual impulses;       the destructive                             ♀︎          
                   ♀︎                             instinct as well",                          ☉  
  ♀︎       ♀︎      as Eros or the life instincts: ♀︎♀︎♀︎♀︎♀︎  ☉  ☉  ☉  ☉♀︎
     Monad from the Greek word monos   ☉
or μονάς (from the word μόνος, which    ♀︎
means "one", "single", or "unique"),        ♀︎
             was referred to by the Greek ♀︎♀︎ ☉
philosophers as "The First", "The Seed", ♀︎
"The Essence", "The Builder",        ♀︎♀︎   ☉
"The Foundation."♀︎ They also called it   ♀︎
"Unity." Source: ☉ "Divine Proportion" ☉♀︎♀︎♀︎

What’s the difference between hate and love
When they are two sides of the same blade.

Sharpened brandished waving wildly in ghost columns
against the disfigured, burning-white face of abrasion.
Then,
march home with square, taut shoulders – slightly bony –
Body swelled and puffed with
the blood-red energy of something desperate to naked pairs
ramming themselves against each other in an effort to
release.
These colorless concepts, abstract words
that hang in the air the same as
smoke-rings – ghost columns.

Could it give You a religion;
a belief that there is some guiding force in the universe
binding the two of you together by
touch, smell, scratching, grinding --
And he and You quelled
each other’s pleading prayers within
the folds of each muscles
the steeple of each elbow,
the hollow of each throat.

Some spiritualists call this the Kundalini – feel this world through a material base
A Love religion – fixing body and body together
because it’s the one thing that seems to make sense in this crude moment
when the ashes settled to fossilize inside
His and Yours brains.

“My God. His chest, his belly,
the riding and the falling, the moans.
How he clung to me, how he struggled --
Life and death! Life and death!”

The circle of arms is the gateway
to some emotional dry-heave:
the swelling, purging, and crashing
of grief, rage, love, and comfort
those same abstract, colorless concepts
teetering on the edge of a beaten-down slave gospel.

We can give our vegetables a gender:
Female onions. Peel only when ripe then
ferment in a closed plastic bottle.
Color sensations that can only pass between illuminated palms on an
angry evening.
Shakespeare’s Gloucester could only see this world feelingly, woman:
How will you cope after being blinded by his tears?
And when the ream is spent, write a poem on the back.

After your limbs searched for each other after years gone, searched underneath the covers for a comforting hand that could save the loneliness from shaking your souls out of your bodies?
When limbs stretched forward to hold both bodies together,
the backbones that ****** you both pressed against the skin --
The very skin that ****** you, too.
That dream baby bearing the handprint of his ghost --
his skin on your skin on baby skin
Against undifferentiated dark, it may glow beneath the cradle’s mobile.
“Another illegitimate black baby.” Let’s call it Smoke and Mirrors for maybe just a second.
Don’t pay attention to the swerve of small-town eyes.
Then, we can see the light through the parenthesis.
Call it the ghost of his Love. The ghost of meat love. Delirious brilliance.

Ghost of mouth-on-the-screen-door Love.
The same taste of nickels, of iron, of blood --
Leave the porchlight on if you want him to find his way back.
Hang the water-filled jar from the tree to ward away the evil ghosts.
Light it, love it, leave it. Light it, love it, leave it.
Who’s going to guide the insect-feelers
to the light
on the nights
When words split, scatter, and sift
into labor-streaked pyramids between these fingers?

Now do you know where you are? We see a little farther now, a little farther still.
Staked in fury, can we recognize red ants on a red ant hill, now?
Shrouded in a glory-cloud, at least you knew you fit somewhere.

As Women, We know the gospel well. A little farther now and a little farther still.
The maddening dances around *** and Song – it is possible for the rest of Us to understand
and know how You’ve been bleeding.

In your world there are magnetic lines that draw your needle North. Polaris and the Great Bear guide you home from clear moonlit skies, so that you may stumble into your hearth at night. I was told that in my heart was a compass rose, with a needle like yours, pointed and true. But my directions are undifferentiated. Ursa hides behind dark clouds and the magnetosphere is interrupted by the fiercest of solar winds. The needle fights to find North caught in an endless loop. The way home is unknown. But somewhere I know you are waiting for me to arrive, for the storms to pass. You would wait a thousand years. And though my compass is broken, I am reaching out my arms to find my way through the brush. And someday I will find you.

a shadow geist
out of the passing of time
reaches in me
grapples my heartstrings
tugs me away like a
like a stranded coastliner
and as it goes, I go,

and as you watch
in the darkness of interstellar space
you dim
to all but a faint sparkle
undifferentiated from other stars
but I won't confuse or lose you
I'll remember you

Even if I don't
I'll make something up in
place of the memory of you

I can't help but feel sorry
where am I now

Lisa and I had a party to hit-up. I can’t stay inside all the time, not on a Friday night anyway and a rooftop is the perfect place to mull over big questions and get the freshest commentary about cultural phenoms - intermixed with music, absotively.

There were several, large, coolers crammed with canned martinis - everything from little Tip-Tops to Tiki-*** Mai-Tais and Triple-Spice Margaritas - this is a partizzle. I wasn’t out to drown my romantic sorrows, but I quickly reached fuzzy and relaxed - which is where I wanted to go.

A massive thumping began, ‘Pitbull’ began spilling from the speakers (‘la la la la’) and the crowd of about 30 reacted in a kind of whooping, group seizure. Lisa clutched my arm wanting me to ‘drop it’ on the dance floor - I could only read her lips - “Come ON,” she pantomimed, and I was ready to make that commitment.

We’re here at Melon’s invitation (a Yale PhD friend), undergraduates don’t usually hang out with graduate students, so it was special to feel welcomed at this off-campus link-up. We’re on the third-floor roof of an office building, under the stars.

The setup reminded me of a Brooklyn warehouse rave Lisa once dragged me to. Multicolored lights, strung every which way overhead, provided a festive air and a round stone fire-pit provided both heat and a light that flickered against every walled surface, evoking something cave-like, deep and primitive - a genetic, stone-age, memory perhaps.

When the beats finally let up, we’d danced-out about 10 songs. Lisa and I sagged into our lawn chairs - fanning ourselves even though it was a cool evening. Between tracks, there was a murmur of in-town traffic and people passing below, forming the undifferentiated buzz of nightlife. “I’m starving,” I told Lisa, who nodded, “Me too - poor planning,” she updogged.

Right then, Melon came over. Melon (real name Milton) is 6’3 and maybe 450lbs. He reminds me of John Candy, with his blonde hair, ever-present smile and colorful Hawaiian shirts.
“You’re giggin,” he said, Mai-Tai in one hand and a lady in the other.
“Thanks for inviting us,” I said, with a nod, “this is nice,” indicating the roof setup.
“Yea,” he agreed, looking around and waving his drink, in greetings, to arriving people.
“I have something for you!” I told Melon, pulling a small bottle of cologne out of my bag.
“Oh, my God,” he said, lighting up like a Christmas tree, “Tobacco Vanille! You shouldn’t have.”
“You said that’s your favorite, ya?” “Yeah, but..” he began.
“You helped us move in,” I said, “It’s a thank you - from all the girls (I lied) and it’s our party gift!”
“Wow, well, thanks Peaches,” he said, adding “you’re cracked,” and gave me a one handed hug.
“Food’s on the way” he said, and then, like he’d forgotten something, “This is Ellen,” he said, turning so she rotated closer.” We only shook hands and nodded, because the music started again.

Not two minutes later, the metal door to the stairs swung open and several guys came up with catering trays of life-saving Tex-Mex from ‘Tacos Los Gordos,’ a couple of blocks away.

“Maybe there IS a God,” I pronounced, unheard in the din, my stomach growling in anticipation.

slang…
hit-up = attend
absotively = absolutely & positively
partizzle = party
giggin = having fun, dancing
updogged = adding a further comment to a comment string.
peaches = Melon calls me peaches ‘cause I’m from Georgia.
cracked = crazy

Peter (my bf) and I were in Paris, about three weeks ago (I was on Spring break, he was on vacation from work).
‘Headstart for Happiness,’ by ‘the Style Council,’ was playing low somewhere.
“This is the kind of starry winter night that guy from the Netherlands used to paint,” I observed.
“If you were writing about it,” he asked, “how would you describe it?”
“Imagine a deep, still blue, hosting a field of luminescent light scatter, and a bashful moon, low in the sky, as if it were hiding in the trees.” I guessed.
“It’ll moonset soon,” he said “within the hour.” he added.
“I never think of moonsets.” I said, looking at the sky like it was new.
“The moon follows the line of the ecliptic,” he said, as if that meant something, “more or less,” he qualified.
“To think I grew up under an undifferentiated sky,” I marveled.

When I’m with him, I can relax, I don’t have to be-on, he’s smart enough.
Of course, I’d come in handy if he went into cardiac arrest or started choking on something.

We were sitting side by side, outside ‘Le Café du Marché,’ a bistro near the Eiffel Tower. Our waiter,  Léo, had just refilled our coffee. It was 9:30 PM and we’d been at this table for about two hours.

We’d reduced the tarte-tatin to a few crumbs forty minutes ago, but Léo knows me and although they're thirty tourists in line for tables, he won’t rush us.

Like puppets dance, we often mimic lines - I don’t know why.
“I was stalking you,” I confided, running a finger along his long-sleeve shirt-cuff.
“I was stalking you,” He said. Our eyes were fixed on each other.
“No, seriously,” I said, moving in much closer, to be serious.
“No, seriously,” He deadpanned back.
“Then I caught you,” I went on, and I was very close now, our lips maybe two inches apart.
“No, I caught you,” he said, smiling as I got very close. “It was ****** Jujitsu,” he softly bragged.
“Wax on, wax off,” I said before I stole a quick kiss.

Peter was shocked, a scooch, by French teens.
If French teens have a crush, especially in Paris, it’s a ‘drop what you’re doing,’ snog-fest - between classes in the hall, on-the-metro, in a coffee shop or grocery store they go-all-in, because love must be stormy, urgent, tinchy.
Here’s a secret. Peter says, “You **** my face, like no one ever has.” It must be the French in me. Ha!

Of course, I learned all I know about love from Taylor Swift.
Let’s see, first, I must be willing to let down my guard - because love can happen at any time.
Love, at its best, is overwhelming, mistake prone, meaningful and powerful - but I can’t assume it’ll last, because my lover may have ulterior motives. I could be hurt or changed by the experience - but I’ll have the memories. Eventually though, I’ll heal enough to try again - with a new set of expectations.

Maybe I’ll even write a song or a poem about it.

the jhoola is damp from
evening rains
still I enjoy swinging under
misty twilight skies
the moon beaming a toothless grin

Funny how it all feels so real
solid, permanent
I’ll always be Sonya ki
in this familiar body,
surroundings and place

I gaze at puddles
of silvery water glistening
over the garden beds
visions from the past float to the
surface
not too long ago I was living in
Arkansas, and before that the big apple
childhood memories of my mother’s
comforting voice and soft lap
eclipses the other images morphing
into a cascade of ever changing
ephemeral moments in time

If nothing stays the same then
what is it that resounds through
the hills and valleys of my being
like an eternal echo

That fixed point where the sun never rises nor sets
Splendor enthroned within
Immortal witness
Beloved

“Consciousness is neither inward turned nor outward turned nor both
It is not undifferentiated, it is beyond cognition and non cognition.
Not experienced by the senses nor known by comparison or inference,
incomprehensible, unthinkable and indescribable,
pure consciousness, the real Self, the cessation of all phenomena,
tranquil, all-blissful, one without a second,
this fourth state (Turiya ), the Atma (Real Self)
(Eternal Witness)
is to be realized”
~Mandukya Upanishad

every man has his island,
his hiding places projected out loud
with blood power,
vernacular dreams &
ventriloquist voices.
among other things, madness -
an optical illusion
what you see is what you are
or seeing is believing
insideman and outsidemen
undifferentiated
the room has one view
on patched windows
indesire cutting deserted canyons
for the self-acclaimed King
(indesire wants nothing but to be,
to make room for islands in reality)

“be good, otherwise Haruka will come
to take you away, my child”
(what’s in a name
Haruka is “from far away”)
but children very rarely draw lines
caught in the furious chaotic circles of the world
now that every action has a reaction
reality principle is just a skin
holding the inside out & the outside in.

everyman has his island
of vexed fantasies
look into your eyes from outside in
before you see that fire
or anything else,
see this
-the beautiful war-

how can it be,
the mathematicians,
the statisticians,
can so well predict

the curvature of my day;
is my life so impoverished,
so undifferentiated, my course;
the climb, the leveling, the
ultimatum gliding, a summary
path to an unremarkable landing

probable outcomes of my
statistical profile so calculable;
my dreams, their peculiarities,
essences, massaged into conformity

hatch plot, deceive, it’s cool,
write a poem, unpredictable,
who could foretell, this scheme,
let’s keep a secret, tween us only,
cover the keyhole, so their eye
cannot peak inside the you and I,
two twice ten thousand indecipherable,
writer and reader, we one, inseparable

only we can decode the true meaning

Love's the base line
Let us be and what would we lack?
Love's no elixir nor intoxicant
Love's the pure undifferentiated state of joy
Love's where we go when we let go of ourselves
And we let go of our games and our desires
And our pasts and our futures and our fates and destinies
Love is tasting good food and chewing till it's paste and sitting back and smiling feeling it energize every cell
Loves hoping everybody wins the poetry slam
Because what good would it be to be in it for yourself
For one person
Against the universe?
None of us are opposed in love,
We are the unbroken chain
But every link is not connected to just
The link in front and the link behind
It is connected to every link at once
It is connected to every link ever forged with the blacksmith's love
The chain doesn't draw a line between us,
It wraps around us and ties us together
Oh love is all I knew before this poem
And love is the effortlessness of every word
Because only Nothing could be easier than love
And love is to BE nothing
Because who could resist such loving completion?
Nothing is the soul of the universe
And anything at all is Nothing but Love
Love is finishing my speech and sitting down because I'd rather hear yours

7 Millions spots of you and I
roaming in jungles and desserts
of the partitioned portions
back at the bone of humanity
speaking in voices as one
rolling as the dense population
seeking liberty and autonomy
failing as the world erodes
indecisive about the notions
of diversity and adversity
speaking in voices as one
in a world of words and verbs
freed of greed and misconception
in a field of broken chains
where truths are a daily meal
void of captivity and blindness
mysterious and unconsumed
undiluted and undifferentiated*  
*7 Millions spots of you and I

i. “…THE SAME FORCE AND EFFECT AS AN ORDER OF FILIATION…”

She’d said she wasn’t expecting or demanding a ******* thing
(It’s probably your kid, she said, But I wouldn’t swear to it)
And his buddies swore he was crazier than a ******* rat
To even think about going along with the whole idea
After she all but given him a Get Out Of Jail Free card,
But he’d gone ahead and signed all the paperwork
Which, in the eyes of the state and the child-support folks,
Made him the one true father of this baby-to-be.  
He couldn’t begin to explain
Why he hadn’t fought the notion tooth-and-nail,
Save for the occasional muttered Baby oughtta have a father,
But there was more to it that; he had a vague notion
That knowing half of who you were was worse
Than having no knowledge at all, your whole reason for being
Becoming the exploration of odd hunches and unrealized fears,
The study of every man that crossed your mother’s path
In the hope (or, more likely, the absolute and utter dread)
That you were glimpsing a part of your genetic destiny,
Though such a line of thought was probably just *******,
A product of Genesee Cream Ale philosophizing.
When the time came, he’d agreed
(An idea which reduced his friends
To mute amazement and slow, sad head shaking)
To be present at the birth,
And, after certain undertakings
He’d just as soon not have seen were complete,
The nurse (saying It’s a boy.  A big, beautiful healthy boy.)
Handed him a black-mouthed, screaming little mass,
Fists clenched tightly, entire body tensed
As if it realized just how inadvisable the whole situation was.
Faced with this tangible evidence of his ostensible patrimony,
He found himself unable to say anything except
*******.  **-lee ****.

ii. As The Old Joke Goes, “In The Morning?  
*****, I Don’t Respect You Now.”

He had, of course, forgotten her name,
Assuming he’d ever known it,
And so it had been chica and hija and amada all night,
Though, to be fair, she couldn’t remember
If he was Juan or Jhonny or Jesus;
She simply remembered that he was Colombian,
All dark hair and bright smiles and quite tall
Although that could have just been a trick of the eye,
As his friends were all compact squatness,
Which she had pointed out  while they were dancing,
To which he’d subsequently horse-laughed out loud.
Chica, he’d fairly shouted over the music,
The best way to be good looking is to have ugly friends.
He’d come to Batavia to hunker down for winter
After the wineries had buttoned things up for the season,
Spending his time catching odd jobs here and there;
Anything to get by, he’d said with the most outrageous of winks.  
She’d had no intention, none whatsoever, of taking him home,
But anything to get by takes in any multitude of sins,
Venal and otherwise.
She woke up about two-thirty or so, all damp with sweat
And the remnants of *******,
To see him awake and getting dressed.
Before she could say a thing, he put a finger to her lips.
Shhh chica, he said softly and soothingly,
Like he was trying to hush an infant,
I got some stuff I really need to take care of;
Look, we’ll get breakfast, OK?
You know the Bob Evans out by the highway? Six o’ clock, eh?
And with that, it was a quick, almost brotherly, peck on the cheek,
Then he was gone, so stealthily that she was briefly unsure
That he’d ever indeed been there at all.
Breakfast, can you imagine she thought
As she rolled over to get some sleep,
Like I’m even awake at such an hour.

iii. We Don’t Ask For Directions, And We Sure As Hell Don’t Make Lists

There had been no blowup, no volcanic incidents of infidelity
No grotesque financial stupidity;  
The china and glasses had remained unbroken,
The plaster-and-lath not displaced
By the seismic slamming of doors.
It had been slow, subtle,
Like the slow unraveling of a thread here in there
Opening up a gaping hole in a old comfortable sweater,
Or how the unhurried seeping of water
Would occasionally cause an outcropping of rock
To tumble into the gorges over at Letchworth.  
Oh, there had probably been the proverbial last straw:
Maybe the new refrigerator that didn’t fit through a single door
In the entire house (and who in hell bought something like that
Without taking measurements anyway)
Or the foolhardy extended warranty on the Volvo,
Which had **** near a hundred and fifty thousand miles on it
And had no more trade-in value
Than a Matchbox miniature of the model,
But it any case, the immediate cause
Was probably more symptom than disease, anyway.
He’d packed a couple of bags with the basics
To ****, shave, shower and dress,
And jumped into the ancient but well-protected wagon,
Heading to God only knows where:
His brother in York, maybe,
Or his mom’s place way the hell up in Tupper Lake,
(Not that he had the stomach for the questions and sidelong looks That particular destination entailed)
But about ten miles out he realized
He’d forgotten his ******* bike.
****, ****, stupid **** he said,
Pounding the steering wheel in rhythm;
The notion of going back like some dumb-*** eight-year-old,
All hang-dog look and tail between his legs
Was not particularly appealing,
But the notion of having to **** time
Without the prospect of a bike ride
(Wind in what was left of his hair,
The barking in his calves as he climbed an incline,
The whole **** freedom of the thing)
Was simply too much to consider,
So he swung the car around and headed back.
She was, as he knew she would be,
Waiting in the doorway with the bike
(**** near sharing a brain after all this time, to be sure),
Her face hung with a look not really a smile or frown
Or anything that fit a definition,
But endearing all the same, and he heard a voice not quite his ask
Well, is it OK if I come in for a few minutes?

iv. The Bob Evans Out By The Highway

…the **** am I doing here anyway, she thought,
Staring down at the table, chunky taupe-ish coffee mugs
And logo plates, fine china for everyone and no one,
Set for two (she hadn’t ordered, she was waiting for someone)
The restaurant more or less empty,
Only the odd trucker or  some senior citizen
Who was still on rat-race time.
The clock had hit six-fifteen when she,
Eyes cloudy and threatening to ambush hastily applied mascara,
Was ready to flag down the waitress to let her know
That she was just a coffee, thanks, when he walked in,
No, burst in, like a madness of chrysanthemum
Where there had only been undifferentiated greenery
Mere moments before.
I’m sorry, chica, he said, bending over to kiss her cheek,
This whole life thing gets in the way sometimes, eh?
He sat down, slapping the table with both hands
Man, he said, all but snorting, I could eat a horse,
And what better place than this, mmm?

Am I a plain being
that blends in with all
just another shade of grey
an empty call
for I feel unappreciated
unnoticed trying hard
for I am undifferentiated
feeling lost
just another broken shard
apart of something bigger
but sadly just as plain
like a dark rushing river
feeling all the same
empty, broken, boring
these things apply
lost, lifeless, mourning
the words just fly by
I try hard and what do I get
a colorless empty palette
a raindrop same as all others
uncared for tossed aside
just like all the others
a bleak being of wrong existence
a mistake made
erased indifferent
a failure a group of many
why there's too much there's plenty
then there are those good
who cast us shame
so perfect we are entertained
wishing we could just start over
life has no second chances
move over
it's a new generations turn
your done
look at your life you had no fun
your goals were never met
you see
there's too many of you and me
in truth were the same
but I'm just feeling plain

I'm bound by the sound
Of my own beating heart, let's start.
Not a battle, but a way to drop and rattle.
It's taking me back up to the top, now, explain everything from the beginning, stop.
Dropped all the pieces in this room, a makeshift tomb.
Twisting names and games.
Through no shame, you gain.
The inevitable urges to tip yourself over all of your verges.
Naming rhymes and taking the climb.
To the undifferentiated child, we can go wild.