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If
If you can keep your head when all about you
  Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
  But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
  Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated don’t give way to hating,
  And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
  If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
  And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
  Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
  And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
  And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
  And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
  To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
  Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
  Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
  If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
  With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
  And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
Aaron Salzman Jul 2014
A periwinkle snap of the fingers
A glazed-over, ungazed-at afterthought of a dimwitted maker
Allowing only specks of atmosphere to puncture through for gasps of air
An assassination without capacity for reflection or modesty.
Broadening my horizons, my eyes adjusting to the sun's sheddings,
I notice the satin ribbons of the west, trotting over the hills, blood-lusting,
Roaring in anticipation of the persecution of the dry, dusty chandelier to the north
Forcing the lumination,
Breaking open the porous night-covering threatening to its final breath
The self-mutilation to bring it and its 3 navigational acquaintances to the bone-encrusted, sadistic
Hell of the humans, modern-day Terra, the disease-laced, frayed blanket of Gaea.
And as I viciously avert my eyes as the first blow finds a weak exposed abdomen,
I pray to God that I might participate in this brawl,
And I curse high heaven that it is so fateful a dusk.
Inspiration from the remarkable Seamus Heaney
Aaron Salzman Jun 2014
A stable, a stable!
Something stable for this horse!
Master trots in with a syringe...
Amphetamines have been known to work on these beasts.

Captured young, raised a pawn,
Played and sacrificed as an august maiden in spring.
Master jerks the horse this-a-way,
down the narrow alleys.

The scene of Italy:
Passionate for romance-
Warm, kindled as Master's desire,
Icy, calculated as Master's gaze.

Stately Master carries head
In such a way that Master's future queen
Might recognize Master
And find truly obvious romantics.

But lo! No gaze returned and
Dashed! Master abruptly halts
And begins his pauper-ly descent from me,
His high horse.
Inspired by a friend, Delaney, who thankfully pointed out my faults
Aaron Salzman May 2014
A blonde, a brunette, and a redhead walk into a bar.
They leave feeling betrayed.
Fellas- know your boundaries, and have a prudent summer.
Aaron Salzman May 2014
The cry
of the barrel screams
Screams resound across the earth's
Great Expanse
Expands from the lowlands of Vail to
the valleys of Los Angeles to
the depths of Oceania to
the oceans of death and,
after incessantly increasing,
incredulously stops.

Except not really.

Really, to most Valians,
he was just a name in passing,
fluttering past consciousness just long enough
to get a "poor thing" or a "shame."
Really, his body hit the cement a full
7 hours, 6 minutes before his parents came work
from home, not the other way round,
Saw the alien body of their offspring, then the corpse,
and threw themselves
at lawyers, counselors, and more lawyers
as each professional debated which lover
he wanted as his teammate in the opening of
The Blame Games.
Really, the cessation of Adam's heart
didn't open the gates in exuberant expectation of
The true savior.
His beats stopped when
the world began
The lost change in between his seat cushions
never had just one meaning.
Really, he never thought he would
ever amount to more than a dollar.
Really, the only question that matters,
the only entreatment with gravity,
is, Was he right?
Aaron Salzman Mar 2014
Apply yourself,
Apply yourself,
Or you’ll sleep on the streets all by yourself.
Don’t ask silly questions; don’t try to scrape by,
Apply yourself this time.

Try yourself,
Try yourself,
No matter the hurdles inside yourself.
Forget the drinking, the hunger, the pain,
Try yourself again.

Push yourself,
Push yourself,
We think the stress won’t **** yourself.
Just go to a college outside of your league,
Through a stifling program to get your degree.
But if you fail, you must be lazy;
Push yourself like crazy.

Stay strong!
Stay strong!
Let go of your thoughts that, “This system is wrong,”
Or, “9 months is too long,”
Or, “Crack makes me King Kong,”
Or, “Should I use needle or stick with the ****?”
Silly, such thoughts, with no motivation,
People today have no innovation.

Help yourself,
Help yourself,
When you’re in the church all by yourself,
Your mom’s in a coffin, your dad’s in a grave,
Your sister and mister both passed away.
And then a man (more hardworking than you),
Comes in and kills you, right in the pew,
Blood seeps out and you sleep evermore…
Listen to us or be one with the poor.
Written in Chemistry and Pre-Calculus Class
Aaron Salzman Mar 2014
Abstract, cohesive,
Invigorating, sobering
Hypothetical absolutes.

They begin purifying the ground,
Wearing not black, nor the noisy character of day, but the ambiance of the rising of the moon,
Stealing through the enclosure, lit as at a dark twilight.
Not robbers nor beggars; skilled and cunning they fertilize unholy ground,
as idolaters often do.
Riddled with holes, they take the appearance of the corpses of her…
They seem to respond to Him, Him, Him alone.
He yells, “Descend, descend!” and she holds His stare, unable to respond, dazed, feeling as if to have ordered the command herself.

At sea (The Atlantic): Specific in the attempts towards land, firm-browed.
Until Leonardo/Jack/Iscariot runs on and Hope falls (jumps?), over the side, lost to the sea.
Ariel after the witch.
(At least Lost At Sea and The Little Mermaid were nominated for an Oscar! Leo couldn’t come through for Titanic! she smirks.)

That anonymous grin slowly disappears.
The Father steals the chords,
His Son goes for the teeth,
Their Eternal Companion with the lips. Yet

He

Remains.
Cursing heaven and hell with the ****** features she has left, weeping.
Yet she ticks, follows the schedule, knows not of the Divine confirmation with lubricating Oil. (Confirmation of what, she asks.)

And she knows life’s supposed to be joyous and full-formed,
But this play is too complex for her to perform.
First time, so would love as much feedback as you can give me!

— The End —