thanks to the basketful of maybe's
i collected
when we were one
it would seem
i'd be well equipped to deal
with the next one's indecisiveness

oh well.

As for me, I chose the alternatives
To do what is right without the superlatives,
To love people without any threat
A choice too many have not made yet.
A loving but jealous and wrathful god?
Even those words put together sound odd.
If this omnipotence were on the level
Why not smite the heck out of the devil?

I never understood that stuff about Eden.
Why have just one tree off limits even?
To people who were basically children
Why was part of paradise ever forbidden?
Any parent will tell you about their kids
They would do exactly as those two did.
You couldn’t keep them away with a truncheon.
Those kids would have a ****** luncheon.

Oh, and what a self-righteous creep was He
To do what what he did to Job endlessly.
It has always sounded evil torture to me;
The work of a cloud-bound twisted bully.
Then for no reason anybody could ever tell
He created a son and then cast him into hell.
He let the Devil make a punching bag of Jesus.
This God creature seems to do what he pleases.

So what about this legend is so wonderful
That we heap money on priests by the basketful?
We create huge bejeweled palaces everywhere
And insist they are houses of God and swear
To visit them will make us all godly creatures.
Yet we demand no solid proof of those teachers.
If a car salesman delivered like that on a promise,
We’d take him out to and pound him into pumice.

Love is the greatest lie of all
It is pushed on to us from the very first moments of existence
To the last moments of life
And even in death
We can't get a break
The pastor says love is eternal
The rabbi says love is tradition
The imam says love is paradise
And the basketful of others declare that love is immortal
That love will stand the test of time
as if it's some giant monument made of steel

But it isn’t a monument
Love is a word
And words sell

They tell you love is a bag of Lay's potato chips
and can of Coke on a hot July afternoon
When you close the door of your new Lexus, they tell you that's love
'For 15 cents a day you could help feed a child' is love
If it's certified, inspected, marked and labeled with a big gold ribbon and covered in little guarantee stickers or the ever cheerful faces of old timey slaves, it's love
And that jolly old man from the North Pole who sits with your kids telling them everything they want to hear,
that's love too
If it feels good it's love
if it tastes good it's love
if it looks good, smells good, sounds good it's love
is love
is love
is love

But that's the lie
Love
Behind the words and the colorful pictures
there is no love
there is only a man working three jobs trying to get the rent on time while saving up some money for his daughters' college fund, but knowing that he'll probably get evicted anyways because the land lady doesn't like Mexicans.
Or a group of shareholders discussing fiscal projections for the new quarter after hiding millions of dollars in unfilled tax returns that went directly into the pockets of a few.
Or a kid trying to decide whether or not to pay a dollar for an ice tea or give it to the *** on the corner,
but buying an ice tea anyways because he knows that bums are *****
and should get a job (at least that's what the TV said)

Love is the greatest lie of all
Because love isn't just a word
It isn't a product
It isn't a construct of human society to exploit our humanity
To take advantage of us so we blindly conform as they dance around the board room table
with fistfuls of hearts bleeding in their hands
All while singing "Love is! Love is! Love is!"
Grinning and snickering as if they had discovered the fountain of youth

Love is not that
Love is a lie
The most beautiful lie of all
Breaking the framework of our reality
Shattering the rose-colored glasses of conformity
A reflection of our inner core
Our soul, so to say,
Sending out a beacon
Of something human
Of something flesh
Something more

Love is

And it would be a crime to solve love
To answer all of its questions
To throw it in a cage and study it like a rat
Cut it open and wade through its internals
Catalogue every piece and lock it in a metal drawer so future generations won't be puzzled by it
So that that love will be so well known
That no more will there be love struck fools
No more star crossed lovers to cry over
No love at first sight
No passion and fire that gives so many reason
No poets pondering
No singers singing
Or writers writing
Love will only be a symptom
And with a prescription you can take care of that too

That's why love is the greatest lie of all
It is
Unexplainable
Inconceivable
Irrational
Impossible
Ridiculous
and­
Cruel


And yet we lie to ourselves
Saying love is this and that
Thinking that love can be defined
That love can be crammed into just 4 letters
A lie that is human in nature
A lie to avoid the truth
A truth we do not want to face
But a truth that we cannot unbind ourselves from

We will always try
To explain
To understand
To know
To not be afraid
But we don't know
And we don't understand
And we can't explain
And that scares us


But maybe that is love
Not knowing
To be afraid of the unknown
afraid of the dark
afraid of being alone
Being scared to say

'Love is the greatest lie of all'

.I felt a little strangewith binoculars in handon a warmWednesday morning,a mild breezetussling your curtains.I watched you with aschoolboy fascinationas you tookyour clothes offof the clothesline.Oh! the basketful of storiesyou draggedin through your door.Were yougoing out dancing?To the store?Your prettiestdress sparkledin the sun's lightand it made me think.Yeah.That's what Ilike about you--You make methink..

Ramnath  brought
  a basketful  of  flowers
  for  top  cabinet    ministers.


Ramson  was  waiting
  for  the  end  of
  'Good  Friday'
in  front of   a
small  church  to
  ******  some one.


He  had  a  basketful
  apple  to  feed
the  ******  before
  death.


He  just  ask to   feed  not
  forcefully  
before  killing.

‘Time is a perfect circle
Where it ends, it curves back in,
Starting a whole new cycle
Where the other one begins,
We cannot escape our futures, nor
Much less, escape our past,
The things that we’ve run away from
Will be waiting there, at last.’

That’s what he said to Jennifer
As she packed her final case,
And carried it out to the taxi,
‘I don’t want to leave a trace!
I’m parcelling up the memories
That I shared so long with you,
And dropping them off at the station,
Locked forever, on platform two.’

And Derek had looked forsaken as
She passed out through the door,
She’d said their love was mistaken
It had gone, forevermore.
‘Don’t look, enquire, or ask for me
Or you’ll still be waiting yet,
The one thing that will stay with me
Is that I wish we’d never met.’

And so she passed on out of his life
A marriage of thirteen years,
A time of strife with a testy wife
And a basketful of tears,
He tried to cling to the better times
That were fading in his head,
He only knew that he loved her still,
Though he wished that he was dead.

When Jennifer rode away that day
She had thought, ‘At last, I’m free!
I’m going to live my life the way
That I hoped my life would be.’
She thought of her husband’s final words
As his heart began to rend,
‘Just know that I love you, Jennifer,
I’ll be with you in the end.’

She moved to a whole new neighborhood
And she spurned her former friends,
Went with a whole new clique of folk
Who had never made amends,
There wasn’t a single married pair,
They were all divorced, or spent,
Adrift in the dim-lit bars like her
In search of what life meant.

But when the news of his passing came
She was pensive for a while,
She planned to go to his funeral
And forgot for a day to smile,
He hadn’t been able to countenance
A life where his love had gone,
And left a note with a single quote,
‘I’d best be moving on!’

She drifted on for a few more years
In her false, gay party hat,
With nobody there to wipe her tears
As he’d done, when times were flat,
When time brought on some dread disease
And she knew that her time was spent,
Whose hand would pay for her funeral,
Not one, and nobody went.

They had to open her husband’s grave
That he’d paid in the years before,
When life for him had been content
‘Til death do us part,’ he swore,
And as her coffin was laid on his
In that dismal outback track,
It was then I heard but a whispered word,
‘I knew you’d be coming back!’

David Lewis Paget

Out-li-er /-, li(-e)r/ noun

this dance was dying of old age.
until I learnt to move a toe.
a dance of old woman trying to see
the sun rise from the sole of her feet. 
her survival outlived a snoring nose.
these holes were carved out from the
thigh of a ******* learning how
to lay on bed. Is this life so sweet to you? 
then, live it without answering a call
to the whispers of the wind to your ears. 

let's visit blank pages. 
of heroes unsung from our historical mouth. 
of those things or people situated away 
from or classed differently from our farms
or a related body translated from the hood.
let's see this images from the eyes of my father trying to be a man before his children.

yesterday,  my father made us to learn
from the school of the African heroes.
he taught us how to be special among all.
how to name extraordinary a friend...
through bridges built in a hardknock.
a lust day. a littered day. a little more griavience.
a little caution is not enough for the craving eyes

maybe. 
maybe not. 
that we survive in this planet.. 

we'll come by in the evening of November.
we'll try to ease out our thoughts.
Maybe you will understand where the
pains started. our legs. our feet. or history.

maybe.
maybe not.
that we survive this gory miseries.

this pains were carved from the tree. 
where the ghost of our ancestors danced. 
they created this basketful paths.
they are the outliers. the geniuses.

maybe.
maybe not.
that we survive after the apollo' creed. 

that we journeyed through this forest. 
the forest cultivated by their ancestral hands. 
until we learn to be like them.
carving history from stones.
Making the sky brighter.
We'll not survive through this modern dance.


©John Chizoba Vincent
FromAPenRefusingFrustration.

I'd miss another chance
To live a new life.
I'd miss this opportunity
Because I cannot let go.
This gift you gave me,
I'd have to leave it in the river's flow;
But I don't know, I guess I won't.

I'd keep it.
I'll hide it beneath the rocks.
Because this gift you gave me
Is a basketful of memories
I've had with you.