Hip Service
By Julian Malek

The zeal of cobblestone tolerance arrayed in fashionable hues masquerading as crimson secrecy, elevates the tide of man but some boats leak in their foundations. Therefore a cork to every exuberance and a triumphant torch for every sorrow lives onward in collective time. Larks that abound because prescience and PUGET sound, that brown has become the new orange which in turn prowls as a concealed swarthy black. To antagonize the willful and frenetic pace, a prodrome of lasting but memorialized disgrace. Should I move to a state by first or last name, or is the final appellation worthy of much more lasting fame. I scurry down the aisles, bemused by shimmering tiles and the beguiled audiences who see much in my limitation but doubt little about my debited elation. Ringmaster Barnum, how much horticulture is needed for assured superstardom, how many cloisters must we evacuate from the incendiary plumes of a metaphorical Harlem..  But know that no virtual reality can supplant the reality that does truly exist, or at least our time is too infernal and purblind to resist. Carrey the tops of mountains in the humor of wellsprings and fountains, we engage a menagerie of egos lilting of an etiolated pragmatic concern. Evicted from paradise, littered with say-cheese demise ensnaring three blind mice eaten alive by snake-eyed vice. To feel good without incorporated tyranny, we must see blue and red as alternatives to the same destiny. A world that reckons with the futilitarianism of pacified malcontent and astroturf monikers that lead the impressionable into a slaughter shed. Established or not, any enchantment under the sea must include fishes once a pastiche of me, but to them I avoid their courtesy flush and never even faintly blush as my egalitarian statements are lavish thrush.

Five TO Won baby one in 99, everyone here aboard the titanic stays alive, you got your boat baby and I got mine, gonna make it with babies numbered in surreal primes. Halt the slots game the nines, a stitch in time is going to turn out to be Mine. Flanger goals, girded piles, liminal like an aborted Harry Styles, we climb mountains we issue tithes, and the turmoil is etched into 45-notched bludgeons and two-tucked knives. Excuse you, where have you been all day, have you been sauntering in a gentle rain or a genteel pain, have you wallowed beyond the mires of doubt and ranked above David Blaine. I hope you tell me of your magic tricks, rather than your other flicks endeared I stand to fight an ineradicable itch. But if not, you placid pond dented by so many rocks and so many ripples give your heart over to me, before I clinch the special Olympics *******, we ran, we span the homespun garments of your left and right hand, but death is a specter that ghoulishly carouses along the carousel terminal disease we call life. I beseech your deepest affection and want to console you for your deepest struggle, to be there every time wed with time rather than a throttled scuttle. Moons make you guarded but maroons leave me desiccated, don’t ever let that wilted flower die, always water it with a rich but gentle ties and widened deck for all to at once marvel and pry.  Monsters of Mars Attacks once flanked my bed, as though the **** brain scared every gooseflesh and restrained every frisson of mystery. I lampoon myself for those cold Dark Knights and the protection ended by the plight of the poor mattering nothing to the deliberately internecine rich. I struck gold in a valley somewhere, an oxymoron of paradox that now you have the privilege to dock, to stay aboard to be a vessel of peace less widely deplored. Even if we don’t sprout wings, we garner the exactitude of measured things and our glass elevator though easily shattered by the glower of enslavement is actually our vista to heaven or listening to brethren tingles for rich mans trinkets and other things. For humanity deserves a legend and a princess, a regimented desuetude and a flanged lust but in our mistakes wildly flouted in momentary moments we become purified by the temptations of an alabaster palace.

***** the left-field wisdom of a pragmatic paragon ellipsis in prison, slip between the cracks and let my suburban muse become your urban ruse. To enchant a caged world beyond a reality delicately and deliberately unfurled. Squirming toads on highways enchanted but dead, are graves for the blue becoming purple in every dignified red. Gainsay assaults me with platitude, a repeated hitter quit on the first bunted ball into foul-line territory. Those gripes are swiped right in all circumstance no matter the plight. The pronged hearing of a trident sensitive to ambient collection, and suddenly we are all in the mad house even though the house of profaned pain is much worse. Glimpses of gambits that gambol for nickels in transit as occult grenades and known dice waddle through without artifice or device, and the laughter and slaughter that trains collegiate minds, differs no more than the tropes of a glamorous violence articled in sordid rhymes. This surfing movie means so much more than Surf Wax America pristine in limited but sacrilege nirvana. Teen spirits smell muskier than 90s pop dreams, the grasp and grunge of gouged eyes becomes a mummified staid, a scarecrow to those who disobey. Childhood flashes with blinding light, and new sight illuminates darkening blight, A blight eradicated only by two magazines and including one that houses the bullets that ***** themselves between death and comatose dreams both within astral sight. Littoral harbor on a seaside town, a shanty with a brackish gown that glides the gourmand to the cosmopolitan eatery on the outskirts of lost & found. But forever lost in embonpoint and forever gained in chavish that exonerates the gaunt, the etiolated prince in heart becomes irrefutable marrow in minded souls.

If I am a spy you are an ESPY, and if I cry than you are a baby,but since neither are the case my wiseacres will cultivate lava lamp dreams for a new generation and suddenly Boston bets on Harvard, but who knows of this piped blather squirming for relevance rather than voguish but temporary chatter. My regatta knows how to swim, my life now knows how to cringe and yet still win and in stilted plays of bungled sincerity the God of peace reminds us of our transcendent personalities. That we in sincerity top the barnacles of invention a novelty but a rarity. But the guillotine quill of emboldened unscripted parvenus ruthless in their eager dues, outdate and outlive the sued swayed blues that indemnify Clinton and make the atomic dog an amazing Winston hill a church often in sheltered disuse. Imps and urchins sting the sentiment, cloy the alimony of repentant betterment, but neither touches the gilded skies of pleonasm striving for raspy disguise as to dissuade further diatribe investigation. Lurking in those scared days of youth, the gore of unalloyed horror scourged me with a limp, that compassion itself could ever become a gimp. Now years later athletics better and scoring goals making the mildew sweat and the years wetter, not a global warming that can be alarmed by global mourning. Take peace at heart if distanced spears of separation make Idiocracy as a pastiche look exceedingly smart. And spar only with the true antagonists bridging malevolence with expedience. Killjoys sure, will joy even more sure, but still boys fluttered heart stopping dead at a stop-watched alarm the worst tragedy of our sordid sort. Give an African Child a real home rather than a spatial roam, a palatial desiccation of momentary Jonas Brothers snapping back at captives with sexualized foam.

Narrative blinds shuttered in an Island among mountains hardly ever wiser to sanitize the sanitarium among the wasps of stung power. Police crumple their uniforms as they prowl down the avenues, looking for misfits and widened platitudes. Somehow that the vigilance of those corrupted by their very career choice, look even worse when megalomania of private is the limelight of public, to their defense few turrets I can muster but castles in the sky will be the apartheid judge. Those that cling to virtue to eradicate Porsche-driven faked or real deaths at the most breakneck speed, that Fast & Furious operation if disclosed completely would turn the Shire of the ring into the hatred curtailed by a song in Sing-Sing. Immunity must not Yoda implore, that livery Liverpool marooned on islands can also to deplore the R.E.D. and still whet the sharpened stead and the fly-by-night Manchester United alights like militant peer pressure for wranglers in tights. But beating the Beatles at a game of Walruses and egg-shelled eyeful towers likely impedes rinkside hockey from anything over bellicose ballyhoo…it exists as a transient fixated glower. But who knows about soccer speculation when love is the transcendent temptation, when nest-egg hens rather than neglecting rig Bens of clockwork and clocked words designed arise better for their token ken. Do I must repeat the subtext of submarines, yellowed as though ugly unused as though unseen, as though the quixotic earthquakes of tintinnabulations Avatar dreams. Wafted souls console the disheartened thoughts of a dashed dream that Berlin hates more than a Furor’s unbridled and useless scream.
Demotic clips slinging from the bedridden silence of a token moon and its token friends, swimming in a shore of ambiguity whether history mellows or whether its furor melts away momentary doubts. I want to avoid the sting rays exorcised by due providence and become the amalgamated talents gentry and of course the upstart swagger of Jack Dawson. But with the psy-op going on, the people manipulated on all sides of a gray picket fence will the relationship bloom without muttered dissent or pretended smiles. Will we take upon the shuffled shuttle and dig with shovels deep-rooted Christmas trees and toast our lives to Dos Equis. We may never go out of style, but the treacle of illuminated imagery when divorced from sentiment bristle shows a swagger that prioritizes rather than amalgamates all love. I love being brash and brazen and honest because when she finally ditches the grandstand of delayed frenemies fandoms of other tinsel decorations without any substance beyond meretricious thrill. You want a roller coaster on some days, but most often you want the nutcracker to elope to secret hiding places. Swim with adventure not just in love, not just in affection with the starlight now matter how luminous, sixpence all the richer is no centuries any poorer and we could be that gilded couple of star and screen and if we ever have to scream, let our screams unite us in passion, rather than a milquetoast deference to pedestaled beauty. but of course the end times don’t laugh at your crumpled wizened relapse. Not out of convenience wed by a discriminating genetic harvest moon but a deeper engagement that flatters when stylish and bristles when romantic but never defiled, never riled of specious pretense. Promise me that you will always remember me in my flaws and my faults, in my scause factory destructions and the penults of PEN-ULTIMATE wisdom that comes before the grace of God in the annihilation of passion for eroded omission. If your goal is to be remembered, check that out…but the most admirable goal is as the propinquities of souls dusted in the wind returning to a spring equinox of passion and if you find in yourselves reservations do not depart from sacred land, and never jilt me because of a boisterous and menacing friend. You are everything to me right now, and I Hope this persists despite the vicissitudes of star-favored afflictions mixed with utter benediction without the pontification of stilted Benedictines  or rather the hyped ludic effrontery of termagants being made of younger and younger women. Leave it at this ,32 leaves the royal secret in royal hands and the Knights Templar and us we altogether hold hands, if only a prelude for a masquerade ball. But the stilted embarrassment of crestfallen time, let that be relegated and emphatically lets embrace what is like to not ever need a real white horse to get back into your favor, because we never go out of style we can brandish the best elements and reject the sentiments of the too newfangled and the too stodgy. We in our crenellated pleonasm can eager ride the lightning to another tomorrow and another yesterday and if even not that, we virtually make an indelible impression of embroidered love not too distant in ivory towers and not to vulgary( catering to popular sentiments) to become a trash glam movement. We soar, others deplore but let their purblind doubts render them blind to our burgeoning love.

Forget the brisk trees dangled in the wind on winding paths through haunted forest or remember them because of ghoulish fortress but with our apotropaic lamp we can avert most evil and call the rest fun and gains and shun but fames never profaned, never inalterable a destiny to magical to be some whimpered catcall. Or we could linger beneath lambent street lights disguised as though wilted garb, attrition of circumstance waiting patiently for the matinee and the vintner to escort us beyond the garb of pretense in a city so abundant with it that it deserves castigation. But I digress, a beachside cliff overlooking tepid waters tumultuous in their power but august in their noises, the cadence of love will sing a half-moon bay on full-moon nights and we will frisk each other like grasping at straws of permanent tracks trammeled of the elite and a sidetracked basque bet. Trim those antlers and instead grow metaphorical wings, to us we all sing but few can match your elegance and everyone would be crazy not to see your ennobled age and together thrilling songs to emulate thriller in sales we will collaboratively sing.
Haughty sneers from lifeless lycanthropy straggling furtively along the pastiched sidewalks of grime, livid because they can’t share the lingering limelight, with as many guarded perks of privacy clambering like a hive of snarky sharks. Lets ditch the big town dreams in terms of posh and stature if only for a caressed moment beneath the unadulterated stars and if you find spars **** to the extent they are amiable than I say guess what my name is Lars! Or wait a second, paused in the big city spotlight our stenciled hearts will guide whatever progeny is yours or mine or ours together we will sing the most comforting lullaby, and caves no longer must we abide. Yearn and earn every inch, as I gripe with my delicate saddened pinch but I think the innuendo speaks . Ripen with our trips to Napa, long afternoon sunsets swim in our hearts as we taste the vanguard’s toast on elegant wine.I console with entreaty to disavow the omen of that San Franciscan church October 2008, the doom implied by Einstein, the raillery of a world grinding down the endless decadence of a railed future inalterable in destiny or partialy amenable to widespread coquetry.

Forget those rumbles in your past that made you feel partial to insecurity and learning the ropes you transcended all and live in all eternity. Thimble and brook, tolerant of all those tokes I took your rebellious side flattens the yeast of Exodus raspy in its begrudged clapping. But the Pharaoh of the modern world sheltered me under his prickly thorns, shielded me from the sickly things that life adorns. We have the numbers on our side, the weight of destiny on our shoulders, dedicate yourself to yourself and I will preen the most vibrant wisdom and love will leap like Apollo across all borders not for camel-****** hoarders. We are culminated destiny in the wings of the best daydream

Fragile egg-shell mind on dawn’s highway bleeding the segue between times traversed only in momentary dreams or in enduring excursions

We drag our droll and quaint 60s baggage like the luggage of a safari made of concrete girding a cavernous expanse of unheralded ground

With our ears oriented to the floor, we leap out of body never to deplore….never to ignore….never to miss the blue bus of our drafted imaginations, so carefully culled from brash elitism

I trounce the intervening time between being friendless and an ironic end, and an irenic comrade becoming the dearest amazed but always aplomb friend

We simper in our glorious traversal, and though bedraggled through an ornamented cavern we linger just long enough to be celebrated

Then a blues riff emanates from a vapid bar, and finally someone heralds my exhumed memory still rusty with the pavement of encased concrete on an empty or full tomb

So I wander in my mind to that roughshod Paris glassy tincture a romanticized gild of proper sensibility crafted in the tongues of lizards emulating the tongues of serpentine Anglicans

As the power of love transcends the love of power, both are afforded serendipitously upon the stately occasion of a fitful revolt where heads literally rolled and deaths still unfurl from the slippage of a violent malevolent eternity, crafting a new creative way to expedite the smite of preventable scourge

So Jim, I see your picaresque side and your wide-eyed love for a listless ship anointed of a crystal blip just detectable long enough on RADAR to become the statistic to crack the slim WHIP

No wigs are needed at this formality, no figs grow from trees forty-five years buried and almost a full month unsung

Pitiable cretins of an invented insanity, they scoff at my ravenous and portentous heart for its excess and for aligning with an upstart verging on only a specious insanity

Why in all humanity could a month be mustered with every defense of history and yet for it to be so widely flouted as a risible exercise in futility

The irony that the artistic glamor of a past vogue becoming a revival that is often toked only to one song but never to the memorial of great cavernous and commodious imaginations, staggers with dismay where otherwise the mayday would be a disaster but still a great day

Then I look at a triggered-fingered omen of a death so ominous yet so brazenly confronted as the ambassadors of time provide plaudits to a fearless martyrdom

Why such a sad spate, why such a stringent but malevolent fate a malediction on a family whose crest is not crestfallen like rolling waves but ornamented with gravity impounding its own weight

A fugacious tomb, an eternal flame, a swan song announcing an independent authority on a prescient demise mashed and deprived

A single shot rippling through the broadened space between clasped eternity and a histrionic disgrace as a psychological confederate pays lip service to a reiterative applause

A cousin hardly American in a defected record of incendiary plumes of a hoarse hatred of waxen discs and flying discs alike,  climbs out of a bonfire mounted purely out of vindictive spite

Then upon a great white buffalo a wrapped package of Californian love before California ever alighted like something beyond an avaricious dove, saw a rocky park and a hearth of illuminated darkness the singular spark

Captain Morgan knows the jackknife applause of a botched deal morphing into a disbelieved spiel. A shibboleth of enormous mystical weight crashing down from an ethereal abode and heaven heavily saddened cannot hardly appeal

Then a loving spoonful of crystal blue persuasion led me to Ethel’s regimented keepsake and for once in my life nobility and I became a grateful waif. But temerity laughed, splintered spacecraft, and the wooden paws of a bearish applause led to resurgent clarity

Blinking stars shattered by knighted and raw applause punctured the liberated might of a sentient hortatory savior grasped by the internecine wrench of a waxen time

An indie track slides by unnoticed in an aleatory time, and the threadbare whine of centuries of lament becomes a dastardly barn set ablaze with the fury of ancients and the scurry of faineant patents

Perfidy slides in recess, and in gentle forbearance the winged angel lingers like a halo on conifer and spring above a remedial ring

I dial frisky celerity tingling the dangling claws of a raven’s screed and in plunder of all history’s pilfer secrets I eagerly weave a tapestry Indiana Jones himself would be proud to watch

Not the riotous ruin of a mystery tour of verdure crippled by genocide but overcome by the revived life of raised rain razing the moments of indelible pain

But the culmination of a proffered time taken at its word for its every careened bird, for its every brazen gird. The manger of proctored stars calls us home tonight and home forever. Life in quaked timorous stumbles suddenly no longer so fitfully absurd.

The quixotic plundered of pirates and emperors in direct emulation of some crooned pastiche of whittled integrity, surges above any encased blurb and any vain testament to a pyramid rigid in destiny and ragged in desultory and sturdy sincerity

Multiplying the ineffable by the division of arable divorced from edible is too creative to be eaten as pabulum when sparks curdle flickered moonlight crimson and that become golden only to the last laugh of ennobled ragamuffins

Frankly the desert of melliferous gorillas abetting the lark of a heavily vetted camarilla engaged in the sinecure of a rigged wall on a main street to block the tall from the lame bleat. Stocks grazed, costs engaged on a littoral beach at the end of a Bossy promenade

This prayer is a cutthroat collapse of a merry spare, a ribbed ****** waiting to plunge into the antithesis of female despair, but sincere in its restraint that vixens courted in love aren’t courted in litigation of a wagered dare

Ambulances chase Deloreans through the desolate moon-stricken skies of a time agape with fleets of phantasmagoria on a Cliffside too wise to ever mince words or excise cries

Skulking the red-teared caverns of entombed films and lampooned tinctures on a passion vetted only for certain and utter deracinated disguise, I wallop with winged men in a single soul armed to the teeth with inveterate tithes to eternal internments of poached and endangered gazettes

As growth older in wizened skin bets on epithets rather than epitaphs for rinsed peace and triumphant clefts we leap above in orbit of only the bellowing nether of blown tolls and untold souls aggregating the esoteric grasp of Alexandrian tomes

The denumeration of certainty is a carousel of wonder, a splurge of time ripped asunder with majesties of paparazzi scuttled impacts a throttled iniquity of regalia’s indicted blunder frenchified but still clean with inestimable sheens

With twenty-five dollars, a dime an assist and a nickeled reiteration of currency already so personable it is divine and sublime in crazed desist I watch the embroiled natives clash in denatured violence with the warriors of a crossed repast hearkening to an old land much of ire but too much of grandstand to ultimately last

Itching for a holy field husk of peerless ties listed as rumpus and beer, a two-packed smoked by bludgeoned blokes careless in irascible sputters of a muffled doom, a Vegan becomes the author of too many sacrosanct homilies becoming defiled witchcraft brooms dead on arrival too many lionized tombs

In plaudits and the scause of an amplified “what if?” of an olfactory nightmare of petrified fog of effluvium bogged in Wade and in heat it is always clogged, sinewy libations of toasted preemptive revenge become a powerballed hog

A castle in the sky founded on Franklin but scourged of wineskins brimming with a distilled time, a swift repartee becomes the whispered ladder of saints blather becoming not rather other than a Dan Rather spatter

A door breeched by a broached inconvenience of amphigory beyond common reach, I clamber excess and whisk the lingered love into destiny beyond any word other than a beseeched preach of nothing tired but everything inspired of noble love with abundance often to teach

Fireworks of turned tides of fallow tithes to aliens beyond any conceivable bribe the bushwhacker writhes but survives staying alive without even a hint of garbled jive a 27th floor glass elevator is quite a resplendent ride

Wellsprings knowing radical rolled tides of errant dice also themselves guilty of confessional tithes to the monolith of avarice at the nooked cranny of an evaporated time we whine as the police sting the album rained with songs too lugubrious to sing but in their elegy every lonely heart has a propinquity phone of souled resonance ring

Iterative mastery of a mathematics of love, loss decay and the dross of a dental Occidental floss, the sweep of screened queues become questions of inestimable importance to foreign dues on a horse with no name but so consumed with fumes

A fright occultist thriller prowls in a waylaying daylight, masquerading an innocent confection for a rescued triage of a dawn stabbed with knives in our last dying days of trembled plight

He resurrects only the wraiths of detest, squinted at by the putrefaction of summoned cardiac arrest and littered with bullets that somehow can penetrate even impregnable bullet proof vests the wrapped carcass of the mummified husk of ready despair offers itself a ghoulish and raspy prayer

Synchronized in a low roaring swathe of rollercoasters too immersive to ride, the terpsichorean obscurantism of deliberately shattered fragments becoming blurbs dismissed with hijacked deride the carnival of a summer sun becomes the ocean of limitless love becoming endless fun

We forget the drawl of the droll old tales that haunt like specters in the closet and beneath the bedridden valetudinarian of an effrontery of shackled fright, we sprawl the innumerable caverns of prophetic insight afforded by the pantheon of history enter stage left, depart stage right

And with their insight I write and write, I grasp the tusk of democracy and wage an insurrection against the doubt of plodding limitations in otherwise immaculate sight

*** and tyrannosaurus rex, of litigable offenses leading to pardonable arrests, the gated entryway of a poetic splurge leads to the demiurge of a demotic enlightenment and suddenly the frank becomes the frazzled retirement and that haunting hounding bunny transmogrified by a shattered eye averts the car crash that careens ponderous engines out of limitless twilight blue skies.

Diamond lightning in pristine skies escorts the telegraphic totems of riddled modems from 1967 to 2016 and suddenly all venerable personages converge on a teeming scene of a union unified by a universal dream. To become everything and yet nothing and out of light and darkness to become a beatific beam

*** trafficking – the trafficking and debasement of souls; Drug trafficking – the trafficking of substances that debase the body.  Here compared you will find the prevalence, impact, and rehabilitation processes associated with *** and shrug trafficking.  Respective clientele, demographics, and locales that these types of trafficking touch will be revealed in order enlighten you to their world-wide prevalence. The physical, emotional, spiritual, and psychological impact of lifestyles that result from these two types of trafficking will be detailed to etch vividly an image of just how far-reaching the impact of these two activities is. Light will be shed upon the rehab processes that lead to recovery from each.
                 According to UnoDC.org, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the use of illicit drugs has remained in a stable trend, with approximately the same number of people using illicit drugs each year. This trend has continued for a number of years. Upon examining the world drug report, written by UnoDC.org, production of several drugs exhibit particularly interesting trends. ***** production for example fell and spiked in a somewhat predictable patter from 1990 until 2010. When this data is graphed a reasonable medium appears for all the years, revealing that ***** production has stayed around an average production of roughly 200,000 hectares annually. Likewise, coca cultivation pictures an interesting trend. From 1990 to 2010 coca production appeared to be almost identical each year, and with little to no rise or fall in production, there is a similar trend in its being trafficked.  
Nefarious: Merchant of Souls is a documentary that was released in 2012 by Exodus Cry Its producers and researchers saw firsthand the atrocities of the *** trafficking industry. The film crew interviewed former pimps and prostitutes, spoke to traffickers, the families of the trafficked and to individuals still actively engaged in three sides of the *** trade referring to currently employed pimps and prostitutes as well as those who purchased ***. The researchers and producers interviewed eastern European gang members and took a trip to Amsterdam’s red-light district – home of legal prostitution. They journeyed to Los Angeles and saw the glamorized side of the dark issue of *** trade.
According to Nefarious, the number of humans trafficked for the purpose of providing ****** services is on a shockingly steep rise. In a matter of a few years, *** trafficking rose from the third largest criminal enterprise to the second. It is second only to drug trafficking and is vying for the position as top criminal enterprise in the world. It is encroaching upon that position far more speedily than any authority or decent human being would care to acknowledge.  A survey taken in 2010 by DART (the drug awareness resistance training program) revealed that 21.8 million people aged 12 and older had taken an illicit drug in the previous month. In 2010 it was estimated that between 153 and 300 million people had used an illicit drug at least once in the previous year. These statistics fail to take into account the impact that this usage has on the lives of the families of drug users. Neither do these statistics reveal the extent to which drug users lifestyles are impacted by drugs. However, nearly  every single human trafficked for ****** purposes is completely and utterly enveloped in the lifestyle of prostitution and the violent world of being prostituted. In Nefarious a shocking statistic is revealed. Approximately ten percent of the entire human population of earth has been trafficked. Both human and drug trafficking are prevalent across the globe. Human trafficking occurs in 161 of 192 countries. Illicit drugs are trafficked in every country that has laws that deem substances unlawful. There are little to no race, religion, ethnicity, or age restrictions on who can and is trafficked for use of ***, but drugs are far more limited by age and ethnicity in their use.
Drug trafficking, though similar to *** trafficking in many ways, is in no way as substantial a damaging force to the mind, soul, and spirit as the world of *** trafficking  is in terms of the critical and dangerous force it exhibits in the emotional, physical, psychological, and spiritual  impact it has on young girls. Both drugs and *** trafficking have some influence in all of these respective areas. The primary area in which people are affected by drug use is the physical. Drug users’ health declines, they become physically or psychologically dependent, and they may develop diseases from sharing of needles or lack of inhibitions that lead to *** with an infected individual. Drugs may, in some rare cases, lead to psychoses and mental disorders. They may cause brain damage, which is both physically and mentally damaging. Drugs may even set one’s heart and soul in a place that they are more susceptible to lies or truth. They alter spiritual state for some individuals, but only mildly. However, *** trafficking victims are impacted majorly and in their entirety as a person. In all aspects of the physical, mental, and spiritual, *** trafficking victims are consumed by *** trafficking. In Nefarious it is revealed that In order to “break” *** trafficking victims they are profusely beaten, and are psychologically toyed with to create a twisted trust and dependence on their various handlers. They are repeatedly *****, and are examined like cattle by those who wish to buy women. They are imprisoned in dark rooms and not allowed to leave unless told to do so. They are bedridden and forced to ******* themselves. After being broken in ways described above and sold to a ****, girls are forced every day to meet certain quotas of customers and cash flow. If they do not meet these they are beaten even more. They lay in bed sometimes a week at a time to recover physically enough to usefully return to their “job”.  Through this hellish ordeal, their soul, self-worth and identity are being attacked by circumstances that devalue them. They become like animals.
*** trafficking victims become dependent on their environment for normalcy. This is so true for some individuals that even though they have been rescued from the lifestyle, they return.  This is not because the *** trafficking victims enjoys the lifestyle of prostitution, and it is not because they want to. Instead, it is because they think they can be nothing more than a *******. The *** trafficking victim, in this case, believes that they need to settle into the numb and thoughtless mind state that they develop when broken. Returning to prostitution does not evidence an addiction. In contrast, it is the cry of a soul that is desperately trying to cope. They do this in order to feel as if they can survive.  
The rehab processes for *** and drug trafficking differ greatly in commitment and length, but are similar in that they both require physical and psychological rehabilitation.  Drug rehabilitation programs typically consist of twelve-step programs or something similar. They last a number of months, or occasionally a few years. They allow individuals counsel and encouragement, and they attempt to, by abstinence, exorcise an addicted individual’s addiction. *** trafficking rehabilitation requires the re-creation of an individual. Self-worth must be reconstructed. The spirit must be healed in order to allow for psychological healing. Prostitutes are not addicted to prostitution, but prostitution produces dependence in that the prostituted crave normalcy. This dependence must be killed. Successfully rehabilitating women from this forced lifestyle requires lifelong commitment and endless resources. It requires passionate fanatics, people who will pour their life into changing the lives of others, because only the incurable fanatic can wreak havoc on the tragedy of human trafficking. Any short-term effort to rehabilitate a *** trafficking victim is doomed to failure. The degree to which the brokenness of *** trafficking victims becomes ingrained in them is so extreme that it takes a lifetime to reshape their lives.
While researching *** trafficking in order to accurately produce Nefarious, the researchers and producers of Nefarious became convicted by facts that they collected. The evidence they collected speaks to the fact that *** trafficking does not just attack the body; it attacks the entire being, and in far worse ways than drugs ever could. Varied races and ages are prostituted and / or consume drugs. The impact of both of *** and drug trafficking is severe, but much more so severe in the case of human trafficking. The rehab process for human trafficking is much more in depth and is testament to the horror and degree of psychological, mental, and emotional disfigurement, as well as acclimation to a horrible situation to the point that horror becomes normal – a new definition of addiction. Human trafficking is an atrocity that is far more horrendous and prevalent than imaginable. It is far more destructive than drug trafficking. Drug trafficking is one of the most destructive forces in this generation.  Surely consuming drugs is one of the most horrid things we can do to our bodies, but what about consuming souls? *** trafficking consumes souls, hearts, minds and bodies. It splits, fragments, debases, brutalizes, obliterates, murders, rapes, molests, destroys, and dehumanizes the prostituted.  Drug trafficking attacks the body the soul, and sometimes the mind, but in much milder ways.

Reinaldo was the name they gave the great white elephant
Who came to clear the jungles around Sao Paulo
A clever notion that because Reinaldo was born in the jungle
Any jungle would do just fine, Brazilian or Siamese made no difference
Just as clever was the notion that because I was a black man, educated
I would do just fine directing other black men to do work, English or Portuguese made no difference
Was I truly so much a fool, twice over?

Reinaldo occasionally was afflicted with slothfulness
Some of the men thought it was from lack of **** and whip
I was of a mind that it was due to lack of companionship
It was costly enough to ship one giant beast across a great sea
I left a wife, in Maryland, whom I never loved and who never loved me
I admit before the plan was in motion I never considered that Reinaldo could have a family
Sometimes, I wonder, did he have a wife who never loved him?

Loneliness became a common theme in our new home away from home
And Reinaldo and I became friends, at least I thought of him fondly
As far as I could say, of all the men he responded best to me
At times it seemed a load of lumber was hauled as a personal favor
For the handler too soft to handle with fear and anger
But as much as loneliness was a theme, so was change, and death

The lifespan of an elephant compares to the lifespan of men
Were this scheme of mine to have worked as desired
I could have sent for a cow, and made Reinaldo a sire
Soon it was revealed that slothfulness was a symptom of an elephant young, healthy and wise
Who sensed not his own, but a friend's imminent demise
Now I am left to wonder how Reinaldo will fare in a world stranger than I could have known
His softest handler and only friend bedridden, waiting for my disease to take its final toll

Existence
by Fadwa Tuqan the "Poet of Palestine"
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

In my solitary life, I was a lost question;
in the encompassing darkness,
my answer lay concealed.

You were a bright new star
revealed by fate,
radiating light from the fathomless darkness.

The other stars rotated around you
—once, twice —
until I perceived
your unique radiance.

Then the bleak blackness broke
And in the twin tremors
of our entwined hands
I had found my missing answer.

Oh you! Oh you intimate, yet distant!
Don't you remember the coalescence
Of your spirit in flames?
Of my universe with yours?
Of the two poets?
Despite our great distance,
Existence unites us.

Keywords/Tags: Fadwa Tuqan, Palestine, Palestinian, Arabic, translation, existence, love, darkness, star, stars, orbit, radiance



Enough for Me
by Fadwa Tuqan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Enough for me to lie in the earth,
to be buried in her,
to sink meltingly into her fecund soil, to vanish ...
only to spring forth like a flower
brightening the play of my countrymen's children.

Enough for me to remain
in my native soil's embrace,
to be as close as a handful of dirt,
a sprig of grass,
a wildflower.

Published by Palestine Today, Free Journal and Lokesh Tripathi



Nothing Remains
by Fadwa Tuqan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Tonight, we’re together,
but tomorrow you'll be hidden from me
thanks to life’s cruelty.

The seas will separate us ...
Oh!—Oh!—If I could only see you!
But I'll never know
where your steps led you,
which routes you took,
or to what unknown destinations
your feet were compelled.

You will depart and the thief of hearts,
the denier of beauty,
will rob us of all that's dear to us,
will steal this happiness,
leaving our hands empty.

Tomorrow at dawn you'll vanish like a phantom,
dissipating into a delicate mist
dissolving quickly in the summer sun.

Your scent—your scent!—contains the essence of life,
filling my heart
as the earth gulps up the lifegiving rain.

I will miss you like the fragrance of trees
when you leave tomorrow,
and nothing remains.

Just as everything beautiful and all that's dear to us
is lost—lost!—and nothing remains.

Published by This Week in Palestine and Hypercritic (read in Arabic by Souad Maddahi with my translation as a reference)



Labor Pains
by Fadwa Tuqan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Tonight the wind wafts pollen through ruined fields and homes.
The earth shivers with love, with the agony of giving birth,
while the Invader spreads stories of submission and surrender.

O, Arab Aurora!

Tell the Usurper: childbirth’s a force beyond his ken
because a mother’s wracked body reveals a rent that inaugurates life,
a crack through which light dawns in an instant
as the blood’s rose blooms in the wound.



Hamza
by Fadwa Tuqan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Hamza was one of my hometown’s ordinary men
who did manual labor for bread.

When I saw him recently,
the land still wore its mourning dress in the solemn windless silence
and I felt defeated.

But Hamza-the-unextraordinary said:
“Sister, our land’s throbbing heart never ceases to pound,
and it perseveres, enduring the unendurable, keeping the secrets of mounds and wombs.
This land sprouting cactus spikes and palms also births freedom-fighters.
Thus our land, my sister, is our mother!”

Days passed and Hamza was nowhere to be seen,
but I felt the land’s belly heaving in pain.
At sixty-five Hamza’s a heavy burden on her back.

“Burn down his house!”
some commandant screamed,
“and slap his son in a prison cell!”

As our town’s military ruler later explained
this was necessary for law and order,
that is, an act of love, for peace!

Armed soldiers surrounded Hamza’s house;
the coiled serpent completed its circle.

The bang at his door came with an ultimatum:
“Evacuate, **** it!'
So generous with their time, they said:
“You can have an hour, yes!”

Hamza threw open a window.
Face-to-face with the blazing sun, he yelled defiantly:
“Here in this house I and my children will live and die, for Palestine!”
Hamza's voice echoed over the hemorrhaging silence.

An hour later, with impeccable timing, Hanza’s house came crashing down
as its rooms were blown sky-high and its bricks and mortar burst,
till everything settled, burying a lifetime’s memories of labor, tears, and happier times.

Yesterday I saw Hamza
walking down one of our town’s streets ...
Hamza-the-unextraordinary man who remained as he always was:
unshakable in his determination.

My translation follows one by Azfar Hussain and borrows a word here, a phrase there.



Biography of Fadwa Tuqan (aka Touqan or Toukan)

Fadwa Tuqan (1917-2003), called the "Grande Dame of Palestinian letters," is also known as "The Poet of Palestine." She is generally considered to be one of the very best contemporary Arab poets. Palestine’s national poet, Mahmoud Darwish, named her “the mother of Palestinian poetry.”

Fadwa Tuqan was born into an affluent, literary family in Nablus in 1917. Her brother Ibrahim Tuqan was the most famous Palestinian poet of his day. She studied English literature at Oxford University and won several international literary prizes.

Tuqan began writing in traditional forms, but later became a pioneer of Arabic free verse. Her work often deals with feminine explorations of love and social protest.

After the Nakba ("Catastrophe") of 1948 she began to write about Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories. Then, after the Six Day War of 1967, she also began writing patriotic poems.

Her autobiography "Difficult Journey―Mountainous Journey" was translated into English in 1990. Tuqan received the International Poetry Award, the Jerusalem Award for Culture and Arts and the United Arab Emirates Award, the latter two both in 1990. She also received the Honorary Palestine prize for poetry in 1996. She was the subject of a documentary film directed by novelist Liana Bader in 1999.

Tuqan died on December 12, 2003 during the height of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, while her hometown of Nablus was under siege. Her poem "Wahsha: Moustalhama min Qanoon al Jathibiya" ("Longing: Inspired by the Law of Gravity") was one of the last poems she penned, while largely bedridden.

Tuqan is widely considered to be a symbol of the Palestinian cause and is "one of the most distinguished figures of modern Arabic literature."

In his obituary for "The Guardian," Lawrence Joffe wrote: "The Palestinian poet Fadwa Tuqan, who has died aged 86, forcefully expressed a nation's sense of loss and defiance. Moshe Dayan, the Israeli general, likened reading one of Tuqan's poems to facing 20 enemy commandos." In her poem "Martyrs Of The Intifada," Tuqan wrote of young stone-throwers:

They died standing, blazing on the road
Shining like stars, their lips pressed to the lips of life
They stood up in the face of death
Then disappeared like the sun.

Yet the true power of her words derived not from warlike imagery, but from their affirmation of Palestinian identity and the dream of return.

"Her poetry reflected the pain, loss, and anger of the Nakba, the experience of fleeing war and living as a refugee, and the courageous aspirations of the Palestinians to nationhood and return to their homeland. She also wrote about resistance to Israel’s injustices and life under Israeli military occupation, especially after Nablus fell to Israeli forces in 1967, heralding Israel’s long-term occupation of the West Bank, which remains to this day." - Zeina Azzam

Fadwa Tuqan has been called the Grand Dame of Palestinian letters and The Poet of Palestine. These are my translations of Fadwa Tuqan poems originally written in Arabic.



Enough for Me
by Fadwa Tuqan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Enough for me to lie in the earth,
to be buried in her,
to sink meltingly into her fecund soil, to vanish ...
only to spring forth like a flower
brightening the play of my countrymen's children.

Enough for me to remain
in my native soil's embrace,
to be as close as a handful of dirt,
a sprig of grass,
a wildflower.

Published by Palestine Today, Free Journal and Lokesh Tripathi



Existence
by Fadwa Tuqan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

In my solitary life, I was a lost question;
in the encompassing darkness,
my answer lay concealed.

You were a bright new star
revealed by fate,
radiating light from the fathomless darkness.

The other stars rotated around you
—once, twice—
until I perceived
your unique radiance.

Then the bleak blackness broke
and in the twin tremors
of our entwined hands
I had found my missing answer.

Oh you! Oh you intimate and distant!
Don't you remember the coalescence
Of our spirits in the flames?
Of my universe with yours?
Of the two poets?
Despite our great distance,
Existence unites us.

Published by This Week in Palestine, Arabic Literature (ArabLit.org) and Art-in-Society (Germany)



Nothing Remains
by Fadwa Tuqan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Tonight, we’re together,
but tomorrow you'll be hidden from me
thanks to life’s cruelty.

The seas will separate us ...
Oh!—Oh!—If I could only see you!
But I'll never know
where your steps led you,
which routes you took,
or to what unknown destinations
your feet were compelled.

You will depart and the thief of hearts,
the denier of beauty,
will rob us of all that's dear to us,
will steal this happiness,
leaving our hands empty.

Tomorrow at dawn you'll vanish like a phantom,
dissipating into a delicate mist
dissolving quickly in the summer sun.

Your scent—your scent!—contains the essence of life,
filling my heart
as the earth gulps up the lifegiving rain.

I will miss you like the fragrance of trees
when you leave tomorrow,
and nothing remains.

Just as everything beautiful and all that's dear to us
is lost—lost!—and nothing remains.

Published by This Week in Palestine and Hypercritic (read in Arabic by Souad Maddahi with my translation as a reference)



Labor Pains
by Fadwa Tuqan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Tonight the wind wafts pollen through ruined fields and homes.
The earth shivers with love, with the agony of giving birth,
while the Invader spreads stories of submission and surrender.

O, Arab Aurora!

Tell the Usurper: childbirth’s a force beyond his ken
because a mother’s wracked body reveals a rent that inaugurates life,
a crack through which light dawns in an instant
as the blood’s rose blooms in the wound.



Hamza
by Fadwa Tuqan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Hamza was one of my hometown’s ordinary men
who did manual labor for bread.

When I saw him recently,
the land still wore its mourning dress in the solemn windless silence
and I felt defeated.

But Hamza-the-unextraordinary said:
“Sister, our land’s throbbing heart never ceases to pound,
and it perseveres, enduring the unendurable, keeping the secrets of mounds and wombs.
This land sprouting cactus spikes and palms also births freedom-fighters.
Thus our land, my sister, is our mother!”

Days passed and Hamza was nowhere to be seen,
but I felt the land’s belly heaving in pain.
At sixty-five Hamza’s a heavy burden on her back.

“Burn down his house!”
some commandant screamed,
“and slap his son in a prison cell!”

As our town’s military ruler later explained
this was necessary for law and order,
that is, an act of love, for peace!

Armed soldiers surrounded Hamza’s house;
the coiled serpent completed its circle.

The bang at his door came with an ultimatum:
“Evacuate, **** it!'
So generous with their time, they said:
“You can have an hour, yes!”

Hamza threw open a window.
Face-to-face with the blazing sun, he yelled defiantly:
“Here in this house I and my children will live and die, for Palestine!”
Hamza's voice echoed over the hemorrhaging silence.

An hour later, with impeccable timing, Hanza’s house came crashing down
as its rooms were blown sky-high and its bricks and mortar burst,
till everything settled, burying a lifetime’s memories of labor, tears, and happier times.

Yesterday I saw Hamza
walking down one of our town’s streets ...
Hamza-the-unextraordinary man who remained as he always was:
unshakable in his determination.

My translation follows one by Azfar Hussain and borrows a word here, a phrase there.



Biography of Fadwa Tuqan (aka Touqan or Toukan)

Fadwa Tuqan (1917-2003), called the "Grande Dame of Palestinian letters," is also known as "The Poet of Palestine." She is generally considered to be one of the very best contemporary Arab poets. Palestine’s national poet, Mahmoud Darwish, named her “the mother of Palestinian poetry.”

Fadwa Tuqan was born into an affluent, literary family in Nablus in 1917. Her brother Ibrahim Tuqan was the most famous Palestinian poet of his day. She studied English literature at Oxford University and won several international literary prizes.

Tuqan began writing in traditional forms, but later became a pioneer of Arabic free verse. Her work often deals with feminine explorations of love and social protest.

After the Nakba ("Catastrophe") of 1948 she began to write about Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories. Then, after the Six Day War of 1967, she also began writing patriotic poems.

Her autobiography "Difficult Journey―Mountainous Journey" was translated into English in 1990. Tuqan received the International Poetry Award, the Jerusalem Award for Culture and Arts and the United Arab Emirates Award, the latter two both in 1990. She also received the Honorary Palestine prize for poetry in 1996. She was the subject of a documentary film directed by novelist Liana Bader in 1999.

Tuqan died on December 12, 2003 during the height of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, while her hometown of Nablus was under siege. Her poem "Wahsha: Moustalhama min Qanoon al Jathibiya" ("Longing: Inspired by the Law of Gravity") was one of the last poems she penned, while largely bedridden.

Tuqan is widely considered to be a symbol of the Palestinian cause and is "one of the most distinguished figures of modern Arabic literature."

In his obituary for "The Guardian," Lawrence Joffe wrote: "The Palestinian poet Fadwa Tuqan, who has died aged 86, forcefully expressed a nation's sense of loss and defiance. Moshe Dayan, the Israeli general, likened reading one of Tuqan's poems to facing 20 enemy commandos." In her poem "Martyrs Of The Intifada," Tuqan wrote of young stone-throwers:

They died standing, blazing on the road
Shining like stars, their lips pressed to the lips of life
They stood up in the face of death
Then disappeared like the sun.

Yet the true power of her words derived not from warlike imagery, but from their affirmation of Palestinian identity and the dream of return.

"Her poetry reflected the pain, loss, and anger of the Nakba, the experience of fleeing war and living as a refugee, and the courageous aspirations of the Palestinians to nationhood and return to their homeland. She also wrote about resistance to Israel’s injustices and life under Israeli military occupation, especially after Nablus fell to Israeli forces in 1967, heralding Israel’s long-term occupation of the West Bank, which remains to this day." - Zeina Azzam

I don't know what he was to others—
   fireworks, lemonade, ants crawling on a picnic blanket—
   but I always knew him at his worst.
He was sleep cycles shaped like carnival pretzels,
   days that bled together,
weeks that clumped like a rat king
   under floorboards in the beach house.
He spoke in clouds
   swollen with diluvian rain,
daggers of lightning
   cracking the river in half,
the language of a muggy body in sticky room
   staring out a window
at absolutely nothing.
   The sort of stuff that makes me think
he didn't know his own strength,
   most of the time.

As always, when he died this year
   he died by degrees,
bedridden in the hospice of September.
   I listened to his death rattle
 of rustling yellow leaves
   and watched the last of the fireflies
crawl from between his parted lips.
   When he went cold for good
I built a pyre out of his firewood bones.
   The ashes fell into the soil
like seeds in waiting, and I watched
   the moon grow so large that it stretched
the nighttime like candy licorice
   and made it longer than before.
My duty done, I turned to go.
   The smoke rose up to embrace the sky,
and at the time, I could have sworn
  that from the corner of my eye
I saw it curl around
   and wave at me.

Hello there. You seem a bit uneasy. Look around, and let me explain.

This is your funeral. I am your funeral. This is your casket. I am your casket, the black balloons, the flowers placed strategically around the room. One flowerpot per five square feet, like your brother ordered. This is the scientifically proven amount of flowers to keep grieving people at a calm level. These flowers are the happy facade behind which grief lies. These flowers are pretty deceit. I am the crying faces, begging to talk to you one last time. I am every tissue that will be picked up and disposed of by the janitors after the grievers return to their lives.

I am your death. I am your last breath, your last sentence, the cancer you battled with for the last three years of your life. I am every doctor's appointment, every shot that left you bedridden for the next two days. I am every particle of hair you watched go down the drain in the shower. I am every strange look, uncomfortable glance you received. I am all the tears shed after your diagnosis, and every benefit held in your honor. I am every sacrifice your family made to attempt a wall of happiness around your sickness.

I am the birth of your only grandson, the beautiful boy of your only beautiful girl. I am the scary morning spent in the waiting room of the hospital. I am every doubt you and your wife had about your grandson's condition. I am the condition that made him two months premature. I am his three weeks spent in an incubator, and the formula he was fed to stay alive. I am the relief your family felt when your daughter and grandson were released, both completely healthy. I am your grandson's first, second, third, fourth birthdays.

I am your retirement. I am the completion of your life's most well-known activity and purpose. I am the years you now plan on traveling and raising your future grandchildren. I am the mornings you will now spend waking up next to your wife, the woman you've been married to for thirty years now, your best friend. I am the breakfast you will make her in bed and the organizations you plan to join in all your free time. I am your old cat you will sit on your porch and pet. I am the party and the gifts you were given, and the flat, insincere Happy Retirement cards that were obligatorily sent to you by your co-workers. I am this last milestone of your life.

I am your daughter's high school graduation. I am the lip-biting your wife partook in as she walked up and shook hands with the principal. I am her boyfriend, who sat beside you two and joined in the clapping, eyes watering for the girl he loved. I am the marriage they would agree to and abide by for the rest of their lives. I am every late night she was out, every test she was nervous about. I am the teacher who called you complaining about her unorganization. I am the cat she brought home one year, promising to take care of. This cat outlived even you.

I am the loss of your virginity. I am the party you mistakenly went to, and the alcohol you mistakenly drank. I am the girl who mistakenly came into the bathroom and held your hand while you puked. I am the drug she took prior to walking in, and the bed she led you to. I am the feeling you were given in the morning, the feeling of the realization of loss versus gain.

I am the day you met your wife. I am the book section of the retail store you both were perusing. I am your heart beating quickly as she smiled, and your hand sweating in your pocket. I am the beauty you saw in her. I am the money you saved up at your after-school job and the Italian restaurant you took her to for your first date, and I am the city in Italy you took her to for your honeymoon. I am the mistakes you both made and all the hours spent awaiting forgiveness.

I am your childhood. I am your first few friends. I am the bone in your foot, broken by a nasty fall. I am the bridge you were playing on and the cast you wore for a month. I am the day you learned how to whistle and the day you learned how to read. I am every birthday party you have ever been given, and every candle you blew out. I am your first word, your first step.

I am your first breath. I am the decision your mother made to keep you. My how easily all of this could have never been.

I am all the sadness you have ever felt, and I am all the joy. And it has all led up to this day. This funeral, this event catered by a food company and paid for by the government and a savings account made for this day. I am that government you lived under, and that savings account you worked so hard for.

And as of today, I am just a memory. I am simply the memory of your life. I am simply the collection of days and days and years, and times. And now, I am gone.

Please stop telling me that God is a boy
like testosterone is the invisible particle
unlocking sacred doors

Please stop telling me that a womb
is just a silly tomb meant to house
potential life when you stop treating
yourself like you are sacred

Please stop passing around the
silent secret that kissing girls is
supposed to be written off as weird honey
like we don't already live for the sweet and offbeat

Please stop silently tracing
my sides, measuring my size
placing limits on what i can
attempt to wear and inflicting fear
at the sight of a stomach roll

Please stop using the unspoken rule book
we all know that thing needs to be burned
or returned to a foreclosed library
because limiting our love based on
expectations and one night stands
leads to a lonely existence where
we forget to see through the smog

Please stop ignoring the sky
It's limitless  and colored like the inside of our heads

Please put your judgments to bed so I can attempt to escape from my bedridden aftermath
I've been stapled to pillows for days

The representative from Ohio
wipes his *** with Jose’s brown
palms after a bout of verbal defecation.
Luckily, Jose’s food truck houses

a small sink in the corner where
he can wash his hands in between
baskets of chorizo prepared
for rich politicians.

Sometimes Jose scrubs so hard dream flakes
rub off of his skin and he throws them
into the wastebasket to be picked
up by the sanitation workers who

eagerly jump like frogs in orange vests
into the waste of Americana. When
the Representative stops by for
a plate of carne asada, Jose’s

dream specks pepper the beef
and his salty sweat flavors
the inside of the burrito. He grills
the onions and green peppers with

a dash of minimum wage and
boils the rice in a mixture of blood
and pieces of his heritage.
He serves the meal in a white Styrofoam

tray and drizzles it with cheese flowing
from an open wound. The receipt is an unpaid
medical bill, the drink an icy reminder
of his future sipped through a straw.

The nightly news tells Jose
the Representative is bedridden
with a stomach infection. He
complains his insides feel like

a million ***** feet kicking the lining,
like unheard mouths with rows of
sharp teeth gnawing at the liver.
Jose to the tv: tonight we’re not starving.

As i lay asleep last night
my mind wondered through the window and out of sight
catching a ride on a passing crow
it went places i’ll never go

Gliding it passed over palms and rivers
swooping under waterfalls left me with shivers
rising on a warm sea breeze high
it watched the golden sun set and with a sigh

Returned begrudgingly to where bedridden i lay
paralysed, a vegetable as they say

the sun radiates,
the waves crash,
the gulls sound
and I lie bedridden.

the white in the room floods the scene,
the blueness of the sky fails to show,
the glass on the table lands on the ground.

red droplets stain the tiled floor,
my gaze is fixated on the ruins,
the fragments from the collision.

my head hurts,
I can't speak,
I can't move my legs.
my hands merely twitch.

Is this what it feels like to be crashed upon?

Movie credits descend and sink
to the bottom of the tv screen;
Admire the time travel of a blink,
repositioned on the bed, not keen

Expired pills; motivating my pulse
Hands shifting; trying to keep up
and end this life which by day gets worse
Free this defunct soul and succumb

And in that moment,
the silent tear that doesn't cease formation;
i have surrendered, time is in halt
The sadness salt, in a state of reconstitution,

But death wasn't part of the victory
She was another night of bedridden dreary
Pre-measured mentality
part anxiety
part agony;
retaining me as an emissary
to unearth my mystery

where do my nightmares trail?
who fogs my thoughts at night?
who tallies off my breaths?

So yes, those pills;
those expired ******* pills
did not give me the answer
Instead, i woke up to another whisper

Impregnated with uncertainty
Long overdue

Waiting on opportunity
My patience is subdued

Attempted abortions
With 4th trimester distortions
Stillbirth ensues

Screams inside the sirens
Struck with hospitalization
Bedridden doormen
Realization…

The time arrives
With labor pains
And liberation pangs

I cut the umbilical chains
Only a piece of me remains

I feel the guarantee
The time is now
I feel parturiency…

don’t be defeatist
they say
as if i am not already worn to ruin
as if my fingers have not bled
all i am capable of bleeding
over their pristine paper sheets

just believe in yourself
they say
as if belief alone has ever offered salvation
as if i could will myself into being
as so many others wish they could with god

all you can do is your best
they say
but what if this is my best?
what if i am a husk of a human being
before i reach the age of 30
what if all my light was used up
in a voltage too high
squeezed out of me like a surge
in an electrical storm

what if my peak is behind me
looming above me like atlas
blotting out the sun
and leaving me to get swept up
in the wake of an overachiever
what if i am incapable of what you believed in me
because you pushed me too hard, for too long
because what you needed of me you needed immediately
you took me in your hands like goliath took his stone
wrung me out until i was bloodless
wrote out my worth and found your pen inkless before you’d reached the end

worth is relative
i say
now that i forced you to see your mistake
now that i am bedridden and useless and limp like a doll
now that my good days are not when i write 100 pages
but when i remember to drink water
when i remember to bathe and eat and wake before noon
as if all your pushing just wound me up like a coil
set me tight enough to regress unto the mean

i am doing my best
i say
now that i am barely capable of anything at all
now that the pedestal you put me on looked like a ledge
and you see it for what it was
now that it’s too late to walk back from the gallows
because i’ve already been hung like a ghost
and all i do these days is sway in the wind


i have been defeated
i say
but it was because you put me in the colosseum
with nothing but my tired self leaning on my tired self
and i lay on the floor waiting for the lions to come

i have been defeated
i say
to my defeatist self
because no one stays around to watch a losing fight.

Saturday is back

for you and Jack

So hurry and pack

Nothing to lack

Or forget something on a rack

Or in a sack

Eat Big Mac

Get some nicknack

Sleep in a shack

When it is black


Sam





Today is Saturday, Oct. 4,the 276th day of 2014 with 89 to follow.

The moon is waning. Morning stars are Jupiter, Mars and Uranus. Evening starsare Mercury, Neptune, Saturn and Venus.



In 1922, Rebecca Felton, a Georgia Democrat, became thefirst woman to serve in the U.S. Senate.





A thought for the day:



It's hard to beat a person who never gives up. -- Babe Ruth



QUOTES FOR THE DAY:



Avarice is the vice of declining years.

------------------------

Beauty is but the sensible image of the Infinite. Like truth and justice it liveswithin us; like virtue and the moral law it is a companion of the soul.

------------------------

By common consent gray hairs are a crown of glory; the only object of respectthat can never excite envy.



George Bancroft





Fortunately,psychoanalysis is not the only way to resolve inner conflicts. Life itselfremains a very effective therapist.



Karen Horney



"If you always do what interestsyou, at least one person is pleased."



Katharine Hepburn



"Keep love in yourheart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and richness tolife that nothing else can bring."



Oscar Wilde



POETRY



Last Night



Michael Broder





Idreamt of making sense,
parts of speech caught up in sheets
and blankets, long strips of fabric
wrapped loosely around shoulders,
goblets, urns, cups with unmatched saucers.

You were there, and the past seemed important,
what was said, what was done,
feelings felt but maybe not expressed,
signs randomly connected
yet vital to what comes next,
to a coming season,
next year's trip to Nauset Beach.

I woke up wanting to read a poem by that name,
and I found one with a lifeguard's chair,
a broken shell, gulls watching egrets,
home an ocean away.


About this poem


"I wanted the poem to enact the dream it purports to recount. If dreamsare wish fulfillment, then this dreamer yearns for some kind of cognitivecoherence. The s ense the dreamer seeks turns out to be nonsense, and yetpoetry finds a way of making it s ensible after all."
-Michael Broder

About Michael Broder


Michael Broder is the author of "This Life Now" (A Midsummer Night'sPress, 2014). He is a freelance writer and lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

*
The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization,whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience.


(c) 2014 Michael Broder.
Distributed by King Features Syndicate





HEALTH and BEAUTY TIP



Applying Moisturizer

When applying moisturizer as part of your daily routine,make sure not to use it directly around your eyes -- this skin is more likelyto retain fluid, and moisturizer will make the under-eye area appear puffier.But do remember to use some on your neck and throat; skin can become dry there,too.



JOKES



Lawyer Joke



An American attorney had just finished a guest lecture at a lawschool in Italy when an Italian lawyer approached him and asked, "Is ittrue that a person can fall down on a sidewalk in your county and then sue thelandowners for lots of money?"

Told that it was true, the lawyer turned to his partner and started speakingrapidly in Italian. When they stopped, the American attorney asked if theywanted to go to America to practice law.

"No, no," one replied. "We want to go to America and fall downon sidewalks."



Pregnant



Seven months pregnant, my hand on my aching back, I stood inline at the post office for what seemed an eternity.

"Honey," said a woman behind me, "I had back pain during mypregnancy. I was bedridden for four months because my baby was sitting on anerve."

Then the man in front of me piped up....

"You'd better get used to it now. Once those kids get on your nerves, theycan stay there till they're 18."





Parole Board

The Bureau of prisons just announced the release of a serialbank robber who had looted over 30 banks before his capture.

The parole board says he is completely rehabilitated and has found employmentat his home in Prague.

Yes, that is correct...

They were able to right a bad czech.



Quick Funny or not so funny



I went to buy some camouflage trousers the other day but Icouldn't find any.



Bad Timing



A parish priest, Father O'Brien, was being honored at adinner on the 25th anniversary of his arrival in that parish.

A leading local politician, who was a member of the congregation, was chosen tomake the presentation and give a little speech at the dinner, but he wasdelayed in traffic.

Sooo.....Father O'Briend decides to say his own few words while they await thepolitician's arrival......

"You will understand," he said, "the seal of the confessional,can never be broken. What is confessed in there to me, is never repeated on theoutside. However, I got my first impressions of this parish from the firstconfession I ever heard here.

Realize, please, that I can only hint vaguely about this, but when I came here25 years ago, I thought I had been assigned to a terrible place.

The very first chap who entered my confessional told me how he had stolen atelevision set and, when stopped by the police, had almost murdered theofficer. Further, he told me he had embezzled money from his place of businessand had an affair with his boss's wife. I was appalled. But as the days went onI knew that my people at this congregation were not all like that, and I had,indeed come to, a fine parish full of understanding and loving people."

Just as the priest finished his talk, the politician arrived, apologized forhis tardiness and then started in on his speech.

"I want to thank you all for letting me say a few words this evening inhonor of Father O'Brien. 25 Years is a long time. In fact, when he arrivedhere, I had the honor of being the first confession he heard at thiscongregation."

Now that is bad timing.



Have a very niceSaturday!

Dreams dance under the glare of the sun’s moodiness
Blood vanishes from the veins of once dead men
Medals of tarnish float along a river of bedridden nightmares
Soft drinks pierce the heart ache of an ancient lover

Coffee mugs litter the world’s tainted breath
Cake mix splatters the wall of any old soul’s happy day
Laundry baskets of forbidden desires clutter my mind
Australian needs rise up and revolt against the will

Steadfast now, the winds have changed and blow upon
new dreams from the shorelines of an imagination.
Hindrances break even with the mob, blowing jobs in the faces
of masked gods under none.

From what does the truth set you free?
And what sets you free from love?
Cerulean dreams dart like angels to the ball
Woe to the marching band stuck at the disco

Tripping on bumps in the sidewalks as if the flaws
were meant to convey the illusion of perfection.
Bumping into dreams while on day trips to a place legendary
among the star screamers of yesterday.

Played with market chiefs in the fishy dreams of villains
Heroes rise from the ashes of who they wish they could really be
Hunger penetrates the enigma in which livestock consume the diet
of better days and healthier people.

Strangers.
Blanket thieves.
Snuggling with the poverty of heart stricken saps who ****
the life out of the tear duct orifice between theses beautiful lashes of grace.

Come with me,
let’s escape to a world of ours.
My imagination has room for
Two.

Laying in the bed
Bedridden,covered in old friends blood
Don't you wish they did
Don't you wish they dead
Don't you want to touch me with the holy ghost for once
Laying in the bed
Bedridden
Don't you want to touch me with the holy ghost for once
As it came already
Ever rest in a candles focus

lover’s lament is a foreign phrase.
the failure to follow through
after days and days.
a night well spent amplifies
the objection  of your heart.
the only self-reverence in your hands
is the skill to erase.  
i am desperate with intent
and you’re high off the assumption.
with a whiff of my willingness
your power is content from presumption.  
desire is essential only when
you fear I don’t need you.  
i react to negligence and
all it does is feed you.  
your eyes have averted
as you’re fully aware.  
my will is good but
nothing to spare.  

i need an end to this name
i’ve been given.
i need a start to this life
that’s become bedridden.
you need a friend
in this karmic
game of resentment.  
what decadence a fair-weather
friend will give
for their own contentment.  
i look around and
i’m the only one still trying.  
your poor heart still bleeds
it still bleeds.
it’s still dying.
like a silent revenge
fallen upon my deaf ears.  
i still hear you.
expose yourself but
conceal your regret.
it’s your own self-doubt
you find hard to forget
attack for full control
that you accuse me of stealing
a gift in exchange to retaliate
your warped feeling.  
to be afraid,
to be afraid,
to be afraid.
is to be free.  
and you’re just like me.

It having been decided, herein is pronounced.
Let them know the number of days; let them count the number of days
and the count shall be 180.
Day 1 let him strike his head with his fists and call it "stupid".
Day 5 let the vomiting begin without surcease.
Let him dress for work as if he can.
Let him park and never drive beyond Day 10.
Let him pass out at the toilet.
Let him shed 100 pounds and all his hair.
He shall suffer such indignities as appertain
until he is brought to tears before his eldest son
of whom he shall ask, "Do you believe in miracles?"
Let there be no reprieve, neither for the holidays.
Let him wander out into the snow without a coat
and utter, "So beautiful. So beautiful."
All this in due course to precede the final 3.
The son and he shall smoke a last cigarette on the porch.
He shall proceed to the gurney and not see home again.
Let them gather at the hospice room.
Let him suffer terminal rage
thus shall he be manhandled by the sons.
On that day he shall be bedridden by narcotic.
Let him fall into persistent incoherence.
They shall play the New World by Dvorak.  
He shall not hear.
They shall gather for the Rosary over him.
He shall not hear.
The eldest son shall vow to stay at his side
nor shall he sleep for 72 hours.
The son shall not permit the end to come.
The son shall take his hand and say
"Only God takes it away."
And when the room is empty but for them he shall sing softly
"Today While the Blossoms Still Cling to the Vine"
He shall not hear.
Let them all tell him it is okay to die.
Let the eldest son protest, "It is not okay to die."
In the final hours he shall struggle again
thus to be manhandled by the sons.
Then amid his incoherence he shall look the eldest in the eyes
and solemnly say
"I love you."
These shall be his last words.
Let them check his toes for signs of life.
Let the breathing come infrequently.
Let the breathing cease.
Let the son remain until they pull away the sheet
and display him in his nakedness at last.
All this to be accomplished January 15
in the year of Our Lord.

you’ve been on my mind recently
i don’t think i love you
perhaps just the idea of loving someone is enough
or more accurately, the idea of someone loving me
i know it was never anything real
when you complimented me
or tried talking to me
but it’s too late now,
i’ve been consumed by my thoughts of you
but i have become obsessed with the idea of you
and it drives me to insanity
yearning to know if “what if” could be definite
and i know it’s so insignificant compared to the vastness of the sky
and the overwhelming stresses of day to day life
but i tell myself you are the most important thing life has to offer

i hate it
i hate that no matter where i am
or what i’m doing
you find a way to seep into the crevices of my brain
and make the contents in my chest quiver
i hate that i feel unwanted because of you
it should not be your decision to make me feel worthy
yet your validation has suddenly become
the purpose of the breaths i take
i want nothing to do with you,
but even saying that, i know it is a deadpan lie
i know you aren’t interested
you’re too good for and to me and my desperate soul
so i will repress this hopeful, naive heart
that believes in the impossible
i know your love isn’t love
i know your kindness isn’t as harmless as it seems
yet i still think about your hands and hair over dinner
and imagine gazing into your eyes when reading any book

love is meant for fools
and i will not be made a fool of
not by a boy with bright red hair
and a bright warm smile
i will not be made a fool of
by a boy who’s love will never manifest deeper than my skin
i had always admired from afar
but it’s time to really distance myself
i need to stop looking for your red head
in the sea of brunettes and blondes
i need to stop myself and my brain
from searching for you
you once were interested in me
and as you break my heart as i once broke yours
the balance of the universe is restored
yet i don’t feel steady
i don’t feel equilibrium

i want the void that consumes me
i want the void to be filled, preferably by you
but it wasn’t meant to be
i wasn’t made for you
you know you’re too good for me
conversations fall flat
being with you would take copious amounts of work
work that won't be put in by either of us
i want the relationship with all the benefits
without the heartache and wet cheeks

i wonder who you love now
i wonder if you still change your interest
like the tides are influenced by the moon every night
i wonder if the one who has gained your interest is gorgeous,
with an extroverted personality
i wonder if they have all the things you wanted me to have
but could never develop
i can’t believe you would make me weak in the knees and in the head
i know you are an unhealthy habit i indulge in,
but buried in my gut,
i whisper prayers to a god i do not believe in
i pray that your soft spoken eyes will fall upon me
and that an electric current will go through your body
i pray you are slowly driven to madness,
the insanity that has enveloped me
i will refuse your actions
because i don’t really love you

i love the idea of someone loving me
i love the power i have over you
i do not love you
i love the attention you provide
i love the thought of getting what i want
feeling your blood drip through my fingers
as i squeeze your heart in my clenched fists
you don’t realize this, but you’re a pawn in my chess game
i am bedridden, sickened because you refuse to participate
but that’s okay
i don’t want or need you as desperately as i once thought
i will let you go, and although i will miss
fantasizing over the idea of you
you will truly be the one who loses in the end,
i have no doubt

i'm anxious for an early grave
an expressway to the pearly gates
or a laundry chute to the furnace flames
any burning faith that i can claim-
like yearning for a puppet string,
i'm addicted to the dangling-
salivating for that suspension
heaven help me make these hard decisions
because the aimlessness of atheism
is weighing down my weakened limbs
as it beats me til i'm bedridden
or confines me to the casket's grip.

Yesterday’s gravity

Pulls threads in weaved cloth
Blown and scattering waves
Massive like black holes and small
Like the wings of humming

Birds of Planck length down feathers
On a drifting radiowave
While watching the television in a
Padded

Rooms inside Schrödinger’s box
Contained by hypertension
Like the hairs that grow in fibers of
The cerebrum’s

Neurons which inflate and warp
His hands shook like the rabbit ears
On his old television, wood paneled with
Outdated

Textbooks like his shelves
And enigma is his cited source
In his teleportation box, bedridden
Things in

There are superstrings on the walls
Floating eyes on the atoms of loneliness
Quark fizz, structural quanta on
Yesterday’s gravity

Pulls threads in weaved cloth

I watch dead birds dance
around the campfire.
Their chirps sound like thousands of years ago.

I can feel it working.

The coyote's rhythmic panting
conforms to my heartbeat.
Bedridden is given to the gods as a sacrifice.

But I need to find my body...

The warmth from the ashes and timber
combined with the midnight air
massages and entangles my hair.

The body I have is is fading...

My eyes are pulling me back
the wind hushes my cries.
The mountains weigh me down.

Breathing is no longer an issue...

Getting over heartbreak is like getting over sickness. Each day you feel better and better, and each day you can stomach a little bit more. Until one day you can walk around and shower and go outside and laugh without sneezing. And then, not too long after that, you won't even remember what being sick felt like. The bedridden, hazy thoughts that occupied your mind will be just a dream. And the sad, helpless feelings of heartbreak will go into oblivion in the same easy breath of freedom.

you can get tied to your bed
held fast, for endless hours
without strength to rise

all you can do is ride
and wait
for deliverance.

May I have a sip?
In the cup of life?
I wish to be well
For this lifelong strife

Bones are cracking
HanDs are numbing
Body is shaking
Heart is aching

Oh! I've longed for this freedom
With a meaningful smile
But hEre I am, bedridden
Like a caged reptile

A chemo tomorrow
A surgery to follow
A wig that I borrow
To hide whAt is hollow

My friends, my loved ones
Please don't cry
I shall fight this sickness
And will not say goodbye

God give me strengTh
For I shall not falter
My life is a gift
And yes, it does matter

Lungs failing
With a heavy breatHing
Eyelids are bowing
*My life is ending

If you wanna leave me
then you must be smart.

You must know
I pick fights with my lips when I kiss
That there's barbed wire at the end of my tongue
That I get into your spine when you sleep
and stay in your lungs after you breathe me in.

If you wanna leave me,
it's because you're a little scared to **** me
because you're afraid I won't like it
And what will happen if I actually do.

Like,
maybe I shouldn't kiss this girl
because I'll either break her
or catch something.

You must know my eyes will close up your throat.
So, baby,
let me make you bedridden

Or you can go.

Your love is unhealthy and infectious. I find myself ill with revolt. I'm bedridden; shackled by abandonment and chained by regret. I need an exorcism to purge me of your sin. I've been telling you for months that I wish to be clean of these mind-altering drugs, yet you keep coming back and finding your way into my veins. Who knew that something as delicate as flower petals would be my demise? Who knew that sandy beaches and empty street corners would eventually be the death of all sanity? You doused my heart in gasoline and told me to set myself on fire. Little did you know that the spark inside your eye was enough to catch us both aflame. I used to think that if I couldn't have you, that I'd rather be alone, but now I find myself taking that wretched curse of my past, and carving what's left of you out of my skin. Sadly, the ravines and trenches on my wrists will forever be a symbol of the day I learned what it feels like to break. I woke up screaming last night (every night, oh god, every night), and rose to a room bathed in red, with sacrificial bruises around my throat. I laughed because I realized that my own hands were to blame, not yours. My mind is starting to cave in on itself, and these four walls are getting closer and closer. I'm scared. I feel disgusting and I'm begging you to please, let go. I gave you everything I had. You've taken my spare change and kicked me in the ribs, abandoning me in a crowded alley. HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO SCREAM OUT YOUR NAME UNTIL IT STOPS MAKING SENSE? WHEN WILL THE STARS QUIT POINTING IN YOUR DIRECTION, AND WHEN WILL YOU RELEASE YOUR FINGERS FROM AROUND MY HEART? I HATE MYSELF FOR FALLING IN LOVE WITH YOUR HYPOCRISY. I HATE MYSELF FOR FALLING IN LOVE WITH YOUR GAMES. I HATE MYSELF FOR FALLING IN LOVE WITH YOUR PAST, BECAUSE ALL I WANTED WAS TO BE A PART OF YOUR  FUTURE. GET OUT OF ME GET OUT OF ME GET OUT OF ME GET OUT OF ME GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT OUT OUT OUT OUT OUT OUT OUT OUT OUTOUTOUTOUTOUTOUTTOUOUTOUT-

(a.m.) 06/26/14