Whatever you do

don't defrost Walt Disney

I hear he was not a nice man

even could be part of the clan



Please don't bring him alive

a brain in a robot he would reside

and if you gave him glaring laser eyes

all at Touchstone pictures would have to die



So please please

don't defrost Walt Disney





By Christos Andreas Kourtis aka NeonSolaris

By NeonSolaris

© 2011 NeonSolaris (All rights reserved)

I miss Lydia I lost her from my side
I wanted so much for her to be my bride
now I feel so lost

She told me she was my sword and shield
I took her with me across many a field
but now I pay the cost.

I need her by my side she fought so well
from the Draugr, Bandits, the Forsworn and Dragons I cast many a spell
she held me very tight at nights so that she could defrost.

Lydia Lydia Lydia I call you're name
why am I so heart broken it's just a game.
I am now heavily laden items must get tossed

I might have to start this game anew
but that would make me feel so blue
I made it to Whiterun and the forest I crossed

I searched and searched for you as far as Markarth
when will you join me once more and satisfy my heart
I have come to a final point and feel extreme exhaust.

Rebuffed
by expressionless faces
you'll never meet.

An image
can't be identified
through a distorted lens.

Weary words
defrost
as egotistical dreams.

Points of view
compete with self-esteem
and dysfunctional genes.

You were a book without a cover
Hard to read
Closed
Your heart was shut
Like mine used to be
I think I know you better
Better than you know yourself
You had a sense of humor
Smart
Witty
Intelligent
Wise
You had a plan
Knew where you were
Going
I liked that
I stood there
Gently knocking
On the portal to your heart
Hanging onto
Smiley face emoticons
And you calling me back
After you had to get off the phone
But
I always texted first
I had to carry the conversation
I don’t think you realize
How hard it was
To stay out in the cold
Waiting for you to
Warm up
To me
To defrost your heart
To see that I was a man
Who stood there
In your bitter cold
But
In the end
It was the end
You and I
Are two
Separate people
I wish
You luck
I hope someday
You believe
In love
I know
I do

I set my cruise on the highway and
am passed by a red AMC Eagle.  
This red rusty AMC Eagle has a
wind shied covered in frost because,
I'm guessing, the defrost motor burned
up in a bakelite mushroom cloud from the
dashboard.  
It is held together with duct tape
and grit.  The pilot sits behind his cardboard
console ludicrously warm in winter parka,
scarf,
hat
and gloves.

I pass him waving dressed
in my tshirt and shorts.
Driving in my new, awesomely
economical car.
Four dashboard vents dump lava warm air
to keep me pleasingly toasty.
The pilot will never understand that I wave
not at his expense, but in envy.  The billboard
on my right says it all,
If I have to explain you wouldn't understand.

I want to understand the steep thing
that climbs ladders in your throat.
I can't make sense of you.
Everywhere I look you're there--
a vast landmark, a volcano
poking its head through the clouds,
Gulliver sprawled across Lilliput.

I climb into your eyes, looking.
The pupils are black painted stage flats.
They can be pulled down like window shades.
I switch on a light in your iris.
Your brain ticks like a bomb.

In your offhand, mocking way
you've invited me into your chest.
Inside: the blur that poses as your heart.
I'm supposed to go in with a torch
or maybe hot water bottles
& defrost it by hand
as one defrosts an old refrigerator.
It will shudder & sigh
(the icebox to the insomniac).

Oh there's nothing like love between us.
You're the mountain, I am climbing you.
If I fall, you won't be all to blame,
but you'll wait years maybe
for the next doomed expedition.

Summer’s time has come and gone
The walls, floorboards release a yawn
With nine months then to recoup, recover
From being a home, just for the summer.

Eloquent memories freshly remain
Of friends who nestled within her frame
A cabin of bunk beds, cubbies, fresh air
Where girls unwound with little a care.

Her crevice now holds a left-behind letter
Whose parchment hardens with winter’s weather
Yet the season’s sleet knows the warmer reflection
Of late night secrets and encouraged imperfection.

Spring has sprung most slowly for some
The evergreens exclaim a harmonious hum
Her wooden steps defrost, and patiently await
The coming of campers to the cardinal state.

Fall, winter, and spring all pass
Warm rays have woken the mountains at last
Each cabin’s frame stands taller, *****
While girls, all ages, reconnect.

Anna Blake

There was a knock at the door

A knock that bounces off in rhythm

Similar yet different
from the disjointed sounds
of her head hitting the door,
the bathroom sink,
and then the floor

Her beats were her beatings
which often dragged from street to bed

They began with her mothers boyfriend,
an alcoholic enforcer of  peace, law, and trust
But, he wished to take a piece of her and eat it,
telling her that no laws were broken,
as he asked her to trust him

With a bit of apprehension
she sequestered, she went to his level,
as mother looked on from her blind eye
She asked her mother to stop the man
because it was a new pain unlike any other
Mother cooked on, stirring her beef stew,
just cooking along as she bawled
Those tears provided little relief
to the daughter with her first STD at 13

She provided little reaction
after multiple interactions with her attacker
It was easier to spread her legs and allow easy access to the temple residing there in shambles

She became intoxicated by the same poison that
awakened the inner beast within her mothers man
An exciting blood rush from bruised legs healed
by liquors lecherous lectures

Until one day the man died
in the street due to his debts
A man in blue left black and blue,
thus freeing her, or so she thought

Now at seventeen she had never had a man of her
own, or a boy after ***** in her case
She doesn't know what a good boy looks like, or
feels like, only what a bad man taste like

Consequently she repeats the cycle
because it is comfort as she's conformed
Her contorted body and twisted smile with
tattooed black and blues is normal

Another knock at the door

A sound that bounces off in rhythm

Rhythm and blues
One, two
One, two
Rhythm and blues
One, two
One, two

Similar but different
from the dangling
of her bracelets
as her man chokes her
with her necklace
she gasps for breath,
but is helpless

Completely given into
the physically stronger
person above her
Keeping her down:
1 foot,
2 foot,
3 foot,
4 foot,
5 foot,
till she begs to be 6 feet underground

Where he stops just short
And digs her up from the Earth

He puts out cigarettes
on her tongue
He rapes her repeatedly:
cooing for her to call him daddy
He makes her shoot up heroine
He beats her and her temple
into smithereens

She is a shell of who she used to be,
but accepts what fate has afforded her
As if she had no say in the matter
because no one told her
that there is always a choice

She doesn't know that she can run
She doesn't know that she can fight back
She doesn't know that she can call the police
(never police)
She doesn't know her own power

Because she is nothing,
nothing without him,
and him and him and him,
Nothing all at without dripping
blood on the floor from her bottom lip
busted open after denying his kiss

She has his baby in her stomach
but it doesn't stop him
from kicking her *** up and down the block
He doesn't want her to have the baby
so he throws her down stairs daily,
"Are you ******* crazy?"

Her neighbors yell
as her man tells them
to mind their business
and go to hell
"She's my *****," he yells
as he always excels
at repelling everyone else

One day an unknown savior
came to offer her aid
One thing led to another
and her saviors fist met her mans face
She screamed and the savior
thought it was out of relief
However she was afraid
that her man was deceased
Her savior would end up
leaving the building in hand cuffs
As she embraced her man,
he swore he woke up and would change
She smiled brightly as he kissed her scars
and dried tears from her face
Her beatings ended for two nights:
then started up again when
she forgot to defrost some chicken for dinner

Once more a knock at her door

A bang that bounces off in rhythm

A baby boy was produced and given love
in the highest quantities known to man,
smothering in quality, and genuine as can be
His mother sacrificed every day of her life for his,
took every loss in stride, cooked every single night,
and was beaten in plain sight of her baby boy

Baby boy learns from daddy,
Daddy turns to stranger,
Stranger is never a danger,
Stranger daps young boy,
After assaulting his mother,
Stranger gives young boy a gun,
Stranger tells young boy to join a gang,
Stranger tells young boy to run the streets,
Stranger tells young boy to hit his woman,
Stranger says she's a *** and a *****,
Just like the young boys mama,
Stranger gives props to young boy,
Stranger loves young boy,
And young boy loves stranger back,
Young boy hates:
his mother,
his neighborhood,
his friends,
his teachers,
his sisters,
and the sun,
But stranger understands him,
Stranger raised him

Mother died in memorial hospital
from internal bleeding
She had taken one beating
a thousand times too many
Young boys grandmother looked
upon her body in regret and shame
Grief given much too late
for the child ****** into hate

The young boy turns man

And knocks on his ladies door

Rhythm reminiscent of hers...

***** and blood
***** and blood
Things come together
Things fall apart

***** and blood
***** and blood
Things come together
Things fall apart

***** and blood
***** and blood
Things come together
Things fall apart

Today is September 11, 2012.

Last night, on  September 10, 2012, I went to bed thinking about classes the next day, things that had to be done, money that had to be spent.  I thought about problems in my relationships, things to fix those problems.  I thought about the horse whom I'd spent most of the evening riding.  I didn't think about the anniversary of the tragedy that happened 11 years ago.

When I woke up this morning, I got ready for school, made sure I had my homework done, grabbed a mug of coffee on the way out the door, and shivered in the morning chill of autumn.  I got in my car and turned on the heat, waited for the windows to defrost, and pulled out of my driveway.  I didn't think about the anniversary of the tragedy that happened 11 years ago.

I was on the highway and someone passed me, too close, and I wondered how some people pass their driving tests.  I got stuck behind a school bus while a very slow teenager boarded, and wondered how I would get to my class on time.  In town, I slowed to let a cat cross the road in front of me, and wondered how it had made it across so many times before.  I didn't think about the anniversary of the tragedy that happened 11 years ago.

On country roads, I turned up my radio when I heard my favorite song come on: “For You,” by Keith Urban.  I sang along with the lyrics, knowing that I was going to cry when I heard the lines, “And in his pocket, just like mine, he had a photograph, and they're waiting for him back home.”  At that moment, the significance of today's date popped into my mind.  September 11, 2012.  And I thought about the anniversary of the tragedy that happened 11 years ago.

I had twenty minutes to get to class, but I couldn't drive any more until I gave a moment to my thoughts about the day.  I pulled over on the side of a familiar country road and turned my music off.  I looked out the window to see the rolling farmland and I felt the cool breeze on my face, and thought about how much I take this world for granted.  This is my country, and the ones who perished on September 11, 2001 would have taken this day for granted too, if that tragedy had not happened.  It was time to think about the present, and see it for its beauty, and not for its frustrations.

I thought about my life, just for a moment.  I went to school, and throughout my classes, I could not stop thinking.  I remembered how I cried when I went to New York and saw the 9/11 Memorial in the footprints of the twin towers.  I thought about the tribute songs to the event.  I thought about my dear friend and my brother, who are fighting for our country as members of the military.  With every thought, I chose to look at something new; something I had seen a hundred times, but could possibly never see again.

The future is unpredictable.  My life is a small speck in a world of sand.  I owe it to thousands of people, because if one person did something differently on any day, in any moment, there is a chance that I would not be here. On September 11, 2012, I give thanks more than any previous anniversary of the event.  Today, I am an 18-year-old adult, free to make choices, free to vote for my country's leaders, free to fight for it.  And as I look out across the fields, and to the sky, and at the flag hanging at half-staff, I decide that I will fight for it, in one way or another, because people have died and more will die to let me appreciate these things and I will not let their death be in vain.

For years ...
My heart sat in a box of icy glass.
Shivering every night, through the wake of daylight.
Cracking slowly over the years.
Hoping ...
Longing
for the righteous touch.
Many sought to conquer but failed...
I would crack thinking
it was time for me
to beat lively again...
But they failed...
They all failed
Not one has come close to my heart.
My heart was detached from me.
I was in cage chained,
watching my heart,
deteriorate through the years.
So
The cracks of my heart began to
rebuild its icy veins.
And my heart sat in box of icy glass.
Longing through ever shutter.
Wondering what am I beating for.
Slowly the temperatures dropped
And my heart became colder.
My heart alarmed signals of  
heavy frostbites hovering over my soul.
I slowly try to crack ,
by enduring this
emptiness of my icy heart.

It Was Dangerous Severed Heart

My heart was coped up in ice and loneliness.
My heart began to fall into abyss of winter
Everlasting for eternity,
My heart in a icy box.
For eternity....
No longer beats due to
The exhaustion from shivering .
From receiving little cracks of hope...
Open and closing to the wrong warriors..
They failed .
To save my heart .
And most importantly to save me...
My heart didn't want to be loved
My heart wanted to be misused
To be mislead through every sin.
That was my love for my heart.
Loneliness sunk into my icy box.
My heart shed tears through every shiver.
The shivers through every wrongful touch.
My heart grew weaker into the abyss..
Quitting.
Slowly
A Silhouette emerged from icy dark waters.
My heart watched this beautiful masterpiece swimming,
across every strenuous wave,
Vigorously. Powerfully.
Eyes with flame of devotion.
So much devotion...
Beautiful Dark Eyes
My Heart and I will always cherish
His eyes ....
My heart deteriorated by the time
As this ghost reached my heart...
My heart began to look for its shiver
My little trickle hair began to alert.
Waking my heart from is devastation
My heart manage to hook
it's eyes on this ghost...
He wasn't a warrior ...
He was a hero.
Angel guardian ...
With eyes that flamed devotion.
Igniting my icy cracks to reopen.
Quickly shunned ..
As when he reached with an anchor
To the iciest veins part of me
Which was my heart in the box...
My heart let go of the anchor.
It didn't want to be save.
It wanted to live in naked loneliness.
You would drop your anchor waiting
For my heart to reach.
Shunned
you
over
over
and
over
again.
Yourself shiver through the nights into daylight.
Waiting for me to defrost into your saving arms.
My heart was incapable .
My heart whisper apologies every shiver you shake waiting for me.
But my heart sank deeper into the haunted memories.
Terrifying questions
"Why weren't you becoming one of my sins"
"Why aren't you a regretful touch"
I couldn't sink deeper because your anchor followed through every pressure..
Through every flaw of my icy veins.
Thawing hard through my icy veins .
You became my hero in that very instance.
My angelic savior .
My heart began to crack to weigh on your anchor.
By the time my heart began to reincarnate itself
I found myself in shaking in shivers
My cracks began to burst with ice
I began to sank....
It wasn't my time to be saved.
Was it?
Then you became alluring serpent of my heart.
The possessed thought of my mind.
Your poison began to shift my veins .
My heart began to pump warmly ,
Slowly regaining its redness through every
Memory of you...
Through every caressing moment from you.
You.
My heart felt this unknown feeling.
It was a masterpiece forming as it began to feel.
It began to feel what my angel has been fighting for.
What you have been fighting for.
Since the moment
he let go of the anchor,
To save my heart...
Most importantly me..
I became yours a little too late .
He loves me...
And I loved him.
Then I love him
And then he loved me.
My heart had to crack
For my angel.
For myself
The time has come.
For my eyes to spark again...
With the same love and devotion
As yours...
My heart is missing heaven.
Missing home.
Missing my virtue.
There are many things,
I know my heart,
Can devote to many,
Beautiful things.
It's not easy for
My heart to start to believe again...
But my heart confides in you .
Only you...
When my heart opens ,
You will be there
with your anchor
Receiving me...
Loving me...
As I waited for awhile
to learn what home feels like .
Not in the icy box ,
But to be  in another heart full with warmth.

That is the moment I been waiting for.
To love you and only you.

Because I righteously deserve all of  you
And you righteously deserve all of me...

I thank you ...
For staying in this prolong battle...

I love you
with all the cracks
and bruises of my heart.
Soon I know I will be healed .

I love you my angel .

One spoon of cough syrup*

              Pour
   Lines pulled against
         the currents,
like the strings of my day
      and you have set
       underneath my
            horizon;
    flares of your colors
         settling into
           my earth.
                                                     Taste
                                          Read my eyes and
                                             longing looks.
                                      Find the nerve behind
                                           the trail of scarlet
                                          and embrace your
                                           lingering shadow
                                         the one I've learned
                                                  to love.                                            

          Swallow                                          ­                                                  
   Cling to my desire                                                           ­                              
 and entangle yourself
         once more
don't struggle instead
     press your bones
        into my grave
   and bury me in your
         flesh of broken
                dreams.
                                  ­                                                                 ­                                                             Repeat
                                         ­       Defrost your denied
                                                         approval in
                                                         my warmth
                                                     and wrap me in
                                                           attention.
                                                      ­ Turn me into
                                                  your poison apple
                                                and sink your heart
                                                  deep into my core.

Sweet rippled midnight, poured
silver chilled cubes shiver
icicles cuddle
a tent hung huddle
priceless frostbite savored
mornings warming drip,
lovely defrost

I lick the ice from my skin;

for it has remained there

since the moment you left,

and I know I must defrost my

indifference and ambivalence

before you return to my arms.

-

a cold, hard shell

encapsulates my heart

(which once throbbed with

love unquenchable)

and icily creeps steadily

up the walls

& down the corridors

only to stop

& melt

at the site of

my own

selfish,                       steaming,

lamenting,                  seeping,

cave of a dwelling.

-

*Yet still I wait

at the door,

to see who

will arrive with the pick.

What I want
For Christmas is
Just the barest
Of necessities

All my teeth
Not just two
So when I eat
I can chew

A skip and jump
Back in my step
So each morning
I have some pep

A pair of glasses
Which self defrost
A set of keys
Which don’t get lost

All my hair
Put back in place
So I don’t have
That barren space

A pair of shoes
With self tie laces
So I don’t have to
Reach those places

A set of arteries
That don’t plug
A nice cold beer
Which I can chug

To have someone
My brain equip
With that new fangled
Memory chip

So it can tell me
My intent
When I stood up
And why I went

A bunch of prunes
Which are pre dated
To work just when
I’m constipated

A gizmo that will
So to speak
Turn off my wee wee’s
Little leak

So I don’t have
I’ll just be blunt
Those little dribbles
In the front

A cork that fits
My *** hole, please
So hemorrhoids don’t pop out
Whenever I sneeze

A longer arm
That would pass
Behind my back
To wipe my ***

On this I’ll end
My little list
I don’t want Santa
To get ******
BOEMS BY JA 103

Bi polar bear bouncing up and down
on a summer high one year
Got to walk the wall

in China before I wore those shirts
an excuse to use/not to wear
When I was getting perks

And reminding me to stay in line
how lucky that it is to get all of this
for nothing more than just a Kremlin kiss

Kathy's kissing in the Kremlin
Chatting after she had tea
And we're hiding from the KGB
Kathy's kissing in the Kremlin

And I went up to Alaska, the final frontier
Found a tent to defrost in Antarctica
Sunk to the bottom of the ocean floor
Where it is all lit up
and I rode the Himalayan Sky
Sold the pictures to the book with yellow trim
and

Kathy's kissing in the Kremlin
Flying there again.  Kathy's kissing in the Kremlin
Kissing in the Kremlin
Kissing in the Kremlin

For you I broke my own laws
when I was with you I saw my own flaws
I had to work hard for a pointless cause
you swiped at me with relentless claws

You cheered me up when I was down
you made me smile, you made me frown
after all the love I tried to drown
your carelessness made me shutdown

I came to you with open arms
Vulnerable to your endless charms
and even though I heard the alarms
I let you cause me deadly harms

My brain is all crisscrossed
emotional death was the cost
while I waited for my icy anger to defrost
any love for me you had, you  seemed to have lost

So now I stand here, tears on the floor
broken and crumbled to the core
you could not have hurt me anymore
you looked at me and closed the door

So if becoming my friend is something you want to do
the walls around my heart won’t be so easy to get through
I have suffered and cried and been broken too
still every time I think of you

No matter how hard I’ve tried
no matter how much you lied
even though I try to hide
still, I die a little bit inside

It’s 6:08 AM
and 6 degrees Fahrenheit outside.
My window sweats on the inside and
a truck motor runs on the street for ten minutes
working to defrost its inner cargo.
The frosty hills are still dark as hell.
Somewhere hours away you’re waking up
choking for coffee and running off
moved by the efficient early metro buses,
the graying slush,
and the misty chandelier of streetlamps.
Maybe next winter you’ll be here
to coax me to put down the books
before the too-long awaited dawn.

Until then,
Good morning.
Goodnight.

.the better part of a Friday night

grim.. times... what better way to pass a drinking session than to translate some Horace... i see no other worthy time-consuming scoop of any events to follow, this:

humano capiti cervicem pictor equinam iungere si velit et varitas
inducere plumas undique conlatis membris, ut turpiter atrum
desinat in piscem mulier formosa superne,
spectatum admissi risum teneatis, amici?
credite, Pisones, isti tabulae fore librum persimilem,
cuius, velut aegri somnia, vanae fingentur species,
ut nec pes nec caput uni reddatur formae.
scimus, et hanc veniam
petimusque damusque vicissim;
sed non ut placidis coeant inmitia, non ut serpentes
avibus geminentur, tigribus agni.

some first reading... sounds like chasing a chimera...

with a human head on a horses' neck: should a painter
tie the two together on a whim, and other limbs
collected from everywhere: puff up duck feathers into
a pillow or a bed cover - from "nothing"... hey presto!
that a beautiful woman from the torso up with a
fish's black tail below to boot...
on exhibition: would you, friends,
not burst burst out with laughter? believe: Paisans!
similar to this image will be the book:
in which as in an ill man's dream, in delirium,
the head and the feet belong to different
forms
i use this law and i recommend others to use it too,
but not to equate gentleness with a wildness:
with a bird a serpent, a lamb with a tiger...

angels and mermaids... what is no less or... no more:
improbable? perhaps neither...
but in the guise of monotheism... everything is still
somehow sensible...
where there was: half and half...
what angel of monotheism is a half and half
when contending for existence among unicorns...
mermaids or centaurs?
a chimera and a cyclops... **** with a minotaur...
but... such events of monotheistic grandeour are...
supposedly the better respected...
for all the respect i gave unto Knausgård -
because it comes from monotheism:
an angel is to be seen as more than a mermaid...
perhaps... if the angel is of my form...
has the wings... but for its mouth?
a pecker mask... a 50:50 share ratio of...
what a racial "mongrel" would otherwise burden his
shadows with...
a pecker mask akin to those masks
worn at the Venice carnival:
doctor doctor black plague masks...
with a muffed-up speech... as if shouting into
cotton puffed up...
esp. cotton candy...

and this is a sort of friday where i'd much prefer
translating latin... god... where did all these modern
prepositions and conjunctions from from:
into the fore?! there's only one song of worthy summary...
the specials - ghost town.

- Autorank Total 10 ( higher is reduced to 10 ), professional similarity 10 (of 10), concrete vs abstract 2 (of 2), noun/verb/etc order -0.7 (of 1) -

poetry and order... yes...
yes... very much akin to rhymes...
and very formal language...
but this is hardly a "micro-aggression",
on my part...

it's funny that i never paid any attention to this detail...

hoc erat in votis

i was never into brian jonestown massacre, more of a dandy warhols' fan, but then brian jonestown released the album aufheben and pawns of the palette started picking up not only seminal citric acids and kashmir's spices, but sharp grooves of some distant geography, which of course, all in all: to my liking.

there's nothing like listening to the opening
track of the aufheben album (panic
in babylon, instrumental) and reciting a
bit of horace; should i be accused of sounding
pompous, here's horace himself

    hoc erat in votis: modus agri non ita magnus,
    hortus ubi et tecto vicinus iugis aquae fons
    et paulum silvae super his foret. auctius atque
    di melius fecere. bene est. nil amplius oro,
    maia nate, nisi ut propria haec mihi munera faxis.

    it was the aim of my wishes: a snippet of arable land,
    a garden, in the vicinity of my house a source of
    fresh water and a grove upon a ***** of a hilly eminence.
    the gods beyond their intentions bestowed upon me
    the loot of my thus lived fate. i have enough!
    i do not implore for more either in this heart of mine
    or among incense or blood of sacrificed bulls at the altar
    where worship is prescribed unto them, but only give me,
    son of May, the chance to use these bestowals.

(translated from polish, and, as would be expected of me,
involved in translation, adding something of my own,
as you can see, the latin prepositions and conjunctions
are reflective of the number apparent in the english language,
but it's hardly a concern with other words,
awaiting a unanimous - not necessarily an N between
two vowels, or because of H, as is exampled by
a great alphabetical distancing of the vowels,
or simply because of the latin tongue-twisters of
the grapheme æ and œ - awaiting a unanimous
decision of the compound words stalled by the hyphen
form, e.g. light-bulb / lightbulb (underlined as a spelling
mistake) by the oxford dictionary committee...
but let's not get as crazy as german spelling
glue... it would make james joyce pale even by finnegans
wake standards of the 100 letter word... i know... english
is a language spelled like shotgun shrapnel, and german is spelled
like a wedding cake or scottish fudge, thick and bulging;
what was i going to say? i took a step into the heraclitean
river and the river took me elsewhere, the ice cubes
in my whiskey citric barley are melting, and i dream
of venice being the modern atlantis along with the maldives).

elsewhere in a grammar lesson:

people think the pinnacle of poetry is coupling
adjectives with nouns, but of course,
given adjective & verb coupling is commonplace:
and when they say poetic v. practical,
they then say the hidden practicality of poetry
via, e.g. 'nicely said;' but of course!
we need a sombre musicality of the tongue
with so much dead machinery around us!
the elders complain about headphone "zombies,"
marching like urban myth lemmings on zebras
toward death... but have you actually listened
to those mechanical sounds on concrete?
horrid! when was the last time you heard an owl's
call in the dead of night in a forest? me!
about a year ago: three by my count.

- Autorank Total 9.9, professional similarity 10 (of 10), concrete vs abstract 2 (of 2), noun/verb/etc order -0.1 (of 1), cliches -2 (of -3) -

the Cyber Pavlov Experiment

and my favorite "poem" in this ranking system,
which, i guess is an a.i. calculator...
i'm most interested in the professional similarity,
i can understand the concrete vs abstract ranking...
but the noun/verb/etc order?
in poetry? again... this is not a "micro-aggression"...

so, i'm on this page, and i meet my ****** pusher,
sure as hell he's pushing ******,
although it's digital, the site / street corner?
allpoetry.com i get to publish 2 poems,
but can't publish more, i have to comment,
and comment positively,
'allo comrade Stalin! then comment on
2 poems, and get this message:
Congratulations, you've achieved level 2,
and are now an "emerald cat"!
To reach the next level you need:
7 x comments, 1 x enter a contest, 1 x favorites,
1 x edit an item. • What are levels?
i am not playing candy-crush saga!
i'm not! i'm not even kidding you,
what is this ****?!
we've been ****** by paedophiles
anonymous?!
                      please get me off
this ****** grid of the Cyber Pavlov Experiment...
likes and comments and saliva and cookies...
    or premeditated minority reports -
  akin to Orwell's thought crime gestapo -
    god it sounds **** when said: g'eh'sh'tap'oh.
                    or how to use the internet
akin to deciphering and censoring established
media outlets...
                              obviously social media
can't replicate socialism, it's a media outlet,
                  but it can for sure ******* with
all the little capitalistic mind games that lead
to nothing but the Pavlov experiment -
            and that was with dogs...
try that with a ******* Gorilla and i'll watch you
cradle prosthetic limbs while
he rips your original limbs off like he's playing
                a harp:
            then you can rhyme: twinkle twinkle little thumb,
    how i wished you were attached to my hand to my arm
to my torso...
                        that's the same story
we had recently concerning a Mr. Kumbuka...
  who escaped enclosure, and proved the a.d.h.d.
        complex correlation with exposure to
sugar... ****** drank 5 litres of concentrated blackcurrant
squash replying: i'm mad at the keepers for keeping
me on a diet! i do king kong and you do the frenzied
blonde maiden.
              it's still a concern for me that they herded the poets
into an area worthy of zoological inspection,
                meaning that they base their worth on
    deplorable points system: like they're immigrants
waiting for visas to Canada -
                          comment, like, blag and blabber your
way into that new country, known to all of us present
              as Si S / Silicon State... by my count that's
the 51st, or the secular version of the Vatican.

- Autorank Total 2.3, professional similarity 1 (of 10), concrete vs abstract 2 (of 2), noun/verb/etc order -0.7 (of 1) -

but now... i'll just post the most "pop" poem from
here-on-in there... for that hard-on autorank...

clues as precursor:
- Strong words: army, audience, beef, box, brick, canvas, cubes, eating, fan, fares, football, lines, match, minced, outside, people, poem, poets, river, scrabble, scroll, short, slab, song, steak, striking, stripes, tartar, tomatoes, wave, writing  
-Weak words: albeit, always, answer, any, bad, be, become, bothered, circa, coherency, could, critic, deliberate, effect, eh, elsewhere, enough, escape, event, form, gather, get, had, happen, hardly, impact, intent, international, invent, long, merely, mind, modest, national, never, nice, nothing, perhaps, personally, presume, question, rarely, reason, recluse, repeating, repetition, somehow, sometimes, started, subconscious, subsequently, succumb, tender, thinking, translation, treat, understand, version, very, want, was, well, what, will, worth, would
- Cliches: to be a, i want

****... too early for an autorank...
so here's a pre-scriptum i wrote for...
what i wanted to feed the autoranking system...

this poem has circa 11 thousand views, "elsewhere"...
and i just... would like... to see the score for it...
the very and repeating: twist on the rotten tomatoes' score
"leverage" between audience and "critic" scores...
i gather that the autorank on this canvas is not...
somehow "deliberate"... i presume i have this slab
of minced beef... and when i put it through...
i'll get... a nice cubism version of a ripe steak: medium rare...

then again: i was always a fan of rare...
mind you... it's never raw, it's not tartar cubes...
it's rare... like the person eating... a rarified recluse example:
like a recluse of a rarified worth of all examples given...
this noun/verb/etc. "coherency" score...
perhaps this a.i. scrutiny hasn't bothered to answer
to no asked question... people can still "un-scramble"
or... un-scrabble bad grammar and understand it...
nothing ever has to be: brick on brick like a long
winding river...
it sometimes can arrive at us...
"lost in translation"... some people speak some
languages with no ill-intent...
they just can't escape the pedagogy rubrics of
subconscious grammar layer upon layer upon layer...
is this... a reason to subsequently rhyme?
personally? i treat rhyme as a phenomenon...
a phenomenon that has to happen rarely...
and when it does: it has to be a striking "pose"...
but enough of the pre-scriptum...
i want to see how this poem fares in the autorank filter...
albeit, this given: this pre-scriptum will have had
an impact on the score...

line repetition, eh? the lines are too long or too short?
what was that poem... when you could somehow
invent: "thinking outside the box" of any form,
or when tender poets started to succumb to the cascade
effect of writing - to merely fill-up scroll speed and space?
it's hardly an event like the mexican wave at
a football match... or how...
the white stripes' song: seven nation army
has become the international... well... that's modest...
the national (english) football clubs' anthem...
when a goal is scored... or whatever you like, otherwise...

or cliches... really?!
how about... oh... i remember this one most fondly...
visual poetry...
fallen... by... jörg piringer...
and unlike any modern painting...
this one really does require a description,
as cited on poetryfoundation.com:

/jörg piringer works in many forms, including visual, digital, and sound poetry, as well as music. In "fallen," piringer combines a visual sensibility with computer programming skills to tumble text from the English translation of The Communist Manifesto into a pile at the bottom of the page. The result is a mass of letters stripped of their original meaning and representing the failure of an idea./ Geof Huth

and no, by no kind reprint...
perhaps modern painting is what it is...
because... there's an alternative, like fallen?
if you can "paint" with words in adverts...
and paint i imply: stress the psychological impact
of coca-cola written in circa: formal scripts -
(why no italics? you can't... just can't,
write a colon and in italics after...
the colon represents emphasis,
as does the italics... tautology or something -esque)
derived from 17th century handwriting...
or... say... volkswagen... written in blackletter &
lombardic scripts... esp. circa 1935...
while all the propaganda posters were on
display...

given all of this? well... do i have to somehow:
bemoan how terrible modern art is?
cubism is not cricitißed - but dada is -
or let's call it... the most bloated
menu of culture citationand)
Barnett Newman painted this masterpiece,
‘Onement VI’, in 1953.
it sold for close to US$44 million...

i can't say such painting is "good" or "bad"...
after a while you just have to call a spoon a spoon...
a knife a knife, a table a table...
onement vi? blue canvas with a straight line
down the middle; form? rectangular...
and that's when thinking can take place...
i gather than modern art is trying to depict:
primodial man acquiring geometry...
after all... only recently i cound the difference
between the western man and slavs...
how the afro-european now lives in germany
and the west... including italy...
and how the indo-european lives east of germany
in some parts of scandinavia and greece...
a totally new discovery...

but... but... i can compensate for modern art...
with what is visual poetry...
if jorgen schmoorgen can do an abstract of a communist
manifesto... here's my take on...
John Constable... because... frankly...
i have yet to properly deal with this particular piece
of writing - as it's fresh... to subsequently aspire
for... a j. m. w. turner... not yet... not yet...
as ascribed to Juba...

the poem itself is... good grief...
always the same with me...
i go to kenya and i'd want to **** all the ivory
beauties...
a mother is in hospital and all the nurses
are black and i'm like...
what a clean and sterile environment this
is... unlike my today which began
finding an acne dot on my little richard...
(i get the joke... spotty ****)...
having to defrost a fridge freezer in
the shed because:
'z przybytku głowa nie boli'
oh yes it does...
not when what someone deems to be
"enough" do you have to count the trivial...
unnecessary things...
which is not a shame regarding my ***
winning a pulitzer price for... never mind...
i claim lack of sun...
black privelege... impeccable skin...
and... ivory beauties...
n'est ce pas?
alternative i have found an outlet to...
it's become brutally boring...
*******...
i found it... in... japanese gravure...
i had to... esp. when 1970s italian *****
classic died... and everyone is doing
this act older than beer and the giza
pyramids... phellatio and you're like:
so when did the ice-cream dream go away...
the peeling the banana...
and all this ******* gagging begin like
there's everyone with their third tonsils
removed... where mouth is no different
from *** or **** to be RAMMED!
lucky for me i still have my third tonsil...
which means i can drink cold beer in winter
and not get a soar throat...
- lucky for me i still have my *******...
god... if i didn't... i don't think i'd have
the "moral compass" to "get away with it"...
unless i was a woman with a web-cam...
in which: it almost becomes akin to reading
a book... it's like: it's there for the sole use of
pleasuring yourself or... as i like to call it on
throne of thrones (the toilet)...
first you do the no. 1, then the no. 2...
then you start doing the no. 3 to see...
whether you've done no. 2 completely...
it sometimes happens that having an *******
dilates the **** to the point where:
there's a shady **** loitering in the "back"
somewhere... which would explain ****-erotica...
in reverse to the act of ****-erotica of being
penetrated... i.e. in this scenario...
finishing doing a no. 2...
after that? downhill a quick side-step for
a no. 4 in the shower - baptism...
but... yeah... the men that shame men with
regards to *******?
they must be circumcised men...
shaming other circumcised men...
i think to think how a circumcised man
could shame an uncircumcised man for this act...
that's like... circumcised women...
shaming uncircumised women...
for jerking off with a web-cam...
uncircumcised women and...
explosive libido... whatever the stereotypes
are... circumcised men...
uncircumcised men...
there has to be a: a priest a rabbi and an imam
walk into a bar joke around here somewhere...
i'm trying to find it...
but i have found that: circumcised men
shame other circumcised men over *******...
while the uncircumcised men are like...
if only i were a woman and had a webcam...
if society had a niche consumer base for that...
"sort of thing"...
i'd be making money from one
genocide of a fraction of myself ever so often...
i.e. it's killing when the ***** is owned
by a woman (sensible... sensible...
i don't mean the former chinese 1 child
state policy of: statistics at all costs...
even at 8 months old)...
but if that's the case...
then a session of hanky-panky...
sterile... washing under the ******* etc.,
i'm practically doing erotica-genocide
slim film no. 3890... ever since it started aged
8... when i discovered Onan...
way before the white nation army came out
from the hades of the *******...
how the ******* of ***** has nothing
to do with the ******...
the muscles and nerves are wired so to the brain...
that i'm pretty sure a castrato feels
the same...
**** chicken shaming...
it must be circumcised men against
circumcised men: ******* missing olympics...
no wonder... you peel a ******* potato...
you have to throw it in some water
to prevent it from darkening...
that's of course: prior to cooking...
so you have to find the ****** cushion
brigade from time to time...
a "sword" without a "sheath"...
rust or egomania or: motivational talk talks...
because Kant was never going to be my:
bachelor of the year for the 215th time in a row...
kierkegaard famously didn't marry...
erectile "dysfunction":
not a real problem in my own company
or in the company of prostitutes...
but a serious ******* problem among
the "free women" of western europe...
it's like one of those vague "superpowers"...
women speak of turn-ons and turn-offs...
yeah: i too have my limp switch too...
somehow... this "thing" is not automated...
it's not like spam-mail... it doesn't always:
"rise to the occassion"...
the mood swings of my *****...
i'm starting to think that perhaps neurology will
explain more about my brain
than my suma summarum will ever tell me
about this excess of the 21st digit (which
of course includes the 10 precursor toes)...

as i haven't read marquis de sade in a long while...
and i'm not touching any modern erotica,
and ******* bores me
and how japenese gravure is the next best
all-spice of brain fever...
and how: if this little harlot went to sudan
for her nitty-picking a tartan lover,
or if she decided for rwanda...
i have to guess the fiction and fantasy...
for me, at least... has to rely on...
a bull in a porcelain shop...
or as the kama sutra says:
a rabbit **** is hardly going to ****
an elephant ****... lengths and depths...
all round!
which makes you wonder...
genghis khan must have been...
or has to be... the ***** envy shitlord
of a whole lot of people with the surname
Khan in pakistan.

I set my cruise on the highway and
am passed by a red AMC Eagle.  
This red rusty AMC Eagle has a
wind shied covered in frost because,
I'm guessing, the defrost motor burned
up in a bakelite mushroom cloud from the
dashboard.  
It is held together with duct tape
and grit.  The pilot sits behind his cardboard
console ludicrously warm in winter parka,
scarf,
hat
and gloves.

I pass him waving dressed
in my tshirt and shorts.
Driving in my new, awesomely
economical car.
Four dashboard vents dump lava warm air
to keep me pleasingly toasty.
The pilot will never understand that I wave
not at his expense, but in envy.  The billboard
on my right says it all,
If I have to explain you wouldn't understand.

Vibrant hues of Autumn
Fades now into the
Winter water color hues
And bleak barren trees.

Days of frozen landscape
And dreams have to defrost.
All the ice and snows now
Cover the twigs once filled with roses.

Trembling in each gust
Barren trees moan, stretching
Gaunt arms towards bleak grey skies
Pleading for rebirth.

Sunset fades to blackness
Shrouding the silent earth,
Devoid of tranquil benediction
No ray of light or hope.

Awakening the resurrection
Of Spring's triumphant song,
Return of Thrush and Robin
Blending with all nature in jubilant symphony.

Until then the minor strains
Of the winter Hermit Thrush
Spiraling hope of the warmer days
And softens up the Arctic blast.

Then finally with the last
White-throated Sparrows gone
And the daylight hours increase
Spring arrives and Winter retreats!


~Timothy and Hilda~

~-Russian-~

Медленный Рассвет весны

Яркие оттенки осени
Теперь исчезает в
Зимой воды цветовых оттенков
И мрачно бесплодных деревьев.

Дни замороженных ландшафтов
И мечты нужно разморозить.
Лед и снег сейчас
Покрывают ветками, когда заполнены с розами.

Дрожал от каждого порыва
Бесплодной деревья стонут, растяжения
Гонта оружия к мрачное серое небо
Пледирование для возрождения.

Закат бледнеет до черноты
Зачехление немого земли,
Лишенный тихой благословение
Не луч света и надежды.

Пробуждение в воскресение
Торжествующий песни весны,
Возвращение молочница и Робин
Смешивание с всю природу в ликующая симфония.

До сих пор незначительные штаммов
Зимы отшельник молочница
Растущие надежды на теплые дни
И размягчает Арктический взрыв.

Наконец, с последним
Белый – Рубиновогорлый Воробьев ушел
И увеличение светового дня
Весна приходит и зима отступает!


~Тимоти и Хильда~

A cold snap: focus sharpens. Crystal clings to every branch
defining more than outline: Long frozen memories want to play.
Youth, buried in years, drifts; re-emerges in layers as I carefully button my coat.
Frigid air; a sharp crack of winter’s whip—for a brief moment I cannot breathe.
Combination of stark colors: world reduced to winter green, black and white.
My own world's akin to the front step; encased in ice.

Laughter shatters the perfect silence as children spill out to play.
Stark softens to water-colored blends. Children: each zipped in winter coat,
with scarf flapping as they run, whitened puffs of air trailing as they breathe.
Boots crunch, footstep designs break ****** white
as I balance, frozen: Journey begun on steps of ice.
When did the magic cease? Somewhere I took a lonely branch.

Burning bush edges the stairs; fiery leaves still stubbornly cling—a coat
of frost blurring red to pale, not unlike distant memory. I breathe
time. Wind whisks snow - nature’s blender. White
out. The bottom step vanishes, but the ice
remains. With naught to grasp, I reach for a branch,
but fall into the fire. The ice burns my face. I am too old; tears play.


Yet muscles defrost, bones aren’t splintered ice and I breathe
a sigh of relief. Flailing flightless wings I snow angel the white
powder on the walk in efforts to rise. I am conquered, the ice
is master here. Direct line of vision: A walking stick stuck to branch;
frozen in time. Dead. Realization sears, I won’t play
that game. A cardinal perches on the split rail fence, his scarlet coat

a crimson memory flash. I remember soaring: red rails against white
on my flexible flyer as I raced the wind down hills worn to ice.
The sharp turn at the bottom taken tilted to shoot across the branch
of the river, scattering skaters. For hours, I’d play
returning, blue lipped to my grandmother’s warm bread. My coat
soaked through, the hearth blazing so hot I could barely breathe.

Smiling at myself, sitting in the snow, I feel the ice
of age crack and my mittened hands form a snowball. I eye the branch
but begin to build a snowman. I haven’t forgotten at all. Rising, I play
with the day, feeling joy as brisk air renews. No matter, now, my coat
isn’t nearly warm enough, I am warmed by the past remembered. I breathe
in and the canvas that is I, again, is white.

No longer shrouded in ice, I branch
off in new directions. For in play, imagination takes mere white
and paints a fresh new coat. It takes more than air to breathe.

I've grown blind to sensation
and deaf to the hums of my walk
its all the same yet again
one great big pile of gray sloshy snow
suspended under an equally flavorless sky
whose clouds pour drips of cool touch onto me
and as they land and stream along the contours and creases of my face
they soak up with my hurt
and that feeling is the only thing that keeps me thinking im still here,
still alive
so please sky, let it rain
let it shower away all of my pain
let it pump my blood to sizzle against the icicles that hang beneath the gutters of my veins
to melt away the current solid stream of red
so i can defrost back into my old self
as steam rises from my now beating heart
revealing gears that rotate freely again once their bolts are no longer consumed in deep frost
the color rushes back into my skin
and the flushed pale face suddenly evolves into crimson cheeks which hold an obnoxiously wide smile
with a voice that speaks loud like a lion with purpose
and sings harmonious with the songs of my youth
...
the day i am resurrected
is the day i will love you like i intend
so tell me, please reveal your secret
where can I melt?

I feel so tired,
I feel so lost.
Give my heart time to defrost.
I'm on the edge,
I've broken down.
I'll never get back up,
I'm going to drown.
We're left to think of an escape
As if the cut is a minor scrape.
Where do we find a cure?
I know people care,
I'm sure.
And if those were the last things I ever heard,
would you care to reword?
What if I was gone tomorrow?
Would you drink to drown your sorrows?
Those last words, what a shame.
Aren't you to blame?
If I can't find my way
If my path has gone astray,
Then whose to say I'll get out safe.
Hidden from my gaze
their words ring in a haze.
"We're here to help,
We're here to save.
Drop the knife,
Please be brave.
Please drop the gun,
They haven't won.
We want the best,
We want a smile.
You know that thing's been gone a while."
Just tell me it's alright,
Only for tonight.
My way out has been delayed,
Honestly I'm afraid.
Who's going to save me now?
And if those were the last things I ever heard,
Would you care to reword?
What if I was gone tomorrow?
Would you drink to drown your sorrows?
Those last words,
What a shame.
Aren't you to blame?
Aren't you to blame?
What a shame.
I'm gonna be gone tomorrow,
Please don't hold your sorrow.
Those last words were just a game.
Maybe you won,
Maybe you're to blame.

The clock becomes a detachable head.
Acquiesced to the ground
The fragments become priceless.
Wrinkled people grovel over the eager glass
Pick them up and risk the cuts.

Vibrations equalize
and everyone is holding hands
stuffing their distractions and sadness
into a sack
looking into each others’ eyes
blurring the faces into one
letting go is hard at first
but then after it is hard
to keep from spinning out of control.

At first sharing for simplicity
and then in a disease involuntarily
for daytime T.V shows
and self-help-how-to-do-your-life books
by self-proclaimed seers and prophets
reading the palm of your hand
which is also mine
and his.

No time
to stop
not for a second.

you are
the god
and all the questions are answered

you are the ice that covers sidewalks
warmth will defrost thought out actions,
instilling the masterpiece.

Response:
Why not look inside of you?
Are there questions that cannot be answered?
Yes but only because of detail
and the sharp and spiky squares of  
Science.


the dance we learn to stop dancing,
goes on after us and goes on into forever.
like forever may not be there.
it doesn’t seem to note or care
that the space between your two ears.
comforts my neck best
or constellations crossing your chest
constantly suggests no matter the rearrangement
no coincidences are circumstance
I’m trying not to look for it
some reality where I belong

if forever sees it has missed a beat
laughing and playing.
I so obediently repeat
what you’ve so gracefully said to me.
Life is not a sign for anything else.
It is more of  an enigmatic saying from a hermit
below a full moon
purely nonsense insane.
…but realizing the smile with which it was contained.

Im haunted inside
I wish she could come back to life
explore all over my mind
i wish she could come back to life
come back to my life
dance a waltz around my heart
and stomp all over my life
take who i am inside
turn back to who i should be
defrost me defrost me
im shaving every day
running
i think ive grown from this sidewalk
but i need sun again
or i feel like im withering withering
honestly
i dont want to move on. i want to
hold the back of your neck when i kiss you and
finish x files with you and
miss you again
if we are not healed by valentines i will
i will buy you what you wanted

Roses red
Night sky black
Love the feeling of fingernails
Etching lines up and down my back
Outside air is vicious and cold
It's warm beneath my bedsheets
Come defrost against my skin
As senses eagerly meet
Time not exists in this place
Surroundings slowly fade out
The stress weighing down my body
A burden I don't think about
Inhaling electricity
Exhaling loneliness
Grateful for present moment
Escape from daily mess
Relief may be temporary
I will appreciate it just the same
Honestly any emotion
Better than the usual pain

You were the catalyst that started my heart.
You were the oxygen that brought me to life.
Limbs once dormant, now guide my path.
Blood once frozen, now navigates my veins.
You took my hand and led me through a world that brought me to my knees.
When I see the future, I can rest with ease.
I know you'll always be there.
Standing next to me.

Teen angst poetry
dribbled in red pen.
Well, ideally.
I only have black type.

In fact, I never have experienced
teen angst. I only have
the perpetual piece of blackandred
corners me alone

The beast beneath my bed ceases
whenever daddy checks
but I never had a daddy
only a mommy valiantly battling the
blackandred demons her daddy
never scared away either.

and in the
end we feel nothing nothing can
touch us. We are the empty rusty
pail crying out from the Dripdripdrip of
our loneliness because no one comes in
because, in the foggy glass, no one can see each other
and coldandclammy jostling elbows
do Not touch- NeverNever

We hope the redhot heart of the
lovers we hold so closely will defrost
our windshields to the world and let in
Lightlovehopejoyhappiness
Contentment

AND THEN
I have hope enough
that the monsterinmycloset
cannot grip my dangling elbow. Hope that the steep
fall of bladeandblood and littleroundpills
Always stays a few feet away

I call and pray for stray sunbeams.

Later- I pull
out the quicksilver shards of glass
from my eyes and under my polluted
fingernails.
I shrug off their sodden coats.
I won't borrow burdens. Anymore.
So that my light may shine encore
Abeaconpillar of radiance
Est deus in nobis

Winter is cold
With it's flakes and it's ices
Special driving devices
Tire chains and defrost
Good lord what was the cost?
With it's quiet and slipping
Then it's melting and dripping
Flaky tendrils of snow
Good lord what do we know?
How it lays in my hair
Watching you everywhere
Nevermind what I say
Watch the snow float away
Watch the frost in the trees
No more birds, no more bees
See the frost in the grass?
See the way the cars pass
Stroke my cheek with your hand
Christmas supply and demand
Kiss my lips while you smile
Every once in a while
Winter is cold
but I'm warm

The calendar that hangs on my white brick walls has been empty since the day I moved in. I don’t plan anything from day to day. I load up my year, usually in January. I fill it up with different colors, louder sounds than years before. I made a vow, or a dozen. I lost count after a while. I lose my train of thought real easily, and I find my progress derailed once a week, twice if I’m in a slump. But anyways, I fill my year up in the Winter when the frost pierces my brain and I’ve dirtied all the dishes in the house already. By March I’m hungry. I switch it up. Even louder sounds, ones I’d never heard before, ones I barely could because they grew so slowly, I grew impatient, it took time,  like that Madagascar Palm plant I read about 3 nights in a row without stopping. I hyper fixate on plants and people that promise even a glimpse of hope for me, it's pathetic. I got off track, oh yeah. It takes 100 years to flower, and once it does it dies. I thought I would do the same in March, sometimes I still do. Sometimes I want too. I take so long to grow that sometimes I forget that I still am. Back to the story, I switch it up in March. I get itchy for Spring flings that will defrost my bones and this year I remember counting every hour for a week straight, not in minutes but in ways I was alone. I counted each day in stomach aches because they never went away, even when I stopped eating to see if what I’d been feeding myself was the source of this and if abstaining from it would help. I thought the same when I left him. I lost 20 pounds in two weeks and I was happy about it because it was defeaning glee, the way people finally looked at me. And when I was counting the ways I was alone, the noise grew louder. It flowered.

I broke in May. I kissed three different boys in the same day and I remember going home and promising myself it’d be okay if I decided to stop living because if one plant that grew beside me could do so, beautifully and quickly, and I took longer, while it leaned on me without ever touching my roots underground, than there was not reason I had to be here. It didn't need me. There wouldn’t be anyone around to see me flower. Humans only live to what, seventy? I didn’t want to see twenty. I stopped growing. I chased ***** with whiskey to see which one was the first to hit me. Which one gave me a worse hangover so I finally had an excuse to spend beautiful July days rotting in bed? I remember the first time I took a shot of whiskey and it was ******* gross but I'd already adjusted to that fuzzy, churning pain in my stomach so I kept drinking. I drank a whole bottle. I was 19. The first time I tried ***** was at a party after you told me I'd turned into a "real ****." I remember that perfectly but the rest of the night is blurry and now I drink to get the fuzzy feeling back the way I had it for a day in May and thought I'd fallen in love again.  I never understood why I knew what it felt like to feel alive but chose to sit and brew inside a room that smelled too much like the Walmart perfume I wore every day the first year I fell in love. I still get choked up. It’s a weird feeling, to not love someone anymore and to forget, day to day that you ever did. But to remember how it felt to hear your heart beating inside your chest before your very first kiss, and how it felt like papercuts when you had your last. I disassociate when I get scared so I start putting “you” when “I” should be there. That’s something to note. I know how to let go but not how to take responsibility for my actions, ones crafted by loneliness, or bitterness. I counted this year in let-downs. How quickly it went by, too. Would you believe that? In just three months I will be able to say that I spent every day of my life, 365, thinking about you. I almost don’t want to publish this, because I forget that there is more to me than the way I felt in 2016. If anyone cares, there’s more to me than what I just stained the page with, right up there. I laughed this year too, with new faces. I drank in new places and got new bruises on body parts I hadn’t seen in years for fear of ridicule. They’re  black and blue but they’re beautiful. I spit words out sometimes and they don’t always make sense nor do they make a perfect sequence but that’s another thing I’ve learned this year. It’s hard to measure in numbers, what do I count when I’ve been out of order for the whole thing? Which parts do I mention when I start remembering the year that cut me open, and the year I bled for all the world to see because I needed validation, of any kind, I needed attention, from all eyes, for once because I could. How do I measure the year that I lost 170 pounds of freckles and lies and gained 40 in beer and candy? Or the year I finally made it to 32 months self harm free but that I talked about killing myself every day in between? How do I measure a year when I never feel like I’m flowering?

Every morning
At 6.35 am
I defrost the car
Then drive home
With numb fingers
And icy breath
Eyes heavy
Heart heavy
And chilled to the bone
I pull in the drive
And then shiver again
As I lock the car
But a smile
Tugs at my lips
And a warmth
Scratches at the chill
As the chirrup
Of the blackbird
That welcomes me
Every day
Once again
Serenades me
Into my home