In between   (a poem)
.
my mind struggles against its own illusion
nightmare tumbles out into still morning
light is heavy,
a fog of echoes...
and I am caught
.
day dreams the sunlight
dreams light the day
and I am caught in between
mourning echoes...
like a stillborn ghost
who can't take a breath in the present

….
  
I live on a tropical island and just want to go surfing with my husband, but the nausea in the early morning as I try to eat  breakfast and drive with him to the beach is so uncomfortable.  Day after day it makes even surfing a chore, and I consider not going anymore.  Background anxiety and unreasonable irritation interferes with our marriage, frustrates him enough to want me out.  

For me, a trip to the grocery store or meeting a group of people awakens the same dreadful fear as rockclimbing a cliff. Perspective has been lost in the extremes.  I try to gain some control over this hindering nuisance, seeking situations that bring the same surges of adrenaline so I can learn to master it.  If I can just push past the avoidance that would keep me inside doing nothing, if I can just ignore the feeling I want to throw up, if I can just get out there, I am rewarded with life’s potential beauty eventually.  Many days I do enjoy the thrill of mountain biking or connection with nature when surfing, but there are too many days of internal struggle that reduce what should be enjoyable to a relentless chore of wrestling inner demons.

The VA offers a few sessions of marriage counseling, and the doctor begins to explain PTSD.  ***, I’ve learned to cope with an unreliable brain, but now there’s this?  From what I understand (and that’s just me, an amateur philosopher) Sometimes the brain is so traumatized, that the memory is literally sealed off, encapsulated, protecting it from changing.  If later something happens that is similar, the brain triggers avoidance responses as a take-no-chances survival mechanism.  Literally the brain is protecting one’s self from one’s self.  This all-or-nothing strategy works fending off potential dinosaur attacks, but in our complex society, these automatic avoidance behaviors complicate functioning and well being.  Life becomes an attitude of constant reaction instead of motivated intention.

The website for the National center for PTSD says.  “After a trauma or life-threatening event, it is common to have reactions such as upsetting memories of the event, increased jumpiness, or trouble sleeping. If these reactions do not go away or if they get worse, you may have Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.”  

“Common reactions to trauma are:
• Fear or anxiety: In moments of danger, our bodies prepare to fight our enemy, flee the situation, or freeze in the hope that the danger will move past us. But those feelings of alertness may stay even after the danger has passed. You may:feel tense or afraid, be agitated and jumpy, feel on alert.  
• Sadness or depression: Sadness after a trauma may come from a sense of loss---of a loved one, of trust in the world, faith, or a previous way of life. You may:have crying spells, lose interest in things you used to enjoy, want to be alone all the time, feel tired, empty, and numb.  
• Guilt and shame: You may feel guilty that you did not do more to prevent the trauma. You may feel ashamed because during the trauma you acted in ways that you would not otherwise have done. You may:feel responsible for what happened, feel guilty because others were injured or killed and you survived.  
• Anger and irritability: Anger may result from feeling you have been unfairly treated. Anger can make you feel irritated and cause you to be easily set off. You may:lash out at your partner or spouse, have less patience with your children, overreact to small misunderstandings.  
• Behavior changes: You may act in unhealthy ways. You may:drink, use drugs, or smoke too much, drive aggressively, neglect your health, avoid certain people or situations.”   It lists four main symptoms: reliving the event, avoiding situations that remind of the event, feeling numb, and feeling keyed up (also called hyperarousal)”

Four words strung together: Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.  They’ve become a tired cliché, exhausted from the endless threat of random cruelty camouflaged in banality, weary of the weight shouldering back the wall that separates death and gore from the living.  Living was a reflex beyond willpower and devoid of choice. Control was self-deception.  The mind was so preoccupied with A: survival, B: sanity, in that order.  Rest was a cruel illusion.  The tank was drained, no room for emotions ditched.  Empathy took too much effort, fear was greedy.  Hopefully they can be remembered and found on the other side, if there is one.  Sleep deprived cells were left hyper-alert from the imminent, shot up and addicted to adrenaline.  Living was Fate and Chance, and meant leaving that time and place sealed in forgetfulness.  

Now PTSD is a worn out acronym, a cold shadow of what it feels like.  I try to think of something more personal that can describe the way it randomly visits me, now resigned to its familiar unwelcome influence.  It steals through my brain, flying ahead of me with its own agenda of protecting sabotage.  Its like the Guardian Trickster of Native American legend.  Its an archetype but real enough to make mistakes: Chulyen, the black raven.

A decade after the ER, contentment is found in a garden of slow tranquility as a butterfly interrupts a sunbeam.  My heart fills with bittersweet as I’ve finally found something I love and want to keep.  Just then Chulyen’s grasping black claws clamp my heart with painful arrhythmia and it fills to burst, tripping in panic trying to recover its pace.  The sudden pain drops me to my knees, in the dirt between fragrant lavender and cherry tomatoes.  Pain stops breath and time and makes me remember the ER, when my heart rebelled its ordained purpose for a week.  I had tried to throw my bitter life back in God’s face but He didn’t take it.  Now that I have peace and a life that I treasure, He’s taking it now.  The price for my mistake is due.  It was all just borrowed time and I’m still so young, my children just babies.  God with a flick of cruelty reminds me not to put faith in the tangible, especially when its treasured.  The sharp claws finally relent and I can breathe, looking up with a gasp and the Raven takes flight overhead leaving a shadow.  Bright noon warmth, unusually heavy and foreboding, seems to say ‘there will come a time when you will not welcome the sun.’   Doctors run an EKG and diagnose ‘stress’.

The bird perches on my shoulder two more decades later, always seeing death just over there.  So I sit on the porch just a little longer and check my list again, delaying the unavoidable racing heart and rush of tension when I fix the motorcycle helmet strap under my chin.  I know all those stupid drivers have my life in their cell-phone distracted hands and hope my husband knows how much I love him, and my daughters too.  

Chulyen wakes me at 3:00 am when autumn’s wind aggravates the trees.  His rustle of black feathers outside unsettles summer’s calm night.  He brings an end-of-the-world portent that hints this peace is just temporary, borrowed.  Tribulation will return.

Ravens are attracted to bright shiny things.  Chulyen steals off with treasures like intention, and contentment.  I don’t realize they are missing until occasionally I find myself truly living in the moment.  I guess that is another reason why I crave adventure, for those instants and epiphanies that snap me out of that long term modis operandi of reacting, instead of being.  The daily list of ‘I must, or I should’ can for a brief while become ‘I want’  and I am free.

My companion the black bird perches relaxed in the desert on the gatepost of a memory.  A bullet-scarred paint-faded sign dangles by one corner from rusty barbed wire:
    No Trespassing    
    That Means You
I have a haunted idea what's behind the fence.  Chulyen implies the memory with a simple mistaken sound:
a Harley in the distance is for a second the agitating echo of a helicopter...
or those were the very same words they said when...
or I hear a few jangling clinks of forks in our warm kitchen...
hinting a cold cafeteria at 5:00 am smelling of fake eggs and industrial maple flavored corn syrup,
and everything else that happened that day...
My cells recollect, brace with the addictive rush of adrenaline.  But the raven denies access to the memory, distracting with discomfort.  I trip and I fall hard into the gritty dirt of irritation at the person who unknowingly reminded me.  Anxiety floods in along with fatigue of the helplessness of it all, back then and still now.  I can't go further.  Chulyen’s tricking deception says Leave This Memory, you never wanted to come back.
But I already knew from just recognizing the bird patiently sitting there a sentinal,
recalling every other time he tricked me with nausea and depression.
I tried to tell myself again that behind that gate,
the past has dried up from neglect.
Disintegrated into dust,
Blown away,
doesn't
exist.
…


After everything else, how to work through this?  The VA gave me a manual, a crudely printed set of worksheets with a government-looking blue cover page:  Cognitive Processing Therapy.
“In normal recovery from PTSD symptioms, intrusion, thoughts, and emotions decrease over time and no longer trigger each other.  However, in those who don’t recover, the vivid images, negative thoughts, and strong emotions lead to escape and avoidance.  Avoidance prevents the processing of the trauma that is needed for recovery and works only temporarily.  The ultimate goal is acceptance.  
There may be “stuck points”, conflicting beliefs or strong negative beliefs that create additional unpleasant emotions and unhealthy behavior.  For example, a prior belief may have been “ I am able to protect myself in dangerous situations.”  But after being harmed during military service, a conflicting belief surfaces, “I was harmed during service, and I am to blame.”  If one is ‘stuck’ here, it may take some time until one is able to get feelings out about the trauma, because one is processing a number of rationales.  “I deserved it because…” , or “I misinterpreted what happened, I acted inappropriately, I must be crazy…”  The goal is to change the prior belief to one that does not hinder acceptance.  For example, “I may not be able to protect myself in all situations.”

(chapter continues with recovery methods)

You're the Wacky Wolf-man,
Tearing through our pages with a single huff.
Breathing life into us little piggies,
Blasting your way through the daily fluff.

You're the Word Wizard.
Leaving us in awe and in dribbles.
Waving your wand,
Conjuring magical and spellbinding scribbles.

You're the Living Legend,
Almost like a deity of some sort.
Garnering shiploads of admiration,
Through words of encouragement, banter and retort.

You're the Bad Boy Bard...
Never mincing your words.
Unconventional, you howl amidst the flocks...
You never did chirp like the birds...

You're the Minstrel Mobster,
Shooting your Tommy, never missing.
Flicking forward your fedora,
Strung lute ever smoking.

You're one Cool Cat.
Fending off haters with a bat.
Everyone just wants to be that.
Like a superhero whose symbol is a bat...

You're a Gem Generator.
Cogs and gears churning the jewels laid
Machine malfunction! My system's jammed!
Well I guess that's just it... Enough said!

I used to think that all of them were just bodies. She-figures, they came and went, facilitating infinite happiness and following with hellacious heartbreak, aorta explosions galore. They pass. I stay. She goes. I remain. We all take a trip, but she falls asleep while I follow the road, I sing the song, make the lyrics up as the 101 heads West, and I careen against the Pacific. I see silvery-white plumes of whale breaths spouting, they break the rocks of my rock and roll. When the levee breaks, we'll have no place to go- I'm going back to Chicago.

California. Line 5. Verse 1. She is born in Arkansas, in Denver, in New York City, in the back of a taxi cab, her parents waiting for a table at Earth Cafe, 1989. There are concerts, balconies, elevator shafts, and on benches. The gain rises, the volume up and up and up, I offer her a cigarette, I ask her if she likes my dress, I show up with two palms full of a flame, and I say hello. Browsing in high-definition, the water is warm, my feet are planted and I have everywhere to go. Classical emporium of light fill me with ease, greatness, and belief. She asks me if I'm gay. Every great confusion can be proven to be fortuitous with enough time on hand. I kiss in cars, in bathrooms, and barrooms, in hallways, on staircases, on beds, church steps, and legs. I touched a leg, ran my fingers through her hair, my thumbs curved to the height of two ears alongside a size B head. I love art *****. i burn candles, and I swirl the wax around until the walls wear masks of white. I check-in to a hotel. I stop to buy wild flowers on the side of the road, or to climb down a ravine, we open a page into an enormous patch of strawberries, wind-surfers, and the golden Palo Alto beaches. I am in Bronzeville, on my way to Bridgeport, I am riding the train, browsing magazines, and singing new songs in my head. My lips are wet with excitement and the musings of the Modern Art Museum and the gift of a first kiss; behind the statue on Balcony 2, near the drinking fountain, the Eames couch, and two lips meeting anew. Bravery in twos.

Chapter 1, Verse 2. The chorus is large and exciting. New plastic shining coats. Smocks patterned with the Random House children's stories that we played with as children. We didn't wear gloves, or hats, or pants, or our hearts on our sleeves. I was up to my knees in hormones and very persuasive. My fifth birthday was at the Nature Center, you chased me into the boys' bathroom and kissed me with your wet and four year old lips in the second stall from the door. I eased up maybe 2% since then. The speakers are a little bit fuzzy, it's like listening to the spit of someone's tongue cascade the roof of their mouth while they pronounce the British consonants of the 90s. Said and done and saving space.

I am saving up for Grace. A crush in the mid 2000s, black hair, long legs, and the only brunette for a decade before or after. We played doctor, with the electric scalpel we turned our noses red with Christmas time South American powders. A safe word for an enemy, the sun for an enemy too. You bolted out and took my early Jimi Hendrix Best Of compact disc case too. While we're at it, you took my Michael Jackson cassettes as well. I go mid-range, think Kiri Te Kanawa in the whispers of E.T.'s Elliot. Stuffed-animal closet party for seven minutes in heaven. Your family came with butlers while mine came with over-educated storage. A blue borage sky in the intestines of life, a splinter in the shanty-town of invincible daily struggles- both of us were born again in O'Hare Airport's Parking Level D. Too many nonsensical arguments in two-tone grayscale ripping open the packaging of a course about trysting in your twenties.

Your stomach's history is overpowering. It is temperamental, mettled by spirits and sleepless nights, borborygmus, wambles, and shades of nervousness you were never comfortable speaking openly about. The history of your ****** was privatized, in options and unedited films shot over and over candidly by a mini DV desk camera, nine months to read you wrong to weep in strong wintry walks back and forth from The Buckingham to the Dwight Lofts, Room 408 without a view. All of your secrets in a little miniature of a notebook, bright cerise red. You captured teardrops in medicinal jars meant for syringes. You tied strings to your fingers, named your field mouse Ginger, and introduced your mother as Lady Darling. Captain with stingray skin, the hide of Ferris Bueller with the coattails of James Bond, dusted with daisy pollen, and clearly weakness. You ate me like bitter herbs on Thursdays, and like every other woman I've ever met, on Tuesdays you always kept me waiting.

I have wings for everything. Yellow wings for a woman in a yellow dress, Red, White, and Green wings for Bernice from Mexico City, Purple wings for  Mrs. Doolittle the doctor who worked at Taco Bell, the Jamaican priestess who was traveling through Venice Italy- we smoked hash with the grandchild of James Joyce on the Northern pier against the aurulent statues of Apollo and Zeus, Cupids' collection of malevolent tricks, SleepingB Beauty's rebuttal in fending off GHB attackers, my two dear friends who were kidnapped in clothes, abandoned in the ****, and only remember eating chocolate donuts with sprinkles and the bruises and dirt on the insides of their thighs. Nothing clever. Nothing extraordinary. Everything sentimental, built to withstand soot, sourness, and early female bravado.

You know how to play the piano so you've said, but i only have the CD you gave me to prove it. I do have evidence of your addiction to men and *******. I have your collection of dresses with tags still on them (but every woman has some of those), there is the post office box in Kauai, the Halloween card from last November and the two videos I have stored on an external drive in a nightstand adjacent to the foot of my bed. You sleep atrociously, talk too quickly, and **** like your father abandoned you when you were five. Your talent for taking photographs is like your skill-set for playing the piano, but I don't have the CD to prove it. You don't believe in social media, social consistency, friendships, or hephalumps and woozels- with the exception of the classes we shared together in college, I've never seen you outside of the most glamorous of fashion. You hate flats, hats, and white wine, and for as sad as you can seem to be at times, I've only had you cry on me once. While we were on the phone, three days after your mother hung herself. That's when I last left California, and I haven't been back yet.

I love a Kristine, but once a Britni, a Brandi, a Joni, a Tina, Kristina, Kirsten, Kristen, and a Katherine and Kathryn too. I know rock stars who are my dearest friends, enemies who I share excellent taste in music with, and parents who've always had my back but show it in lashings of the tongue and of the belt. It's been two years and three states since I was two sizes smaller than I am now. I've never considered the possibility that I was the main character and not the supporting actor, but due to recent developments in antipathy and aesthete, reevaluation, and retrospective nostalgia. All of this is about to change.

I am me still evolving without my usually stolid and grim ****** features. i bare brevity to situations existing that would **** most or in the least paralyze a great many. There is one for every hour of every day, and one for every minute in every hour, second in every minute, and more than the minutes in every day. No one has a second chance, shares a different time, or works off a different clock. I have been called the master of the analog, king of the codependent, and rook to queenside knight. I share a parabola for every encounter, experience, and endeavor. I am three minutes from being a cadaver, one drink away from a drunk, and one thought away from being completely alone. I think upright, i sleep horizontally, and I love infinitely. I am the only finite constant i have ever known. I am the main character, the script, satire, sarcasm, and soundtrack are mine.

"I don’t care if you believe it. That’s the kind of house I live in. And I hope we never leave it.”
There's A Wocket In My Pocket by Dr. Seuss

A Muslim boy with a clock
Is seen as a terrorist with a glock
Maybe i'm right, maybe i'm wrong
But if he were White, Asian, Hispanic or even Pacific Islander
Nobody would of suspected anything.
When are we going to stop fearing an entire race for only a portion radical and illogical ways of treating others?
I don't tolerate people who behead others if they don't agree with their religion
I don't agree with the repressive governments that control everyone and stone them for minor misdemeanors
There are good men out there fighting this evil that has plagued their homelands
I'm all for ending terrorism of all kinds
But let's stop terrorism of innocents too
Sure, i'm afraid of what the radicals will do to their own people, my people and the rest of the world
But i'll be dammed if i treated somebody from the Middle East like a monster when i don't even know who they are
If it wasn't for a Middle Eastern girl
The Syrians girls wouldn't have an improved education
If it wasn't for a Middle Eastern man fending off the Taliban and risking his entire village to keep Marcus Littrell alive
He would of been KIA a long time ago.
What about the ones who fought and died for America?
Nobody ever mentions them
The media wants me to hate them all, but i laugh and shake my head
Warped minds trying to warp others
I only see the ones who want to do us harm, and the ones who want to live peacefully and away from a life of hell
Brothers and sisters, just a different culture and skin color
I'm sorry if America seems racist or hateful, but i'm proud to be the one who throws those two words in the trash
Because i'm not afraid to speak my mind
And i welcome everyone here
America is everyone's home.
If only the Soviet Union never invaded Afghanistan
If only the people were not scared
To be free like America.
Unity for all,
Religious differences and Cultures alike.
I hope one day a Muslim man or Woman can walk down an American street without being labeled as a terrorist.
I hope one day these repressive governments fall into the hands of democracy
And we start the Age of Unity again.

No more than a rumor
Or a legend spoken in whispers
Mischievous folklore
Foretold around campfires

About a man
Skin black, birthed under an Eclipse
Who stalks the dark forces
Casting his might over them

Fending off the evil
Which festers across the land
Bleeding gold ink
That soils the crop and livestock

Wherever life thrives
Evil musters its footprints
But wherever it may be
He is there

Baffling their kin
Striking like thunder
Swift and silent
Like the humming katana

Making clean kills
And fading back into thin air
Being seen as a ghost
When more is known of him

For he is flesh
Great in heart
And vibrant in sight
As the father of judgment

Carrying out his given cases
That are closed by his steel hands

Ganders...gargantua--ensconced in far-fetched space...
(attrition)...LOOK AT THAT LINE...LOOK AT IT...
ROUND THE CORNERS OF PERPETUITY...predilections.
A soul's inalienable fracas...on bend and knee...hop...and
whoop...miasmic gargoyles poppy-wreathed...
for all-too-lucid dreaming...chanting etceteras of bare riff raffs.
Golden breastplates...weeping willow wings...empurpled--
fending fang trumping lines of: yuck, cluck, claw and kook.
...Listless eyes...alphabetize...think a blind oracle's informed
absentia...holy and bovine.
Redolent airs...perspiration of spume's most distancing shore--
eyepieces for the specks and logs in the oculos of brothers
and sisters.
As dust to dust doth not settle...heart's yonder score...nay cease
of interstice...off-world amorousness.
Gather ye yarrow sticks...hurl them at days...roofless arcady...
live into the spectra of their worlds, come friend or foe...Fate's foundling.
Lines strung as prayer beads...curs-ed beads...forget-me-nots
enclosed in letters baiting Long Farewells, in the great literary
correspondence of authored and Author.
...Ye gorgeous gargoyles come perch and push.
Persona non grata...the wide world...unisex prodigal...All--returneth.
LOOK AT THAT LINE...LOOK AT IT...(attrition)...ROUND THE
CORNERS OF PERPETUITY.
NEBULAEIC FANFARE...come perch to push...lo...ANGELS!

they say in history,
behind every great man there’s an even greater woman.
so think of it like this:
do you know who marcia lucas is?
it’s okay if you don’t.
there’s a reason for that,
until a few months ago i didn’t know her name either.
but you probably know who george lucas is.
biographer dale ******* once said that marcia,
george lucas's first wife who he was married to throughout
the production of the original trilogy,
was his “secret weapon."
and the operative word in that sentence is secret.
because i have been watching star wars
for just about as long as i can remember;
growing up, my brother and i owned not only
half a dozen plastic lightsabers and a box set of both trilogies,
but my dad even likes to mimic yoda’s voice and speech patterns
when he gives me motivational life talks.
but i never once learned marcia lucas's name.
i know star wars super fans who can spout out more trivia
about wedge antilles,
an x-wing pilot with 2.5 total minutes of screen time in the entire saga,
than marcia lucas,
the women who edited the film together
into the cultural phenomenon we know.
marcia lucas is the woman who edited starwars
from a mess into a masterpiece.
the woman who has be described
as the “warmth and heart of the films”
who carved out her husband's characters into people
and developed with much of emotional resolution of the series,
coming up with the idea of killing off ben kenobi
when george lucas couldn’t resolve the plot line himself.
her fingerprints are all over these movies,
she shaped these stories and us with them
yet we never talk about her hands cutting the film.
the woman who edited the scene
where luke skywalker destroys the death star
from a 45 minutes crawl into the fast-paced moment
when the good guys win,
the woman who sewed together
the magic we watched on our screens
is nothing more than a footnote in the credits.
she has been erased from the narrative.
and as i write this poem,
i know that only some of you will never think of this name again.
and if you do it will probably be as trivia,
a fact to spout in a conversation about george lucas
or while you pop in a new hope into the DVD.
but sometimes you have to think about how many people’s lives
end up on the cutting room floor.
they say in history,
behind every great man there’s an even greater woman.
margaret hamilton is the lead software engineer
whose work took apollo 11 to the moon.
do you know her name?
you know the man on the moon but not the woman who put him there.
sybil ludington road twice as far as paul revere
to warn the local militia of the oncoming british attack,
fending off a band of highway robbers as she did.
do you know her name?
long before little richard and chuck berry
were ever even strumming at their guitars,
sister rosetta tharpe was pioneering a genre
with the first album ever labeled as rock’n’roll.
do you know her name?  
rose mccoy wrote the words to the song “i beg of you”
that elvis presley crooned,
along with countless more that other people sang.
do you know her name?
do you know any of their names?
maybe spotlights cast more shadows than they give off light.
we are a culture of people who forget everything out of sight.
they say in history,
behind every great man there’s an even greater woman.
we just... don't know her name,
no one ever bothered to teach us her name.
no one was supposed to.
history is not always about who you remember,
sometimes it is about who you forget.

.                                I.

The sand is perfect ripples undulating to the bay,
as the 6:00 A.M sun flashes open a sulfur-eye,
yawns and apologizes for its January warmth.
She emerges her tent, much as she has entered the world,
naked, but filled with wonder and an attitude.
The glassy water winks her an invitation,
morning's blank canvas beach
etched only by random footprints of seabirds.
Taking advantage of the serenity,
haltingly slipping between the waves,
her skin bristles, subsumes cool ocean freshness,
surfboard bobs obediently at her side.

                            II.

On this planet we have friends, who
pose no questions and pass no criticisms,
who the more they trust, the less
we can afford to make a mistake.

                            III.

Like a pat of butter skimming a hot pan,
she lolls blissfully on the board, soaking up scenery,
heedless to the approach from the rear,
yet, sensing she is being watched.
Dorsal fins break the water's surrounding skin,
as a pod of bottlenoses dance and play,
pretend to be oblivious, as she floats within their sights.
Their presence startles, still, she quietly observes their folly,
willing them to come ever closer ...
Her outstretched hand beckons them to
circle with puppy-like curiosity.

                            IV.

Arguably, the perfect couple is a mother and child;
babies do more to females than make them mothers,
they bond them in a sisterhood of knowing recognition,
to which others need not apply.

                          V.

Coriolis swirl of scarred dolphin bodies evades inquiring fingertips,
eye of the alpha-female fixed intently on the floating visitor,
who in turn looks back in shared wonder ---
between two mothers of the Earth, a psychic trust is formed.
The bottlenose rolls a streamlined fusiform body,
revealing  a smaller version of her own,
tucked safely against her white underbelly.
The sun was racing Apollo's arc, as they silently
slipped beneath the plane and were gone.
She knows they've been fending off shark attack,
wishes for a way to fend off trawlers with gill nets.
A singled tear rolls down her cheek,
trickles off the board to merge with salty blue beneath,
reaching compassionately for her sister in the sea.

oh jeez...
look at how unsanitary the air can be
this area's apparently embarrassed of the error
so please excuse this breeze abuse
& breathe in deeply...heavily.
be ready for the steady supply
of thickened oxygen that's boxed me in
pressed against the rocks again
fending off that wretched wind
it bends me with its petty whims:
my lazy lungs got stretched too thin.

this air
this air...this heavy necessity
wrestling emptiness endlessly
TESTING TESTING
please inhale as you're listening
i'm invested in your empathy &
especially your circulatory circuitry
every blood cell has its worth to me
every photosynthesized sympathy
is my chlorophyll currency
& i'm spending it like burning leaves.

I used to think that all of them were just bodies. She-figures, they came and went, facilitating infinite happiness and following with hellacious heartbreak, aorta explosions galore. They pass. I stay. She goes. I remain. We all take a trip, but she falls asleep while I follow the road, I sing the song, make the lyrics up as the 101 heads West, and I careen against the Pacific. I see silvery-white plumes of whale breaths spouting, they break the rocks of my rock and roll. When the levee breaks, we'll have no place to go- I'm going back to Chicago.

California. Line 5. Verse 1. She is born in Arkansas, in Denver, in New York City, in the back of a taxi cab, her parents waiting for a table at Earth Cafe, 1989. There are concerts, balconies, elevator shafts, and on benches. The gain rises, the volume up and up and up, I offer her a cigarette, I ask her if she likes my dress, I show up with two palms full of a flame, and I say hello. Browsing in high-definition, the water is warm, my feet are planted and I have everywhere to go. Classical emporium of light fill me with ease, greatness, and belief. She asks me if I'm gay. Every great confusion can be proven to be fortuitous with enough time on hand. I kiss in cars, in bathrooms, and barrooms, in hallways, on staircases, on beds, church steps, and legs. I touched a leg, ran my fingers through her hair, my thumbs curved to the height of two ears alongside a size B head. I love art *****. i burn candles, and I swirl the wax around until the walls wear masks of white. I check-in to a hotel. I stop to buy wild flowers on the side of the road, or to climb down a ravine, we open a page into an enormous patch of strawberries, wind-surfers, and the golden Palo Alto beaches. I am in Bronzeville, on my way to Bridgeport, I am riding the train, browsing magazines, and singing new songs in my head. My lips are wet with excitement and the musings of the Modern Art Museum and the gift of a first kiss; behind the statue on Balcony 2, near the drinking fountain, the Eames couch, and two lips meeting anew. Bravery in twos.

Chapter 1, Verse 2. The chorus is large and exciting. New plastic shining coats. Smocks patterned with the Random House children's stories that we played with as children. We didn't wear gloves, or hats, or pants, or our hearts on our sleeves. I was up to my knees in hormones and very persuasive. My fifth birthday was at the Nature Center, you chased me into the boys' bathroom and kissed me with your wet and four year old lips in the second stall from the door. I eased up maybe 2% since then. The speakers are a little bit fuzzy, it's like listening to the spit of someone's tongue cascade the roof of their mouth while they pronounce the British consonants of the 90s. Said and done and saving space.

I am saving up for Grace. A crush in the mid 2000s, black hair, long legs, and the only brunette for a decade before or after. We played doctor, with the electric scalpel we turned our noses red with Christmas time South American powders. A safe word for an enemy, the sun for an enemy too. You bolted out and took my early Jimi Hendrix Best Of compact disc case too. While we're at it, you took my Michael Jackson cassettes as well. I go mid-range, think Kiri Te Kanawa in the whispers of E.T.'s Elliot. Stuffed-animal closet party for seven minutes in heaven. Your family came with butlers while mine came with over-educated storage. A blue borage sky in the intestines of life, a splinter in the shanty-town of invincible daily struggles- both of us were born again in O'Hare Airport's Parking Level D. Too many nonsensical arguments in two-tone grayscale ripping open the packaging of a course about trysting in your twenties.

Your stomach's history is overpowering. It is temperamental, mettled by spirits and sleepless nights, borborygmus, wambles, and shades of nervousness you were never comfortable speaking openly about. The history of your ****** was privatized, in options and unedited films shot over and over candidly by a mini DV desk camera, nine months to read you wrong to weep in strong wintry walks back and forth from The Buckingham to the Dwight Lofts, Room 408 without a view. All of your secrets in a little miniature of a notebook, bright cerise red. You captured teardrops in medicinal jars meant for syringes. You tied strings to your fingers, named your field mouse Ginger, and introduced your mother as Lady Darling. Captain with stingray skin, the hide of Ferris Bueller with the coattails of James Bond, dusted with daisy pollen, and clearly weakness. You ate me like bitter herbs on Thursdays, and like every other woman I've ever met, on Tuesdays you always kept me waiting.

I have wings for everything. Yellow wings for a woman in a yellow dress, Red, White, and Green wings for Bernice from Mexico City, Purple wings for  Mrs. Doolittle the doctor who worked at Taco Bell, the Jamaican priestess who was traveling through Venice Italy- we smoked hash with the grandchild of James Joyce on the Northern pier against the aurulent statues of Apollo and Zeus, Cupids' collection of malevolent tricks, SleepingB Beauty's rebuttal in fending off GHB attackers, my two dear friends who were kidnapped in clothes, abandoned in the ****, and only remember eating chocolate donuts with sprinkles and the bruises and dirt on the insides of their thighs. Nothing clever. Nothing extraordinary. Everything sentimental, built to withstand soot, sourness, and early female bravado.

You know how to play the piano so you've said, but i only have the CD you gave me to prove it. I do have evidence of your addiction to men and *******. I have your collection of dresses with tags still on them (but every woman has some of those), there is the post office box in Kauai, the Halloween card from last November and the two videos I have stored on an external drive in a nightstand adjacent to the foot of my bed. You sleep atrociously, talk too quickly, and **** like your father abandoned you when you were five. Your talent for taking photographs is like your skill-set for playing the piano, but I don't have the CD to prove it. You don't believe in social media, social consistency, friendships, or hephalumps and woozels- with the exception of the classes we shared together in college, I've never seen you outside of the most glamorous of fashion. You hate flats, hats, and white wine, and for as sad as you can seem to be at times, I've only had you cry on me once. While we were on the phone, three days after your mother hung herself. That's when I last left California, and I haven't been back yet.

I love a Kristine, but once a Britni, a Brandi, a Joni, a Tina, Kristina, Kirsten, Kristen, and a Katherine and Kathryn too. I know rock stars who are my dearest friends, enemies who I share excellent taste in music with, and parents who've always had my back but show it in lashings of the tongue and of the belt. It's been two years and three states since I was two sizes smaller than I am now. I've never considered the possibility that I was the main character and not the supporting actor, but due to recent developments in antipathy and aesthete, reevaluation, and retrospective nostalgia. All of this is about to change.

I am me still evolving without my usually stolid and grim ****** features. i bare brevity to situations existing that would **** most or in the least paralyze a great many. There is one for every hour of every day, and one for every minute in every hour, second in every minute, and more than the minutes in every day. No one has a second chance, shares a different time, or works off a different clock. I have been called the master of the analog, king of the codependent, and rook to queenside knight. I share a parabola for every encounter, experience, and endeavor. I am three minutes from being a cadaver, one drink away from a drunk, and one thought away from being completely alone. I think upright, i sleep horizontally, and I love infinitely. I am the only finite constant i have ever known. I am the main character, the script, satire, sarcasm, and soundtrack are mine.

"I don’t care if you believe it. That’s the kind of house I live in. And I hope we never leave it.”

Show me a field that is filled with golden flowers
hours upon hours the smell of the grass elevates the scents
that seems to send passerbys into an overdrive of envy.
Lend me your hand so that my coarse skin is softened by yours,
the door to my heart is forever open awaiting your entrance
and the defences are fending off other fiends so don't worry about guard
because as hard as it is to trust, I've let my guards down a long time ago.
Show me that you can be the green to my gold
let us grow old but never grow up as we play like kids
let the bliss fill both our hearts as we unite together against the world.
Girl, will you find it in yourself to love me? ...as much as I love you?

Weepy is my heart as it mourns hard this day
Muddled is my head with thoughts all amuck
Muffled is my voice with the words I try to say
Stifled are my screams as they try but all seem stuck.

Tense are my shoulders with the load that I bear
Wet are my eyes seeing everything so blurry
Heavy is my chest as it sighs and draws its air
Tired is this body with so much it attempts to carry.

Weak is my strength, fending off oh so feebly
Uncertain are my hopes to see the light at the end
Outstretched are my arms reaching and grabbing constantly
Tested is my resolve, how much further can it bend.

Lonely is my soul yearning greatly for it's other pair
Drunken are my senses, almost losing all control
Desperate is my being wanting love that's not here but there
Clouded is my future, totally obscured is my goal.

Two-sided are the fallen words I have listed before
Strained is my mind as I try to view the good
Mirrored are these feelings, they bear so much more
Enlightened is my will, I shan't mope and brood.

Relieved is my heart when I think of the other that beats
Serene is my head when I separate fear from fear
Loud is my voice as it clears for the love it greets
Redundant are my screams for I don't need them here.

Relaxed are my shoulders, still fueled to continue
Wide are my eyes for the sight they can't always see
Lifted is my chest for the love it wants to pursue
Upright is this body, to get to where it wants to be.

Rejuvenated is my strength when I accept that I am strong
Restored are my hopes, I'd still keep them alive
Faithful are my arms, still reaching for what they long
Strengthened is my resolve with plans it'll contrive.

Contented is my soul for the mate it has found
Heightened are my senses, embraced by feelings so keen
Centred is my being, keep my bearings on the ground
Bright is my future, in my dreams they have been.

Empty are the words for I won't let them linger
Focused is my mind; on my prize no matter how far
Embraced are these feelings for they only make me stronger
Steeled is my will; to be one with my love, angel and star...

Around the time
I entered the place I was
Already sweating like a *******.

Fiends poured from crooked parking meters - all unpaid and blinking red.
Angular threats were shooting from the eyes of dead gangsters - wives all mad.
Laughters entrails spilled out onto the rotten wooden blanks
Like Jimi Hendrix's gun-shots of Vietnam lore.

At noon the church doors will open and
There, the wind will freeze like water to ice;
Memories menace psychedelic post-war like;
Upstairs toward the 4th floor, the blast-furnace blasts away.

My eyes were pink. The music was loud.
When I heard my name, I said, "no, I don't believe it."
There was a knife floating from the ceiling and
I swore
God whispered "Run" into my ear.

A squeal
From the corner of the bathroom.
There, I witnessed a kitten reading a piece of newspaper.
Times like these I imagine an imagination indifferent,
Only to shudder as I enter the freezing winter of space.

Blame is there for all who wish to take it.

Back at the table,
I tried to reform the face of my date.
She smiled and frowned and sighed and grimaced
All the same time.
I wondered what love felt like, then
Entered a new space of hazing music, malnourished.

Hubert came through the window,
With a 8 inch bowie knife and a grin.
I chuckled and he did too.
I asked, "Where you headed?"

"To the kitchen. There are beasts in there that need killing and I'm the man to do it."

Nodding, I went back to my
Dusty periodical, silently hoping he would
Execute one of the hares or bison I
Kept near the garbage disposal and dish soap.

A vibration.
A musical note.
Echoes through eternity.
In there faces float still, poised, perfect.
A baby is born,
An old man dies,
Lovers intertwine.

The end.

Instead of sleeping, I stayed awake.
Sleep frightens me.
Dreams are sometimes to good to wake up from.
When will be the day I can stay in one?

When there was glory,
There was man.

When there was faith,
There was God.

When there was death,
There was life.

Eating up the trough, far past the fill-up,
Cooking up any excuse the twisted mind can come up with.

Eavesdropping love songs to tormented poetry readings.

A foggy night in San Francisco
Leaves a clue so slight to the hand that pens.

The raps burn against the metal, rusted window panes twanging with cheap celebrity.
Here, the brown line runs, as the Mississippi purrs chasing atonement.

New York City is still burning.

There was the sense that something was wrong when I entered the other room.
I'd heard of it. Someone had told me about it, but I couldn't recall who.
On the street, the wind was like cold milk and the smell of candles was stinking up the street.
It was somebody's birthday and it was morning and there was no escaping the day.

At noon, I was still in bed, trying to fend off the sun. Impossible
To do, I got up and braced myself for the sinking put-put of my feet against wood floors.
There in the hell that was upon me, the warden sunk his teeth into a miniature grapefruit.
Surprised by his choice and subtle nerve of health,
I saw then he was a large volkswagen sized man with teeth the size of sharks.

I was away for too long. This was here. Here was this place. I was here now, for good.
To leave would be to go to the same place, all over again.
Instead of throwing away the future, I ****** the present into oblivion.
Eyes bug-out backing up the bartender in a noon-day brawl and instead of calling the cops,
We called the bald gimp Jerry K. because his father used to be in the military and
Taught him a couple things when he was seven and half.
The man died that night in the alley by a knife and few hearty laughs.

Waking to sleep the day away.
Burning money to see what color it'll make.
Fending of friends with solitude and *****.
Shoot pool to drool and stay cool.
A ladies a lady until proven otherwise.
Candid scenes pass, though the flames engulf the lazy, littered
Streets with sleeping hobo's sick for the one's who don't
Have time to be; hard work must be done for our good country.

I stained my mind the other day. Saw
Seven virgins all spinning like circus china in a window
Too hard to see through. Their silhouettes were something to be
Haunted by and because past loves always seem to haunt me,
I bought one and took it home quickly.

She stands in the corner spinning, as I type away, grinning.  

After I rearranged her face
She started to cry. I watched her eyes as they turned from blue, to violet,
To sunken ships of hurt not let go.
I tried to show her where the desert was not dried up,
But she would not take my hand. It hung there like a bobbing kite and
Because the ocean can never run out, the bout we thought
Would break us, only made us cackle like the downtown girls we know.

After some convincing, I took her to a french breakfast spot rather than the desert.
A few spotted chinese women sat next to us with an abnormally large golden retriever.
"I've never seen such a beast before, " I giggled, "They must ride that ******* home."
"Don't be gross," she scowled, "It's an animal with feelings."
I told her I got a triple bacon egg-sandwich and she started to weep lightly into the
Broken hem of her beige linen vest. Something told me I should nip this in the ****, but
Just then, my sandwich came. I handed her a napkin then began to eat. She finished her
Coffee in one gulp and picked up her leather and left. Eating alone, I watched the golden
Giant eat bits of hot dog the smaller of the two chinese women had hid in her shoe.

Why think of the ending when the beginning was where it started?

Smart they are. **** she can be. Aye, here I am again.

Aye.

Here we all are again.

today i learnt that 3am is witching hour
i think back to the 3ams we spent together
our thoughts growing louder
as the world grew silent

witches would have had nothing on me
with you, my fears remained shrunken
a rock, a stone, a gem
my rock, my stone, my gem

remember how i picked at your mind
remember how you learnt my idiosyncrasies
remembering intimacies and depth
remembering limits and being apart

‘patience is a virtue’
i never understood that till i saw it reflected in you
but then again, patience. . .
the very thing that made me tear us apart

we used to fit ourselves into each other’s schedules, like puzzle pieces
now remote acquaintances at the very least
strangers and driftwood
torn apart, all on my part

consider this a shout to an endless void
a scream into an abyss
a plea to your heart
all that you will never witness

but if i ever cross your mind even for a millisecond
do accept my last selfish request
promise they’ll be good thoughts
or maybe, at the very most, promise you’ll call

after all 3am was always ours
two of us fending against the dark
an incessant, hopeful memory (yet one of my favourites)
3am will always be ours

The first time
I heard them
I swear,
I was to listening
to the most beautiful choir
in four-part harmony,
swaying
or angles wings rubbing,
& perfectly, playing
a common file instrument
angled, such a unique sound
symphonic & splendorous
they are all around
this free concert
an offering of
Mother Nature
chiming at once
uncaged,
& calling on the ladies
in perfect unison  
sounding like church
telling one another
of sunlit hours
say the flowers
fending off evil spirits
allowing me to travel
into the dark again
leaping over obstacles,
alerting me to danger,
still in their silence
  I am protected
by this harbinger of luck
a most powerful portent,
of coming things
they sit silently in the quiet,
like a copper cricket weathervane,
as the poor man's thermometer
spinning tales effortlessly,
in the wind calmly
  watching over us
a shivering in the night
save you, are mine
my Native American totem
or God's Cricket Chorus
foretelling of Sorrow
of coming rains tomorrow
ex-lovers and death
a shrill creaking
stridulating in song

Oh, I fear that day,
your music should go away
please dear uncaged cricket choir
  I truly ....
   hope you'll stay.

Cherie Nolan© 2016

Nag, nagging,
Finger wagging,
Shoulders sagging,
Victim slagging.

Oh beration,
Flagellation,
Irritating
Castigation.

Cutting hemlock,
On her chopping block,
Innuendoes
Spawning ad hoc.

Super-intending,
Condescending,
Never ending,
Insult fending.

Pointless rounds
Of empty double-talk,
Wife, your name is
Self-styled wise hawk.

Nebraska has over 6 million head of cattle
and is perhaps the largest beef producer in the world.
This is strange, juxtaposed to my neighbors
who are Hindus, from India.
On all sides, I am surrounded by young, attractive,
friendly Indians
living in Nebraska,
studying information systems.
I rarely eat beef, but I joke, for them,
this place must be some kind of sacrilege,
or purgatory
where they go before returning home to join the "growing middle class"
we hear so much about.

They have gatherings, food,
language and ways
of maintaining hegemony among their group
while they are here, in my hallway,
and I am alone.
I have no information to manage,
no home to return to.

They gather in my neighbors’ apartment
talking, late into the night
I once made friends with two of them
who, unlike the others, were both atheists
instead of Hindus.
They told me that Hindu women, like the ones next door
do not have *** before marriage,
but the men do.
This seemed like a paradox, but I believe them to this day.
And when I hear this platonic conversation, muffled by the walls
it sounds like pigeons
cooing
flapping their wings in an alleyway
And having nowhere to go.
The countless, devout Hindu men
visiting my charming neighbors
remind me of adolescence
how I used religion as a cover for my shyness
I admired these men, in their pursuit
of something I was told to be obtainable
and then I remembered all the people
who were not devout
******* the religious girls I tried to flirt with
while I was in high school.
I laugh.
I wish there were a high minded reason I stopped believing in the zombie Christ,
but it was the fact that no one from my church was having *** with me, because
of God and all that, but they were having *** with other people.
**** christians, really, you can have them all.

It’s easier to imagine my neighbors as trapped birds
subtly fighting for scraps
without ****** desire
than to imagine them as people like me,
who know what they want but assume it’s out of reach.
The alternative, to know that they are having ***,
and I am not,
is too upsetting.

I want them to sound like cooing birds,
shy and timid and lost,
because that is how I feel.
But, if their voices, distorted by the walls,
sound like pigeons to me,
what must my silence sound like to them?
How do they want me to seem?

Lonely people, quiet people,
sad people, fending for scraps of trash.
That is not them, but it is me.

I realize it is easier to be a Hindu
than an atheist
in Nebraska,
and it doesn't matter what (or if)
you eat
when you're alone.

Walk
Dear Mr. President-
I think it’s time we talk-
See I walk in that same stilled motion-
Engraved in my soul-Sir-is the same old theory notion-
Handed a dripping blood star spangled rag of devotion-
I hear the anthem play as I make way through this sandy ocean-
Yet I have compromised for the life that I have chosen-
Sir-
I am frozen-
Stuck among the simple brainwashed component-
Wondering where home went-
And they say home is where the heart is-
But what if the heart has left home-
Then it’s been condoned-and postponed at the emotion that should have been so home grown-
Yet I am so alone-
I’m surrounded by thousands of drones-Moving in illusions to the beat of contemporary confusions is leaving the stink of retribution and the contusion on the spirit of this institution Keeps proving while correspondents are continuously reviewing the inability to honor the constitution-
So with all due respect-sir-what the hell are we doing-?
I am losing my G-d **** mind-While patient politicians predict the estimated time-
And in the mean time-Bullets fly by brittle bodies-Rotting minds wait for mind-full plotting-Knowing knowledge knocks simple logic-And it is chronic-
And I don’t mean the kind you smoke-But more so the kind that poke jokes by late night hosts-
So when the hell did is this war become a show?-
My soul it lays defeated-physically-mentally-and emotionally-depleted-
I am bleeding-
Needing a reason to keep on breathing-Dreaming of a moment when my mental torment becomes dormant-And I am no longer fending-but feeling-Kneeling-Screaming-Asking-
The Lord for a meaning-
These fatigues have me stressed and fatigued and this disease it seeps deep into my sleep-And I just creep hoping my weary feet don’t lead me to a concaved grave that bleeds-
As trails of remorse stream down my cheek-
I plead-
With you Mr. President please set precedence consider my wishes relevant I just want to go home to my residence where Corrupt Cooperate Capitalist no longer have this regiment-and the elements of peace sir have a higher percentage than that of the deceased-
See-
These dog tags come with body bags perfectly delivered in a neatly folded flag-And the fact remains Sir-it’s an endless game-Sir-we are trying to conquer a region we can’t maintain-Sir-So I ask you to refrain-are youth from being slain-Please-let wisdom reign-Indulge in peace not in pain-Please sir-go against the grain-in that stilled motion-I walk the same-
If you recall Sir-
I voted for change-

Listening to the Cardboard Empire with -
gray day rain pools , shadow figurine -
ancestors trapped in dusky tree lines
Irreverent city banter , ideals shifting
right of center , selfish , twelve coated
worthless brick entities
Working the wishing well for pennies
Finding home with a cart
Walking back to start* ......

Where the devil if not here
In the room with me.
Surprised
In the kitchen
I slide
The chef's knife
Far back on the counter
To hide
Lest she loose control lost
Again, else
Might become real, that image
Now swimming
In her own soup,
Of a chromium-vanadium blade
Gleaming, swinging
In glorious swoop
Home to this chest or head,
Imagining it dead,
Tainted crimson.
Not the first time
I could be a toreador
Fending off his bull
With nearby chair
To save flesh from the goring
Of its horns,
On the way to salvation
At the door.
Still, animal rage
Stands between instrument
And shields awaiting at table
As they are meant.
A lamb, I once used my hand
And it hurt
When steel first broke skin.
Tears weren't
First from pain, but shock
Life was so real and cruel.
Since then the whys
Have grown with our lives.
One or other medication
Will fail to stop the sensation.
Now, my life's exhaustion is
In pondering the question:
Can the coward present neck
As easy offering and end it,
Or continue cowardice,
Facing  the goddess
Conspired to destroy
What once was me.

For the majority of my life I've been cared for by my parents.
Now i'm all alone trying to do this on my own
Fending for myself
Got me feeling stressed out
Popped to many Xanax
Bout to pass out
Just hit the couch and i'm startin to black out
How many did i do again?
I think i lost count
Stomachs feeling week
Feelin like i'm at the peak
Don't wanna come down
I'm so sick of the frown
Depression at its worst
Thinking that im gonna burst
Tired of being the clown
Now im searching for the crown

Eager, *****, I washed my hands of you
in Rippling Creek on the 1st of January --
the beginning of the beginning.

As you turned to driftwood,
the friends and cross-eyed strangers
asked what was I thinking when I let go of you.

My mouth stitched by bongwater haze
all I could do -- watch your notched body soak.

Now on the 18th of September,
sitting in Fox Hollow, USA,
the shiniest of suburbs --
the sober of the sober--
In honest,
I say I'd rather have you alive and hating me
than dead and loving me.

If I lied in the grey dawn,
it was out of love.
If I lied in the grey dawn,
I was out of truth.

I'm alone
fending off vultures prying in with fake Facebook profiles,
taking threats from fathers who long ago went blind,
and this much I promise to you and Fox Hollow, USA:

I will quarantine the past.

Withered Roses
by Allama Iqbal
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

What shall I call you,
but the nightingale's desire?

The morning breeze was your nativity,
an afternoon garden, your sepulchre.

My tears welled up like dew,
till in my abandoned heart your rune grew:

this memento of love,
this spray of withered roses.



Ehad-e-Tifli (“The Age of Infancy”)
by Allama Iqbal aka Muhammad Iqbal
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The earth and the heavens remained unknown to me,
My mother's ***** was my only world.

Her embraces communicated life's joys
While I babbled meaningless sounds.

During my infancy if someone alarmed me
The clank of the door chain consoled me.

At night I observed the moon,
Following its flight through distant clouds.

By day I pondered earth’s terrain
Only to be surprised by convenient explanations.

My eyes ingested light, my lips sought speech,
I was curiosity incarnate.



Excerpt from Rumuz-e bikhudi (“The Mysteries of Selflessness”)
by Allama Iqbal aka Muhammad Iqbal
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Like a candle fending off the night,
I consumed myself, melting into tears.
I spent myself, to create more light,
More beauty and joy for my peers.



Longing
by Allama Iqbal
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Lord, I’ve grown tired of human assemblies!
I long to avoid conflict! My heart craves peace!
I desperately desire the silence of a small mountainside hut!



Life Advice
by Allama Iqbāl
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

This passive nature will not allow you to survive;
If you want to live, raise a storm!



Destiny
by Allama Iqbal
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Isn't it futile to complain about God's will,
When indeed you are your own destiny?



O, Colorful Rose!
by Allama Iqbal
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You are not troubled with solving enigmas,
O, beautiful Rose! Nor do you express sublime feelings.
You ornament the assembly, and yet still flower apart.
(Alas, I’m not permitted such distance.)

Here in my garden, I conduct the symphony of longing
While your life is devoid of passionate warmth.
Why should I pluck you from your lonely perch?
(I am not deluded by mere appearances.)

O, colorful Rose! This hand is not your abuser!
(I am no callous flower picker.)
I am no intern to analyze you with dissecting eyes.
Like a lover, I see you with nightingale's eyes.

Despite your eloquent tongues, you prefer silence.
What secrets, O Rose, lie concealed within your *****?
Like me you're a bloom from the garden of Ñër.
We’re both far from our original Edens!

You are complete, content, but I’m a scattered fragrance,
Pierced by love’s sword in my errant quest.
This turmoil within might be a means of fulfillment,
This torment, a source of illumination.

My frailty might be the beginning of strength,
My envy mirror Jamshid’s cup of divination.
My constant vigil might light a world-illuminating candle
And teach this steed, the human intellect, to gallop.



Bright Rose
by Allama Iqbal
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You cannot loosen the heart's knot;
perhaps you have no heart,
no share in the chaos
of this garden, where I yearn (for what?)
yet harvest no roses.

Of what use to me is wisdom?
Having abandoned Eden,
you are at peace, while I remain anxious,
disconsolate in my terror.

Perhaps Jamshid's empty cup
foretold the future, but may wine
never satisfy my desire
till I find you in the mirror.

Jamshid's empty cup: Jamshid saw the reflection of future events in a wine cup.



Coal to Diamond
by Allama Iqbal, after Nietzsche
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I am corrupt, less than dust
while your brilliance out-blazes the brightest mirror.
My darkness defiles the chafing-dish
before my cremation; a miner's boot
crushes my cranium; I end up soot.

Do you acknowledge my life's bleak essence?
Condensations of smoke, black clouds stillborn from a single spark,
while you with your starlike nature triumphantly adorn monarchs,
gleam of the king's crown, the scepter's centerpiece.

"Please, kin-friend, be wise," the diamond replied,
"Assume a gemlike dignity! Carbon must harden
before it can fill a ***** with radiance. Burn
because you yield warmth. Brighten the darkness.
Be adamant as stone, be diamond."

Iqbal’s poem was written after a passage in Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols in which a kitchen coal and diamond discuss hardness versus softness.

Keywords/Tags: Urdu, Hindi, translation, English, rose, roses, withered roses, nightingale, desire, breeze, garden, nativity, cradle, infancy, heart, tears, dew, rain, rainfall, longing, conflict, tumult, peace, life, life advice, live, nature, survive, survival, storm, destiny, God, God's will, silence



Federico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936) was a Spanish poet, playwright and theater director. He was assassinated by Nationalist forces at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War and his body was never found.

Gacela of the Dark Death
by Federico Garcia Lorca
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I want to sleep the dreamless sleep of apples
far from the bustle of cemeteries.
I want to sleep the dream-filled sleep of the child
who longed to cut out his heart on the high seas.

I don't want to hear how the corpse retains its blood,
or how the putrefying mouth continues accumulating water.
I don't want to be informed of the grasses’ torture sessions,
nor of the moon with its serpent's snout
scuttling until dawn.

I want to sleep awhile,
whether a second, a minute, or a century;
and yet I want everyone to know that I’m still alive,
that there’s a golden manger in my lips;
that I’m the elfin companion of the West Wind;
that I’m the immense shadow of my own tears.

When Dawn arrives, cover me with a veil,
because Dawn will toss fistfuls of ants at me;
then wet my shoes with a little hard water
so her scorpion pincers slip off.

Because I want to sleep the dreamless sleep of the apples,
to learn the lament that cleanses me of this earth;
because I want to live again as that dark child
who longed to cut out his heart on the high sea.

Gacela de la huida (“Ghazal of the Flight”)
by Federico Garcia Lorca
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I have been lost, many times, by the sea
with an ear full of freshly-cut flowers
and a tongue spilling love and agony.

I have often been lost by the sea,
as I am lost in the hearts of children.

At night, no one giving a kiss
fails to feel the smiles of the faceless.
No one touching a new-born child
fails to remember horses’ thick skulls.

Because roses root through the forehead
for hardened landscapes of bone,
and man’s hands merely imitate
roots, underground.

Thus, I have lost myself in children’s hearts
and have been lost many times by the sea.
Ignorant of water, I go searching
for death, as the light consumes me.



La balada del agua del mar (“The Ballad of the Sea Water”)
by Federico Garcia Lorca
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The sea
smiles in the distance:
foam-toothed,
heaven-lipped.

What do you sell, shadowy child
with your naked *******?

Sir, I sell
the sea’s saltwater.

What do you bear, dark child,
mingled with your blood?

Sir, I bear
the sea’s saltwater.

Those briny tears,
where were they born, mother?

Sir, I weep
the sea’s saltwater.

Heart, this bitterness,
whence does it arise?

So very bitter,
the sea’s saltwater!

The sea
smiles in the distance:
foam-toothed,
heaven-lipped.



Paisaje (“Landscape”)
by Federico Garcia Lorca
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The olive orchard
opens and closes
like a fan;
above the grove
a sunken sky dims;
a dark rain falls
on warmthless lights;
reeds tremble by the gloomy river;
the colorless air wavers;
olive trees
scream with flocks
of captive birds
waving their tailfeathers
in the dark.



Canción del jinete (“The Horseman’s Song” or “Song of the Rider”)
by Federico Garcia Lorca
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Cordoba. Distant and lone.
Black pony, big moon,
olives in my saddlebag.
Although my pony knows the way,
I never will reach Cordoba.

High plains, high winds.
Black pony, blood moon.
Death awaits me, watching
from the towers of Cordoba.

Such a long, long way!
Oh my brave pony!
Death awaits me
before I arrive in Cordoba!

Cordoba. Distant and lone.



Arbolé, arbolé (“Tree, Tree”)
by Federico Garcia Lorca
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Sapling, sapling,
dry but green.

The girl with the lovely countenance
gathers olives.
The wind, that towering lover,
seizes her by the waist.

Four dandies ride by
on fine Andalusian steeds,
wearing azure and emerald suits
beneath long shadowy cloaks.
“Come to Cordoba, sweetheart!”
The girl does not heed them.

Three young bullfighters pass by,
slim-waisted, wearing suits of orange,
with swords of antique silver.
“Come to Sevilla, sweetheart!”
The girl does not heed them.

When twilight falls and the sky purples
with day’s demise,
a young man passes by, bearing
roses and moonlit myrtle.
“Come to Granada, sweetheart!”
But the girl does not heed him.

The girl, with the lovely countenance
continues gathering olives
while the wind’s colorless arms
encircle her waist.

Sapling, sapling,
dry but green.



Despedida (“Farewell”)
by Federico Garcia Lorca
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

If I die,
leave the balcony open.

The boy eats oranges.
(I see him from my balcony.)

The reaper scythes barley.
(I feel it from my balcony.)

If I die,
leave the balcony open!



In the green morning
I longed to become a heart.
Heart.

In the ripe evening
I longed to become a nightingale.
Nightingale.

(Soul,
become the color of oranges.
Soul,
become the color of love.)

In the living morning
I wanted to be me.
Heart.

At nightfall
I wanted to be my voice.
Nightingale.

Soul,
become the color of oranges.
Soul,
become the color of love!



I want to return to childhood,
and from childhood to the darkness.

Are you going, nightingale?
Go!

I want return to the darkness
And from the darkness to the flower.

Are you leaving, aroma?
Go!

I want to return to the flower
and from the flower
to my heart.

Are you departing, love?
Depart!

(To my deserted heart!)

It was the Saturday before Halloween
And my friends were having a blowout.
For the first time in a long time I chose
To make an exception and go on out
Dressed up for the occasion that night
As Moses without the tablets, a mask,
And when I got there, nobody groaned
Instead, I got offered a hit on a flask.

So, I arrived at the party, not hopeful
That a good time would be had by all.
I wore my silly old man mask at first
And my long gold robe to cover it all.
No biggie, everyone was dressed up
In outrageous, fantasy forms of attire
There were princesses and knights.
I called one crowned fellow sire.

My friends were doing a wine tasting
In connection with the happy affair
So, I took them up on all of that
After doffing my mask full of long hair.
We joked and told each other tales
Of our activities at work and home.
Later, I found myself kissing with
A hot to trot, **** garden gnome.

Then my oldest buddy Dan said,
“Let’s take this to the Boulevard.
It was just five blocks to the south
So the walk won’t be that hard.”
Seeing the adventure in this
Nobody disagreed even a little
We took off in a clump of twenty
With me masked, close to the middle.

First was our friend, Allan the artist.
He’d constructed a seven foot ****.
He wore black pants and shoes
But the papier mache did the trick.
Second was the Darth Vader guy,
A lawyer in a fine rented outfit.
Behind him was Doctor Ucia Sickie
In scrub greens with ****** clots on it.

There was Raggedy Anne and Goofy
And a couple of Midnight Cowboys
And Dan was dressed quite normally
Because he was the outing’s decoy.
See, most of us were a bit drunk, and
Nobody had any dope on them then
As it was a touchy time about ***
In the days of Reagan, way back when.

Daniel didn’t care. Without telling a soul
He had whipped up Toklas brownies
And passed them to us, getting us ripped
Completely unknown to most of the townies.
Dan raised great window-box stuff, so I
Remembered, in two bites, from times before,
And soon I got that happy, toasty feeling
And my shyness was suddenly no more.

Of we went, twenty fools wide then
Wandering down the Avenue of Stars
Goggling at the crowd, the costumes,
The zinging lights and the hopping cars.
Everyone had beer bottles, not just us
Or wine bottles and were guzzling glad
About this happy, jam packed occasion
There was no way to be bored or sad.

The cholos were dancing their hydraulics
On cars that cost more than some homes,
And the sidewalks were all overflowing
With humans thick as laundry foam.
It wasn’t really walking, it was standing up
And letting the tide of people carry me
In a Mardi Gras atmosphere of loopy fun
That offered up nothing to worry me.

We went all the way to Fairfax, then we
Turned around and made our way back
A knotted mass of silly people gabbing
Like hamsters running on an invisible track.
Halfway down, at about Hudson street,
In front of me I heard something loud.
People were screaming with laughter
And gathered in an even tighter crowd.

The middle of a circle, with TV cameras,
Was Allan, the seven foot ****, corralling
A six foot, totally authentic Miss Piggy
And she was fending him off giggling.
He kept putting the huge head of his guise
Down toward her thighs, and the crowd
Applauded, hooted, whistled and laughed
And it seemed the Boulevard just howled.

It was on the news the next morning
As we all were sure it would have to be
But that night became a noteworthy one
For all of my friends, strangers and me.
You never know what will happen to you
When you let yourself be a bit more free.
You might end up in a Halloween Parade.
Well. At least that’s what happened to me.

-- Wish You Were Here* -- standard postcard greeting
-- Poems aren't postcards to send home -- Anne Sexton

Dear friends, dear friends at home, resent
No pagan rite nor chance event
We've failed to photograph for you
With technicolor flair in the true
Late Tourist Style. Be satisfied

You're there, not here in Circe's herd
Or dodging stones some Giant's hurled
Or fending Triton's tempest blasts
Or lashed, like me, to a shattered mast
As tempting taunts roll down the tide.

When night winds grind the wheel of sleep
Consider Cyclops, counting sheep;
When home-fires cool, just think of us
Attending smokes more perilous!
Home-bound friends, be notified:

This holiday's a Trojan Horse.
The wine's gone bad. The weather's worse.
So mark our fates by this palsied hand:
*Have sacrificed most every man.
Now homeward-bound. Still terrified.

Seagulls hit the horizon's backboard
off the sands of Pacific Beach.
In my lungs breakers burn out
some forty feet from shore.
They will return.
This jetty'd be a monolith
if this ocean were a sky.
Silt on this deserted
coast scene is encumbered by
bits of driftwood and sun-bleached glass.
The living in this town
are accustomed to the weight. And
tidepools are their hearts:
shallow, mossy, little things
fending for breathe.
This jetty'd be a monolith
if this ocean were a sky.

Isolated faces paradoxically surround
Bound by wants infinity
I strayed away from banks
Cause greed was just to trendy
The idea of friends and numbers
Threw me to the ground
Figured we'd crown 4 quarters instead of 100 pennies
Swede shoes, silk shirts, and bentleys
By some is defined as plenty
While little Lenny with stomach empty dreams of Denny's
Or some water or a Father would help immensely
Afgani blowing and Hennessy gulping MC's
Take their aperture and narrow it densely
Make millions off the Emmys some how erases Memories
Of pennies struggling in this world
Mother fiend'n they're just fending
Against the many
In class they're considered lowers
Below us they just a penny
I say our morals need reordered
cause no doubt that they're all Quarters
And deserve entry into this bank of respect
That has become run by hoarders
Loving to build borders 3 times the size
Of their self righteous shoulders
This is a disassembly of a culture surrounded by sentries.

If I hedge thus a drooling wager and cash in
on my thrice-foiled cravings for her overdue bites
(plus a guilt-free laugh at his expense), I can
use minced steps to sidle around too-lively
trunks, and avoid the need to heed thugs
barking mad from within their crevice-laid traps.

How those bug-eyed brutes'll clamor and claw at me
to discard this protective wrap, clued in by my rep
of never bending willfully to anybody
but her. "Come on, shed! Get, uh, new set of scales,
for you we will — promise!" is how she'd stammer,
roughly translating their not-so-twee chatter,

if she were there. Rather, in that lavishly apt way
she has, she'll be away picking suitable pelts
to adorn her newly uncovered, quite public shame
while fending off an advancing clod, who won't go
easily, but who does go on ad nauseam with
a penchant for naming every God-**** thing

that haps vitally across his cocky path. Beyond
a simple relish of mischief, I'm doing this (mostly)
for her benefit. How could a persimmon
be forbidden, as if he had permission to make
such bargains? He's dismissed it as an ungainly fruit,
and mocked its likelihood to "lava thy lips"

with an orange pulp, but in that chance smattering lies
the matter to inflame my soul. I'll feed her
the pudding-fresh flesh, and strip it down
to its delectably small seeds. In their splitting
I'll glean the silvery utensils to spill
a man's wholly worthless future. Let's tuck in.

Kiss me in hallways and backyards,
in barrooms, and back rooms and in basements,
enslaved with the treatment and easement of lips
twisted which time ceases to be with
and be of, to believe of lease treats of the Grand Paradis,
trysting bright lights of the night.

Give me a center to move around,
a dance to take my hands into, a wall
to build a fortress on, a body to move
motionless inside a shadow upon, fending off tides,
embodied in touching, this turnstile of heavy whetted emotions churns a fuse,
burns loose the moment that time has lead us to produce.

So cute. Impeccable,
irrevocably festive with all of the pyres night's desires
iron onto our wrists, lifting up each other's shirts,
flirting with our fine twilight dessert.
Sewn by such estranged Earth's involvement, our arms
wrapped, chests spasming with deep breaths and ripe
peddling. Pampering first chaste grace of the soul, whether
our bodies entwine or fast in the hours of this world.

How conceived of delight, the moments effervescent reproach,
like Apollo's gold wing's flying from his chariot's coach. The mien
of publicly idling in two, what seemed like an hour happened
in only sixty seconds times two. A year passes, entranced with
shining infinite lust, with a cornucopia of different kisses that
began with just us.

Primative man, pre written word had it easy,
When it came to wooing a woman,
It was as easy as
Lugging a 150 lb log
A few miles,
Fending off a pack of wolves with a stick and a torch,
All so your Cro-Magnon flower could have something to sit on,
To keep off the cold cave floor,
While she weaves baskets, and cures skins.
The simple song,
Or the rabbit pelt and the shiny stone
Have devalued, since the arrival of currency.
But a poem,
Masterfully crafted,
Is a currency all its own.
The value of which is determined,
Not by the poet...
But by the reader.