It's so funny when people say make lemonade!
Because all the lemons I've ever been given,
have been moldy and much to bruised to truly
make some good lemonade to get me through
the day.

And secondly where am I suppose to get the sugar from?
Water is easy I can just use the tears from the times
when the lemons were sprayed in my eyes instead
of given to me.
But sugar? It that a joke?Life has never been that sweet.

For all those who say when "when life gives you
lemons make lemonade"...I'd like you to have
the first drink of my moldy lemon,tear water, no sugar...
Lemonade.

Silent crackle, tingle,
The smell of a sticky must. Floating dust in
An abandoned attic, where the rats roam and the dead skeleton of a fish
Still lies in an empty bowl of moldy rocks and plastic plants.
Yet, despite the emptiness, a girl curls up in the corner, black
Running down her face as she weeps for the things she longs for most.
She looks out the *****, broken window at the cloudy sky and imagines it
Blue. The brightest of skies with only few hints of cirrus.
A blanket on the ground and the man she loves, nothing else in sight.
The expanse of green in her head is contrasted to the rotting floorboards she lays
On, dreaming. The steady beat of Boy in Static thrumming through her headset
As she struggles not to scream and jump, finishing the job on the window
From troubled teens years before. The sound reminds her of VHS tapes,
Press rewind, take a turn and start over. But she can't, when something has changed.
The boy she knew, looking down with his hood not up, but covering his face, shielding
Himself from her. She knew he had a ***** in his head, but she just looked away. He never answered anything she asked. He was unable.
But her heart still dropped, she smiled her best. An amazing actress, fooling everyone, makeup allergy keeping her eyes dry. She just read Huck Finn as though nothing was wrong.
Now she sits in her room, writing and shaking her head. This line is not right.
Her walls were full of color and poetry, but her mind kept wandering to that attic.

She was there again. Blankly staring at her star charm anklet. A simple blue ribbon.
And the throbbing of her heartbeat through that one spot on her thumb,
That pressure point that hurts more than anything. But one thing could be worse.
Being left. Just like the broken rocking horse in the corner and the baby's cradle
Lined with blue silk that was shoved into a box. That baby is probably dead. Just like all
Of the others who lived there, burned by the fire. Goose flesh raises, prickly
Hairs on her legs from a week of no shaving. Scratch. Scratch. Scratch. Bleed.
Change the song. Bleed Like Me. Perfect. She draws on the peeling walls, two hundred
Years of wallpaper and lead paint, chalk barely leaving a mark. She sketches a masterpiece.
A child that she wishes she could have. Impossibly too young, but still...
A daughter she could raise better than her mother raised her. A chance to do something right.
More than the mechanic life she has lead, empty and useless.
Confused and pathetic. Like the broken grandfather clock that ticks backwards.
Three, two, one.
Ding-****, ****-ding. Grandfather never taught me anything. He was not a wise man.
He was a fool. Knew too much and too little, no room to know what was right.
She let another raindrop escape and suddenly it began to pour. Lightning crashes as a glass
Slipper collides with the picture drawn of her dream. Thunder as she releases a
Bloodcurdling scream. "Why!?"
Why her? The pain in her back is unbearable. She slouches too much, and her eyes burn.
She is not Cinderella; her ball gown does not glitter.
Piano is her least favorite instrument, but it somehow gets to her. Small hammers
Striking her heart strings, low notes reminding her of his voice and the soft, feminine
Voices radiating, remind her of when she was young... Immortal. She has aged since then.
Too quickly. Her entire life has been a masquerade ball. Unskilled idiots dancing
Around her and stepping on her toes. Shouldering her in the stomach,
Breaking her ribs. Beats of music guide her skilled toes, swerve around falling raindrops that
Her own eyes emit. And she crashes through the floor of that dismal attic. Broken free,
But she is still trapped. The walls are charred down here.

But the walls are not painted black. They were once a mint color, green and cheerful, healthy.
Until a psychopath lit a match.
"I didn't mean to do it." It was all in her head. The house.
She set it aflame.

She sits in her room, writing and shaking her head. This line is not right.
Her walls were full of color and poetry. It isn't worth it to stare. Nothing will change.
She is still just a girl in a glass box, being stared at and judged. Trapped and ridiculed because her eyes bleed and bless the onlookers with bad luck. It's amazing the things
That people don't know. Drifting deeper into a pit of endless darkness. A candle won't
Live down here. No oxygen to let it breathe. But one lit self portrait hangs in the air.
Years ago, drawn in pencil. Symbolic, it wants to be erased. To die.
And the ******* the page is wearing a mask. The girl in the parchment is me.
Medium length hair and a tear painted, permanent. A Parasite. Capitalized for its meaning.

A demon is running through me, singeing
My tissues, blisters on the insides of my bones. Swelled up, show through
My skin. Waves on a shore. But I am not a beach. A ***** maybe...
Still, I hate it. The hate killed whatever flowers I had left planted in my mind.
Tainted me with the horrible visions of a tear streaked face of paper mâché.
She was the one in the attic. Her whole persona
Wilted and ashen, grey. A silent movie might mask it; the hurt, I mean.
The grey lines on the screen hiding the bags under her eyes and the redness of her nose,
Get rid of the twinkling shards of glass frozen on her cheek from crying in the dead of winter.
Slip up once, and everything goes to hell. Well, I must have slipped years before I was born.
Few smiles are left on this dismal timeline. And I shall use them wisely. But, for now,
I think I will just weep, sleep forever and hope that you don't give up on me and pull the plug.
I am still here somewhere, just dormant. Please wake me up. Get me out of this charred cabin,
This glass box. Pull me out of my warped sense of everything, teach me again what
Love feels like. I have forgotten amidst everything that I have felt and remembered.
There is no more room for things to be learned. Only for things to be repaired.
I will give you a hammer. Come inside and fix me; that ***** in your head couldn't have taken your knowledge away. You are the only one that knows.

Use this never ending lightning and bring your bride to life.

I have a special talent.
I have the ability to taste peoples personalities.
It sounds weird, I know.
But this is not a fictitious writing.

It happens only on the very first interaction with someone.
Only in person obviously-
Not through text or the phone.

I feel it-
Rather, I taste it in the first words they speak.
The first time our eyes meet.
And in one instance, the first hug.

I guess I don't "taste it"
Its more instinctual-
It almost feels like a memory.
Not like I just imagine it.
Its more like-
When you think someone said your name when they didn't.

Sometimes people taste like the smell of rain.
Some, like salt water.
some, like cloth or toothpaste.
On an occasion-
Sweet Orange Soda.

I guess I don't know if its actually personalities I am "tasting"
It just so happens that the Fellows that taste like burning rubber, or rotten cheese end up being the ones that just cant get along with me.

Its hard not to judge-
When my body does it at the instant.

Maybe its all about mannerisms, and subconscious memories.

Its odd.
Ill stick to my friends that taste like Mint and Orange sodas-
Fruit and cake dough-
Than those-
who taste like moldy bread.

girlworm, you grab a wrist like you've known modesty in the shyness of a bare feeling gripped tight on the one offering it
tightrope fingers falling into the spaces of unspoken territory, slipping into familiar qualms like the worn lipsticks that fits the grooves of my lips like an object of my affection
knowing the contour of what i'm never aware of
anxieties creep like an overgrown lawn
these fears personifying into antsy women invading my kitchen telling me that there's not enough ventilation and the stove is on leaking gas into the baby lungs of a young smoker
and when i begin to argue they give both a look of sympathy and disgust as they say "oh child you drown so easily"
so i sit chewing my nails as i count the birds outside flying back and forth from their post as if they can't remember where they're going towards or if there's something that could possibly pull them elsewhere
my mind swirls in the smoothie of a plastic cup that sticks to the coffee table, the rings of different bottles painting circles for me to memorize again
my paradise sits with the roughness of his knuckles and the ambiguity of eyes that could know everything and i would set fire to the stars inside because of the jealousy that grows from pretty things being smoldered under skin
when i begin to lose my person, pale and shivering i go towards it
empty stomached and ready to be buried in the clothes of her
that i can imagine becoming the consistency of yogurt in my lap
kissing back my tremors as i lift up her hair from curious shoulders
dry-heaving the importance of the cheeks that feel warmer as they settle on hands that are brought together as if in deep prayer and i know i will collect myself again one day
girlworm, you're a swarm in my chest and i am me

Above my home where the dark clouds
curl into the sky clinging for a home to
rest their sleepy depiction, shadowed
trees hum sweet lullabies, lonely leaves
breathe in the sad song of fallen dimensions,
letting its lifeless view roll upon their frame,
the chilled breeze sailing in the skyline,
as I scramble my way out of a filthy dumpster,
a mountain of disintegrating mess covering
my broken body, hovering flies surrounding
sticky strips of spaghetti, moldy mashed potatoes,
and moldy chicken *** pies, while my mind sunk
into traveled thoughts, bruised hands pressed against
the creases in my forehead, allowing my existence
to feel the stranded scars streaming in various mazes,
dull eyes flushed with a burning disorder, aching cheeks
and chests nestled in darkening chamber corners, buried
hips and thighs uprooting in somber blades of grass,
thorned, torn, and destroyed in different worlds.  As I stood
on the slippery pavement staring at the ruffled scenery
in my sight, spinning streetlights thickening into slouched
positions, screaming sidewalks spilling sadness and madness
in the drenched air, razor-edged buildings inching into crushed
centimeters, jumbled meters, ****** yards.  I replayed the sober
images in my head, the way my young brown-skinned mom said
I would never amount to anything, how I could hear the raged
noun ****** sift into the distance, its flaming mechanics
accelerating into screeching sounds, the way she hurled
her fists at my smashed face, every vibrant language
breaking apart, slamming shut into closed infinites,
snagged contractions and gerunds diverging into
shuddering double spaced negatives, the way she threw
my lingering body inside the trash dumpster, her sharp
scarlet words, You are no son of mine, ricocheting off
savage surfaces, sparking my soul in a calamity
of choking diction.

Big boiled blood,
Boiled big blood
Blood boiled big

Black soot, thousand flies
They're headed for your eye
grinder teeth sagging eyes

Busted ear drums
only seen here on top
of the pile of brimstone over there.

The blood boiled
over the pan, too high.
Carlos! I got Marlene.
          
              II
Moldy muddy maze
muddy moldy maze
maze moldy muddy

Tomato stained imperative notes
nails bitten, tied the tongue
Grease stains, hand and feet.

Yellow Teeth and nacho cheese
The teeth's termites
Don't let the shoes come off.

Rotten eggs, spoiled cheese
The bread is rock, crusty;
Mold muddy Maze

It's three in the morning,
And I am so tired.
But the thought of having to wake up
Is keeping me from falling asleep.

A fire breathing dragon lived inside the nook of a tree,
Small enough to fit in a man's watch pocket,
Big enough to singe the bark around his door.
We peaked around the nearest trunk,
His smoke billowed around our adolescent ankles,
From his penny-sizes nostrils protruding from the plane of his oak.
We figured he ate the ivy snaking through his neighborhood,
But noticed no pin-sized tooth marks in surrounding leaves.

We then became bored with our own imagination.
We realized this black mark was only mold,
And we aged ten years.

I am scared of routine,
and repetition
even though my disorder
longs for it.

Makes it impossible
for me to live comfortably.
Because I want consistency
and when I get it
my other disorder takes over.

It's like a power struggle
between my mental illnesses-
and my mind is an episode
of celebrity death match
no one really wins,
we all just end up ******
and broken
and a joke.

Inconsistency
is like my consistency.

When things
smooth out
like cream cheese
on my favorite bagel-
I'm like **** this is good.

Then I start to worry
about when the bagel
will be come stale
or moldy-
and I don't wanna buy new ones
I like the ones I have ya know?

And the concern takes me over-
no longer even wanting to eat the bagels
because I'm scared they've already molded
even though they probably haven't
even though they're my favorite..

Should I be more poetical about this?
Should I outline this in a different
tone and texture to make
it sound like
I'm something other than I am.

I'm tired of doing all of that-
and I'm tired of using the word I
in all of my ******* poetry.

But it's always about me.
I am a self-involved writer
only writing from my experience
so why wouldn't it be filled
with every single part of me?

Love is something I have never been good at,
especially when it comes to myself.

Someone else tries
and all it does it make me cringe
and I wait for it get moldy and stale -
I'm not actually still talking about the bagel anymore
am I?

Am I?
Am I everything that I say am?
or am I just biting off an Eminem line.
Oh my god I've turned into
the manifestation of Jay-Z
overrated and boring
and attempting to stay relevant
via my love life.

I wish things wouldn't change,
I wish routine stayed routine
and things didn't get so complacent.
The spark always dies in the end
and I always end up becoming
a different version of myself
as soon as I fall in love.

I guess I'm always too scared
too reliant
and too worried no one will want me
when they see the real me.

But in this current scenario
I was 100% the real me first
and then we fell in love
and now I'm at like 75% and free falling.

All because I miss how things were
when friendship made us talk everyday
and we spent a good amount of time apart
so we actually had things to talk about
when we were together.
Now it's all the same again
and I worry about routine
and consistency
more than anything else.

This is what ruined me before-
comfort.
and I need to talk to someone everyday
or I will become too much into my own head
that I think myself into
thinking that everything is going wrong.

It's like I'm trying to find reasons
to not be happy
and I'm so scared of having nothing
that I end up giving myself it anyway.
That way I am safe and not worrying
about when everything will go wrong
because it already is.

I've never been so happy-
and it scares the living **** out of me.
I just want it to be like we used to,
I'm scared of you not trying anymore
because you have me-
it's happened too many times before.

Then you get comfortable
and then I don't matter
and I turn into a bagel
left stale in your bread bin.
I turn into something always there
but never paid attention to.

None of this has happened
but I feel it slowly in my bones
that history will repeat itself
and I will end up lonely
and in love
and hurting all over again.

I just want to feel like
I matter I guess.
Like even though you have me
you'll still try for me.
But we all know how this goes,
and history repeats itself again
and I end up a moldy bagel
waiting to go stale
waiting to be thrown away.

I'm mad at myself again-
so **** forgiving to everyone else

What did I do so wrong to me?
Why can't I let **** go.

Get it together.
You're all you have.

Genial poets, pink-faced
earnest wits—
you have given the world
some choice morsels,
gobbets of language presented
as one presents T-bone steak
and Cherries Jubilee.
Goodbye, goodbye,
I don’t care
if I never taste your fine food again,
neutral fellows, seers of every side.
Tolerance, what crimes
are committed in your name.


And you, good women, bakers of nicest bread,
blood donors. Your crumbs
choke me, I would not want
a drop of your blood in me, it is pumped
by weak hearts, perfect pulses that never
falter: irresponsive
to nightmare reality.


It is my brothers, my sisters,
whose blood spurts out and stops
forever
because you choose to believe it is not your business.


Goodbye, goodbye,
your poems
shut their little mouths,
your loaves grow moldy,
a gulf has split
the ground between us,
and you won’t wave, you’re looking
another way.
We shan’t meet again—
unless you leap it, leaving
behind you the cherished
worms of your dispassion,
your pallid ironies,
your jovial, murderous,
wry-humored balanced judgment,
leap over, un-
balanced? ... then
how our fanatic tears
would flow and mingle
for joy ...

It is four in the morning and I'm alone
It's dark out
The city lays quiet and sullen with sleep
I'm awake
Awake

Still awake
The sun has yet to rise and won't for another two hours
I move with such grace and ease that the grass doesn't have to strain against my weight
I hear a vehicle fast approaching
A shed to my right
Silently duck behind it
Security van passes by
My heart is pounding in my ears
My breath has never sounded so loud
So utterly loud
So ******* loud
Can't stand it
Security must have heard
But I really know they didn't

I fall to my hands and knees and crawl out from my temporary shelter
The morning dew stains my hands and pants
Don't notice
Don't think

There are bundles of old plywood tied with twine that border the asylum drive
Crawl behind them
Streetlights illuminate my way
They deliver a soft, humming sound that enters through every pore on my body
It's loud
So ******* loud
Hands to ears
Doesn't stop
Won't stop
Keeps ******* humming
Ignore it
I learn to ignore it
Don't hear
Don't think

I position myself in front of the plywood bundles
Asylum drive
Fifteen foot mesh link fence
It's 4 am
I know
I'm awake

Fifteen feet of fence
Steel mesh
Steel mesh so tight, I can barely stick my pinky finger through a hole
There are three horizontal metal bars placed at five foot intervals on the opposite side of the fence
No way up
No way down
The gate is locked and closed
No way in
No way out

I know better
There are a few sturdy looking metal hinges on the massive gate
My hands are laced with sweat
Start to shake
My limbs vibrate in rhythm with my heart
It's compulsive
Compulsive
I stand in front of the gate and look up
It reaches to the heavens
Too tall
Can't climb
The steel is cool and wet to the touch
Can't climb
The bottom of my shoes are slippery
Slippery on the metal
Can't climb
My left foot misses and finds air
I reach, straining myself
Expand
My mind is breaking, seeping strength
Sweat burns my eyes
It hurts
It ******* hurts
Twitch
Can't climb
Mind slips
Slips away
Blood
On
Me
Don't feel a thing
Can't

I'm straddling the top bar of the fence
Until now, I've never been afraid of heights
I stare at the ground, fifteen feet below me
My head is spinning
Look up
Spinning
Panic is settling inside of me
Paralyzed with fear
Paralyzed
Can't move
Breathe
Think
Feel
It's so slippery
Don't want to fall
Don't want to die
Scared
Can't go down
Can't

I let go
I slipped and fell
Falling
Fell
Hit
Ground
Face
First
I'm cold and numb
It hurts
It ******* hurts

My left eye is cold
My eyelashes have been ripped out
My eyelid is a ******, fleshy mess
Bleeding profusely
It's sticky
Wet
Gross
My mind is racing
I'm soaked
Soaked in sweat
Dew
Thoughts
Pain
Time
I'm gross
Awake

The facade of the building is straight ahead
I move numbly towards the entrance
The doorknob is lifeless and still in my grasp
It doesn't move or budge
Door is locked
Back away
Have to get in
Calling for me
Waiting for me
Beckoning
Persuading
Wanting me
Needing me
I must
No
I need to get in.

My mind snaps back to reality
There's an open basement window to my left
I climb in without any hesitation
Dark
Dank
Damp
I lean heavily against a firm wall
I cannot see my own hand in front of my face
Eyes don't adjust
Eyes close
Collapse
Asleep
Unconscious

Awake
Time passed
It's daylight
I've lost sense and track of time
I smell like my surroundings
I'm moldy
It's moldy
I'm damp
It's damp
Stand
Fall down
Stand again
Light pours through several basement windows
The room is empty
The light turns grey walls shades of the sun
It's bright
Awake

I begin to wander
I touch my face
Still here
My eye is still cold, but the bleeding has stopped
My eyelid is chunky with dried blood
It still ******* hurts
Scab picker
Pain oozes through my face
A couple flakes of skin float to the ground
Sickening
I can feel the dried blood on my fingers
Chapped
Pick more
Pick more
More pieces of blood-dried skin detach from the remainder of my eyelid and float to the ground
I step on them
Bury them into the dust
My hand is stained red
Blood red
My eye begins bleeding again
I tear a piece of my shirt and press it to my wound
Leave it there
Leave it to soak

I wander in a daze until I find a staircase
Ascend
Many flights of stairs
So it seems
Until I reach the second floor
My legs are weak and numb
Weak and numb
Mouth is dry
Tastes like sand
I move my tongue around and can't feel a thing
Mind is clear
I don't like it much
Search for thoughts
Any thoughts
Nothing comes
Don't think
Press on

What am I searching for
Can't answer
Don't know
Others have answered
I don't change
I'll know when it's found

Awake
I enter into a long hallway
On either side there are empty, window-lit rooms
Rooms that are filled with chairs
Rooms that are filled with desks
Rooms that are filled with papers
Files
Curtains
Shoes
Bed frames
Electric chairs
Operation tables
Iron lungs
Toilets
Sinks
Wheelchairs
Dust
Dust
Dust
Rooms that were once filled with love
Rooms that were once filled with hate
Rooms that were once filled with laughter
Tears
Pain
Prayer
Loss
Hope
Fear
Terror
Longing
Wonder
W­orry

I remember
Each room, a name
Each name, letters
An object of identity
Object of terror
Destruction
Hate

Awake
At the end of the hall, I face a door
An illegible name continues rusting
I don't care
A light is on
It's bright
Blinding
Coming for me
Coming to get me
Wraps itself around me
Can't breathe
Chokes me
Gag
*****
Stomach contents and blood escalate up my throat and onto the cracking tile
It hurts
It ******* hurts
My throat burns acid
Spit
Stays
I cry
It stings
Tears burn my face
My eyes
Sniffle
I wipe my mouth
Taste nothing
Feel nothing

Sick
The light brings me back
I let it
Eyes remain half closed
My sight skips around and lands on a waiting chair in the middle of the room
It looks so inviting
So ******* inviting
I don't trust it
Hates me
Wants me
Wants to feed off of me
Wants to be fulfilled
I don't trust it
My legs and body ache
Wobble

Sit
The room is bright and bare
Bare walls
Bare floors
Bare ceilings
Bare emptiness
This is my room
This is my name
Mine
Sit
Don't think
Don't move
I clutch my hands together
My palms are sweaty
My feet brush the floor
They swing
I lean my head back and stare at the ceiling
Damp
Sick
Don't see
Don't hear
Don't feel
Taste
Smell
I smile
Smile a true, deep, loving smile
A smile that generates warmth
A smile that knows where it belongs
I'm home now
Home
I'm alone
Awake
Alive

I'm alive.

the circus train comes to town once a year,
carrying Russian ballerinas & corporate America dropouts.
she brings an irresistible bouquet of
caramel apples & greasepaint, of
cotton candy & mechanical smoke.
the circus is a seductive beast, she'll grab your heart
between her teeth & she won't let go, like a
rabid dog.

when the show begins on opening night,
you'll be sure to grab a front row seat, right in the
Grand Stand, among the soccer moms & their sticky-faced toddlers.
you'll feel the childish delight bubble
in your chest when the music swells, when the elephants march
& the clowns tumble out in garish colors.

after the show, you'll stumble to the three rings with the
toddlers & their tired moms, right to the center ring, don't be
shy when the clown dressed in yellow & black,
like a bumblebee, comes towards you, a devilish grin on
his painted coal black lips.
your knees will tremble, you'll turn as red as his big nose, when he pulls your back to his solid chest, & he begins to juggle right in front of you.

"stick around, after closing" he murmurs in your ear, "that's when the real circus begins."

the circus is painted bright, a swirling mass of
red & blue, with sparks of yellow, ribbons of pink.
even when the show is over, the mystery is still
there, the sweet seduction lingers, like an old lover's fingers can trace circles on your skin in the dead of night.

when the bumblebee clown drags you around town that night,
as if he lives there & not you, you'll go along with him,
your heart racing fast, as fast as the girl dressed in
pink spandex flew from the cannon across the circus ceiling,
how could you have forgotten that?

he'll take you to McDonald's, ask you to pay for the meal, he's broke until Thursday at 2. of course. you split a small
fry and a chocolate shake, by then it's midnight,
he performs some simple magic tricks, balancing a
chair on the edge of his chin, snagging a shining quarter
from your brunette curls, watch out, girl, he's reeling you in,
he's as seductive as the circus.

he will walk you back to your college dorm &
he's sure to mention how it's been years since he has
been inside a dormitory, since clown college, yes it's real.
your roommate is gone & you're not ready to say goodbye
just yet, so you'll sign him in & guide him to your third floor
room.

he marvels at your textbooks & cuddles your teddy bear
brought from home, while you drink him in, solid, squat,
a true Texican, his skin is brown as caramel, & you wander
if he will taste just as sweet. he'll notice your blush, & pull
you close, pinch your hips, nuzzle your neck & kiss you hard,
maybe a bit too hard.

he lays you on your back, & you're naked, you're scared,
vulnerable, you watch him dip his head & kiss you, nibble you in that sweet, sweet forbidden spot. there's a black coal
in your chest, in the pit of your stomach, you're disgusted,
you're curious, you taste the circus firsthand, gagging.

the circus will remain in town for
an entire week, & for an entire week you have a
circus clown as a boyfriend.
you take him on adventures around your college campus,
to your favorite burger spot, to the big water balloon fight
& he'll show you the circus world, you'll hug
an elephant, you'll drink your first beer in Clown Alley,
& you'll watch the show a dozen times.

he'll write you a love letter on your skin, caramel drips on
China porcelain, he'll leave bruises in the shapes of hearts,
& you'll cry when he leaves, it's only been a week, but
it's been a lifetime. he'll hold you tight, too tight, and he'll whisper,

"it's only a year, i'll see you in a year."

when the circus train leaves, the asphalt lot will be
conspicuously empty, except for a trampled clown nose,
much like your aching heart. you'll feel numb & blue,
you'll cling to your phone, the clown promised you
he would call.
you fall asleep cradling your phone to your chest, startle awake when he finally calls you, it's 4 in the morning, you have an early class, but that can wait, his voice is on the other line.

you'll lose a lot more than sleep when you fall in love
with a circus clown, you have to conform to his schedule,
you see, he is the one calling the shots, not you, not we.
you'll start to slip up in your classes, all you do is stare at your phone screen, who cares about supply vs. demand, anyway?

you hitch a ride to see the clown half a year later, you could
hardly stand him being an hour away, & you'll fly into his arms
like a trapeze artist, after the show, he'll carry you like a bride
to his coffin
bed & you're naked again, scared, vulnerable, he's all the way
he's grunting and sweating, and you're cowering, numb.

you leave 15 minutes later, with shaky thighs, you're slightly
nauseated, you try to kiss him goodbye, but he pushes you away,
he's got eyes on the concession stand girl, the one with
raven black hair and a Marilyn Monroe piercing. your heart drops as you get into the car, your friend begs you to talk, but you can't,
you're confused, you're scared, you won't see the clown
for some time to come.

you try to focus on your schoolwork, but your As slip to Ds, you
try to go out with your friends, but they want to talk about
the cute guy in psychology, not about a circus clown miles away.
you forgot to do laundry, all you do is lay in bed, your dorm is
smelling moldy, your roommate starts to stay away. you're
falling, sinking into a blue sea, deep, dark, endless.

when you fall in love with a circus clown, you must know
you're just another Rube from another city, nothing special,
you see, he's got girlfriends in Florida and Las Vegas, that
concession stand girl, too, you're nothing special, girl,
not even close. you gave it all up, your love & your
bleeding heart, to a circus clown, you foolish girl, don't
you know, he'll just play you as hard as he plays in the
circus ring?

Why aren’t your eyes--- there?
In two places--- where water should be?
Moldy residue--- absence of vision, tears
From those bullet holes--- you ought to see--- your own ambivalence
Fall down my cheek
Terrifying--- Me, with nothing for both us
Automaton, my weakness
Intellect, disease
You’re my body
Cage
You're my spirit
Doubt
Justice and horror--- within, without

we play with a retired professional but
none of the other kids mind—
his alcoholism has gotten the better of his muscle
memory and god doesn’t he look bad

the ball is an old piece of garbage made from
a kind of industry plastic
half-flayed alive by loving kicks
that expose the moldy gray rubber inner-
sphere like some soft eyeball

and, behind one of the goals, the
boy who plays goalkeeper only on Wednesdays
lounges like a pimply Greek sculpture—
unable to move as an epileptic fit lazily
puppeteers his body while the players pass the ball into his gut
and I step aside, too—
my stomach aches so badly for the crispy joy
of cold cereal I can’t play—

some days are like that—shed of their seriousness
because it’s more fun to play without a defense
even though we’re always losing **** it I just scored
a goal!

For years, Tim had the visions
Seeing things that no one could
If he spoke of them, he's crazy
He kept quiet, like he should
Just normal, little, visions
Of people who were dead
Just wandering in places
He knew weren't in his head

It started on vacation
He saw the "grey lady" in a room
At first, he thought the lighting
made what he saw there in the gloom
But, later, in his bedroom
while reading pamphlets on the place
she appeared there in his bedroom
But, he couldn't see her face

He kept his little secret
Not telling people she was there
She was mentioned by no others
So, he didn't really care
An undigested bit of beef
A piece of moldy bread
Like Dicken's Scrooge before him
She wasn't real, because she's dead

While still on his vacation
He saw two more, this time more clear
He saw one upon a staircase
And the other, much more near
They never interacted
Didn't know that he could see
But, he wondered "why could no other"
"see them 'cept for me?"

Two years had passed, he was at home
He was living on the coast
When one day he saw the woman
And he knew she was a ghost
The house was large, and gothic
With a widows walk on top
It was there he saw the woman
He shut his eyes to make it stop

She walked upon the rooftop
Looking out over the waves
Her dog was there beside her
Looking for someone to save
He walked away in silence
Turned to look, she was not there
He knew better than to think that
It was a trick of light and air

Turns out the spirit walker
Lost her husband in a wreck
He was a whaler, up in Portsmouth
He drowned and broke his neck
A wave came out of nowhere
Sank his boat, "The Lucky Hoof"
Now, his widow walks and watches
She is a fixture on the roof

He's seen children in the bushes
Not quite sure if they were real
But, could he talk about his visions ?
His dark secret to reveal
They never seemed to notice
That he saw them, they just were
So he'd watch them and he'd listen
Till the day that he saw her

She was sitting in the corner
Of a restaurant, alone one night
But as he watched a little closer
He saw no shadow from the light
She sat alone in silence
No one ventured where she sat
She was dressed in twenties clothing
A classy dress and flapper hat

Two nights went by, he saw her
Sitting exactly as before
When he asked about the table
He saw the table was no more
He had to find this woman
find out why she showed up here
He would investigate the building
But, first he'd have a beer

Turns out her name was Maisy
At least that's what he found out
She went missing from the building
Of this there was no doubt
No one knew which way she travelled
No one ever saw her go
But, the stories, oh the stories
Maisy, turns up...don't you know

The corner with the table
Was just a bricked up wall, that's all
It was constructed when she left here
By the old owner Joe Paul
There never was a reason
For the wall, it had no use
There could only be one reason
And I think you can deduce

Maisy never went and left here
Joe killed her late one night
It was an accident of passion
He had to hide her out of sight
But like Poes tale "The Telltale Heart"
She would show up in her seat
Only Joe could ever see her
No one else would Maisy meet

Tim went to the new owner
Told him of Maisy and her tale
Told him of The Widow Hanker
And her husband and his whale
Was he crazy ? or a mystic ?
The owner said "you are no clown"
And he said tonight at closing
The wall is coming down

They found dear Maisy waiting
In her dress and flapper hat
She was sitting at the table
She was dead, and that was that
The owner, shocked to silence
Stood and watched our mystic Tim
As he stood there while Maisy's spirit
Left this world and passed through him

Tim still has the visions
Still sees the woman and her hound
Still watching for her husband
Tim knows he won't be found
He knows which ones he's needed
To investigate, set free
And the rest of all the spirits
Well, Tim knows what is meant to be

City limit space expands,
it's threaded through with veins--
grey-black dendritic strands
                                     span
                        across this moldy brain
of a city.
Our rotting nights spray hits around
           the places players play.
The impulses will whitewash all complaints
'til the glaring day.

I wanna spit-shine every storm drain,
stain the cracked sidewalks in white,
take this town to Sunday morning Mass,
though she was born for Friday nights.

We're gonna trickle past addresses
                                                   now,
Electroshock through habit streets
these crosswalks sneer with snide expression.
Mildewed thoughts we'll hardly think.
A conversation you're repressing
I'm smoothing out my wrinkled brow
Another weekend's blurred out
blank confession
melts off the tips of tongues,
          I can taste it now.

Circulation space expands,
we're threaded through with veins--
this bio-asphalt plan
                           spans
              all through this molded frame
of a body.
But rotten thoughts, like ships aground,
                   teach sailors how to pray
when impulses have buried all complaints
'neath the foaming spray.

I wanna shade out every bruise now,
paint the dumpsters all in gold.
Missoula, listen: You're a lady.
I don't give a **** what you've been told.

A moldy brain dreams slattern makeup
for a prizefight town each night
so let's take up every artist's brush,
paint shadows on these barroom eyes.

We're gonna flow right through these boule-
                                                          ­          vards.
Electroshock through habit streets.
These dim lit yards and spoiled thoughts
are hyphens placed between each week.
A conversation you're repressing,
I'm smoothing out my wrinkled brow.
Our city's made-up face is running
off the tips of winter and I taste it now.

It hurts me when you have to leave.
I never want you to leave again-
I want to spend all of forever with you.
wake up next to you, go
on road trips with you, make
breakfast with you, dance
around with you, have
fights with you.
I don't want your mom to tell us what to do
or your sister to yell at us
or our friends to third-wheel
I want to spend all my time with you
so our restless hearts can finally escape,
together.
Every day. No one else.
You and me.
Forever.

A bisel: A little
A biseleh: A very little
A breyre hob ich: I have no alternative
A breyte deye hob'n: To do all the talking (To have the greatest say or authority)
A broch!: Oh hell! **** it!! A curse!!!
A broch tzu dir!: A curse on you!
A broch tzu Columbus: A curse on Columbus
A brocheh: A blessing
A chazer bleibt a chazer: A pig remains a pig
A chorbn: Oh, what a disaster (Oh ****! an expletive)
A choleryeh ahf dir!: A plague on you! (Lit., wishing someone to get Cholera.)
A deigeh hob ich: I don't care. I should worry.
A farshlepteh krenk: A chronic ailment
A feier zol im trefen: He should burn up! (Lit., A fire should meet him.)
A finstere cholem auf dein kopf und auf dein hent und fiss: (a horrible wish on someone) A dark dream (nightmare) on your head, hands and feet!
A foiler tut in tsveyen: A lazy person has to do a task twice
A gesheft hob nicht: I don't care
A gezunt ahf dein kop!: Good health to you (lit., Good health on your head)
A glick ahf dir!: Good luck to you (Sometimes used sarcastically about minor good fortunes) Big thing!
A glick hot dich getrofen!: Big deal! Sarcastic; lit., A piece of luck happened to you.
A groyser tzuleyger: A big shot (sarcastically.)
A grubber yung: A coarse young man
A kappore: A catastrophe.
A khasuren die kalleh is tsu shayn: A fault that the bride is too beautiful
A klog iz mir!: Woe is me!
A klog tzu meineh sonim!: A curse on my enemies!
A langer lucksh: A tall person (a long noodle)
A leben ahf dein kepele: A life on your head (A grandparent might say to a grandchild meaning "you are SO smart!")
A leben ahf dir!: You should live! And be well!
A lung un leber oyf der noz: Stop talking yourself into illness! (Lit., Don't imagine a lung and a liver upon the nose)
A maidel mit a vayndel: A pony-tailed nymphet.
A maidel mit a klaidel: A cutie-pie showing off her (new) dress.
A mentsh on glik is a toyter mensh: An unlucky person is a dead person.
A mentsh tracht und Gott lacht: A person plans and God laughs.
A metsieh far a ganef: It's a steal (Lit., A bargain for a thief.)
A nahr bleibt a nahr: A fool remains a fool
A nechtiker tog!: Forget it! (Lit., "A day that's a night.")
A nishtikeit!: A nobody!
A piste kayleh: A shallow person (an empty barrel)
A ritch in kop: Crazy (in the head.)
A schwartz yor: Bad luck. (LIT., A black year)
A schwartzen sof: A bad end.
A shandeh un a charpeh: A shame and a disgrace
A shittern mogn: Loose bowel movement
A shtik fleish mit tzvei eigen: A piece of meat with two eyes (insult)
A shtik naches: A great joy
A shtyfer mogn: Constipated
A sof! A sof!: Let's end it ! End it!
A tuches un a halb: A person with a very large backside. (Lit., A backside and a half.)
A volf farlirt zayne hor, ober nit zayn natur: A wolf loses his hair but hot his nature. "A leopard cannot change his spots."
Abi gezunt!: As long as you're healthy!
Achrahyes: Responsibility
Afn gonif brennt das hittel: "He thinks everyone knows he committed a crime." (a thief's hat burns)
Ahf mir gezogt!: I wish it could be said about me!
Ahf tsores: In trouble
Afh yenems tukhes is gut sepatchen: Someone else's *** is easy to smack.
Ahf zu lochis: Spitefully (Lit: Just to get (someone) angry.)
Ahntoisht: Disappointed
Ahzes ponim: Impudent fellow
Aidel: Cultured or finicky
Aidel gepotchket: Delicately brought up
Aidim: Son-in-law
Ainikle: Grandchild
Aitzeh: Advice
Aiver butelt: Absent minded; mixed up
Alaichem sholom: To you be peace. Used in response to the the greeting Shalom aleichem.
Ale:bais - Alphabet; the first two letters of the Jewish alphabet
Alevei!: It should happen to me (to you)!
Alle ziben glicken: Not what it's cracked up to be (all 7 lucky things)
Alles in einem is nisht do bei keine: All in one (person) is to be found in no one.
Alrightnik: One who has succeeded
Alrightnikeh: Feminine form of "alrightnik."
Alteh moid: Spinster, old maid
Alter bocher: Bachelor
Alter bok: Old goat
Alter Kocker: An old man or old woman.
An alteh machashaifeh: An old witch
An alter bakahnter: An old acquaintance
An alter trombenick: An old ***
An emmisse meisse: An (absolutely) true tale
Apikoros: An unbeliever, a skeptic, an athiest
Arbit: Work
Arein: Come in!
Aroisgevorfen: Thrown out, wasted, (wasted opportunities)
Aroisgevorfene gelt: Thrown out money (Wasted money)
Arumgeflickt!: Plucked! Milked!
Arumloifer: Street urchin; person who runs around
Aydem: Son-in-law
Ayn klaynigkeit: Ya, sure!! (very derogatory)
Az a yor ahf mir.: I should have such good luck.
Az di bobe volt gehat beytsim volt zi geven mayn zeyde!: If my grandmother had testicles she would be my grandfather.
Az mir vill schlugen a hunt, gifintmin a schtecken: If one wants to beat a dog, one finds a stick.
Az och un vai!: Tough luck! Too bad! Misfortune!
Az tzvei zuggen shiker, leigst zich der driter shloffen: If two people say you're drunk, the third one goes to sleep. If two people confirm something, it's true.
Azoy?: Really?
Azoy gait es!: That's how it goes!
Azoy gich?: So soon?
Azoy vert dos kichel tzekrochen!: That's how the cookie crumbles!
B
Babka: Coffee cake style pastry
Badchan: Jester, merry maker or master of ceremonies at a wedding; at the end of the meal he announces the presents, lifting them up and praising the giver and the gift in a humorous manner
Bagroben: To bury
Baitsim: Testicles
Balebatim: Persons of high standing
Balbatish: Quiet, respectable, well mannered
Balebatisheh yiden: Respectable Jews, people of substance and good standing in the community
Baleboosteh: Mistress of the house. A compliment to someone who is a terrific housekeeper. "She is some baleboosteh!"
Balegoola: Truckdriver or sloppy person of low standing.
Balmalocha: An expert (sometimes used sarcastically- Oy, is he an expert!)
Balnes: Miracle-worker
Bal Toyreh: Learned man, scholar
Bal: Sure
Bandit: Menace, outlaw, pain-in-the-neck
Bareden yenem: To gossip
Baren (taboo): Fornicate: bother, annoy
Barimer: Braggart, show-off
Bashert: Fated or predestined
Ba:yekhide - A female only child
Bashert zein: To be destined
Batampte: Tasty , delicious
Batlan: Someone without a trade or a regular means of livelihood
Baysn zikh di finger vos: Regret strongly that........
Becher: Wine goblet
Behaimeh: Animal, cow (when referring to a human being, means dull-witted)
Bei mir hust du gepoylt: You've gotten your way with me.
Be:yokhid - A male only child
Benken: "To yearn for" or "to long for."
Benkshaft: Homesickness, nostalgia
Bentsh: To bless, to recite a blessing
Bentshen lecht: Recite prayer over lit candles on Sabbath eve or Holy Day candles
Beryeh: Efficient, competent housewife
Bes medresh: Synagogue
Bialy: Named for the Polish city of Bialystock, the bialy is of Jewish origin. A Bialy is a fairly large (about 6 inches) chewy round yeast roll. Somewhat similar to a bagel, it has a depression rather than a hole in the centre, and is sprinkled with chopped sauteed onion before baking.
Bikur cholem: Visiting the sick
Billik: Cheap, inexpensive
Bist meshugeh?: Are you crazy?
Biteh: Please
Blondjen: To wander, be lost
Boarderkeh: A female boarder
Boch: A punch
Bohmer: *** (masc.)
Bohmerkeh: *** (fem.)
Boorvisser fiss: Barefoot
Boreke borsht: Beet borsht which the wealthy could afford.
Borekes: Pastries with cheese inside
Borsht: Beet soup
Borsht circuit: Hotels in the Catskill Mountains of New York State, with an almost entirely Jewish clientele, who are fond of borsht; term is used by entertainers
Borviss: Barefoot
Botvenye borsht: Borsht made from beet leaves for the poor.
Boychik: Young boy (term of endearment)
Boykh: Stomach, abdomen
Boykhvehtig: Stomachache
Breeye: Creature, animal
Breire: choice
Bris: Circumcision
Bristen: *******
Broitgeber: Head of family (Lit., Bread giver)
Bronfen: Whiskey
Broygis: Not on speaking terms
B'suleh: ******
Bubbeh: Grandmother
Bubbe maisse: Grandmother's tale.
Bubbee: Friendly term for anybody you like
Bubeleh: Endearing term for anyone you like regardless of age
Bulvan: Man built like an ox; boorish, coarse, rude person
Bupkis: Nothing. Something totally worthless (Lit., Beans)
Butchke: chat, tete-a-tete, telling tales
C
Chai: Hebrew word for LIFE, comprised of the two Hebrew letters, Chet and Yod. There is a sect of Jewish mysticism that assigns a numeric value to each letter in the Hebrew alphabet and is devoted to finding hidden meanings in the numeric values of words. The letter "Chet" has the numeric value of 8, and the letter "Yod", has the value of 10, for a total of 18.
Chaider: Religious School
Chaim Yonkel: any Tom, **** or Harry
Chaimyankel kooternooz: The perennial cuckold
Chaleria: Evil woman. Probably derived from cholera.
Chaleshen: Faint
Challa: Ceremonial "egg" bread. Either round or shaped long. Used on Shabbat and most religious observances with the exception of Pesach (Passover)
Chaloshes: Nausea, faintness, unconsciousness
Chamoole: Donkey, *******, numbskull, fool
Chamoyer du ainer!: You blockhead! You dope, You ***!
Chanukah: Also known as the "Festival of Lights", commemorates the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem. Chanukah is celebrated for 8 days during which one additional candle is added to the menorah on each night of the holiday.
Chap a gang!: Beat it! (Lit., Catch a way, catch a road)
Chap ein a meesa meshina!: "May you suffer an ugly fate!"
Chap nit!: Take it easy! Not so fast! (Lit., Don't grab)
Chaptsem: Catch him!
Chassene: Wedding
Chassene machen: To plan and execute a wedding.
Chas v'cholileh!: G-d forbid!
Chavver: Friend
Chaye: Animal
Chazen: Cantor
Chazenteh: Wife of chazen (cantor)
Chazzer: A pig (one who eats like a pig)
Chazzerei: Swill; pig's feed; anything bad, unpalatable, rotten. In other words, "junk food." This word can also be used to describe a lot of house hold or other kinds of junk.
Chazzershtal: Pigpen; slovenly kept room or house.
Chei kuck (taboo): Nothing, infinitesimal, worthless, unimportant (Lit., human dung)
Chev 'r' mann: Buddy
Chmalyeh!: Bang, punch; Slam! Wallop!
Chochem : A wise man (Slang: A wise guy)
Chochmeh: Wisdom, bright saying, witticism
Choleryeh: Cholera; a curse, plague
Choshever mentsh: Man of worth and dignity; elite person; respected person
Chosid: Rabid fan
Chossen: Bridegroom
Chosse:kalleh - Bride and groom; engaged couple
Choyzik machen: Make fun of, ridicule
Chrain: Horseradish
Chropen: Snore
Chub Rachmones: "Have pity"
Chug: Activity group
Chupah: Canopy under which a bride and groom stand during marriage ceremony.
Chutzpeh: Brazenness, gall, baitzim
Chutzpenik: Impudent fellow
Chvalye: Ocean wave
Columbus's medina: It's not what it's cracked up to be. (Columbus's country.
D
Danken Got!: Thank G-d!
Darf min gehn in kolledj?: For this I went to college? Usually said when describing a menial task.
Davenen: Pray
Deigeh nisht!: Don't worry!
Der mensch trakht un Gott lahkht: Man thinks (plans) and God laughs
Der oyg: Eye
Der tate oysn oyg: Just like his father
Der universitet: University
Der zokn: Old man
Derech erets: Respect
Derlebn: To live to see (I should only live to see him get married, already!)
Der oysdruk: Expression
Dershtikt zolstu veren!: You should choke on it!
Di khemye: Chemistry
Di skeyne: Old woman
Di Skeynes: Old women
Di skeynim: Old men
Die goldene medina: the golden country
Die untershte sheereh: the bottom line
Dine Essen teg: Yeshiva students would arrange to be fed by various householders on a daily basis in different houses. (Lit., Eat days)
Dingen: Bargain, hire, engage, lease, rent
Dis fayntin shneg: It's starting to snow
Dis fayntin zoraiganin: It's starting to rain
Dos gefelt mir: This pleases me
Dos hartz hot mir gezogt: My heart told me. I predicted it.
Dos iz alts: That's all.
Dos zelbeh: The same
Drai mir nit kain kop!: Don't bother me! (Lit., Don't twist my head)
Drai zich!: Keep moving!
Draikop: Scatterbrain
Dreidal: Spinning top used in a game that is associated with the holiday of Chanukah.
Drek: Human dung, feces, manure or excrement; inferior merchandise or work; insincere talk or excessive flattery
Drek auf dem teller: Mean spirited, valueless Lit.crap on a plate.
Drek mit Leber: Absolutely nothing; it's not worth anything.
Druchus: The sticks (way out in the wild)
Du fangst shoyn on?: Are you starting up again?
Du kannst nicht auf meinem rucken pishen unt mir sagen class es regen ist.: You can't *** on my back and tell me that it's rain!
Dumkop: Dumbbell, dunce (Lit., Dumb head)
Durkhfall: A flop or failure
Dybbuk: Soul condemned to wander for a time in this world because of its sins. (To escape the perpetual torments inflicted upon it by evil spirits, the dybbuk seeks refuge in the body of some pious man or woman over whom the demons have no power. The dybbuk is a Cabalistic conception)
E
Ech: A groan, a disparaging exclamation
Ech mir (eppes): Humorous, disparaging remark about anything. e.g. "American Pie ech mir a movie?"
Efsher: Maybe, could be
Ei! Ei!: Yiddish exclamation equivalent to the English "Oh!"
Eingeshpahrt: Stubborn
Eingetunken: Dipped, dunked
Einhoreh: The evil eye
Eizel: Fool, dope
Ek velt: End of the world
Emes: The truth
Emitzer: Someone
Enschultig meir: "Well excuuuuuuse ME!" (Can also bu used in a non-sarcastic manner depending on the tone of voice and situation.)
Entoisht: Disappointed
Eppes: Something
Er bolbet narishkeiten: He talks nonsense
Er drayt sich arum vie a fortz in russell: He wanders around like a **** in a barrel (aimless)
Er est vi noch a krenk.: He eats as if he just recovered from a sickness.
Er frest vi a ferd.: He eats like a horse.
Er hot a makeh.: He has nothing at all (Lit., He has a boil or a minor hurt.)
Er hot nit zorg.: He hasn't got a worry.
Er iz a niderrechtiker kerl!: He's a low down good-for-nothing.
Er iz shoyn du, der nudnik!: The nuisance is here already!
Er macht a tel fun dem.: He ruins it.
Er macht zack nisht visindicht: He pretends he doesn't know he is doing something wrong. Example: Sneaking into a movie theatre, or sneaking to the front of a line.
Er toig (****) nit: He's no good, worthless
Er varved zakh: Lit: He's throwing himself. Example: He's getting angry, agitated, ******-off.
Er zitst oyf shpilkes.: He's restless. (Lit., He sits on pins and needles.)
Er zol vaksen vi a tsibeleh, mit dem kop in drerd!: He should grow like an onion, with his head in the ground!
Eretz Yisroel: Land of Israel
Es brent mir ahfen hartz.: I have a heartburn.
Es gait nit!: It doesn't work! It isn't running smoothly!
Es gefelt mir.: I like it. (Lit., It pleases, me.)
Es hot zich oysgelohzen a boydem!: Nothing came of it! (Lit., There's nothing up there but a small attic.)
Es iz a shandeh far di kinder!: It's a shame for the children!
Es iz (tsu) shpet.: It is (too) late.
Es ken gemolt zein.: It is conceivable. It is imaginable.
Es macht mir nit oys.: It doesn't matter to me.
Es iz nit dayn gesheft: It's none of your business.
Es past nit.: It is not becoming. It is not fitting.
Es tut mir a groisseh hanoeh!: It gives me great pleasure!(often said sarcastically)
Es tut mir bahng.: I'm sorry. (Lit., It sorrows me)
Es tut mir vai: It hurts me.
Es vert mir finster in di oygen.: This is a response to receiving extremely upsetting information or news. (Lit., It's getting dark in my eyes.)
Es vet gornit helfen!: Nothing will help!!
Es vet helfen vi a toiten bahnkes!: It won't help (any)! (Lit., It will help like blood-cupping on a dead body.)
Ess vie ein foygl sheise vie ein feirt!: Eat like a bird, **** like a horse!
Ess, bench, sei a mensch: Eat, pray, don't act like a ****!
Ess gezunterhait: Eat in good health
Essen: To eat
Essen mitik: Eating midday or having dinner.
F
Fahrshvindn: Disappeared
Faigelah: Bird (also used as a derogatory reference to a gay person).
Fantazyor: Man who builds castles in the air
Farbissener: Embittered; bitter person
Farblondzhet: Lost, bewildered, confused
Farblujet: Bending your ear
Farbrecher: Crook, conman
Fardeiget: Distressed, worried, full of care, anxiety
Fardinen a mitzveh: Earn a blessing or a merit (by doing a good deed)
Fardrai zich dem kop!: Go drive yourself crazy!
Fardross: Resentment, disappointment, sorrow
Farfolen: Lost
Farfoylt: Mildewed, rotten, decayed
Farfroyren: Frozen
Fargessen: Forgot
Farklempt: Too emotional to talk. Ready to cry. (See "Verklempt)
Farklempt fis: Not being able to walk right, clumsy as in "clumsy feet."
Far Knaft: Engaged
Farkakte (taboo): Dungy, ******
Farmach dos moyl!: Shut up! Quiet. (Lit., Shut your mouth.)
Farmatert: Tired
Farmisht: Befuddled
Farmutshet: Worn out, fatigued, exhausted
Farpitzed: To get all dressed up to the "nines."
Farschimmelt: Moldy or rotten. An analogous meaning could be that a person's mind has become senile.
Farshlepteh krenk: Fruitless, endless matter (Lit., A sickness that hangs on)
Farshlugginer: Refers to a mixed-up or shaken item. Generally indicates something of little or dubious value.
Farshmeieter: Highly excitable person; always on the go
Farshnickert: Drunk, high as a kite
Farshnoshket: Loaded, drunk
Farshtaist?: You understand?
Farshtopt: Stuffed
Farshtunken: Smells bad, stinks
Farshvitst: sweaty
Fartik: finished, ready, complete
Fa:tshadikt - Confused, bewildered, befuddled, as if by fumes, gas
Feh!: Fooey, It stinks, It's no good
Feinkoche: Omelet, scrambled eggs
Feinshmeker: Hi falutin'
Fendel: pan
Ferd: Horse, (slang) a fool
Ferkrimpter ponim: Twisted-up, scowling face
Ferprishte punim: pimple-face
Fet: Fat, obese
Fetter: Uncle (also onkel)
Finster un glitshik: Miserable (Lit., Dark and slippery)
Fisfinger: Toes
Fisslach: (chickens'/duck's) feet, often in ptsha
Fliegel: Fowl's wing
Focha: Fan
Foigel: Smart guy (Lit: bird)
Foiler: Lazy man
Foilishtik: Foolishness
Folg mikh!: Obey me!
Folg mikh a gang!: Quite a distance! Why should I do it? It's hardly worth the trouble!
Fonfen: Speak through the nose
For gezunterhait!: Bon voyage! Travel in good health!
Forshpeiz: Appetizer
Fortz: ****
Fortz n' zovver: A foul, soul-smelling ****.
Frageh: Question
Frailech: Happy
Frassk in pis: Slap in the face
Freint: Friend,
Mr. Fremder: Stranger
Fress: Eat....pig out.
Fressen: Eat like a pig, devour
Fressing: Gourmandizing (By adding the English suffix "ing" to the Yiddish word "fress", a new English word in the vocabulary of American Jews has been created.)
Froy: Woman,
Mrs. Frum, (frimer): Pious, religious, devout
Funfeh: Speaker's fluff, error
G
*** avek!: Go away
*** feifen ahfen yam!: Go peddle your fish elsewhere!
*** gezunterhait!: Go in good health
*** in drerd arein!: Go to hell!
*** kaken oifen yam!: Get lost (Lit: Go **** in the ocean!)
*** mit dein kop in drerd: "Go with your head in the ground." "Stick your head in the mud"
*** platz!: Go split your guts!
*** shlog dein kup en vant!: Go bang your head against the wall
*** shoyn, ***.: Scram! also, Don't be silly!
*** strasheh di vantzen: You don't frighten me! (Lit., Go threaten the bed bugs)
*** tren zich. (taboo): Go **** yourself
Gait, gait!: Come now!
Gait es nit!: It doesn't work!
Galitsianer: Jewish native of Galicia
Gants gut: Very good
Gantseh K'nacker!: "Big Shot"
Gantseh Macher: "Big shot."
Gantseh megilleh: Big deal! (derisive)
Gantseh mentsh: Manly, a whole man, a complete man; an adult; a fellow who assumes airs
Gatkes: Long winter underwear
Geben shoychad: To bribe
Gebentsht mit kinder: Blessed with children
Gebentshte boych: Literally-blesses stomach (womb) (Said of a lady with a fabulous child or children,
Gebrenteh tsores: Utter misery
Gebrochener english: Fractured English
Gedainkst?: Remember?
Gedempte flaysh: Mystery meat
Gedicht: Thick, full, ample
Geferlech: Dangerous
Geharget zolstu veren!: Drop dead! (Lit., You should get killed.)
Gelaimter: Person who drops whatever he touches
Gelibteh: Beloved
Gelt: Money
Gelt gait tzu gelt.: Money goes to money.
Gelt is nisht kayn dayge: Money is not a problem.
Gembeh!: Big mouth!
Gemitlich: Slowly, unhurried, gently
Genaivisheh shtiklech: Tricky, sharp, crooked actions or doings
Genevishe oigen: Shifty eyes
Genug iz genug.: Enough is enough!
Gesheft: Business
Geshmak: Tasty, delicious
Geshtorben: The state of being dead.
Geshtroft: Cursed, accursed; punished
Geshvollen: Swollen, puffed up (Also applied to person with haughty pride)
Get: Divorce
Getchke: Statue
Gevaldikeh Zach!: A terrible thing! (often ironically)
Gevalt!: Heaven Forbid! (Exclamatory in the extreme.)
Gevalt geshreeyeh: good grief ("help" screamed)
Gezunde tzores: Healthy troubles. Troubles one should not take too seriously.
Gezunt vi a ferd: Strong as a horse
Gezunteh moid!: Brunhilde, a big healthy dame
Gezunterhait: In good health
Gib mir nit kain einorah!: Don't give me a canary! (Americanism, Lit., Don't give me an evil eye)
Gib zich a traisel: Get a move on
Gib zich a shukl: Hurry up! (Give yourself a shake)
Gitte neshomah: good soul
Gleichvertel: Wisecrack, pun, saying, proverb, bon mot, witticism
Glezel tai: Glass of tea
Glezel varms: comforting or soothing (Lit: Glass of warmth)
Glick: Luck, piece of luck
Gloib mir!: Believe me!
Glustiyah: Enema
G'nossen tsum emess!: The sneeze confirmed the truth!
Goldeneh chasseneh: Fiftieth wedding anniversary
Goniff: Crook, thief, burglar, swindler, racketeer
Gopel: Fork
Gornisht: Nothing
Got in himmel!: G-d in heaven! (said in anguish, despair, fear or frustration)
Got tsu danken: Thank G-d
Got zol ophiten!: G-d forbid!
Got:Vorte - A good piece of information or short concise Torahy commentary.
Gotteniu!: Oh G-d! (anguished cry)
Goy: Any person who is not Jewish
Goyeh: Gentile woman
Goyim: Group of non-Jewish persons
Goyishe kop: Opposite of Yiddishe kop. Generally used to indicate someone who is not particularly smart or shrewd. (Definitely offensive.)
Greps: Blech; a burp if it's a mild one
Grob: Coarse, crude, profane, rough, rude
Grober: Coarse, uncouth, crude person
Grober finger: Thumb
Groi:halter - Show-off, conceited person
Groisseh gedilleh!: Big deal! (said sarcastically)
Groisser gornisht: Big good-for-nothing
Groisser potz! (taboo): Big *****! Big *****! (derogatory or sarcastic)
Grooten: To take after, to favour.
Groyser finger: *******
Guggle muggle: A concoction made of warm milk and honey for sore throats
Gunsel: A young goose. Also used to describe a young man who accompanies a ***** or a young *****.
Gut far him!: Serves him right!
Gut gezugt: Well said
Gut Shabbos: Good Sabbath
Gut Yontif: Happy Holiday
G'vir: Rich man
H
Haimish ponem: A friendly face
Haiseh vanneh: Hot bath
Haissen: To hate
Haken a chainik: Boring, long-winded and annoying conversation; talking for the sake of talking (Lit., To bang on the tea-kettle)
Hak flaish: Chopped meat
Hak mir nit in kop!: Stop bending my ear (Lit.; Stop banging on my head)
Hak mir nit kayn chainik (arain): Don't get on my nerves; Stop nagging me. (Lit., Don't bang my teapot.)
Halevei!: If only...
Hamoyn: Common people
Handlen: To bargain; to do business
Hanoe hobn: to enjoy
Harte mogen: constipation
Hartsvaitik: Heart ache.
Hecher: Louder
Hefker: A mess
Heizel: *******
Hekdish: Decrepit place, a slumhouse, poorhouse; a mess
Heldish: Brave
Heldzel: Stuffed neck flesh; sort of a neck-kishke
Hendl: Chicken
Hert zich ein!: Listen here!
Hetsken zich: Shake and dance with joy
Hikevater: Stammerer Hinten - Rear, rear parts, backside, buttocks; in the rear
Hit zich!: Look out!
Hitsik: Hothead
Hitskop: Excitable person
Hob derech erets: Have respect
Hob dir in arbel: Lit., I've got you by the elbow (Used as a response to a derogatory remark as you would use "sticks and stones"
Hob nit kain deiges: Don't worry
Hoben tsu zingen un tsu zogen: Have no end of trouble (Lit.,To sing and to talk)
Hobn groyse oygn: To be greedy
Hock mir nisht en chinik: Don't hit me in the head. or Dont' give me a headache.
Hoizer gaier: Beggar
Hoizirer: Peddler (from house to house)
Holishkes: Stuffed Cabbage
Host du bie mir an avleh!: So I made a mistake. So what!
Hulyen: A hellraiser
I
Ich bin ahntoisht: I am disappointed
Ich bin dich nit mekaneh: I don't envy you
Ich darf es ahf kapores: It's good for nothing! I have no use for it. (Lit., I need it for a [useless] fowl sacrifice)
Ich darf es vi a loch in kop!: I need it like a hole in the head!
Ich hob dir lieb: I love you!
Ich eil zich (nit): I am (not) in a hurry
Ich feif oif dir!: I despise you! Go to the devil! (Lit., I whistle on you!)
Ich *** chaleshen bald avek: I'm about to faint (from sheer exhaustion)
Ich hob dich in ***!: To hell with you! (Lit., I have you in the bath house!)
Ich hob dir!: Drop dead! Go flap you ears! (Lit., I have you....!) (Americanism!)
Ich hob es in drerd!: To hell with it.
Ich hob im feint: I hate him.
Ich hob im in ***!: To hell with him.
Ich hob mir fer pacht: I have you in my pocket. (I know you for what you are.)
Ich hob nicht kain anung: I have no idea.
Ich ken dir nisht farfeeren: I can't lead you astray
Ich loif: I'm running
Ich vais: I know
Ich vais nit.: I don't know.
Ich vel dir geben a khamalye: I'll give you such a smack
Ich vel dir geben kadoches!: I'll give you nothing! (Lit., I'll give you malaria or a fever.)
Ich yog zich nit.: I'm not in a hurry.
Ich zol azoy vissen fun tsores.: I should know as little about trouble (as I know about what you are asking me)
Iker: Substance; people of substance
In a noveneh: For a change; once in a blue moon
In di alteh guteh tseiten!: In the good old days!
In di oygn: To one's face
In drerd mein gelt!: My money went down the drain! (Lit., My money went to burial in the earth, to hell.)
In miten drinen: In the middle of; suddenly
Ipish: Bad odor, stink
Ir gefelt mir zaier.: You please me a great deal.
Iz brent mir ahfen hartz.: I have a heartburn.
K
Kaas (in kaas oyf): Angry (with)
Kabaret forshtelung: Floorshow
Kabtzen, kaptsen: Pauper
Kaddish: A mourner's prayer
Kaddishel: Baby son; endearing term for a boy or man
Kadoches: Fever
Kadoches mit koshereh fodem!: Absolutely nothing! (Lit., fever with a kosher thread)
Kaftan: Long coat worn by religious Jews
Kakapitshi: Conglomeration
Kalamutneh: Dreary, gloomy, troubled
Kalleh: Bride
Kalleh moid: A girl of marriageable age
Kallehniu: Little bride
Kalta neshomeh: A cold soul
Kalekeh: A new bride who cannot even boil an egg.
Kalyeh: Bad, wrong, spoiled
Kam derlebt: Narrowly achieved (Lit., hardly lived to see)
Kam mit tsores!: Barely made it! (Lit., with some troubles) The word "Kam," also is pronounced "Kom" or "Koim" depending on the region people come from.
Kam vos er kricht: Barley able to creep; Mr. Slowpoke
Kam vos er lebt: He's hardly (barely) alive.
Kamtsoness: To be miserly
Kaneh: An enema
Kaporeh, (kapores): Atonement sacrifice; forgiveness; (slang) good for nothing
Karabeinik: Country peddler
Karger: Miser, tightwad
Kaseer: enema
Kasheh: Groats, mush cereal, buckwheat, porridge; a mess, mix-up, confusion
Kasheh varnishkes: Cooked groats and broad (or bowtie) noodles
Kashress: Kosher condition; Jewish religious dietary law
Kasnik, (keisenik): Angry person; excitable person, hot head
Kasokeh: Cross-eyed
Katchka: Duck (quack, quack)
Katshkedik (Americanism): Ducky, swell, pleasant
Katzisher kop: Forgetful (Lit., Cat head)
Kaynahorah: Lit: the evil eye. Pronounced in order to ward of the evil eye, especially when speaking of one's good fortune. "Everyone in the family is happy and healthy kaynahorah."
Kazatskeh: Lively Russian dance
Kein briere iz oich a breire: Not to have any choice available is also a choice.
Kemfer: Fighter (usually for a cause)
Ken zein: Maybe, could be
Kenen oyf di finger: Have facts at one's fingertips
Ketzele: Kitten
(To) Kibbitz: To offer unsolicited advice as a spectator
Kibbitzer: Meddlesome spectator
Kiddish (Borai pri hagofen): Blessing over wine on the eve of Sabbath or Festivals
Kimpe:tzettel - Childbirth amulet or charm (from the German "kind-bet-tzettel" meaning childbirth label containing Psalm 121, names of angels, patriarchs
Kimpetoren: Woman in labour or immediately after the delivery
Kind un kait: Young and old
Kinderlech: Diminutive, affectionate term for children
Kish mir en toches: Kiss my backside (slang)
Kishef macher: Magic-worker
Kishkeh: Stuffed derma (Sausage shaped, stuffed with a mixture of flour, onions, salt, pepper and fat to keep it together, it is boiled, roasted and sliced) Also used to describe a person's innards. "You sweat your kishkehs out to give your children an good education, and what thanks do you get?"
(A) Kitsel: Tickle
Klainer gornisht: Little **** (Lit., A little nothing)
Klemt beim hartz: Clutches at my heartstrings
Klaperkeh: Talkative woman
Klipeh: Gabby woman, shrew, a female demon
Klo: Plague
Klogmuter: Complainer, chronic complainer
(A) Klog iz mir!: Woe is me!
Kloolye: A curse
Klop: Bang, a real hard punch or wallop
Klotz (klutz): Ungraceful, awkward, clumsy person; bungler
Klotz kasheh: Foolish question; fruitless question
Kloymersht: Not in reality, pretended (Lit., as if it were)
Knacker: A big shot
Knackerke: The distaff k'nacker, but a real cutie-pie.
Knaidel (pl., k'naidlech): Dumplings usually made of matzoh meal, cooked in soup
Knippel: Button, knot; *****, virginity; money tied in a knot in a handkerchief. Also, a little money (cash, usually) set aside for special needs or a rainy day. (Additional meaning thanks to Carl Proper.)
Knish (taboo): ****** [this translation is disputed by at least one reader]
Knishes: Baked dumplings filled with potato, meat, liver or barley
Kochalain: Summer boarding house with cooking privileges (Lit., cook by yourself)
Kochedik: Petulant, excitable
Kochleffel: One who stirs up trouble; gadabout, busy-body (Lit., a cooking ladle)
Kolboynik: Rascally know-it-all
(A) Kop oif di plaitses!: Good, common sense! (Lit., A head on the shoulders!)
Komisch: Funny
Kopvaitik: Headache
Kosher: Jewish dietary laws based on "cleanliness". Also referring to the legitimacy of a situation. "This plan doesn't seem kosher".
Koved: Respect, honour, reverence, esteem
Krank: Sick
Kran:heit - Sickness
Krassavitseh: Beauty, a doll, beautiful woman
Krechts: Groan, moan
Krechtser: Blues singer, a moaner
Kreplach: Small pockets of dough filled with chopped meat which look like ravioli, or won ton, and are eaten in soup; (slang) nothing, valueless
Kroivim: Relatives
Krolik: Rabbit
Kuch leffel: A person who mixes into other people's business (cooking spoon)
Kuck im on (taboo): Defecate on him! The hell with him!
Kuck zich oys! (taboo): Go take a **** for yourself!
Kugel: Pudding
Kukn durkh di finger oyf: Shut one's eyes to....., connive at......, wink at.....
*** ich nisht heint, *** ich morgen: If I don't come today, I'll come tomorrow (procrastinator's slogan)
Kumen tsu gast: To visit
Kuntzen: Tricks
Kuni leml: A nerd
Kunyehlemel: Naive, clumsy, awkward person; nincompoop; Casper Milquetoast
Kuppe dre: A piece of ***** matter (s--t)
Kurveh: *****, *******
Kush in toches arein! (taboo): Kiss my behind! (said to somebody who is annoying you)
Kushinyerkeh: Cheapskate; woman who comes to a store and asks for a five cents' worth of vinegar in her own bottle
K'vatsh: Boneless person, one lacking character; a whiner, weakling
K'velen: Glow with pride and happiness, beam; be delighted
K'vetsh: Whine, complain; whiner, a complainer
K'vitsh: Shriek, scream, screech
L
Lachen mit yas:tsherkes - Forced or false laugh; laugh with anguish
Laidi:gaier - Idler, loafer
Lakeh: A funnel
Lamden: Scholar, erudite person, learned man
Lamed Vovnik: Refers to the Hebrew number "36" and traditionally each generation produces 36 wise and righteous persons who gain the approbation of "lamed vovnik."
Lang leben zolt ir!: Long may you live!
Lange loksch: A very tall thin person , A long tall drink of water.
Lantslaite: Plural of lantsman
Lantsman: Countryman, neighbour, fellow townsman from "old country".
Lapeh: Big hand
Layseh mogen: Diarrhea
(A) Lebedikeh velt!: A lively world!
(A) Lebediker: Lively person
(A) Leben ahf dein kop!: Words of praise like; Well said! Well done! (Lit., A long life upon your head.)
Lebst a chazerishen tog!: Living high off the hog!
Leck, shmeck: Done superficially (lick, smell)
L'che:im, le'chayim! - To life! (the traditional Jewish toast); To your health, skol
Leffel: Spoon
Leibtzudekel: Sleeveless shirt (like bib) with fringes, worn by orthodox Jews
Leiden: To suffer
Lemechel: Milquetoast, quiet person
Lemeshkeh: Milquetoast, bungler
Leshem shomaim: Idealistically, "for the sake of heaven."
Leveiyeh: Funeral
Lezem gayne: leave them be
Lig in drerd!: Get lost! Drop dead! (Lit., Bury yourself!)
Ligner: Liar
Litvak: Lithuanian; Often used to connote shrewdness and skepticism, because the Lithuanian Jews are inclined to doubt the magic powers of the Hasidic leaders; Also, a person who speaks with the Northeastern Yiddish accent.
Lobbus: Little monster
Loch: Hole Loch in kop - Hole in the head.
Loksch: An Italian gentleman.
Lokshen: Noodles
Lokshen strop: a "cat- o- nine tails"
Lominer gaylen: Clumsy fool (a golem-Frankenstein monster -- created by the Lominer rebbe)
Loz mich tzu ru!: Leave me alone! (Lit., Let me be in peace!)
Luftmentsh: Person who has no business, trade, calling, nor income.
Luch in kup: A hole in the head ( " I need this like a luch in kup").
M
Machareikeh: Gimmick, contraption
Macher: big shot, person with access to authorities, man with contacts.
Machshaifeh: Witch
Maidel: Unmarried girl, teenager
Maideleh: Little girl (affectionate term)
Maiven: Expert, connoisseur, authority
Maisse: A story
Maisse mit a deitch: A story with a (moral) twist
Makeh: Plague, wound, boil, curse
Mameleh: Mother dear
Mamoshes: Substance, people of substance.
Mamzer: *******, disliked person, untrustworthy
Mamzerook: A naughty little boy
Mashgiach: Inspector, overseer or supervisor of Kashruth in restaurants & hotels.
Mashugga: Crazy
Matkes: Underpants
Maynster: Mechanic, repairman, workshop proprietor
Mayster: Master craftsman, champion,
Mazel Tov: Good Luck (lit) Generally used to convey "congratulations".
Me ken brechen!: You can ***** from this!
Me ken lecken di finger!: It's delicious!
Me krechts, me geht veyter: I complain and I keep going.
Me lost nit leben!: They don't let you live!
Me redt zich oys dos hartz!: Talk your heart out!
Mechuten: In-Law
Mechutonim: In-Laws (The parents of your child's spouse)
Mechutainista: Mother-In-Law
Megillah: A long story
Mein bobbeh's ta'am: Bad taste! Old fashioned taste!
Mein cheies gait oys!: I'm dying for it!
Mekheye: An extreme pleasure, *******, out of this world wonderful!
Mekler: Go-between
Menner vash tsimmer: Men's room
Mentsh: A special man or person. One who can be respected.
Menuvel: A person who is always causing grief, can get nothing right, and is always in the way.
Meshpokha: Extended family
Meshugass: Madness, insanity, craze
Meshugeh: Crazy
Meshugeh ahf toit!: Crazy as a loon. Really crazy!
Meshugeneh: Mad, crazy, insane female.
Meshugener: Mad, crazy, insane man
Meshugoyim: Crazy people
Messer: Knife
Me zogt: They say; it is said.
Mezinka: A special dance for parents whose last child is getting married
Mezuzah: Tiny box affixed to the right side of the doorway of Jewish homes containing a small portion of Deuteronomy, handwritten on parchment.
Mies: Ugly
Mieskeit: Ugly thing or person.
Mikveh: Ritual bath used by women just prior to marriage as well as after each monthly cycle. This represents a "spiritual cleansing after a potential to create a new life was not actualized. There are some religious men who also use mikvehs prior to festivals and the Sabbath. Some Chassidim immerse every morning before praying.
Min tor nit: One (or you) mustn't
Minyan: Quorum of ten men necessary for holding public worship (must be over 13 years of age)
Mirtsishem: G-d willing
Mitn derinnen: All of a sudden, suddenly
Mitn grobn finger: Quibbling, stretching a point
Mitzvah: Good deed
Mizinik: The youngest child in an immediate family
Mogen Dovid: Star of David
Moisheh kapoyer: Mr. Upside-Down! A person who does everything backwards. Not knowing what one wants.
Mosser: Squealer
Mossik: Mischief maker, prankster, naughty little boy, imp
Moyel: Person (usually a rabbi) who performs circumcisions.
Mutek: Brave
Mutshen zich: To sweat out a job
Muttelmessig: Meddlesome person, kibbitzer
N
N'vayle: Shroud; inept person
Na!: Here! Take it. There you have it.
Naches: Joy: Gratification, especially from children.
Nacht falt tsu.: Night is falling; twilight
Nadan: Dowry
Nafkeh: *******
Nafkeh ba:is - *******
Naidlechech: Rare thing
Nar: Fool
Nar ainer!: You fool, you!
Narish: Foolish
Narishkeit: Foolishness
Narvez: Nervous
Nebach: It's a pity. Unlucky, pitiable person.
Nebbish: A nobody, simpleton, weakling, awkward person
Nebechel: Nothing, a pitiful person; or playing role of being one
(A) Nechtiker tog!: He's (it's) gone! Forget it! Nonsense! (Lit., a yesterday's day)
Nechuma: Consolation
Nechvenin: To *******
Nem zich a vaneh!: Go take a bath! Go jump in the lake!
Neshomeh: Soul, spirit
Neshomeleh: Sweetheart, sweet soul
Nisht geshtoygen, nisht gefloygen: neither here nor there
Nifte:shmifter, a leben macht er? - What difference does it make as long as he makes a living? (Lit., nifter means deceased.)
Nishkosheh: Not so bad, satisfactory. (This has nothing to do with the word "kosher", but comes from the Hebrew and means "hard, heavy," thus "not bad."
Nisht araynton keyn finger in kalt vaser: Loaf, not do a thing, be completely inactive
Nisht fur dich gedacht!: It shouldn't happen! G-d forbid! (Lit., May we be saved from it! [sad event] )
Nishtgedeiget: Don't worry; doesn't worry
Nisht geferlech: Not so bad, not too shabby (Lit. not dangerous.)
Nishtkefelecht: No big deal!
Nisht gefloygen, nisht getoygen: It doesn't matter
Nisht gefonfit!: Don't hedge. Don't fool around. Don't double-talk.
Nisht getoygen, nisht gefloygen: It doesn't fly, it doesn't fit
Nisht getrofen!: So I guessed wrong!
Nisht gut: Not good, lousy
Nisht naitik: Not necessary
Nishtgutnick: No-good person
Nishtikeit!: A nobody!
Nishtu gedacht!: It shouldn't happen! G-d forbid!
Nit kain farshloffener: A lively person
Nit ahin, nit aher: Neither here nor there
Nit gidacht!: It shouldn't happen! (Same as nishtu gedacht)
Nit gidacht gevorn.: It shouldn't come to pass.
Nit kosher: Impure food. Also, slang, anything not good
Nit heint, nit morgen!: Not today, not tomorrow!
Nito farvos!: You're welcome!
Nitsn: To use
Noch a mool: One more time
Noch nisht: Not yet
Nochshlepper: Hanger-on, unwanted follower
Nor Got vaist: Only G-d knows.
Nosh: Snack
Nosherie: Snack food
Nu?: So? Well?
Nu, dahf men huben kinder?: Does one have children? (When a child does something bad)
Nu, shoyn!: Move, already! Hurry up! Let's go! Aren't you finished?
Nudnik: Pesty nagger, nuisance, a bore, obnoxious person
Nudje: Annoying person, badgerer (Americanism)
Nudjen: Badger, annoy persistently
O
Ober yetzt?: So now? (Yetzt is also spelled itzt)
Obtshepen: Get rid of
Och un vai!: Alas and alack: woe be to it!
Oder a klop, oder a fortz (taboo): Either too much or not enough (Lit., either a wallop or a ****)
Oder gor oder gornisht: All or nothing
Ohmain: Amen
Oi!!: Yiddish exclamation to denote disgust, pain, astonishment or rapture
Oi, a shkandal!: Oh, what a scandal!
Oi, gevald: Cry of anguish, suffering, frustration or for help
Oi, Vai!: Dear me! Expression of dismay or hurt
Oi vai iz mir!: Woe is me!
Oif tsalooches: For spite
Oisgeshtrobelt!: Overdressed woman.
Oisgeshtrozelt: Decorated (beautiful)
Oisgevapt: Flat (as in "the fizz has gone out of it.)
Oi:shteler - Braggart
Oiver botel: Absentminded: getting senile
Okurat: That's right! Ok! Absolutely! (Sarcastically: Ya' sure!) Okuratner mentsh - Orderly person
Olreitnik!: Nouveau riche!
On langeh hakdomes!: Cut it short! (Lit., without long introductions.)
Ongeblozzen: Conceited: peevish, sulky, pouting
Ongeblozzener: Stuffed shirt
Ongematert: Tired out
Ongepatshket: Cluttered, disordered, scribbled, sloppy, muddled, overly-done
Ongeshtopt: Very wealthy
Ongeshtopt mit gelt: Very wealthy; (Lit., stuffed with money)
Ongetrunken: Drunk
Ongetshepter: Bothersome hanger-on
Ongevarfen: Cluttered, disordered
Onshikenish: Hanger-on
Onshikenish: Pesty nagger
Onzaltsen: Giving you the business; bribe; soft-soap; sweet-talk (Lit., to salt)
Opgeflickt!: Done in! Suckered! Milked!
Opgehitener: Pious person
Opgekrochen: Shoddy
Opgekrocheneh schoireh: Shoddy merchandise
Opgelozen(er): Careless dresser
Opgenart: Cheated, fooled
Opnarer: Trickster, shady operator
Opnarerei: Deception
Orehman: Poor man, without means
Oremkeit: Poverty
Ot azaih: That's how, just like that
Ot kimm ich: Here I come!
Ot gaist du: There you go (again)
Oy mi nisht gut gevorn: "Oh my, I'm growing weary."
Oy vey tsu meina baina: Woe is me (down to my toes)
Oybershter in himmel: G-d in heaven
Oych a bashefenish: Also a V.I.P.! A big person! (said derogatorily, sarcastically, or in pity)
Oych mir a leben!: This too is a living! This you call a living?
Oyfen himmel a yarid!: Much ado about nothing! Impossible! (Lit., In heaven there's a big fair!)
Oyfgekumener: Come upper, upstart
Oyfn oyg: Roughly, approximately
Oyg oyf oyg: In private, face-to-face
Oys shiddech: The marriage is off!
Oysznoygn fun finger: Concoct, invent (a story)
Oysergeveynlekh: Unusual (sometimes used as "great.")
Oysgedart: Skinny, emaciated
Oysgehorevet: Exhausted
Oysgematert: Tired out, worn out
Oysgemutshet: Worked to death, tired out
Oysgeposhet: "Well grazed," in the sense of being fat.
Oysgeputst: Dressed up, overdressed; over decorated
Oysgeshprait: Spread out
Oysvurf: Outcast, bad person
P
Paigeren: To die (animal)
Paigeren zol er!: He should drop dead!
Pamelech: Slow, slowly
Parech: Low-life, a bad man
Parnosseh: Livelihood
Parshiveh: Mean, cheap
Parshoin: He-man
Partatshnek: Inferior merchandise or work
Parveh: Neutral food, neither milchidik (dairy) nor flaishidik (meat)
Paskidnye: Rotten, terrible
Paskudnik, paskudnyak: Ugly, revolting, evil person; nasty fellow
Past nit.: It isn't proper.
Patsh: Slap, smack on the cheek
Patsh zich in tuchis und schrei "hooray": Said to a child who complains he/she has nothing to do (slap your backside and yell "hooray")
Patshkies around: Anglicized characterization of one who wastes time.
Patteren tseit: To lounge around; waste time
Payess: Long side-curls worn by Hasidic and other ultra-Orthodox Jewish men.
Petseleh: Little *****
Phooey! fooey, pfui: Designates disbelief, distaste, contempt
Pinkt kahpoyer: Upside down; just the opposite
Pipek: Navel, belly button
Pishechtz: *****
Pisher: Male infant, a little squirt, a nobody
Pisk: Slang, for mouth; insultingly, it means a big mouth, loudmouth
Pis:Malocheh - Big talker-little doer! (man who talks a good line but does nothing)
Pitseler: Toddler, small child
Pitshetsh: Chronic complainer
Pitsel: Wee, tiny
Pitsvinik: Little nothing
Plagen: Work hard, sweat out a job, suffer
Plagen zich: To suffer
Plaplen: Chatter Plats! - Burst! Bust your guts out! Split your guts!!
Platsin zuls du: May you explode
Plimenik: Nephew
Plimenitse: Niece
Plotz: To burst
Pluchet: Heavy rain (from Polish "Plucha")
Plyoot: Bull-*******; Loudmouth
Plyotkenitzeh: A gossip
Ponem: Face
Poo, poo, poo: Simulate spitting three times to avoid the evil eye
Pooter veren: Getting rid of (Lit: making butter)
Pooter veren fon emitzer: Getting rid of someone; eg: "ich geh' veren pooter fon ihr" - "I'm going to be getting rid of her!"
Poseyakh: Rolling out dough
Potchke: Fool around or "mess" with
Potzevateh: ******, someone who is "out of it."
Praven: Celebrate
Preplen: To mutter, mumble
Prezhinitse: Scrambled eggs with milk added.
Prietzteh: Princess; finicky girl; (having airs, giving airs; being snooty) prima donna!
Pripitchok: Long, narrow wood-burning stove
Prost: Coarse, common, ******
Prostaches: Low class people
Prostak: Ignorant boor, coarse person, ****** man
Proster chamoole: Low-class *******
Prosteh leit: Simple people, common people; ******, ignorant, "low class" people
Proster mentsh: ****** man, common man
Ptsha: Cows feet in jelly
Pulke: The upper thigh
Pupik: Navel, belly button, gizzard, chicken stomachs
Pupiklech: Dish of chicken gizzards
Pushkeh: Little box for coins
Pustunpasnik: Loafer, idler
Putz: Slang word for "*****." Also used when describing someone someone as being "a ****."
Pyesseh: A play, drama
R
Rachmones: Compassions, mercy, pity
Rav: Rabbi, religious leader of the community
Reb: Mr., Rabbi; title given to a learned and respected man
Rebbe fon Stutz: A phrase used to explain the unexplainable. Similar to blaming something on the fairies or a mystical being.
Rebiniu: "Rabbi dear!" Term of endearment for a rabbi
Rebitsin: Literally, the rabbi's wife (often sarcastically applied to a woman who gives herself airs, or acts excessively pious) ; pompous woman
Rechielesnitseh: Dowdy, gossipy woman
Reden on a moss: To chatter without end
Redn tzu der vant: Talk in vain or to talk and receive no answer (Lit. , talk to the wall for all the good it will do you)
Redlshtul: Wheelchair
Redt zich ayn a kreynk!: Imaginary sickness
Redt zich ayn a kind in boich: Imaginary pregnancy (Imaginary anything)
*****: Rich, wealthy
Reisen di hoit: Skin someone alive (Lit., to tear the skin)
Reissen: To tear
Retsiche: ******
Rib:fish, gelt oyfen tish! - Don't ask for credit! Pay in cash in advance! Cash on the barrel-head!
Riboyno:shel-oylom! (Hebrew) God in heaven, Master of the Universe
Richtiker chaifetz: The real article! The real McCoy!
Rirevdiker: A lively person
Rolleh: Role in a play
Rooshisher: Definitely NOT a Litvak; coming from Ukraine, White Russia; the Crimea, Russia itself.
Roseh: Mean, evil person
Rossel flaysh: Yiddish refritos
(A) Ruach in dein taten's taten arein!: Go to the devil! (Lit., A devil (curse) should enter your father's father!)
Ruf mich k'na:nissel! - I did wrong? So call me a nut!
Ruktish: Portable table
S
S'vet helfen azoy vie a toytn baynkes: Lit: It will help as much as applying cups to a dead person.
S'art eich?: What does it matter to you? Does it matter to you?
Saykhel: Common sense
Schochet: A ritual slaughterer of animals and fowl.
Se brent nit!: Don't get excited! (Lit., It's not on fire!)
Se shtinkt!: It stinks!
Se zol dir grihmen in boych!: You should get a stomach cramp!
Sh' gootzim: Plural of shaigetz
Sha! (gently said): Please keep quiet.
Shabbes goy: Someone doing the ***** work for others (Lit;, gentile doing work for a Jew on Sabbath)
Shabbes klopper: A resident of a neighbourhood who's job it was to "klop" or bang on the shutters of Jewish homes to announce the hour of sundown on Friday
Shadchen: Matchmaker or marriage broker. There is the professional type who derives his or her living from it, but many Jewish people engage in matchmaking without compensation.
Shaigitz: Non-Jewish boy; wild Jewish boy
Shaigetz ainer!: Berating term for irreligious Jewish boy, one who flouts Jewish law
Shaile: A question
Shain vi der lavoone: As pretty as the moon
Shain vi di zibben velten: Beautiful as the seven worlds
Shaineh maidel: pretty girl
Shaineh raaineh keporah: Beautiful, clean sacrifice. Nothing to regret.
Shainer gelechter: Hearty laugh (sarcastically, Some laughter!)
Shainkeit: Beauty
Shaitel, (sheitel): Wig (Ultra-orthodox married women cover their hair. Some use a shaitel)
Shalach mohnes: Customary gifts exchanges on Purim, usually goodies Shalom - Peace (a watchword and a greeting)
Shamus: Sexton, beadle of the synagogue, also, the lighter taper used to light other candles on a menorah, a policeman (slang)
Shandeh: Shame or disgrace
Shandhoiz: Brothel, *******
Shpatzir: A walk without a particular destination
Shat, shat! Hust!: Quiet! Don't get excited
Shatnes: Proscription against wearing clothes that are mixed of wool and linen
Shav: Cold spinach soup, sorrel grass soup, sour leaves soup
Shayneh kepeleh: Pretty head (lit) Good looking, good thoughts
Shemevdik: Bashful, shy
Shepen naches: Enjoy; gather pleasure, draw pleasure, especially from children
Shidech (pl., shiduchim): Match, marriage, betrothal
Shih:pihi - Mere nothings
****:yingel - Messenger
Shikker: Drunkard
Shikseh: Non-Jewish girl
Shlissel: A key
Shissel: A basin or bowl
*******: Sparse, lean, meager
Shiva: Mourning period of seven days observed by family and friends of deceased
Shkapeh: A hag, a mare; worthless
Shkotz: Berating term for mischievous Jewish boy
Shlak: Apoplexy; a wretch, a miserable person; shoddy; shoddy merchandise
Shlang: Snake, serpent; a troublesome wife; ***** (taboo)
Shlatten shammes: Communal busybody, tale bearer; messenger
Shlecht: Bad
Shlecht veib: Shrew (Lit., a bad wife)
Shlemiel: Clumsy bungler, an inept person, butter-fingered; ***** person
Shlep: Drag, carry or haul, particularly unnecessary things, parcels or baggage; to go somewhere unwillingly or where you may be unwanted
Shleppen: To drag, pull, carry, haul
Shlepper: Sponger, panhandler, hanger-on; dowdy, gossipy woman, free-loader
Shlimazel: Luckless person. Unlucky person; one with perpetual bad luck (it is said that the shlemiel spills the soup on the shlimazel!)
Shlog zich kop in vant.: Break your own head! (Lit., bang your head on the wall)
Shlog zich mit Got arum!: Go fight City Hall! (Lit., Go fight with God.)
Shlogen: To beat up
Shlok: A curse; apoplexy
Shlooche: ****
Shloof: Sleep, nap
Shlosser: Mechanic
Shlub: A ****; a foolish, stupid or unknowing person, second rate, inferior.
Shlump: Careless dresser, untidy person; as a verb, to idle or lounge around
Shlumperdik: Unkempt, sloppy
Shmaltz: Grease or fat; (slang) flattery; to sweet talk, overly praise, dramatic
Shmaltzy: Sentimental, corny
Shmatteh: Rag, anything worthless
Shmeis: Bang, wallop
Shmek tabik: Nothing of value (Lit., a pinch of *****)
Shmeer: The business; the whole works; to bribe, to coat like butter
Shmegegi: Buffoon, idiot, fool
Shmeichel: To butter up
Schmeikel: To swindle, con, fast-talk.
Shmendrik: nincompoop; an inept or indifferent person; same as shlemiel
Shmo(e): Naive person, easy to deceive; a goof (Americanism)
Shmontses:Trifles, folly
Shmooz; (shmuess): Chat, talk
Shmuck (tabboo): Self-made fool; obscene for *****: derisive term for a man
Shmulky!: A sad sack!
Shmuts: Dirt, slime
Shmutzik: *****, soiled
Shnapps: Whiskey, same as bronfen
Shnecken: Little fruit and nut coffee rolls
Shneider: Tailor; in gin rummy card game, to win game without opponent scoring
Shnell: Quick, quickly
Shnook: A patsy, a sucker, a sap, easy-going, person easy to impose upon, gullible
Shnorrer: A beggar who makes pretensions to respectability; sponger, a parasite
Shnur: Daughter-in-law
Shokklen: To shake
Shoymer: Watchman; historically refers also to the armed Jewish watchman in the early agricultural settlements in the Holy Land
Shoymer mitzves: Pious person
Shoyn ainmol a' metse:eh! - Really a bargain
Shoyn fargessen?: You have already forgotten?
Shoyn genug!: That's enough!
Shpiel: Play
Shpilkes: Pins and needles
Shpits: end, the heel of the bread
Shpitsfinger: Toes
Shpitzik: Pointed sense of humour, witty, sarcastic, caustic
Shpogel nei: Brand-new
Shreklecheh zach: A terrible thing
Shtarben: To die
Shtark, shtarker: Strong, brave
Shtark gehert: Smelled bad (used only in reference to food; Lit., strongly heard)
Shtark vi a ferd: Strong as a horse
Shteln zikh oyg oyf oyg mit....: To confront
Shtetl: Village or small town (in the "old country")
Shtik: Piece, bit: a special bit of acting
Shtik drek (taboo): *******; ****-head
Shtik goy: Idiomatic expression for one inclined to heretical views, or ignorance of Jewish religious values
Shtik naches: Grandchild, child, or relative who gives you pleasure; a great joy
Shtikel: Small bit or piece; a morsel
Shtiklech: Tricks; small pieces
Shtilinkerait: Quietly
Shtimm zic: Shut up!
Shtoltz: Pride; unreasonably and stubbornly proud, excessive self-esteem
Shtrafeeren: To threaten
Shtrudel: Sweet cake made of paper-thin dough rolled up with various fillings
Shtuk: Trouble
Shtum: Quiet
(A) Shtunk: A guy who doesn't smell too good; a stink (bad odor) a lousy human
Shtup: Push, shove; vulgarism for ****** *******
Shtup es in toches! (taboo): Shove (or stick) it up your ****** (***)!
Shtuss: A minor annoyance that arises from nonsense
Shudden: A big mess
Shul: Colloquial Yiddish for synagogue
Shule: School
Shushkeh: A whisper; an aside
Shutfim: Associates
Shvach: Weak, pale
Shvachkeit: Weakness
Shvantz: tail, *****
Shvartz: Black
Shvegerin: Sister-in-law
Shvengern: Be pregnant
Shver: Father-in-law; heavy, hard, difficult
Shvertz azayan ***: It's hard to be a Jew
Shviger: Mother-in-law
Shvindel: Fraud, deception, swindle
Shvindeldik: Dizzy, unsteady
Shvitz: Sweat, sweating
Shvitz ***: Steam bath
Shvoger: Brother-in-law
Sidder: Jewish prayer book for weekdays and Saturday
Simantov: A good sign (lit) Often used with mazel tov to wish someone good luck or to express congratulations
Simcheh: Joy; also refers to a joyous occasion
Sitzfleish: Patience that can endure sitting (Lit., sitting flesh)
Smetteneh: Sour cream; Cream
Sobaka killev: Very doggy dog
Sof kol sof: Finally
Sonem: Enemy, or someone who thwarts your success.
S'teitsh!: Listen! Hold on! How is that? How is that possible? How come?
Strasheh mich nit!: Don't threaten me!
Strashen net de genz: Lit., Do not disturb the geese. (You are full of yourself and making too much noise)
T
Ta'am: Taste, flavor; good taste
Ta'am gan eyden: Fabulous (Lit: A taste of the Garden of Eden)
Tachlis: Practical purpose, result
Tahkeh: Really! Is that so? Certainly!
Tahkeh a metsieh: Really a bargain! (usually said with sarcasm)
Taiglech: Small pieces of baked dough or little cakes dipped in honey
Tallis: Rectangular prayer-shawl to whose four corners, fringes are attached
Talmud: The complete treasury of Jewish law interpreting the Torah into livable law
Talmud Torah: The commandment to study the Law; an educational institution for orphans and poor children, supported by the community; in the United States, a Hebrew school for children
Tamavate: Feebleminded
Tamaveter: Feebleminded person
Tandaitneh: Inferior
Tararam: Big noise, big deal
Tashlich: Ceremony of the casting off of sins on the Jewish New Year (crumbs of bread symbolizing one's sins are cast away into a stream of water in the afternoon of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashoneh)
Tateh, tatteh, tatteh, tatteleh, tatinka, tatteniu: Father, papa, daddy, pop
Tate:mameh, papa-mama - Parents
Tatenui: Father dear (The suffix "niu" in Yiddish is added for endearing intimacy; also, G-d is addressed this way by the pious; Tateniu-Foter means G-d, our Father
Tchotchkes: Little playthings, ornaments, bric-a-brac, toys
Teier: Dear, costly, expensive
Te:yerinkeh! - Sweetheart, dearest
Temp: Dolt
Temper kop: Dullard
Ti mir nit kayn toyves: "Don't do me any favours" (sarcastic)
Tinef: Junk, poorly made
T'noim: Betrothal, engagement
Toches: Buttocks, behind, ***** (***)
Toches ahfen tish!: Put up or shut up! Let's conclude this! (Lit., ***** on the table!)
Toches in droissen: Bare behind
Toche:lecker - Brown-noser, apple-polisher, ***-kisser
Togshul: Day school
Toig ahf kapores!: Good for nothing! It's worth nothing!
Traif: Forbidden food, impure, contrary to the Jewish dietary laws, non-kosher
Traifener bain: Jew who does not abide by Jewish law (derisive, scornful expression
Traifeneh bicher: Forbidden literature
Traifnyak: Despicable person; one who eats non-kosher food
Trefn oyfn oyg: To make a guess
Trenen: To tear, rip
Trepsverter: Lit. step words. The zinger one thinks of in retreat. The perfect retort one summons after mulling over the insult.
Trogedik: Pregnant
Trog gezunterhait!: Wear it in good health!
Trombenik: A ***, no-good person, ne'er-do-well; a faker
Tsaddik: Pious, righteous person
Tsalooches: Spite
Tsaloochesnik: Spiteful person
Tsatskeh: Doll, plaything; something cute; an overdressed woman; a **** girl
Tsatskeleh der mamehs!: Mother's favorite! Mother's pet!
Tsebrech a fus!: Break a leg!
Tsedrait: Nutty, crazy, screwy
Tsedraiter kop: Bungler
Tseereh: Face (usually used as put-down)
Tseeshvimmen: Blurred
Tsegait zich in moyl: It melts in the mouth, delicious, yummy-yummy
Tsemishnich: Confusion
Tsemisht: Confused, befuddled, mixed-up
Tsevishe:shtotisheh telefonistkeh - Long distance operator
Tshatshki: Toy, doo-dad
Tshepen: To annoy, irk, plague, bother, attack
Tsigeloisen: Compassionate, rather nice
Tsiklen zich: The cantor's ecstatic repetition of a musical phrase
Tsimmes: Sweet carrot compote; (slang) a major issue made out of a minor event
Tsitskeh: Breast, ****, udder
Tsivildivit: Crazy, wild, overwhelmed with too many choices
Tsnueh: Chaste
Tsores: Troubles, misery
Tsu undzer tsukunft tzuzamen: To our future together.
Tsutsheppenish: Hanger-on; unwanted companion; pest; nuisance
Tsum glik, tsum shlimazel: For better, for worse
Tsumakhn an oyg: To fall asleep
Tsvilling: Twins
Tu mir a toiveh.: Do me a favor.
Tu mir nit kain toives.: Don't do me any favors.
Tumel: Confusion, noise, uproar
Tumler: A noise-maker (person); an agitator
Tut vai dos harts: Heartbroken
Tzadrait: Scattered
Tzedakeh: Spirit of philanthropy; charity, benevolence
Tziginner bobkes: Jocular, truly valueless. Also used to describe black olives. Lit: goat droppings
Tziter: To tremble
Tziterdik: Tremulous or trembling
Tzitzis: Fringes attached to the four corners of the tallis
Tzufil!: Too much! Too costly!
U
U:be-rufen - Unqualified, uncalled for; God forbid; (A deprecation to ward off the evil eye)
U:be-shrien - God forbid! It shouldn't happen!
Umgeduldik: Petulant
Ummeglich!: Impossible!
Umglick: A misfortune; (masc) A born loser; an unlucky one
Umshteller: Braggart
Umzist: For nothing
Umzitztiger fresser: free loader, especially one who shows up only to eat (and EAT!)
Unger bluzen: Bad mood. Swollen with anger.
Ungerissen beheiman: A totally stupid person. Lit., an untamed animal. Not wild, just dumb.
Un langeh hakdomes!: Cut it short! (lit., Without a long introduction)
Unter fir oygn: Privately
Unterkoifen: To bribe
Untershmeichlen: To butter up
Untervelt mentsh: Racketeer
Untn: Below
Utz: To goad, to needle
V
Vahksin zuls du vi a tsibeleh, mitten kup in drerd: May you grow like an onion, with your head in the ground!
Vahksin zuls du, tsu gezunt, tsu leben, tsu langeh yor: May you grow to health, to life, to long years. (Each may me said when someone sneezes)
Vai!: Woe, pain; usually appears as "oy vai!"
Vai is mir!: Woe is me!
Vai vind iz meine yoren: "Woe is me!"
Vais ich vos: Stuff and nonsense! Says you! (Lit., Know from what)
Vaitik: An ache
Valgeren zich: Wander around aimlessly
Valgerer: Homeless wanderer
Vaneh: Bath, bathtub
Vannit: Where (from) "Fon vannit kimmt ihr?" (Where do you come from?)
Vantz: Bedbug; (slang) a nobody
Varenikehs: Round shaped noodle dough stuffed with meat, potato, etc. and fried
Varfen an oyg: To look out for; to guard; to mind (Lit., To throw an eye at)
Varnishkes: Kasha and noodles
Vart!: Wait! Hold on!
Vas:tsimmer - Bathroom, washroom
Vas:tsimmer far froyen - Ladie's room
Vas:tsimmer far menner - Men's room
Vayt fun di oygn,vayt fun hartsn: Far from the eyes, far from the heart. Equivalent to "Out of sight, out of mind."
Vechter: Watchman
Veibernik: Debauchee
Veibershe shtiklach: Female tricks
Veis vi kalech!: Pale as a sheet!
Ve:zaiger - Alarm clock
Vemen barestu?: (taboo) Whom are you kidding? (Lit., Whom are you *******?)
Vemen narstu?: Whom are you fooling?
Ver derharget!: Get killed! Drop dead! (Also "ver geharget)
Ver dershtikt!: Choke yourself!
Ver farblondjet!: Get lost! Go away!
Verklempt: Extremely emotional. On the verge of tears. (See "Farklempt")
Ver tsuzetst: "Go to hell" (or its equivalent)
Ver vaist?: Who knows?
Ver volt dos gegleybt?: Who would have believed it?
Veren a tel: To be ruined
Veren ferherret: To get married
Vi a barg: Large as a mountain
Vi der ruach zogt gut morgen: Where the devil says good morning! (has many meanings; usually appended to another phrase)
Vi gait dos gesheft?: How's business?
Vi gait es eich?: How goes it with you? How are you? How are you doing?
Vi gaits?: How goes it? How are things? How's tricks?
Vi haistu?: What's your name?
Vi ruft men...?: What is the name of...?
Vi ruft men eich?: What is your name?
Viazoy?: How come?
Vie Chavele tsu der geht: Literally: Like Chavele on her way to her divorce; meaning "all spruced up."
Vifil?: How much?
Vilder mentsh: A wild one; a wild person
Vilder chaiah: Wild animal or out of control child or adult
Vilstu: Do you want...
Vo den?: What else?
Voglen: To wander around aimlessly
Voiler yung!: Roughneck (sarcastic expression)
Voncin: Bed bug
Vortshpiel: Pun, witticism
Vos art es (mich)?: What does it matter (to me)? What do I care?
Vos barist du?: (taboo) What are you ******* around for? What are you fooling around for?
Vos bei a nichteren oyfen lung, is bei a shikkeren oyfen tsung.: What a sober man has on his lung (mind), a drunk has on his tongue.
Vos draistu mir a kop?: What are you bothering me for? (Lit., Why are you twisting my head?)
Vos failt zai?: What are they lacking?
Vos gicher, alts besser: The faster, the better
Vos hakst du mir in kop?: What are you talking my head off for?
Vos hert zich?: What do you hear around? What's up?
Vos hert zich epes ne:es? - What's new?
Vos heyst: what does it mean?
Vos hob ich dos gedarft?: What did I need it for?
Vo:in-der-kort - Capable of doing anything bad (applied to bad person; Lit., everything in the cards)
Vos iz?: What's the matter?
Vos iz ahfen kop, iz ahfen tsung!: What's on his mind is on his tongue!
Vos iz der chil'lek?: What difference does it make?
Vos iz der tachlis?: What's the purpose? Where does it lead to?
Vos iz di chochmeh?: What is the trick?
Vos iz di untershteh shureh?: What's the point? What's the outcome? (Lit., What on the bottom line?)
Vos iz mit dir?: What's wrong with you?
Vos kocht zich in teppel?: What's cooking?
Vos macht a ***?: How's it going?
Vos macht vos oys?: What difference does it make?
Vos macht es mir oys?: What difference does it make to me?
Vos macht ir?: How are you? (pl.); How do you do?
Vos Machstu?: How are you? (singular)
Vos maint es?: What does it mean?
Vos noch?: What else? What then?
Vos ret ir epes?: What are you talking about?
Vos tut zich?: What's going on? What's cooking?
Vos vet zein: What will be
Vos vet zein, vet zein!: What will be, will be!
Vos zogt ir?: What are you saying?
Vu tut dir vai?: Where does it hurt?
Vus du vinsht mir, vinsh ikh dir.: What you wish me, I wish you.
Vuhin gaitsu?: Where are you going?
Vund: Wound
Vursht: Bologna
Vyzoso: Idiot (named after youngest son of Haman, archenemy of Jews in Book of esther); also, *****
W
Wen der tati/fater gibt men tsu zun, lachen baiden. Wen der zun gibt men tsu tati/fater, vainen baiden.: When the father gives to his son, both laugh. When the son gives to the father, both cry.
Wen ich ess, ch'ob ich alles in dread.: (Lit. When I am eating, I have everything in the ground.) When I am eating, everybody can go to hell!
Y
Yachneh: A coarse, loud-mouthed woman; a gossip; a slattern
Yachsen: Man of distinguished lineage, highly connected person, privileged character
Yarmelkeh: Traditional Jewish skull cap, usually worn during prayers; worn at all times by observant Orthodox Jews.
Yahrtzeit: Anniversary of the day of death of a loved-one.
Yashir koyech: May your strength continue
Yatebedam: A man who threatens; one who thinks he's a "big shot"; a blusterer
Yedies: News; cablegrams; announcements
Yefayfiyeh: Beauty; woman of great beauty
Yenems: Someone else's; (the brand of cigarettes moochers smoke!)
Yeneh velt: The other world; the world to come
Yenteh: Gabby, talkative woman; female blabbermouth
Yente telebente: Mrs. National Enquirer
Yentzen (taboo): To fornicate, to *****
Yeshiveh: Jewish traditional higher school, talmudical academy
Yeshiveh bocher: Student of talmudic academy
Yeshuvnik: Farmer, rustic
Yichus: Pedigree, ancestry, family background, nobility
Yiddisher kop: Jewish head
Yiddishkeit: Having to do with all things relating to Jewish culture.
Yingeh tsat:keh! - A young doll! A living doll!
Yiskor: Prayer in commemoration of the dead (Lit., May God remember.)
Yom Kippur: Day of Atonement (the most holy of holy days of the Jewish calendar)
Yontefdik: Festive, holiday-ish; sharp (referring to clothes)
Yortseit: Anniversary of the day of death of parents or relatives; yearly remembrance
Yoysher: Justice, fairness, integrity
Yukel: Buffoon
(A) Yung mit bainer!: A powerhouse! Strongly built person
Yung un alt: Young and old
Yungatsh: Street-urchin, scamp, young rogue
Yungermantshik: A young, vigorous lad; A newlywed
Yusoimeh: Orphan
Z
Zaft: Juice
Zaftik: Pleasantly plump and pretty. Sensuous looking (Lit., juicy)
Zaftikeh moid!: Sexually attractive girl
Zaideh: Grandfather
Zaier gut: O.K. (Lit., very good)
Zaier shain gezogt!: Well said! (Lit., Very beautifully said!)
Zee est vee a feigele: She eats like a bird
Zeh nor, zeh nor!: Look here, look here!
Zei (t) gezunt: Be well! Goodbye! Farewell
Zei mir frailich!: Be Happy!
Zei mir gezunt!: Be well!
Zei mir matriach: Be at pains to... Please; make an effort.
Zei nit a nar!: Don't be a fool!
Zei nit kain vyzoso!: Don't be an idiot! Don't be a **** fool!
Zeit azoy gut: Please (Lit., Be so good)
Zeit ir doch ahfen ferd!: You're all set! (Lit., You're on the horse!)
Zeit (mir) moychel: Excuse me! Be so good as...Forgive me!
Zelig: Blessed (used mostly among German Jews in recalling a beloved deceased ----- mama zelig)
Zeltenkeit: Rare thing
Zetz: Shove, push, bang! Also slang for a ****** experience (taboo)
Zhaleven: To be sparing, miserly
Zhlob: A ****; slob, uncouth
Zhu met (mir) in kop: A buzzing in one's (mind) head
Zhulik: Faker
Zi farmacht nit dos moyl: She doesn't stop talking (Lit., She doesn't close her mouth)
Zindik nit: Don't complain. Don't tempt the Gods.
Zingen: To sing
Ziseh neshomeh: Sweet soul
Ziseh raidelech: Sweet talk
Ziskeit: Sweetness, sweetheart, (Also endearing term for a child)
Zitsen ahf shpilkes: Sitting on pins and needles; to fidget
Zitsen shiveh: Sit in mourning (Shiveh means 7 which is the number of days in the period of mourning
Zitsflaish: Patience (Lit., Sitting meat)
Zog a por verter: Say a few words!
Zogen a ligen: Tell a lie
Zogerkeh: Woman who leads the prayers in the women's section in the synagogue
Zoineh: *******
Zok nit kin vey: Don't worry about it (Lit: Do not say woe)
Zol dich chapen beim boych.: You should get a stomach cramp!
Zol dir klappen in kop!: It should bang in your head (the way it is bothering me!)
Zol er tsebrechen a fus!: May he break a leg! He should break a leg!
Zol es brennen!: The hell with it! (Lit., Let it burn!)
Zol Got mir helfen: May God help me!
Zol Got ophiten!: May God prevent!
Zol ich azoy vissen fun tsores!: I haven't got the faintest idea! (Lit., I should so know from trouble as I know about this!)
Zol makekhs voxen offen tsung!: Pimples should grow on your tongue!
Zol vaksen tzibbelis fun pipek!: Onions should grow from your bellybutton!
Zol ze vaksen ze ve a tsibble mit de kopin dreid: You should grow like an onion with your head in the ground.
Zol zein!: Let it be! That's all!
Zol zein azoy!: O.K.! Let it be so!
Zol zein gezunt!: Be well!
Zol zein mit glik!: Good luck!
Zol zein shah!: Be quiet. Shut up!!
Zol zein shtil!: Silence! Let's have some quiet!
Zolst geshvollen veren vi a barg!: You should swell up like a mountain!
Zolst helfen vi a toyten bankes: It helps like like cupping helps a dead person.
Zolst hobn tzen haizer, yeder hoiz zol hobn tzen tzimern, in yeder tzimer zoln zain tzen betn un zolst zij kaiklen fun ein bet in der tzweiter mit cadojes!: I wish you to have ten houses, each house with ten rooms, each room with ten beds and you should roll from one bed to the other with cholera. (not a very nice thing to say.)
Zolst leben un zein gezunt!: You should live and be well!
Zolst ligen in drerd!: Drop dead! (Lit., You should lie in the earth!)
Zolst nit vissen fun kain shlechts.: You shouldn't know from evil.
Zolst es shtipin in toches!: (taboo) Shove it up your ******!
Zolst zein vi a lom:am tug sollst di hangen, in der nacht sollst di brennen - You should be like a lamp, you should hang during the day and burn during the night!
Zolstu azoy laiben!: You should live so!
Zorg zich nit!: Don't worry!
Zuninkeh!: Dear son! Darling son!

everyone has dark cellars
scattered within their body,
vanishing, pulling down planets
and cobwebs from the forgotten
corners of the room.
please enter my confetti filled castle
and slip elegantly on the rain soaked floor.
laugh at the paper airplanes we used to
make as kids that barely flew straight and
how every grandpa seems angry when they type.
nothing is important unless you allow it to be.
i'll buy a needle and thread and stitch together my words into
the warmest blanket for you to sleep under,
but falling asleep seems like a waste of time, and
we will probably get complaints about that.

I try to live Here. Here is humid-sticky-underground-dance-hall hot. I’m caught tight in a mess of limbs- bodies stretch and sway from this to Eden. I have never been more lonely. Together we inhale metallic Old Spice. Together we exhale stale tap water hymns. I am breathing all alone.

My tired tongue kicks awake to cheap nail poison as I tap each fingernail against bottom teeth and lightly push three times.
(Four times or eight times. Ten times in one quick, heart-drop minute but who’s counting?
Me. Of course I’m counting. There’s not a beat, rhyme or giggle that hasn’t busy-bee buzzed around my foggy brain. Each thought its own color, each touching down on a different set of crumb-glazed quilts or a different tower of gutted magazines. Each bee is long and thin, pointy in a terrifying way. Each bloated and dripping with a grand idea- which they leave like droppings and are so specifically intense they will never make any sense a breath apart from this moment and this context which crumpled and blew away while I dully, dutifully checked my pulse. I'm alive but my thoughts took off. I can see their exhaust but they fled fast, like they knew I could only begin to gnaw on them. They were born to quickly, maniacally live and die- in and out and there then off and gone.)

Here. Here the walls are chipping off one hundred years, one hundred lives of lead-based paint and are dripping onto the frayed denim of my ****** cut-offs. Impossibly long hair, absurd to call it mine, hangs heavy and wet. The strands shed drops of atmosphere on my (and their and your and-) bare feet. I’m my own sumi brush- my calligraphy is not words, but a footprint-marked path to treasure. Braided bits cling heavy and soaked to the curve of my neck and then billow like sheets hung out in the wind. My sharp, slick scapula must be the laundry line. It’s one of the good bones. Good bones only exist while jutting. The scapula is the beautiful ******* of my skeleton and we finally have made nice.

Here the music is so loud. The bass ignites my dental cavities. They sting and pierce as a reminder of how terribly I’m taking care. Lights blink, the room quakes and I need water.  I’m throbbing and flickering and faces attached to bones slither between each other and grind up into my own perfect focus. They’re smirking.

One at a time they appear with a warm, grainy hand on the small of my cold-sweat back. Each face of bones lean in close, dry and cracked lips that graze my own fever-hot ears. Goose bumps sling up and down limbs and the lips, all smudgy red lipstick and cigarette breath, whisper something to me that is absolutely crucial. It’s something beautiful or something hilarious or something crude but I can’t hear it. I’ll never hear it. They throw their bones back and cackle-laughing so hard it must be painful. All I can hear is my eardrums cracking and breaking, laying the bass for a high pitched dial tone.

One by one they do this and then, with a huge play-dough smile and eyes as deep as I feel, they slowly back away from my flimsy, electric body. I know they’re relieved they didn’t get stung. This goes on for forty straight hours. I feel like the Queen bored and still as they file through to kiss my ring. I feel like I’m at my own wake. I am beginning to erupt. I am lightly vibrating with the burden of militant creativity. I think I'm melting from the inside out. The bones still laugh and the bees, diving like war missiles, are screaming that it’s time to flesh out that novel, string precise words together in a huge, monumental way down golden strings that will change the world for the better and forever hang on God's graceful neck. It's time to record that beloved lullaby and sculpt that masterpiece or put on black clothes, sneak out and vandalize monuments. It is all absolutely crucial and so very urgent. Everything is wailing and I’m nodding slowly because if I do not do it, ALL OF IT, now- right this instant and quickly- I will die having said nothing. I will have wasted my opportunity to matter.

Here. Here the bone-bodies continue to mock me. The room stays dim and damp and I don’t think I’ll ever get clean. After twenty minutes or seventy years the crowd thins out, lights switch on illuminating exit signs and the room slowly, sadly, empties. I am sticky and aching and have never felt dumber. The bone-bodies left their blurry sweat, their empty bottles and their void inspirations like blank fortunes trailing across the bar top. There’s a real, fur, calf-length coat and a fake Birkin bag in the corner. My feet are filthy.

Here. But I’m not really Here. Here is bougy and exclusive. There’s no list but you probably can’t get in because actually Here is utter *******. Here is the moldy bricks and pre-war ceilings inside my head.
Leaving Here is too easy. You blink and you’re gone. Then I try to remember what party I even went to but I’m sitting Indian style and cramped on rough carpet and my back is in knots and everything I’m thinking is slow, melting taffy lose and inconsistent.

The sun starts to rise up pink through broken bedroom blinds and I know that I went way down deep and danced and gripped tight to flurrying ideas and made a big mess and now I’m stuck ripping papier-mâché, three inches thick, off coat-check walls and trying to read the graffiti-ed bathroom stalls but the Sharpie is dripping and I might be illiterate.

The Somethings I came to flirt with are hiding and won’t answer ‘POLO’ no matter how loudly I scream ‘Marco! ******* Marco!’ I’m reeling and under-breath begging ‘and please come find me and let’s make stuff and we can’t waste this and I can’t be a waste.’ But below all the pacing and knuckle-cracking I know that there are no Somethings listening to my panicky prayers. They sneaked out while I was braiding my hair for the sixth time, humming something old and Johnny Cash-y that I remembered and liked and had to Google and perform eight times for a mirror. I sneeze and I want to cry. I don’t think I know how to read. Edges start to blur and the alphabets a mess.

In defeat I’ll wash my face and slide under one light blanket and quickly sweat through it. I’ll lower my heavy, thick-thought and dizzy head onto a stack of three pillows. My vision will fall away from me and stars will explode in a chatty whisper that has be immobile and straining and sore. I will treat them like a sky full of fireworks blazing just for me. I'll ooh and ahh and my heart will palpitate under the weight of them. (Really I do know they're just amphetamine snowflakes falling slowly and burying my wasted night.  I swear next time I won’t waste it.) But at that moment I'll watch the show and feel safe and small and inconsequential, at last.

You liked me for what you saw, for what  was skin deep.
You liked the decorative icing on the cake.
You did not know what lay beneath.
Was I dry, moldy or a fake.

You did not know my regrets, the things I've done wrong;
You did not know the secrets that I've kept for so long.
But you were perfect; maybe too perfect for me.
I was not worthy of you but perfect I'd be.

If you just wait for a while and give me some time
I would be perfect but right now I'm not worth a dime.

We, the invisible reasons for your problems, blind ourselves to the
dismal inevitability that we will
suffocate because you refuse to stop
the pillaging of the future for the sake of your own ******* lineage being able to further itself and potentially give you a chance to again close your mind and scream as loud as you can when confronted with your own toxicity

We, the ones who humbly take the bludgeoning from your self-proclaimed pious hand, know these chains are only on your bleeding wrists and ankles.

We, the silent and the broken, know Santa Muerta by the nicknames she had in college and all accompanying wildness she brought in her wake.
We still will stroke your hair while you
throw your tantrums and wail about what is and isn't fair on your deathbeds.

We will burn the mattress and all while cheering you on on your flight into the night sky you ignored for a lifetime.

We, the servants of streaming digits and stewards of bottled stardust, will create stories about how it wasn't your fault and how you shouldn't be hated for bringing the world crashing into the excrement of wasted potential so our children know there was a choice to be made.

We, the overly polite pariahs pry laughs and love and lust and learning from looming catastrophe like Burroughs writing Naked Lunch with a glassy eyed stare that burned holes in the veil hiding the tide of partially coagulated blood and ******* that YOUR world preached as milk and honey.

We, the proof in the moldy pudding still finding time to rot, will burn tobacco fields in your honor just to dance while getting drunk on the breaths you'll never waste.

We, the lovers of questions and haters of creeds, let tears stream in the hope that they are not considered part of our body's 75 percent while fantasizing about your ghosts seeing them and the dehydration they may be in spite of and quiet your tired old yelling and shaking of fists at the clouds when overcome by the slight sadness that whispers "its too late" lovingly into your ear.

We, the lovers, the thieves, the reviled, the *******, the witches, the junkies, the ******, the reptiles and worms under the rocks society deems unusable and misshapen, will be the ones lifting the crowns off your corpses and throwing them high as graduates do when full of a hope only ever dashed by themselves.

We, the drooling monsters you vehemently deny anything besides the cramped closets or the space between bed and floor in childhood bedrooms, will be the Valkyries to descend onto the blood-choked battlefield you set aside for your souls to suffer on and offer you respite in the form of soggy bread and wildflower honey while  ravens and jackdaws bicker over the eyes and fingers of those that once showed us how to ride a bike or drunkenly beat us beneath our favorite trees or touched us in dark rooms in ways that would chase Love away from the shadow of our hearts until we finally climbed high enough to see it all as someone screaming of war and bravery while running from the sound of steel biting steal because their protectors talked so highly of honor and duty that it seemed as if it were God and Adam touching fingertips on the arched ceilings of youth. that, then was painted on the crumbling walls of abandoned houses they would secretly indulge on the forbidden fruit soaking pages of a faded **** magazines or up skirts of blushing  girls who put on their mother's prudishness until fingers pushed past
cotton and virtue alike to the warm center they both melted in.

We, the unsung and numb, walk in spirals while the complexity you rebuked as devil-born becomes the sigils of yet-to-be kingdoms bringing about golden age after golden age in the distant mists rolling over hills and valleys of memories of moments yet to coalesce into rigid experience.

We, the eyes weeping blood atop crumbling pyramids, have seen the walls you want to build in futures dissolved in the winds blowing dust over the dream-roads we skip down and how it resembles the one you built to keep your heart from breaking from the pressing mass of what you can't file away as noise or heresy or communist propaganda;
We drew throbbing ***** and dripping ***** on all the blueprints we came across and tucked them back into the secret compartments of wardrobes and roll-tops passed down through generations.

We, the keepers of the singing stones you traded for cheap concrete, will embrace the tiny souls you neglected out of ignorance to the existential snake oil pitch you broke every tooth biting down on all because the salesman reminded you of your drunk father or mother imposing their wills like you make shadow puppets dance on peeling wallpaper in the silence that ensued after they had passed out on creaky couches reeking of Lucky Strikes and spilled ***** while the shine of the staticky T.V. set covered them like the blanket no one ever put over their slumbering forms because of those infinite lists of excuses used to skirt the skirmishes of showing any kind compassion even if they alone were sole witness to it.

We, the pieces of self the deathbed "you" sent hurtling backwards through time to shine lights on the siege seething at the gates of what you stand for, are only holding those lanterns to show you that fleeing is futile and your death is just a hallway with a door that leads to the knowledge that life is not a cell to watch time morph into tally lines scratched into cold stone as if they were epitaphs for the seconds bet and lost at the roulette table crafted from any slave ship the ocean never swallowed.

We, the flames mimicking those dancing girls you longed to have squeal under the idea of your thrusting masculinity amidst the graffiti on the bathroom stalls in seedy dive-bars or the paupers playing prince you follow giggling with hope in hand like a bouquet of baby's breath and daisies for that one day they would stop and turn and smile so handsomely that your knees would shatter against one another and wedding chapels would bend down to tie tin cans to bumpers of beat up Buicks and Oldsmobiles your fathers give dowry and the crowd could watch "just married" poorly written in shaving cream on the back window grow small until it disappeared over the horizon.

We, the dreamers, are tired of sleeping and are in need of a old tree to swing from, to bury our dreams like beloved pets under, and watch as it lets its leaves fall to the hungry earth that is more patient then anyone closed eyed and humming ancient syllables beneath crooked branches could ever be.

All the trees you climbed and kicked and fell in love under have died from too many hearts around intials being carved into them or were used to make fascist pamphlets you yourself passed out at churchs mistaking the mask with bone structure or the river for the people it swept to sea.

We are laughing;
like a loving mother at her clumsiness on display in her cackling child and not like the crowds gazing at the sideshow stage as the curtains pull back and stage lights illuminating John Merrick's flesh and the intricate dissonance it lent to minds.
Minds that afforded only sips of bliss as monotonous stints on factory floors but were preached about like they were some heaven-sent golden cobblestones laid lovingly all the way
to the beach where Heimdall will one day sound his horn, one foot feeling the grit of the edge of the world and the other washed clean for the grave we will all step in.

So, all these words, all these images, all of it is intended to be a moon so all the stagnate tide pools that have forgotten their origin and the freedom they used to give form to lesser forms they forage forgetfulness from.

We, the ones beneath you on the climb to the summit of our collective potential, beg you to think of something beside yourself when taking a ****.

It is not just ******* in the wind if there isnt wind and we are right below you and dying of thirst.

It is not an inalienable right if someone else is deprived of the same.

It is not Heaven's gate if the brilliant gild has a melting point or if it remains latched to any soul's approach.

It is not "liberal *******" or a myth if whole flocks of birds fall from the sky or schools of fish wash up on beaches while people snap photographs for their feed.

It is not "god" if love dispels it like smoke hanging in the kitchens your great grandmother sat in and told you about a witch shapeshifting into dogs without heads to scare drunks stumbling home because she was a ******* racist.

It is not just food if someone's organs fail from starvation that even the worms and flies are free from.

You wave your banners and let your war-horns echo and you wear your ignorance as armor.

We, the eaters of life and death, will chisel a name into stone and pick your bones clean if you think we should march to the sounds of drums and trumpets just because you were stupid enough to think it was anything other than your masters convincing you to whip yourselves ****** because "at least God hath been kind enough to give you a purpose" or "he works in mysterious ways".

**** that.

Look at what it has brought out of the swirling sea of " all that could be" while you write the same song about how shiny and numerous the scales of the prize are.

We are not responsible for pillaging God's bounty.

We are the bounty and our emptiness and lack of foresight are in jeweled bowls at your feet, but in your hubris you believe it to be the slaves that come to wash the dirt from between your toes.

We are Death and She is the wet-nurse that will give us intimacy to fertilize our hearts by refusing us her breast but turning our heads to your silhouettes shambling off the edge of existence far off in the distance only a decade or less could be confused for.

[AS ONE VOICE WE SING/SANG/HOWL:
Lux amor potentia restituant propositum dei in terris.]

As if it were as easy as holding the hand of a dying tyrant afraid they cannot the luminous terminus while wearing your father's face as a mask to trick radiant angels or the contortions of gods reeking of struck matches by those trembling and their swirling black hearts closed to the breeze carrying leaves celebrating their liberation and caressing a cheek they were too ashamed to kiss when opportunity was their ally.

We shouldn't hate these piles of skulls all parroting the same axioms to those who only show up to add another or leave an empty bottle turned into a candle holder, wax dripped down the neck and froze before any trace of tallow could finally unite with the dirt it longs to become one with;
icicles hanging from the eaves of abandoned asylums.

This place was supposed to be alot of things but that is what lead THEM to drown in the sound of buzzing bees, birdsong, and abundance in all directions.

I suggest we stop trying to squeeze it into a shoebox we scribbled Promised Land on and just let it be the open armed paradise it inherently is.
Let it be the heart and home as well as the hostile territory because it is only ever that and what we wont find in any Oracle's Prophecy.

I'll end my rambling with a question and it's answer.

How do you turn a police station into a hospital and a schoolhouse?

Burn it to the ******* ground.

ask anyone i know:
i have a tendency to forget things.

i forgot moose's middle name
my password
what day i have to go to the dentist
what i did yesterday
if i ate this morning
what year i stopped talking to ryan
the words to my favorite moldy peaches song
the name of a childhood friend
the book that i was supposed to return
the movie i was supposed to bring
the cookies i was supposed to bake
the smile i was supposed to smile
the words i was supposed to say

but this is only lately.
i used to remember everything

i thought my tactic of not thinking about the bad things
made the bad things not real

but it only makes me
forgetful

Vernarth says: "Give me some milk, and I will be the son of Zeus, perhaps as a means in everything and not a whole of which I never thought...!"

Wonthelimar from the Boedromion brought the arrows that Zefian brought, they brought the sleeping bodies of winter to the lap of the spring Boedromion, crossing the lines from spring to winter in the cycle that went directly to the Mercurial Ambrosia of the Cinnabar. Were they discreet detached arrows that he had thrown into the sky and did not return? but if in the rooms, and in the animalism stages that made the duty of rejoicing at the ****** of the Telesterion.  Wonthelimar being once more re-looted, before starting the works of the temple of the Megaron Áullos Kósmos, he returns to the cavern of Chauvet Wonthelimar. It distanced itself from the contravention of Apollo and Artemis towards an olive tree, originating in the arrows of Zefian, to mark the new cardinal points of the zenith, starting with the first two arrows that are placed in the bowstring, each one belonging to trajectories from north to south and the other two that were again violated with the arc of the stormy East, to launch the arrows from east-west with limits of southern magnetism. He carried in his belongings "The Iberian Rings", which would be the migration to the cardinals and points where the Megaron of Vernarth would be exactly, arguing that the phalanges of Zefian would be ordered in Syntropia and organic chaos in Patmos, Pythagorean proportions would be made, in essences of numbers that idly advanced in the temporal steps of Wonthelimar that mobile became of religious arrows and of the Mercurial Ambrosia of the Cinnabar, to help him with the most insightful points of the Constellation of Capricornus.  Zefian's tendency was one of evident delight after the bowstring being pulled, for phantasmagoric existence; presuming that where they fell would be the beginning of the storms that would originate the Állos Kósmos Megarón, for late courts imposed from a cosmos, which was directed by committing itself to its will and from a doubtful Vestal god advocating to associate with hospitable Canephores, such as Vestal Virgins of Roman bilocation, and quantum parapsychology of the dreaded in-between-tale alive that boils back in the arrows that had not yet fallen, and did not know their whereabouts. Like plates or serial hosts that were evoked from where the origin of the Universe was broken, to open towards the Duoverso contravened organic, vigorous and in anti-scorch to the divine celestial origin as a parameter of *****-ovule, rather in eonic instances in the fireplace of Hestia, running in eternities to vast volumes of light-years.

From the medrones that grow in the Nyons massifs, the Seven Ibic Rings were established.

Ibic 1: "The first was from the initiation of Wonthelimar and brought purity, for all who needed him and were visiting in the dark, and then he would find the light when he left the cave alive if he was accepted."
Ibic 2:” He was guided by Vlad Strigoi in the priesthood center on his shelves with the Chiroptera, and in excess of the mercurial ambrosia for the purpose of energizing the Tsambika Cinnabar.  Having all the protocol of Transylvania and eternity with the waters of Antiphon Benedicts”.
Ibic 3: "From the Eygues, the waters evaporated for healings of the tormented initiatory processes of raising the four Arrows of Zefian, to indicate the zenith of the Megaron."
Ibic 4: “This ring was from the antlers of Wonthelimar, here they wore the oikos or threads of Gold from Orphi, for the Himation and investiture to anoint the body of Vernarth, bringing the aerial atmospheres of the Alps and Ida as a complement to Mycenae- Aldaine ”.
Ibic 5: "This piece of metal speaks of the fifth plasmic element that would contract the universe and the Hyperdisis galaxy, to elevate it to Vernarth's neurological and Duoversal hyper brain twinned to the Mashiach."
Ibic 6: "It is the sixth piece of crowns of Kafersesuh, bringing the pollinations of the Lepidoptera, for the central stage of the investiture under the gloom of Hellenika and Theoskepasti."
Ibic 7: “It is the grave voice of the Cinnabar and the Antiphon Benedictus, together with the Lenten fast of all the hoarse voices, which inquire about the true phoneme and photon of divine mass light, to build the Áullos Kósmos. From here the purification will go up in synchrony through the final growth medron, up to the millimeter shoulder of the square meters assembly, which will illustrate the Megaron´s Acrotera  "

Ellipsis - Parapsychological Regression Marielle Quentinnais year of the Lord 1617

Wonthelimar was transmigrating to Chauvet, but the Pontias wind carried him from Nyons to Avignon, encountering filigree by Raymond Bragasse; a Former Dominican priest of Cathar descent. He always drenched himself in the estuaries of the Rhone, which came from the Saint Gotthard massif; being master and lord of dreams and of the breaking curses of the despicable administrators of the house of God, and of the Antipopes in Avignon.
Wonthelimar heard voices from some parapets babbling in the parapsychological regression of Vetnarth, on August 4, 1617, when Klauss Ritkke was found cleaning the main stained glass window; he heard heated dialogues between a Friar and a Gentleman, who was once an assistant to the clergy. Klauss could come closer and hear his conversation more clearly, until Friar Andrés, muttering, demanded indulgence from Raymond Bragasse, one or the other.

Raymond Bragasse Says: “My lord Wonthelimar; what grace has brought us together here in the middle of the Pontias, between hopes and reforms!”

Wonthelimar responds: "Your flight is a spell of the grace of André Panguiette, who will find us again. How many times with hope I fought to reform you Raymond... Oh Virga ac Diadema  sed Diabolus...!! Oh, ****** the devil smiled...!!

Raymond replies: “It is a major question to live if in something I have failed, take me to the sulfurous emanations of Hell. But my faith lies moldy at the bottom of the sea, a sacred myth of my truth..., and of my beloved Marielle...! There are fifteen thousand demons that possess my body... fifteen thousand demons for attacking the sacred mystery of the Holy Rosary...! Marielle was my light, my Edenic Eve, an admirable land. Now, she is my spell, my stubbornness or my constant sharp bleeding, without knowing where it has to pass...? I still remember that night, that gloomy night, renouncing my final vows of faith and the consecration of my soul. I broke my ties and ecclesiastical chores, all for Marielle, a noble descendant of the Quentinnais. I would never believe such regret in my destiny. I did love her, but her misfortune knew me. When I approached the edge of her house that night, I entered through the kitchen window. All were asleep, except for the albiceleste reflection of the last death throes of the deadly round of Quentinnais Mansion. I was thinking of rescuing her and saving something from those cheeks kissed by me, but her heart disease dried up his heart and her lungs. It is still possible to recall the last roses that I brought into her hands, they danced with her along with the hymn and the old dirge of the sleight of hand made by the monk, along with the cartomancy plays settling the minute of taking her into darkness, with her beautiful bare feet. What a pain, I could not rescue her from her, and death was dispossessing her! Her parents hated the mere fact of having her heart ruled by an impious priest, so I turned to the pagan and dark gods, to heal Marielle, and her heart to transplant it for mine. Since that day, I continue to burn in a polysatanic hell, to take out the little breath of goodness, and seize the transparent liquids that plague her existence and her serene metallic Diadem..."

Friar André Panguiette upon learning that his great friend possessed by the Devil would fall into some endemic evil infection...; Evil endemic to his love, he crossed himself when he saw that he became a horrible being. The jumbled leaves in the garden were transformed into Bible sheets torn from their bindings and fillings, the wrinkled ***** Saints slid down their columns, the sky proclaimed hemorrhages and the wind oozed foul gases, which in the firmament sprouted in clots of clots on the Papal House of Avignon. Fray Andrés, threw the rosary on the neck of the possessed person, and asked the Demons who were they most afraid of...? The demons answered this question, screaming and falling vertically down the central nave... they went down and flew!

Wonthelimar induces: “From that moment, you and Marielle would cross their gazes closely and love each other. In the following minutes of Pentecost, the two of them went alone to sit on the bench on the banks of the blessed wind that caressed their profiles, as if plotting to unite one with the other. Raymond effusively kissed her; he drew her to him, believing he sensed an eventual and sacrilegious separation from her. This is how it happened when François Quentinnais surprised them...:

François Quentinnais: With this example, you have provoked my anger Marielle...! Hundreds of men like me would react like this when they saw my daughter in the arms of whom until recently, she was hugging God!

Marielle: Father, I beg you for mercy, Raymond of precept sent a letter renouncing his vows!

When the soul of Marielle was entrusted, Raymond escaped seconds before shattered, he did not tolerate the nonexistence of Marielle; vegetating rotten grass of the estuary, emerald swallowed by fire. In a purely inorganic state, Raymond walked away from the mansion, walked through the leaden mountains, and on the cruise he walked through the walnut trees in whose scarlet pods the intense cold of the esplanade howled. The almond trees cracked a baritone muezzin, which one day he wanted to go there, but could never reach the east. His beard reddened, his nails were like ram's horns, and his also reddish hair at the ends of it had black tulips. His clothes turned gray just like his eyebrows, and his breath smelled of nurse sewers of the black plague, the dry flow of his voice announced monosyllables, thus he purged his pain from town to town, from house to house, everyone quarreled with him, and then they were exasperated by kicking him out. Until in June 1617, caravans of people started from the southern town of Avignon, escaping the flames of angry soldiers of the crusades. The fleeting townspeople carried on their banners the inscription... INRI. On the other side, they carried the cross and a colorful coat of arms that in the lower corner said Siccidemy. Then, there Raymond opened his bruised eyes, unable to contain the recovered memory of him, between gunshots, screams, sobs, and screams, the hundreds of steps that were heard around him, led him to tear and save his life. In an instant of stillness, he found himself surrounded by people until one of them took him into his arms to hydrate his mouth. We are Albigensian, and you... Who are you?

Raymond replied: “I fled in search of a miracle that could save a beloved being. I used to call myself Raymond, now I don't know what name to go by. I fled, but I had to face the situation, even having acted behind the back of the Church”. An Albigensian says: “The clergy have also believed that our sect has acted behind the back of the Church. However, his powers and his government have registered absolutism within Christendom”. Another Albigensian says; “We seek the establishment of ancient Christianity, we deny the existence of purgatory, the importance of rituals, clerical organizations and the possession of goods by the clergy. And for this reason, we have been expelled from our lands, from our homes, our children have paid for the Sacred Inquisition, in the hands of those who one day... baptized with blessed water”.

It was on June 18, 1617, the Albigensian fugitives were besieged in Montlimar. The Argentine crosses gleamed like dogs eager to bite the enemy. The open-minded Albigensians gathered together with Luzbel, who floated on a calypsigenic cloud. Raymond and the others piled up essences in the fuels to start the pact, after this event François Quentinnais answered negatively, and strongly took her daughter by her hand, pulling her sharply to the float. The horses slip their hooves before the sloping pastures carpeted by tiny Calypso flowers; the mayoral pressed his thin lips, also raising his shoulders, so as not to hear the despotic cries of Monsieur François. As for Reverend Raymond, he could be seen crying silently, accompanied by late halos of the luminosity of the final and sad day. Sorrows and regrets dislodged his bones that underwent violent arthrosis, populating his body in a sedentary lifestyle and irritation. I myself say Wonthelimar, I am the one who carries Marielle's love in me, I am your Raymond. Remember that night that...: "When the monk retired to pray, you stormed the bedroom, and uttered Marielle..., Marielle:," wake up, in vain I fear to leave without your divine voice. Marielle, what do you have...? I don't think your father's impure will blind your eyes to not see me, or he ripped your sweet voice to not name me...? ".

The Albigenses resigned to the spell, their adherents had largely been reduced, only ten or twelve remained. That later they fled from Montelimar escaping to the west, crossing the enchanted Rhone. The Siccidemy troops mutilated the last demonized Albigensians; nothing would help for their lives, everyone would bleed except the group that fled with Raymond. For several days they wandered the Cevennes plateau, provisioned themselves in Montpellier, and arrived in Carcassonne on July 20, 1617. Little could they remain here, since the congregation of Santo Domingo, without distinction, attacked the population decimated by the crusaders? What a regrettable exodus for Raymond with his black flock fleeing from where his feet laid hope! Twenty-two days of bitter flight, and everywhere the crosses, until Raymond decides to separate and go back to Avignon. He takes a  sailboat off the shores of Narbonne in the middle of a stormy gray day, in his bitter journey he dreams of being born again and having Bethlehem as a lineage, on July 23 of the same year, he lands in the waters of Marseille. When he was discharged from the port, he undertook a light journey to Avignon, near Arles, thousands of fellow citizens started from the hosts of King Godfred of Bouillon, the nobles cooperated by revealing the mobs that gathered in the city, the Hussites, and the Waldensians; Iconoclast heretics, fighting fierce battles. The crusaders took the offensive and tried to prevent them from burning their sacred images, which had already been torn to pieces throughout Gaul. Raymond, distant, helped the most serious, he was afraid of being confused by one of them, it was better to hide in the Cathedral of Arles. Upon entering, he felt a dizzy ***** that shone timidly in the hands of his performer... it was a little girl who, when looking at him, named him Dionysus..., demi-god, save us! Raymond fell into a daze, and falling into a dream that told him of barbaric actions, with masked fellow citizens lying neutral in their gestures, and suddenly angels revealed to him that they were looting the pantheons of Avignon, to burn the rosaries of the saints. Bereaved in their graves, some Albigenses exhumed the bodies of relatives related to the Clergy.

Raymond was sweating his hands and forehead, he struggled to get to the Quentinnais mausoleum, straining his precognition, he crossed the interdepartmental courtyard, he continued to haunt the packed pyramidal cypress trees and suddenly a lion-faced him dealing with a snake; with the symbolic image of the Quentinnais. He saw the slab desecrated, on whose horizon his Beloved Marielle slept. His skin prickled... it was the Iconoclasts avenging their own, with strong breaths he squeezed his hand, wanting to wake up... so it happened, he got up pushing the crowds that were holding him back, but his strength was growing. He rode a roan steed, in three bridles that he gave him he flew towards Avignon; his mount seemed to be a hot air balloon that flew with great dynamism. Raymond in his own painful station would moan his hand, his eyes; his legs creaked like the legs of the Pegasus that carried him fast.

Ellipsis Second Sequence Mausoleum Quentinnais

Finally, he arrives in the second parapsychological sequence, noting that Avignon was in ashes, takes the reins and immediately goes to the Quentinnais mausoleum, upon arrival, he appreciates several Albigenses committing crimes, dismounts, and runs screaming towards the defilers; he faced them with stakes, some demonized had to cut their throats, arriving in time to defend the remains of Marielle. For long hours he was with her alone, thinking about what to do, Raymond knew that he could not revive her, so he had no more redress than to invoke Luzbel, who this time revealed her true and evil personality as ruler of the evil spirits.

Raymond: Dear Luzbel, millions of Canaanites looked up at the altitude representing you; today I will do the same from here and beyond the solid roof of the mausoleum! Bring Marielle to life, come and twist her cheeks, since without her! I have had to live all this to protect myself from suffering. Since Pentecost, he hadn't been physically close to her. Now I need her... well, I lynched her...! Beelzebub making him believe that she was Luzbel, ordered him to extract her heart!

Beelzebub: “In Montlimar, I saw volcano crests arrive in such failure of my envoys. But it will not be repeated, and for it to be so, I entrust you to take out the heart of your beloved and tear the eyes from her that saw your gaze. Then open your chest with this dagger, I will draw your blood and heart, to moisten the heart of your Marielle. And finally, I ask you to bring a lip to me to enchant her lips in lilies. "

Raymond: “opinion accepted... that's the way I'll do it!
Being dominated by the spell, Raymond abided by every step dictated by the supposed that Luzbel lived difficult moments since he was a good day, but so many thousands of years of living in darkness, and in the midst of punishment that violently changed his mind. Justo Raymond carried the body in his arms so that the ritual would culminate. Luzbel snatched his beloved from him and with laughter he vanished.

Beelzebub says Mortal fool! Don't you see that I am Beelzebub; chief of the evil spirits and the guide of the Albigenses, Hussites, and Waldensians? Never invoke me in the Mausoleums, here betrayal triumphs. Now a Quentinnais will be my image on earth, giving her the doubt of doing well for many centuries.

Beelzebub took his beloved away, leaving the rosary wrapped in soft tulle next to the scapular in his hands. Raymond cringed in pain, and in an act of madness scratched his face. Poor Raymond, he told himself...!  That in himself he found no reason to live. He left the mausoleum at dawn looking around every corner in case he saw Marielle lost in his sight since recently. He was exhausted; he remained after the confession that was delayed too much because the events that took place in the Pantheon, in a way pretended to be the events that Raymond inexhaustibly narrated. And in a way, he feared for his life at that time unknown, by the mouth of some hidden place they documented his bitter inability to do well, and that he would fall under Raymond's curse. At this moment, Raymond lay lying on the banks of the Pantheon, from that day on, he did not know about the days, he only existed at night and he did not socialize with anyone, his madness sowed hatred for everything sacred and infernal, he dealt with the Holy Rosary found a magical find, until one day a new one reached her ears; she was referring to some crusaders who had intervened in Jerusalem when it was invaded by Saladin. A certain Frederick Barbarossa was drowned in Sicily by..., "Wonthelimar", who with the Diadem of a woman Seized the island of Iconium. This was the other new one that enlivened his spirit. This greatly surprised the worn Raymond, suspecting that the kidnapper of his beloved might be in cahoots. And as the news continued to hear her, it was said that her sacred beliefs allowed her to continue undercover, in order to continue for a long time, even in the other attacked city that would be Nice. He signed to the limit, for centuries that will serve us in future generations…, suffocating the iconoclasts.

The poppies moved from north to south through the Provencal regions. The oceanic eastern Gods Makara's in tumultuous pyramidal ships descended legions and escorts, to aid Raymond's farewell at Nice. At twelve o'clock at night, the prophetic edict of the Lord would be fulfilled, here the last words of that chimerical episode were received, and he feared that until then a first descendant of Raymond; he became a statue in ignitions of the reborn underworld. The Diadem will be transport and refuge, as for Wonthelimar he said doubtfully…; I think he is nothing more than the deviant Beelzebub, who with optical retractable eyes, in Montlimar disguised the initial in double V..., Wonthelimar, but I was wrong! Wonthelimar already transmigrated to Raymond, staying on the banks of a stream, with nausea he regurgitated his underlying spirit state from the lyrical crust. His mouth unsheathed the most diverse and heterogeneous chronolites; Parasitized dust in pieces of temporary stone, flowing in disciples, quarantine fragments, in marriages by sinuous water. Raymond slapped his thighs in anticipation of throwing up there. His blatant, incisive alienation took over his will, with inherent crickets singing to her in isolation from him, shining his conscience, and residing in the grace of the Holy Grail. The conquest of the earthly system amputated the Andromeda Amygdale; Constellation-illusion and spouse of Perseus, who is mysterious vehicles of the solvent Grail, kept him tied to Raymond. Deafening roars erupted from the earth pits, and the mass of the mountain hung above the trees, pseudo purple and violet rays bombarding sarcophagi all over Nice.

Wonthelimar: “Since this day I have been boiling in a polysatanic hell! The Ibex picked me up from the surroundings of the Pantheon and the Quentinnai mansion, where I have never been a human again, only an Ibex in the Chauvet cavern. Thanks to the herds of goats that adopted me that I have been able to bear their pain by taking refuge in the darkness of all times, which never transpires in the past, present, and future? Now I have come in this re-location, to reorder Vernarth's parapsychology, which you are too, and who has never been able to overcome the pains of love, even beyond pale death! "

From that moment, the shadow of Heracles is seen among them, encouraging them to be part of the gods, and of the feasts of the beautiful Ankles of Heba. Thus the words redecorated them both amid the thick fog, in Avignon. Afterward, Wonthelimar left and left Raymond to continue in Marielle's darkness to the end of the world. The blister day and the scorching night, thought one of the other in constant profit, for the good of finding them in the Kalijoron..., the well of the divine light of Eleusis, for those who rest in naive peace in the face of cunning, and the decorum of the gentle dialogues in the comedies of the exceptions, after crossing the Nile, with tributers collecting the faults of the gods, or else with horrific screams that would make them prey to an imaginary Gorgon.

Wonthelimar was now going after the “Íbics Ring”, which were left in the Chauvet cavern, by some Iberian tribes of the early Neolithic age, who were on their way out desecrated the cavern with ****** in the orbit of the Ortho Heliacal. From here, in the last goal, they reach the darkness where the vampire bats were terrified to see them with their eyes in mercurial ambrosia, which enveloped them with the gums in each one as they approached in the sound of night hunger arrests, next to the betrothal death brought by the darkness of the Strigoi, in lost wanderings of their wills following the search for the panescalm sheds, which carried human chiropterans for the regions of Transylvania, subjected to distinctions and exactions of Climate Changes. From here the bronze spear Dorus of Vernarth would go to the right hand of Wonthelimar, to shield him, and to put celery-foot feet on the ineffable Kanti steed, with certain renown of Eacid of Achilles stirring up hops and low bottoms of the mineral aquifer at the base of the den. In a quick figurative gesture of Achilles, Wonthelimar passes his right hand over his nose, noticing that lights trickled from the Auriga and the Automedon that came by order of Drestnia to provide aid to him, and to rescue the Iberian Ring Eagles, to transport them to the cove of the Mound of the Profitis Ilias.

In the eternity of the noise, Vlad Strigoi is in solidarity with him and gives him lightly from the bottom of the final flow of the bilges of his panescalm, condensing air of Gaseous Gold, in Pan-Hellenic regions, and in the Valdaine regions sixty-seven kilometers from that mountain area very close to Avignon. The infected zones of physical virtue were divided into micro-regions that were compressed before Wonthelimar merged into micro space within the cavern, to abandon the burning furnaces that came alongside his interpersonal goodness, in the metaphysical transfer of darkness, and of the wicked gentlemen drawing him towards the Parasha or Parashot of the Torah, so as not to be attracted as a human to ******-emotional implications or manipulations, who will snoop in growing voices in the voids of the cavern, and in the failing anxieties of the pompous and ancient effigy tarred from Hades. Wonthelimar limps superlatively with some nervous leave, but eager to apprehend the Ibic Rings. After the Benedictus antiphons were seen coming out of his chest, they were iridescent in magenta and mordoré for those who are ibex, always hiding under the goat epidermis, sponsoring happiness practices, one and the other after their vicissitudes in a cyclical mystery classroom. On the plains, you can only see haze and the experimental change when leaving everything in the hands of those who die without rainwater and bagel, in the most absolute solitude, amidst rocks that will never and never be reconverted, less into mid-plains giving terrifying compliments on flower baskets that stink of wandering Wonthelimar clones… not being!

Wonthelimar with Kanti, they emigrate from the cavern of Chauvet in their reminiscences, standing out from the voids and invocations of Raymond in unfinished by filling space in the hearts of both. Heading southeast towards Patmos with the Ibic Rings on his bracelets, wrapped in Vernarth's Himathion for his investiture!

the universe hates me because
it forces me to eat stale bread
and leftover feelings.

My sun-scorched back tingles pin-point waves of, not quite pain--distress--as I settle back onto this memory-stained slab of concrete.
Puffing on a dark-green American Spirit, I relax, taking stalk of the monumentous armada above.

Letting go of all focus from my vision in an attempt to take in the world summons forth an arrayed troupe of points
Though, they're not that, per se, more like minute splashes along the clouds' surface.
They don't remain stationary for long.
Suddenly aware of an audience, they get the show rolling.
Center stage, a forceful spiral forms, slowly whirl-pooling the others
Gravity's on theirs ***** now, they get close, slingshot, rinse and repeat.
Individual groups pinch together and blow apart.

The performance humbles me, forcing me to take responsibility for my actions,
For straight A's popped,  
Living wills written on concrete slabs, while puffing a light-green American Spirit.

American city, your roads make me gasp,
Hold my breath with cancerous anxiety.

Your sidewalks,
Ancient ruins of time passed: A failed optimism for Utopian desire:
A house, a yard, a car for every person.

Now derelict, termite infested, but rented.
Chlorinated chemical water runs through rusted, moldy spickets to
Rinse pesticide seasoned vegetables.
And yet they remain so tasteless.

But who cares?
Suburban middle class zombies?
Created with media placed propaganda.
Born and inoculated with DisneypepsiMccocacola ideologies.

Oh Wal-Mart,
how we love your homogenized Chinese products.
Oh America,
how we love your multi-million dollar cathartic films,
They bring my mind to no place and inspire nothing.

Your theme park inspired retail caters to any identity I desire:
I am a professional,
My wallet lined with the best credit cards,
SUV, Hummer, Super boat, designer label, mall bought,
bleached teeth smile, with slick greasy hair style.

I'm cool, I pay for the gas.
Beep your horn, and rev your engine.
We are at war with each other.
Everyone get out of my way: road rage lifestyle: compete or die.

Big screen television dream.
Bought it at Target.

Open my cupboard: Macaroni and Cheese, delicious.
Ambian, Prozac, antibiotic, Listerine.

Collagen bovine beauty:
Manicure, pedicure, dye and wax

Acrylic nails, hair extensions
And silicone sacs.

Oh, American city
How we want to steal your money and **** your blood.
Chop your trees and cement your grass.
American city you are dead.

There's a certain kind
That holds you hostage
Way up there in the bleachers
In a red-light district
Cold and cheap
It lures you because you're lurable
Attach and you're stuck up there
In a certain kind
Of dilapidated ivory tower

It's only later on
When you're broken
When the nights have woven
Their history and the light
Has drained
Only when you're pushed out
Only when you're shoved off
Only then does the truth
Begin to talk

Until then it's been silent
Though gradually loosing appetite
For despair, denial, dilemma
Only when unhooked
Does that fierce, quite dismissal
Begin to beg for something else
Only then does
A certain other kind
Begin to go wild for itself

You wonder how yourself
Moldy and molting
And mad with lies
Had so deceived its own
You wonder how
If there is a god
S'he coulda watched you bleed
With self-betrayal
And sat there idle
While you slowly crumbled

But admit it
You were terribly cocky up there
In the pink and belly-full
***** and hookered
If G O D woulda spoken
You woulda spit in the face of divinity
And you probably did

So that certain kind
Watched and waiting
For another
Certain kind
To choke the bejasus outa ya
'til you slowly faded to full stop
And dropped to your knees
To a certain other kind

Bill played piano down by the bar,
moldy old show tunes
gray-haired folks listened to,
in youth they'd played over...and over.
He once told me he was terminal,
diagnosed with months left,
and had just one request
of his own to be met
before accepting eternal rest -
peace in the kiss
of a handsome young man
who's powder blue eyes
might make him feel young again.
I thought he would weep,
and heart aching, obliged,
gratified by the smile,
sweet joy it seemed to bring him...
'till Sarah stuffed a dollar
in the tumbler of tips
he kept perched on the edge
of the piano he played -
he'd won their wager
he could get the
straight kid to kiss him.
Sarah cooked in the kitchen
and I always wondered
what sort of mother
named her son -
Sarah Vaughn -
then heard the sparrow sing
on the radio, laughing
because the one I knew
squawked like a crow
and dressed
in wigs and woman's clothes
when work was finally done.
The coincidence seemed
a delicious, karmic prank,
payment for some past-life indiscretion.
Michael studied flamboyance,
raised to high art in sweeps of his hand,
head tossed back, as if to keep pace
with legs was annoyance.
Adolescent innocence ended
when I realized the only other
guy employed there
who was straight like me -
was really a she -
chest wrapped real tight.

Peaches and cream
All just seem
A bit too sweet

At a run down BP
The man in front of me
With rotten teeth
Is purchasing
Marlboro reds, coffee
And a chance to win the lottery

Gets what he needs,
Then goes on with his deeds
Walks by me
Like a blind man
Who cannot see
Maybe he'll be the winner

Now I'm next in line
Cashier asks "how are you?"
I say fine
They don't care if that's a lie
All I buy
Are peaches
To feed my hunger
Peaches for dinner

I devour
Counting down the hours
Days until I eat again
Slowly becoming more sour
Losing all my power
I hide like a coward
Benith moldy skin
Rotten from within

Same as a peach,
I wither and decay
Who is to say
tomorrow is another day?

A Monday morning in Richmond
     is like waking up with your head
   shaking with commotion.

You pray while you take a dump.
       You end up going across the street to Starbucks,
    with three-sixty left on your credit card.

For some reason unbeknownst to you,
you feel that you're a Renaissance artist,
brought to earth to perform studies on human beings.

Little by little you realize that you're the son of God.
There's a moldy tennis ball in
your pocket labeled: God.

Rap, or is it, Rock music that pumps through your ears?
And you're not afraid anymore.
You start to notice the handwritten facade built around your surroundings.

The State Farm billboards
perched above the scaffolding.
Your nose drizzles with crimson.

Memories of the Christopher Walken Impersonator stains the keyboard.
There is no real difference between the garbage man
and your best friend, the one who supplies you with mescaline.

And the comedown feels like a Indian Monsoon.
Electrocute your senses
until you've turned numb to your baby sister Victoria.

The Toyota Avalon cruising up
the street corner with the yellow high beams
is not the white witch from The Wizard of Oz.

Trip falls.
Inhale smoke.
Speculate more.

Dirigibles in the clear, blue sky plummet down.
You listen to your parents while you're high on *****,
wondering why mom dukes looks like Johnny Depp.

Fingers tremble as you try to type out
a handwritten letter from prison.
You meant to text message your mom, "Happy Mother's Day."

And instead
you typed out to her,
"Happy Birthday Mother!"

Lows and highs permeate through your heart.
Caving in, the walls crush into each other.
That girl was married and you gave her a head start on life.

You stole your best friend's birthday money to buy M. You tell yourself everything
is going to be okay as you swivel in your leather recliner,
A ****** dollar bill jammed up your left nostril.

Long, blue rails dotting the wrinkled notebook paper,
used up from the last owner. You
can't stop coughing.

You throw up on your clothes.
And you start to think that
maybe you are ******* up and you can't stop without an intervention.

Then
you start to think,
maybe this is all in my head.

The cold wind nips at your exposed ankles.
Red sores develop on the back of your elbows.
Local pariah is far away from his hometown.

Your favorite Uncle has stage 4 lung cancer,
and you're chain smoking menthols
to ease the edge that splits your brain in half each morning.

What is struggle without the lost—
without the success on the other side of sanity?
You pop prescriptions to ward off the insects gnawing away at your eyeballs.

Gouge your intestines with a straight edged blade bought
from the dollar store.
Ode to Keroauc.

The unholy manuscript written with pen and needle.
Cool story bro.
But you have nothing, but mistakes to offer to this unjust world.

And earth continues to spin on an uneven axis.
When it comes to a point where fiction and nonfiction
        are void of speculation.

           When it comes to the point where reality and dreams coincide
and you begin to stumble
over your shoelaces that are tied.

When it comes to a point where
               your enemies and friends seem the same that is the point
when you attempt to sleep.

But sleep will always allude you, you Danny Art
          So read your poetry aloud to the unsung.
To the sleepless.

The Walkers dressed in rags approach you,
smoking on black and milds, dark rings
circling their eyelids.  

And the time of night which you so longingly search for
in the face of listening to The Dark Knight soundtrack, gives you a pulse, a sudden click that boosts you into peril.

That bloodstain drenching
the corner of your eye sweats profusely. And that's when you start to wonder:
is everything that I'm doing baked in fallacy and witchcraft?

The comedown.
The comedown.
The comedown.

You are the burden of my fellow constituents, lost in reverie,
gone in madness, forlorn from deeds,
that are too great to imagine.

Your tears mean nothing
in comparison
to the world at large.

And that's okay.
And that's okay.
And that's okay.


You begin to discover,
that you do not write poetry,
but you write greeting cards in a journal.

Or a pen and pad,
ink
and blood.

I
It's quite the tragic statistic,
when the last thing on earth
that approaches your face
is a patch of brown grass,
pale and dry from age,
dead from poor nourishment,
just like your need for acceptance.

And it’s even more destructive
when the scarlet sentences
shrieking down your face
were pulled from your bone marrow,
all the way through your thick, coarse skin,
by the dense and moldy weapon
swung in the hands of the town’s valiant savior.

Yes, there are rapists and fascists
living in each corner of the street,
looting their families of their dignity,
******* on the very words they glorify,
but the crooked joints in your limp wrist
might as well be a bull’s eye on your forehead.

The tides of holy water did not burn off an inch,
did not smother your facet of human nature.
You did not blindly agree with our fright-ridden hatred,
so the only and easy way out
is to induct you into our slaughterhouse,
all because you loved.

Can love be executed so poorly
that it awaits a death penalty?
In a Utopian tyranny, anything can die.

And they wonder,
with our dying breath,
and the dirt being shoved
against our battered faces,
why we declare a riot call.

II
I have sent a request
to all the white cone clad
twiddling their thumbs with menace
and hunting for their latest scapegoat
to mask their feelings of inadequacy...

As the **** on my garage door
slithers your hatred along
in the form of the word "******"
and the last three men who shook me to the core
have been reduced to front page casualties,
I beg to finally join
this league of humankind.

Please, ladies and cavemen, do as I ask
or I might just lead myself
to break
your double standard necks into thousands
of desperate times that surpass desperate measures.

I will no longer be reduced
to another strange fruit hanging
on the ******* tree, for I've seen
the shards of glass showering
like hurricane rainfall
over your Stone Age architecture.

Preaching your "manhood", your "sanctity"
on your altars as the color
of your wife's eyes
seems to slip your busy mind,
as your first born
reiterates your perspective
with a tape recorder ribbon
composed of tangled heartstrings.

It must stop.
Those sounds of you slinging
your fists and your speech
towards all, including
your own flesh and blood.

Our palms can't stay nailed to the wooden floor,
our lips can't stay sewn shut anymore,
angels writhing in their graves,
your time has run out.

Here, my friend, is your riot call.