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Nigel Morgan Nov 2012
As a woman, and in the service of my Lord the Emperor Wu, my life is governed by his command. At twenty I was summoned to this life at court and have made of it what I can, within the limitations of the courtesan I am supposed to be, and the poet I have now become. Unlike my male counterparts, some of whom have lately found seclusion in the wilderness of rivers and mountains, I have only my personal court of three rooms and its tiny garden and ornamental pond. But I live close to the surrounding walls of the Zu-lin Gardens with its astronomical observatories and bold attempts at recreating illusions of celebrated locations in the Tai mountains. There, walking with my cat Xi-Lu in the afternoons, I imagine a solitary life, a life suffused with the emptiness I crave.
 
In the hot, dry summer days my maid Mei-Lim and I have sought a temporary retreat in the pine forests above Lingzhi. Carried in a litter up the mountain paths we are left in a commodious hut, its open walls making those simple pleasures of drinking, eating and sleeping more acute, intense. For a few precious days I rest and meditate, breathe the mountain air and the resinous scents of the trees. I escape the daily commerce of the court and belong to a world that for the rest of the year I have to imagine, the world of the recluse. To gain the status of the recluse, open to my male counterparts, is forbidden to women of the court. I am woman first, a poet and calligrapher second. My brother, should he so wish, could present a petition to revoke his position as a man of letters, an official commentator on the affairs of state. But he is not so inclined. He has already achieved notoriety and influence through his writing on the social conditions of town and city. He revels in a world of chatter, gossip and intrigue; he appears to fear the wilderness life.  
 
I must be thankful that my own life is maintained on the periphery. I am physically distant from the hub of daily ceremonial. I only participate at my Lord’s express command. I regularly feign illness and fatigue to avoid petty conflict and difficulty. Yet I receive commissions I cannot waver: to honour a departed official; to celebrate a son’s birth to the Second Wife; to fulfil in verse my Lord’s curious need to know about the intimate sorrows of his young concubines, their loneliness and heartache.
 
Occasionally a Rhapsody is requested for an important visitor. The Emperor Wu is proud to present as welcome gifts such poetic creations executed in fine calligraphy, and from a woman of his court. Surely a sign of enlightment and progress he boasts! Yet in these creations my observations are parochial: early morning frost on the cabbage leaves in my garden; the sound of geese on their late afternoon flight to Star Lake; the disposition of the heavens on an Autumn night. I live by the Tao of Lao-Tzu, perceiving the whole world from my doorstep.
 
But I long for the reclusive life, to leave this court for my family’s estate in the valley my peasant mother lived as a child. At fourteen she was chosen to sustain the Emperor’s annual wish for young girls to be groomed for concubinage. Like her daughter she is tall, though not as plain as I; she put her past behind her and conceded her adolescence to the training required by the court. At twenty she was recommended to my father, the court archivist, as second wife. When she first met this quiet, dedicated man on the day before her marriage she closed her eyes in blessing. My father taught her the arts of the library and schooled her well. From her I have received keen eyes of jade green and a prestigious memory, a memory developed she said from my father’s joy of reading to her in their private hours, and before she could read herself. Each morning he would examine her to discover what she had remembered of the text read the night before. When I was a little child she would quote to me the Confucian texts on which she had been ****** schooled, and she then would tell me of her childhood home. She primed my imagination and my poetic world with descriptions of a domestic rural life.
 
Sometimes in the arms of my Lord I have freely rhapsodized in chusi metre these delicate word paintings of my mother’s home. She would say ‘We will walk now to the ruined tower beside the lake. Listen to the carolling birds. As the sparse clouds move across the sky the warm sun strokes the winter grass. Across the deep lake the forests are empty. Now we are climbing the narrow steps to the platform from which you and I will look towards the sun setting in the west. See the shadows are lengthening and the air becomes colder. The blackbird’s solitary song heralds the evening.  Look, an owl glides silently beneath us.’
 
My Lord will then quote from Hsieh Ling-yun,.
 
‘I meet sky, unable to soar among clouds,
face a lake, call those depths beyond me.’
 
And I will match this quotation, as he will expect.
 
‘Too simple-minded to perfect Integrity,
and too feeble to plough fields in seclusion.’
 
He will then gaze into my eyes in wonder that this obscure poem rests in my memory and that I will decode the minimal grammar of these early characters with such poetry. His characters: Sky – Bird – Cloud – Lake – Depth. My characters: Fool – Truth – Child – Winter field – Isolation.
 
Our combined invention seems to take him out of his Emperor-self. He is for a while the poet-scholar-sage he imagines he would like to be, and I his foot-sore companion following his wilderness journey. And then we turn our attention to our bodies, and I surprise him with my admonitions to gentleness, to patience, to arousing my pleasure. After such poetry he is all pleasure, sensitive to the slightest touch, and I have my pleasure in knowing I can control this powerful man with words and the stroke of my fingertips rather than by delicate youthful beauty or the guile and perverse ingenuity of an ****** act. He is still learning to recognise the nature and particularness of my desires. I am not as his other women: who confuse pleasure with pain.
 
Thoughts of my mother. Without my dear father, dead ten years, she is a boat without a rudder sailing on a distant lake. She greets each day as a gift she must honour with good humour despite the pain of her limbs, the difficulty of walking, of sitting, of eating, even talking. Such is the hurt that governs her ageing. She has always understood that my position has forbidden marriage and children, though the latter might be a possibility I have not wished it and made it known to my Lord that it must not be. My mother remains in limbo, neither son or daughter seeking to further her lineage, she has returned to her sister’s home in the distant village of her birth, a thatched house of twenty rooms,
 
‘Elms and willows shading the eaves at the back,
and, in front,  peach and plum spread wide.
 
Villages lost across mist-haze distances,
Kitchen smoke drifting wide-open country,
 
Dogs bark deep among the back roads out here
And cockerels crow from mulberry treetops.
 
My esteemed colleague T’ao Ch’ien made this poetry. After a distinguished career in government service he returned to the life of a recluse-farmer on his family farm. Living alone in a three-roomed hut he lives out his life as a recluse and has endured considerable poverty. One poem I know tells of him begging for food. His world is fields-and-gardens in contrast to Hsieh Ling-yin who is rivers-and-mountains. Ch’ien’s commitment to the recluse life has brought forth words that confront death and the reality of human experience without delusion.
 
‘At home here in what lasts, I wait out life.’
 
Thus my mother waits out her life, frail, crumbling more with each turning year.
 
To live beyond the need to organise daily commitments due to others, to step out into my garden and only consider the dew glistening on the loropetalum. My mind is forever full of what is to be done, what must be completed, what has to be said to this visitor who will today come to my court at the Wu hour. Only at my desk does this incessant chattering in the mind cease, as I move my brush to shape a character, or as the needle enters the cloth, all is stilled, the world retreats; there is the inner silence I crave.
 
I long to see with my own eyes those scenes my mother painted for me with her words. I only know them in my mind’s eye having travelled so little these past fifteen years. I look out from this still dark room onto my small garden to see the morning gathering its light above the rooftops. My camellia bush is in flower though a thin frost covers the garden stones.
 
And so I must imagine how it might be, how I might live the recluse life. How much can I jettison? These fine clothes, this silken nightgown beneath the furs I wrap myself in against the early morning air. My maid is sleeping. Who will make my tea? Minister to me when I take to my bed? What would become of my cat, my books, the choice-haired brushes? Like T’ao Ch’ien could I leave the court wearing a single robe and with one bag over my shoulders? Could I walk for ten days into the mountains? I would disguise myself as a man perhaps. I am tall for a woman, and though my body flows in broad curves there are ways this might be assuaged, enough perhaps to survive unmolested on the road.
 
Such dreams! My Lord would see me returned within hours and send a servant to remain at my gate thereafter. I will compose a rhapsody about a concubine of standing, who has even occupied the purple chamber, but now seeks to relinquish her privileged life, who coverts the uncertainty of nature, who would endure pain and privation in a hut on some distant mountain, who will sleep on a mat on its earth floor. Perhaps this will excite my Lord, light a fire in his imagination. As though in preparation for this task I remove my furs, I loose the knot of my silk gown. Naked, I reach for an old under shift letting it fall around my still-slender body and imagine myself tying the lacings myself in the open air, imagine making my toilet alone as the sun appears from behind a distant mountain on a new day. My mind occupies itself with the tiny detail of living thus: bare feet on cold earth, a walk to nearby stream, the gathering of berries and mountain herbs, the making of fire, the washing of my few clothes, imagining. Imagining. To live alone will see every moment filled with the tasks of keeping alive. I will become in tune with my surroundings. I will take only what I need and rely on no one. Dreaming will end and reality will be the slug on my mat, the bone-chilling incessant mists of winter, the thorn in the foot, the wild winds of autumn. My hands will become stained and rough, my long limbs tanned and scratched, my delicate complexion freckled and wind-pocked, my hair tied roughly back. I will become an animal foraging on a dank hillside. Such thoughts fill me with deep longing and a ****** desire to be tzu-jan  - with what surrounds me, ablaze with ****** self.
 
It is not thought the custom of a woman to hold such desires. We are creatures of order and comfort. We do not live on the edge of things, but crave security and well-being. We learn to endure the privations of being at the behest of others. Husbands, children, lovers, our relatives take our bodies to them as places of comfort, rest and desire. We work at maintaining an ordered flow of existence. Whatever our station, mistress or servant we compliment, we keep things in order, whether that is the common hearth or the accounts of our husband’s court. Now my rhapsody begins:
 
A Rhapsody on a woman wishing to live as a recluse
 
As a lady of my Emperor’s court I am bound in service.
My court is not my own, I have the barest of means.
My rooms are full of gifts I am forced barter for bread.
Though the artefacts of my hands and mind
Are valued and widely renown,
Their commissioning is an expectation of my station,
With no direct reward attached.
To dress appropriately for my Lord’s convocations and assemblies
I am forced to negotiate with chamberlains and treasurers.
A bolt of silk, gold thread, the services of a needlewoman
Require formal entreaties and may lie dormant for weeks
Before acknowledgement and release.
 
I was chosen for my literary skills, my prestigious memory,
Not for my ****** beauty, though I have been called
‘Lady of the most gracious movement’ and
My speaking voice has clarity and is capable of many colours.
I sing, but plainly and without passion
Lest I interfere with the truth of music’s message.
 
Since I was a child in my father’s library
I have sought out the works of those whose words
Paint visions of a world that as a woman
I may never see, the world of the wilderness,
Of rivers and mountains,
Of fields and gardens.
Yet I am denied by my *** and my station
To experience passing amongst these wonders
Except as contrived imitations in the palace gardens.
 
Each day I struggle to tease from the small corner
Of my enclosed eye-space some enrichment
Some elemental thing to colour meaning:
To extend the bounds of my home
Across the walls of this palace
Into the world beyond.
 
I have let it be known that I welcome interviews
With officials from distant courts to hear of their journeying,
To gather word images if only at second-hand.
Only yesterday an emissary recounted
His travels to Stone Lake in the far South-West,
Beyond the gorges of the Yang-tze.
With his eyes I have seen the mountains of Suchan:
With his ears I have heard the oars crackling
Like shattering jade in the freezing water.
Images and sounds from a thousand miles
Of travel are extract from this man’s memory.
 
Such a sharing of experience leaves me
Excited but dismayed: that I shall never
Visit this vast expanse of water and hear
Its wild cranes sing from their floating nests
In the summer moonlight.
 
I seek to disappear into a distant landscape
Where the self and its constructions of the world may
Dissolve away until nothing remains but the no-mind.
My thoughts are full of the practicalities of journeying
Of an imagined location, that lonely place
Where I may be at one with myself.
Where I may delight in the everyday Way,
Myself among mist and vine, rock and cave.
Not this lady of many parts and purposes whose poems must
Speak of lives, sorrow and joy, pleasure and pain
Set amongst personal conflict and intrigue
That in containing these things, bring order to disorder;
Salve the conscience, bathe hurt, soothe sleight.
Brycical Nov 2013
Time flies like a baby fruit fly to a banana
buzzing through a brand new day through the fractal lakes
cleansing my body in peppermint amethyst vibrations
as the gyrations of the water ripple and drip down my back and waist
tickling the skin into submission--
I'm on a love mission feeling the splish-splash nefelibata mind
within my glowing gold-hazel eyes as I realize my potential.
The world isn't simply my oyster
my voice can make a difference
if I wish and believe me I've kissed Aladdin's lamp
but my mind is filled with vagary so I plant the seeds
in my magic garden and watch them grow--
burst through the ground and glowing
some like emerald embers
and others like electric chalcopyrite
as my third-eye shines and pops calico corn
crackling in the back the ideas simmer on the grill
near the chilled ZuZu Juju honeydew wine
while the electric blue hip panther cat croons
away on her guitar in ancient star languages saeng
when we were all just haranguing through the ONE-light
all bright sun's right to shine a vine of fire rays
into our future past selves
now aligned with burning designs of moons, suns and AUMS.
The animal pixie band manipulates the sounds around us--
the cicadas sing a lotus chorus while the tiger-painted rabbits rapidly
strum rainbow hieroglyphs on their magic harps
while the jazz sax racoons all dressed in jasper suede jackets
and backwards newsboy caps
play a theta vibration so meditatively
we dance in digambara dream catcher trance
of enhanced meraki enchanted atoms
and cells boiling in passionate blood.

After all the eating and dancing we play in the clay mud
recreating our animal forms and budding faces blooming
and swooning as our winged auras sling us
into the dusk sky
to sway and zoom in the rain.
later we enter Father Sky's cloud castle
for a peaceful night curled up by the azurite lightning fireplace
roasting marmalade maple marshmallows
with those rasta angel fellows token
on the diviner's sage sippin mugwort tea.
And as we third eye-gaze into and through each other
seeing our past and future time tubes
aligning into a sacred golden flower sphere,
we giggle like silly fox children
we've forgotten hours have left our pockets
cause to us it only seems like seconds have gone by...
mk Apr 2018
i am in a haze today. it is cloudy and beautiful outside. it is also pressing down on my chest and i struggle for air. i wore your shirt to bed last night and it helped steady my oxygen supply. i wish you were here to say my name and speak to me in my native tongue to remind who i am and where i've come from. i'm forgetting everything, slowly. recreating yourself is only good when you haven't done it five thousand times over. i just want to be me now. but how do i become me if there is no you? pick me up from the library and walk me to class. hold my hand and tell me that you will stay with me no matter how grey the sky is or how cold my fingers feel.
Remember, that chaos first was a primordial deity,
Chaos; the nothingness from which all else sprang
headfirst and heartfelt,
half-naked and handsome,
hook, line and... halibut.

All of this,
every measurable moment,
every particle,
every object set forth in motion
sprang from a void so harmoniously
as if the absence of everything was kissed
sudden
by the presence of something.

Often depicted with wings, a bow, and a quiver of arrows,
Cupid, son of Venus - goddess of love,
son of Mercury - god of trade,
his story,
almost identical in Greek and in Roman
mythology,
his story, about a couple of gods
who seem so inherently human by nature,
jolted by jealousy,
dumbstruck by beauty,
hellbent on immortality,
his story has been hallmarked
as red hot velvet rose petal fine wine
and symmetrical hearts.
Wrapped in tin foil red ribbons
bitter-sweetly sugarcoated
dipped in thin layer of chocolate
taste-tested and lover approved.

Remember that scene in Hook
where Tinkerbell leaves her footprints on Peter's chest,
well that's you and that's me--
touch me where my heart beats
because I don't ever wanna be a lost boy.
I wanna grow up like a good bedtime story
with morals
and purpose,
I wanna have meaning.

You might say that Cupid found himself.
You might say that Psyche found her soul.
You might say that Tinkerbell was just faking it--
with the clapping.
Truth is, we can never know the whole story--
the complete truth.
Problem is, we think we can
and act like we do.
So the only time we mean what we say
is the first time we say it,
every utterance thereafter is just an attempt
at recreating a moment.

I love you
is a paraphrase
that deserves three separate ellipses
because there's a lot left unsaid.

I (distinctively remember shadow-boxing with)
love (against a star-dotted sky anchored to a
moonlight so vibrant it can only be compared to)
you (and your tidal waves).

And that's where I fell
headfirst and handsome.

I (was punched-drunk by a kiss so breathless
that it spiked my dopamine to a volume
that can only be described as) love
(in that every time my neurotransmitters feel) you
(they spin themselves dizzy and dance to your science).

There was a moment in the absence of everything
when I was kissed silent by the presence of something.

Hold me to your breastplate.

I don't ever wanna go back to the void.



*02/09/2010
Demon of destruction has set out to destroy me...
From morning to night it feeds out to control me...
But the Light of Christ has enabled to comfort me...
Mandated from Darkness it sets out to capture me...

Fortified by the Armor of the Almighty...
I fight the battle with Divine Splendor...
From the deepest part of your soul your Umi tries to control and overpower Yami.
From the deepest part of your soul your Umi* fights control Yami* (Umi:Darkness Yami:Light)
Objective is try to not let Umi win over Yami.
We shall fall in battle weary, armor broken, divine splendor shattered...
Ready to give in when the Highest...
Saves us from doom from complete darkness...

The Radiant Morning Star shall emulate light into your soul essence...
Furthermore, restore the power of your Divine Armor...
Conquering the pestilence that roams in the dark...
Destruction demon weakening prayer empowerment rising...
Then we drawl in the Heavenly sword...
Which shall slay the demon decapitating his head...
Hallelujah the judgement from heaven has been made...
Stand united Brotherhood of Light...for this is an ongoing battle between your Life and your Soul...
1 being alive to do as much good as possible pleasing The Almighty daily and at all times. 2 Allow God to be in control and your outlook on Life and what it brings the good the bad the ugly...Christians must stand war ready for our spiritual temple to wedge war against principalities, dark powers, witches, witchcraft, spells, plagues of doom, prophecy from the other realms, dreams, illusions, perdition and lastly soul contracts.  Jesus Christ the intermediator and The Father and the Holy Spirit...
Lucifer doesn't sleep doesn't eat doesn't give up from the day you take your first breath till the moment you take your last...

Let God help you can truly feel free of worldly chains... disobedience to The Almighty and Denial of the Work of The Spirit Of Fire...
Eight blue flamed tongues...
The immortal and unimaginable power he holds...
The Holy Spirit the doppelganger of The Father...or The Almighty One...

Allow spiritual sleep come be awake and allow the force of God the Omnipotent, Omnipresent the One Ethereal Benign Being...

Love is his ultimate power the Alpha and Omega. Beginning and End. Existence recreating itself within itself...a world of random possibility. But with direct order from its atom microorganism the human being. We choose right from wrong we are given "Free Will" and in the end God shall judge all...

~Stand Prepared for Judgement Day~...for HIM known as God shall judge according to his divine will and perfect impeccable truth within truth a experience so drastically real you will know exactly where your headed....the Heavenly Realm situated in the ultimate realm of the Multiverse. Or Hell the Eternal Sanctum and punishment of Wicked Corrupted Souls, souls that denied The Holy Spirit Of God. Within the Heavenly Realm this majestic immortal being  exists the entity known as God...
From there inside the Holy Throne to the right of The Almighty...sits the Only Begotten Son (Ultimate Atonement for Humanity: The Lamb, Jesus Christ) then his Querubins,Seraphims and Messagers. Followed by Holy Beasts and 24 Holy Kings...

The power of Lucifer Prince of Darkness...God Demon. Ruling over Leviathan, The Black Legendary Dragon, a hierarchy of Demons from Pride, Lust, Gluttony, Wrath etc.

Are you with us...Christians Warriors Of Light...or against us...

Decision is crucial here we are battling for your eternity your salvation...

Come now calls the Lord come home...

To a Wicked Generation Lost in it's inevitable end and final resolve.

Don't be Godless remember Love is what God is made of...come ye weary lost souls come...Amen
©Franko the Christian Poet
Demons vs Angels the battle rages on. Love vs hate battle rages on. The color of your skin... racism must be abolished.
Sara Reilly Mar 2016
The effects of poverty on children
&
The development of maladaptive behaviors
a.k.a survival instinct to
in victims of childhood abuse
&
In children of mothers with mental illness

See:  Schizophrenia births ******-                               affective bipolar set-up borderline personality

&
Of Broken promises and
Of divorce
on toddlers
Subject to
Hypochondriacal
Dissociative identity disorder maniacal
Munchuasen syndrome
&
Development of anorexia in girls whose mothers
tell them they are fat
And not to eat
At the age of 3
And do not keep
food in the house
&
Of memory loss on survivors of ******
**** perpetual at brother's behest
Sibling rival/sociopath/hater
Initiate secrets to swallow later
Same same high school juvenile
English teacher hebophile
Lies beget lies with no adult supervision
Predators penetrate without permission
Especially favored males
above suspicion

Back to back with

Court ordered
reverse abduction
Too much too late
Overt overprotection
premature prepubescent
irreversible independence
****** up DNA lifetime sentence
Survivor guilt/too young to choose
Either way at 12 years old you lose
Tough love authoritarianism
Vs.
Prodromal adolescent survivalism
Now no court dare insist
which insanity trumps which
Coupled with
Biological mother "crazy" trash-talk
Teenage runaway as soon as she can walk
&
Development of trust issues
Normalized by chronic
neglect and abuse
Hyper vigilant of subtext
Double super mega
Abandonment complex
Stockholm syndrome and PTSD
Dissociation in abductees
(Comfortable with recreating tragedies)
Within exploded families
Where the truth is an accumulation
Of what is not acknowledged

diagnostic checklists
Symptoms life synopsis
Doctors office doctors office
Taper off, titraite this
between pages tranquillized
Quoth the holy DSM V
Artificial life artificial life

As dirt swept under the rug
So much dirt makes a pile
So big a pile makes a child
A child makes too much noise
Ignore her
Tell her to shut up
Make her shut up
She is a liar
Put her in the closet
Do not feed the girl child
She needs too much
She is too much
Takes up too much room
Even in the womb
It's ok if she goes away
If someone takes her one day
If she dies
If her brother wants to **** her
And tries
Pretend she is dead

Mother didn't do anything
Wrong after all
No proof
No evidence
Just a child never born
To steal the glow of
Psychosis from the flaming eyes
Of a mother crossed
Who also never saw adulthood coming

Through the delusions, the chaos
Inherent crime without cost
You can't blame us
Born and raised already lost

Generations of children
Who make bad adults
Potential unfulfilled
And it's nobody's fault.
In progress
Lee Sharks May 2015
BELIEF & TECHNIQUE FOR TELEPATHIC PROSE
Lee Sharks & Jack Feistfrom Pearl and Other Poems

1.     Compose real poems telepathically, with mind control powers, inside your glorious brain.

2.     You are your own best advocate. Insist the world acknowledge your poems as artifacts of tiny doom. Accept nothing less. Threaten to smash yourself in the face with gasoline and set your hair on fire. Leap over the seats to aggressively stand inside the world’s personal space and get up in its grill. Take this container of Tic-Tacs and smash it on your forehead. Crush each Tic-Tac individually into your eyeballs and ask the world if it likes your poem, and if it likes your poem, then eat your poem: “Do you like my poem? Then eat it.”

3.     Always seek constant approval, then punch your cat in the face.

4.     Arrive alive. Don’t text and drive.

5.     Always write poems all the time.

6.     Never professionalize writing. Professionalism is the last refuge of responsible people looking for work.

7.     Your life is your poem. Take care to write it biographically. Failing that, invent false biographies and post them on Wikipedia.

8.     Get as much education as you can, then ****** your education in the face to save it from sloppy education. Get enough education to respect your contempt for education.

9.     Give it all that you have, as deep as it goes, as desperate and total as taking a breath.

10.  Also be pedantic mundane pig-critic of precise punctuation juggling and ruthless crossed-out darling murdering of your own puny sentences. Save every draft and revert to original after enormous work, then drown yrself in the bathtub. Remember: editing is organization.

11.  Be long-sighted prodigy of skeptically believing in nothing, but also believe in destiny, but quietly, and hit yourself in the face for naivety’s sake.

12.  You are a seamstress of words—place each stitch carefully, deliberately. Develop a series of rituals and perform them, without variation, prior to placing each word. Allow the frequency and intensity of these rituals to grow until you spend hours, each day, touching and retouching your left index finger to the tip of your nose in a rhythmic, counter-clockwise motion, in sets of thirty revolutions, in order to place a single character. Spend years of your life shut away from the world, wasting away into an awkward, unhygienic shadow of your former self, and have, to show for it, a two-syllable word of Germanic origins on an otherwise clean, white page. This word will be redoubtable, the bedrock of your writing career. Go on to spend vast sums of personal wealth and total dedication, alienating the remaining handful of long-suffering friends who continue, despite all odds, to solicit the memory of your humanity, in order to learn the arts of metalworking, Medieval alchemy, and font design, recreating a metal-cast, alpha-numeric set of Times New Roman font, from scratch, going broke long before “numeric,” and with only the half-formed germs of the characters W, N, and sometimes-vowel Y.  hat are such retrictio s to  ou?  ou are a poet,  ot a mathematicia .  ou are a creature of steel.  ou  ill  rite a  e  and better  orld, a  orld  ithout the letter   , forgi g it, o e smoki g husk of a  ord at a time.

13.  Turn over a new leaf. You’re not getting much done like this, anyways, let’s face it. Break the chains of your censoring, conscious mind; tap into the spontaneous well of unconscious human brilliance that springs from the source of dreams. Thwart the stick-in-*** tyranny of your internal editor by making a commitment to write constantly, without ceasing, editing, or even thinking, no matter what, ignoring the anally retentive quips your brain will no doubt make. Make a further commitment: you will not only write, irrespective of internal censorship, but in a way that is unconscionably terrible, on purpose. Your writing will be, by turns, embarrassing, infantile, automatic, and marmaduke poppers—or shall we say, antagonistic to the indoctrination in repressive concepts such as “sentence” and “word” of your reader, who is always, and only, you. Let your writing be a spiritual discipline of Bat-a-rang pancakes and lightly alarm clock, ding—your toast is done.

14.  Always Alka-Seltzer eyelids all the time.

15.  At last, you are ready to make it new, to ****** your darlings, to first thought, best thought, to your heart’s content. Your adverb will be the enemy of your verb, the difference between your almost-right word and your right word will be the difference between your lightning bug and your lightning. You are ready to have a spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling, then censor the s**t out of it. You are ready to turn your extremes against each other: Unlearn your apple pancakes and burst through the mental barriers; then slow the flood, let the lovely trickle out & edit, edit, edit. Capture spontaneous gem of native human genius, then marshal vast armies of technical knowledge & self-discipline to ensure it glimmers and cuts.

16.  Believe in things like destiny. No really—the path will shatter you so many times your shards will have splinters, your bombshells, shrapnel. By the time you get there—which you probably won’t—even your exhaustion will be tired. Exhaustion of mind and body will have passed so far beyond the physical, and through malaise of spirit, that it will emerge on the other side, as physical exhaustion again. In the face of this, nothing but a little Big Purpose will do. Besides, a little ideology never hurt anyone. Feel free to be all Voltaire with your bad self, in public—but don’t give up.

17.  After all of this, when your will is finally broken (again), and you have given up for the final time (again), start over. The former model wasn’t working. Refashion yourself and your writing. Lather, rinse, usurp your noble half-brother, and repeat, until you get somewhere, or die in the trying.  

18.  Achieve consistency of voice; it is the signature by which you will be known. Your “you” should ring out clearly from each individual letter. In this, the writer is like the salesman. Like a new car, neither the writing’s merits, nor the reader’s needs, will be the final, deciding factor. Ultimately, the deciding factor is you.

19.  Unlike a new car, it is difficult to drive a poem, to use it to get to school or work. Unlike a car salesman, a writer does not wear enormous ties.

20.  Be so consistent that your writing consists in composing the same words, in the same order, creating the some overall voice and style, consistently, over and over, an eternal return of the same. Maintain this disciplined drudgery over the course of years. Let years become decades, and decades, an entire life: You will have “found your voice.” Variety is the spice of life, but consistency is its signature.

20.  Be so consistent that your writing consists in composing the same words, in the same order, creating the some overall voice and style, consistently, over and over, an eternal return of the same. Maintain this disciplined drudgery over the course of years. Let years become decades, and decades, an entire life: You will have “found your voice.” Variety is the spice of life, but consistency is its signature.

21.  Then again, consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. Throw things up a little bit. One day, put on your hobgoblin hat, the next day, your small mind.

22.  On second thought, re: #16-17: Stop here. You don’t look like much of a writer. Save yourself the trouble of a deep investment that is sure to yield no returns. The prize is big, and not many take it. The Iliad showed us that the prize of writing is life eternal, and taught us to long for that promise; but the Odyssey taught us not to bother. There are many suitors, a single Odysseus. While the husband wends arduously homeward, Penelope weaves impending glory, an evaporating glamour, enchanting them, until he arrives. We are in for a bad end, if we chase another man’s wife, or a prize not rightfully ours. There are many suitors, a crowd of them. They begin as a chittering swarm of bats and end in the very same manner. You cannot have what is not yours. What is yours, no man can take. So, like Emily says,

I smile when you suggest that I delay ‘to publish’—that being foreign to my thought as Firmament to Fin. If fame belonged to me, I could not escape her—if she did not, the longest day would pass me on the chase—and the approbation of my Dog would forsake me—then—My Barefoot Rank is better—

23.  Therefore, take these Sturm und Drang commandments to the trash heap. Return to step 1, as the only useful piece of advice: Compose real poems telepathically, with mind control powers, inside your glorious brain.

(c) 2014 lee sharks & jack *****

from Pearl and Other Poems:

http://www.amazon.com/Pearl-Other-Poems-Crimson-Hexagon/dp/0692313079/ref=sr11?ie=UTF8&qid;=1429895012&sr;=8-1&keywords;=lee+sharks+pearl
BELIEF & TECHNIQUE FOR TELEPATHIC PROSE http://mindcontrolpoems.blogspot.com/2014/12/belief-technique-fortelepathic-prose.html
Carly Salzberg Feb 2013
I have left, pig-mudding drunk,
having sipped from stock to stock on fraying cheer, stages.
I have stood in foreign basements; sweaty cellars of youth;
begot by attitude breeding spaces of the hip;
drawn circles searching for love in recreating nonsense:
a silly pupil, moon-eyed, out of breathe.

I have heard them quack, reveal their cords;
heard them whisper a thousand and one secrets,
heard them deconstruct their circumstances as pilgrims, penniless and sick.
I have their memories now, an image of a depressed,
***-imprinted pillow soaked in liquor and a feeling of nausea
where ribs sleep on this couch tonight, every night.
I have heard one refute the weight of living, ******,
on the banks of his best friends hospitality, and thought
How much is it worth?

And I have envied every **** greasy pored hipster,
the ones fixing on makingitnew now kind of clan; stared blankly at fashion,
a culture back door where pink fish scales sparkle high from runway halters
to the tops of grown men, bearded and chesty.
And your mothers pearls sit, not your mother’s pearls but your mother’s, mother’s pearls,
that old world clout ornamented around those hairy *******.
Oh yes, I have seen men become peacocks, charmed animals of *******;
seen them teeth at discourse in the noise they create, wide-mouthed and pointed;
I have seen them masked like frantic felines: wooly bully cats trying-to-roll their own meter,
their tobacco stained black charcoal over soft bricked lips quiver to their beats:
those painted lemmingings, without a parachute: kamikaze felons.

I have desired absolute sterility: white china,
in the egg of a toilet bowl I spewed out, shut-up my exuberance for the night;
sorry-pleaded my resolutions to gag out the naughty nouns in my life.
I have quit; turned in my lust for performing the lioness, paw-licking,
snarly creature: the predator of my youth, and now,
I am pretty-headed, tamed in bath oils and schedules;
a spotted fox, in plain view, one medium-sized mammal getting by.
Hannah Nov 2014
It is said that those
who have emotionally touched you
leave an everlasting imprint
on your beating heart
and shining soul
An impression of sorts
like one of a fingerprint,
the swirling patterns of their delicate fingertips
pressed against our skin
leaving a permanent mark
for everyone to see
a tattoo of beauty
or sometimes,
a scar of spiteful hatred
and sham
The imprints left on our skin
eventually travel to our hearts
recreating our character
and traveling to our souls,
shaping us anew
taking and reshaping our very beings
to become a kind angel
or a vengeful demon
refining our once innocent minds
to become something else
Fingerprints pressed to our eyes,
lips,
hands
and feet
either leaving us with good impressions
or wicked intentions
It is not for us to decide
whether those who touch us
leave fingerprints of swirling beauties
or a labyrinth of anguish
but we can decide
what we do with these unique tattoos
and what we create using
their magnificent power.
Vernarth says: “I was at the separation of the threshold of Archangelos and Tsambika, where I was introduced to the threshold of sub mythology, which came from a promontory of the high cusp, that intersect the portal of light between Archangelos and Tsambika. There was a great vertical mass of petrified air between the two units, as I approached I saw against the light of one towards the other, the supposed synoptic and optical circumstance of sub-mythology, which makes me the creation that abandoned all of us who have dealt with it all. A life with sword in hand. For this reason, we have not restructured ourselves as a "Creation and Genesis that dwells in the myth of the warrior who is defeated on his war bed, but winner of the war of Life as Peltasts." My democracy is to narrow the steps of credibility towards a narrowing of the resurrection in all and all of us who have never been at peace, by proposing the last energy of daring to follow the triumph of the democracy of the resurrection. Many remain in doubt and waiting, others follow, but the stubborn objection of creation makes us a mere vivifying objective to revive in the exam that writes everything and stores everything more than thousands of lives and scrolls that settle in its proscription Literary”

Replied Apostle Saint John: “The Derveni papyrus was a work in Central Macedonia, 10 km northwest of the Greek city of Thessaloniki, in Macedonia. 226 small burnt papyrus fragments were found, inside a bronze jug that also contained a gold crown and other funerary objects. In the dimension that has been able to instruct, he speaks to us of God and mysticism, but with hidden and allegorical suggestions, moving towards a representative monotheism, we have enough to assert about eloquent quotes from the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus and Orpheus. Being the son of Apollo and one of his muses, Calliope. According to the accounts, when he played his lyre, the beasts would calm down, and the men would gather to hear him and to rest their souls. Thus he fell in love with the beautiful Eurydice and managed to put the terrible Cerberus to sleep when he went down to the underworld to try to resurrect Eurydice. Orpheus was of Thracian origin; In his honor, the Orphic Mysteries were developed, musical rituals quite common in Ancient Greece, of which there is not much information, or their sources are not known”

Eurydice replies: “I read Orpheus's verses on his lips, which at length encouraged me, eager to hear more, but Orpheus turned off the lights of my curiosity, putting hidden ideas and allegories that crossed my doubts like ghosts that crossed before me in this hymn Orphic of Derveni. Orpheus was credited with abilities because with his lyre he was able to poke around with all the most wonderful melodies that humans had allegorically heard. That is how I fell in love with Orpheus and shortly after we were married. But sadly, I died shortly after getting married from a snake bite. Orpheus went into a hidden pain, until it was decided to go down to the very underworld in order to save me. And so it was, he went down to the underworld and once there he tried to take me back. But Hades wouldn't allow us. So Orpheus began to sing for Hades and me, until they appeared before him and allowed Orpheus to be taken away on one condition: He could not look at me until I was completely bathed in sunlight. We did so, and when we went outside Orpheus turned to see me. But he did not realize that one foot had stayed in the shadows so I disappeared into the darkness of the underworld and this time forever. Sad Orpheus perished in battle within a few weeks, but when he died and went to the underworld, he finally managed to be by my side, for life. Now I am in the light of the figurehead of the ship Eurydice, I am and I am the boatswain that watches and I carry this feat in the Vernarth memorial with me in the underworld supporting him. Now I appear for this creation reaching the everlasting preamble, so that in Teambika as a creation of the sub-Mythology in which I figure in this journey, with Vernarth always between we will intervene in the matrices that intersect in Archangelos and Tsambika, as a clear image that is revealed before me, like the perfect figure of perfection recreating itself in the genesis of a Marian world, judging myself to be eternally with the resurrected living”.
Derveni Papyrus
To the girl with the alluring melanin...
skin the enticing & mouth-watering color of caramel

To the girl with the enigmatic mind,
subliminally affixed to mine**

To the girl with the beautiful heartbeat
that coexists as one with mine.
To the girl with the winsome name
...my lips feel so much better when it's your name leaving.
To the girl with the mollifying voice,
your voice is the strongest tranquilizer I've ever encountered;
It apprehends all negativity I'm engulfed in
and brings me back to sanity again.
To the girl with the broken heart
shattered into a thousand pieces,
I'll spend 1,000 days putting each piece back together
and on the 1,001 day
you'll see that not only did I mend your heart
but I gave you remnants of mine.
To the girl who was at war with herself,
I've seen your battle scars.
To the girl who constantly goes back to war,
you are not alone and I won't ever allow you to be.
  ॐ                                     ॐ                                    ॐ  
To the boy with the perfectly sculpted face...
if you were to ever leave, I'd spend forever recreating it's beauty.

To the boy with the beautifully structured mind,
which never fails to unravel every mystery within mine.


To the boy with the wavering heartbeat
that coexists as one with mine.
To the boy with the voice of a symphony of my favorite melody
that never fails to leaving a distinct sense of perfection in the air.
It scatters positivity throughout my body
reminding me of the purpose of my existence.
To the boy with the faltering heart
which never falters enough to give up on me.
And even if it did, I'd spend all my days
as a cardiovascular surgeon.
To the boy with the artistic fingers that paint with fire,
igniting every inch of my skin they lovingly skim over.
To the boy with the dark parallel lines freckled over his wrists,
reminding me of the heartache, and distress you once endured.
I'd spend every day of my life eradicating each piece
of pain-coated glass embedded in your heart.
You are not alone and I won't ever allow you to be.
I follow back.
Written by  my ex-girlfriend(http://hellopoetry.com/jade-s/) and I.

It's a ballad and it goes with music...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTrSUexKajY
evphxric Nov 2013
mind blossoming
orchids and lilies
ribs intertwining
sprouting winding tree branches
limbs folding
recreating their art  
old soul awakening
beginning a new life
Nat Lipstadt Mar 2015
Aye Aye
(Poetry is the Adhesive of Our Lives)

6:33 am

for Joe*


once again,
in a strange bed,
in a strange city,
left a cold snowed city climate
debtor-in-possession,
owner of a carryover question
of yours,
what was a
winter prior posing,
is now a plane plain ride over
have coming with me
awaking,
by a sun provoking,
the answer,
now strange composing
in a visually warm city where
beautiful tanned bodies
are mined in beach sand

and
this,
my answer,
it too,
mine,
it too
being mined,
subconsciously working, coming,
f o r m I n g
in my always busy,
overthinking,
daily nighttime shift of
repositioning from a
dark night ended reposing,
into a
sunny day answer deposing

t'is a tricky one,
when one poet asks another
straight out,
after the the fashion of the day,

of my poetry,
whattaya think,
whattaya know...

about
my very own
words,
this communal place,
HP,
an open bed,
where we lie down with strangers,
where we lay down our words,
wake up lovers,
or worse,
ignored,
wake up encouraged,
(can one make hallelujah a verb?)
or refuted,
disputed by
the either/or
ignorant silence of the masses,
of what's truly good,
or sunk
under reedy rushes of swamping
despair,
at the ignorant adulation of the
endless trite, puerile

not one
for shooting from the
hip,
on a subject so
delicate,
that my paused,
slow mo response,
to you,
of course,
misunderstood,
as a red badge of no courage,
a refusal to answer
in this demanding age of
virtual, instantaneous any and every
stray dog thought

multiple shades of a Miami sunrise,
burnt oranges and Van Gogh blues,
frosted strawberry internal pink toppings,
whitish cream cappuccino streaks,
makes one wonder about the
creative design team that brought us the
universe and this all over
sunrise,
all natural, organic visual breakfast
that comes to remind me that
your answer,
you...

for all of us,
in our lives
there is always poetry infused,
there for the seeing,
and
for some,
even
adhering to our
private places

for you, Joe,
there is always poetry,

in this work,
is the continuous process,
self-recreating,
and this sir,
aye, aye, sir,
this one writ,
hopefully a satisfactory answer,
perhaps...
one of resolution,
of adhesion,
silicon bonded

for such is the nature of
this particular Joe,
an inquiring soul,
a nurtured one,
another poetry-partial-birth
child of mine,
born on-line

so,
requiring special handling when
creating, crafting,
******* lines of my presumptuous presumptive
"expertise"
in all matters that
our emotional heart
is the make-up-the-rules-as-you-go
rulemaker

thus,
peril,
fraught, and
simplistic excessive
frugality of word/feelings,
dangerous and inappropriate...

I loke (love + like)^
your poetry fine
the slow revolution of the screws
of growth so readily apparent...

But,
always,
a but,
my demands upon you,
so great,
the expectations of expectations,
greater for you than I dare share,
only since your quest
is my bequest
so shockingly that you dare
directly request

herein,
asked and answer attempted,
yet the risks are I lighthouse beacon
angle too high,
becoming too troublesome,
an Excedrin headache

You don't see,
You don't comprehend,
the way I do,
how far you have come,
your train,
upon which
I am a windowed, winnowed,
passenger,
a pseudo parent
in Loco (crazed) HP Parentis

so it breaks my heaVy heart,
that I want burdensome you better,
so much better...

Oh Toolmaker!
from your
as of yet
swelling unrealized
r e a l
blood sweat and
tears

I want to be forced
by you
to shed my own
tears,
gasp, intake my own
bloodied breath,
sweat when reading yours...
hopelessly selfish,
wholly unsatisfied...

I want
your refreshed wit  born in
Whitman
winters

tales of your Connecticut icy hot
Frost
should lay me low by new poems as good as
Lowell's

tease me, seek me
let me beg,
make me yours,
like Sara Teasdale's
"I Am Not
Yours"

I will you!
will you be,
recreate anew
William Carlos Williams

make me gnash my teeth
when you limerick like my first hero
Ogden Nash

moor my heart like
Marianne Moore

be a new American Master
of this awesome trade,
accepting of this modest tirade,
make new tools still invisible
that will become
more powerful than
any man's hand
can mechanical design...

most of all force me to
reside inside your adoms
locked in my soul's firmament,
until you have fashioned me
into
an obedient tool,
forcing me,
to weep my own
r e a l
blood sweat and
tears
that your words
backhoe excavate
from their hidden places

be mine own
GI Joe
poet~hero

hopefully,
this answers your question,
what I think
of your poetry voyage
to levels of heaven
you are yet
unacquainted

looking forward to an
aspiring spring,
a robust salute of
Aye, Aye,

for I  have fixed the spot in the sky
with the adhesive will keep your star aloft
tween you
and the rest of us
plodders

but now be bounded to lift
us to
unbounded highs
on the wings of the highest
expectations*

of all of us who
admire your journey so...
will not e v e r be satisfied,
until
you exceed,
you succeed,
until
we are such
so sated, so satisfied...
that we see the music,
dance to the words,
in places where the silence
of listening
is the greyest gift
one can give...
^Loke - courtesy of Joel Frye

Of course, I  just happened to hear Christine Ebersole sing this tonight...

It seems like happiness is just a thing called Joe
He's got a smile that makes the lilacs want to grow
He's got a way that makes the angels heave a sigh
When they know, little Joe's passin' by

Sometimes the cabin's gloomy and the table's bare
But then he'll kiss me and it's Christmas everywhere
Trouble's fly away and life is easy go
Does he love me good, that's all I need to know

Seems like happiness is just a thing called Joe

Sometimes the cabin's gloomy and the table's bare
But then he'll kiss me and it's Christmas everywhere
Trouble's fly away and life is easy go
Does he love me good, that's all I need to know

Seems like happiness is just a thing called Joe

Little Joe, my little Joe, little Joe
Let me paint you in watercolors,
I want your hues of blues and reds to drip into clear ocean waves.
Let me spatter your soul on the walls of buildings
As abandoned as that hole in your chest.
You were always psychedelic.

I want to rebuild you from paper mache
Placing all your pieces around the frame
Of what I wanted to build you into.
So I can resuscitate the times when you loved me back.

I’ll sculpt a smile into the stone
I am using to reconstruct you,
So never again can you cast an ugly word at me
And all my poetry
Will be etched in your eyes.

But I can’t get your eyebrows just right,
My paint brush hurts my wrist.
My chisel and mallet cause me carpal tunnel
And I break off your lip in pieces.
The paper mache slides in wet globs to the floor.

Part of me is glad I can’t recreate your impeccability.
Now I may be able to see beauty in something,
Or someone,
Else.
Daniel August Jul 2014
The best of my poetry wasn't written down,
Rather, was spoken to empty rooms,
The stinging silence pregnant,
Each syllable a fleshy womb
Creating, and recreating, your
Image in my mind.
Patterns float
obscured
by uncertain mists
recreating
a scene perceived
and painted
in washes of water colour
overlapping, merging
transfixed
fresh and timeless.

The shape
of routine activities
unpredictably change
or shatter
behind
the inexorable advance of time
as sequences
inevitably retreat
into a fading future
until the circle is complete.
Kate Apr 2013
Do you ever think
about becoming
someone new?
About unmaking,
Recreating,
Partaking,
In the life of someone -anyone-
Who isn’t you?

Hours and hours and days and weeks and months and years
I perfected, rejected, resurrected the art
of becoming someone new.

In mere moments,
a new me.
a new world.
a new dream.

A world to be anyone
or go anywhere
Or be anything.
When I just
Don’t want
To be
Me.

New demons and angels,
New shadows and suns,
New curves and new angles,
New characters
to become.

A world not like
my own.
The trees are paper.
The people move with a blink.
Grass is woven from knowledge and
Leaves are sprouting from ink.

There I go
at a moment’s notice.
Diving, delving, digging.
Revealing
an impossible time.
Where the improbable, inconceivable, unimaginable, unthinkable
occurs every
Other
Line.

I am disappearing into the books.
Invisible to the world.
Unmaking myself,
Recreating myself,
And becoming someone new.
Alin Oct 2014
sometimes you are with me when I bike
right  in the middle of my eyes
you look through
as if recreating tides

sometimes you rise
stretch my tailbone
cross my neck all along
and silently whisper love and hate words

until you painfully adjust yourself towards a subtle opening
hidden under a golden crown

you tie us by secret subtle lines
as if  a puppet-pendulum
anchored to a bluish-green star
somewhere far away
as far as a single jump-rope swing
which I may call home sometime

is that why you send me signs
while I listen
like that lady bird today …
perfectly matching to the colors of an eloquent orange brown pottery
by which geishas serve

a ceremonial rice bowl the labels tell
exhibited behind glass only
my silhouette
reflected in dim lights
becomes a dance of invisibility  
hiding teardrops
along a museum corridor
covered with cherry blossoms

I ignore I say all the stupid signs
continue a play
with the luck bug
alight on my right side
observe its dotted natural  beauty
forget all there is around me
oh yes she knows me

I farewell her over a giant photograph of a well respected lady
make it  a living part of her brooch and dream away
if - maybe she’d be me
some lifetime ago
and you the lover
of our lingering sad story…
Jon Ordway Aug 2013
I want to guide my fingertips down your backbone, using vertebrae like stepping-stones across my river of dreams into a beautiful reality of you and me.

I want to do laps in your smile and blow my speakers out to the sound of your laughter.

I want to find every ticklish spot on your body, map them out, and mark every treasure with a kiss.

I want to hold your hand, like we handcuffed ourselves together and then swallowed the keys to each other’s hearts.

I want to take a spray can full of emotion and graffiti a wall, of a police station, during the middle of the day, as if opening up isn’t dangerous enough…

I want to show you that I’m dangerous enough, that my heart could jump the Grand Canyon for you, with no helmet or elbow pads, because every scar is a story and stories are my business.

I want to shake the hand of the artist who controls your paintbrush eyelashes creating beautiful works of art every time you blink.

I want to **** the nicotine from your black and gold lips until I become your new addiction.

I want to become one of your bad habits, like procrastinating to get out of bed with me.

I want to replace your morning coffee and your hot showers. I’ll be the first thing to warm you in the morning and the last thing to hold you at night.

My arms will be like scarves laced with melatonin wrapped gently around your head as you drift away to the sound of the broken rainstorm locked inside my chest…

I want to show you what is inside my chest.

I want to show you my best, but I’m nervous my smile won’t be enough because I haven’t been flossing with my cerebral cortex and I’m afraid I won’t think before I speak.

So I’ve been biting my tongue until ever word that eventually crawls its way out of my mouth stains my shirt crimson.

These walls I’ve built are a prison and I’m growing tired of the view. I’ve been digging escape routes to landmines that blast me back to square one. So take a diamond wrecking-ball and crash into me like a kamikaze under cupid’s orders.

I need you to make the first move because I can’t open my mouth to say “hello” when I’m busy gnawing at the bear traps around my ankles.

But I swear when my legs are free I’ll drive to you like a car fast as death because I’m running from a daisy that I couldn’t pluck and trying my best not to end up like Gatsby.

And although I still have a bee hive full of romantic ideas of recreating the past resting on my shoulders, I want you to be the smoke that kills the buzzing.

I don’t have to be your everything; I just want to be your something.

And I wish I could be like Houdini so I could escape this straight jacket sewn from the fabric of time dyed blue by every ex of mine.

And when I take a punch of courage to the stomach, I hope I walk away with a smile instead of in an early grave.
Violet Wade Jan 2013
My bones are shattered porcelains
And Dr Frankenstein is recreating
My body from the toes up

I have more screws than tarsals
More plates than fibulas
More scars than cracked paint on derelict homes

Greens, yellows, blues, blacks and purple
Dye my leg in splendid hues
Plaster decorates my toes and pokes under my knees

Pins and needles tingle constantly
But these are made of steel as well as
Peripheral neuropathy

My hospital discharge form
Reads like poetry
Displaced tibea

Goes on adventure and brings back
Swollen instead of souvenirs
And crushed ligaments as testament

To broken steps they have fallen on
Perhaps it is not as profound as sunsets or romance
But I am finding beauty in pain

Intricacies in injury
And the limits of my creativity
To distract from nightmares

Of how this happened
And to drown out the hungry goblins
Deep in my guts demanding opiates

Like drunken teenagers
They loot my stash and trash my viscera
Legal or not I'm still a ******

Writing poetry rather than sleeping-
Confronting demons with stanzas.
Over screams I am armed with the arsenals

Of metaphor, personification and symbolism
Whatever the pain, my posse of poetry and prose
Has always got my back
Jimmy Desire Jul 2014
(A freestyle off of Revenge of the Dreamers / J-Cole)

Lost in a world
of a word
or a combination of which entrances me
onto rants such as this
Do you understand the feeling?
losing yourself in the rhythm
and imitating or recreating your favorite song,
in your vision?
What’s amazing is, what a large world this is…
and how much of it truly influences the music we hear
I mean, I can use my memory to remind me of her beauty
or instead I can bring together the words that will explain to you
how every morning the sun’s rays ever so lightly kisses her face
just to compliment the amazing glow that only amplifies the radiance of her smile
and her warmth,
is a treasure to be cherished as I do
Everyday, the sweet serenades of “sunday morning” remind me of you.
and how my lips graze and embrace her skin,
often I simply allow them drag carelessly along her valley of silky smoothness
as my tongue sends chills thru her spine
just to hover above her ear and remind her that she’s mine
this love is divine,
but something this great takes time
patience — most aspects of life ask of it
and these words let me pace it out
mediation for the mind
for the days where my eyes may glaze over a shade of red
and things don’t seem so easy
I let the creativity flow thru me
as history and THC embed my bloodstream
focused but my mind races
past the similes and metaphors that lay hidden in the borders of the margin
and the bridge echoes,
“Can you feel the buzz?”
my body trembles to the beat
I end up singing along…
“Do you believe in love?
What’s your drug?,
What’s your drug?”
as the smoke escapes my lungs and lingers in the atmosphere
I allow the meaning of the words to sink in
Can I get you to understand?
how the music inspires me to speak
on what it is that I care for or desire
from the need of perfection I feel once the idea is bred,
to the hours of lost sleep trying to avoid the clutches of defeat
when it comes to end,
I feel complete
as if these words fulfill my wishes
to bring back a little substance to our lives.
Although to some, I know this is simply nonsense
well then,  let me try to make it make sense
this time spent has been for my love of music
then simply writing off its influence,
poetry, more than just an art form
I’m just trying to reach your mind and touch your heart
Because you and I can’t be that far apart?
We live in this world together don’t we?
This is the human experience
It's in our nature, let’s connect.
Let’s spread peace and love throughout the land
with a little positivity and encouragement
vibe with me to the beat,
Tell me what it is that you seek,
Do you believe in love?
A piece I'm very proud of. Thanks for reading.
Tori Dec 2017
"I am enough"
She said to the mirror,
Dull eyes gazing back
Her reflection recreating regal
expressions
That coming so naturally before, now were cracked

"I am beautiful"
She said, with silver tears
Brimming in her eyes
In the daytime she was Clepatra
Aching for affirmation, filled with ***** lies

Standing in her own presence
No lines so sweetly versed
No role to be rehearsed
Fists clenched, lips tightly pursed
Oh beautiful tragedy! you lost your identity...
the ache is stayed with the plunge of a blade
breaching  the chasm which once held your heart
Salil Panvalkar Jan 2012
I wish there were words to make you see
words to express these images
but im not a painter, neither much of a talker
i take solace in the silence
as there are sounds to shut out
no sounds keeping me from the symphonies in my head


The impulses recreating euphoria
that feeling of joy, which i wish i could share
i wish i had the words to express
but all i have is this silence
it gives me pleasure, it gives me joy
i wish i could share it


Babies, i envy the most
the only image that matters to them is that of their mother’s tired yet content face
in that little brain of theirs is imagination in its purest form
untainted by the world
dragons they haven’t seen yet, neither fair princesses
but even then they dream when they sleep
and those tiny brains of theirs explode into a billion different colours
and equal number of shapes, which none of us remember


That’s the reason for their smile
the laughter without a cause
because they haven’t been told yet how beauty is defined by the world
in their eyes everything is beautiful
they have seen true beauty
they show it to you by holding your finger in their puny hands
and you feel a sudden rush of warmth you feel when you look into a lover’s eyes

I wish there were words to tell you how I feel
words, to show you the world through my eyes

to describe the shapes I see when I stare at a wall for too long,
that  feeling of wanting to fall back into a dream
the words to tell you why I love that one particular song
the one that plays over and over in my head
but somehow I can’t remember if I have ever heard it or not

One day I wish I find a dictionary that translates thoughts into words.
At once at the top of the Estinfalos, Marie des Vallées avoided all of them being injured and being swallowed by the strait. The bronze birds with great vigor avoided being part of the vast shore that hit them as Nephelleidae Helles. Here they were compelled by the Myth Frixo and Hele, in the process of their sacramentals. They took the assignments before running with the same fate as the children of Atamante and Nephele. Ino the second wife of Atamante wanted to get rid of them by burning the grain so as not to have crops. This is where the soul of the Herophilus Sybilla appears to them, consulting the Oracle of Delphi. The Children of Atamante were destined to be sacrificed, being Nefeles who sent a Golden Ram, the children were saved by climbing Ram's spine, taking him away from the executioners. When Heles was going to a great height he looked towards the sea that caused him vertigo, falling into the sea in its celestine waters, remaining from this instance with the patronymic Hellespont. His brother, Phryxus, clung tightly to his back and arrived safely at Colchis. Marie could see some Gerakis and then react in search of Heles, taking time to decide and enter. It was only a few hours before dusk, and the lacerated seventy were lowered from the Stymphalos to cross the waters in search. Marie joined the bronze birds with the interaction ratio of all the times that they would intertwine in the lines showing exploration, supplying what Theus and Vikentios did to grow in number, and with all the occurrences that occurred for the contemporary coincidence of thousands of years, for the current figure of millions of light-years that reacted towards the sky crashing in everything that a maximum roof allowed, and then allowed them to be in the interaction when crossing the Sea of Heles, where she always was, only being diverted by the bronze birds from above, and only being tangible by Marie's conscience when she saw that she had never fallen from the Golden ram, but had been only a weightless creature among the clouds of her mother Nephele, hanging around her neck some remarkable telesomatic beings sent by herself, in egregious tributes to her most adorable daughter. She subsequently falls into the sea, unblemished that Vernarth would go to rescue her from her. The Lacerates, Theus, and Vikentios gathered in the circular area of the Gerakis, leading them to the ancient Phrygian city of Dardania. The crowded currents of the celestial realm became ocean currents that lifted Heles's living body as Gerakis with her wings signaled to the Stymphalos to grasp her with precision. Silently the psyches of the bodies of the Trojan War were able to make Heles's rampage measurable, doing Vernarth's medication at a distance with Heles when her death throes accused her rejection of the balsamic intentions of Marie des Vallées. Then is she resorts to the bilocation of Vernarth managing to see from the surface the reckless surface of the sea, seeing a figure with a snowy white outfit and also a light blue tunic, in addition, she wore a crown of cocoons as a Diadema.

Nothing made it possible to presume that quantum was not bending in kilometers that separate Patmos and the Sea of Heles when this sacred figure was sighted that was glimpsed as psychosomatic physiology, for the good of the Second Age that Vernarth brought for them, noting that it was Bernardette Soubirous, which became immediate like a Benedict Akashic field. The small and large units of Massabielle's universe were pointed out from where this quantum elitrophic wave came, with living palpitations of Heles granting the inquiry of her by convulsions of his brain with small akashic vibrations before falling into the icy Sea. Non-local logic became arcane before this telepathic event, and the figure of Bernadette notified them by its coherence of subtle connection, that lately the light that she carried when she escaped from Ino will be rekindled, with the oblation for her was subordinating her, and that it would be supremely since there from where they would uproot her and then free her from the Akashic field from minor to major storm, where Marie des Vallées would let them know that she was safe. This space was already local, but it was detached from the terminal that made it originally from it for the connections of having it already on Patmos so as not to have to be transported by the Stymphans. Everything happened synchronously in unison, after the transpersonal boundaries of consciousness that were united among all to free it from these bonds in the freshness in Heles. All the micro-dimensional organisms became more than clairvoyant with the endowments of the falls and the uprisings after the rescue of Heles by Vernarth and the Akashic fields, applying the material field that was transposed in great extensions of material-immaterial time, before the immanent Electromagnetic gravitationally that could only be seen, heard and probed by Vernarth when he was meditating between the hemispheres of Aullós Kósmos, justifying nth parapsychologies where space is not empty and does not have a percentage mass in this case, and what has been called the quantum vacuum is in fact a cosmic plane (Akasha). Thanks to this information, it was conserved and transferred by the Akashic field, from the coherent universe of Heles, where it could be reconverted into a Sub Mythological being, thanks to a superhuman being happening at the site of the Dardanelles and which will also take place in another place in Patmos.

Marie des Vallées says: “everything that happened in one period also happened in the following times here at the Hellespont. Nothing was local, nor limited to where and when it happened. All things are integral, cosmic because everything is connected and the memory of all things extends to all places and times. Here is Vernarth who is the object and subject of his umpteenth parapsychologies, which are the replica of the joyous songs of Bernadette Soubirous's Rosary "

Vernarth sensing that Heles was in frank danger of life, mounts Alikantus and heads for the Strait of Dardanelles. Here he manages to specify that it was compared with the anachronism of the Bronze Birds, who had sailed through the upper Dodecanese, then over the Marmara counterclockwise from Kairos, meeting again with the Helladic period. Here it spread over Hellen; with the eponymous hamlet that boasted of the Stymphalos, as a coerced premonition in the pre-Helladic, towards the end of the Bronze Period. Thus, with this changeable phenomenon, Vernarth was directed, while he flew in the seconds of Kairos time as a symbol of subsisting in each deleterious life, almost with the powers of not getting intoxicated with any substance transited by the sea of the strait. Here Vernarth went to Alikantus, being this one from Thessaly and Sudpichi, right here among them Kanti appears with Etréstles, they came to tone up the survivals that would bear Heles after recreating the two great Ionic and Doric hydric colonnades. While Alikantus being of Cretan, the roots he had to emit breaths from the Eighth Cemetery of Messolonghi to revive the colonnades, to separate the waters and molecules that increased in density to move Heles from the depths of the ocean. Kanti was a super steed, he plunged under the Marmara, like a tiny sea to leave the waters of the Black Sea from one of the abutments of some seams of some Achaeans, which were disengaged from the seas that joined them. In this instance, the Helén together with Vernarth continued to release the ropes of a great Kizara that Nefeles had woven for her daughter, from here from the dean cloud and from the distress where she freed herself to go to her Gaugamellian aid. The Kizara was a Eurythmic wire rope, therefore its sound elucidated the sea and its celestial kingdom, magnifying and complicating Poseidon in the sea that actually resembled the sky. Therefore, Heles was with his ethnonym Hellespont who snatches her and redirects her to Helén, which was similar to her name, in such a way that the sky was embroiled by the point, from Helén by Heles creating the watery element of the Flood of Heles that was retracted by the impetus of Kanti and Alikantus when Vernarth increased with all his vivification when he saw her near the shaft of the Doric colonnade, organizing the waters that would rise from the susceptible Heles wrapped in a Himation that Vernarth had dispensed near the Vas Auric.
Nefheles
Jacquelyn Morgan Feb 2013
Milked and Pasteurized in infancy
I come of age and choke on the breast I've suckled and wrung.
Explore an open door of opportunity to meet the man who settled the seed.
Disappointed to find only horses, cracks, and neverland keys.
Recognize a social scheme of getting in, getting off, and moving on.
No longer ignorant in bliss,
Apparent to me that daddy left and all that's there is mother mirage.

She's climbing a ladder to complicated bliss,
Pockets full of posies, pills, and thrills.
Mind full of confliction,
self-deprecating inhibition-
hypocritical actions to condone.

Bake a cake.
Make a mermaid sandwich to oblivion
Talk metaphors to your minion.
Fake a place.
Call it home.

Be the hammer in my stone, help me tumble n' bow to your throne.
Sold me sideways lies and theory
Hypothetically, it seems to me that $commission$ was gained
from blackened eyes and skinned up knees
Come to find the wrinkled hand that led me was none but my own.

Guess your conscious forgot it's name
Guess your soul forgot my name.
Careful Grace that saved a wretch like no one.
She's carefully steppin' around your toes,
She's gracefully getting tired of recreating this unreality.

You're a ******' rabbit in a hole.
Lit a match and you've lost all self-control
What breaks you makes you.
What takes you, stakes you out to come and **** you, fake you
Knock on hidden hills door to get more
Swallow the roof that disproves your critics
Keeps you loose and ******* the alphabet dry.
Swallow Cold Alphabet Soup.  I try.
Venus Rose Vibes May 2013
Thomas John stepped as quietly as he could over the dried leaves,
cautious not to make a sound as they crinkled beneath his feet.
A man lost within an oak forest
had a quiver in his knees
for he knew there was a presence that dwelled
his eyes had not yet seen.
Traversing through haunted hallows
he turned back into a child,
a slightly built boy
facing fears his mother would shallow.

My dearest Thomas,
All will fare well,
and if you are filled with good then
you will steer clear of Hell.

Where are the beneficiaries now
that you are walking the path of whispering fairies,
maniacal minuscule beings
fore bearing legions of terror.
Darkened leagues above seas
lurk between branches and bristles of trees
harboring demons
within their wooden beams.
The weather is deemed as nothing
for the Sun attempts to reach
the darkened green
but the foliage will not let it in.
Thomas quests for an exit
only to be led further into caves of deception
pretending to be roads,
cells repelling as nematodes
burrowing ghouls inside of his soul.
A prominent light shines
from behind less wretched tangles
as does the breeze,
a faint faith lifts him from a sure defeat.. But visions are not meant to be believed
when they are birthed
from devilish dreams.

My son,
The brightness that you have viewed
is but a small token to you
amongst the gifts I shall douse you with
if you will fulfill my request.
My favors are without concern
and with your reliance in return, 
you could find yourself out of the dense
in no time at all.

He wonders,
maybe the lamb is at fault
and the goat is to whom I should pray.
I mean, I left my life in shambles
and even now it is in array.
The blackened moss
has become comforting,
I now prefer heavier shades of grey.
My insides can not mean much
if my corpse is here to stay.

My name is Thomas John;
My father a mistake,
my mother a drunk.
Every decision I have ever made is frowned upon
but not this one.
I will sell myself for a worthless win,  
dip into a world of sin
unknowing of what will begin
once my head is to the brim.

A fire started at his fingertips,
any nature he touched lit
into auburn flames
torturing their creator
into trembling remittance
for the soldiers lay hidden.
Hercules is now a peasant,
the innocence of Jesus
conformed to malevolence
and what was sanctioned as reality
is now told to be worthy of repent,
since it was not given wihout grant.
Global currents circulate glaciers,
chilling the air,
recreating the ambiance
of the raised hair on his arms and neck.
Canopies of wicked in the same cage
as the monoxides he breathes.
There is another trapped inside of your region
but she is not worthy,
skin her while she screams for forgiveness
and wield her into your trophy.
Thomas did as he was told
in quite a scurry,
finally feeling the dank presence
that he had been carrying.

I can not continue to do this;
questioning what to do with
the horror of that which would
surely persist,
his ears picked up currents
of pulsating blood
coursing through his wrists.
A curse bled behind pale skin, acknowledging the weight within
he buried his face into the mud
forcing the devil to choke
on his own blood.
David Noonan Jan 2017
Taking two words to describe yourself
You just smiled "Annie Hall"
I had only seen Manhatten but somehow
Knew, knew how hard i'd fall
As for my turn
Well you just placed a finger on my lips
And then so softly whispered
Sentimental boy

That was then, as for now
Maybe the final credits have rolled
Our picturehouse now in ruins
No more screenings nor stories to be told
Like that derelict Ballroom of Romance
We visited at the edge of town
Summer nights, flagons of cider and your  
Sentimental boy

Recreating it's history
By it's broken down and boarded up wall
Slow dancing in the moonlight
Stopping only to swear we'd heard a call
Rising from the paupers graveyard
Dancing silhouetted in the stars
Ghosts of dead lovers to an old fashioned tune
Sentimental boy

This town now has changed so much
But none so more than we
Yet so often on a warm summers night
By that paupers graveyard you'd still meet me
Humming some half remembered melody
Whilst wishing on the brightest star
Please oh please, won't you just let me be....

                                                      ­               your
                                                sentimental boy
* Rural Ireland in the 1950s/1960s offered little in entertainment or socializing, save for dance halls. These became known as Ballrooms of Romance but were little more than large sheds and most lay unused and derelict by the late 80s/90s

** In modern Ireland a flagon usually refers to a two-litre bottle of cider. Very popular for underage bush  (street) drinking due to its relative low cost per quantity

*** Paupers Graveyards were a field of unmarked and unkept graves of the poor and destitute . Originating from Famine times  (1844-1849) they were common sites all over the country. 150 years later the only signs that remained were often a single cross on a mound of the field
Clarissa Clark Dec 2010
Dedicated to my mentor, Dr. Douglas Graham.

In a young girl's heart
there is happiness
and carelessness;
and as I hurled my little body
through the fields of tall grasses
there was timelessness
and freedom.

But,
as the days and nights
passed me by,
I began to learn of past and future.
I was taught
to prepare for the future
every moment of my waking hour.
I was taught
that with future
comes a past,
that since others
hold onto my past words and actions,
I should too.

As each day and night
continued to pass on by,
I began to learn of pain
and how to attach and identify myself
with that suffering.
The hurt grew stronger
as I witnessed
words of destruction being spewed
from the angry lips of people;
as I witnessed
the crime and actions of those mortals,
who simply needed love,
yet were justified as “bad people”;
as I witnessed
my own mother and father
express violence and hate
to each other
and themselves.

As the light of day and darkness of night
continued on,
I began to learn of entrapment and authority.
My animated nature
was condemned by adults and peers alike.
I experienced my soul diminishing
as those in authority
attempted to control my inherent curiosity.

And as those days and nights
continued to pass me by,
there was no change
in the substance of my youthful education.
I eventually retained, engrained, and acted upon
the new collective understanding.
The knowledge of society
that I was trying to figure out;
the concepts and beliefs
about the life of others
and the society of humans
that was forced upon
my subconscious mind.
Yet each idea I was unwillingly imbued
grasped no true meaning within
and lacked a sense of righteousness.

In a young lady's heart
there grew torment and fear.
And as I started to forget
those timeless days
spent under the sun and blue skies,
disconnection and sorrow developed.
My head began spinning
within the cycle of madness
that encircled my surrounding society.
A fear change
was controlling my life path,
yet the situations and people in my presence
began to transform.
There was a new understanding to be learned
but at the time of my somber confusion,
I was unaware of this fear-infusing change
being for the better.

As the suns and moons rose and set,
my breath was being suppressed
beneath the heavy burdens
I was taught to carry.
I began to find temporary refuge
in the ruinous activities
of attempting to find happiness and freedom
in untruthful relationships,
late night destructions,
and seemingly innocent masks.
I was afraid of change;
afraid of a change
that I had no control over.

But as the suns and moons
continued to rise and set,
I began to dread and have pity on my life.
I realized I was searching for the light
in my self-created cloud of darkness,
so I started to accept the reality
that ongoing evolution in oneself
as a way of life.

So as the sunlight and moonlight
shone their passing luminescence,
thus began the opening
of my eyes
and heart.
I came across a familiar,
but forgotten,
way of life
that stood out to me
for the first time.
My dreams longed
for change in the world,
but I was unable to pinpoint
the areas that needed transformation.
I remembered meeting a man
living a strange kind of life,
and I thought I should meet with him
once more.

As the days and nights
walked on by,
I learned with enthusiasm
for the first time.
I grew content with letting go
of the attachment to the past;
letting go
of my fear of change;
letting go of the collective understanding
I couldn't make sense of.
My father introduced this man to me
who opened doors in my brightening life
that I didn't know existed until then.
This man
spoke without contradiction
and focused on who I was
as a living being.

And I conceived,
as the days and nights
continued on,
that this man
shared a vision
with the minority of others
and I;
a vision
of recreating the paradise on earth;
a vision
of unity,
well-being,
and peace
among every living creature;
a vision,
I came to realize,
that I can help expand and grow
if I started the change within myself.

In a young woman's heart,
there is happiness
and carelessness.
And as I run through
the familiar fields of tall grasses,
there is timelessness
and freedom.

Because of two men,
early on in my life,
I have taken on
a different kind of path.
I now seek happiness and love
through my connection with nature
and personal congruencies.
I have liberated myself
from my past life
and have embraced who I am
right now.
And I have forgiven those mortals
who are involved in the collective dictation,
acting upon anger and hate,
because their heads and hearts
are painfully swirling
with the insanity of society.

Because of these two men,
these simple human beings
who guided me to the open doors
in my life,
my existence is dedicated
to our powerful
and profound vision;
I am dedicated
to helping those suffering lives,
lost in their clouds of darkness,
to the everlasting light of paradise.
To help them realize
that they don't have to keep living a life
void of such a resplendent reality.

Thank you,
for helping find my own light
and allowing the freedom
to radiate that glory
and let it brighten my life
as well as the life of others.

We,
as a whole in our minority,
have created a ripple of truth
that will expand to the mass consciousness
and transform every aspect
of life on this planet
to our vision of an absolute
peaceful,
loving,
brilliant,
unified,
thriving,
compassi­onate,
vibrant,
growing
and everlasting
heaven on earth.
Ananya Bansiwal Dec 2018
Nothing can help me
but that beauty

I still remember it was dawn
and
all what the moment did was
recreating love
which I always needed to do myself.
Jessie Storm May 2013
I'm always falling for girls who are arrows shot through the hearts of prodigal sons.

You've been in my head for days.
I've been clinging to your later
Like a shipwrecked sailor
Clings to the shattered bow
As the ocean tries to swallow him whole.
You swallowed me whole,
And you barely even opened your mouth;
Just wide enough for me to taste honey
And see stars that have been three nights creating haloes around my drunken head.

But you'll only hold my hand in the shadows;
You'll only ask me how I am if you know the answer will be
I'm fine
not
I've got you under my skin
But you're under it, girl.
You're seven layers deep,
And suddenly you're rushing through my bloodstream
And filling my body with a five-dime dream
That is only of your face.
Everyone knows that web of red veins
All lead back to the heart.

So I'm putting up fences
But leaving gaps between the posts
So when you’ve circulated my system
and I can feel you tingling electricity in every one of my cells
It’ll look like the bars I’ve put up were to keep you out
But really the space between was to let you in.
I’ll be shining a light so bright that maybe you’ll grow powdered wings
and flutter towards me like a moth who can’t ignore the flame for even one more second.

You’re more like a butterfly though.
When I look at you I see every colour;
I see grace and beauty, and in your voice I hear a melody so sweet it makes me wonder
whether you’re a girl,
Or if maybe you’re a songbird.
Maybe you build a new nest every night
From twigs and feathers and broken hearts.

You showed me a cutting of your old boyfriend’s hair
That you keep in your wallet
Because you dream of recreating him.
I thought if I knew how I’d make an army of this boy for you,
I’d carve his face from limestone
And give him blossoms for eyes
But I’d give him my lips,
So that when you kissed him I’d taste you.

  And it’s not like I’d make you,
But inside my head we’re every day making each other laugh;
We’re every day running through dappled fields,
Calling each other’s names,
Smelling each other’s hair.
It’s the sweetest thing.
That’s all I really want to say
Is that you make me smile and dream,
And sometimes I’m looking at your face
For just a bit longer than you’re looking at mine,
And in the half-light I think,
*Isn’t she beautiful.
Beeha Dec 2014
hollow o my soul,
lost them down the hole.

chanting with them wall,
i wish time could stall.

hallucination at its best,
yet my mind did not rest.

recreating some scenes,
hysterical but dreadfully keen.
Sofia Paderes Aug 2013
you will know she is a poetess
if she likes to wear long-sleeves
long-sleeves that hide the scars
long-sleeves that hold her bruised arms together
long-sleeves with a slit near the shoulder
where she tried to wear her heart
(but poured it out in ink instead)

she will have long hair
or walk like she does
because hair is memory
cutting it is like erasing yesterday's you
restyling it is like recreating you.
her hair will have leaves in it
and leftover twine
from the flower crown she wears
or if she is the daring kind
her hair will have silverdust
(proof of how close her words
got her to the moon)

if she smiles and laughs
and never shows pain
she is a poetess
because a poetess writes her hurt down
in free verses and half-finished sonnets
and she cries not on a boy's shoulder
but on paper where her tears are caught by
the swooping syllables and dauntless denotations
making her words come alive
(because where there is water, there is life)

if you meet a person and assume she is a poetess
check first her palms
(if she will show them to you)
they must show no sign of ink
(for a poetess is sometimes secretive)
no, you must be able to trace the constellations
along the creases of her palm
smell the rocket smoke
and see the nebulae dotting her flesh
where she managed to catch stars.
congratulate her
and maybe, she will lift the hem
of her long pearl blue skirt
and show you the wings on her ankles
and if you're lucky, she will tell you story
upon story
upon story.

if you are able to tell a poetess from a person
and you find her,
keep her.
keep her close to where
the drums of your soul beat from
keep her next to your dreams of sailing and pink seas
keep her in the mental list you keep
of people you will never, ever leave
(and she will keep you, too)

when she dies,
wrap her body in a white Ilocos blanket.
use no coffin.
let the earth swallow her up
(but don't let it swallow her words)
tend to the fire she left you
plan to set out on a quest
to look
for other word-weavers
because it is impossible to live without
these storytellers
then go back to her writing desk
touch the last thing she held
and look for a hole
a false drawer
a hidden key
anything that keeps.
and i promise you,
you will find
more poems.
and if you spread each page out on the floor
its letters will rearrange
and form your name
and point you to a poem hidden
in a pocket she sewed inside her coat
and the first line will read,


"how to tell if she is a poetess"
*******!
I yelled to the past
how could you do this to us?
then I read your history
dismantled your genocidal machine
refocused on my breathing
scolding past
rexamining the present
recreating the past
provoking the future
Michael W Noland Dec 2012
Its nefarious arrogance, that's scaring grandparents, but its in the air and I'm airing it, as we are seeing all the signs, but just staring at them.

Somehow there is safety as an arian, where we are safely alien to  Americans made in sapient sanitariums, shooting you first for glaring at em.

So what if i'm Dolling up my delirium for a serum to cure them all.

I am awol, from my call to duty, recreating movies, for serial groupies, suiting up to slither a delivery of a soothing sour piece.

I am stalling to clean the secretions from hostel sheets from the screamers being eaten, by Cretans, with beaten dogs at bay, staring blank at the fanfare from a cage.

Im burning white sage, under pages of poetry anointed by a stoical spleen, tuning out the dreams, of lesser beings, until complete.

A zoo within a zoo within a zoo, i barely know you now

Barely know how, to know you as a model citizen with baller trimmins, fixins, and a life with others wives, in the rough diamonds of the bluff, before the door opens just enough, to look through and confirm what you already knew.

Love is the stuff dreams are made of.

And through you..

Im through.

Pleading, to seed the need for repentance and with reduced sentences, bleeding the demands on stances of chance, in costly cants.

I am convulsing in the congruence, in which I am influenced, by my afflictions of depictions in my head

I might be addicted to the dread of previously said decor, in my adorable horror show afloat, deplorably denoting the nopes of logic, and the slippery slopes of khangi, that spring off me when i'm coughing on my green tea.

You are wrong to stop me in my dislogic, dodging the narcotic mocking of toxic strong arming, in proxy alarms, setting barns ablaze.

I praise the poetry pushed on me, dauntingly haunting me with savant like ambiance, from the have nots, having things as far as the eyes can see.

— The End —