the earth is curved - sure y’all knew that.  
but to get to the Northwest,
Interstate 84
ain’t le route plus directe

nope curve north to Ontario,
wave to Bex as I cross over
London and Toronto, also can’t recall
which poet from Rochester hails,
or did they shuffle off to Buffalo?

Crossing Erie, Huron, and Michigan Great Lakes all,
brings to mind
my mother’s birthplace,
Last of the Mohicans,
and the three years I did in the Cleveland Penitentiary,
where sun was illegal and baseball was a pretend play
of cowboys and Indians
but by god, it made me
the penitent fella I am today

Look skyward to Montreal,
yes, there he is, the Leo Priest,
the baffled king,
blessing this poetic meet ‘n greet trip
with a smiling unsurprising
hallelujah

Apparently some US citizens still can traverse O Canada,
even if one forgot their passports,
and are not PNG’s (Persons Not so GREAT)

over Minneapolis shed a tear for Diane,
a poet- gone-missing, and wonder if you reader come from
St. Cloud, Fargo or Duluth, Bismarck or Aberdeen,
surely they still speak poetic English there
in a twangy metering methodology  - well, message me asap

wow there really is a Saskatoon!

the pilot asks us to lean left in our seats
to help turn the plane
so we go to Portland and not to Vancouver...
me thinks he might be a touch Rockie Mountain High,
considering we are at 30 thousand something Imperial,
as he walks the main cabin with an oxygen mask and a
huuuuuge grin

see the distant Cascades
through a crack in the shuttered windows,
must be close to “the coast”
(as if, harrumph, there were but one)

ah, words in the clouds, ripe for the plucking
must be getting close to Oregon,
where poets grow on trees, woody words like ****,
and log-float poems down the Columbia to the sea

gonna drink me some poets
under the table cause this
trip I ain’t no driving and I am already
“flying” ‘n scribing and arriving
on a high tide and a good wind

“The love betweenness^ a mother and her son”
when it’s healthy strong and ancient,
like this, is for me, and it seems,
for you as well, almost a supernatural force in certain ways.
I know many other women who understand this.
It’s been probably the best surprise of my life.” Medusa

sometime, a poem commission needs a quiet time rumination,
a seventh inning time out to birth a perfect game,
a mental stretch mark,
did your know your commentation was a commandation,
write me up, punch my ticket and jump back into murky waters,
where a hu-man boy child only gifted me a tertiary imagination, comprehensive incomprehension

this look upon differing and different, parenting parts of me,
with the bright den mother’s sun gazing eyes of a new motherland,
promotion to an incessant guardianship,
an ordered mathematical centrality,^
a forever buck private’s uniform shoulder stripe pointing to mom

maternal rhymes with eternal

for children go off and go on about their lives,
occasionally glancing backwards,
but a mother’s eyes are an all encompassing, an all white canvass painting that the artist continue-ously slyly forward refreshes,
forever white repainted with each perpetual glancing thought added

this mother woke, sensing her make-male creation
is a gender separate separation,
a mystery needing learning, genes requiring a crisper adult education, a breast refilling is a sharing, eye to eye,  
****** to mouth, transferring a transformation,
between a new meaningful, an analogy of understanding that
swims in both directions, across a uniting natural division that unites,  better called an open boundary

daughters are different but the insanity~same,
a poem for another day

a supernatural surprise that occurs daily,
that you rightly appel it, as ancient  is correctly unsurprising
for the knowledge is in every cell recorded, time immemorial

apologies;
my insufficient words
can’t explain this
dotted line division,
only that, I too am a student driver mother,
my son, a teacher,  a natural scholar,
the understanding we shared is instantaneous and confusing,
as we go back and forth together,
travellers tween the dotted line spaces,
absorbing his milky ways,
informations that were not obviously ****** in me, or if they were,
awaited this suckling’s coronation and education, invitation


our differences are not a true division,
but a new manner of best embracing

which is why with good humor, our private joking, is that he
is my very own  nap-ster master,^^ we are an ordered centrality^

Oh, my stoic... whatever happened to you?

At 6'4 you could stare down anyone in the room with your stern dark eyes. People might take you for melancholy until you told one joke with your deadpan humor. But you were a little morose, in your own way... is it because you're a Cancer? Or were you searching for something that only your mind could find for you? I never knew. Stoic and enigmatic are **** near the same thing, after all.

You, with your hundred dollar jeans worn after your yuppie yoga classes. You might not have worn Converse sneakers or thick-rimmed glasses (thank God)... but don't think I didn't see those expensive flannel shirts from Nordstrom's in your closet. Is there such thing as a hipster fashionista...fashionisto? I remember you approved of my Lucky brand jeans. They were a gift. Hand-me-downs. I didn't tell you that.

How elegant that you would grab Moroccan mint tea when coffee was no longer your thing. Sure, you'd down so much wine after dinner I'd worry you an alcoholic... but caffeine? Something about not liking dependence, you said. I savored watching you drink tea when we'd work side-by-side in some of the city's independent coffee houses. You wouldn't be caught dead in a Starbucks.

I do hope you make your amazing Turkish coffee, if only for your next love. Did I say "love?" No... maybe your next tryst. That's more your speed. I still can't taste cardamom without thinking of you.

And oh, your guitar... you'd strum the chords as if you were solving a riddle: quiet, to yourself. Leave the simple "Wonderwall" for neophytes because you could play Django Reinhardt. Unsurprising that a person like you would have a music performance degree from New York University. Every note you played was expensive. And you knew it.

It wasn't just the way you strummed Spanish flamenco while I made us quinoa stuffed squash in your small kitchen. You had to play the cool music before it was cool--nothing so trite as Vampire Weekend or Kings of Leon; only the sweet whispers of Priscilla Ahn for your sensitive ears. I'd desperately try recalling obscure artists from my college days and try to keep up. Album Leaf? Mirah? I got a half smile mentioning Bela Fleck.

Do you remember, how we'd smoke hookah on your soft leather couch? I'd read your book aloud on tantric Buddhism as you'd light the candles. Once the room filled of cinnamon, we'd inhale exotic rose-flavored tobacco and watch documentaries imploring us to free Tibet.

Even your ******* name was exotic; foreign. My mother didn't like it, you know... she worried a man like you would always be patriarchal.

It didn't matter that your days were spent wondering if your law degree was worth it; because you had other dreams. Dreams of foreign service and pro bono nonprofits.

But somewhere in the planning of those dreams, we fell out of touch.

You ended it. I knew you would.

In the worst of my thoughts, I assumed you ended it to find a woman who was everything I'm not, but who I desperately wanted to be. She'd be an international human rights lawyer. A yoga teacher. She'd take yearly trips to hike the Grand Canyon and go on meditation retreats in Bhutan.

2 years later, I've moved on. I won't need 2 glasses of wine to feel comfortable in your presence (as I once did). I've found someone else; we're happily married. He'll never have your enigma, but he lets me in his world. It's not a world of Ghirardelli hot chocolate on winter nights, obscure records and hole-in-the-wall Vietnamese restaurants. But he encompasses everything I needed that you couldn't give: warmth.

I hope you're well, my stoic sophisticate.

Sunshine arises a delightful smile on my face
For the time of twilight compassionate and sweet
The darkness of the night escorts an exotic trance
Where music titillates and tingles the tolerant minds

We trip the light fantastic ceasing in the catnap room
Reach for dreams as hypnotic states are entered
To the other side of the tunnel
Sequences continue like trees do through seasons

At dawn I will laugh from the salty raindrops
That declared war to my skin
Clouds shooting never ending water molecules
Ocean flavoured waterfalls drip down my lips

When the sun is sublime
The world makes me laugh
For people are odd and reality is unsurprising
The clock ticks life away as it puts life in time

When birds abandon sweet lullabies
Sunflowers wind their heads away from the sun
And tranquil colours paint the abstract sky
My heart is in peace and butterflies tickle my tummy

I remember Rosalie, my grandmother
not a rose but a worn thorn among flowers
saying it was the doctor who killed him.
"It was no accident!" she screamed.
"They feed him poison because they
thought he was a head case."
I stood there, in the middle of
a perfect suburb that I didn't live in.
Clean sidewalks and quiet streets,
Jaybirds trading tunes with Hummingbirds.
My mom, saying nothing.

Building was something he loved
a bicycle pieced together from the
parts of a thousand different things,
a homemade coffee machine
that looked like a robot,
a model of the titanic as big as
a queen sized bed.

A great person once speculated that,
maybe
death comes to you in whatever form
you want it to, and I like to think
that it came to him in the form of
a giant Lego castle, opening up to let
him in and welcome him as their new king.
I hope his death came to him in Lego's,
because it came to me in the form of
a 2,000 foot plummet.

"Your dad died."
My mom said that two days
before Christmas break back in 2004
She'd just picked me up from school.
That day in P.E. I'd had hard rocks thrown at me
for being a minority
and my English teacher heckled me
because I supported gay marriage.
I'd spilled milk all over my uniform.
and I'd lost the money I've been saving for two months.
Now my mind went back to all of that,
as I thought I had misheard her.
I said nothing and she repeated it
"Your dad died."
I heard the sound of crackling in my ears
from my theory of hearing a mistake breaking.

the indifference on her face was
astonishing, but not unsurprising.
They'd be divorced alas
their past mistakes had sparked friction.
I had only seen him 6 times in
the last 6 years
and she was full of more hate
and false compassion than actual love.
then, and even now, I know
this isn't feeling like home.

The cause had been an accidental overdose.
Meds for his maniac, million mile thoughts,
and painkillers for his broken arms.
Mix'em and you've got
the worst kind of elixir.
The poisoned apple had been bitten,
and the curtain had fallen.
crying was reserved
for mental breakdowns,
when the weight of the two
vultures that sat on my shoulders
had grown to great
and my own mind had eaten too much of me.
And that is why I didn't shed
tears until much later,
the day i saw a 10-second video
recorded by him.
Reenacting the scene of a musical,
he held on to a random street pole
and spun and once done

said

"Hey, Jasmin. Hey, sweetheart"

Beep
end of recording.

How that single moment changed me
is difficult to describe
hearing those words,still
now ringing in my ears like a maddening tinnitus
I think made me realize that,
no matter what I'm
doing
saying
writing
Can't shun the world.
I can't seek refuge in the clouds,
never letting my feet touch the ground
I can't shut down when life turns into
a baseball hat and hits me over the head.
that moment , that day,
boot camp had turned into war.
My conscription had arrived
and instead of running, I took it.

now
I am crackled glass
that refuses to shatter
the reflections on the possibilities
of reaching that point where I don't hate.
Everything helped me carry on.
You can find beauty in the most terrible things;
you just have to squint.

Are we running
because you're afraid of me

or the starting pistol aimed at us both.

sometimes I stop at you
and look
with eyes of grateful wonder
your spirit still all shiny
yet you are still here with me

yes  some things aggravate
but why should they, if unsurprising?
they shouldn't really get to me
it's  your different way of singing

well-seasoned are my campaigns
i've loved and lost a few
i come with all my baggage
to be here with you

i think that I am blessed
and live by this adage
happy with a playful angel
not being unaccompanied baggage

Did I ever tell you that I miss you?
That now when the sun shines, I can't feel its warmth
Because I'm quite sure that you were the sun for me
My own bright star.

I could romanticise the constellations for you,
I really could.
But you of all people know that I was never a
Romantic.
Instead of love letters I'd give you stutters
And instead of flowers I'd give you a crane
Made from the napkin that I used to wipe pasta
Sauce from my face.

Unsurprising is the fact that you left without a word,
Leaving me here to write words about you and
Your arms when they held me,
Even for the briefest of moments.

Sometimes my brain tells my eyes that it was you
That passed the corner by our cafe.
But I'm still convinced that you're a dream and I'm
An insomniac not quite woken up,
Since my eyes are still half-closed.

You could be my Sirius or my Adhara,
Or even their flanks.
After all, Mirzam and Sirius were lovers-
Or siblings, I never did quite get that right.

Forgive me, gorgeous.
I lose my mind around you and talk about the
Stars as if they're your eyes.

That would indeed be the closest comparison,
After all.

As I wander in, the path ahead unfolding
I'm forced to reassess the playing cards I'm holding
Conquer and divide the uncertainties,
only to find they're alive, they've multiplied
And though my days wandering down the wrong path have ended
Its set for the aimless wandering to begin
Most days are unsurprising
I can see the sun arising
Illuminating the things I've learned thusfar
Though still leaving me with a tin can for a heart
It's like looking in the rear view mirror,
objects no more nearer, rather farther
And it's only getting harder seeing, believing that my intuition's not deceiving,
That the feeling that's haunting me
Isn't just because of where I want to be,
That what I see is what I see,
That I haven't shrouded my head in rose colored glasses,
Not clouding myself with whatever flight of fancy
Passes me from midnight to midmorning, warning me
That morning light dancing across my bed isn't the harbinger of another day of medioctiry,
But the bringer of the life I swear I see.  
That I haven't deluded myself concluding,
Reading signs alluding to some moment frozen inside my head subconsciously
That I swear has been there all my life,
That I'm fated like I thought, not condemned to waiting,
Not believing without reason, not deceiving,
But seeing the redeeming that I've seen,
Just believing what I've seen.  
Just believing.

(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 16, 2017)

Dear Adult Face,

This letter is to inform you that your employment is no longer needed. I am planning to make some structural changes area-wide and our affiliation will be terminated. During your tenure with me your performance metrics were clearly stated, as were the implications for deficient outcomes. Despite three prior notarized memos you have failed to address lagging issues and for quite some time you have failed to live up to my expectations. And as I feel I must put my best face forward, I will be refilling this position.

Yours in success,
Self-Improvement Initiatives

Dear “Brain,”

I would just like to calmly say to you—in response to your very unsurprising termination letter—you expect too much. Being your face wasn’t ever easy. In fact, you don’t know the crap I’ve had to put up with, every single day, representing you. Never a kind word from the boss. Never a massaging flattery. This face you’re looking at, Buddy—I am part of history. I’m the real deal. So pardon me for living—but you can’t just get rid of a face so easily. I’m not a piece of meat you can toss out with the trash. I’m a survivor. I’m more you than you are, you cavalier bag of bones. This isn’t the end of it. I’ll be seeing you again again someday before we leave this earth. If you’re lucky. You toxic ****.

Wishing you a punch in the new face,
Original Face

we slide through times
of nothing really
they’re delicate reminders –
i grew up learning cycles
with outlines hard to break

we vanish further –
unsurprising –
intentions fading footnotes
without the strength to leap
we’re shapeless
intermissions

the quiet ones for worse
caressed yet empty-handed
and waiting
with no end in sight

against the motto: write little; do it well -
sure, let's fill galoshes with frogs and slugs and
seawater - fry a pancake, eat a leotard -
play chess using our toes -
do all those things, but never get a brimful's
worth of insight into waterfalls
or volcanoes interrupting the goody-two-shoes'
lives in the market sq. of Pompeii -
let's do that, let's do that, write sparingly,
let's not gesticulate at the void like
what's missing at the para-Olympics -
two blind men boxing, lights out already?
throw a torso into the swimming pool!
misery... and the funniest comedy - you
could almost get tired, but it doesn't tire,
you were expecting a mile long walk -
now you're running a ******* marathon,
hyphen (or the hanging pause) -
just yesterday, a minor virus on word,
font turned into Vendetta from Times New Roman,
and this ******... ¶... everywhere, each line
a new paragraph, who's he?
Mr. ¶ or Mr. Pillow-Crow - piquant like
a radish in pickle acidity - before
writing the invoice a good 10 minutes trying
to make Mr. ¶ disappear - long ago it was
like so:

¶xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxx­xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx­xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx­xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx­xxxxxxxxx
¶xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
**­xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxx­xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx­xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx­xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

but it changed into

        xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxx­xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx­xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx­xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx­xxxxxxxxxx
         xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx­xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx­xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx­xxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx­

(cheaper print charges, could allow more blank space)

nah, forget writing well but very little,
learn the trombone or the viola instead,
write a lot, write a lot to make mistakes,
become Jack the Decathlon inquirer,
all the trades, master at none,
splash in a rainbow, some thunder and
some sleet, give it a proper variation juggle
and wait for the chuckles brigade -
now instead of writing about reading
we're writing about giving advice,
i'm not, pronoun usage can be misleading,
i'm giving myself self-assurance,
yeah, in a car accident, whiplash,
i'm gonna bank about 2 thousand quid in insurance,
and i'm working it out from the citation
of Alexander Dumas, Athos - "the best advice
is to not give advice", and boy did that morph
from " " into ' ', i.e. my own -
the best plan is to not have a plan -
while they write their systematisation and
skeletal fiction with unsurprising anatomies
i'm writing and i'm like... huh? i didn't plan this!
well, no shame in that, no beetroot face,
unlike squeezing a wet **** on a rush-hour
commute home on the tube -
write a lot, so you can write ****** pieces,
write a lot, so you can become a simile of a missing person,
write a lot, so they don't find you (no paranoia intended,
not really about some obscure government organisation),
write a lot, just so you can write mistakes,
don't become a prim-bow-tie perfectionist.

I received my official
(unofficial)
unsolicited
free of charge
diagnosis today. From a stranger
on a bus.
Seems I lack balance,
everything in perfect portions
salty and sweet
wet and dry
meaning and irreverence
acceptable and perverse
a place of equilibrium and symmetry.
I find this state - unsurprising
Painfully predictable
transitory
a beacon for chaos.
Disorder only exists
against the theoretical backdrop
of order.
Nature unrepentantly marches towards
disorder
chaos
unbalance
asymmetry.
To hold balance, one must
shut the mind - close the soul
to new ideas and experiences.
Lest the delicate state
of transition be undone. Completed.
Balance is just a wobbling bubble.
driven aimlessly by currents of air.
Until the sphere inevitably - pops.
Entropy prevails,
We already knew it would.
always has,
always will.
Chaos snacks on tasty morsels of order.
Like little hor de' ourves
served on a shiny tray
at an impromptu soiree
universally,
eternally.

In my more misunderstood days, I once read up on how to speak to the dead
The results were unsurprising; an article on Necromancy
I read on and on, it went quite hard to my head
It went quite hard to my memories

Upon that aloof, summer day of boredom in which I was first clued in
To the biggest secret kept away by grief and adulthood
I read why unspeakable corpse magic is deemed a sin
And why such things are sealed away with intentions good
But ultimately useless
Despite the misinformation’s efforts proven fruitless

We do not reach out; we do not speak to the dead
The dead reach out, they speak to us

They reach out to us
In dreams, in books, in stories
With much fuss,
They rise from the crypts and earth
And they whisper sweet glories
In their reeking, putrid breath exhaled from rotten lips
The truth slips, the future slips

For the dead, they can see the future
For the dead, they have lived the past
Necromancy, romantic for the living longing for the dead; suture
Of misinformation; the ideation that the living cast
A spell upon the dead, raising them for past loves and lives
When in truth, they are merely here to set free our eyes from our lies

The dead do not want us the living to die
For they know how horrendous fate can be
With screeching lungs rotting, they shriek of how the end is nigh
And share wisdom mostly ghastly
Willingly, they impart visions of future from bygone past
As, they - the ungrateful dead - lusting for life to return
With one last breath,
I remind you so you may learn
So, you may pass on from your own misunderstood days:
That which colours our miserable, romantic haze...

We do not talk to the dead
That is why we believe it bad luck to speak ill of our passed-on people
The dead talk to us and they talk to us of the future
That is the truth of Necromancy
That is the truth that you will now see
Beyond misconstrued myth, it is not the raising of the dead for love,
But for knowledge.

An exponential explosion
losing potency
the orb of energy gasps
with its last act, fortissimo
the universal pattern emerges
unsurprising, yet ambiguous
arms as fluid as
the harp of Orpheus
hands of grace
caress the faces that appear
a clinging flitter
dwindling into the abyss
with your passing
the beautiful cycle continues

we plant white lies like seeds in the fertile soil of stories—
perfect as a magic bean, we’ll climb skyscraper-high
to a world of gods and giants.

when reality sets in, cold as a vise and just as tight,
it’s unsurprising we cling desperately to soothing fictions.
given enough hope and rope, we’ll tie our own noose.

we’ve memorized the plot-lines,
can trace the hero’s journey
as the veins in our hands.

in fairy tales and holy texts, they say,
“love will save the day.” but i have never met
someone who can take the pain away.

I.
Some of the leaves are still green
crawling between cold alleys in morning
thin wind stringing them along
carrying them towards December

II.
The trees are decorated too early
every year is an unsurprising imitation
but still you are warm inside with your family
making up for the colours you lack outside

III.
Cocktail dresses flash like little winks
hints of resolve so ready to be broken
the gold flows like goddess ichor and smiles
kissing like lovers who will leave tomorrow
loving as if we aren't

IV.
Love is in the air like chlorine gas
and no one is the wiser for it
the streets are still covered in old, dark snow
but we're too tired of it to notice
it's only a few sleeps until spring.

I continue to let the days fade
Because this game that we play
Only continues with the sun
The fighting is always worth the fun.

But games only last so long
I keep saying there's only so much that can go wrong
It should be the point of unsurprising
Everything we fight about the past re-rising

With every argument I tend to think
That soon our fights will begin to shrink
But wrong I am, and wrong I will be
Until our trust is brought back,
I hope we find that ability

"no champagne,
all problems", huh?

makeup couldn't hide
that ugly personality
and callow disposition

all crop tops, glitter dresses,
ripped jeans, white vans
sate your vanity through
instagram platitudes
and stepping on others

xoxo, you played scalpel tic-tac-toe
on his unbroken heart
oh but the next game, my dear, the next game?
will be on my time
with pieces of your body
being the ****** betting chips

unsurprising that manipulating someone
made you feel better about your worthless
manic pixie dream girl self

skinny jeans aren't skinny enough
to fix your bulimic soul
you've walked the tightrope far too long
my glittered sequined circus star
and when you fall
(and you ******* will),
this crowd will afford you no sympathy
only laughter and a sarcastic spotlight
on your mascara pity party

i hope you get an eating disorder.

I’ve grown numb
And accustomed to
Whatever that was deemed
Extraordinary.
Does this make me dull
If the complexity of the universe
Has become
Ordinary?
No longer a stranger or an enigma
To my inner experience?
Does this make me boring
If I no longer find joy
In discovering something
Unsurprising?
For when you
Constantly dwell and live
In the unknown
Is it really a big deal
To find something unexpected?
I mean... what did you expect anyway?

I am more interested in human interactions
In the consequences
And the causes
Of my actions
And I have internalised the outside world
And the outside wonders and
Discipline and harmony
Has become my quest and
My childish discovery.

Maybe you’ll come across this someday
A blur of futile conversation that made
no sense at the time but happened nonetheless
neither one of our sparrow mouths
being able to express the why or
wherewithal that made us say or do
what we did at the time with convincing clarity
just two people hammering with crooked communication
tools cranking on each other’s Jack in the Box wire coils
with insufficient answers until some
unsurprising result concluded us
Maybe you’ll come across this someday
when you have children of your own and
are writing poems about all the things
you wished you’d thought of to say
but couldn’t because they won’t want to hear them

Written by Sara Fielder © May 2015

one day, you feel like the world is finally in harmony with your soul, the next, all you want to do is crawl in bed, hide away from everyone else. it all suddenly feels like you are on your own again, your mind is drained from all the thoughts crashing rapidly through the walls of your brain. no one, not even yourself can understand what's happening. you feel so lost meanwhile the world continues to revolve around you, but you are there, feeling so numb and not knowing what went so wrong. the unsurprising knowledge that you are disconnected from everybody else; detached.

When you stand balancing over me,
I do not see him.
I do not feel him,
Miss him, I—

I remember all of them.
Every boy I have ever given my body up to,
Whether it was only at the sight of the crevice that pillows my words,
Or the entirety of my existence.
I let them have it.

Let them crawl atop the tethered grass that’s been ripped out of its place
And make a bed.
Let them make a bed even though it does not comfort me.
Even though that isn’t even where I sleep.
I let them dream,
Let them dream until they tell me that is exactly what it feels like—
Like a dream because it all must be a movie,
Because every movement is so translucent,
So unsurprising and superficial.

So expected and too perfect,
Too familiar because I’ve seen it so many times over,
When you stand balancing over me,
I do not see him.
I do not feel him,
Miss him, I—

I remember all of them.
Every boy I have ever given my body up to,
Whether it was only at the sight of the crevice that pillows my words,
Or the entirety of my existence.
I let them have it.

When you stand over me I feel powerless.

Powerless because I am not in control of my mind, because my thoughts are not mindful of everything I’ve been through.
They try to forget but they cannot erase what has happened to me,
Cannot erase the red and blue that surrounds my eyes because I rub too hard,
I think too hard,
Because it isn’t that I don’t want you to,
It is that I don’t want to be the one to give it to you,
And suddenly I remember all of them.
Every boy I have ever given my body up to,
Whether it was only at the sight of the crevice that pillows my words,
Or the entirety of my existence.
I let them have it—

The resolution of an empty bed that I refuse to lay in when it’s warm,
And even if it’s mine,
My resolution is that for you I have nothing more than empty promises.

I promise you can fill my space when it gets cold.

i just can't get rid of the moths...
5 for one bedroom
and... it's hardly an enterprise
in cubisms' revisionism...
daddy larva -
should i leave some
cotton for these poor
delights...
                  am i riddled with
a western "world" exhausted...
like... the pops of no new
genius?
  like polyphony was never
at play:
   when the rigour of man
made it: less of an affair that might
suggest green tea
and the superfluous
fling of a pancake at
a constellation of: nowhere...
  a crucial time for messiahs
and for caricatures...
magicians and iranian baklava bite-sized
retreats...
  not necessarily iranian:
could be lebanese!
       it's not like this grand past,
this grand history...
this inheritance tax on the mind
was to be ever borrowed from
a concentration on the trade
routes surrounding the baltic sea...
i... inherited... nada! nothing!
i acquired english when i should
have given inclination
to tsarina cyrillic and minor hector
mandarin...
       it's so unsurprising, though...
to catch up on the bbc radio 3 adventure...
to reach a platitude of i.q.:
i finally! finally!
fathomed the point of an english
soap opera... eastenders...
i didn't find an i.q. focus to mind...
a continuum perhaps...
but it has and always has been
just... ever so tiresome...
to compensate i.q. -
or to overstate it...
             it's not that i found soap opera
dumb... but after waking up
to bbc radio 3... i knew i was missing
a narrative: an assurance...
a soap opera is an assurance...
however banal the pursuit of harlequin
is...
it's there: a persistent brick upon brick:
wall!
      well... it's one compliment to hear:
that children "like" you...
that dogs or cats like you...
but... for god's sake... moths?!
i am not quiet assured a status in alignment
with a buffalo bill...

so much for nabokov
and the whole ****** and the entomologist /
etymologist...
catch them with what?
my bright oozing bulb of a phosphorescent
appreciation for the punchy cliche
goldberg variations?

to be honestly endeared by a dog...
to be made forthcoming
by a quizzical attention span of cats toying
with poker...
      but to make endearing
inquiries in the realm of insects...
who... fathomed... the flies...
a mythological man with an authentic
given name that came to be
the realisation of the myth of Beelzebub...

well... so much for sharing...
on the crux of a noun... like any other...
be it a moth... motte... ćma...
or a butterfly... schmetterling... MOTYL...
globalisation and...
well... no real etymological sensibility....

not even in sharpnel wording:
    in: w,
               im...
                        z: with, mit
o: about, um...
                      od: from, von...
so much for a shared purpose a sharing
of tattoos and ******* blisters...
like old age is a crease...
and youth an argument...
best invested in pickles...

                the ordeal of the night sky...
while having to grind a gripping
reality of something profoundly
stupid that it cannot be anything beside
stupid...
         a concept of a solitary pine...
when a pine as solitary is
impossible to fathom:
or a birch thus solo...

        an oak: while the adventures
of birches have come to their
natural advent of regrets...
           and this solo coffin shadow come
noon stans procrastinating a
show of shadows borrowed from
an overflow of the Styx...

Thames: a river... with... no authentic
tide: from mountains toward
the sea...
no... the Thames is an inauthentic river...
if it's a river to begin with...
a sea knows a concern for tide...
but a river?
a river should know no mirror
bogus "now" of a tide...
the Thames is like the Bermuda Delta...
an irrational high-rise ****...
enough to pluck one's eyes
out for...
   or don a sheikh hanky panky teasing
that 19th century morbid whitey
of celestial: wool! my eyes! needs! woolz!

some banal Clarice chasing a hunchback
Circe with a Charon towing...
impossible gravity of walking a stupendous
walk of arrogance:
this two-feet-tow...
my bucktooth and arithmetic:
theatre von der nacht:
lepper zeppelin -
   authentically lisping minor details:
an accent "here" or... "dasein"...

teatr nocy...
               ćma i jej obcy:
a moth and her other...
              like some proto-digestion
of custard and borrowed glue...
me left to my own: deus "ex" machina /
**** in machina device-works...
a concept of switzerland came
with both the tickling time-keeper
of a form of clock and some lesser
known 20th century protagonist
by the name of Young...

                  persuasions please!
i can leave my i.q. on the diatribe for
the persistent allowance
of the desired... "englishness" of:
queue...
            bread the brittle futurism of
a sanctity of bread:
beside this "thing" dubbed irish...
and gnats and breadcrumbs...
itches furthest from the last
encompassing loiter...
of a truth salvaged via
a tartare steak...
a kogiel-mogiel...

                  a bread-owned soaking
up of a spilling yoke:
like it's a french... "thing"...
teasing an affair of a wig...
best: warsaw will forever be...
an interlude of:
the concept question from
london toward tokyo...
i.e.: why can't we have nice things...
answer?
we... ahem... never had them...
we tried... vaginal ****-wit
from Brandenburg or that ****-****-wit
from lady muscovite...

here's to samson-frankenstein's monster...
the furore surrounding
the faroe islands...
the 20 thousand(s) composition
of the shetland:
united schkootland repose:
'aggis neeps 'n' tatties!

enough salz undz pfeffer
und we have haz ours...
hinderburg-esque hogmanay!
of the british:
not lived among the vilsh...
or the scuttling furore of the:
'igh 'anders...
          
cutie pie pork chop
worth a *******'s towing:
that last vanguard of / if:
              "too few"...

no... no good lending an ear
to listen to "shared": charred...
etymology of greek or russian...
London's desperate plight:
*** ordeal that never has to happen...

there have to be concerns
for calling it a new 9am...
just because it just so happens
in Edinburgh...
  there's the chopping of wood...
there's the ordeal of castratos
attired in niqabs...
the harems of the ottomans are
still a fetish for imagery best
sourced in Vienna...

            to worship the night:
is to find enough of day...
as sacrificial:
as banal... as enough...
to think with an exhaustion
of compensation:
     it's not that i dare not: dream...
but it's not enough to dream
to begin with...
i will harvest this eternal night...
to eat away at the day's
mediocre...
              mirror mirror...
             your wish for status lake...
i see no question-worthiness
in either sea or river...
how is it that i write
to fathomable formal linguo?
                  mirror in the shadow...
mirror in the lake...
murky time of river
and the hiding grey of the sea(s)...
come tide come swelling of
hinterland ambitions...
this little norse retreat of my
last perspective...
            perhaps i just want
to die a death pronounced by
having to don an agitating
pair of shoes: that demand...
towing a scenic incredulity of
a miser's mile?!

         how's that? roundabout
faroe isles! an itch of spreading butter
on... toasted bread:
notably a sourdough crusted:
new holborn sort of "adventure"...
no.. nothing new...
here's to drinking some more
while making it simultaneously
well-reserved ast having
the same inviting prospect of...
looking for:
a loot of a shakespeare and a full-stop.

On a day like today
Love can really happen
Waiting for the family to get ready
It really worked out nicely today,
didn’t it? So nicely. Full of massages and good cheer. Prana sales and laughter all around. My dear friend, thanks for being in my life and teaching me so many things. My dear parents, thank you for easing me into the person I am today and thank you for being so loving and giving and open. I learn from everyone, and in turn, they learn from me. Life is beautifully grand.
On a day like today, Love can really happen. Love can blossom in ways unexpected unsurprising and flavorful in its reverence.