I saw two butterflies in the alley,
'Twixt the new well and the orange tree;
With the shade of the tree they seemed to dally
To tease the sun who, without them cannot be.
I overheard two blackbirds when I looked up:
“Why can’t we tease the shade like the butterflies?”
Said the maid-bird, pretending an orange to sup.

And before she could even realize,
The blackbird spread his long wing over her thighs.
In the throbbing blue flakes of the sky she cries
& she cries & she moans & she moans & she cries -
Unlike a Buddhist.

It is a wonderful thing, when the willows doze,
at the stillness of a winter breeze.
The season settles, and it never goes,
with the passing dues at ease.

The heart so stale... the dreams so pale...
But she would dance a-still!

She would turn the world around,
and she would would bring the walls to sound,
and she... would run the waters still!

The stalemate arises, all so subtle,
and the wind in willows, hurdled in muddle,
would fly no more, until...
She sings to be, she sings to me...
And then she would cry, and I shall cease to be!

A.r. Bazian
*January 1st, 2017

one.

    When she cries herself to sleep
    six out of seven nights a week you must
    say nothing. You must simply take
    her in your arms and kiss her gaunt,
    pale cheeks and wait for her to
    slumber at the sound of your heart.

two.

    On the days where she wishes she
    were part of the stars, tell her
    no. Tell her that there are too many
    lights in the sky and that just one
    would be forgotten the moment you looked
    away from it. Tell her that she is perfect
    the way she is: completely human.

three.

     Don't let her think about the scars
     that no one but her can see. If she
     says "I think I'm broken" smile like you
     know a secret and say, "No, you're mending."
     But do not be the one to fix her - no, she
     must be the one to do it herself, and you
     merely are there to quietly encourage her.

four.

     Read her poetry (even if you are
     not a poet), the kind that uses
     flowery words and compares girls to
     the moon; the kind that you will
     rewrite for her. Make her a warrior.
     Make her a goddess with eyes like a
     wolf's and a smile like a tiger's.

five.

     Laugh with her the first thing in
     the morning and the last thing before
     you fall asleep. Tell her cheap puns
     that you've been thinking of for weeks.
     And when she smiles - the type of smile
     that could bring you to your knees if
     you aren't careful - know that for the
     moment, she's yours. She is whole.

six.

    Love her. Love her like a fish loves
    the sea or a bird loves the sky. Love
    her in the way that your heart feels like
    it's going to burst at any moment every
    time it beats. Love her skin and the way
    it feels against your own, soft and warm
    and utterly flawless. Love her for the way
    her voice trembles when she can't keep it
    together anymore and love her when she
    holds onto you as if you were the only
    thing that was keeping her alive.

seven.**

     Love her, because some days she just can't do it herself.

"To hold is to bear the dream a moment, and meanwhile toil still unto the downfall -Regardless, together... However folly and glad!

To die, as all men have and will.
But to having lived?! this is so far as to you that you may have only your dreams to suffice the thought of life with another!
A Life for another!
A dream, merely, to make the sweetest passing onto oblivion, ever sweeter Still!

Having been dying for the long while rather than living, such thought that the brave lot have taken unto with zeal and devotion, is as foolish as is noble.

As meaningless as it is divine.

And as solemn as it is rejoiced!
Still, after all, a dream."

A.r. Bazian
*May 18th, 2014

She [Bee] said to me:
but i want to know more...you lift my madness, to a completely different level.
you're the turn... THE turn, of a double ended sword!
you dont make sense, and i lose sense!
if you cease to be clear, you're taking words away from me...
you unrest me...

I [A.r.]replied:
But I am the curb, where the world pauses for safe passage... And it passes. That is all I am as all I know regresses, and I make sense still.
To the world, and myself, I made sense, still, and motionless, while the universe twirls around me for-to this whirlpool-like endlessness in where I am. And the world passes.
Death lingers, the memories too -perhaps... and the sense of necessity which compells that I remain in this unfamiliarity, where I stand -still, midst the passions and dispassions of our kind all the same, more or less confined in our daily desperation.
And we would remain. It is this sense of overlapse that by the end of the day, I find that the world is cruel, and that in truth I want no part in it. And I do what I did in school -for some time, compelled: I learn, cope, and burn to the ashes out of which I'd wake to the visiting beams of distanced hope... Hope that I and my fellow friend should come forth free! Only realise that I have yet another day to survive.
So passing the bend I'd glimpse at my aging on the turn of the sword you speak of, and I know nothing about or of myself this day. Nor of this beauty that pauses next to our safe crossing, or of the young dreamer whose vision -like mine, is reformed one day by the other.
And I insist to keep this distance, knowing that once these necessities for modern day survival become one's priorities, they consume you, and assume you. So I watch over myself become this silent street pole to resume my "functioning cog in some great machinery serving something beyond me".
And I know the truth behind the tragedy... my pole-ness I'm struck put for the safeguard of my passions that I accumulate and savour for my implosion. And they pass, like everything else, but we remain where we are -assuming there is someone pole-still too along the sword-line, or perhaps tipping it, with the same still fury that is fixated for this great urban vertigo.
And we'd pace, and pace, and keep still to make sure we'd find ourselves on the round, to remind ourselves of our withering dreams, and our collective sense of existence as human which is promised to ultimately expand unto the oneness of our ever varying uniqueness. Not as visitors, not as observers, but as citizens -women and men, of this lasting defloration of our simulated existence; the world. Free.
Death is -and in order too, an elaboration unto the unknown; and while we remain, decaying and rusting inside out, we ind ourselves neither dead nor free. I feel and know of the agony of fellow oppressed men. And I know of the pains and of abandonment. And I know too that the world will on spin with or without us. Our precious autobiographies becomes a mutilation along of their own becoming. And I pitty them.
But I pass myself poled into the concrete grasp of the ever benign to remind myself of my friends' struggles and agonies, that for them, I will stand still, and walk along to fortify my stillness, and for mine own, fearing that if I step out of the reach towards me I will be crushed into the very pavement were I stood.
So, I'm pinned motionful, neither myself or another, but both, and none. A world passes processed, observed, and I along with it, while  the other remainders I knew or knew of would fade into utter darkness or oblivion... But I'm still, being; amongst those who pass and those who pass on.
And I'm enraged, inblazed by life devaluating day by day, and I pray, for this frey of madness to regress, but alas it doesn't.
And I'm sad. All from point distance from my passing, looking at brassing steelpole monuments, decaying slowly. Is that sane enough for your fancy?

A.r. Bazian (Ft. Bianca H.)
*Oct 30th, 2013

"And with the Midnight feathers,
brushing against the great walls of red seas and gloom,
come braided sonnets unto the world,
to praise the passing of our dreams.
in this pacing passion... this worldly compassion,
every single thing, is exactly how and what it seems!

the morning blush,
the midnight rush,
the world spinning still... 
onto the minutes of vast extent,
wards the racing years of lives ill-spent!
hours passing curved, and heavy,
like leaping light, cold... unbent!

the dawning widows, like leaves they went,
into their slumbers, cast and sent...
off with this poem,
my weary deed...
and onto the winds of northern speed.
to where the blue vastness, starlit by day,
nights and days over,
to not by this day!

but like peoples' due, to dates unsaid,
to promises few, like words in wed,
in rites of sea, or gapes of red...
writ solemn in black, to fears we dread...
and onto the pits of mighty oblivion...
for she will be alone, too!"

A.r. Bazian
*Apr 15th, 2013

And a woman who held a babe against her ***** said, "Speak to us of
Children."

And he said:

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts.

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit,
not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you
with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;

For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that
is stable.