I have been swimming in this lonely ocean of yours for way to long,
And now it's time for me to taste a new kind of salt.
For I should be more than a blimp on your sonar.
So keep testing those waters with timid toes,
Because although there's plenty more fish in the sea,
You'll never find a mermaid like me.

You're in a never ending cycle of telling yourself you are never quite good enough, asking "What am I lacking?" What a trick you play on yourself, and it seems you have lost yourself while you question your worth.
Come to me, let me help build you up. Feel me right here as I put your insecurities to sleep. Let me remind you even at your worst that you will always be enough, remind you that you are deserving, and that you are worthy, until you believe it for yourself.

-Rebecca Cerrone

Hypocritical catastrophe,
Irreverent duplicity,
Luminarial ludiocrity,
Nonsensical impetuosity.

Flippy floppy, slippy sloppy,
Blamey gamey, shame, shame, shame.

Constitutional incongruity,
Jesuitical dictatoriality,
Oxymoronic partiality,
Nepotistic surreality.

Materialistic abnormality,
Monetaristic conviviality ,
Ritualistic mediocrity,
Histrionic philanthropy.

Gotten rotten, misbegotten
Seldom truthful, lie, lie, lie.

Misdirection genuflection,
Malefaction justification,
Incarceration implication,
Resignation profliferation.

Prevarication reiteration,
Damnation indication,
Malefaction direction
Undetected discretion.

Flippy floppy, slippy sloppy,
Blamey gamey, shame, shame, shame.
Gotten rotten, misbegotten
Seldom truthful, lie, lie, lie.

Flippy Hippie, what the heck is your trip?
We get things going fine and then you flip.
Your political lips are criminally zipped.
Because you are obviously losing your grip.
Tripping hipster, what were you thinking?
The ship of state is so obviously sinking.
Are you diddling with your own erections?
And too good to vote in our elections?

Hippy dippy, Flippy Hippie, you’re mental.
Apparently your adulthood is experimental.
You’re just tourists in your own realities
Blathering a lot of brainless banalities.
You make excuses not to use your brains.
You’re making choices you can’t explain.
To you all politics is just a boring game.
When we ask, you say they’re all the same.

Flippy Hippie, you make not much sense at all.
You’ll die too when they stand us to a wall.
We know you quit thinking in elementary school
And that explains why you’re such a big fool.
We understand the reason you are so dim
You don’t see it’s us or them. You’re not them.
Later, if they get their way and the US is dead
Just remember a lot is because you stayed in bed.

The Psychedelic Deli
Is sometimes in an alley.
It can seem accidental,
Some of it experimental
All completely experiential.

There is no shop, no store
You must have a friend
If you really want to score.
Everyone is different
Under new management.

Let me make this clear;
Anything you want,
Everything you want is here.
From champagne to beer
All the time, every year.

You can send out for *****
And have nothing to lose.
Only just all your money,
But you may think that funny
Once you’re getting chummy.

So mostly bring your own
And don’t drink it alone
Because it’s best to share
That’s true just everywhere
If you have the grace to care.

The Psychedelic Deli
May sell wares ***** nilly
They’ll charge you indecently
As stuff they made just recently
Must be paid for immediately.

They have this and that
And if you pass the hat
You’ll go on a trip with no ticket.
You surely don’t want to miss it.
But there’s always a bit more to it.

So, you better be up to it
Because many more blew it
And ended like a fish on their belly,
Their minds about as stable as jelly,
Shopping at the Psychedelic Deli.

A song of mad men, many bad men
Sung to sad men, to remind or warn
That trusting can be dangerous to you
Because, sometimes, Goliath gets shorn.
We have to pay attention to our heroes
If they are zeroes we can be misled
Thinking they were something good
With nothing good inside their heads.

It’s amazing how many villains exist
And are powerless to resist being bad;
Who’ll rob  you and cheat you, and love
To really enjoy the pain you have had.
They roam like packs of wolves prowl
And will tear you up if they only could.
So, it’s good to remain ever vigilant
And not be the baby lost in the wood.

They’ve taken over our government
Despite what the mad men have said
And with their total lack of sentiment
It’s like the night of the living dead.
The people who could stop it did not.
It happened quick, while we were asleep
Now we’re stuck with what they’ve brought
We fallen  from the top of the moral heap.

So this is a sad song, of what once was
And what it seems it’s soon to become.
Many citizens were rebels without a cause
And most of those were terminally dumb.
They believed change would be good
When we were doing especially well
Now those deluded heads of solid wood
Have created for us all a scary kind of hell.

I was doing the dishes
And I was thinking of you,
Of back when our love
Was so shiny and new.
I was thinking of how we
Found fun in simple things
Like scrubbing and cleaning
The stubborn bathtub ring.

I was take the trash out
And I was thinking of you
And the looks you’d get
With the things that you’d do;
That beautiful smile when
The meal turns out right
And the bewitching smile
When you’d turn out the light.

I was folding the laundry
And I was thinking of you
Separating the whites from
Red, green, yellow and blue.
I remember you laughing
When I did them all at once,
And that you worked so hard
Not to call me a big dunce.

I was bringing home groceries
And I was thinking of you.
And missing you terribly
And that is so sadly new.
You were always here for us
And now you are gone.
Now I don’t have your love
That I can lean upon.

She sits in her room
Beside her lonely loom
And dreams of times of grace
And suitors come to her place.
But no one has come here,
So she sings the songs
Of being alone too long.

None will come so near
That she needs to flirt.
Instead she gathers her hurt
And weaves it into tapestries
Of such stunning majesty
That only she will applaud,
Because there is no god
That will transform her to be
A lady of famous beauty.

She never has known why
She was born forbiddingly shy.
She fears to speak and convince,
Always she is prone to wince
Instead of smiling and inviting.
Her lovely pale face whitening
With dread she cannot speak
And that makes her feel weak.

The sun rises and it sets
She has nothing to regret
Or to remember gladly
But sadly she has grown
Comfortable being alone
Since  the pain is remembered
And she never delivered
From the roaring noise
Of life without love’s joys.

the ocean is the color of your bluest eyes
the sand is as fine and soft as it is when i run my fingers through your hair
the sun sears my skin in the same way as your lips do when they touch my body
the island of maui is a paradise i used to equal to laying in your arms
now i realize comparing you to paradise was me caught in my own daydream
there can be only one paradise
and sadly that is not you

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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