it's so easy to talk about loneliness and pain
to romanticize all of these things that i've been feeling
and throw in rhymes here and there

but how do i get myself out of this mess?
how do you fall in love when you're so uncomfortable
with yourself?

it's 5 am again and all i can think of is
how quickly my fingers hover over the keys
and there are people rising but
i still cannot sleep

i am engulfed in sad songs and books and the quotes
in those books that tell me more about myself
than i ever can

(sometimes i wish some dead poets were my friends
and then sometimes i wish i could put on a mask
and masquerade around as another person,
as a stranger even to myself
i feel like i'd be more comfortable then)

tell me, what does it feel like to fall in love?
does it feel like electricity crawling up and down your spine,
like warm fuzzy feelings swirling in your stomach like wine?
and does it last? or do people just pretend?
will i ever find love? or will i be all alone in the end?

does up what seems a little clumsily down snow?

White and
White and
White and

everywhere, perhaps?seems snow

seems no

edge or fay

where might Spring's lewd fingers fit?
lewd fingers fit fat
lewd fingers find fickle fair frayed a bit fay
where its fingers can fit?

(the sun)
whose thick fingers
between the quick thighs of night

       can. fit in)just Spring

**** do not cover yourself
your arms across
your ******* are so
nice and do not
cover them across your
body is the curving
hush of perfectly
winsome beauty(not skinny
or exactly straight

but precisely wonderful;

concisely amorous to touch).

I.

do you know?

have you been?

have you been by the slant ways behind the hills there is store and have you
wandered much in it?

have you gone down the little rows and counted them?

have you looked into the tired eyes of weary mothers and fathers?

have you seen in them your mother and your father?

have you kissed with them your thoughts and wondered on the small
mystery of their being?

have you wondered at them looking at you(and what do they see)?

have you thought to reach out and touch them and ask them how they are doing?

have you wanted to look in their eyes and tell them that you know they are tired but there isn't much left to go and you know how hard it is and that you are sorry and that they are as soft and as infinite as your own self?

have you dreamt much?

have you gone out from the store, into the nice mouth of the city, and have you seen the same tired look in the same weary bodies?



II.

where have you been in the Summer?

have you been by the bank of a river?

did you let your toes in it, and did it feel so cool as to rush across them you suddenly want to pull them out?

and how did it feel, the first time you were kissed, and sweaty between the arms, you pushed in even tighter?

have you laughed much?

when was the last time you laughed?

did it feel as if it was the last time?

did you watch your laughter curl away into nothing like a vine of fume from a smoker's mouth?

did you watch it curl away and wonder if you might be lucky enough to laugh tomorrow(and did you wonder how many more days and nights you might be lucky enough to not laugh)?

did you cry after you laughed?

did you look down at your hands and marvel at the intricacies of your bone and flesh?

did you ever hold them up against the night sky and marvel at the tinniness of their work? (have you held them up before your face in a dark room and wondered what it would be like to not see?)




III.

have you struggled much?

do you ache, and are you sore?

do your muscles hurt?

do you feel heavy with obligation?

do you feel tired from living, and with life?

from where does your pain begin, and where does it end?

did it begin in the hands of someone you thought you loved? did it end in the empty stare of someone you thought loved you?

have you hurt anyone?

how did you feel?

did you tell yourself it was ok?

what did you tell yourself?

who were they?

why did you hurt them?


IV.

are you awake?

are you reading this?

will you wake up tomorrow (and every tomorrow until you don't), and will you remember this moment?

will it fade into nothing?

will you recall it suddenly in some still moment?

will you look out the window of your car on your way to work and catch the sliver of some stranger's face in the quick of your mind?

will you wonder on their life, and the sliver of your own face, caught in their mind?

and will you remember?

will you remember?

Good-by, proud world, I'm going home,
Thou'rt not my friend, and I'm not thine;
Long through thy weary crowds I roam;
A river-ark on the ocean brine,
Long I've been tossed like the driven foam,
But now, proud world, I'm going home.

Good-by to Flattery's fawning face,
To Grandeur, with his wise grimace,
To upstart Wealth's averted eye,
To supple Office low and high,
To crowded halls, to court, and street,
To frozen hearts, and hasting feet,
To those who go, and those who come,
Good-by, proud world, I'm going home.

I'm going to my own hearth-stone
Bosomed in yon green hills, alone,
A secret nook in a pleasant land,
Whose groves the frolic fairies planned;
Where arches green the livelong day
Echo the blackbird's roundelay,
And ****** feet have never trod
A spot that is sacred to thought and God.

Oh, when I am safe in my sylvan home,
I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome;
And when I am stretched beneath the pines
Where the evening star so holy shines,
I laugh at the lore and the pride of man,
At the sophist schools, and the learned clan;
For what are they all in their high conceit,
When man in the bush with God may meet.

atlas, you man
of a monster:
why have you
laid my mother
out on her back,
across the earth?

i swear to you,
fail to keep her
heartbeat trembling
and i will shake the
universe from your
shoulders.

no more smoking
breaks in the
lavatory.

you're made
of stone anyways.





**(c) jude rigor 2014