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 Apr 2013 Mzuli
Raymond Johnson
The brain is a pretty rad little doodad. Sitting atop your neck, buzzing with blood and budding thoughts like an apple tree in spring.
I think it's fascinating that we're still quire clueless as to how it really works.
There's one particular part that still fascinates me, namely, memory.

Memories are the cranial equivalent of keeping a diary or writing in a journal. a collection of feelings and happenings of days gone by and words once said.
There are a few journal entries, if you will, that stand out to me. Ones I made with a girl... let's call her B.

If B were here right now, I'd look her in her big brown eyes and ask her:

Do you remember?

Do you remember the divine way the curves of your body fit into mine was we lay in an amorous embrace amongst the blankets and downy pillows?

Do you remember the way I told you a million times that I loved your hair. Your angelic, graceful hair, even though you thought it was too long and too messy?

How we walked through the forest for hours, talking about nothing and nonsense, and how we sat on a log for what seemed like eternity until I manufactured enough courage to finally kiss you?

They say that elephants never forget, and every time you cross my mind I feel my nose getting a little longer and my skin turning a little greyer.

Do you remember? Because I sure as hell do.

Do you remember how adorable you looked in those pajama pants of mine that were about a foot too long for you because you forgot to bring your own?

Do you remember how we sat on a bench and watched the birds flit from feeder to feeder as the sun waved us a crimson farewell?

Do you remember the feeling of your lips upon my lips, and the simple fact that it is impossible to properly describe that in any banal combination of 26 tired characters?

Do you remember the bittersweet intermingling of the smells of my eighty dollar cologne and your forty dollar shampoo?

Do you remember the way we looked into each other’s eyes? The vast universes of possibilities leaping from neuron to neuron behind those irises?

Wonderful memories. Pleasant memories. You couldn’t ask for anything better than these kind of memories. But there’s more. And there’s a reason why they’re just memories.

I remember the way the blood drained from my face like your used bath water circled the drain in my bathtub, and how my heart went on strike and stopped beating when you told me we couldn’t be together.

I remember how similar the crunch of the leaves and twigs under our booted feet sounded to the cracking and shattering of my sanity as you drove away on that sombre day.

I remember all of the dreams my brain pumped out of its pitiful pineal gland in a futile attempt to travel back in time.

I remember the empty spot in my bed and the gaping and gushing hole in my heart that still exists
To
This
Day.

But for all of these melancholy memories, these rotten ruminations, the beast of anger has yet to rear its matted mane.

In fact,

I thank you.

I thank you for this sadness, this regret, this longing, and this acute absence of rage,

For it is proof that I am alive.

I thank you for this sorrow, for this awful ammunition, for inspiration to machine masterpieces from the melancholy.

For what is light without darkness?

What is life without death, and love without loss?

So thank you.

I look back on our shared seconds not with eyes full of misplaced malice and fury,

But with gratitude.

Because even through tragedy

The heart survives.
https://soundcloud.com/blaxstronaut/memories
 Jan 2013 Mzuli
Ugo
Before guns wore make-up,
We used to put pennies in our socks
So we’d always walk on the root of all evil.

Now Wall Street angels frolic through satellite clouds borrowed
from youths educated by universities of smoke and plastic bags.
                  
(The tears of a child are homage to the waning gods)
For in a day not far away,
Over the painted moon of the Morning Son,
The sun will rise wearing the finest war scars money can buy.

And the screams of humanity will be heard from Venus,
Forgetting that the reciprocal of   L-I-V-E   itself  is     E-V-I-L
And perhaps death is the life meant to be lived.
John 10:34 "Jesus answered them, "Is it not written in your Law, 'I have said you are gods'?
 Dec 2012 Mzuli
Pablo Neruda
I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.
 Nov 2012 Mzuli
Leah Ward
My house will be filled with the things that I love;
Goldfish, dandelions,
Green sofas, Greek mythology,
Books of psychology.
Books. Lots of books with lots of words.
Multiple copies of the really good books too.
All stacked to the ceiling
on bookshelves adequate to
The height of the house
All equivalent to
My love of the place I’ll call home.
A sock monkey here or there,
pillows and throw blankets.
Pictures of Lake Louise, and a souvenir
If I’m ever lucky enough to go there.
I will print poetry, frame it, put it on my walls.
My walls will be yellow gray and blue,
I will have a boombox with speakers that go BOOM
(but at night it will sing me to sleep
with many sweet lullabies).
And it’s music will fade to the sound of voices
Voices of people I love and admire
Who can walk through the door,
of the place I aspire
To make my own,
To share and not waste
With the precious presence of others
And their ideas
And hopes and dreams
So if you aren't a thing I love,
You have to leave.
I’ll probably have a lot of lamps too.
 Nov 2012 Mzuli
Jene'e Patitucci
Clear off the bed
and come lie next to me
or lie with me
or crawl under these sheets
and die with me
or without
I'm used to it
but I could get used to this

Clear out your mind
and sink down low with me
or get high with me
or hold my hand
and lose some time with me
or without
I'm used to it
but I could get used to this

Clean up your act
and fall apart with me
or fall, apart from me
or fall, a part of me
and take some time to cry with me
or without
I'm used to it
but I could get used to this

Clean out your car
and run away with me
or run to me
or put it in reverse
and go back to the start with me
or without
I'm used to it
but I could get used to this

Cleanse your spirit
and embrace this pain with me
or brace for pain with me
or take a moment to put me back together
and just be with me, with me
or without
I'm used to it
but I could still get used to this
© 2012 Jene'e Patitucci
 Oct 2012 Mzuli
Hannah Hagemann
The infinity of lights made her feel infinite
Safe
Like all the light would drive out the dark in this glowing city
One
She was as vast as the vast city around her

New York
Chicago
Seattle
all
or
None of the above
Dream World

Safe
Safe enough to jump
Not really to jump
Maybe more to fly
The fear did not affect her action
In her hazy dream world city

She could fly she thought
She places her feet on the slippery unforgiving iron
Stepping Up
Looking Down
The fear was still not there

This was not a suicidal act
She wanted to jump
Not so much to jump as to fly
King of this concrete jungle

The ***** of the heart
The pulse of the hand
The breathlessness
The final step

Shes soaring now
Shes falling now

flying:soaring:floating

falling:flailing:breaking

you won't break yourself if you believe you can't

There's the confliction

The child that believes she can fly
The grown girl who lays broken to die

Her body is broken like a cartoon
Like Wile E cayote after falling off some boulder
There was a whole body

There was not
blood
guts
or reality

Hazy dreamworld city

In this flowing capital she beams with a twisted sense of perseverance
She sustains no injuries
Like tripping on those uneven breaks of pavement

They say you're never supposed to sleep through the falls in the falling dreams
The pit of the stomach
Winded
Clammy
Punched in the stomach
Falling Dreams

Yet she did
Why was the fear not there?
It was not in her sleep cycle
not on top of the skyscraper in hazy dreamworld city

She saw her broken body rise to life
Why could she sleep through the fall?
And the next sky scraper she fell from
...Not in hazy dreamworld city
...Would she walk away?

Was she jumping from the money that built that skyscraper?
Or the classic Freudian symbol, dream specialists might contend
Translation of one image onto another

So I was jumping away from men
Commitment
What's new?
Spend money and time
Loose friends and crime

Jumping away from reality
Soaring now
Falling now
Falling into the flowing light of the hazy dreamworld city

As flies will always return to fluorescent light bulbs, naive

Like if she got close enough to it
She would become it
She would consume it
The light would consume her
Illuminated

The dark expelled to the smallest corners of this earth
flying in this hazy dreamworld city.

— The End —