The yolk of yesteryear festered
Leaving fewer shoes at the masjid
Fewer smiles at Eid more taut lines
At the corner of Imam's mouth as he
Raised his hands to cover his head and
Cried the Azan to an empty room

Behind him tenuous shadows lurked
Eager to report back to an eagle with
Its talon scratched feudal lines deciding
Who gets to live and for how long
In countries far away where children
Have learned to fear the sky

Hey Samah?
Yeah.
Move over. I'm falling.
No.
I'll leave.
Fine. Happy?
Yeah.
I don't like sleeping with you. You're too unpredictable. However, we will still remain bed buddies.
We were never bed buddies.
Of course we're bed buddies. We're also sweater, pants, TV, lunch, dinner and homework buddies.
Is there anything we're not buddies for?
Poetry buddies. You ****. You don't even rhyme things. I'm sleepy. Good night.
'Night.

Immigrants, especially those who don't return,
create idealistic homelands.
They imagine that all their
Woes, hurts and indignities
Would not exist
in their imagined homeland.

In their minds, homeland
is in stasis.
The life they left is lingering
waiting for them to return.

They cast winter upon the ponds of their
homelands
And live lives skating over the surface
Each time coming closer to
shattering the illusion
and gasping
in the icy
waters
of change.

Dreams, wisps of things inside my head not too
Long ago with faraway soft noises and
Rushing trains that were never too blue
Oceans sparkling, tears glistening, small band
Plays forever, trumpets blasting, fireworks dance,
Across black nights, horrid days, with joy
Children make, green grass stains, mud cakes in France
Where many street fairs enchant a lost boys
Who fly at night past winding towers
And wake in the morning with
Little memory of naught.

Girl you want some lotion? Here I got you
some cocoa, coconut, shea butter, vanilla bean
We’ll have you smelling like fresh dewdrops
From the morning rain, fresh bread, blessings,

Here let me hold that for you, here give it to me,
Here, can I help you? I got you some soup, some
Chocolate, tampons, gum, hair ties, smiles, hugs,
These are how we keep each other alive.

Girl, you gotta listen to this, it’s gonna change you
Your whole life today, go in a dark room and close your
Eyes and listen, mouth each word until its fits yours

you’re looking fine today, you’re holy, you’re whole.
you’re a whole world. here I am, right here, here
standing here, right here beside you.

Gather your books, your notebooks, your pages and pages
Barely legible Catholic school cursive, oil crusted papers
Coffee stains, cheese danish crumbs, ink marks on your thighs

Use your mother’s brain, your father’s tireless oxen energy
Your sister’s bravery, your grandmother’s mix of mango & tajin,
Your grandfather’s home grown guavas from the rooftop gardens
You come from a legacy, a star doesn’t explode in isolation

At my funeral play Jamila, play Nitty, NoName,
Rihanna, SZA, Mahlia, Kamaiyah, MIA, Nina,
Light a votive in the shape of Beyonce and baby Blue
Sing your blues, the chorus never sounded this good

When his fingers traces the border

Around the ridges of her spine

When his breath falls softly

Around the ridge of her collarbone

She whispers in Arabic to him

The words melting in the heat

Absolving this sweet sin

We live in fear
Of handshakes, of smiles, of
any sort of legal situation.

To us, then, books like
Franzen's Corrections are
revelations.

They are portals into this other world,
Of our neighbours, of our bosses
and, of course,
of those ever-perplexing PTA members.

To the author,

Forgive me,
I have loved too deeply
the shadows of your type
I've stolen your creation
Locked it away in a tower
Thrown away the key
Incinerated all ties to you
Starved, it died.

Love,
The Reader

To Mr Arnav Gupta,
Forgive me bhai, your embers are still
fanned alive in my memories you are
still walking in circles in Ellipse Park

Dear Mr Gupta,
Do you know what distance a flame can travel on a summer day?
How far the flame travels in the camera frame, how long it keeps?
Your flame ephemeral everlasting still walking still wake
Purians pyres that covered brown bodies in 1687

Dear Arnav,
Do you remember when Sita sat in her Agni Praskar in Ramayana?
How women still throw themselves in their husband’s funeral?
What were you trying to purify through the seven flames?

They say the world ended
In Grandma’s backyard
On a sultry October noon
When Eve, then two, tripped
Over her own sneakers trying
To get to that perfect red apple
When Adam, then two, saw
Eve’s demise and stepped
Over in his cowboy boots
Sunk his only tooth into that
ripe tender white flesh and
that satisfying bone crunch
Before throwing it away into
A pile of dried dead leaves

This is not a critique
It is not an attack
But if you treat each word as a bullet
Then you are bound to bleed

Saturdays we left for epic adventures
Through snow capped Kashmiri mountains
Falling in love amid flowering Swiss fields
Dancing wildly in dimly lit Spanish bars

After two hours we'd stop for Intermission
For fried pakoras and warm ketchup
Or cold chai spiced with Milly Aunty's gossip as old as the stained theater seats

From Monday to Friday we’d work
In offices in warehouses in farmyards
Until late nights became early mornings
And our bowed heads kissed concrete

With our eyes blind & our ears deaf
silently waiting for our stars to come

Some days my bones weigh heavy and I
Can hear creaking down the back of my
Spine it sounds like my grandmother's
Chair in the middle of the night when
She sits in an empty room and knits
A spool of thread jumbled forgotten
Slowly unraveling this body of mine

Some days my bones weigh heavy from
The lives I am not living and from the life
That I am and my chest constricts my
Heart thumps as fast as the hummingbirds
Wings and my ears fill with the sound of  
waves crashing on some distant shoreline
washing dried remains of a moored whale

Today I am carrying my bones forward
Pressing out the air bubbles between
The ligaments and presenting them to
You in a porcelain case bound with a
Scarlet ribbon darker than my blood
So you can wash them with a new light

The ball bounced over
and I, ever ignorant, picked it up
And looked around expectantly
Hoping to throw it back
And finally, for once, join in a game, any game.

"Oh no, she has it now,"
A whisper said
My brown hands gripped the ball
Tighter as if
that could
help

Summoning up my courage
I walked over to one girl
Call her Bonnie, if you like.
I say
In broken English
"Drop you, take this?"

"Thanks"
sarcasm replies
as fingers slowly take it
minimizing contact

When I turn back
Bonnie throws the ball at the ground
and uses her hand-sanitizer
As if possessed.

That night, at home, in the shower,
I scrubbed and scrubbed
Trying to
Destroy
My brown
disease.

Brown girl dreams of love
that feels like drowning  

Warm oceans will heal
bruised muscles clinging
onto her rusting bones
a balm for the marks
on the inside
of her open thighs

Brown girl dreams of
a love that is drowning

Warm oceans will flood
hallowed hollows pushing
onto her collapsed walls
sinking air rises slow
in a murky tide
small noiseless cries

Brown girl dreams of
a love that drowns her

To the man who taught me to
put cinnamon in my coffee, put
a little swing in my hips, leave
a little smile on your lips

in the middle of an empty room, in
the middle of winter, slowly exhale,
breath our hopes in frigid air, let
them linger in soft space between

dreams and reality, dreams and reality, dreams
dissipating like the cinnamon spots, sun spots
in the middle of an empty room still lingering

adrenaline rushes up
zaps between empty synapse
for a minute, a light
Then darkness expansive

hush
talking, whispers
"she's just an alternate"
sleep, wake
white boards scraped pure with
blood red markers and oceans of blue
spinning numbers pretty letters
awful alphabet designating destinies
how ****** up is that
responsibilities dragging down dreams
dreams crash dreams down dreams drown
darkness

adrenaline rushes up
zaps between empty synapse
for a minute, a light
then darkness expands

Hello, thank you for using Bangladesh Free. please input the number you are trying to dial.

yesterday i bought a long distance calling card to talk to myself
there, not here, my body straddles two nations
yesterday i rubbed my fading purple stretch marks
i don’t know which language I dream in any more  
yesterday i sat in cold bathwater scrubbing until the purpura bleed
my mothers’ mothers’ mother died in a red river
my mothers mother’s mother birthed a nation
between her bleeding legs
most days I am still, her water’s edge, algae between teakwood toes
yesterday i bought a long distance calling card to tell myself

We’re sorry your minutes have run out. Please deposit ten dollars to continue.

Day 1, I walked into the library
Day 7, I allowed myself to touch the spines
Day  10 I started on the first book
Day 20 I finished the 30th book
Day 39 I encountered friends more dear than real
Day 59 I leave,
Carrying the ghost-books.

Dear Angela,
When was the last time the wind blew threw your hair or did it go through your body too? I didn’t know the last time we saw each other, the cat would stain on the wall with its **** and then you would miss your date. Your hair looked like a crown in the sun. Did you ever get the energy to come out of bed?

Dear Angela,
Soot collects in the hollows your cheekbones, the eyeliner you have rubbed off in your sleep. The last time I saw you, you were cleaning the cat’s **** from the walls and missed your date and we laughed it off and had pizza instead. Angela, I know you are exhausted from simply opening your eyes. Angela, do you still hold your body at night like it is something holy?

Dear Angela,
Do you remember when we had tea in the August heat in clear plastic cups with our pinkies up and your mother showed us her corrugated cucumbers? Angela do you remember when you were swimming in the Y with the ladies whose bodies could hold your body and mine and still have room for more.

Dear Angela,
Do you remember when we walked out of class during your first panic attack and how I told you to lay down on the plastic benches that littered the hallway and you said you suddenly felt calm again? Angela do you still lie down on your side sometimes and think about going back to your prime days? Did you know then?

Dear Angela,  
I can tell you to stay strong but I don’t know what that means either. I can tell you that it is winter now and it is cold and campus is a dead white man’s tomb but there are still flowers that stay in the winter time. They call it a winter garden. Angela, maybe you are a winter garden, maybe you are the softest footprint in the snow.

I stared at Diana
Eyes a hue of blue
Skin white and shiny
Hair a sheen of unnatural yellow

My hand shook whenever I had to move her
Fearful of spoiling her purity
With my grubby fingers

So Diana stood alone in the corner
Bidding me goodbye
As I set out for school each morning.

One month later
She was stolen
By the housemaid

Today, I imagine Diana
Standing proud in the
Middle of the mud floor
Bringing regality
Into an impure world.

She sat glorified
Among rotting leaves
On a rooftop ledge
Reigning over streets
Where children don't believe in "someday"

Each day, she greets the sky
With a painted pink smile
Her perfectly sized body
A taunt to adolescent girls below

Gusts of violent winds
Descent from that palace
Into the lap of a dreaming bookworm

These days she wears a torn dress,
Broken limbs splayed on a glorified bookcase

When we make love
Your eyes are closed
Later you tell me that
I scare you that I am
The only one whose
Eyes hold no light

"You're going to hear me mooooo"
sings the Cow.

"Oh shut up,"
interrupts the Fox,
Of the late viral video hit,
from the next cubicle over.

"I'm sorry, but
you should go work somewhere else.
Somewhere for
lesser animals,"
Lion adds.

So the Cow left,
relegated to laughing
and the abundant sale
of her breast milk.

She never sang
again

I batter the fish,
smother them with grease
then swirl them around in sauces
the lifeless eyes stare blankly
slammed into a hard bed of
stale crumbs
then tossed into the oven.

I batter them to stop
battering myself.

"You can do whatever you want!
She proclaimed
A thousand eyes peered at her
scornful, disdainful
It was a motto they'd heard often,

"You can" had lived longer
Than any of their friends
It was etched onto their brains
Next to the minimum skills for the low-wage job they held
and the worries about getting food on the table

"Do whatever" echoed
Through broken doors,
Creeped in the cracks between
Grafitti plastered walls,
trash-strewn streets were nothing thrived.

"You want" whispered
In the silence between gun shots,
Hospital beeps, loud televisions, squawking carts
Slapping them awake when they fell asleep after
Working 20 hour shifts

"Just follow your dreams" she continued
(Not that you can anyway because you'll
Never be treated equally, never be given
The attention you need, never be lucky)

"Remember, everything is a choice!"

Options are not included.

"don't go, stay please"
hands around waist
body pressed against
the doorframe your
tongue tracing my
the back of my ear down
to the neckline as we
show ourselves layer
by layer and suddenly

it is five am and I am
tracing the outline of
dawn on your back
and you turn to hold
me again and our fingers
interlace and suddenly

it's two weeks later and
i am staring at the dots
on my phone at two am
whispering alone again
"don't go, stay, please"

When I was younger Nanu
Told me bhoot kahanies of
Treacherous masked nishi
That crept on four long legs
Wreaking havoc among
Peaceful village homes  

I sleep with lights on always
Lest the silent boba crept in

In 2001, I discovered bhoot
Wear the mask of friends
With benign, serpentine voices
That sat inside mosques to put
Innocent men in prison and tell
Small children to fear the sky

I sleep with the TV on always
Lest the silent boba crept in

Bhooth walk between us
Tell us to fear each other
Until we cast off our names
Convinced that these are
Weapons waiting to be
Utilized against us.

Your soft featherlight touch
wrapped around my shoulders
did you know you are made from tears?
Did you know you hold oceans inside of you
that the deepest part of the ocean is not blue
it is purple.

We both have a little bit of purple lipstick on us
twirl around and around until the world is a blur
your soft featherlight touch
wrapped around my shoulders
reminds me I am home in the deepest
part of the ocean.

I don't remember when we stopped
Going to the grocery shop together
When the silence grew too loud to talk over
When I'd stopped trailing after you with the rattling bones of canned soup, clutching the well rusted handles of the shopping cart asyou pioneered your way
Down the discount aisles proud and dusty
Stopping to pick up another sugar laden piece of the American Dream

I do remember my first day grocery shopping alone, squeaking with my empty cart hesitantly down the aisle waiting for you to come and tell me to put back the extra box of chewy chocolate chip cookies
The scuffed tiled floors shone, the fluorescent lighting cast a dull glow and I swear I heard soft angels humming over the white noise from the refrigerators
As I headed home to our white picket nightmare, the blue bags in the backseat shone like medals, subtle victories.

I am from a rooftop garden
That smell like fresh guavas
And hard, wired fences
Behind which lies a foggy skyline
A dreaming city

I am from a small, brown-red backyard shed
Tucked between rural green fields
Where two little girls defended the world from evil by
Laughing and swinging wildly on a rusted, fluorescent swing set

I am from a row of townhouses
Where no matter how late the return
Warm lights inside glow
Beckoning  

I am from strong rocks
Against which foamy, icy waves crash
Leaving behind grass
Soft to touch  
And hard to uproot

I am from eating overdone fried chicken
From short-lived patience
From a voicemail
That will always say
From Lucy, Tulu and Samah

From don’t eat that, it’s for the guests
And if you have to do it, do it, but I don’t want to hear about it.  

From too many whys
And not enough faith

I am from Dhaka, Bangladesh
From jostling crowds and hearing a million voices outside

I am from Limerick, Ireland.
From rustic houses and quaint parishes

I am from Wallingford, Pennsylvania
From suburbia and inane boredom

From the college-genius who crashed weddings on weekends,
The woman who is still unimpressed by sushi in Japan

I am from feeling sad if you do
But wanting to make you laugh anyway

Touch was left senseless, confined to a single, gray sheet

Vision squealed
Cornered by hard lines, transparent materials and cruel facts

Hearing despaired, assaulted by
squeaks, squawks spears
piercing relentlessly

Taste strived to differentiate,
bland it seems, could have multiple types
from desperate to demure and back again

Brain sighed.
It had accepted defeat.

The final yawn covered the room,
rest finally arrived.

The woman, she was the catalyst,
She sat beside me and lured me in,
All concerned nods,
And a single, delectable cookie.

Anyway, it all started
When she asked the fatal question
"Are you all alone dear?"

"All alone in the world,"
I reply, voice tremoring,
"My family, they died
Just over a month ago."

"Oh dear," she
spluttered, clearly
disturbed.

I go on, inventing
blood baths,
poisonings,
diseases,
gruesome ends
that only come to mind
With youth.

After I was neatly done
killing off family members
One by one,
Or three in the case of my
imaginary aunt's
still born triplets,

I sighed.

"It's just so awfully hard.
I don't get very many treats at
my foster parents.
Could I perhaps try a piece
of your cookie?"

"Of course" she replies,
"Here, take it all."
thinking she was helping
another lost soul.

After scarfing it,
(it was delicious, absolutely perfect)
we reached our stop
I thanked her,
the kind, misguided soul,
I stepped off

Into my loving parents embrace.

"Don't you know,
I had the worst trip.
Sat next to this fussy old woman.
I could really use a treat."

So spun the next web.

You know how it is,
the lady tells me,
Growing up with five siblings
In South Philly

The look in her eyes,
mistrust and scorn,
tells me that she doesn't believe me.

I tell her,
Growing up in a third world country,
where you only eat once a day,
where you get electricity for two hours max,
running water even less,
where everything is an unaffordable luxury
You know how it is?

Living in a one room apartment
cohabited by cockroaches,
married by age 16,
dead by age 30,
You know how it is?

Being homeless for so long
that clothes are literally
sewn into skin
You know how it is?

But I don't.
How it is is not a competition,
not a sick, perverse way to measure
who hurts the most, whose life
represents disaster best.

I nod.
It is how.

I love you like hail dancing
on the closed window pane
fast and reckless and breathless

I love you like the moon chasing
behind the sun's shadow
long and steady and slow

I love you like footprints disappearing
into the cold night's dream
soft and gentle and fleeting

I love you like a fish in water
needs air to breathe
stubborn and hard and senseless

Javier Oscar
Has two first names
Two hands, two feet
One brain
(Though he wished he had two,
One for work and one for play)
Everyday, Javier Oscar walks to work
Crossing two streets
Striding up two stairs
Sitting in-between two equally shaped
Gray Squares
With two bowls in front of him
Round with two light blue swirls
One for pennies, one for food
Everyday, after work, Javier Oscar walks
To a park, to a bridge, to his favorite
Two trees
Where he squats in a shelter, a home of
Two cardboard boxes and two shredded raincoats
One a kitchen, one a bedroom
Every two days, Javier Oscar donates
Two dollars to charity
One a future hope, one a forgotten love.
For Javier Oscar is not poor
He has two hands, two feet, two names
One a man, one a soul.

Buried the sleeping bags
(Bodies inside)

Ate concrete blocks
Drank tangled wires

Welcome to the Jungle
South of Ithaca.

Smashed bottles
Shattered illusions

Shoved tires
(Inside ground)

Welcome to the Jungle
South of Ithaca.

She didn't know anyone with cancer,
She was lucky in that way.
She knew people with diabetes,
TB and  heart failures

She knows people who live
Ten days, sometimes less
Streets where death is
a matter of daily life

She knows people poisoned
by lead, by hunger, by greed
She knows many people
who will not live until the age of 20.

"Who knows someone with cancer?"
asks the motivational speaker
Her hand is the only one down
She's lucky, in that way.

Sometimes at night

quiet you gather
pieces of yourself
and stitch together
The silver moon’s
light and a promise
that it’ll be alright
it’ll be alright later

when the sun rises

Mina Mina she declares
Life is hopeful
Pink and red.
She instructs me to wash
my hands and listen
to my parrot
She is feminine power
fearless leader

Mina Mina she lies
of no use know
what does she know
of wife beatings? Of
Dumpster scavengers? Of
rationing food? Of
Children in whom no one
Believe?

Mina Mina she is dead.

The problem with being 18 is
simple.
The thing is we feel too much,
too deeply, too suddenly.

Our anger is an earth-splitting motion,
Sadness a thousand and one rain
clouds dragging down
And happiness is the flight of the
new born bird
Love is the wonder of finding
a buried Easter egg.

Each day, anger strikes, sadness
rains and, on good days,
love rebuilds.

We live on shorelines ravaged
Daily and salvage
fiercely.

In a way, Mr. Nelson's death was the closest we ever got to him. It was the closest we ever came to solving his mystery. He had moved to our small town about five years ago. There were no boxes announcing his arrival. Just a small sign on the postbox and some flowers planted outside the door. Without the presence of moving trucks and their cacophony, he had inserted himself into the community.

We didn't know what to think of Mr. Nelson. We never saw him enter shops. He didn't buy groceries at SuperFoodMart, get his haircut at Barber Joe's, never browsed in the whimsical shops like Shelly's Seaside Surprises or Ahmad's Rugs, never bought clothes in K-Mart. Quite frankly, we don't know what he ate or what he used because there was never a garbage bin. In fact, we don't think he had ever walked down Main Street.

Except when there was a community event. He was always at every single Thanksgiving parade, softball games, and summer concerts. In various shades of corduroy brown and pastels in the fall and wide brimmed hats in the summer, Mr. Nelson would be there. He would never participate, never pitch the ball or cheer in the sidelines. Instead, he would have an old Nokia Lumia video camera, filming everything in sight.

Though no one ever asked him what he did with these videos, there were several theories. Ahmad thought he was a spy, a CIA agent in disguise, waiting to catch someone in our sleepy town. Joe thought he was a ******, reporting back to some godforsaken land in the East. Shelly thought he was just a creep, spying on women behind his sinister lens. We conspired together on back porches and cozy couches, on lazy summer days and cold winter nights. Some of us got tired of all the talk and tried to find out.

There were several attempts to infiltrate Mr. Nelson's house, both covert and blatant. The Betty twins hid in the flowerbeds, the Warden's daughter had tried to crawl in a window only to find that they were always shut. Mrs. Gilovich baked endless amounts of cookies, pies and casseroles only to find herself politely thanked and the recipient of a *** of jam on her doorstep the next day. One day, noisy Edna hobbled over and tried her trick of requesting water, but was greeted by Mr. Nelson at the door with a cold glass and a bemused smile.  

So concerned were we with Mr. Nelson that he came with us on vacations, on roadtrips, and even on our most solemn sojourns. In  hushed whispers he was summoned in distant lands. He skied with us over snow and water and was even known by our most tenuous relationships. It came as a surprise then, when on the last weekend of summer, we received an invitation to Mr. Nelson's wake at his house.

That Mr. Nelson had died was a revelation. Sure, he hadn't come to the last few summer shows but we didn't think too much of it. Still, it would be a lie to say that we were not excited when . Calls were quickly made to every house, to confirm the receipt of the invitation, to go through costume changes and appropriate greetings. How would we be greeted? What would we see?

Some of us, those of us who can never bear to wait, showed up five minutes before while some trickled in five or even ten minutes late. We came in clusters, hushed and energized groups, murmuring our condolences to each other. We were like eager schoolchildren visiting the Holocaust Museum, understanding the gravity of the situation yet unable to contain a sense of excitement.

In the end, we were sorely disappointed. His wife, who we had never seen before, greeted us at the door. We ate cheese and crackers while our eyes scanned every corner, attempting to ferret out an explanation. The rooms could have been any one of our homes, with furniture from last year's Pottery Barn catalogue. There were no hidden corridors, nefarious Communist propaganda, perverted sketches.As quietly and plainly as he had arrived, Mr. Nelson had bidden us goodbye.

For weeks afterwards, we exchanged ideas of what it could mean, what Mr. Nelson could possibly mean, what a life can mean. Once again, he travelled with us around the globe. Long after we had left our sleepy town, Mr. Nelson remained with us, filling us with equal measures of curiosity and dread.  What a shame we voiced, no one would ever remember Mr. Nelson. What a shame, we thought, that Mr. Nelson would outlive us all.

I am obsessed with my name
The way it swells and curves
With straight edges that can cut
A knife wrapped lovingly in silk

I write it everywhere these days
On papers scattered around the room
On the oily remains of the dinner plate
On chalkboards in empty classrooms
On your skin in the middle of the night

each stroke is radical
Me to mine and
Mine alone

When my uncle came home from the war
he brought seven bags of naan
two pounds of butter and a piece of
shrapnel buried in his stomach

Cook he commanded
Butter the naans, heat
their skin on the stove
until they’re scorched

until they scream for release.
Cut them into a million
pieces and scatter them
Along Victory Avenue.

Once Noakhali’s valiant champion
Who scarfed 100 fuchkas  
With their blood sauce streaming
is now unable to eat

His stomach is a paunch
Growling with rotting screams
pulled fingernails and broken
bones, fragmented stories

Allah’s messenger said, ‘Allah has ninety-nine names, one hundred less one and he who memorized them all by heart will enter paradise.’ To count something means to know it by heart - Sahi Bukhari, Vol. 9, Book 93, Hadith 489

Cook her with Honey, Sweets, Glorious Sugar
Peaches and Hares, Soft Haired Stranger
smells like Tulips, Beloved Roses, Jasmines,
Violets, Blessed Lilies, Lotus Stars and Songbirds

First Born, Second Born, Eighth Born
The Oldest Daughter, Shy and Timid
My Father’s Blessings, My Mother’s Tears
Promise of God, God is My Father
One Who is Alive, a Songbird Fantasy

Person of the Night who Loves the
Beautiful Night Rain, *****,
Jezebel’s Daughter, Detesting Witch  

she is One Who Can Forsee, Prideful,
Original Sin, Woman of White Magic
Wild As a Mountain Goat
Torch of Light, Light of Mine, Light All Around

watch the Woman with Crown, a Woman of Victory
Truthful Ruler of the House, Ruler with a Spear
Fighting Filled With Wrath, Strong as a Little Bear
Battle Armor From the Land of the Broken
Protector of Sunrise and Nightfall
Fighting a Battle in Winter with
Wisdom and Justice

A Princess Who Has A Heart of Gold
Beauty, A Woman of High Manners
Noble Queen, Radiant Precious Stone
Shining Diamond, Like Smooth Dark Wood

our Possession, our Brand New Home, our Feast
A Reward Given, an Afterthought Charity, Chaste Homemaker
Wealthy Companion, Warm Fire, Compassionate Nurse
Say the Prayers with Heavy Stones

Divine Woman. Universal Woman.  
God’s Messenger,
Holiness, Living.

I guess I shouldn't be listening to
a spot against the sky's colossal gloom
And land deflated in the evolutionary
past we go
It aimed at windows' frosted panes
this is what it studies in romances
And does anyone know that
the species invents symbols
To the contest otherwise they'll
how oftentimes the day
Has left.

Pre-nothingness, we created
A song of immense proportions
It entranced people until they died.

Nothingness, we created
Pictures worth no words
It created a vaudeville show no one escaped.

Post-nothingness we created
A blanket, white, wooly, slightly scratchy
It stretched over sleeping, hungry children

O Captain, my Captain
I am sick of being a Pioneer
I am sick of having my body being sung electric
I am sick of these lilacs always blooming in my door-yard

O Captain, my Captain
I don't want to walk along with Him
I don't want to be a Gnostic
I don't want to be divine

O Captain, my Captain
Let me be free of this dreadful  uniqueness
Let me plod along life, uninhibited by aspirations to greatness
Let me be the million, not the one