Youthful ignorance wishes
    that life meant something
    external

But nothing means anything
    to anyone until one gets
    involved

Meaning follows experience
    inexperience has no place
    demanding

Maturity destroys innocence
    self-indulgent egocentrism
    encourages

Failure to find deeper meaning
    is failure to build the bridges
    connecting

How convenient to blame life
    for meeting the low expectations
    we've sown

We are children animals
singing
on the island palace
dipping our toes into the Nile River.

Birds  incessantly chirp
along with the rhythm of my pen
and the echo of your voice
we share the same simulacra--

        The music sways our bodies
   like a candelabra--
            We are dancing children,
                  solid ripples.

Smoke breath
       under palm trees
     the music cradles the shisha
      into blissful oblivion
      as we donate part of ourselves
      to the space AUM.

We sing peach energy
surrounded by history
and vibrant banana yellow
and pink lemonade foliage.
We dance with the wind
between our bodies
pull us closer
until the sunlight disappears.    

We are children animals
singing
on the island palace
dipping our toes into the Nile River.

whereas bronze will evoke more of girls on the beach than the perfect luster of a Chinese horse in the museum hallway near the back of the wing.

perfect sunny day--
insects  sing   so    loud!
as i surf the web

pond water--
my hair dries as i click,
getting hot again

One summer years ago, at my childhood home, in a nudist colony whose so-called 'co-founding' is my family's only legacy--perhaps right before my grandmother had passed, or when my father's prostate was scheduled to be removed and he thought it best to hire someone for a last-minute memory (despite his ***-negative crutch-christianity, just in case the operation cost him his jive)--i googled, '*******,' while looking for ****, and the atrocity i found took all of a second to challenge my complacent illusion that i could remain separate or disconnected from the global oppression of women and girls while i consumed the products (i.e., fantasized about having *** with and/or 'making love' to simulacra-women; masturbated to pictures of them) of an industry whose widespread lack of any substantial commitment to fairness, safety, legal recourse and work-place equality has contributed to a new generational acceptance of the ancient memes that perpetuate bigotry:

dismembered girl
on an open body-bag--
why does this exist??

the insects clacking,
droning in the grass--
summer can't hide death

her hip bones' marrow showing,
young *******'s corpse--
limbless

her legs gone--
the image chokes me
from speaking

my sisters, too young to tell--
who do i tell?
why should i tell?

i read she'd run from her ****--
they put her in the river.

young girl,
her blood still--
i can't feel my heartbeat

young woman,
her torso bare--
unfeeling stumps

young woman,
her legs gone,
skin gray from the river

young woman,
your legs gone--
i choke  on words








.

****** again,
Post-hasted doubting and raving,
Confused why I torture myself so –
Truer words never spoken as lies,
The dull, pumpkin-glow of the broken lamp casting ghosts,
Filling my visions with demons I’d thought excised.
****** again,
Alone in its tendrils again,
I travel –
Travel through ideas shattered and plexiglass melting,
Singing and burning as it covers my senses like a myelin sheath,
Conducting protons-only,
But my brain is slow and the receptors dull,
And the raw input manifests only as trails of spirits.
****** again,
The madness thick as bog sludge,
Stinking of scorched sulfur,
It kicks corroded and dead gears into spin,
Generating false ideas and wild delusions
That I know aren’t real but –
Nothing else here is, either, especially not you,
Disembodied you, listener.
****** again,
But not alone this time no,
Her idea ghosting simulacra,
Taunting me with her shortcomings and spitting like venom
Those thousands of details I’d always hated while
Refusing acknowledgment, but
Like a brick golem she’s got a core,
A conduit of last-year’s hopes, and I flee, panicked –
****** again,
The clouds high above the ruined October grass,
Laughing like spaceships, and returning me to boyhood fancy:
I’ll never be an astronaut.

If death did not wear black would he be taken so seriously?

If one literally wore one's heart on one's sleeve what would be the medical implications and would your friends still take you seriously?

If it is true that 'the beat goes on', is it any wonder that 'the rhythm is gonna get ya'?

When Dana sang 'All kinds of everything remind me of you', did she include rubella and death metal in this?

If a tree falls in a forest and there is no one to hear it fall does it make a sound? If a man plays cello in a forest do the trees mark him out of ten?

If the simulacra is real then surely all one needs to do is to pay more attention?  If one pays more attention, how much should one tip?

Descartes stated "I think therefore I am".  What on earth was he thinking?

Mans awareness of his mortality created the need for a divine being in order to facilitate the concept that there is life after death.  No one can say definitively if there is life after death.  Does this paradox create a dizzying confusion?  Is this confusion a lot like spending too much money in a carnival?

Britain's Got Talent: in a population of approximately 60 million, one would certainly hope so.

Is the concept of the omnipotence of god applicable if priests are unavailable for confession?

Is this a question?

Is the presence of a question mark the only thing required to ensure that something is a question?  Seven cherubs aluminium?  Is that a question!

The concept of 'keeping ones feet on the ground', by which we mean to not get carried away with success, for example, can never be difficult if one accepts the laws of gravity.

What sounds lie in the spaces between keys on a piano?

Any identifiable stimuli?

I'm a hack of all trades.
Fondler of the sacred.
Like a roach,
Who turned into a human.
Metamorphosize that Kaf:
I'l have you spinning in your grave.
While darkness ***** on the sun.
Oh Clouds!
Clouds of blue, Clouds of grey!
Mark the evening sky,
With Buddah's laughter
Nature's secret,
What it has to teach:
There is no universal mind.
It's laughable and cyclical.
No wonder the smile...
Simulacra overload.
My mind is a toad

Desperate to grab the grail of words
we decide to share our joint thoughts
to introspect our vision together
of what it takes to write two at this hour

Pen and paper, one
writes witness into the mind of the other
and meets the timid point of punctuation, followed by
the exasperation of words
it only follows

rules do not apply
nor does a simulacra of similes
the enjambment is our language
that we create we can
misplace
is it our native tongue so much so that
poetry never needs to be learned?

The friendship of thought to process
Relays poet to poem
to poet
And poem again

It's with you now
          I walk
Our eyes along the same path to troth

It's truth is spoken
Between lines, it's in the heart
Our paths, alone, come together
Its friendship Is art

Dialogical process fill in
the blanks at  1:01 4:01
p.m, hey aim
For the sweet link we proudly
discovered and shared in eyes and ink
Both black.

It's lack of light
Where the sun of the one seeks the night of the other
It's days and nights; mark hours... asunder under calendar
And daydream of once and again seeing the same sun face the marvel of the other

We are time traveling, air traveling through words
book a seat at the airline company of poetry
What the other sees in the sun sky above her
the other thinks of under his night sky
the thought of one never cancels that of the other
We trod on the same path
Me with Ginsberg, you with Plath.

Written jointly by Appoline Romanens first, third, seventh and ninth paragraph  at 1:00-1:27 pm, Lyon, France and by Jesse Altamirano, second,  fourth, fifth, sixth and eighth 4:00- 4:30 am, Riverside, California
May 23, 2017