You can hear the voices of our peers being silenced, ignored, shunned and distorted.
Staggering out of their bedroom doorways to the street corner to score a dime bag.
Bright, insightful millennials freezing in search of warmth from something to believe in that will encourage them to look forward to see another day.
Where our economy has made financial prudence clear when talking about education, yet price tags of university tuition's skyrocket.
The refused, the ones with hope but no money or scholarships; tread the streets with the echoes of electro house pulsing in their skulls.
Those who strip themselves down and shred their own morals to scraps just to find themselves and to see their own limitations.
Searching for answers to the unknown, to ascertain what they are, who they are and why.
Timid in high school, pushed along with nothing and no one to put their creative vigor into.
The squeakiest wheels that were never even considered to be given a good greasing.
Faculties giving them lethargic hellos on the first day of school, bestowing celebrated goodbyes to them on graduation day, diplomas in hand.
Now are the ones slumped over in a lackadaisical position contemplating how they can afford an education.
They work eight to ten at seven twenty five an hour Monday to Friday; and weekends staying in as not to blow their earnings.
Those who commute to university and balance a job with it, I applaud you.
The bewilderment of adulthood, the overabundance of pressure and responsibility.
Awakened from nightmares of lost opportunities, missed trains and lost contacts.
To step out of bed and splash water onto a severely distressed face and staring into a mirror with a despairing look.
Then hoping a bus to Garfield to bring back weight for all the embryonic smokers not yet at the point of make or break, just save up enough to pave my own way.
Gazing at the town on a roof top, chugging down the tenth…no…twelfth beer of the night wondering how this all happened.
Wild sensations of kissing an attractive stranger, the rush of touching on things never felt, tasting pleasures only the lucky have known.
The passionate, yet dissolute yearning for that ever eluding ******* adrenaline. Pounding, Pounding, Pounding until the culmination of energy has come.
Flip sided to those dizzying, tear jerking thoughts of suicide, annihilation of ones being, the contradictions of their faith in themselves and the people around them.
Unexplainable waves of anxiety crashing onto the shore of a diminutive island of optimism
Striving to look past the panic, the gloominess and fury that may or may not be present. But to remain composed and press forward to what awaits them.
Coffee keeps them going. Cup after cup, late night cramming every bit they can; into their caffeine driven psyches until the indisputable crash and failure.
Packs and packs of menthol cigarettes to calm their rattling nerves but at the same time killing them slowly. Their lives will seem shorter than the time it took to finish one bogey when death is near.
Marijuana induced ventures to run down burger shacks, laughing hysterical in the car ride, eyes heavy with a most ridiculous elastic grin extending from ear to ear. While inside millions of thoughts and realizations of consciously simple speculations and troubles become clear and unproblematic. So the joy is mirrored outside in.
LSD trips in Petruska dancing and singing in the rain! Making music, making love; playing pretend and creating art. Becoming a family while kicking back under the warmth of an illuminated tree on a cool fall night.
MDMA streaming through the body, everything is as it should be
Beautiful, lovely to touch, wondrous to stroke, marvelous to move.
To contact and connect, converse and converge with the dwelling desire to share what you feel with everyone for it would be selfish and unpleasant to keep it in.
Mushrooms oh the emotional overflow I need not say more but ****.
Then there are over the counter candies, Oxycontin, ******, Adderall and Xanax, painkillers and antidepressants. Ups, downs, side ways and backwards.
Selling addiction and dependency legally to kids. Making heroine, ******* and speed easily obtainable to them. Changing the names and giving out prescriptions so the parents can feel like they're actually helping their children but are subconsciously making it easier on themselves because they cannot handle the way their offsprings actually are. Some parents a feel it is the only way, I wish it wasn't so. Becoming zombies, mindless addicts before they even start to mature into puberty. I've seen it, firsthand front row.
Oh, the monotonous, mundane rituals and agendas of our lives. School, work, sleep eat, the sluggish schedules and repetitions of yesterday's conversations and redundancy of itineraries we had plotted months prior.
Same people, the constant faces of boredom that groan in apathy and hold the fear of complacency.
We talk about how hum drum out lives have become and what we could to put some color in our world but don’t.
We speak of how unfair the system is but ultimately confuse ourselves and everyone else due to lack or organization and dedication so nothing is changed.
We speak of breath taking women we want to share ****** fantasies with but can’t even muster enough courage to send a trivial friend request.
Texting away for hours trying to court those who now occupy our minds and possess our hearts hoping they may allow us to acquire their attention and affection. Calling them only to receive futile dial tones and know we are being evaded.
Weeping on and on for seemingly endless time frames of a dilapidated relationship that was so strained that a miniscule breeze could cause it to collapse but still clinging to every memory as if they were vital hieroglyphics depicting your very essence.
Brilliant theories blurted out in a drunken stupor.
Ingenious hypothesis shrouded in marijuana smoked out room.
Remembrance of friends long gone.
The marines, the navy.
The casualties of drug addiction.
The conquerors or their afflictions.
The scholars.
The insane locked away on the flight deck never to be seen again.
Teenage mothers unsure of themselves, abandoned by their families for they believe that they brought fictional shame upon the family’s name. The fate of the child is unclear but the mother’s everlasting love shines through any obscurities in its way.
Dear mother of the new born winter’s moon may the aura of life protect you and your baby.
The father gone without a trace.
He will never know his daughter.
And it will haunt him forever.
Parents bringing up their kids with values and morals, The Holy Bible, mantras and meditation, the Holy Quran, The Bhagavad Gita, and Upanishads. Islamic anecdotes and Jewish parables.
The names all different
The message the same
The stories unlike
Goals equivalent
Faith
Kabala, Scientology and Wicca
Amish and Mormons
All separate paths that intertwine and runoff each other then pool into the plateau of eternal life.
But do we have faith in our country, our government?
They do not have faith in us. Cameras on every street corner, FBI agents stalking social media, recordings of our personal lives and police brutality. 4th amendment where have you gone?
We say farewell to Oresko the last veteran of the last great war. And revisit the Arab spring, Al-Assad’s soldiers opening fire on innocent protesters, one hundred fifteen thousand lay dead. Bin laden dead, Hussein hanged, Gaddafi receiving every ounce of his comeuppance. War, terrorism, the fear of being attacked or is it an excuse to secure our nation's investments across the sea? Throwing trillions of dollars to keep the ****** machine cranking away, taxes, pensions, credit scores, insurance and annuities all cogs in the convoluted contraptions plight.
My dear friend contemplates this every night laying in bed, fetal position; the anxiety if having to be a part of this.
Falling apart on the inside but on the outside, an Adonis, *******, Casanova wanna be. Who worshiped the almighty dollar, gripping it so tightly until it made change, drank until he had his fill falling face first into the snow. The guy who lead on legions of clueless girls wearing their hearts on their sleeves not knowing he had a girlfriend the entire time. Arranging secret meetings in hidden gardens, streaking into the early morning. Driving to Ewing in his yellow Mustang to woo a sado masochistic girl. The chains and whips do nothing to him he is already numbed by the thrill. Then he comes home, lays in bed until one, with no job and having people pay for his meals.
He knows what he does and who he is wrong. He recites and regurgitates excuses endlessly. He cries because he knows he is weak, he knows he must fix himself. I sit on the edge of myself with my fingers crossed hoping maybe, maybe he will set himself straight.
My chum who can talk his way out of any confrontation and into a woman’s *******. Multitudes of amorous affairs in backrooms, backseats, front rows of movies theaters. Selfish, boastful and ignorant, yet woman fling themselves at him like catapulted boulders over a medieval battle field just to say hello. These girls blind to see what going on, for their eyes were taken by low self esteem. A need to be accepted, to feel wanted even only for fifteen minutes. Poor self image, daddy issues, anorexic razor blade slicing sirens screaming on about counted calories and social status. Their uncontrollable mental breakdowns and emotional collapse. Their uncles who ***** them, their parents who split up and confusing their definition of love and loyalty for the rest of their lives. Broken homes, domestic abuse and raised voices, sending jolts of fright into the young girl’s fragile minds. I send my sorrows to you ladies, to see such beautiful creatures suffer then be used and thrown away with the ****** that was just ****** deep into their *****.
Then I see women and men of marvelous stature, romantic in the streets holding everyone and everything in high regards. Finding beauty in anything and anyone. Enjoying every second as if the rapture was over head eating exotic foods from unheard of countries and cultures. Bouncing to the sound of whimsical , reverb ricochets and sense stimulating music. Huffing inspiration to create something out of thin air. Dancing to retired jazz and swing albums as if no time had past since their conception. Wearing bold colors and patterns, thrifty leather shoes or suede.
Dawning pre-owned blazers because why spend hundreds of dollars on new clothes just to look good but feel uncomfortable with a hole in your pocket. Dressing up but dressing down, so class yet urban I love it, chinos, pea coats and flannels so simple but chic.
At night they go to underground dens, sweaty bodies, loud music and freedom. Expressive manifestations glowing fueled with MDMA and other substances to further their enjoyment of the dark glorious occasion. Kandi kids sporting colorful bracelets, not watches for time is of no concern to them, they have all eternity they know that.
Going to book stores, coffee shops just to have some peace of mind and a moment of silence to themselves so that can weave the tapestry of imaginative innovation. Writing their own versions of the same story, endless doors of perception, reading news papers and taking it with a grain of salt. Watching the news on TV with a hand full of salt. Searching for the real story so they can know if the world they all live in is actually safe.
She who made her own way breaking hearts, rolling blunts and making deals. The flower child of the modern age, left the rainy days in search of radiant sunshine, idealistic. Reality was subjective, purple dyed hair, multicolored sweater with sandals on her feet. A ten inch bowl with bud from California packed in tightly. Coming from Dumont to Bergenfeild then on to Philly to Mount Vernon. Off to Astoria and the Heights. Now to Sweden laying in the grassy plains below the mountains. Good for you my friend whom I have loved, may fortunes of unsullied joy come to you and all you meet.
Since you’ve left I have encountered drunken burly firemen just trying to have a good time. Pounding down Pabst Blue Ribbon as if it were water; as if it were good tasting beer. But heroes none the less.
EMT's, young eighteen years old high school graduates, saving lives reviving people who are a mere inch close to death.
Sport stars getting scholarships thanks to their superior skills and strength.
Striking beauty school students who are into making the people of this world a little bit more beautiful on the outside.
All these people, successful, doing things. Departing to their desired destinations. I see inside them, they carry baggage, loneliness and insecurities. I can feel their guilt slowing them down. All have their loads but it’s the way they carry them that shows who they really are. And to me their all gems.
Not far in Paterson I watch the junkies limping across busy winding street, perusing a severely needed fix. “Diesel!” they shout beneath flickering streetlights, asking for spare change and if bold enough a ride to some shady sketchy place. I give them a dollar and politely decline. They’ll die without it. Vomiting up bile and blood, twitches and shivers are all you feel when it’s not in you. They cannot stop, they need help. Why not help them instead of “assisting” those who are homosexual? Cleansing so they can be granted entry to the kingdom of God. Looking down on people who have found love and understanding and a deep attraction to others who just so happen to share alike genitals.
Narrow minded uproars about the spread of AIDS, nonsense! The puritanical onslaught of those who want nothing more than the rest of us, love. "Gay", "****", "******", "queer", how about "kind", "funny", "genuine human being"? The right to be married and divorced should be an option for everyone to enjoy. The strains and hardships of matrimony are yours if you want them. If you don’t agree don’t hate or harm just allow them to be peacefully. Same goes for anything for that matter, Jehovah's going door to door, Mormons from Burbank. New ideas are never a bad thing, they’re not a waste of time. On average you have about eighty years to mull over your options.
Some people don’t live long enough to do so, cancer is rampant, blood diseases, ****** diseases, natural disasters coming right out of left field and blindsiding the innocent bystanders of both hemispheres. Some go through life handicapped, autism is apparent these days. Schizophrenia, Asperburgers, ADD and ADHD. Some lose their golden memories of their many valuable years walking down Alzheimer's Lane, not being able to remember whatever transpired only a few moments ago but revisiting gold nuggets from from fifty-some-odd years ago with ease. Some go through life delusional or bipolar. Some can't even sleep at night but they still carry on. And if assistance is needed it is our job as a race to help our brothers and sisters, no one deserves to be excluded from the gala of life. Or be denied by society and pumped with brightly colored pills from doctors promising a cure but prescribing a crutch.
Finding solace in sincerity.
The serendipity of it all hasn’t been uncovered and that keeps me going.
“Radiate boundless love towards the entire world above, below and across. Unhindered without ill will without enmity.” Oh Buddha the truth as it ever was.
Who is he who keeps these thoughts from the conscious minds of the population?
Who is it that distracts us from the humbling beauty and overwhelming devastation of this place of existence we’re in?
It’s they who do under the table parlor trick behind our backs.
Those who broadcast mind numbing so called reality TV shows without an underlying value or meaning.
Those who produce music, proclaiming extravagance to be the end all be all gluttonous goal we all should aim to achieve.
And those who turn noble causes into money making scams and defile pure ideas.
And of course those who give false promises of easily obtained  bright futures, those who don’t care, those who steal, ****, curse, bad mouth and lie. But still manage to get elected into positions that more or less decide out fates. Monsters, demons, banshees howling inconsequential worries and leaving us deaf to hear the real issues.
The

Diversity of motivation among self-harming individuals

An estimated one in twelve teenagers has committed self-harm. Of those many will continue self-injuring into young adult hood. Yet older adults are not immune to committing this act. In 2003-2004 adults age 25-44 were responsible for nearly fifty percent of reported/discovered self-harm cases.  There are many reasons that people self-harm. These reasons may include self-harming as a survival mechanism, self-harm as an outer expression of inner emotional turmoil, and self-harm as a means to exercise control over one’s environment.
Contrary to popular thought, only one in ten people who make the decision to self-harm are suicidal. The majority of people who cause injury to themselves willfully have a wish to avoid killing themselves. The act of self-harm is developed as a “technique” to cope and survive the afflictions of life. How can we know that this is the reasoning or thought behind the action of self-harm? “Cutters” typically reason out the least amount of damage that will “remedy” the stress intensive situation that they find themselves in, and exercise an enormous amount of restraint in inflicting only a measured amount of damage. Cutters’ common logic is that through this expression of injury, further damage to their selves may be headed off. --------, a former cutter, attests to the reality of this when he says, “Every time that I touched a blade to my skin, I would resist making a larger cut, a deeper wound. Every time that I hurt myself, I did so only in response to what drove me over the edge; Each time the amount of physical damage that I did was the very least that I could muster. I fought to do the least damage I could, no matter how intense the pain that I felt became.” He sums it up rather nicely.
Secondly, self-harm is used as an outward expression of deeper, more complex emotional and psychological phenomena. It is not a diagnosis; it is a symptom. It is a symptom of a struggle that is inherited by victims of abuse, those who lose a loved one, or experience other traumatic events during their childhood. These groups are far more likely to indulge in self-harm. One study conducted by Boudewyn and Liem found that of those college students that reported a history of self-harm, fifty two percent had been sexually abused as a child. Those that self-harm do not simply cut to cut, burn to burn, or mutilate to mutilate. There is a deeper motivation. This motivation is commonly emotional. These motivational emotions are often the results of tragic or traumatic life experiences. It is seldom that a cutter’s motivation is a want for attention.  In fact, most cutters are chameleons.
Self- harm is used as a tool to exercise control in a chaotic environment over which one would not otherwise have any means to control. Among chaos and turmoil such as the loss of a parent or close friend, relational betrayal, divorce of one’s parents, or consistent, one time, or sporadic physical, emotional, or ****** abuse an individual is radically more likely to engage in self-harm. Outside reasoning on this is only speculative. For this reason it is valuable to look at the action from the perspective of those who commit it. Cody, the same individual mentioned earlier says something else that lines up with this common scholarly opinion. He says “I remember the very first time I cut myself intentionally. I was in the ninth grade, in the school bathroom. I had just experienced what I saw as betrayal by my best friend of about ten years. I felt like I lost him. I felt like things were spinning out of control, and I couldn’t control the way I felt about it all. The only way I could feel that control was with something sharp in my hand.” This is characteristic not only of ----- but also of many other cutters.
Cutters are not (necessarily) crazy. On the surface it may appear that cutting goes against the ingrained survival and self-preservation instincts in human beings. This is actually the opposite of the truth. Many who cut feel that if they don’t inflict smaller harm to themselves that they may indeed fall to suicide. They feel that by letting out their pain in increments, and escaping in fragments, that they can slay the thoughts of suicide and urges to escape that they carry. When at the edges of rational, some instincts may take different forms. What may seem counter intuitive – an act of self-harm – becomes the definition of an instinct that it seems to defy. The desire to survive becomes so strong that it is necessary to inflict pain. This is not uncommon to survival situations. For example, the movie 127 Hours reenacts the experience of a man trapped under a boulder in a beautiful and secluded gorge. He cut off his own arm with a dull multi-tool in order to escape death. That act is the epitome of self-harm as a survival instinct.
Cutting could lead to a series of events that tailspin out of control. Loss of control could take the form of the spiral of therapies and prescriptions that would follow if it were discovered that one were cutting , or it could be the accidental slip of a blade gone too far. It could end in hospitalization. It could even end in death. However, those individuals who choose to cut, as long as sober, take precautions to avoid discovery or more injury than is intended. They are meticulous, careful even. They reason out how, where, and when they can cut “safely”. They are very much in control over the act, when they feel they cannot be in control of anything else.
It may rationally appear that pain is pain. That it would make no difference whether out or inward, because whatever its state, the pain is still owned by the individual. However, emotions are often harder to process than physical events. A burning rage, hate or guilt may well be harder to cope with than a burn to one’s arm, leg, or hand. An emotional cut to the bone may be less painful than a physical one. It may be said that the act does not transform the pain, but multiplies it. This in essence may be true, but one form of pain allows a man to ignore another. A pinch may allow a man to ignore the emotional pain of a nightmare. A small cut may allow ignorance of the bigger cut on one’s spirit or psyche.
There are widely varying and increasingly complex variations of motivation and cause of self-harm. They may include, but are absolutely and in no way limited to: self-harm as a coping or survival mechanism, self-harm as a tool to exercise control over one’s increasingly chaotic environment, and self-harm as an outer expression of inner emotional turmoil. To believe that cutting is simple is to nearly deny it altogether. Its essence is complicated. Stereotyping self-harm or self-harmers may well lead to opinions that will ostracize or further encourage the occurrence of self-harm.  Since the motivation and causes of self-harm are undeniably complex, to attempt to brush this under a rock would be to diminish its importance, and to deny healing to those who need to understand it.

"Envision yourself working in your own office."
"Envision yourself writing prescriptions for your patients."
"Envision yourself receiving a huge amount of money."
"Envision yours-"

She stopped mid-sentence and looked at me.

"I want you to dream high, my dear."

"Mom, I want to become a writer."
"No, being a doctor is better."
"But mom, I want to study literature, I want to publish b-"
"I said no."

Mom,
I know you wanted to become a doctor way back then  
but mom,
I have my own dreams too.

I can't imagine myself working inside hospitals
I can't imagine myself writing prescriptions
I can't imagine myself receiving a huge amount of money

but mom,

I can imagine myself working inside my own office,
I can imagine myself writing stories and not prescriptions
I can imagine myself starting with a small amount of money
but most of all,

I can imagine myself smiling despite these.

You told me to dream high,
and I'm sorry because
Mom, I failed.

I told myself not to dream high,
I told myself to dream deep.

I told myself to dream deep
and plant my dream in the deepest part of my heart
and make it grow -
that even my heart can attest that my dream was all I ever wanted.

My dream grew deeper
And the roots grew stronger

and I can tell,
Mom, I failed to dream high.

Everywhere I look, there's an emptiness
where you’re supposed to be.
I told the doctors how I see nothing in everything,
so they prescribed pills to help me see.

My room is always so cold
but your breath was so hot.
I told the doctors I still feel it on my neck
so they gave me more pills to make it stop.

I took the pills for years
but they haven’t helped at all
So I stopped the prescriptions
and started my downward fall.

The doctors will never fully understand
that I will always look for you everywhere I go.
Antidepressants and mood stabilizers are making my mind a
bomb, ready to blow.

Euphoric visions
Frantic envisions
Body collisions
Heavy prescriptions
Enlightened by a muse that I was happily given
Unwarranted treasures on the paper was written
Psychadelic notions
Underminded by twitches
Glares of green lights flashing
In the artists’ painted trenches

Heavy prescriptions
Doses of living
Binded by ink from a tie-dye fitting
Zones flowing in and out
Lying down for the feeling
Eyes looking up
At the neon-colored ceiling
Ah, is this living
A euphoric disposition?
Defying immortality by a psychedelic existence
Back under...



To the trenches



And the heavy prescriptions

The rusted belt is tight
in our hometown city.
Black smoke masks the lights
In one gaseous setting;
the permenant fitting
Of our hometown city

Trees exchange steel
In our hometown city.
You’ve never seen the wheels
churn and the deals burnt
In the factories that take pity
On the nitty-gritty of our
Own hometown city.

The last laughs with us
In our hometown city
We don’t’ ride the Cali bus,
But yea, I'd say we are witty,
cause al'the prettiest girls
Live in our hometown city.

The river’s been burnt
In our hometown city.
Yea we’ve learned a lot
From our own ad(e)missions;
And now, clinics fill prescriptions
in ourown hometown city

In my own hometown city
We’re slicker than you,
Even though our York’s isn’t new…
Why? Watch my city revive in
Front of your eyes- then ask me;
Why is this your hometown city?

Caint Complain
                       By Phyllis T.  Halle  February 26, 2006
Growing up in a tiny coal mining town in the hills of Eastern Kentucky,
I frequently heard a response out of the lips of stooped, arthritic miners, toothless women, old before their time,
wretchedly poor widows with six children to feed.
It was just a common reply to the courteous, "How are you?" -
"Caint complain."
The high pitched voices of those descendents of English, Scottish, German, Irish pioneers still echo in my ears and I wonder always at the tenacity, strength and wisdom which resounded firmly in those two words,
                                          "Caint Complain."
Very few people had indoor plumbing, telephones, cars or two pair of shoes. Health insurance, retirement plans, paid sick days, furnaces, pizzas, air conditioners, jet planes, paid vacations, job security, career planning were all unheard of unknowns.
When someone became ill, the ‘‘kindly old general practitioner would come to the house and dispense his little pills and words of encouragement and instruction, knowing the limitations of his skill and ability to heal.
Mothers and fathers still buried their little children who died from diphtheria, pneumonia, whooping cough, measles, diarrhea, croup ( a disorder known in later years as asthma).
Husbands buried wives who died in childbirth, at an alarming rate. "Caint Complain," they'd say gently, with a soft 'almost' smile and deeply troubled eyes.
Sanitation was fought for, vigorously, by hard muscled women, who scrubbed and washed, and swept and mopped.
They'd boiled the family’s clothes which had been worn for a week, in pots in the back yard, "to get ‘em clean."  
Killing germs was not in their vocabulary, but that is what they'd were doing. Ask that little old gal who was out in the yard, stirring the clothes around in boiling water, over an open fire, "How are you doin’?"  
                            "Caint Complain, " she would invariably say.
WHY couldn't they'd complain? Where did their tenacity come from?
Where did that philosophy of not complaining come from?
Where did they find the resolve to place dire, critical deprivation, hard labor and malnourishment behind them and place a smile on their faces and say
                                Caint Complain?

I knew some of those people when they had grown very old and faced birthdays in their late nineties. Without exception, they had the sweetest dispositions, most grateful hearts, kindest words and calmest old ages of any among the many I have known who reached that age!
When the pressures of their life had faded and they had nothing remaining that had to be done except to live out the final part of their life, they did not have a habit of complaint.
Some recent phone calls I have received were what prompted me to think about this. One right after another, friends called and for the first ten minutes of each call, I listened to a long list of complaints about the trials and travails my dear friend was suffering.
Each friend has: no financial worries, a wonderful primary care doctor, prescriptions to keep their heart pumping, eyes seeing, brain focusing, stomach digesting and body sleeping, each night.
They are protected from financial ruin, by medicare and/or HMO, social security checks, pensions, savings and inherited wealth. They have loving, devoted sons, daughters, nieces and nephews who keep in touch and are there for them.
They each one have lovely heated and cooled homes, apartments or condos with every convenience known to Americans; cars or taxi/bus services to get them out and around. More than that, each has beautiful memories which they can call upon to bring a smile to their face at any moment of the day or night. But somehow we find plenty to complain about.
Why haven't we formed the habit of Caint Complain?
Maybe the philosophy of always seeking more comfort, more possessions, more money, more- more- more- of everything, has driven us to achieve, accumulate and accomplish but it required us to never know what the word contentment means.
Contentment doesn't mean having everything at one’s fingertips. It doesn't mean lacking nothing. It certainly doesn't mean every dream and desire fulfilled.

Yet there are many who have enough of everything except the common sense to know when they really "Caint Complain."
Happiness is a fleeting moment of joy. Contentment is finding peace in what you have, what you are and what you have accomplished.
Having the serenity to know which one brings lasting goodness into your life is wisdom.
A SMILE IS THE KNIFE GOD GAVE US TO CUT THE SIZE OF OUR TROUBLES DOWN TO A BEARABLE LOAD.    
Lots of love and hugs, Phyllis

i don't know why i found redemption in the tetragrammaton, sure, my mother cared for two elderly jewish ladies, one escaped the Holocaust (surname Roßhandler) and the other of established English rooting (surname Rockman... thanks to her, upon completing my g.c.s.e. exams i got a complete collection of Bernard Shaw's plays) - but i find it there, ping-pong salvation every time, translating it akin to arithmetic: 1 + 1 = 2 is very much akin to Y              H            W          H, which i started calling the perfect chirality - chiral meaning non-superimposable:
                                       A                      &                  E, i too ventured to call the double H dualism a déjà vu - but i know see them as vantage points, more electrons and quantum physics than protons and neutrons - well, it ****** well fits the schematic: sine (M) and cosine (W) - sure, crude, but i'm not looking at the geometry of the mouth... language on the base of pure optics... and no, not necessarily adjective noun compounds for emphasis to argue a point, just easily an easily accessed point of reference...     so quantum physics calls it the non-independent ontology of electrons: a. particles (Y, centre 0 on the x, y, z graphs - apart from the heliocentric and the geocentric models, here's another one of similar causality)... and b. waves (W, the formerly stated trigonometry suggestion) - and hence the two vantage points bound to H... apart from Adam and Eve lodged in between... which suggests that the geocentric analogy of electrons is bound to electrons behaving like waves... while the heliocentric analogy of electrons is bound to electrons behaving like particles: microcosm Copernicus blah blah; well, more like pseudo-Aristarchus of Samos.

20th century literature is, quiet literally
something akin to the cave paintings at
Lascaux - big brother isn't watching -
nor is the publishing old guard -
i just find it unreal that so much rests upon
the internet these days, the people have no
idea what power has been granted them,
they petty the use of the internet with
their earthly squabbles of a marketplace,
while, running parallel: the lost infatuation
with democracy as necessary organisation -
turns out it's unnecessary organisation:
because we ain't go anything better -
hence political disillusionment - rampant in
what western society deems the pinnacle
and the Libra of a fine balancing act -
religiously? that famous: "mystery of lawlessness"?
that's the internet - imagine a time when you
could bypass some publisher, some adherent
to a state doctrine, when you could turn poetry
into physics, not the waffle of metaphysical Keats
waiting for a kettle to turn into a volcano
or a whistling horse, but to turn the dial to
point at the reality of things:
quantum physics (derived from quanta,
a variation of datum: particularity of input
energy) gave poets breathing space,
metaphysics became shadowy, Hades like
learning, obscure and all the more necessary
to build-up its strength while puritan physicists
lost their sway of power with the fears of
the atom bomb and all things quantum -
so while the physicists became dazzled with
all things quantum, the metaphysics took off...
entombed in an apathetic (without pathos)
subjectivity: a calm heart, much more than an
embracing heart - yes, i am aware that i have my
wacko moments of feeling, but this ticker is
made of stone - and that usually means a chaotic
thinking process, spontaneity being the key
in involving yourself with real-life narratives
then never suppose a character study: what you see,
is what you get: my sanity plateau?
talk about music rather than make poetry musical,
it's a pale shade of red or blue when you
have guitars and orchestras and the poet,
a voice in the wilderness - nothing but pins dropping
to exemplify the talk... i don't understand
the need for poetry being a kindred of musicology,
i don't understand rhyme, i don't understand
being conscious of poetic prescriptions of technique
very much akin to language's artefact minded
grammar: noun
                                v. poetry's pun
grammar's verb
                                       poetry's metaphor... etc.
my deviation? being an adherent toward music,
and returning poetry back to its true purpose:
puritan narrations - not conscious of what's
expected, or what defines the art,
very much the beginning of cubism and later
innovations in art, i just can't stand rhyming poetry -
it's too conscious of itself by what it's defined by,
we have learned of a new subjectivity:
the unconscious - we might as well exploit it
while objectivity gets crushed into bewilderment
by quantum physics -
thus said: i feel like i'm a dervish spinning
counter-clockwise in a chaos of tornadoes spinning
clockwise while listening to two songs:
tool's *right in two - and muse's stockholm syndrome:
i can't be bothered translating the feelings
entombed in these two songs with a rhyme...
poetry should be less stuffy than it already is...
it should be a statement of the supreme effort: freedom.
all of this? spurred on by rereading passages from
Jung's gegenwart und zukunft (1957), alter:
          the undiscovered self (1958) -
it's seemingly odd (but not too odd) that books
written by psychiatrists are more popular than
philosophy books in the anglophile culture -
as already stated, i can't read philosophy in english -
maybe this is why psychiatric literature is so easily
accessible in this tongue, what with the self-help
movement, it the grandest prescription that no pill
(unless it's a sleeping pill) can be prescribed -
i'd say, if you want to read philosophy in english,
i'd start off by reading a book from psychiatry -
Jung is by far more adaptable than Freud
(Freud's for the rich people who have ***
written on their foreheads in permanent ink -
        and: daddy didn't care, mama was
                                     struggling feminist who
     forgot to breastfeed me) -
       but of course the 1960s Scottish superstar
(who drank, rightly so) from Glasgow: Laing.
well, sure, the Hungarian Szasz (shash, not sas,
or zaz... shish kebab... it ain't the difficult) -
impromptu deviation: what's funny about Heidegger?
he says: you need to study Aristotle for 15 years
to get him... and that's very much true for him also...
two years... TWO YEARS it took me to read his book.
that's what's interesting about this book,
a literary anorexic, in at 79 grams (pages) -
the interesting point? in physics, there are things
that are not independent of observation -
i like that conundrum, the mere idea of it is titillating -
running joke for the past two years: ***** ***** tat for tat
months later -
                          well... i'm not the one trying to
dress you up in a straitjacket with a label: this is poetry...
can't see **** for miles with how i write.
so there's a purpose, some things are depending on
being observed - which is a good thing, which means
that this world could not be independently sustainable -
its dependency on existing lies akin to our
desire to be independent of it - so all the religious
blah blah means something - even after 3 years
of rigorous studies in chemistry i come back into
humanism with a furore of agitating religious paraphernalia -
mind you, i do have a scientific approach toward
language - grammar and algebra combined -
meaning? certain words have become post-grammatical,
i.e. algebraic - not categorised as nouns or otherwise,
but as algebraic signatures: primarily because no one
really knows what to do with them, apart from
church yoga, standardised: e.g. x = god,
            i = y                  and the                  world = z,
predictably transcending the casual use of language
when shopping for cheese in a Parisian grocery store...
err... je ma'pel gorgon, avoir vous fromage?
nope, took to English too much - i was learning French
in primary school, but i had an existential crisis
aged 9 or 10... my brain refused to learn another language
after having just learned one from scratch -
                               the mute in class soon turned into
an avaricious reader... so parallel to my life, i now hear
stories about children being diagnosed with depression...
try being thrown into the deep-end of the pool
with your former development using a language
automatically, into having to learn the language without
no major influence of a teaching authority...
                                  no wonder the accent game
   sort of imploded and i started speaking sometimes tosh,
sometimes posh, and sometimes east London oh'rite?
                             ale casem tes jak rolnik -
                            owszem, czasem jak mieszczanin też.

Addicted to diction,
With conflicting
Prescriptions
From competing
Physicians,
I'm dying from sickness
In the wealthcare system.
Our nutrition
Is based on
Corn-laced fiction,
Advertisement
Superstitions,
And a pill for every
Devised affliction.
We're born into life
Under welfare
Conscription,
And destined to die
From dereliction.
Make sure to vote
For the best
Infection in the
Next election,
As they raise
A toast
To their own
Reflections.

If you're a celebrity
For medications come to me
I have them all, come see, come see
I'm the devil in disguise

I sign prescriptions by the score
If you run out, I'll give you more
I'll bring your pills right to your door
I'm the devil in disguise

Dr. Robert, Feelgood too
Names I'm sure are known to you
If you're in need call you know who
I'm the devil in disguise

Uppers, Downers, oxy's....well
Imagine what is down in hell
I'll keep your secret, I won't tell
I'm the devil in disguise

Elvis called, and MJ too
They both liked pills in shades of blue
No one else does what I do
I'm the devil in disguise

It's up to you, which choice you make
I fulfill, and you....you take
I'm here all night, don't need a break
I'm the devil in disguise

If you're in need, well...I'll be there
You pay for service, and I care
I've got lots, and lots to share
I'm the devil in disguise

If you're mute, and lost your voice
You know I'm your only choice
I'll be right round in my Rolls Royce
I'm the devil in disguise

You'll end up dead, but I'll keep kicking
With pills and needles, stars keep sticking
I'm the doctor all the stars are picking
I'm the devil in disguise

I am the devil, that is true
I am around, that's not new
I'm known to them, but not to you
I'm their doctor...till they die.

Freedom flings
Tyrant kings
Into their rightful place
A head on a plate
Democracy inflates
The morale of the people
Oligarchy deflates
The idea that we're equal

Spiteful dictators make their way through the system
And dominate the world while nobody listens
Distracting people with things that glisten
Disseminating hatred as their vision
Engendering fear is their mission
To buy or sell weapons
For more money or more power
Dropping bombs from their ivory tower
From extreme explosions we cower
Explosions of hatred then violence
Explosions hastened by silence
Explosions of fire we ferment
To burn the faces off our enemy
To avoid exercising our empathy
Creating a world filled by entropy
People say ******* like freedom isn't free
When the currency we pay for freedom
Is restriction
We dampen our fiery feelings
With prescriptions

Freedom is free
It's inherent
It can only be taken or given away
It is not a proper excuse to slay
Those that rightly disagree
With what you're imposing

Freedom is fleeing far far away
When people are molded by clay
Of those with the power to shape civilians
Of those with the power to bring billions
Of people to their knees
When freedom is our fee
To live in timid apathy