. 'as for those poets, only the perverse follow them. do you not see that they go too far in every direction and say things, which they cannot do?' (ash-shu'ara / the poets 26:224-226).

call them what you like,
the Huguenots,
for all i care...

   you always side with
the "heretics"...
  
   given that, "said" heretics
retain some cultural value
relativism of other cultures,
namely in the form of
depiction -

    since why would, "the word"
be deemed holy,
    ****-naked,
                rather than donning
a bikini of "iconoclasm"...
         when words... are at
the meat-market of copyright -
what with © coca cola?

                 sunni islam would have
never allowed sufism...
  but Farsi does...
  and will continue...
since no Iranian will bow
before an Arab within the schematics
of history...

          Sunni Islam, it's Wahhabi sentimentality...
so why persist in signing
the Adhan?
   why not speak in a honing like
drone sentiment of plain speech?
i thought all music was banned?
the current Adhan is a form
of music... isn't it? BAN IT!

    you never side with these Sunni
muslims, exploiting Bangladeshi labor,
you side with the heretics of Iran...
these *******, i can at least respect...
  
      no fast cars, convenient ongoing
cultural insurrections -
   Sufism...
       Afghan women's poetry,
and all that much closer to Hindu mysticism...
    
yeah... "islamophobia":
but only against Sunni Islam...
   but Shia Islam?
   no problem...
   i could stomach these peoples
like i could stomach the in-between
of the Turkish variant -
no ideology - simply, pure, power throttle...

i could make a great Janissary -
with a Turkish barber...
         for a great trim of hair and beard...
i'd cast a shadow on some
obscure chocolatier of Brussels
who thinks himself a politician...

     but there are certain aspect of Islam
i am willing to tolerate...
   what happened to the son in law
of Muhammad, namely, Ali...
was raw ******* kicking...

               promises, promises...
no promises...
           Shia Islam, as an European,
i can tolerate, Turkish Islam, i can tolerate...
Turkey is incrementally shy
of being treated at the 2nd variant of Iran...
at least with Iran, we share a history
via the insurrection into the ancient
texts through Greece...

  come to think of it...
whenever i listen to
matta's song echo babylon...
i start feeding myself goosebumps,
reminding myself
of Cyrus... Nebuchadnezzar...
and the dim-wit that was
   Belshazzar...

always siding with the heretics...
if not on economic groundwork,
then at least motivating,
rather than monetizing an idea...

and the Shia muslims are...
    one way or another...
   unlike the gluttons of Dubai...
the barbie dolls of postage stamp
"proof" of progress,
in size, and worth...

   Sunni Islam would have
never allowed poetics to remain
a viable form of expression -
the Persian tradition that is,
far beyond the western concern
for a comment section...

         Shia Islam allows patronage
of the arts, notably poetry,
without concern for monetary
funding, it, at least, doesn't prohibit it...
given the pride of the Persians...
Sunnis and their continual quest
for finding water...
    sure... poetry is pointless within
such restrictions of
existential concerns...
    but... given the current, civilized
establishment?
   sky-scrapers in *******
sand dunes?

         the qu'ran should have
forbidden the architectural ambitions
equivalent to the tower of babel
being erected, in environments,
that could never sustain said projects...

    and who originally spewed the term
islamophobia?
Sunni Islam...
        i never liked this strand of belief...
i hate the Sunnis like
a Shia partisan...

p.s. it's called patriotism is America...
but nationalism in Europe...
    you sure that's not a synonym?
Europeans can't be patriotic,
and Americans are never nationalistic?

...

   well: how could i ever convert to islam,
i do enjoy the adhan from time to time,
"sorry", but i do...
  i can't help it:
if i'm a sucker for pop songs,
i'm also a sucker for the adhan...
   crusader songs, templar songs become
stuffy after a while...
and last time i checked:
     there were the northern crusades
against the baltic people:
notably prussians, lithuanians...
with that cushion of: mediating the
escalation of war by the polacks...
coming from the east:
  last time i checked the mongols
didn't reach leipzig...
               buffer zone people...
and what of the ottoman onsalught
of vienna 1529: the ****** winged hussars
won the charge...

so, coming back to heidegger... aphorism 26
ponderings IX... how am i to not be
the historical animal?
         perhaps in german, in germany
i might become a non-historical animal,
to begin: anew, but with a terrible
past to hide, to negate...
   i could do that: if i were a german,
speaking german, in germany...
but i'm in england:
            i might have some roots in
Silesia, but it's "hard" to not be a historical
animal, an "animal" with a sense of time,
i.e. a future a past a present...
esp. under the english conditions
of: the biological animal momentum narrative,
like a tsunami, like an earthquake...
ripples throughout...
              i can't move forward with
the english championing darwinism every
single ******* step of the way...
why can't they hide darwin like the polacks
hid copernicus...
given the motto: copernicus -
who moved the earth, and stopped the sun...
why wouldn't i escape into history
if the current biological reality is:
(a) a yawn... the cruel nature of per se?
   the courting of pigeons on a t.v. antenna...
pigeons get rejected all the time,
lesson learned, he bows and bows,
coos... expands his tail feathers upon
the bow then folds them... she flies away...
repeat...
    (b) i can't escape being a historical
animal in the way that what the current
facts are being repeated have encountered
a whiff of Chernobyll...
              history is inclided to answer reality...
biology? not so much... not from what i've
seen and heard...
             truly a schizophrenics disney dream:
to walk among the newly insane feeling
like the only sane among them...
beau-ti-ful!
                   well... given the current criteria
of being bilingual as being synonymous
with being a schizophrenic...
           magic!
                    
   now the crescendo...aphorism 24
ponderings X:

              the word designates, the word signifies,
the word says, the word is (heidegger)...

i found that you can only write
"philosophy" with a neat, fixed vocab. regime,
clarity of boundaries...
    quadratic events in vocab.:

i.e. the reflexive: yourself, himself, itself etc.
and the reflective: your, self....
                       his, self...
                                  it, and the self...
                    ergo? atheistic scissors,
  the two articles, indefinite and definite
                                 a / the "self"...

i'm not playing "identity politics",
when i say that only two peoples ever managed
to sack Moscau... the mongols and the polacks
with the help of lithuanians,
"identity politics" only happens in
post-colonial society, akin to the english,
i'll speak the english,
but i will not be a cucked indian of
the former raj: i will eat the fish & chips,
i will eat the sunday roast,
   i will eat the english breakfast with great
delight...
            but i will not do what these former
colonial masters expect of me:
integrate at the expense of making my
mutterzunge into hubris!
stubborness contra pride...
                hard to tell the difference...

and why do i like heidegger so much?
i'm not into the ad homine arguments...
my grandfather, was, a communist party member...
so?
       i like heidegger... because he appreciates
poetics, i like that poets can share the same
values as philosophers,
thanks to heidegger: we have been requested
back into the republic...
if plato and islam didn't like us, hanging around,
some offshoot german thinker / promenade
enthusiast like used enough to,
i suppose: ban the theatre puppeteers...

i am not playing identity politics...
biological reality is not enough...
but archeological reality?
       can you really advance to counter?
i was born near:
Krzemionki Opatowskie, a Neolithic and
early Bronze Age complex of flint mines
for the extraction of Upper Jurassic (Oxfordian)
banded flints...
  personally? i don't believe in
the African genesis conundrum...
i believe "my" people originated from
the Indian sub-continent,
as, associated with the complex:
Indo-European categorization of language;
i'm still to see an African phonetic
encoding system, beside the hieroglyphics...

i, was, born, there! i'm not a displaced
post-colonial debacle between former master
and former slave...
i have: roots... i'm not ******* up to the fish & chips
brigade with a friday night's worth of curry...
i cook my own curry,
and by god: it is the food of the gods...
i'll give the blue indians that counter...
but sure as **** not the worth of mead
or whiskey...

if they only tolerated themselves,
sure, learn the english language,
but know this much:
           english is the modern lingua franca...
it's the language of economics,
forget the natives, too ignorant to learn
either deutsche or française:
island-folk...
                what else, what other attitude?
even the russians are like:
that land of the weirdos? the idiosyncratics?
yes, we know that land...
the only "thing" that shelters the english
are the h'americans, the south africans,
the australians etc.,
  sure as **** the scots aren't sheltering them...
and, mind you?
   if the i.r.a. really wanted to plant
a bomb?
   a real bomb? they'd revert from speaking
any english to begin with... resorting
to revising their usage of gàidhlig:
ga-id-hlig... gaelic...
   like the welsh, stubborn people, proud people,
retaining their Çymraeg...
celt: said kelt...
the glaswegian football team?
       Çeltic... not: keltic...
  borrowed from the greek: sigma (ς: cedilla to ****)...
   wow! all the particulars in the english tongue!
guess it would take an ausländer to spot them!

U-21 european championships,
england versus romania:
                           a magnificent match...
the youngsters playing better football
than the oldies in their mid to late / early 30s...

i'm trying to tolerate Islam,
               it's not in my nature...
            hell... i enjoyed visiting a turkish barber
shop, i still have an unflinching opinion that,
the turks are the best barbers in the world...
but...

              this quote, is going to **** you:
same aphorism / pondering (24 / X) -


*** fight videos - count dankula...
you know what i'd love to do to these little
snarky *****?
the french revolution isn't enough...
n'ah, them hanging, is not enough....
ever heard of the butchers' hook?
                 it's also callled close-up fishing...
imitation hang-man...
   you insert a fishing hook...
and you let the sweeney todd ****** dangle...
on a hook, rather than a noose...
lords of salem come your way?
i'd rather the snarky teen hanging off
a fisherman's hook than dangle
like some lynched ******...
beside the suffocation,
i'd like them with a fisherman's hook entombed
in their hard palette...
         i don't want them hanging...
what am i? a sadist?
  i want them on the fisherman's hook!
when suffocating without a broken spine absorbed
by the neck isn't enough!
  fisherman's hook gallows is a
masterpiece... of suffering...
  most certain...
  when cheap comedy is being towed...
making fun of bums, or homeless people...
the current society is so welcome
to bypass all the "adventures" of Loki...
but akin to the lords of Salem...
burn!? such a limitated imagination!

ah... right... digressing...
        the reflexive / reflective quadratic...
language - only if speech  has acquired
the highest univocity of the word does it
become strong (enough) for the hidden
              play of its essential multivocity
(as withdrawn from all "logic"),
             of which poets and thinkers alone
are capable, in their own respective modes
and their own directions of sovreignty.

we do live in a time of a lost sense
of dialectic, since we do not live in a time
of etertaining dialogue,
perfectly sensible opinions,
that's all we have...

                       if one of these snarky *******
came up to me...
they'd get a chance to experience a rubric
of 4, knuckles...
what's 189 centimeters in empirical?
6ft2...      oh!
                   see where imagination takes you?
and here i was: thinking i was without it!
butcher's hangman...
oh, not so easy...
                  
                fame by no association to fame...
just the tears of parents who raised their children
to be nothing more than rugrats...
annoying gnat like bothersomes;
and nothing quiet special to be associated
with weimar berlin...
     just, these,
   h'american mall onlookers
with pwetty-guy-for-a-white-fly-mentality,
as borrowed from californian
1990s punk;

re-used ****** losers.

mad-hatter's fraction: 10/6....
      0.666...
      well: to the given extent:
1.666666(7)....
     1, 0, /6,
no number is divisible by 0,
every number, divisible by 1:
is the same number...
    mad hatter's 10/6...

   re-used ****** losers...
i like that phrase...
        7 for every 6, 7 for every 6...
until the 0. fraction comes
a 1.: exponential serf of 0...
0 being the multiplier...
          
         i really am growing a beard to less
don it, but rather to experience
a relief from patience...
war robots?
the first non n.p.c. game...
i like that, very much...
      and when i did:

you know my first experience of
love at first sight?
the younger sister of my then girlfriend...
****** up ****...

love at first sight is a terrible phenomenon...
i was nearing 18, she was barely 13...
i was dating her older sister...
but it was love at first sight,
the trouble with: love at first sight:
it doesn't lie...
it tries to lie...
          but it can't lie...

   paedophilia? a bit... untouched bodies
though... bodies of people who were
never supposed to touch...
i once said to a fwend:
well wouldn't it be ****** up if i touched
her?
   she's a muse, which doesn't translate
into vacating her as a busy body
worth of a touch, does it?
     if only my old friend samuel said
otherwise:
sylvester "contra" tweety:
my first girlfriend...
but her sister?
         i was nearing 18, she was about 13...
love at first sight...
untouched, cradled, unscathed...
and so she remained...
   until she did what every girl would
have done...thank god she remained
a figment of my imagination...
   rammstein: rosernrot...
    
           i have seen love at first...
such a load of ******* that it had to be
the younger sister of a girl i was dating...
and the **** that i had to be 18 and see
was just beginning her teenage transition...
the world unfair i grant
the most justifications... as being
the (just - unnecessary adjective) arbiter...

love at first sight becomes a forbidden love...
love at first sight was always a forbidden
love...
           and the sort of "love" that achieves
a perspctive of change that doesn't
translate into old age...
love at first sight is soon translated
into a love of affairs closely associated
with middle-age disenfranchised
state of affairs...
i.e. to love again...
            how else to feel relief from
having lost both one's inhibitions
               as well as one's ambitions?!
in the conundrum of the mortal
"question" of the continuum being
preserved?

To be a woman
Is to be property

To act ladylike
Is to mold into the stereotype

To speak up is unheard of
Just go crawl behind the white man you see in front of you

A glimpse
Of steel is all you see before
The warmth of blood drains every part
Every being you thought to be strong
Now gone

Pick up the pieces
Bandage that wound

We have a war
One that was fought before

Blood on the knife
Stained the suit of the man walking to the congress chair
He holds it up with a smile
And the other men in the house follow
As they add it to the closet of achievements

We are strong
We are not blind to perspective
We see in color

Stitch up the knife wound
Targeted at the abdomen

Property does not fight back
A piece of land does not speak words
The cornfields do not unite

To be a woman
Is to have a voice
One loud enough to be heard over laws
That prohibit natural human rights

Our bodies are not to be tagged by the market vendor down the street
Politicians now playing a game of operation in their makeshift white coats

Forgetting all that we have achieved
Women's bodies are now more dangerous
Than a gun on school property

To have a body
Is to have a choice

To be a woman
Is to bring justice and unity to all

i’ve never had feelings for anyone who could be good for me. i’ve never been interested in someone where a good, healthy relationship could’ve resulted, and maybe that’s why i’m so jaded, because everyone i’ve ever liked has just been a distraction or a house on fire— someone i know i shouldn’t be involved with, but i’ll give myself just a few more days to run around frantically with my hands over my eyes, peaking through the cracks between my fingers, searching for things i know i don’t really need, and then i’ll dash out and run down the driveway and the smog will linger for a little while, and the neighbors will complain, and i’ll sit on the curb with my forehead on my knees, holding nothing but intangible regret. next, i’ll either get over it, or obsessively think about him and the ashes smudged on the inside of my eyelids for longer than my sanity. i’ve never really liked someone and been able to daydream about the real possibility of us turning into something greater; of tire swings and painted mailboxes and overgrown, green lawns. it’s always been pretending and fake hope and melodramatic doom. i think it’s messed up my perception of having feelings for someone, because i can never take it seriously— either i know he’s not right for me, or i know the circumstances prohibit the possibility of us. it makes me never want to give anyone a chance (i can’t even see anyone worth chance-giving) because i know how it ends. i don’t like having this closed off heart so early on; i’m too young to be this bitter.

Kurt Queller uses narrative criticism to analyze Mark 3:1-6, the healing miracle story in the gospel of Mark.  Queller’s narrative criticism includes “echoes of the Exodus liberation narrative” , echoes of Deuteronomy’s covenant language and Sabbatical provisions , intratextual echoes in Mark , and independent echoes in the other synoptic gospels.  Queller uses these echoes to fill in the gaps he finds in the story of Jesus healing the man with the withered hand on the Sabbath.
In the beginning of his criticism, Queller lists the gaps in Mark 3:1-6’s narrative that he seeks to fill: the meaning of the withered hand, Jesus’ reason for healing on the Sabbath, His reason for considering the withered hand life-threatening, why it is a choice between good and evil, et cetera.  He begins filling these gaps by referencing intertextual echoes of Mark 3:1-6 in Exodus.  Jesus’ command to the man with the withered hand in Mark 3:5, “Stretch out your hand,” is echoed in Exodus 14:16 where God commands Moses, “stretch out your hand.” When the man with the withered hand stretches out his hand, his hand is restored. Likewise, when Moses stretches out his hand, the Reed Sea parts, resulting in the restoration of the Israelites’ freedom.
Queller’s reference to this echo in Exodus, paired with other echoes he mentions in Deuteronomy, helped me begin to understand Jesus’ insistence on healing the withered hand. Queller was able to use the echoes to fill in the gaps I previously could not fill. In Deuteronomy 15, God’s covenant requires liberal lending and debt forgiveness to the poor on the Sabbath year. God reminds the Israelites that He delivered them from Egypt in verse 15, and He claims that this is the reason for His liberal Sabbatical law. Thus, this Deuteronomic prescription for Sabbath observance is a continuation of the Exodus liberation narrative. Queller mentions these echoes in Exodus and Deuteronomy to draw a larger narrative framework for understanding Mark’s controversial healing story.
In my initial reading, I recognized that a withered hand is not necessarily a matter of life and death. Like Queller, this was a gap that I initially set out to fill. However, I was unable to fill this gap in a way that completely satisfied my confusion on the matter. Queller’s larger narrative framework for this passage led me to a better understanding of why Jesus considered the withered hand worthy to heal on the Sabbath.
According to Queller’s filling of the gaps, the withered hand is an affliction that can be compared to the Israelites’ enslavement in Egypt. The withered hand also embodies the economic predicament of the poor, who remain enslaved to their debt to the rich.  Such enslavement could be a death sentence, which is why the Sabbath requires the liberation of slaves and debt forgiveness of the poor. It seems plausible to me that a withered hand could cause a man to be enslaved and/or perpetually poor. This line of reasoning, provided by Queller’s larger narrative framework, allowed me to truly see how the Sabbath could require Jesus’ healing of the withered hand.
Another gap Queller and I similarly set out to fill is the question of what constitutes as doing good and what constitutes as doing evil on the Sabbath. This gap also arises from Mark 3:4, in which Jesus asks, “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to ****?” (Mark 3:4 NIV). In his analysis of this particular part of this particular verse, Queller points out a small important detail that I originally missed. Mark 3:4 does not set the frame for a passive, inner choice between good and evil.  The literal wording says, “to do good or to do evil.” The choice between good and evil on the Sabbath thereby requires action.
While recognizing that required action is problematic for the restful nature of the Sabbath, Queller supports his assertion by referencing Deuteronomy 30. Deuteronomy 30’s prescription for obedience of the Sabbath repeats the active command, “do it.”  Queller illustrates the parallelism between Mark and Deuteronomy by placing Deuteronomy 30:14 and Mark 3:4-5 in a figure side-by-side.  Deuteronomy 30:14 says, “The word is very near to you, in your mouth, and in your heart, and in your hands, to do it.” With this commandment as the framework, Mark 3:4-5 spells out the Pharisees’ failure to do good; It says, “But they were silent . . . grieved at their hardness of heart, he said to the man: ‘Stretch out your hand.’ And he stretched it out.”
From this, Queller concludes, “The ‘word’ to be done is already ‘in [their] mouth’ – but they refuse to say anything in response; it is ‘in [their] heart’ – but their heart is hardened against it. It is ‘in [their] hands, to do it’ – but as Jesus turns again to address the man, our attention is directed back to an inert hand, that, in its current withered state, seems unlikely to do anything.”  From this I am now able to conclude that which constitutes as doing “good” on the Sabbath is acting on the word. The word is completely accessible to us, and we must use our mouths, hearts, and hands to act upon it.
This gap of good and evil action that Queller helps fill also provides further evidence for the necessity of Jesus’ healing of the withered hand. Since the hands are required to carry out good action in obedience of the covenant, the withered hand is an affliction that can breach said covenant. Queller asserts that the withered hand symbolizes “the tangible embodiment of [the Pharisees] unwillingness, despite the ‘nearness’ of the word, to do it.”  Jesus, by necessity, must heal this affliction to show the Pharisees how to act according to the law of the Sabbath; “The stretching out of the hand then becomes a ‘witness against’ those who have chosen to forgo or even prohibit action because of exclusively sacral concerns.”  Without the preceding narrative frame of Deuteronomy, such significance of the withered hand for the Sabbath covenant was impossible for me to comprehend.
Though Queller is certainly helpful in providing evidence that enables understanding of the withered hand’s significance, there are parts of his criticism that I find contradictory and unhelpful. This occurs when he references echoes in Exodus and Deuteronomy to provide a framework for understanding the Pharisees’ silence in Mark 3:4 and hardness of hearts in Mark 3:5. He first relates the Pharisees’ hardened heart in response to Jesus’ plea in Mark to the Pharaoh’s hardened heart in response to Moses’ numerous pleas in Exodus. In my concordance work, I also made this connection. However, Queller and I differ in the conclusions we draw from this observation.
Queller draws from Deuteronomy to provide framework in conjunction with Exodus for understanding Mark’s interpretation of the Sabbatical law. He references Deuteronomy 29:19, which warns against thinking one can receive the blessings of the covenant while breaching it in the inner wanderings of the heart. This passive infidelity of the covenant brings God’s curse to the innocent as well as the guilty. Queller uses this context to explain why his literal translation says Jesus “co-aggrieved”  with the Pharisees because of their silence and hard hearts. The Pharisees’ passive, inner breach of the covenant invoked God’s curse on them, as well as the innocent Jesus, according to Queller.  
When I analyzed Jesus’ reaction to the hard hearts of the Pharisees in comparison to God’s reaction to that of the Pharaoh, I realized that the same Greek word was used to describe Jesus’ anger and God’s wrath. However, the consequences of Jesus’ anger and God’s wrath do not relate as clearly as Queller would lead one to believe. As a result of the Pharaoh’s hard heart, God’s wrath leads to the Pharaoh’s ultimate demise. Jesus’ resulting anger from the Pharisees’ hard hearts, on the other hand, catalyzes his decision to heal the withered hand. This action ultimately leads to Jesus’ destruction alone. Jesus, the innocent character, does not fall to the mutual destruction of the Pharisees, per Queller’s argument. I see no destruction of the Pharisees at all. Instead, Jesus restores God’s blessing of the guilty by becoming the recipient of God’s wrath in their place.
This conclusion, though differing from Queller, is consistent with his interpretation of the withered hand. Queller writes, “The withered hand embodies covenant curses invoked against those refusing to ‘open [their] hands’ in liberal lending, instead killing the poor by freezing credit in view of an impending sabbatical debt amnesty” . If the withered hand embodies God’s curse against the Pharisees, then Jesus revokes this curse when he cures the withered hand. Furthermore, the larger narrative framework of Mark’s gospel echoes this conclusion. Jesus’ crucifixion ultimately pays the debt of sinners and liberates them from God’s wrath.
Kurt Queller’s narrative criticism uses intertextuality, a narrative tool that “evokes resonances of the earlier text beyond those explicitly cited”  and “requires the reader to recover unstated or suppressed correspondences between the two texts.”  Such intertextual echoes he references from Deuteronomy and Exodus provide a larger background for interpreting Mark’s healing controversy. This granted me the ability to fill many gaps in the narrative that I was unable to fill prior to reading Queller’s criticism. In a footnote, he explains that his “metalepsis” uses such intertextual echoes for analysis, and, “In narrative, the resultant new figuration operates at what Robert M. Fowler calls the ‘discourse level.’ Metaleptic signification is thus transacted between an implied narrator and an implied audience – as it were, behind the backs of the narrative’s ‘story-level’ participants.”
The intertextual and metaleptic tools that Queller uses for his narrative criticism have proven to be very insightful and helpful for my understanding Mark 3:1-6 in an entirely new way. Even as I disagree with Queller on certain parts of his argument, these points of disagreement pushed me to deepen my own individual reading of the text. In comparing my argument to Queller’s, I realized just how far my initial interpretation was able to go. This narrative criticism answered a lot of my questions and filled many gaps. However, most of my conclusions about the implications and ultimate consequences of the text remain unshaken.  
Bibliography
Queller, Kurt. “Stretch Out Your Hand!” Echo and Metalepsis in Mark’s Sabbath Healing Controversy. Journal of Biblical Literature 129, no. 4 (2010): 737-58.

1356

The Rat is the concisest Tenant.
He pays no Rent.
Repudiates the Obligation—
On Schemes intent

Balking our Wit
To sound or circumvent—
Hate cannot harm
A Foe so reticent—
Neither Decree prohibit him—
Lawful as Equilibrium.

1734

Oh, honey of an hour,
I never knew thy power,
Prohibit me
Till my minutest dower,
My unfrequented flower,
Deserving be.

what the hell is love anyway? why is there this supposed special connection to someone. And why do we fret so much when it goes away? what makes it different than a friendship? is it the extra doses of horomones you get from kissing? (wich, lets face it, is oly a trigger to the brain to think of ****** contact) why must humans search and find this ONE person the propose impossible promises to? Most animals just let their ****** need envelope them when they choose and dont think too much on the subject. But doses of religion and morals of society prohibit us from doing that. Are those morals the things telling us to seek out this unreasonable aspect of love? are those morals the secret to these pain-inflicting circumstances? becasue, all feelings are are certain levels and mixtures of horomones in the brain, so love is nothing more than a science. The thing that seperates the link between enjoing someone as a friend and as a suitor is ***. and the eason people get heartbroken and cry over losers who hurt them are merely the fault of morals

I know people,
who apparently can judge the entire being of a person
on the fact that they smoke.

Making judgements
by the cigarette
that hangs from their mouth.

The image in their heads
says that this person is bad
but that's just the ignorance talking.

I know people,
who smoke
cigarettes and ****.

These people enjoy the feeling
like the taste
or it's to stop the shakes.

Some of these people
have huge hearts and open minds
greater than all the haters.

I know people,
who drink and party
because they think that's fun.

If that's what you like
then who am I to stop you
but that's not my cup of tea.

I prefer a nice tobacco pipe
and a great book
while I ponder life's questions.  

So ******* and your childish judgements
that cloud your mind
and prohibit you.

Open up and maybe someone
will be willing and able
to care about you again.

I need to know something. I don’t know if you want to tell me or not, but I really don’t care. You’re gonna tell me or you’re gonna find yourself in a world of trouble. I’m already ****** and it won’t take much to push me over the edge into dangerously angry territory.

No, **** it. Never mind. I’m ALREADY in “dangerously angry territory”. No, it wasn’t your fault. I was already close enough I could see the other side of reason before you came along.

But it would still be nice to know, if you’re willing to tell me. I mean, I’m not going to force it from you. That was the plan just a moment ago, but I’ve changed my mind. I’ve decided that my bitterness is not your fault. I won’t make you pay for it.

Yet I do feel as if it would do me a world of good to know.

Where were you when I was falling in love?

Were you sitting in a back seat of a crowded subway train with a cup of Starbucks coffee in one hand and a copy of “The Catcher in the Rye” in the other, holding it in front of your face as if it’s pages were a fascinating mirror? Was there an old man sitting near who turned to look at you every so often to the point where it creeped you out? Maybe you eventually said something to him, like “Excuse me, but is there something you wanted to say to me?"

“Why would you get that idea?” he would ask, as if he were totally oblivious to his invasive nature.

“I don’t know…you just keep looking at me and I wondered if there were a reason for it.”

“Nope. Not that I can think of.”

Did you smack him real good right then? Did you draw blood? I hope you did. I hope the driver had to stop the train to come back and drag you off of him. It would have been a real drag if the police had to be summoned, but on the other hand, wow, how ****** the thought of you resisting arrest.

Or did you cower into your corner, turn a page in your book and let the lecherous ******* carry on? I don’t think so. I really don’t think so. I don’t think that’s the kind of girl you are. I think you’re a firecracker.

And I think that wherever you were when I was falling in love is not where I wanted you to be. Not where you should have been.

Because I fell in love with a robot. Who knows why I fell in love with an ottoman? I didn’t know she was one at the time. Do you really think I’m stupid enough to fall in love with a machine? No, she was flesh and bones when I met her. She seemed normal, like all the other women I’ve ever seen or known.

But then she started smoking cigarettes. She carried them around in a little soft leather pouch that could be mistaken for nothing else but a case for holding the little *******.

God I hate cigarettes. I hate the smell of them, whether they’re lit or not. I hate the dark tan color of their filters with the little white dots speckled randomly. I hate the cotton that stuffs their filters. I hate the white paper with the almost imperceptible stripes banding around their length. I hate how the brand is stamped close to the base of the filter. I hate the packages that they come in and the cellophane that wraps them. I hate how stray flecks of tobacco gather in the bottom of the boxes and the wrappers, too. I hate how they make a person’s breath stink. I hate how they make a person’s clothes reek. I hate the way they look in a shirt pocket. I hate the way they look between people’s fingers and in their mouths. I hate the way they burn down to the nub and the ash that they leave behind. I hate pitch black nicotine stains on ******* smokers’ hands. I hate the way some people put one between their ear and noggin and actually think it makes them look cool. I hate how smokers seem to have some code of sharing, how it’s always “Hey, can I *** a smoke from you?” and 99 times out of 100 the answer is “sure”. It’s never, “Okay, but you gotta pay me back.” Oh no, Smoker’s Karma is at work here. I hate the way too many people call ‘em “smokes”. “I’m off to get a pack of smokes.” Good God, I think that’s lame. “Smokes”. Ha. I hate the way smokers ***** about laws that prohibit them from smoking in public and how so many of them have absolutely no regard for non-smokers who not only can’t stand the smell of the ******* but would just as soon not chance even the most remote possibility of getting lung cancer caused by second hand smoke. I hate how smokers would tell that person, “Oh, don’t be ridiculous. The chances of that happening are one in a million.” So what? *******. ******* with your nasty cancer sticks and **** your tar-lined wheezing lungs, too. **** the death bed you will lie on when emphysema steals your last breath. **** the oxygen tanks that cost almost as much as all the cartons of cigarettes you have wasted your money on during the last who-knows-how-many years of your life. **** all your attempts to quit. **** the feeling of disappointment that overwhelms when you fail once again, as Mighty God Tobacco hugs you, strokes your wet hair, wipes the sweat from your forehead and the tears from your eyes. Sweet summer sweat. The tears of a clown.

You know what? She never smoked before. I never would have thought she would pick up that disgusting habit, but she sure as hell did. Picked it up like it was a twenty dollar bill someone lost that she found on the side of the road as she walked to the smoke shop to buy another pack of Marlboro Lights.

There’s another thing I hate about cigarettes. “Smoke Shops”. Where the value-minded smokers purchase their wares. Not “Cigarette Store”. Not “Tobacco Warehouse"…oh, no. It’s a SMOKE SHOP. You’re going to buy some smoke, brother Jim. You’re gonna spend too much money at the 7-11 and it’s all gonna go up in smoke, but by the grace of God you are gonna save a couple of bucks by purchasing them at the “Smoke Shop” instead of the convenience store. You complain until you’re blue in the face about how ridiculously high the ciggy prices are at normal retail outlets, but when you run out of ‘em and the God-blessed “Smoke Shop” is closed ‘cuz it’s Sunday you’ll drive like a madman to Love’s and blow ten bucks because there’s a “Buy Two Get One Free” special going on. What a ******* good deal that is, eh, mister?

Furthermore…CIGGYS??? I hate how people call ‘em “ciggys”. But not nearly as much as I hate the word “cigarette”. I cannot stand to speak the word. I hate the way it rolls of my tongue. I hate the way the word sounds like it means “little cigars”.

I hate the way some smokers empty out their car ashtrays in the parking lot. I hate the way all the butts look lying there in a heap, a pile of paper soaked with the spittle of a hundred different mouths. And yet the nicotine python grips some desperate smokers so tightly that they will pick them up and try to smoke the last tiny flecks of tobacco from their crushed and blackened ends. I’ve even seen people extract the remaining **** from several discarded butts, roll it all up in a Zig Zag paper and smoke it. Don’t these people even know what Zig Zag papers are for? They sure ain't for tobacco, Charter.

“Butts”. There’s another word in the smokers lexicon that just sounds silly. “Smoke ‘er down to the ****, Jack, we’ve got more!” “I don’t have an ash tray, Terry, so just put your BUTTS in that half empty soda can over there on the table”…never thinking that there might be someone else at the party who could very likely mistake that particular pop can for his own and take a mighty swig from it. Oh my God, the thought, it gags me. How nauseating it would be to feel one of those wretched things fall against your lips and…Egad…the flavor…and yet the cruel smoker will laugh at such misfortune.

****.

God help me.

She was not a robot when I met her. Oh, no, she was a beautiful, exciting, passionate loving woman with a heart of gold and a desire that was practically insatiable. Here…take a look, I have a photograph in my wallet. See what I mean? That’s right, daddy-O, she was a real dreamboat. I used to carry this picture with me wherever I went…I guess I still do, huh? But I don’t know why. I don’t know why I torture myself looking at it, remembering what was, all we had, our bright and glorious future wrecked and deserted by her newfound proclivity for smoking cigarettes. Yeah, my friend, she was a real keeper. But you know what? **** her now, y’know? Just turn her over and **** her.

But hey…perhaps I’ve been too harsh on the smoker in general (if not to her…no, not to her). Perhaps I have exaggerated a bit. After all, some of my best friends smoke. It’s their business, not mine. Never has been mine. I know that. If they knew how I felt about the whole thing, whose to say they wouldn’t tell me to ****** off and never come back? Then again, if they are so shallow as to take any of this as a personal insult, then maybe, just maybe they aren’t my friends after all. I doubt the robot would want anything more to do with me if she knew what a stalwart anti-smoker I am. But I thought she felt the same. She DID feel the same. She told me as much. Before she lost her soul. Before she started smoking cigarettes. Before she started bumming ciggys.

I got no time for changes in her life so now I ask you again…where were you when I was falling in love?

Were you sitting in a Pentecostal Holiness church on a hard pew early Sunday morning before the service began, thumbing through the hymnal, looking for one that best expressed your feelings of devotion at that point in your spiritual journey? And what would that hymn have been? “Onward Christian Soldiers”? “Peace in the Valley”? “In the Garden”? “Smoke on the Water”? “Hotel California”? Maybe some obscure Black Sabbath song tucked in at the end of the book, next to the Doxology?

Did your hair shimmer, reflected in the light that poured through the stained glass window directly behind you? Did you feel it’s heat on your neck? Did it draw out beads of perspiration there, glistening? Would you have let me lick them and taste their saltiness even in the sanctuary of the church building? Probably not. But I don’t think the idea would repulse you like it would some other bonnet headed midi-skirt wearing holy rollin’ *****.

Maybe I would have asked you outside so that you might feel a little more comfortable with what I’d had in mind.

And maybe you would have told me “no”. I couldn’t blame you for that. No, I wouldn’t. It’s only natural for a real woman to guard her integrity in situations such as this one. I could not hold that against you.

Is that where you were? I need to know. Where the hell were you when I was falling in love?