I get the crust and the gristle of a thistle once a missile shooting out into the sky and I cry, wonder why. Never sure what I feel for the meal of a deal and then words more like air slip the breeze in my hair, butterflies in the skies killing what kept my alive. Oh too bad, well how sad, if the songs last lines din't matter it'd harm, it'd make the soul so very mad. Here I fall, there I stand like a robot dancing to the tunes. It's demand. Hear I laugh, hear I cry. I hear the screams and feel the burn, so why? Why unsure, of what's telling me my life is so impure. Threatened heart, from the strings that wrap it, tearing it apart. Feel the clench of a bundle of what you yourself have drench and so benched. And you threw to me the horror show, I never so have thought would reckon me to be. I, to be, it's master and it's longing family, here I cry. Hear "I" cry. For I exist in heart, but never, not in mind. There I stand once again as a memory of all that I pretend. If I tried, to be real, the pieces fall apart inside. So I hide, then I quiver and I shake as 'me' is inside. I can touch to the shelter covered in the unbelieving, underachieving to be who I know I am to be. Or at least what you see. I crush the old me and start anew, though I grew. I, immortal to myself have stomped the true. And I become something greater than simple little shrew. Do not lie! For I see with one eye, the look through me. What you see is a host, not the ghost, that lives on. "Awh, look at me. I'm so strong!" Laugh along. Child there. Where? Oops, forgot to care. Now I stare, towards the end that's never ending like this script. Never ending. Twist and bending. Don't kid me, I'm no kid. I'm the body of a youth, but I am dead. I've destroyed myself, if others didn't do a perfect job. Hold up stop! I'm letting go, a bubble that will pop. It will burst, destroying me, if it doesn't **** me first. Here I stand. Hear I cry. There I go. I have died.

I've stopped caring if people call me Mr.
I'm resigned sometimes to fade away
like a moldy apple rotting quietly in the bin
it was only a taste of me that ever counted

but I'm not done yet
(sigh)
babies...this is the rowdy bus ride
on the long windy island road
shouting *******
as the driver power swerves around the sunday driving couple
in a flash, white knuckled eye to eye with the semi driver
not even surprised
that we are colliding
no-one else seems to notice
this ride ends too,
a red house on a hillside over looking the pacific
monkey toucan sloth
a private pool
infinity style, ends at the edge and tumbles into what
nothing to signify
no goals met
I'm just alive,
perhaps underachieving,
this number on my check is a third of last years take
maybe I'm not charging enough
maybe I'm working too hard or not eating
I've gained no weight since college
and I barely seem to care
I learn night moves, sometimes I can sing
fearless full throated belts

a sign in some ohio river town
in front of some church
that some people still go to
and maybe get charged at the door
says
pray ceaselessly
they say
yoga is a way of being
a person goes to the gym for an hour
but what about the other 23
I keep my back straight and my breath full
and count a days labor
for ******* in my *****
and keeping my triangles engaged
just like Bomchew and Paul taught me
an old lady smiles at me in a white stair case, calls me cowboy
she said she saw me standing in court
a judge threatening to throw me in jail
and said to herself
now theres a man

She's a tortured soul
In a privileged girl's world
It's hard for me to imagine
Not being able to justify my pain
In a world where there's not supposed to be any problems
That seems to be the problem
I'd be the first to throw a fit
If she ******* about the money she had
But we all forget
All the money in the world
Can't hug empty arms
Or catch a falling heart
She breaks like the rest of us
But fights through the pain
'Cause there's not supposed to be any problems
For a girl with her last name
Like Roger Clemens and his ****** sock
She marches on with a bleeding heart
She puts on fronts
Like little black dresses
It's as far as she can get
From where all the stress is
When she's not being herself
She's being what she is
Rich, white, and beautiful
Nothing wrong with that
Till you go home and turn off your lights
Your shadow can't tell you what color you are
Your 700 thread-count sheets forgot how to add
And your mirror's not working right tonight
All you're left with is the dark
And the pain in your heart
And we all know that's a deadly combination
Whether you live in a box
Or a mansion
Daemons still torture your thoughts
But just like Van Gogh and his missing ear
She marches on with haunted dreams
Yeah
She tried to shop her way out of this
One progressively lower top at a time
But it doesn't matter how **** you are
Or how many guys are looking at you
If he's not
There's no fooling yourself here
It was all for him to begin with
And so she finds another problem
Her daddy's credit card can't buy her out of
And the burden of her last name
Continues to weigh down her soul
Always working on herself
Learning languages, instruments, diets
Like she's out of Jane Austin's
Demented 1800's stock market
Just trying to raise her profit shares
Like a Kennedy and their legacy
She marches on underachieving royalty
Her therapist wishes he could prescribe her a bottle of wine
Knows sober she'll never give him the whole truth
But a word of warning
Once she starts she won't stop till she comes to
And it doesn't come out in a narrative either
So you have to sift through all the
I'm-fat's, the nobody-likes-me's, and the do-you-think-I'm-pretty's
But if you can do that
You'll get to the good stuff
To the he-hurt-me's, the I'm-lonely's, and the I'm-not-over-him's
The my-parent's-don't-approve's, the I-feel-abandon's, and the I'm-not-over-him's again
And if all that sounds familiar
It's because they're universal
Heart breaks don't check credit scores
Daemons don't need bank statements
You're never too rich to cry
Like Cinderella and her glass slipper
She marches on with a limp

Aiming for the stars
But cannot reach the trees
Trying to move mountains
But running from the bees
Tryna swim away
but i can't wade in water..
Tryna warn the sheep..
Before they all get slaughtered..

Sullen, sunken underworld
Underachieving overwhelming me
Not yet what I am
For who I am is
Largely at risk, rarely
Overzealous with tasks or
With thought or with speech.
Ever repressing the riot, cyclical.
Ravaging, rampaging, burning life.

Somehow, the tragic hero must
Excel, grow and develop, to envelop
Exotic, ****** nurturing rays of light.
Do you know how to feel alive?
Show me.

and
The pickles
on the shelves
in the condiment aisle

are readying
themselves
for the winter

The half-sours
stand at attention

The garlics stand
at parade rest

Dill chips are
stacked so
their eyes cannot see
out the jar

Mrs. Smith's bread & butter
pickles will not be on sale
again until late Spring
(so tasty are these)

What a long cold winter
awaits those

underachieving cucumbers

Addicted to the green leaves, you're a caterpillar crawling in the dirt
Conflicted and sick as he heaves, after looking up a butterflies"s skirt

If he could only see, potentially, what he could be, if he"d simply just look up
I continue my plea, eternally,  to help set him free, have a drink from my cup

I know you waited a whole extra week to finally come out of our mother
But the Responsibility rests on me, I refuse to give up on my only brother

There"s no place like home
Unless its abusive and broken
There"s no chance to roam
Unless actions are outspoken

I'm afraid of success, because I'll finally run out of all the excuses
Many sins to confess, none worse than underachieving all our uses

If you could only fear less
If you could only focus more
Take a hit just to relieve stress
Wake up in a city called *****

You"re still looking down crawling on the ground
With so so many women lost waiting to be found
You should be out up here with me flying around
Butterflies attract without even speaking a sound

We"re born with no parachutes and I'm a frequent flyer
So please stop wallowing down in the muck and the mire
Come flourish with me and lets set the ******* world on fire
You're my only thicker than water, join me before we expire

All Understanding uncovers
ugliness, usury.
Unifying utopians
uncorruptable,
unmoveable.

Dashing Prophets promoted
promiscuous personalities.
Promethus’s powers
persisted
purposelessness.

Do Postmodern proletariats
protest phantoms?
Puckering proudly,
pondering
paraphrases?

If Egyptians engineered
excessive egoists,
Englishmen evolved
ethical
endgames.

Tradition Rules reformed
rednecks, remobilizing,
romanticizing, recursions
rose
remarkably.

If Caesar costumed
cabals crafted carefully,
Christianity calibrated
circumferential
conflicts.

Vigilantism Unveils unlucky
usurper, undoes underachieving,
unemotional, unconsciousness
unlearning
unhumanness.
  
Every Tadpole’s talents
triumphs titan’s tricks
tip toeing
towards
truth.

glass half empty or half full?
why do we even ask at all?
all this thinking takes its toll
on our society of analysis
anti-action and paralysis
it really is a dangerous thing
overphilosophizing i mean
we've fallen victim to the allure
of thinking that we can cure
anyone anything and or any problem
with enough thinking tinkering and or solving
but truly there's really got to be
more to cure the modern malady
of paradoxes and dichotomies
and meta-epistemologies
we've come too far for us to merely be
just because i think we think
if i can really only see
what's standing right in front of me
once it's gone to the periphery
then i'm positive that we'll all have been
over inacting and underachieving
for far far too long


we think too much and do too little
it's not like it's a test or a riddle
we write creeds and manifestos
but there's no credence manifested
if we don't give precedence
not to kings queens or presidents
but to becoming a society-
a people who won't go quietly
whose thoughts and bright ideas
suddenly begin to coalesce
into lives being lived
to the absolute fullest
we need something more
we need a paradigm shift
made from something much more sure
than a philosopher's two cents
but if we don't act now
if we procrastinate and wait
our dreams will just be dreams
and tomorrow will be too late
so then-
if you don't mind
instead of stopping just to analyze and think
i think i'll take that half of a glass
and maybe take a drink

They say underachieving is an overrated skill
But Who's better qualified for your time to ****
So let me proceed to bleed just to prove I'm alive
You'll never have to leave if you constantly arrive

They say Confucious once said that he's the true root of all confusion
And stars are really just God's making love, we call it nuclear fusion
Metaphorically I smite thee with blasphemy as I come to a conclusion
Then I left somehow forgetting to remember time is merely an illusion

They also say most communication is nonverbal and it crept in my head
I had so many questions to ask, but figured they were better left un-said
And as I opened my mouth I saw a sign with the words "better off read"
It was the manual to the future, "Stare at your phones until your dead"

it's not like i was away from society,
sure, i crawled into my room and stockpiled on books,
the Tibetan Book of the Dead was never something
i was going to finish reading and find translatable
insights to compliment...
but there were plenty of books...
enough newspapers too... all the culture sections
written by critics: just today i was reading
up on two reviews in the culture section of
yesterday's the Sunday Times:
  poetry reviews! wow! wow! poetry is being
criticised in a mainstream media publication: still?
isn't poetry dead? last time i heard
TS Eliot killed poetry...
    well: if anything needs a killing -
i imagine trying to **** a dead person...
**** a dead person by mime?
**** a corpse by propping him in a chair...
talking to him, it, her,
pouring her, it, him a glass of whiskey...
dealing cards to them?
pretending the dead thing is somehow still
a body and all the mechanisation process of SIGMA
we dare to call soul or a seal of falling leaves or self?

horrors of the novel and all things
flashy and pop... i could if not for the autobiographical
drip drip drip...
   today i stood in the kitchen and imagined
myself: the demon cook of hell...
tomorrow i'll be making a Turkish dish
of finely cut beef... rosemary (oddly more complimentary
of beef than lamb), chillies, garlic,
sumac, pepper... cheese... white wine vinegar
to cure the meat...
                        black pepper... salt...
eaten with LAVASH...
                                          gorge of all gorges of
the thirst -
      but i will also be making two curries for the day
after tomorrow... to give myself more time for:
more time...

i went away from society: but didn't...
society tried to cement my ear into a lunatic asylum:
how i wished i made it among the madmen,
truly... how i wished i was at one point sectioned:
i tried my luck, i tried and tried but failed...
i never was... pop pill X white as nerves
and the bleaching of aluminium -
   pop pill Y... no result... the desired result...
the world span forward and still the same world
i returned to... although with quaked psyches
reaching out for hands instead of receiving
pointing fingers... exclude you: exclude i and you:
you-not-you i-not-i: or even:
i as "i" and you as "you"...
                    
in this kitchen: this, not this: any kitchen...
what was playing in the background? a spin on vampirism,
a blood-disease romance...
i thought about: if i wrote a YA novel about
vampires in the decadent period of the 1980s
with the height of the AIDS epidemic?
imagine: i "said" to myself...
    imagine vampires with AIDS... i started to imagine
vampires suffering from AIDS...
    not the sort of pristine vampires that needed
virgins or children to survive...
just a wild-thought: an unnecessary thought...
i'd be better off thinking of windmills...
    like that one coming up to Upminster from
Hornchurch...
               because this book, will never be written by
me... but a theme exists...
vampirism at the height of the AIDS pandemic...
vampires with AIDS...
             the homosexuality of vampires is yet
to be explored... seems these creatures might want
to exchange blood, spit and *****...
perhaps vampires would be immune to AIDS...
but then again: that's irrelevant since there's a cure
for ***: the virus that designated the past-"redemption"
state of AIDS...
or at least: this is what i "think" i "know":
point being - i don't care to know...
                              
the following rubric also came up...
on the topic of gravity...
swimming - ∇ (you find gravity in the top part
of your body... in the torso)...
the feet are slackers... they come in for the swim...
cycling - (again) ∇ nabla schematic...
your torso actually manages the coordination
of the body on the bicycle...
your feet do all the work... peddling...
but your upper body needs to coordinate
the centre point of gravity being: you're not falling...
you're not falling when either swimming
or cycling...
you're not falling when walking...
you're not falling when climbing, rock or tree...
∇... the legs are only there for the "ride"...

but? ice-skating... it should be the same!
it should be a ∇-schematic...
but is it?! is it?!
hardly some darkened mysterious, poetic O...
oh god... not another of those O O's...
like O is ****** or O is orbit
or O is eye or: whatever happened in Ur
and why not Oor for up-sigh-alone
   is not different to oh-mega-n: oh Meghan?
not a name in the tabloids... just
a coincidence, a little coincidence...

i can't be blamed for underachieving in the second
wave of literacy: basic example i can give:
frightoffreedom = "FRIGHTOFFREEDOM"
print(f"{frightoffreedom.lower()}")
who write so complicated but still performs
magic in 2D and can't translate 2D into 3D?
did every child start speaking said, any said
language to an unsaid capacity of a Buddha's
silence? gate-keepers some say,
a new literacy i say: i too could learn if
there was someone willing to teach...
but as the first pigs to the trough...
first learners come first and the rest "struggle"...
that's me sorting out the basics of ever used
EXCEL twice, properly...
HTML building blocks once...
sorting out my father's change of accountant:
three years prior to his retirement:
quick-books confuses everyday tax-payers
except for the intended audience of accountants...
but... how happy i was... filling out the rubrics
finding math fun without doing any math...
my new favourite expressions
are =SUM(D3:D34)
   that's for the total of money spent...
next column... =(D3*1.2)
   that's the rubric for the Netto (without VAT)
slide the mouse down from D3 through to D34...
next column the VAT (Brutto)..
    =(D3-E3)
             ergo... the VAT in cell F3... scroll down
to F34... then at F35 type in:
    =SUM(F3:24)...

                   modern poets are yet to have discovered
or used the internet or computers...
Poet-Luddite... conflated language:
i want to forget outside of the immediacy of having to
know an elephant is an elephant and
there are five blind men trying to tell apart
a chair from a table...
                 perhaps seeing each item represented
by a cubist painting would leave them
the same blind men if they were only given
a snippet of sight to tell a chair from table apart...

conkers left on windowsill and other locations
in the household allow you to spend the winter
months: freed from feeling spiders...
spiders apparently abhor the scent of oak seeds:
i've been huddling in my winter abode
freed from spider bites... in winter...
when spiders morph into mosquitos and draw
blood from mammalian flesh...

- i can't believe it though! it was so easy!
but... it had to take a lesbian to ask me out on a date!
it took me from the age of 21 through
to the age of teasing 37, done so casually...
hey: do you want to go ice-skating with me
after the shift is over? sure! why not!
today i paid for it... however many hours
i spent cycling, today i felt muscles i never thought
i had... but it took a lesbian to ask me on a date...
a coworker mingling scenario...
we worked the shift, we went ice-skating...
she filmed me trying my best not to fall over...
her laughter, or rather, her giggling reminded
me of Ilona... that masculine-feminine aura
of self-assurance...
i'm not attracted to these women:
they just seem to be attracted to me...
tattoos, piercings, bully-boy butch-Toms...
standing a proud 5ft4 eyeing up a 6ft2 example
trying to kick punch and kiss all at the same time...
well... it was so easy, so much fun...

it should follow that finding the centre of gravity
within the confines of ice skating
should be the same as that of finding the centre
of gravity while swimming or cycling...
i.e. ∇... that's the schematic...
upper-body: the torso is giving prime psychological
concerns... the legs are secondary...
but no... it's counter-intuitively: "intuitive"...
you can't exactly begin finding gravity while
either swimming or cycling by flapping your
arms about pretending to learn to fly:
but you do! you do!

            a drowning man is flapping his arms about
but his legs... his legs...
i'm starting to think i'm getting this theory all wrong...
swimming = cycling = ice skating = ∇...
i kept looking at my legs
pretending to walk while simultaneously trying to glide...

Δ schematic insinuates: don't look at your legs...
no one who walks upright looks down
asking the legs to do the walking...
one looks down to resemble a humbling
expression of grace: thank you: mechanisms of
what binds water to a tide and the mountain
to itch for rising above the setting sun...
thank you...
no one looks at one's legs insinuating:
you're not performing my unconscious demands
of moving from X to Y...
but on ice? ice skating...
it's a fake schematic... ice skating is truly like
swimming and cycling...
next time? my 3rd time on the ice? i will have to let go...
i will have to fall the nth number of times...
what's scary is generating a momentum
so easily without any obstacles of a hill
of grit of grind...
     it's a bit like: people exercising in the gym...
performance art... they can lift weights as a spectacle...
they can create a sexed-up physique, body-shape...
but throw the same people into a manual-labour
environment: with the drudgery of manual labour...
the bulkiest of them will stumble...
tell them to lift, perform "art work" on a roll of
      felt in the roofing industry...
lifting weights is an abstract compared to actual
physical labour...

still... aged 36 and the first "date": it wasn't a date...
was with a female who just so happened to be a lesbian...
what sort of heterosexual woman would go on
a date with me so simple... she asked to go ice-skating
i would have asked: want to go cycling with me?
want to go to an art gallery with me?
was there any talk about what job i have?
was there any talk about what living arrangements
i'm living "under": more like over given
the current climate of renting in London:
12 months upfront rent?!
             of course i still live with my parents...
i clean the house, i cook, i sort out my father's invoices...
i do the VAT for the accountant,
i tend to the garden...
                              i pay "rent"... well...
thankfully i didn't have hopes to get married...
so... my parents didn't have to fork out from their savings
for some grand fakery parade of ceremonial pomp
of ****** white: bride to be...
easier with the prostitutes in the brothel...
but i figured: if the the 8 year old me figured out
how to ******* before he could produce *****
he could also have an inkling into the current debacle
of men who *******: like that was ever a hindering
"problem": because women are all pristine
because they rarely talk about it:
cipher: Madame Bovary...

         two bad experiences having *** in one brothel
and i'm thinking about curing my ills seeking out
another brothel... but it's winter and my libido is
obviously not up to scratch...
so? three times daily... jerking off to the point
where i: i don't have to actually enjoy it...
no movies... just pictures... cleavage... ***...
eyes... mostly eyes...
                           bacon, butcher, bacon,
tenderising meat, curing meat with acids...
spices... herbs...
                 the more i do it the less i think of it...
worried about communal hot topics about loss
of testosterone?
                   i have hair on my chest
my stomach, my back and on my chin...
                  blah blah some parrot said...
seagulls dived in for a *******... the Kraken yawned...
Norse mythologies crept up on dying Christianity
and all was well... meadows covered by frost come
late January somewhere in the open green patches
of Edinburgh...

                - the labour and the pains of the crucified-foetus....
some say it's like waking into a world
where women perform the splinter-membrane
argument of what's living and what's not...
how ancient male mammals performed infanticide...
yet how chemistry and the abstract allowed
a new-mammalian-wave of female infanticide:
because: early birds in the dynamic of ***
made their first falls the fault in the opposite ***...
while some of us waited and waited and
by waiting became freed from ugly brides
and social expectation: Darwinism's pressures
to procreate...

i can't listen to both Darwinism and Buddhism
at the same time: i simply can't knife through
to the fork to subsequently spoon up and gulp down
this sort of duality...
like i can't stomach the dualism: if there is one
of consolidating the aesthetic with the ascetic...
i can't consolidate the AESTHETIC with the ASCETIC!
Christianity did just that! Christianity
married the AESTHETIC with the ASCETIC"

Apathetic, acataleptic, anthropomorphic abstractions aided an anorectic.
Biology and botany, both broad, but bellicose blossoms bring banality.
Considered communication can conceal certain capabilities- cruelty without causality.
Delirious dreams of divination dwindle during daytime's discontinuation.
Echoing and eerie, ecclesiastical ecstasy eclipses eccentric ebullience in extroverts.
Face-to-face farewells facilitate friendships & fatigue families, familiar in fantasies.
Grace goes gardening, garnishing and ghostwriting, good god, glistening a glittery glaze over.
High, hovering, hallucinating helps habits' hardening and hiding in hazy harmony.
Introduced ideologies, indeed, illustrate ingenuity in idiosyncratic individuals I impersonate.
Jumbled and juiced juxtaposition of jitterbug and jazz justifies jovial jumpiness- jeez.
Karaoke on ketamine, a kettleful of kerosene, kindling kisses, knocking knees.
Last but not least, the lawless laying low are liberated, later learning large life lessons.
Mainly markedly meticulous, maids manage the meagerness of mess, mollifying mothers.
Namely narcotics, not either naivety nor narrow-mindedness, necessitates a nosedive.
Obligations to obtain n occupation only obfuscates obvious obstacles, and oftentimes objectivity.
Pervasive paradoxes parody people's past perceptions, predominantly persistent patterns.
Quick-witted quarrelers query quantifiable qualities, quotations never quivering or quiet
Rickety, raggedly radios ring with ragtime, rainbows remain a rarity.
Sick, staggering students suddenly spill, saucer-eyed, onto streets and scatter.
Thrown together, the tank top, the trousers, tempted and tongue-tied them, totally.
Underestimation ultimately undid the understanding of ubiquitous underachieving underdogs.
Variability in validity and value variance violates the valuer's viewpoint very vividly.
Wandering war-torn wastelands, wayfarers weaken, wait for water, wearily wonder at weather
Xenophobic xylophonist's x-ray wouldn't show his xanthopsia, xeroxed in the xanthic Xs of his eyes.
Your yawning and yelling is yellowing your youthful yearnings for yesterdays.
Zigzagging, zany zookeepers zestfully zone out with zoom lenses, to see from A-Z.

Being a teenager is dodging bullets of petty rumors and gossip speeding towards you like heat-seeking missiles in the middle of the hallway and
Hiding from the shadows and trying to find the light simultaneously and
Aiming to please everyone, especially your parents who don't pay attention to the important things like whether or not you're still sane unless you ask them please and
Floating somewhere in the middle of over and underachieving so as to remain afloat and
Constantly battling the stress that wages a war on your body and mind and
Falling in and out of what can only be described as the adolescent definition of love and
Wishing you could sign a peace treaty with wherever all these emotional bombs are flying from and
Getting crushed under the pressure that
Builds and
Builds until you
Bend and
Bend until you finally
Snap.
And break down in tears, exhaustion and strife.
And when you regain enough strength, you wave your tiny white flag in surrender,
Hoping to put life on pause, even just for a moment
In a feeble attempt to prepare yourself for the next attack
Because these ruthless soldiers don't care if you can't handle the pain that they inflict and
Without skipping a beat, a machine gun opens fire on your soul, leaving holes that make you question who you are and
Your wounded, empty shell of a body is all that's left laying motionless on the ground and
You hope like hell you can survive this teenage battlefield.