I used to think that all of them were just bodies. She-figures, they came and went, facilitating infinite happiness and following with hellacious heartbreak, aorta explosions galore. They pass. I stay. She goes. I remain. We all take a trip, but she falls asleep while I follow the road, I sing the song, make the lyrics up as the 101 heads West, and I careen against the Pacific. I see silvery-white plumes of whale breaths spouting, they break the rocks of my rock and roll. When the levee breaks, we'll have no place to go- I'm going back to Chicago.

California. Line 5. Verse 1. She is born in Arkansas, in Denver, in New York City, in the back of a taxi cab, her parents waiting for a table at Earth Cafe, 1989. There are concerts, balconies, elevator shafts, and on benches. The gain rises, the volume up and up and up, I offer her a cigarette, I ask her if she likes my dress, I show up with two palms full of a flame, and I say hello. Browsing in high-definition, the water is warm, my feet are planted and I have everywhere to go. Classical emporium of light fill me with ease, greatness, and belief. She asks me if I'm gay. Every great confusion can be proven to be fortuitous with enough time on hand. I kiss in cars, in bathrooms, and barrooms, in hallways, on staircases, on beds, church steps, and legs. I touched a leg, ran my fingers through her hair, my thumbs curved to the height of two ears alongside a size B head. I love art *****. i burn candles, and I swirl the wax around until the walls wear masks of white. I check-in to a hotel. I stop to buy wild flowers on the side of the road, or to climb down a ravine, we open a page into an enormous patch of strawberries, wind-surfers, and the golden Palo Alto beaches. I am in Bronzeville, on my way to Bridgeport, I am riding the train, browsing magazines, and singing new songs in my head. My lips are wet with excitement and the musings of the Modern Art Museum and the gift of a first kiss; behind the statue on Balcony 2, near the drinking fountain, the Eames couch, and two lips meeting anew. Bravery in twos.

Chapter 1, Verse 2. The chorus is large and exciting. New plastic shining coats. Smocks patterned with the Random House children's stories that we played with as children. We didn't wear gloves, or hats, or pants, or our hearts on our sleeves. I was up to my knees in hormones and very persuasive. My fifth birthday was at the Nature Center, you chased me into the boys' bathroom and kissed me with your wet and four year old lips in the second stall from the door. I eased up maybe 2% since then. The speakers are a little bit fuzzy, it's like listening to the spit of someone's tongue cascade the roof of their mouth while they pronounce the British consonants of the 90s. Said and done and saving space.

I am saving up for Grace. A crush in the mid 2000s, black hair, long legs, and the only brunette for a decade before or after. We played doctor, with the electric scalpel we turned our noses red with Christmas time South American powders. A safe word for an enemy, the sun for an enemy too. You bolted out and took my early Jimi Hendrix Best Of compact disc case too. While we're at it, you took my Michael Jackson cassettes as well. I go mid-range, think Kiri Te Kanawa in the whispers of E.T.'s Elliot. Stuffed-animal closet party for seven minutes in heaven. Your family came with butlers while mine came with over-educated storage. A blue borage sky in the intestines of life, a splinter in the shanty-town of invincible daily struggles- both of us were born again in O'Hare Airport's Parking Level D. Too many nonsensical arguments in two-tone grayscale ripping open the packaging of a course about trysting in your twenties.

Your stomach's history is overpowering. It is temperamental, mettled by spirits and sleepless nights, borborygmus, wambles, and shades of nervousness you were never comfortable speaking openly about. The history of your ****** was privatized, in options and unedited films shot over and over candidly by a mini DV desk camera, nine months to read you wrong to weep in strong wintry walks back and forth from The Buckingham to the Dwight Lofts, Room 408 without a view. All of your secrets in a little miniature of a notebook, bright cerise red. You captured teardrops in medicinal jars meant for syringes. You tied strings to your fingers, named your field mouse Ginger, and introduced your mother as Lady Darling. Captain with stingray skin, the hide of Ferris Bueller with the coattails of James Bond, dusted with daisy pollen, and clearly weakness. You ate me like bitter herbs on Thursdays, and like every other woman I've ever met, on Tuesdays you always kept me waiting.

I have wings for everything. Yellow wings for a woman in a yellow dress, Red, White, and Green wings for Bernice from Mexico City, Purple wings for  Mrs. Doolittle the doctor who worked at Taco Bell, the Jamaican priestess who was traveling through Venice Italy- we smoked hash with the grandchild of James Joyce on the Northern pier against the aurulent statues of Apollo and Zeus, Cupids' collection of malevolent tricks, SleepingB Beauty's rebuttal in fending off GHB attackers, my two dear friends who were kidnapped in clothes, abandoned in the ****, and only remember eating chocolate donuts with sprinkles and the bruises and dirt on the insides of their thighs. Nothing clever. Nothing extraordinary. Everything sentimental, built to withstand soot, sourness, and early female bravado.

You know how to play the piano so you've said, but i only have the CD you gave me to prove it. I do have evidence of your addiction to men and *******. I have your collection of dresses with tags still on them (but every woman has some of those), there is the post office box in Kauai, the Halloween card from last November and the two videos I have stored on an external drive in a nightstand adjacent to the foot of my bed. You sleep atrociously, talk too quickly, and **** like your father abandoned you when you were five. Your talent for taking photographs is like your skill-set for playing the piano, but I don't have the CD to prove it. You don't believe in social media, social consistency, friendships, or hephalumps and woozels- with the exception of the classes we shared together in college, I've never seen you outside of the most glamorous of fashion. You hate flats, hats, and white wine, and for as sad as you can seem to be at times, I've only had you cry on me once. While we were on the phone, three days after your mother hung herself. That's when I last left California, and I haven't been back yet.

I love a Kristine, but once a Britni, a Brandi, a Joni, a Tina, Kristina, Kirsten, Kristen, and a Katherine and Kathryn too. I know rock stars who are my dearest friends, enemies who I share excellent taste in music with, and parents who've always had my back but show it in lashings of the tongue and of the belt. It's been two years and three states since I was two sizes smaller than I am now. I've never considered the possibility that I was the main character and not the supporting actor, but due to recent developments in antipathy and aesthete, reevaluation, and retrospective nostalgia. All of this is about to change.

I am me still evolving without my usually stolid and grim ****** features. i bare brevity to situations existing that would **** most or in the least paralyze a great many. There is one for every hour of every day, and one for every minute in every hour, second in every minute, and more than the minutes in every day. No one has a second chance, shares a different time, or works off a different clock. I have been called the master of the analog, king of the codependent, and rook to queenside knight. I share a parabola for every encounter, experience, and endeavor. I am three minutes from being a cadaver, one drink away from a drunk, and one thought away from being completely alone. I think upright, i sleep horizontally, and I love infinitely. I am the only finite constant i have ever known. I am the main character, the script, satire, sarcasm, and soundtrack are mine.

"I don’t care if you believe it. That’s the kind of house I live in. And I hope we never leave it.”
There's A Wocket In My Pocket by Dr. Seuss

She doesn't have many friends but she's okay with it. She always thought she needed somebody to fill the blank space in her life, wanted somebody's fingers to perfectly intwine with her's.
She looked  everywhere  for him but couldn't  find him, what is the definition of the ideal man for her ? Well she herself doesn't know.
Being an aesthete has made her realise  that the moon and the nature are her only companions. No matter how good or bad things are  they will always listen to her and the glistening light of the moon  somehow calms the thunderstorm of her  heart. The moon made her realise that the happiness that she's trying to look for is already there all she has to do is love herself a little more and he also made her realise that it's not necessary for a man to hold her hand and make her realise her worth sometimes holding on to somebody can suffocate you.
When she cannot find and love herself, nature caresses her in unexpressible ways like the wind  kisses and holds her hand whenever she's  in turmoil, the grass let's her  breathe the freshness of life whenever she walks barefoot on it,  she forgets about all her worries for a little while when she hugs a tree and the tree makes her feel loved by shedding a few leaves on her arrival , the way the waves touch her feet makes her realise  that it's not that hard to let go of things that have held her back, chained her thoughts with fear and regret.

Now she is happy with everything that she has and this has made her fall freely in her own arms.

he could play a frakkin' minuet
with his hands, this dude,
with perfect pitch and key --
and birdcalls of a timeless cult.
he'd hangglided in volcano rainbows,
had meathook *** from rafters.
reciting Shakespeare, conjured instant goosebumps, tears --
towering heartwise, intellect vast
whatever roles he played at night to model for our soul
we ripped the roof from off my fathers house, sublime,
wearing attic soot in all our pores,
asbestos grin contracting into mycophile hopes
flirting with the passing birds
in leaves and pizza parlors,
tanned and buff, shingle tar on shoulders, nails,
iron hard for her and her and her
the beating sun-breath coughing under mask
each tack an instant echo for the breeze
to take direction from a symbol core
no symbol ever truly held..
refreshing airs to bleed away the vanity,
yet halfway on the ladder there
an interrupting brag, my father's fascia beams
report card scores as if a better world they made
in money pitted recess taxing hidden filth- -
thank you,
Bach, to break up pride with existential high
new melodic rain to cover over thousands lost to sell,
settle dust,
handwind bard, aesthete
innovate human
you turn me on with tales of your amazing wife
bareshirt in your unfinished house, lusting eaves,
backyard grasshoppers on the counter,
****** as insect brains can be
to tilt their eyes with me at unreal fullness spectra-circle on a cloud
not possible the wholeness found
in wish fulfilling living roofs
of ecosystem awe and sunlamp bottles
here, and here,
under moss on backwoods skillion
or trussed on tree spread wide, open-hipped for skylove --
contentednesses missed the meaning now
of mother-art to birth anew the endless homes,
ecosophy's abundant cheer
laughter even in the nooks of dying nails
extemporaneous arcology of barefoot
ridgetop feardance raked in soffit shift
from gray to green
invulnerable vigor gained and gone
and grown again
from marginalia to universal veil
'happy evermore' no matter this or that
a swimming hole of naked sayings streamed,
inner wash of salt and sweat, an afterthought deluge
to challenge dormer crease-dive of a dogma drain
structured, learned pillage ivory still
though greensulated soon








.

/          the aesthete...

                             and the athlete,

i.e.

               the "sophist",

                     and the "philosopher"?

ah... phonetics, rather linguistics:

  former: as-feet...

   but the latter?
                                   ancient greek
in french:

                    a(h)'f'lé'té.

     people should, really introduce
a chemistry-style subscript for surds,
most notably H,
                hay'chch,

      when dealing with such deviations
from classicaly philosophy
metaphysical concerns,

   and modern, orthography:
this, the, now,
     types of "philosophical" inquiries:

and i mean that
  as "philosophical":
   because i actualy mean...
   the favours of pedantry akin to
being entertained by
the intricacies of Versailles;

you'd get more good-luck wishes
in the form of horse-shoes
hanging over your door in a small
village in the ***** of gascony.

Roar.
stone teeth grind dully.
Dear.
flesh swells & tears.
Torn.
breathe aggressive heat.
Breathe.

I used to think that all of them were just bodies. She-figures, they came and went, facilitating infinite happiness and following with hellacious heartbreak, aorta explosions galore. They pass. I stay. She goes. I remain. We all take a trip, but she falls asleep while I follow the road, I sing the song, make the lyrics up as the 101 heads West, and I careen against the Pacific. I see silvery-white plumes of whale breaths spouting, they break the rocks of my rock and roll. When the levee breaks, we'll have no place to go- I'm going back to Chicago.

California. Line 5. Verse 1. She is born in Arkansas, in Denver, in New York City, in the back of a taxi cab, her parents waiting for a table at Earth Cafe, 1989. There are concerts, balconies, elevator shafts, and on benches. The gain rises, the volume up and up and up, I offer her a cigarette, I ask her if she likes my dress, I show up with two palms full of a flame, and I say hello. Browsing in high-definition, the water is warm, my feet are planted and I have everywhere to go. Classical emporium of light fill me with ease, greatness, and belief. She asks me if I'm gay. Every great confusion can be proven to be fortuitous with enough time on hand. I kiss in cars, in bathrooms, and barrooms, in hallways, on staircases, on beds, church steps, and legs. I touched a leg, ran my fingers through her hair, my thumbs curved to the height of two ears alongside a size B head. I love art *****. i burn candles, and I swirl the wax around until the walls wear masks of white. I check-in to a hotel. I stop to buy wild flowers on the side of the road, or to climb down a ravine, we open a page into an enormous patch of strawberries, wind-surfers, and the golden Palo Alto beaches. I am in Bronzeville, on my way to Bridgeport, I am riding the train, browsing magazines, and singing new songs in my head. My lips are wet with excitement and the musings of the Modern Art Museum and the gift of a first kiss; behind the statue on Balcony 2, near the drinking fountain, the Eames couch, and two lips meeting anew. Bravery in twos.

Chapter 1, Verse 2. The chorus is large and exciting. New plastic shining coats. Smocks patterned with the Random House children's stories that we played with as children. We didn't wear gloves, or hats, or pants, or our hearts on our sleeves. I was up to my knees in hormones and very persuasive. My fifth birthday was at the Nature Center, you chased me into the boys' bathroom and kissed me with your wet and four year old lips in the second stall from the door. I eased up maybe 2% since then. The speakers are a little bit fuzzy, it's like listening to the spit of someone's tongue cascade the roof of their mouth while they pronounce the British consonants of the 90s. Said and done and saving space.

I am saving up for Grace. A crush in the mid 2000s, black hair, long legs, and the only brunette for a decade before or after. We played doctor, with the electric scalpel we turned our noses red with Christmas time South American powders. A safe word for an enemy, the sun for an enemy too. You bolted out and took my early Jimi Hendrix Best Of compact disc case too. While we're at it, you took my Michael Jackson cassettes as well. I go mid-range, think Kiri Te Kanawa in the whispers of E.T.'s Elliot. Stuffed-animal closet party for seven minutes in heaven. Your family came with butlers while mine came with over-educated storage. A blue borage sky in the intestines of life, a splinter in the shanty-town of invincible daily struggles- both of us were born again in O'Hare Airport's Parking Level D. Too many nonsensical arguments in two-tone grayscale ripping open the packaging of a course about trysting in your twenties.

Your stomach's history is overpowering. It is temperamental, mettled by spirits and sleepless nights, borborygmus, wambles, and shades of nervousness you were never comfortable speaking openly about. The history of your ****** was privatized, in options and unedited films shot over and over candidly by a mini DV desk camera, nine months to read you wrong to weep in strong wintry walks back and forth from The Buckingham to the Dwight Lofts, Room 408 without a view. All of your secrets in a little miniature of a notebook, bright cerise red. You captured teardrops in medicinal jars meant for syringes. You tied strings to your fingers, named your field mouse Ginger, and introduced your mother as Lady Darling. Captain with stingray skin, the hide of Ferris Bueller with the coattails of James Bond, dusted with daisy pollen, and clearly weakness. You ate me like bitter herbs on Thursdays, and like every other woman I've ever met, on Tuesdays you always kept me waiting.

I have wings for everything. Yellow wings for a woman in a yellow dress, Red, White, and Green wings for Bernice from Mexico City, Purple wings for  Mrs. Doolittle the doctor who worked at Taco Bell, the Jamaican priestess who was traveling through Venice Italy- we smoked hash with the grandchild of James Joyce on the Northern pier against the aurulent statues of Apollo and Zeus, Cupids' collection of malevolent tricks, SleepingB Beauty's rebuttal in fending off GHB attackers, my two dear friends who were kidnapped in clothes, abandoned in the ****, and only remember eating chocolate donuts with sprinkles and the bruises and dirt on the insides of their thighs. Nothing clever. Nothing extraordinary. Everything sentimental, built to withstand soot, sourness, and early female bravado.

You know how to play the piano so you've said, but i only have the CD you gave me to prove it. I do have evidence of your addiction to men and *******. I have your collection of dresses with tags still on them (but every woman has some of those), there is the post office box in Kauai, the Halloween card from last November and the two videos I have stored on an external drive in a nightstand adjacent to the foot of my bed. You sleep atrociously, talk too quickly, and **** like your father abandoned you when you were five. Your talent for taking photographs is like your skill-set for playing the piano, but I don't have the CD to prove it. You don't believe in social media, social consistency, friendships, or hephalumps and woozels- with the exception of the classes we shared together in college, I've never seen you outside of the most glamorous of fashion. You hate flats, hats, and white wine, and for as sad as you can seem to be at times, I've only had you cry on me once. While we were on the phone, three days after your mother hung herself. That's when I last left California, and I haven't been back yet.

I love a Kristine, but once a Britni, a Brandi, a Joni, a Tina, Kristina, Kirsten, Kristen, and a Katherine and Kathryn too. I know rock stars who are my dearest friends, enemies who I share excellent taste in music with, and parents who've always had my back but show it in lashings of the tongue and of the belt. It's been two years and three states since I was two sizes smaller than I am now. I've never considered the possibility that I was the main character and not the supporting actor, but due to recent developments in antipathy and aesthete, reevaluation, and retrospective nostalgia. All of this is about to change.

I am me still evolving without my usually stolid and grim ****** features. i bare brevity to situations existing that would **** most or in the least paralyze a great many. There is one for every hour of every day, and one for every minute in every hour, second in every minute, and more than the minutes in every day. No one has a second chance, shares a different time, or works off a different clock. I have been called the master of the analog, king of the codependent, and rook to queenside knight. I share a parabola for every encounter, experience, and endeavor. I am three minutes from being a cadaver, one drink away from a drunk, and one thought away from being completely alone. I think upright, i sleep horizontally, and I love infinitely. I am the only finite constant i have ever known. I am the main character, the script, satire, sarcasm, and soundtrack are mine.

"I don’t care if you believe it. That’s the kind of house I live in. And I hope we never leave it.”

i.

In the Aeonian of the lifetime's
We shalt formeth together;
Lifeline's.

ii.

We shalt be aesthete's
Museum enthusiast's;
Of chariot's, and cherub's.

iii.

Aeviternal through the ion's
Cascarilla of incense burning;
Smoke to riseth ourn hearth.

iv.

A catena of both of ourn novel's
The fireplace, wood gleamed;
Ourn silhouette's making love to the shadow's.


©Brandon nagley
©Lonesome poets poetry
©Earl Jane nagley/ Filipino rose dedication

A cloud never
entertains
the same shape
from point a
to point b.

And if they did
would we even
bother to lie
in the grass
anymore?

There's a reason
many of the best
thinkers in history
took off into nature
often.

She never forgets
what humanity
has long ago
forgotten.

We would not
tape leaves
to a tree
to stop her
leaves from
falling.

Or barricade
the ocean
to stop
her ride
from rising.

Or push
the sky
to prevent
a storm.

But we do it
to ourselves
and each other
every day.

dust has collected in this once filled room of my mine

it's floated and settled on the last few things left behind

spellbind

windchime

now i can say this empty space is all mine


8 years of pacing this room

8 years of shouting at the moon

8 years of sleeping til noon

just to ignore the fact I meant nothing to you


so much anger has made home in my bones

the way you used to speak about me felt like being casted with stones

I used to try and drown out your tasteless, colorless tone

you type "she's dramatic" in a text on your phone


I expected this feeling of indifference to feel free with no stop lights

yet this empty space

and this empty mind

coincide

with what I've known this whole time


that all too familiar feeling of restlessness has come to an end

and even though there are still memories burned into my head

I don't believe I have anything else left unsaid


I envied your callousness

I despised your self-righteousness

and i ached at your lack of consequence

what caught your eye was never my elegance

but rather my callowness


as the ice in your drink swirls and melts

and you're blaming me besides everyone else

as your anger starts to swell

just remember it was me who wasn't treated well


we can keep our heads down while our eyes meet on the street

while you pretend I don't resemble meadowsweet

and that we never danced in my kitchen with me on your feet

but

to be honest

in the end

we were always offbeat

when you chose to secede

I found you to not be an aesthete

if you could agree

to be without me


this story is begging to no longer be told

so maybe I'll revisit this time of my life when I've seen how my life will unfold

til then my king is fallen on this chess board

my feelings are buried far past the sea's shore

and I've finally

stopped keeping score