PASSION PLAY

Ayad Gharbawi




Location: Desert Shore, Bitterly Cold Night, next to strong waves from the ocean.
Characters: Man ((M) and his Lover, a Woman (W).

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W: “Search as I forever do, in manifold ways unknown, I seek but to love thee, and the meagre goodness from Life, with steely ardour - my armour faithful.”
M: “Alone I may be, and still, yes I love thee; these days heavy are and beset I am by burdensome trivialities, but I remain trusting, though my corner so narrow remain.”
W: “My Love! Your speech I hear aloud and thine lips I live within and yet, my Love, all Solitude I am. Man! I am unaided! In this journey of sinful thorns, my love, in this unforgiving journey, this blurred odyssey, I stand alone”.
M: “This trial you speak of, but I do know of it well; so, listen then: within the strength of trusted togetherness we can plough on, though everlasting harm shall do its spiteful tricks, warm to our united truth shall we remain.”
W: (Surprised) “O! My love! This thought I cannot hear! My life, my destiny, is but mine. And all have their own solitary roads of jagged rocks to embrace, like it we or not. We heartbreaking earthly sad beasts, either fiercely clutch at integrity, or we do let it go to perish away.”
M: (Confused) “My Love! I do hear, I do hear. But when Times decide on burdening us, what then can we achieve? To face Reality within the frail arms of solitude is to ignore, to refuse the severe threats of repulsive grins.”
(Silence)
M: (Passionately) “O! My sweet! Only in us, can we envelope, through joined, clasped warmth can we be as one united! The screams that so truly are meant to slice us off, only we, our Unity, can destroy. For mine eyes can only find sleep in your ears, and it is so - for otherwise nothing and no one can be.”
W: (Angry) “My Passion too is bubbling for thine bewildered ears. Am I not your soul? Do we not suffer as one? Do we not reflect as one? Am I not your lover true? Is not our warmth not weighty to our fickle bones?”
(Silence)
W: (Passionate) “But, Lover, this much ought I to formally declare unto thee: For our eyes, and all eyes, envision unequally at one another. Till eternity, in its casual, indifferent flicker, snatches at us all wretched mortals, the gazes from lords to paupers remain veritably mismatched. O my passion! My woeful heart! These words I thunder forth defines love unfeigned, and what mine eyes do pour out unto thine ears is authenticity true.
(Silence)
W: (Passionately) “What joined mem’ries you choose to caress may possess thee, but your exactness for what love is to you, doth not dwell in mine mind. What tears, what weepings you do, fall stormily upon thine own soul’s wildernesses. You choose to be chained by changing visions and indefinite sentiments of light weight – though so poignant at the moment they veritably are?”
M: (Inquiring) “My love! I cherish thee; where hast thou been in thine mind, for now ye talk of that truth you relate to in your heart. Your pronouncements, what depths I do feel! Can it perchance be that my passion has strayed our winds far from me?”
W: “No, my love! Why is anger, I feel, lush on thine tongue?”
M: (Surprised and Frightened) “Anger! I am too distant from that affliction! But yes, I feel my words make only for unstable murmurs in my breath.”
W: (Quietly) “Then, do tell me, lover, who do your murmurs betray - myself or yourself then?”
M: (Quietly) “Perhaps so, perhaps so. But my anxiety wilfully demands of me to eradicate your vision.”
W: (Firmly) “You answer naught from my undemanding question. Or, are mine meanings too violent for you? What aches thee?”
M: (Passionately) “My sweet! In so many moments, I created mysterious planets for thee! Bizarre worlds of contrasts and opposites and musical words of antiquity and sensual ravines. My love! I, my soul, my life, my inner deepest breath, tempted as I am by Fates’ inscrutable cruelties to ashamedly yield, I have yet always expressed to mine eyes’ heart, though they be in bleak darkness, to faithfully fight without pause all shades of vice and still yet - with loving integrity; I have stood with arms of righteousness and love for thee up and never down! Yes, sincere good and venal ill remain joined in life for all to feel, but you knew it was not for me to disentangle them. And so, I pronounce unto thee, still, and yet ever and ever more, my love for thee, though still beholding a thousand mountains before me, I remain sturdy for thee; I remain undisturbed by burly laws, and by exotic dictums, I stand fierce and unhurt, save in your absence.”
W: (With Sadness) “My beloved, your vivid voice stabs the falsehoods for thee, and I say unto thee, unto thee your excessive and unreasonable chains, and for myself my unreasonable and extreme chains remain.”
M: (Shocked) “But I burden thee with no steely chains, nor verbal fetters! For naught I produce for thee save grace, passion and freedom to love for us both to be in Unity Sacred! Dost thou embrace my visions as ‘shackles’, then ‘tis better we agree to class that which we are as but madness! Hear me, for my tears now must truly change their colours!”
W: (Determined) “Your feverish hands clutch only upon mine erratic wings!”
M: (Anger) “Never! Never! For I clutch only to destroy all malevolence; as for thee, Lady of the purest, untouched, guarded, secluded Ponds, I seek to unshackle for you the scattered, scared shadows that yearn for thine sovereignty. And what is this ‘sovereignty’ but our Sacred Union? What curse deemest you I impose? Do you equal my purest passions with atrocities? Murmur unto mine ears, your clearest love for me.”
W: “Ah! You enquire of me my ‘sincerity’ for thee? What demands!”
(Silence)
M: “I see naught but heaving forests of love betwixt us, and yet, you discover my words being ‘demanding’?”
W: (Drily) “Perchance, your visions are indistinct and ever more blurred, through these years cannot be ignored.”
M: (Begging) “My love! All mine life, though it be lengthy, I fought most venal tyranny, and for this moment, you question my righteousness?”
W: (Indignantly) “I have been plunged into seas hostile and I have plunged in a thousand miles of inert minds troubled beyond conceivable comprehension and I have yet to have my Right for my own greedy, ravenous flesh to be vigorously and forcefully embraced by sensuality and serenity. Yes, I do love thee, and yet in our union, as in all unions, I have been adorned with naught, save snickering, gossiping scenes of festive *****, games, chatter and farewells, themselves festooned within silly and sincerely stupid smiles and frowns, and shallow tears and never ending ludicrous chatter unworthy of monkeys conversing. I have met programmed rows of pats, respect and all other so-called decent intents and gestures, but, where, lover that you are of mine, where does my personal heart, throb and manically vibrate, save in your heavenly imaginations?”
(Silence)
W: (Quietly but Determinedly) “My love! I truly thee love and with passions, I tell you, of proportions of precise exactitudes; in your eyes I have witnessed symphonies of exquisiteness; and, I of thee ask: where dwelleth your own love for myself in thine body?”
(Silence)
W: (Passionate) “Do you recognise the changing structures that form this, that I name ‘My Love’? In my solitude eternal, I do evermore and always do pause, and be pensive, and be thinking of questions, such as ‘where’, ‘why’, ‘when’ ‘how’, and ‘which’ should be my path; I am forever and ever more searching, seeking the heavens of every corner, and the irritable tempests, within my changing self as they themselves do try to seek me, and we forever, through inconceivable murkiness, do try to assemble the everlasting entirety of these disorganized puzzles into some measure of comprehensible cohesion that ‘I’ am. That is how the ‘I’ you love is forever changing and thereby formulating itself, and within all these meandering passions, and endless errors, where am I to feel thee? Where? And where do you seek me? In which land? In which forest? You trivialise my beingness as you focus upon my lands as being that which so effortless to find, and yet, you are much too distant from an understanding of my conflicting, emerging civilisations.”
(Silence)
W: (Passionate) If the utterance ‘Never’ is pathetic for thee, then allow me to introduce you to my latest heart: for it screams out that single, protracted utterance! Never! My love, these winds of raging wraths, both within and outside by flesh, must and can only be annihilated by mine own sincerities – were I not to play against my own self. My uncontrolled desires and, yes, thirsty manic passions can only be tempered and thoroughly satiated to the utter brim, by mine own loving, sources of pleasure, my own uncontrollable ecstasies. As for the rest of ****** pleasures, my own erroneous words, speeches and utterances can only be severed and sliced by my tranquillity.”
M: (Resigned) “I hear thine words. Do not abandon me. Do not destroy our civilisation of justice.”
W: “What we share, the bonds, are enjoyment. Listen though to mine lips: enjoyment is what - when it is to be compared with convulsive ecstatic quivers of satisfaction?”
M: (Puzzled) “And what of all our journeys to attain that unity? For all that, is it to be of mere insignificance? And if that be your truth, for what then did we toil and labour for unity of minds and bodies?”
W: (Laughing) “Did you understand from Life itself, that here it was, grandly to proclaim its furtive faces unto thine own awaiting face?! “
M: (Baffled) “It was so far too plain and vastly clear unto me these sceneries we faced before our loving bodies.”
W: “Yes, and I too, did see them with thee. Our four eyes, did see unity for that flicker of time. How true you speak! But, time clocked on, I saw you as you stood there, moving nowhere, unawares that it was your duty to squash onwards whatever vile breaths faced us.”
M: (Desperate) “And did I not? Did I abandon thee in these crushing paths?”
W: (Accusing) “No, you did not. Never, once did you abandon me. I ask of thee; for what sense do we feel a need for a continuation of these gruelling marches? For unity? For love? Or, is love unity? Was that and is this our reason for us to carry on with these shackles?”
M: “For assuredly, yes, and more yes, I tell thee! Toil and gruelling dawns, and unbearable evenings and the whitest of nights are all for the sacred attainment of that heavenly summit of joy I name as blessed ‘Love’.”
W: (Assured) “And, Sire, what if my nerves, blood and ****** hunger tell thee in truth that we, all of us, need no longer, and need never in truth, to undertake these paths, for we find naught that nourishes us at the blessed summit of your definition of what ‘Love’ is?”
M: (Confused & Sad) “So, I falter here and now upon understanding your speech; do I reason from thee that our loving days in unity are frivolously bygone now?”
W: (Calmly & Gracefully) “Do the wandering birds, and do the blind bats, and do the reckless storms, and do the blindly, raging waves and do the supremely arrogant oceans eternally march on in but one direction only with the savage passage of time within their particular lives? You did pronounce that you built planets for our unity; well then, did you not view how planets endlessly revolve along the same path?”
(Pause)
W: (Calmly & with Dignity) “For, Sire, I am not as a Planet - could you not feel that throughout our journeys? You endlessly query and question ‘who’ it is that ‘I’ am? Well, I speak this much on myself; I am as the birds, and the bats, and the storms and the waves and the oceans.”  
M: (Angry) “Woman! I can only then tell of thee that you are naught but feuding clutter and violent disarray!”
W: (Unconcerned) “Those are your words. Not mine. Speak for what you wish, Sire.”
M: (Angry) “And I stand here, before thee, in anger – nay, more, more! In fury!”
W: (Laughing) “For what? For the deeds that created but sticky, and grimy grains of sand for the undoubted pleasure our eyes?”
M: “And so you label our truths, our love so much! Fair indeed, you speak, Woman of Justice.”
W: (Arrogantly) “Man! Express your delights for your own delights. And, alas, there the circle and reality ends – and it ends only for you. That is one morsel of truth for you to ponder. What we ‘created’ and what we ‘loved’ was never and never, ever be the same for you as it is for me. Are you a sincere believer that your personal vision is the same sight all other seeing creatures envision?”
M: (Angry) “Woman, you enrage me! Your arrogance is drenching thine rags.”
W: (Sarcastic) “Tis the Man with no reason who allows his breath and words to be a veritable cesspool of fuming stenches!”
M: “But I, that I am, no longer can define your contours?”
W: (Pointedly) “Precisely, Man, precisely. Perhaps, now you have come closer to the vulnerable shores of reality!”
M: (Confused) “Do you express that you are ever varying and so for that reason there is not a one unified you?”
W: (Calmly) “For we are all ‘varying’, to borrow your word – if you do so allow me, Sire. There was never ‘unity’ of soul, nor mind, nor self, nor of any one personality. This, I desire, that you may understand.”
M: (Aghast) “Then if that be your truth and then, are we naught but multitudes of ever changing confusions, Lady of the Desert?”
W: (Calmly) “Yes and no! For those who are muscular and full of fertile vigour in their flesh, and in their intellects, and those that are severely and strictly scholastic, then they do need and they can succeed in time, in their never ending struggle to bring together the mutually antagonistic factions of that which constitutes our beingness. And, as for the dense brained soulless beings, then, it is equally veritably true that, a descent into madness can be rapidly produced, since from their erratic constituents, they cannot attract together these antagonistic and mutually-hating emotions in some vision of cohesion, and thus mayhem can be fashioned.”
(Silence)
M: (Calmly) “So, pray do tell me, where does Love and Justice and Truth and Morality stand in your universe?”
W: (Serenely) “That has been mine desire to hear the words being produced from your lips, Man!”
(Pause)
W: “So, now perhaps, your sight may be getting clearer, for your question is certainly apt. Foremost, we pathetic mortals, we the be are forever slimy specks of sand that  crumbles, must necessarily seek to survive and flourish within whatever forest, desert, meadow we find ourselves cast upon.”
M: (Startled) “At what cost, Woman? At the expense of Morality?”
W: (Rapidly) “Yes and no.”
M: (Shocked) “Horrendous! How can you spout out such filth?”
W: (Quietly) “Restrain your stupidities, and give more room to your intelligence, Sire.”
(Silence)
W: (Gracefully) “In times of trouble, what can Man do when he be forced to embrace evil, even though he finds the act of the embrace loathsome, but he does what he does for the truth of his vital existence to continue. Only when he need never embrace vile, and then allows himself to commit the act, then he is for certainty to incur the everlasting wrath of God. Evil is thus never one truth to be utterly rejected, perchance you may now see. ”
M: (Calm but Tired) “I follow your words and their ideas therein.”
W: (Gracefully) “When you talk to me on Man and everlasting, conflicting changes within that self-same creature, I tell you with all the earnestness that I possess, of what God has scattered and endowed upon me; for this beast, we all call in unity Man, this creature has far too many a numberless number of mutually self-contradicting, distrusting, loving, hating, inspiring and a never ending number of feelings and emotions that are in constant flow and change – as in any rapid river descending unto its eventual destination, which in its case, is the sea, while in our case, it is Death itself for sure.”
M: (Despair) “And how can this beast ‘love’ anyone within this welter of confusion?”
W: (Rapidly) “He cannot!”
M: (Rapidly, Begging) “But Man and Woman do love with bristling passions! Do you deny that, Woman?!”
W: (Calmly, eyes downwards looking) “Yes, and no. Since the beast has needs, based on his vastly intricate constituents, to ‘love’ his fellow beast, he imagines and believes

11:33pm @Boston_Police:
#occupyboston The BPD respects
your right to protest peacefully.
We ask for your ongoing cooperation.

@Occupy_Boston: 11:51
The BPD asks reporters to leave
the inside of the camp
they don't want them to record
and report on what they're about to do.

1:31
Cops give Occupy Boston
five minutes to vacate.
Nobody is leaving.

1:41 @OccupyBOS_Media:
The police are beating the Veterans for Peace

1:44 @Occupy_Boston:
Cops arresting everyone.
We are being beaten.
KEEP TAKING PHOTOS.

I walk there as my legs will cary me...

The Aftermath:
All quiet on the western curb
Over 100 arrested and spread amongst
more than five separate jails—none close by.
Camp two is gone and camp one intact. for now;
The ecstatic crowd, arms linked, chants
"Who do you protect? Who do you serve?""

Hyperbole all around.
Injustice or public safety?
...It hardly even matters.

The people are on the streets again
The military is overseas but
this time, the war is at home:

Men and women in blue,
likely just doing their jobs,
fighting people without them.
I fear the 99% fights itself

Rumors flit about. Crackdowns abound
Dallas, Atlanta, St.Louis, Seattle, &
San Francisco: from sea to writhing sea
The chickens have come home to roost and
The pigs are bringing home the bacon

The professionals were cleared out,
but the media wasn't. The talk is on
line by line, it is lively, ever-streaming:
blogs and tweets; statuses, state by state.

Rumors created. Rumors dispelled
Proof offered. Faith destroyed.
Anger engendered. Assumptions reinforced:
The people are connected
but the disconnect remains

Between rich and poor, yes, but maybe worse than that:
this movement is only as United as these states
The basic principles the same, the practice not so much
Peaceful, yet violent; Pro-capitalist, anti-corporate
"a laughable gang of disorganized, confused Nazis.  
an ill-disciplined, highly-trained, ****-smoking,
fascist organization."

First the Tea Party and now this,
Demonstrating the strength & flaws of Democracy
even as they protest the flaws of Republic
Still, they are not so different

They sit in parks by day and sleep at night
in dorms, apartments, houses, tents. Uncomfortable
Wrapped too tightly in sheets of red, white, and green.
Trying, desperately, to wake up from the American Dream

                                        ~D.B. Guy
                                         10.11.11

Janie pushes the metal book cart back into its parking space in the Document Delivery Department of the St. Louis Public Library and hangs the last sticky note for October 30, 2012 on the wall by the head of the department’s closed door. She retightens her brown scarf under her chin, tucking the wispy hairs above her ears back into hiding. Having your hair begin to prematurely gray as a teenager has dramatic effects on a person. Her mother wore scarves around her wrists when Janie was growing up and when Janie begin to wear scarves to conceal her salt-and-pepper hair, her mother just smiled. The clock hanging on the wall above the children’s section reads 11:28pm.
Two more minutes.
She reorganized the pens and books on her desk and set the box reading NOTES onto the right corner or her desk with three blue pens and a stack of note cards. Her coworkers learned fast that Janie does not like to talk. She does not like eye contact. She loves the silence, and never ever to ask her about her hair. Her manager gave her the NOTES box after about a month of horrible miscommunication and everyday it fills with requests for books or tasks that Janie has to complete. She completes the tasks one by one, alone, in her back office in the Reference Department and hangs the completed sticky notes on the wall by her manager’s door. She works the night shift and locks the library up every night. When she’s alone she can talk out loud to herself and those are the only voices she cares to hear.
“Goodnight, books. Good night, rooms.” Janie shut the heavy wooden door to the library, placed the color-coded keys in the front right pocket of her jacket, and began her walk to the bus stop one corner away. She avoids the main road, taking her first right onto a side street that she knows would spit her out right beside the bus stop.
“Goodnight Taco Bell Sign. Goodnight Rite-Aide. Goodnight Westside Apartments. Goodnight Jack-o-Lantern smile.” She stopped in the middle of the alley and peered up at the Jack-o-Lantern grinning down at her from the third story window above. “Mother wouldn’t’ve liked your smirk, Jack. She would’ve slapped that **** right off your face.” Janie, satisfied the pumpkin was put in its rightful place, smiled as she trotted on.
“Mother carved smiles into her arms and that’s why Daddy left, it is, it is.” She kicked at a crushed Mountain Dew can as she remembered that night from years ago.

“Mommy?” Janie pushed opened the door to her mother’s bedroom and saw the moving-boxes torn open and all their contents scattered across the floor. She tiptoed through piles of scarves and silverware and corkscrews until she reached the bathroom in her mom’s room.
“Come to us like rain, oh lord, come and stay and sting a while more, oh lord…” her mother’s voice was slipping off the tiled bathroom walls. Janie pushed open the door and saw the blood for the first time pouring from her mother’s wrist. Her mother was naked and perched on the bathroom sink, singing to a red razor blade.
“Mommy?”
“GET OUT!” Her mother jumped from the counter and perched on all fours on the floor. She began to growl and speak in a voice too deep to be coming from her own throat.
“Mommy! It’s Janie!” She began to cry as her mother, still naked and bleeding, twisted and writhed onto her back and began to crawl towards the door that Janie hid behind.


“Thirty-Three percent, dear. Just a thirty-three percent chance.” She shivered trying to clear the last memory of her mother with the words that all the shrinks had echoed to her over the years. “Schizophrenia is directly related to genetics, little is known about the type of Schizophrenia mother was diagnosed with except that it is definitely passed on genetically. But, there is only a thirty-three percent chance you could have it, dear. Thirty-three percent.” The sound of the bus stop ahead reminds her it is time to be silent again.
“Disorganized Schizophrenia.” She mouthed to herself as she stepped back out onto the busy street from her alleyway. She tightened her scarf and saw the bus pull into the pickup spot. She walked forward to the bus, again immersed in her self-imposed silence.
Stepping out of the February cold, Janie removes her wool scarf as the bus doors close behind her.
“Where to baby?” The driver smiles a sticky smile. Her nametag reads, “Shannon” and has a decaying Hello-Kitty sticker in the bottom left corner.
“The Clinton Street drop.” She hands the driver her $2.50 fare and avoids the woman’s questioning eyes. The night drivers are always more talkative, curious.
“Your ticket hon.” She tears Janie a ticket stub. “Everything is pretty dead this late, I’ll have you there in ten minutes top.”
Janie begins to shuffle towards the seats, ignoring the woman.
“You mind if I crank up the music?” The bus driver asks, purple fingernails scratching in her thick blonde hair. “I need to keep my eyes open and blood flowing and music is my fire of choice you know?”
“Sure.” Janie shrugs her bag onto her shoulder and walks on before the woman can say anything else.
“Route E-2, homebound.” Shannon’s voice crackles over the loudspeaker.
She shuffles down the bus towards her usual seat; second from the back right side.  Shannon starts the bus rolling before she reaches her seat and Janie can hear her singing along to “Summertime” by Janis Joplin. The bus floor, today, is sticky because of the morning rain. Two years of riding public transportation has taught Janie that staring at the floor as she walks to her seat is better than the risk of making eye contact. The bus is usually empty this late but if there ever happens to be anyone else on, it’s better not to converse. Safer that way.
She plops into her seat filling the indention that ghosts of past passengers left. The seat is still warm and Janie squirms around until the stranger heat is forgotten. She tightens her scarf and sighs. The brown pleather seatback in front of her is peeling towards the top. Janie leans forward and idly picks at the scab-like dangles of brown as she watches the sodden city canvas roll past her out the foggy window. As she picks, the hole grows. She twists and digs her unpainted nails into the seat until her hands feel wet, warm. Looking down, they are covered in blood and mud.
“What. The. Actual. ****.” she whispers, wiping her hands on her pants leg. She cautiously picks off another piece of pleather and a trickle of deep red begins to run from the seat back, clumps of mud now falling onto her knees. A puddle of blood and mire splatter down her legs and pool around her feet as she picks at the seat. Her white tights are definitely beyond saving now, so she digs faster until her thumbnail catches on something, bends back, and cracks. She gasps and withdraws her shaking hand, watching her own blood mix with the clotting muck in the seat, half of her thumbnail completely stripped off.
Looking around, all else seems normal. The driver is now muttering along to some banter by Kanye West, completely unaware of Janie’s predicament. She closes her eyes.
This is a dream, this is a dream, wake the **** up.
She opens her eyes to see the pool of filth around her feet trickling towards the front of the bus. Panic sets in with a whisper, They’re going to think it was you, your fault, you’ll be thrown in jail.
“But I didn’t do this.” She lashes out to herself. “I didn’t hurt anyone.”
Next stop, E-2. Shannon blares on the intercom.
“It’s just a dream, get your **** together, Janie.” She laughs at herself, manic.
Prove it! Her subconscious screams.
Convinced to end this moment she has to continue; Janie plunges her hand into the pleather grave one more time. Frantic and confused she laughs as she digs, spittle of muck splashing on her bus window.
Faster, faster, faster.
Deeper, deeper, deeper.
Realer, realer, real.
Wake up, now!
Then, as the bus slows, one last chuck of mud splatters to the floor and Janie sees a pink piece of her thumbnail stabbed into the white of a bone in the bottom of the seatback pit. Her white Ked’s were becoming so red they were almost black. She pulls her knees up to her chest and begins to rock back and forth. Clenching shut her eyes she begins to hum. Janie’s sweet soprano harmonizes with the buses deep droning purr, their wet melody interweaving with the driver’s alto and Lil Wayne’s screech made her feel dizzy as the bus turned right.
She take my money when I'm in need
Yeah she's a trifling friend indeed
Oh she's a gold digger way over town
That dig's on me
The bus slows to a stop and the bass is shaking. Janie is cold. She slowly peeks out of her right eye, expecting to be instantly immersed into the same dismal scene. The seatback is whole again. Releasing her knees, her feet fall back to the floor and her shaking fingers stroke the solid pleather.

“Ma’am? We’re at the Clinton Drop.”
Janie hurriedly picks up her bag and flees down the aisle to the bus doors.
“Everything alright, dear?” The bus driver asks, smiling.
“Fine, just fine.”
“You be safe out there tonight. The night is dark and only ghouls stroll the streets this late.”  Shannon laughed as Janie’s jaw dropped. “Happy Halloween, dear. It’s midnight, today is October 31st.”
The bus doors opened and a cold wind ****** the warm bot-air surrounding Janie into the streets. She begrudgingly followed, her mind spinning as she stepped onto the pavement. The doors slammed behind her and she turned to see Shannon pull out a tube of lipstick and smear it, red, across her cracked lips. Shannon made a duck-face in the mirror and reached down to crank up the music as loud as it would go. The bus exhaled and rolled forward, leaving Janie behind as it splashed through the potholes.
She surveys the surrounding midnight gloom and the street is quiet and dark. Even the stars are hidden behind swirling clouds. She begins to hum, hands in her pocket, and shuffle towards her apartment.
“Goodnight, stars. Goodnight, street.”
As she approaches her single-bedroom apartment, digging through her coat pocket for her keys, her thumb pulsates. She grasps the keys and pulls them out as she steps up to the apartment. Sticking the cold, silver key in the lock she looks down at her thumb and in the shadows of the porch sees half of the nail completely missing. She laughs as she pushes the door open to her bare apartment, light flooding out. Without any hesitation she closes the door behind her, sheds her clothes, and slips onto the mattress in the corner of the room gripping her thumb tight. She reaches out for the glass of milk on the floor beside her bed from the morning and it’s still cold. Nursing the milk, surrounded by blankets and solitude, she reminds herself,  “Only a thirty-three percent chance. A nice, small, round number. Small.”  
She sets down the empty glass and curls into the fetal position under the heavy blankets, pointer finger tracing circles on her thumb. Only when she has heated her blanket cocoon enough to feel safe does she remove her scarf and allow her thick white hair to fall around her face.
“Goodnight, room. Goodnight, mother,”

PASSION PLAY

Ayad Gharbawi




Location: Desert Shore, Bitterly Cold Night, next to strong waves from the ocean.
Characters: Man ((M) and his Lover, a Woman (W).

----------------------------------------



W: “Search as I forever do, in manifold ways unknown, I seek but to love thee, and the meagre goodness from Life, with steely ardour - my armour faithful.”
M: “Alone I may be, and still, yes I love thee; these days heavy are and beset I am by burdensome trivialities, but I remain trusting, though my corner so narrow remain.”
W: “My Love! Your speech I hear aloud and thine lips I live within and yet, my Love, all Solitude I am. Man! I am unaided! In this journey of sinful thorns, my love, in this unforgiving journey, this blurred odyssey, I stand alone”.
M: “This trial you speak of, but I do know of it well; so, listen then: within the strength of trusted togetherness we can plough on, though everlasting harm shall do its spiteful tricks, warm to our united truth shall we remain.”
W: (Surprised) “O! My love! This thought I cannot hear! My life, my destiny, is but mine. And all have their own solitary roads of jagged rocks to embrace, like it we or not. We heartbreaking earthly sad beasts, either fiercely clutch at integrity, or we do let it go to perish away.”
M: (Confused) “My Love! I do hear, I do hear. But when Times decide on burdening us, what then can we achieve? To face Reality within the frail arms of solitude is to ignore, to refuse the severe threats of repulsive grins.”
(Silence)
M: (Passionately) “O! My sweet! Only in us, can we envelope, through joined, clasped warmth can we be as one united! The screams that so truly are meant to slice us off, only we, our Unity, can destroy. For mine eyes can only find sleep in your ears, and it is so - for otherwise nothing and no one can be.”
W: (Angry) “My Passion too is bubbling for thine bewildered ears. Am I not your soul? Do we not suffer as one? Do we not reflect as one? Am I not your lover true? Is not our warmth not weighty to our fickle bones?”
(Silence)
W: (Passionate) “But, Lover, this much ought I to formally declare unto thee: For our eyes, and all eyes, envision unequally at one another. Till eternity, in its casual, indifferent flicker, snatches at us all wretched mortals, the gazes from lords to paupers remain veritably mismatched. O my passion! My woeful heart! These words I thunder forth defines love unfeigned, and what mine eyes do pour out unto thine ears is authenticity true.
(Silence)
W: (Passionately) “What joined mem’ries you choose to caress may possess thee, but your exactness for what love is to you, doth not dwell in mine mind. What tears, what weepings you do, fall stormily upon thine own soul’s wildernesses. You choose to be chained by changing visions and indefinite sentiments of light weight – though so poignant at the moment they veritably are?”
M: (Inquiring) “My love! I cherish thee; where hast thou been in thine mind, for now ye talk of that truth you relate to in your heart. Your pronouncements, what depths I do feel! Can it perchance be that my passion has strayed our winds far from me?”
W: “No, my love! Why is anger, I feel, lush on thine tongue?”
M: (Surprised and Frightened) “Anger! I am too distant from that affliction! But yes, I feel my words make only for unstable murmurs in my breath.”
W: (Quietly) “Then, do tell me, lover, who do your murmurs betray - myself or yourself then?”
M: (Quietly) “Perhaps so, perhaps so. But my anxiety wilfully demands of me to eradicate your vision.”
W: (Firmly) “You answer naught from my undemanding question. Or, are mine meanings too violent for you? What aches thee?”
M: (Passionately) “My sweet! In so many moments, I created mysterious planets for thee! Bizarre worlds of contrasts and opposites and musical words of antiquity and sensual ravines. My love! I, my soul, my life, my inner deepest breath, tempted as I am by Fates’ inscrutable cruelties to ashamedly yield, I have yet always expressed to mine eyes’ heart, though they be in bleak darkness, to faithfully fight without pause all shades of vice and still yet - with loving integrity; I have stood with arms of righteousness and love for thee up and never down! Yes, sincere good and venal ill remain joined in life for all to feel, but you knew it was not for me to disentangle them. And so, I pronounce unto thee, still, and yet ever and ever more, my love for thee, though still beholding a thousand mountains before me, I remain sturdy for thee; I remain undisturbed by burly laws, and by exotic dictums, I stand fierce and unhurt, save in your absence.”
W: (With Sadness) “My beloved, your vivid voice stabs the falsehoods for thee, and I say unto thee, unto thee your excessive and unreasonable chains, and for myself my unreasonable and extreme chains remain.”
M: (Shocked) “But I burden thee with no steely chains, nor verbal fetters! For naught I produce for thee save grace, passion and freedom to love for us both to be in Unity Sacred! Dost thou embrace my visions as ‘shackles’, then ‘tis better we agree to class that which we are as but madness! Hear me, for my tears now must truly change their colours!”
W: (Determined) “Your feverish hands clutch only upon mine erratic wings!”
M: (Anger) “Never! Never! For I clutch only to destroy all malevolence; as for thee, Lady of the purest, untouched, guarded, secluded Ponds, I seek to unshackle for you the scattered, scared shadows that yearn for thine sovereignty. And what is this ‘sovereignty’ but our Sacred Union? What curse deemest you I impose? Do you equal my purest passions with atrocities? Murmur unto mine ears, your clearest love for me.”
W: “Ah! You enquire of me my ‘sincerity’ for thee? What demands!”
(Silence)
M: “I see naught but heaving forests of love betwixt us, and yet, you discover my words being ‘demanding’?”
W: (Drily) “Perchance, your visions are indistinct and ever more blurred, through these years cannot be ignored.”
M: (Begging) “My love! All mine life, though it be lengthy, I fought most venal tyranny, and for this moment, you question my righteousness?”
W: (Indignantly) “I have been plunged into seas hostile and I have plunged in a thousand miles of inert minds troubled beyond conceivable comprehension and I have yet to have my Right for my own greedy, ravenous flesh to be vigorously and forcefully embraced by sensuality and serenity. Yes, I do love thee, and yet in our union, as in all unions, I have been adorned with naught, save snickering, gossiping scenes of festive *****, games, chatter and farewells, themselves festooned within silly and sincerely stupid smiles and frowns, and shallow tears and never ending ludicrous chatter unworthy of monkeys conversing. I have met programmed rows of pats, respect and all other so-called decent intents and gestures, but, where, lover that you are of mine, where does my personal heart, throb and manically vibrate, save in your heavenly imaginations?”
(Silence)
W: (Quietly but Determinedly) “My love! I truly thee love and with passions, I tell you, of proportions of precise exactitudes; in your eyes I have witnessed symphonies of exquisiteness; and, I of thee ask: where dwelleth your own love for myself in thine body?”
(Silence)
W: (Passionate) “Do you recognise the changing structures that form this, that I name ‘My Love’? In my solitude eternal, I do evermore and always do pause, and be pensive, and be thinking of questions, such as ‘where’, ‘why’, ‘when’ ‘how’, and ‘which’ should be my path; I am forever and ever more searching, seeking the heavens of every corner, and the irritable tempests, within my changing self as they themselves do try to seek me, and we forever, through inconceivable murkiness, do try to assemble the everlasting entirety of these disorganized puzzles into some measure of comprehensible cohesion that ‘I’ am. That is how the ‘I’ you love is forever changing and thereby formulating itself, and within all these meandering passions, and endless errors, where am I to feel thee? Where? And where do you seek me? In which land? In which forest? You trivialise my beingness as you focus upon my lands as being that which so effortless to find, and yet, you are much too distant from an understanding of my conflicting, emerging civilisations.”
(Silence)
W: (Passionate) If the utterance ‘Never’ is pathetic for thee, then allow me to introduce you to my latest heart: for it screams out that single, protracted utterance! Never! My love, these winds of raging wraths, both within and outside by flesh, must and can only be annihilated by mine own sincerities – were I not to play against my own self. My uncontrolled desires and, yes, thirsty manic passions can only be tempered and thoroughly satiated to the utter brim, by mine own loving, sources of pleasure, my own uncontrollable ecstasies. As for the rest of ****** pleasures, my own erroneous words, speeches and utterances can only be severed and sliced by my tranquillity.”
M: (Resigned) “I hear thine words. Do not abandon me. Do not destroy our civilisation of justice.”
W: “What we share, the bonds, are enjoyment. Listen though to mine lips: enjoyment is what - when it is to be compared with convulsive ecstatic quivers of satisfaction?”
M: (Puzzled) “And what of all our journeys to attain that unity? For all that, is it to be of mere insignificance? And if that be your truth, for what then did we toil and labour for unity of minds and bodies?”
W: (Laughing) “Did you understand from Life itself, that here it was, grandly to proclaim its furtive faces unto thine own awaiting face?! “
M: (Baffled) “It was so far too plain and vastly clear unto me these sceneries we faced before our loving bodies.”
W: “Yes, and I too, did see them with thee. Our four eyes, did see unity for that flicker of time. How true you speak! But, time clocked on, I saw you as you stood there, moving nowhere, unawares that it was your duty to squash onwards whatever vile breaths faced us.”
M: (Desperate) “And did I not? Did I abandon thee in these crushing paths?”
W: (Accusing) “No, you did not. Never, once did you abandon me. I ask of thee; for what sense do we feel a need for a continuation of these gruelling marches? For unity? For love? Or, is love unity? Was that and is this our reason for us to carry on with these shackles?”
M: “For assuredly, yes, and more yes, I tell thee! Toil and gruelling dawns, and unbearable evenings and the whitest of nights are all for the sacred attainment of that heavenly summit of joy I name as blessed ‘Love’.”
W: (Assured) “And, Sire, what if my nerves, blood and ****** hunger tell thee in truth that we, all of us, need no longer, and need never in truth, to undertake these paths, for we find naught that nourishes us at the blessed summit of your definition of what ‘Love’ is?”
M: (Confused & Sad) “So, I falter here and now upon understanding your speech; do I reason from thee that our loving days in unity are frivolously bygone now?”
W: (Calmly & Gracefully) “Do the wandering birds, and do the blind bats, and do the reckless storms, and do the blindly, raging waves and do the supremely arrogant oceans eternally march on in but one direction only with the savage passage of time within their particular lives? You did pronounce that you built planets for our unity; well then, did you not view how planets endlessly revolve along the same path?”
(Pause)
W: (Calmly & with Dignity) “For, Sire, I am not as a Planet - could you not feel that throughout our journeys? You endlessly query and question ‘who’ it is that ‘I’ am? Well, I speak this much on myself; I am as the birds, and the bats, and the storms and the waves and the oceans.”  
M: (Angry) “Woman! I can only then tell of thee that you are naught but feuding clutter and violent disarray!”
W: (Unconcerned) “Those are your words. Not mine. Speak for what you wish, Sire.”
M: (Angry) “And I stand here, before thee, in anger – nay, more, more! In fury!”
W: (Laughing) “For what? For the deeds that created but sticky, and grimy grains of sand for the undoubted pleasure our eyes?”
M: “And so you label our truths, our love so much! Fair indeed, you speak, Woman of Justice.”
W: (Arrogantly) “Man! Express your delights for your own delights. And, alas, there the circle and reality ends – and it ends only for you. That is one morsel of truth for you to ponder. What we ‘created’ and what we ‘loved’ was never and never, ever be the same for you as it is for me. Are you a sincere believer that your personal vision is the same sight all other seeing creatures envision?”
M: (Angry) “Woman, you enrage me! Your arrogance is drenching thine rags.”
W: (Sarcastic) “Tis the Man with no reason who allows his breath and words to be a veritable cesspool of fuming stenches!”
M: “But I, that I am, no longer can define your contours?”
W: (Pointedly) “Precisely, Man, precisely. Perhaps, now you have come closer to the vulnerable shores of reality!”
M: (Confused) “Do you express that you are ever varying and so for that reason there is not a one unified you?”
W: (Calmly) “For we are all ‘varying’, to borrow your word – if you do so allow me, Sire. There was never ‘unity’ of soul, nor mind, nor self, nor of any one personality. This, I desire, that you may understand.”
M: (Aghast) “Then if that be your truth and then, are we naught but multitudes of ever changing confusions, Lady of the Desert?”
W: (Calmly) “Yes and no! For those who are muscular and full of fertile vigour in their flesh, and in their intellects, and those that are severely and strictly scholastic, then they do need and they can succeed in time, in their never ending struggle to bring together the mutually antagonistic factions of that which constitutes our beingness. And, as for the dense brained soulless beings, then, it is equally veritably true that, a descent into madness can be rapidly produced, since from their erratic constituents, they cannot attract together these antagonistic and mutually-hating emotions in some vision of cohesion, and thus mayhem can be fashioned.”
(Silence)
M: (Calmly) “So, pray do tell me, where does Love and Justice and Truth and Morality stand in your universe?”
W: (Serenely) “That has been mine desire to hear the words being produced from your lips, Man!”
(Pause)
W: “So, now perhaps, your sight may be getting clearer, for your question is certainly apt. Foremost, we pathetic mortals, we the be are forever slimy specks of sand that  crumbles, must necessarily seek to survive and flourish within whatever forest, desert, meadow we find ourselves cast upon.”
M: (Startled) “At what cost, Woman? At the expense of Morality?”
W: (Rapidly) “Yes and no.”
M: (Shocked) “Horrendous! How can you spout out such filth?”
W: (Quietly) “Restrain your stupidities, and give more room to your intelligence, Sire.”
(Silence)
W: (Gracefully) “In times of trouble, what can Man do when he be forced to embrace evil, even though he finds the act of the embrace loathsome, but he does what he does for the truth of his vital existence to continue. Only when he need never embrace vile, and then allows himself to commit the act, then he is for certainty to incur the everlasting wrath of God. Evil is thus never one truth to be utterly rejected, perchance you may now see. ”
M: (Calm but Tired) “I follow your words and their ideas therein.”
W: (Gracefully) “When you talk to me on Man and everlasting, conflicting changes within that self-same creature, I tell you with all the earnestness that I possess, of what God has scattered and endowed upon me; for this beast, we all call in unity Man, this creature has far too many a numberless number of mutually self-contradicting, distrusting, loving, hating, inspiring and a never ending number of feelings and emotions that are in constant flow and change – as in any rapid river descending unto its eventual destination, which in its case, is the sea, while in our case, it is Death itself for sure.”
M: (Despair) “And how can this beast ‘love’ anyone within this welter of confusion?”
W: (Rapidly) “He cannot!”
M: (Rapidly, Begging) “But Man and Woman do love with bristling passions! Do you deny that, Woman?!”
W: (Calmly, eyes downwards looking) “Yes, and no. Since the beast has needs, based on his vastly intricate constituents, to ‘love’ his fellow beast, he imagines and believes

As I brush my teeth in the bathroom, a young woman enters- tooth brush and face wash in hand.  I watch her reflection in the large mirror a front the sinks, I put an over-sized glob of tooth paste on my brush.
******* it Danielle, she sees this mistake you’ve made.

I turn the water on and attempt to wash away some of the toothpaste. We start brush at the same time, I smile to myself because these synchronized flukes, such as speaking in unison or laughing simultaneously, make me feel briefly connected to someone. Sounds a little silly, but don’t all ways of relieving loneliness?

My anxiety stirs again as I realize the volume of bristle to tooth.* Can you hear this? Is is disgusting to you? That sound of saliva and paste being ground into my teeth.
I lean forward to spit, inspecting the rusted faucet. I see my face in it’s metal stem, it convoluted my face.

I’d rather be disfigured, so that I’d no longer have to guess and worry about whether people were eying me. I would know. They could clearly see my faults if I had a missing jaw, drooping eye and liver spots mapped across my grey skin. I wouldn’t have to worry about the possibility of being seen in a favorable light.

The possibility of fooling anybody into thinking I’m not repulsive. I would know it.  I stare into the metal, I spit. Blood is all over the sink. I spit again and more blood. Again, blood. It’s pouring out of my mouth. I turn the water on high, panicked that the girl beside me will see. But she leaves, “goodnight” she says as she walks by. I try to say something but I’m choking on the blood. Where the **** is this blood coming from?

I glance up to the mirror, there is no blood in my mouth. Back to the sick- no blood. I am so confused, just moments ago Armageddon was spilling from my mouth; and now it’s vanished?
I stumble back wards into a stall.

“I saw that.”

A voice whispers from within the stall, or was it outside?   I open the door, but nobody is there.
Okay, Danny, calm down. Nobody is here, you’re imagining things.

“No, you heard.”

Confused, the voice, that voice- it’s coming from the stall door. No, doors can’t speak, I open the door but still, I am alone.

I run, bladder still full. Sundries still on the counter, I need to get out of there.
_______________________________
Paranoid Schizophrenia- A mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of the process of thinking and of emotional responsiveness. It most commonly manifests as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social or occupational dysfunction.*
___________

Within two weeks of my first experience of hallucinations, I was in the Summit Valley Institution for Mental Disorders. Highly medicated, with stitches along my chin and staples in my head.
I’d lost all control, they found me at the bottom of a stairwell after falling 3 stories.

Nurses told me that when I’d been taken in, they found more that one hundred scraps of paper in my pockets, on them were different snipets of conversation I’d heard throughout the day. It was a compulsion, I was told, associated with Schizophrenia.

Head spinning
Feet tapping
Mind wrapping
Thought trapping
Idea capping
Desperation mapping
Quality lacking

Spaces filled
Time killed
Not thrilled
Answers willed

Nails biting
Cheaters sighting
After all nighting
Wrongs not righting
Feel like flighting

Brainpower waning
Lack of knowledge maintaining
Wisdom draining
Composure regaining

Test failing
Arms flailing
Letters mailing
Face paling
The big unveiling
No more prevailing
The action entailing:
My annihilation

♂ ♂ ♂ ♂ ♂ ♂ ♂ ♂ ♂ ♂ ♂

Fatherless broods, whose mothers hoped for change

Fight the law, abort their restoration;

Attack, burn, riot… consider nothing strange

Extorting payout from their host nation.

Fatherhood, dark elephant in the room,

Denigrated, dissed by baby-mamas

In his absence, speaks potently of doom

(Apparently blessed by both Obamas…)

***** donation, filling the wombs with child,

Disorganized communities, off-course

Guarantee police work when thugs run wild.

With marriage faltering in the race: lame horse.

Inhuman nature being what it is

Be careful who you shoot—and hold your ****.

The Phoenix
(To Love and Lose Part 2)
by Ryan Kinney

It started with a broken heart. Through the crack seeped liquid fire. It engulfed me, burning away all that I was. The flames shall purify me. Boil me down to my base components, and then rebuild me. From the ashes will rise a new entity.

Who am I?

Following my divorce I began an identity quest dubbed The Phoenix. It is my own personal trial by fire. Fire is the essence of life itself. As it destroys it also creates. I will create a new life from the remnants of my former, a persona not defined by another.

Chapter 1-The Quest

Depression and Suicide
“…my life before you was very chaotic and unstable. You were the stability I needed and the foundation on which I built my life.  I never doubted that you would always be there for me. You were my rock. Of all the people that had disappointed me you never let me down. Yet you did, You pulled the rug out from under me without warning and the foundation upon which I built my entire life crumbled…” –email correspondence to Lisa; Nov. 21, 2008

It took four months to undo ten years of my life. A debilitating depression overwhelmed me. I never saw anything in my life, but Lisa. What did I have left without her? What would I do? Darkness clouded my heart.

A rusty blade in my hand. A message in blood written on the broken mirror.
I lay in the tub, leaking crimson life. In my haze I barely make out the words.
What does my final message to the world say? I cannot remember why it hurt so much.
In a few minutes it won’t matter anymore. What the hell did I write?
I can only think of one thing that torments me enough to drive me to this darkness.
Trailing down in letters, clotting on the wall…
“I loved you.”

This revolving drama played on a loop in my mind. I was lost, a walking corpse. All I felt was cold hollowness.
“All that is left is emptiness, an empty house, an empty soul.”-journal excerpt; Oct. 6, 2008
I so badly just wanted the hurt to stop. In my tunnel vision existence I was oblivious to those whose hearts bled for mine. All my substance and passion was gone. Lisa took my heart with her and left nothing inside. Without her my existence seemed meaningless. The cloaked figure smiled, offering me the almost irresistible temptation of sweet release.
“Do I give in to the darkness? Let it consume me”-journal excerpt
Ultimately, though, there came a day when I awoke from the fog. I was living outside myself watching this unknown drone on a worthless trek. One phrase finally broke through the shell.
“What a waste!”
The Phoenix was born in that moment. The match was struck to light the way on the difficult road to recovery.
“The pieces of my soul are on the floor for everyone to trample on.”-journal excerpt; Oct. 6, 2008
I was in over my head. I needed help. A therapist helped at first, but the relationship quickly cheapened because I was essentially paying for a friendship. Antidepressants proved to work too well. I have a manic level of natural intensity. Lexapro ignited fireworks inside my brain. Both, however, gave me the nudge I needed to help myself. Eventually, I grew beyond the need for crutches. A previously unrecognized army of supporters each lent their kindling to the fires. One day at a time I battled my inner demons until I was ready to accept happiness again.
“You will be amazed on how much of the original Ryan is back. Why? Because I'm over my depression about change because something I feared more came to fruition.  I lost you.  I'm doing my best to survive from that, but my past fears now seems trivial and meaningless in comparison.”-email correspondence to Lisa; Sept. 8, 2009

Denial and Desperation
“Run, Run away Ryan. Open another book, turn on the TV, surf the Net. Delve into your fantasies and escape reality. It’s how you survived your childhood…”-journal excerpt; Oct. 2, 2008
The cracks in my facade were beginning to show. I shielded myself in delusions. I lied to myself to soften the full scope of Lisa’s betrayal. I more than lied. I was absolutely sure. I trusted her with my life. I trusted a lie. I was living a lie. I betrayed myself more than she ever did. The realizations came in shards, each piece punching holes in my heart.
I wallowed in self-pity and desolation.
I yearned so badly to feel some warmth, anybody’s warmth.

The New Girls
Upon Lisa’s departure I sought to quench my loneliness in the convenient woman around me. For a moment’s time, they took pity on me.
Rebound-I immediately sought solace in the arms of a good friend. She’s always shown me nothing but love and idolization. I was ashamed for disrespecting her and our friendship. I knew full well that our brief encounters were all that would ever be between us.
Crazy Chick-She was a brute of a woman, yet conversely, very maternal and comforting. She had a unique talent for forcefully ripping out my raw emotions, breaking through the masks. As she said, though, “I’m not Lisa.” Pathetically, that’s exactly what I wanted.
One Night Stand-ups-Several brief encounters fed my addiction for attention. Like a ****** with a needle, my appetite grew. Desperation was becoming my scarlet letter.
“…but it did seem that the thing we are most proud of and the thing we are most ashamed of are but the front and the back of the same coin. They torture and thrill all at once.”-Grotesque; Natsuo Kirino
I felt guilty and *****, yet loved for but an instant. These experiences were very cathartic. I had completely lost the ability to cry, feel pain, rage, or joy. They were the prefect drug, just so that I may feel again. Without these women to reopen the wounds, the numbness would have consumed me.
“Every angel has a little devil inside them.”-Manda; 2009
What attracted me to these women was mock chivalry. Each had their own “hard luck” story. So ingrained in me is the comic book ideal of heroism that I constantly seek to rescue the damsel in distress. Women will always be my kryptonite. However, as Crazy Chick put it, “ When is it time for you to be rescued?” The divine irony is, it was they who saved me.
It too, was not to last. A long period of isolation followed, as the women grew tired of babysitting me. Another lie to myself, a band-aid on a wound desperately needing stitches.

The Crush
Hers was the first light I allowed to pierce the darkness. She did more to heal me than any who said, “Yes.” Her secret, she said, “No.”
It has always been my curse to be eternally misunderstood and underestimated. I could see her scars bled the same as mine, although hers had begun to clot long ago. I am attracted to those who have a depth chiseled by adversity.
I identified with her. Her intelligence far exceeded my own, an Einstein in a circus. My eyes saw straight to her soul, seeing only the gorgeous woman she was on the inside. My friends would point out my eyes would sparkle whenever I spoke of her.
Yes, I loved her, but only in transition. We came from different worlds, but met as wounded soldiers on the battlefield. She was the catalyst to open my eyes. A sweet smile for my shredded soul.
“A worn beaten heart trapped in by bars.” From “Painless” by Tracy Reed
She held the key to my self-imposed imprisonment. My growing frustration with her opened the door for my transformation. For all her grace, all her amazing potential, she was wasting away in the same feeding trough as me.
“You can do better.”
Then it hit me…
“I can do better!”
I began to rebuild my empire. My never-queen rejected me…
I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

The Emotional Spectrum
“Stuck in a prison of abstract ideas and overpowering emotions.”-Zach; mypsace blog
Shock
1) ‘I don’t love you anymore.”
2) Letter…”I can’t wait until my divorce is over!”
3) Ryan-“So I guess this means we’re getting a divorce.”
Lisa-“Well, yeah. You knew that.”
4) “Ryan, they’re together, and have been.”
5) “I’m moving out.”
6) “By the State of Ohio, I hereby grant this dissolution.”-Judge; Dec. 30, 2008

Six bullets to my heart, six separate, devastating phrases that brought about Armageddon. I gave her a decade of my meager existence, nearly half my life. She threw me away like garbage, and couldn’t have been happier.

Fear
As the gun smoke drifted, I clutched my breast. I was frozen in horror that I’d lose myself along with her. Fear, you see, was the beginning of the end for our marriage.
I never dealt well with change. When we bought our house, the combat that ensued left me crippled. I ultimately built myself into a comfort zone again. “I don’t know what I want to do” was always an excuse for me. I lay stagnant and complacent with no true purpose or direction.
It was Lisa that first took action. She sought to elevate us from the ranks of lower middle class into which we were born. I fought her, determined to lay docked in the doldrums. “Leave me alone in my bubble.” I made attempts, but with each failure became depressed. She became frustrated and took matters into her own hands. It is obvious she loved me then. She worked effortlessly to give us a better life.
I was blind to the truth and in time Lisa lost sight of her motives. She plodded on, mechanically, no longer sure of why. She drove herself to extreme exhaustion, afraid, that if she stopped, for even a moment, she’d realize it was all for naught. She lost faith in our combined, bright vision.
So, she did the only thing she knew how. She ran away, straight to another as miserable as her. She kept running, further and further, taking greater risks. All just to not have to feel her own hollowness.
She left and my phobia ended there. What followed was a newfound fear. “I don’t know what I want to do” became “What the hell do I do?” I was afraid I was doomed to be alone the rest of my life.

Sadness
“Are you ok?”
“We’re worried about you.”
“How are you, Ryan?”…

“MISERABLE!”-Ryan

I always speak the truth. I’ve never felt so surrounded and alone in all my life.

Anger
“Like koi in a ***** pond, you can see your rage barely hiding below the surface.”-Erin Kompik
The most intense rage fueled The Phoenix. I lashed out at everything. Everyone was burned. I was ******* and the world would pay. The spectacle burned so bright it threatened to eradicate all that I was.
“I can feel bitterness and anger coming. I am fighting for control over the anger”-journal excerpt; Oct. 1, 2008
“The seams in my heart leak nothing, but hostility.”-journal excerpt; Oct. 6, 2008
“I’ve become a monster. I once loved someone so hard I would die for her. Now all I can feel is scorn and hate. My heart is twisted and black. I fear I will become the bitter man my father is. I hate myself for being so.”-journal excerpt; Sept. 30, 2008
Who was I so angry with? For all the hurt I felt from Lisa, I was most angry at myself. How could I let this happen? How could I have been so blind? My blood boiled as I berated myself. The loss I suffered left my heart festering with hatred, as nothing but fire and volatility overtook it.
“The red light of rage is violent action without consideration of consequence. It is uncontrollable. So I will unleash it.”-Final Crisis, Rage of the Red Lanterns
Then, the root of another anger broke through the fury.
“I know that you may not see it now, but time really will heal these wounds.”-Michelle Kinney
She was right. I had absolved myself of my original rage. I had forgiven her. I could forgive myself. I couldn’t be held responsible for another’s irresponsibility. The anger dissipated into the smoke. It left behind a few flickers, but I’ll not extinguish them yet. I still have a use for that rage.
“Do not be afraid to expose the darkness. Only by bringing it to the light can it ever truly be resolved.”-audio journal excerpt; Aug. 16, 2009

Love and Happiness
During my marriage, hers was the only love I let myself feel. Then, she took it with her when she left. I felt scorned and unwanted, a refuse of human waste.
I was wrong. I am a man that seeks love as an end all for my existence. Lisa unlocked my caged heart. Over the next decade I cultivated relationships with countless individuals. There was more love in my life than I ever realized. They were there when she wasn’t. My parents sacrificed everything to give me a life and family they never had. Lisa’s family had become my permanent family. She divorced me. I did not divorce them. All my friends gave all they could. Even my harsh enemies stepped off the battlefield, for they understood the casualties of this war. All of them, a shining sea of compassion, poured their hearts into mine. Their light overcame the darkness. When I finally crawled out of the pit, they got me to my feet.
“For them, I must continue.”-Naoko Takeuchi
I had to be strong. I owed it to them to survive. They gave me their love to fill in my missing pieces. For all I had been given, I could never give up or give in.
“I am meant for greatness. I am meant for happiness, for joy, for me.”-Zach; myspace blog

Chapter 2-Evolution

Picking up the Pieces
“I need to be out there.
Living.
Looking for my own life…
I need to open my mouth.
I need to be heard.
I need to live.
You’re gone…
I’m not.”
-Goth Girl Rising; Barry Lyga.
It was time to rebuild that which had been broken. My life was fragmented chaos. I needed an order to the chaos, or more to my tastes, organized chaos; anarchy with purpose. I learned to become a master strategist. The civil war I waged on myself demanded a general.
STEP 1-Stabalize finances.
My pact with the devil to keep my beloved home required emptying the coffers completely. How delicious the irony that I wound up working the same long weeks as Lisa.  Hard work and sacrifice were absolute necessities if I was ever to afford to live again. It was Lisa that taught me that. The only difference, I must never lose sight of why. Money is not the reason for existence. I simply needed enough to achieve my goals.
“Money is nothing.  It is an imaginary concept.  Its only value is what we put into it.  While often a necessary evil to survive, it is not important.  The only possession of true value is time.”- The Most Valuable Possession; 2009
STEP 2-Tear down the Mausoleum.
My home had become a testament to a dead marriage. Lisa’s five day moving notice threw a grenade into my living space. It was disheveled and disorganized. It was no longer Ryan and Lisa’s. I had to reclaim it as my own. Out of respect for our past, I kept a few pieces of Lisa as a constant reminder. I will never forget where I’ve been.
“Your spirit helped build this place and it still flows through its walls.”-email correspondence to Lisa; Nov. 21, 2008
Physically putting my environment in order likewise put my mind into an order. As I rebuilt my home, it became the new foundation for my life. The Phoenix had a place to perch.
STEP 3-Know Happiness again.
“I seem to find that my great periods of change, evolution, and growth precede an ultimate betrayal from someone I’ve let close to my heart. Is survival mode the only way I can fuel my passion? Where do I find the love that ignites my will, yet does not drive me to complacency?”-audio journal; Aug 13, 2009
The answer, I needed to love myself again. I could not rely on someone else to complete me. I had to become independent, to be ok with being alone. I deserved to be happy, to be loved, above all, by myself.
This was going to be hard.

Breaking Codependency
Not having another physical body in the house left a void. Without another heartbeat close to mine, I stopped sleeping at night. My appetite was lost and I started shedding pounds. With my depression receding, I awoke to find I was living in a desolate wasteland. What would I do in this solitary confinement?
Utilizing survival skills my mother taught me, I used it. Ever the artist, I took the pieces and created an existence. Then I improved it, again and again. Loneliness is a disease that attacks only if you let it. I had to learn to accept myself, before I could expect anyone else to. I used the loneliness to redefine and rediscover myself. I would not rely on anyone to do for me. My honor and respect for my loved ones demanded I do for myself. The stifling quiet, the sleepless nights taught independence. The silence used to frustrate and anger me. Now, I use it for peaceful reflection and meditation. Th

I'm extremely disorganized
I don't know what belongs where
Take my eyes for example
I can't find a place to rest them
I tried setting them on you
But everyone agreed that **** wasn't working
They explained that an organized man
Adheres to categories
And you and I
Are not of a kind
I attempted to argue that you organized me
My heart
My mind
You folded me neatly
When you beat me
You always made sure to set me aside when you were done with me
You'd place me in a bin
Or release me to the wind
Yet there was a burdensome fault in my littered logic
They explained that an organized man
Is clean
I must use eyes that are sanitized
To see how we're not categorized
And avoid your matador eyes
Because things will get messy
When the bull in your fists
Sees the roses in my heart
My humanity starts to part
And my wishes I begin to opine
For the nature of a bovine
So I wouldn't misplace my eyes
And be what I'm classified
But that nature eludes me
As do most things
On account of me being disorganized and all
But I'm a quick learner order burner page turner
I may not know what belongs where
But I know I belong neither here nor there
Making my eyes not belong anywhere
This is what develops my entropy stare

I have been here before, and with this same pen, I express myself through words.
To better understand myself, and to avoid being misunderstood.

Some call it bewitched, but I call it love.
There is an emptiness in the freedom of being alone,
And liberty in being caught in that divine spell.

The day that I stop writing love poetry is the day that my pen's ink will run out,
Along with my sense of connection to humanity.

Love is hard, and so difficult to describe,
Too complex to express simply by stringing words together.
Yet here I am, trying over and over,  
Always feeling limited, unfulfilled, unsatisfied.

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I have been here before, I am comforted by love's familiarity,
Its pleasant tenderness, shining like rays of sun, enveloping me in warmth and sincerity.
Its floral fragrance in the form of beautiful golden sunflowers,
Bundled with red ribbon at the stems, followed by conversations that go on for hours.
Its sweet taste in the form of kisses, followed by more and more and more, all over my cheeks and face,
Until there is not a spot that his lips have not touched, and then I point lower, to a different space.
I want more but I am too timid to say,
But my flushed cheeks and smile gives it away anyway.

But, I've also been here before, reminiscing on this familiarity,
I am then reminded of the heartache that follows, and I get a sense of polarity.
The shattered promises of forever, and the final goodbyes,
The returning of sweaters that smell like him while holding back desperate cries.
The empty and cold interactions as he shuts the door behind him,
The sinking loneliness as I stand in the room that is now increasingly dim.
The racking sobs as my heart begs me to stop doing this to myself,
So, I take the thought of love, lock it in a box, and put it high on a shelf.


But, I have been here before, knowing that I cannot stop,
Love is embedded deep inside of me, it is not something I can just drop.
My heart knows how capable I am to feel such raw emotions,
It flows gracefully through me, and soars with plummeting waves like the ocean.
My heart demands to spark a flame in the one who ignited such feelings inside of me,
It longs and yearns to douse them with love and unwavering loyalty.
It demands to be expressed, through every form of self-expression that I use,
Whether that is poetry, painting, music, whatever outlet I choose to let loose.

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I have been here before, trying to express my feeling of love.
It is difficult and frustrating, and most attempts are ripped apart and disposed of.
I have been trying to describe love for years, and still feel unsatisfied,
The countless filled notebooks are evidence of all the times that I have tried.
I cannot find how to put it simply but in a beautiful way,
I write about it for hours and hours, from night until day.
I want to be cherished for not only who I am, but who I was, and how I came to be,
So instead of writing about love, I will write about how to better love me.

I have not been here before, so I will take it slow,
If it helps you better understand me, please let me know.
This is for you, if you want to love me,
It is complex and it may not come immediately.
Please understand that it will take time,
For you to love me the way that I need, this is not just a rhyme.
This is new to me, I have not been here before,
If it makes you see the real me, for you I will write more.
I have not been here before, but I am still using the same pen,
If you follow my trail of disorganized thinking, please nod every now and then.

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I am honest, and I will never lie.
I want you to be my best friend before being my guy.
I want to build a sense of familiarity -- to know about you and your life.
I want consistency, continuous communication, so we can avoid all strife.
I want passion and longing, the magnetic pull between our lips and bodies until they unify.
I want "I love you"s to be meaningful, not fillers to be thrown in when our conversation dies.

He must know that the "he" in this story, could also be a she.
My ability to love isn't limited by appearances that fade with time, life’s bittersweet guarantee.
He must know my personality, my strengths, goals, hopes, and dreams,
And when we fight, he must remember that we are not on opposing teams.
He must know how to support me and my life goals, how to motivate me,
When the coldness of the world frightens me, and I search for ways to escape reality.
He must want the best for me, for me to be happy, even if that is not by his side,
If we realize that we are not compatible, or our relationship makes us feel unsatisfied.
He must know my weaknesses, my flaws.
My tendency to push away when I am overwhelmed, and how to find the probable cause.
He must know that though I love to care for others, I am not great at caring for my own body.
My self-destructive nature has a story of its own, and it is not shared with everybody.

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I have been here before, and with the same pen, I try to help him understand me,
I have been fighting my demons for a long time, and I can't remove the shackles that would set me free.
He feels a need to fix me, as if I were a broken wine glass,
I tell him to mind his footing, bringing attention to the pieces he should avoid and overpass.
He thinks that sweet words could be the glue to adhere my shards together,
And praises the curvature of my body, accentuated by a jacket made of leather.
He believes that he could love me more than anyone else has, and by doing so, he would mend me,
I quietly sigh, close my eyes, and slowly count to three.

I have been here before, and with the same pen, I try to make him see,
My broken pieces are not mean to be picked up by fragile hands, nor by anybody.
He learns this when the sharp sting of glass runs along the tips of his digits,
He realizes that the scars on my fingers were from all the attempts I made when I felt brave and ambitious.
Trust me, I have been there before -- I know how much it hurts, I do not want you to share my pain,
I know that I am a sad girl, but still some happiness remains.
I want to embrace this darkness, my ability to feel emotions so immense,
My dear, there is no need to put your fists up in defense.

I have been here before, and I watch him try to fit the pieces together,
But they are sharp, merciless, and weigh much more than a feather.
They are not a puzzle, they do not even fit me anymore,
But he becomes increasingly frustrated, exclaiming that this is more than he asked for.
I try to make him understand that they do not define me,
I only want them to be a visual for my story, I do not need them to be complete, nor to feel free.
I want him to see my past and my struggles, laid on the table,
Only then he will know how intricately strong the roots are that ground me and keep me stable.

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I have been here before, and I don't feel like rhyming anymore,
It took me a long time to understand myself and what I stand for.

The shattered pieces that lay before him are all of the times I've lost a piece of myself;
The innocence that I clung to for so long and had to drop in order to survive and adapt.
The ideologies of supportive families, shattered by abusive alcoholics that no one questioned.
The expectations of loving and supportive friends, broken by betrayal and abandonment.
The life that I once knew, had to leave behind, and the shock that crackled my perspective and forever changed me.

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I have been here before, and with the same pen, I try to reassure him,
But he is drowning in my sorrows and has forgotten how to swim.
He feels a need to scare away my demons, and cure what plagues my mind,
He becomes frightened by my pain and wants to protect me, so he covers my eyes.
But my self-destructive nature was never his job to correct,
I try to help him understand that I am grateful, I never meant any disrespect.

I have been here before, and with the same pen, I try prove that I am his equal and that we are the same,
I am not expecting him to be anything more than he is, I am not a helpless dame.
But he feels that it is his duty as a man to complete me, to support me, to give me a reason to smile.
I put down my pen, and and stare into his eyes for a while.

Though I may be broken, I am complete on my own.
The only support I want is holding hands as we walk side by side, not in the form of you carrying me.
Our world is beautiful enough to make me smile, I only want to enjoy it alongside you.

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But, I have been here before, and I have been through all that.
For 24 years actually, so that makes me stronger than you.
I am better equipped and more than capable to deal with certain things on my own,
These pieces are not even a part of me anymore.
My demons do not need to be slain by a knight in shining armor, because they are more afraid of me.
They know what I've overcome, and know that I will not take **** from anybody.

I've been here before, and with the same pen, I acknowledge my strength,
I've rebuilt the walls of my wine glass exterior with precise width and length.
I designed them using the knowledge that I have gained from my hardships and where I went wrong,
I shaped and molded them with the experiences that have taught me how to be strong.
And I placed seeds that blossomed when nourished by my own self-determination,
I spent many years adding to my durable and unbreakable flooring and foundation.
I painted the walls crimson red, and hung golden accents on the ceiling,
And laid mats to meditate on when I am hurting and need healing.

I have been here before, and I've created this for myself,
I will invite you in, if you'd like to see it for yourself.
I am strong, I am intelligent, and I hope to be more brave,
But I am a lover and a fighter, so please don't think that I need to be saved.
I want to share this beautiful experience of life with you,
But it is not a journey that you have to carry me through.
We will put on comfortable shoes and make our way together,
And we'll prepare for obstacles, challenges, and unpleasant weather.

I have been here before, and I see that look in his eyes,
The corners of his lips curl down and he feels the need to apologize.
I don't need an apology, or for you to change who you are,
Let's enjoy our time together and have a cigar.
The universe granted us to exist alongside each other, and we have crossed paths for a reason,
So please enjoy the warm weather with me this season.
There are so many beautiful sights out there,
I don't care what we do, or where we go, we can go to Times Square!
As long as I'm by your side, and you love me,
In the most pure, raw, and passionate form, it would make me so happy.
Put on the other headphone in and listen to this song,
I think now that you understand how to better love me, you can do no wrong.
I put my pen down as we listen along,
I dedicate a playlist to him, filled with love songs.

I have been here before, and even though my pen is down,
It seems that I cannot and will not stop expressing love.

In her own scattered mess
Flawed perfections coalesce
She sits and contemplate
The difference between love and hate
A fine line of indifference
with subsequent consequence
She soars to new heights
Reaching for the starry lights
High above the night sky
Her soul flies high
To her own surprise
She is....
            Just....
                     .....Beautifully Disorganized