It's when you're teetering on the edge of insomnia,
When every pound of your being is exhausted
To the point where you're seeing colours,
Without recognising objects, people,
Kind souls, kindred spirits,
That you soar to the most wonderful place
Of creativity and life-fulfilling happiness,
Or at least if not happiness, then
Contentment or satisfaction.

But, like insomnia, that teetering
Is the fundamental factor -
Because that same day,
In that same continuation of euphoria,
You can be waiting for a train,
And whilst you teeter at the edge
Of the cold station platform walkway,
You can plummet to the depths of depression,
Return to those comforting, suffocating clutches,
And that cry for help is stifled
By the thundering railway carriages,
And all that is left is a ****** stain -
Stained in your mind,
The knowledge that you'll never escape those clutches,
That grasp for the underneaths of railway carriages
Or the cordless bungee of tall buildings,
The comfort of the warm ground below,
And, naturally, a poem,
Flittering away in the gust of the train
Storming through the station
Like your ever-dwindling happiness...

they’re pouring out of the
woodwork
those pretentious machiavellians
in ailing albino frames
eccentric masked figures
milling about the glow light
like night moths
in a london fog

lunatic gazers
with seeping moles
pinned by frogmen and twine
spider climbers
in hell fire
splitting seams
on the fading
and hideous ink

guards of the perch
stand on hades hand
while monsters and demons
with severed limbs
taunt the condemned
and wanting
souls of the ******

cauldron fire
in blood red sky
silent screams
hack and wheeze
gas lines broken
words unspoken
teetering backwards
in the dark shadows
of a phantom abyss

I feel like a toddler
Teetering and tottering as I take my first brave steps
Into the unknown.
We often fear what we do not understand,
But I think that instead we should try
And color our skin with hues that cannot be seen
In the standard visible spectrum.
We're making a rainbow connection,
You and I.
Can't you see the bright bridge we've built across the sky?
My shining *** of gold at the other end
Is filled to the brim with your laughter,
And I cannot wait until I can dive inside
And swim.

Too long this rot has run its course, too much the damage done
When men deflect acknowledged glance, they know that wrong has won.
Across this land and far afield the wrongness seeps within
And pride becomes a memory through distant halls of spin.
How can we bow to tyranny, how can we shy away
From that which causes  eyes to slide.... and coaxes will to sway?
To tolerate the bombast, the bullying, the lies
Succumbing to a hopelessness, which, both we despise.
Division in the nation, uproar in between
A man and wife’s contention-ness beyond what should be seen
Brothers loathing brothers, silence in the room
Where a word  uttered wrongly can erupt to screaming soon.
Allies left in tatters, trust is cut to shards
Tariffs injudiciously, imposed to **** the cards.
International uproar, industry in strife
Teetering disastrously when NATO flees the knife.

Putin sits and rubs his hands, hilarious the show
Disorder and disharmony to lubricate his glow.
Beijing sits inscrutably, always opportune
Manoeuvring judiciously, in place, to call the tune.

America, the isolate, sails away to sea
Blondini, at the helm, wears smirk indulgently.

M.
The White House
HAMILTON NZ
12th July 2018

You are a flame inside me
Flickering,
Teasing,
Caressing,
Smoldering.

You are far away
Yet so close
Teetering on the edge of my imagination.

The yearning is the knowing
The mere knowledge of you
That you are existing somewhere
Somewhere my reality can’t touch.

My words spill out of me
Like candy from a piñata
Pages and pages
Poems scattered about like hungry pigeons.

You make me so hungry
So eager to express
To spill my inner self onto empty pages.

You are my muse
My cruel inspiration
The tears staining my pillow.

I am dancing on a cloud
Unnoticed by you
As you live your life
Unaware of mine.

My words are endless
My thoughts knowing no bounds
As I imagine your eyes
Penetrating through me.

You are my fantasy
My never forever
My drug of choice.

You are the fuel that keeps me writing,
Feeling,
Expressing.

You are my special light
Turning on inside me
When all my creativity is turned off.

I want to ravish you
Bite the buttons off your shirt
Loosen your necktie
Drown in your eyes without a life jacket.

You are my muse crush
The smile on my face
The pain in my heart
The hello that never comes
The inevitable goodbye.



© 2014 Stacey Handler

Last night sitting on the edge of my bed
a bed that seemed more like a ledge
there with a burden in my head:
Should I look up or just feel the dread?

I sat longer and I think I prayed.
I knew he was a God who cared,
but lately on the verge of afraid,
my faith seemed weak and impaired.

I wondered if they were right
that the short blast of rays
won’t hurt and will **** the blight
the doctors say is in its early phase.

But why pray to a God who seemed unable
to help my aunt who died
from a disease so unstable,
so good at finding places to hide?

So here I was, teetering between trust
and its evil opposite, doubt
doubt he can alter life’s ******.
Does he have any real clout?

In this dark of mind
I came to see I really don’t know!
So why let my inner skeptic always lurking behind
reign and empower its verdict of no?

Instead I choose to lift my head
from that lonely fretting place
and embrace a Father not gone and dead -
but here, now to create and renew me with grace.

“Teetering,” Copyright © 2018 by Glenn Currier

my mind tends to ooze with a negativity

that leaks out & into my already searing

and prolonged wounds;

within this ragged & treacherous steam of consistency

I find myself laid out upon the very gravelish grounds

that I goofishly juggle with on a lazen basis

sometimes there

sometimes here

but a lot of times just nowhere at all.

where I disappear to I couldn’t be sure,

the empty screen in front of & behind me

don’t speak of much

but they do tend to catch my demiseful falls

every now & then;

seems these cavernous valleys have a soothing touch

to them,

a loosely held comfort that I know

better than I seem to know myself at times

and at times I wonder

what I am supposed to be protesting

within these grotesqueful lines

of a beautifully laid out tragedy,

for even here I do not feel

within the bounds of my own mental safety nets

but maybe an unthoughtful falling & tumbling

will do me some good?

to be comfortable with my own deathly summons,

I write to edge the demons within

to a borderline of both peace & content,

for truthfully no set of letters

can taint me as much as I might allow them too

although I can tend to lean towards the waywards

of an apathetic crustacean

through my own carelessness & ill suited

self brought upon lonesomeness

…

sometimes I cannot tell what is right,

or maybe best is a better way to put it.

for I long for a connection of connections

and equally equivalent siphonings,

but many a times I seem to find

that my end of the line has gone stale,

quiet, a desperate yet eerie monotoned scale

of solemn notes left to ring in the ears

of those who are strongly enough

to take the time to hear,

and for those that are not afraid to stare

deeply into their own darkened & blazeful caverns,

I am forever grateful.

ill never forget that night.
we were laying in bed,
eyes closed and half asleep,
teetering on the fence between
the world of wake
and the world of dream.

we’d been quiet for awhile now,
understandable in this hour of the night.
the room was lowly lit
by the dim glow of light
cast off computer screens,
and the air was filled
with white static sound
and your soft rhythmic breathing.

eyes closed,
i could swear you were beside me,
half convinced by the hum
of the speakers softly snoring
that i’d roll over to your body,
even though i knew
you were far away from me,
sleeping alone across the sea.
but it was something i could believe,
nearly there,
slipped into sleep.

and suddenly
you split the silence,
waking yourself up,
you called out my name with urgent pace
and i mumbled a reply
as you pulled me awake.

you spoke again,
and the words spilled from your tongue like nectar
and dripped from your lips like honey,
said with such haste
like you couldn’t get the words into the world fast enough,
as though holding it in any longer
would bring down the world burning.

it was then in that night,
one of many moments yet i’d find,
that i knew i was going to love you forever,
and
no matter of land or sea,
of sun, stars, or skies between,
could ever change that,
or keep you away from me.


―  “i love you more than anyone or anything i have ever loved or ever will,” 12:37 am, 10.08.17, what you said to me.

I gaze into my crystal ball, discern amidst the haze
A world so far removed from that of now, it would amaze,
Where catapulting incidents collide like billiard *****
And sense defies belief as renaissance makes the calls.

Blueprints fresh from Internet supply the suitcase blast
Where the terrorist’s, simultaneously, ignite in cities cast
From Moscow to New York, Beijing to Berlin
Gay Paree to London town then way out east again,
Budapest, Jerusalem Calcutta burning all
And Tokyo is levelled in a ghastly nuclear pall.

Kneejerk reaction triggers contrails in the blue
Crisscrossing all the continents obliterating through
An overkill so vicious that in seconds it is past
And the living cling in horror, bearing witness… aghast.

Restraints are erased as the opportunists dash
Flotillas from the Spratleys sprint to occupy and cash
In on the minerals, oil and potential food supplies
Of uncontaminated nations found beneath Pacific skies.
Hindi, Jew and Muslim settle scores bereft with years
Of resentment accrued in a flood of blood and tears.

A sudden realisation of immensity of loss
Curtails the destruction in retrenchment across
The habitable outposts, the dearth of supply
And the daunting prospects of a nuclear winter sky.
Global collapse of all electronic gear
No power, no phones, and no cars now…for years.
Electromagnetic impulse put paid to all that
And the day is as dark as the cold night is black.



And here all we sit, in the here and the now
On the verge of catastrophes’ teetering tower,
With a fools pudgy finger just inches above
The nuclear button…and all that we love.
……You fear the insanity, sense the insane
Knowing that people like this are holding the reign?
Knowing that volatility strikes
Like the shot of a gun and the ****** of a knife.

I don’t have the answers to hand
But someone out there, knows how…and can.
The sands of time are running thin

URGENTLY needed a LEADER...to WIN!

M.
Planet Earth
6 March 2019

A deep breath—I fill my lungs and close the airway. Submerge my face in a pillow and resolve myself to wait until my lungs burn—I await the pain. My senses screaming, my lungs driving me to let them have the oxygen they so desire—I decline. Funny how I chose that which offers peace to the weary, an item that invites comfort to rob myself of that most archaic means of surviving. I find it interesting how calm I feel while denying myself that which I know I cannot live without. Isn’t it odd how we only become aware of the subtle currents of air that tickle our skin, raising chill bumps where it finds us bare when we deny ourselves its luxury? Luxury. That’s an interesting way to phrase it really—Breathing as a luxury. A gift of power, smug in our abuse and neglect we fail to see what we loose when we breathe. Lying here refusing to give myself life—for that’s what air is really, and breathing is living. I laugh. Oh yes, I find it funny. I catch myself readying to breathe again and I still that notion. Shove it down; subdue it until it is nothing but a stinging memory in my chest. It takes a lot of strength to deny yourself to breathe. But somehow that only drives me to test that strength.
I wonder if I will forget how? Could the muscle memory that pilots such a necessary involuntary act be forgotten? No, of course not. But perhaps the feeling of fresh air full of life could be. Could it? Perhaps not. For even as these words find themselves onto this page I find myself remembering what it feels like to expand my lungs, for the blood to cool as it gathers its fill with oxygen as it travels on its wending cyclical way. I laugh again. The burn begins to spread and I feel my muscles atrophy. Yet they tighten and tense as if under assault, screaming at the atrocity wrought upon them. Though still I refuse to breathe.
I roll away from the pillow, open my face to the still air and feel it tickle as it tries to find a weakness. Denying my lungs for so long I begin to feel my skin breathing. Absorbing oxygen as cellular mitosis continues in spite of my flirtatious dance. Maybe I am just dreaming. I feel the fire subside. As if my body accepts its doom. “No breath for you,” I say. “No easy outs.” And resolve continues.
Amazing how long a person can go without breathing, pushing ever closer to that most primal fear—that of not being able to breathe. But I can. I feel my chest involuntarily expand, demanding the very thing I strenuously withhold. I know by that alone that I can breathe, I can live. But still not once do I begin to inhale the sweetness that I need. I want it now, but the primal is so enticing. After all, it is when we fear that we truly know what it is to live. That’s when we feel life. As if it were a tangible being that we’ve strapped to ourselves so that it won’t escape. I’ve set mine free. I’ve let go. Maybe it will return to me. Maybe it will leave me in my vain attempts to deny myself to continue fickly on to another. But which do it want--Perhaps neither, perhaps something more. Beyond breathing, beyond mere muscle memory, beyond what I cling to. The Pain returns.
I want to breathe. I want to live. I want to feel the rush as all my body awakens and revels in new existence--Rebirth. Its odd how something so ordinary can redefine a person, how something so obviously taken for granted and ignored can make us anew—a Renaissance of living, giving new life to life, helping life live. That’s just funny to say. My chest chuckles--I can’t laugh. I can’t breathe so how could I anyway? I smile. Vanity is alluring. I am vain. I deny that which defines life just to feel alive. Vanity, Luxury, Rebirth, Pain—such is the nature of my breathing, the archaic nature of involuntarily driven muscle memory.
Would I even know how to breathe if it wasn’t burned into the most ancient quadrants of my brain? I don’t even know the part that drives the muscle memory. Perhaps when people die there are a few lingering moments where their lungs contract like the twitching mouth of a decapitated fish, gulping at air to fill dead lungs. Maybe breathing is so primal that it doesn’t end with the rest of the body.
The burn has come. I can feel the fire inside my chest. I welcome its warmth, rubbing my hands over the radiating inferno as if I just came from the dead winter cold without the weathering to block out the chill. The warmth permeates through me. Would breathing feel better than this? Could it? I doubt. Only at the razor edge of life while teetering upon the precipice stealing insecure glances to the other side on the off chance that we may glimpse a greener field do we know what living really is.  So aren’t I living now more so than ever before? Whilst denying myself a breath, aren’t I more aware of what it means to be alive? I laugh. Denying yourself air only leads to an end. No, the end--Death. Yet I appreciate life more so dying than living. I deserve to die. Taking for granted that which is stolen from innocents daily. Innocent? Now that’s a peculiar ideal. They are the same. I wonder if they are aware that they breathe. That’s absurd, of course they are. How could they not be? ******* life, ******* air, but do they know what it means?
I feel my lungs contract again—Pain. That’s all it is now, but why? I know I can breathe, yet I choose not to. Is it the act of forcing myself not to take a fresh breath, or the fact that I have yet to do so that hurts? Maybe it’s because I now know what I’ve been doing all these years. At the brink I realize what it means to live. Was I living before? Yes, but I wasn’t alive. Interesting that, to live without being alive—sounds as if I’m hooked to a load of machines keeping me from decay. That’s all they do really. Awareness, that’s living. Breathing is merely the means. The end is being aware, awakened to the fact that an action which you can’t control is the only thing keeping your head above ground. After all, even when drowning the body wants to breathe.
I open my mouth. I lie to my body. I still fill my lungs with nothing but stubborn desire, desire to delay my breathing. I imagine what it will feel like to take that first breath—a Renaissance of living. I can feel the blood in my veins bubble in anticipation. My body wants to be alive. My heart can’t beat fast enough. Striking a furious pace it pumps my blood through my body spreading life and oxygen to every limb making me light headed and delirious with its purity.
I’ve decided. I’m going to breathe again. I’m going to live. And what’s more, I’m going to be alive.
My mouth still open, my lungs still closed, still screaming, still burning, still tightening in their involuntary way—breathing air that isn’t there, air that they know is there, available to them at their whim. I open my lungs.
I exhale. Now that is interesting. I’ve denied myself the life of breath until my lungs begin to pump out of sheer memory and longing for that which gives them purpose. Denied that which defines life, that which I want—that I need. And I exhale?!? Further delaying what my instinct has told me to take? How is that logical?
Air rushes into my lungs. Funny, I scarce expanded them at all. I feel the life rushing to my fingertips, to my toes, to my ears and eyes—to my kidneys even. I am alive. It’s funny though. Part of me feels like I’ve just died, like I’ve ceased to live. I laugh long and hard, throaty and merry and so brim full of life. I began to live again, became alive at the very instant I ceased to exist. And it is so funny.