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I was two years behind Art Garfunkel at Columbia College, but I never met him. Nonetheless, like millions of other people, I consider him to have the most beautiful singing voice of the 20th century. Art's singing of BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATER is celestial.

I was two years ahead of George W. Bush at Andover, but I never met him. Nonetheless, too many people voted to make him President of the United States twice. W. was not very smart. He did not do well academically at Andover and Yale and Harvard Business School. But his father, George H. W. Bush, had gone to both Andover and Yale, and later became head of the CIA, then Vice President, then President. Legacy was powerful in the 1960s, and still is.

I wish I could meet Art Garfunkel and thank him for the enormous pleasure he has given to millions of people. I would never wish to meet W.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS
It could never work
You were a duchess
While I was a fool

But what a pretty
Dream it was...
If only my blood was blue...
 Jun 28 st64
badwords
There once was a lass
who gazed upon the sky,
like a sailor’s widow
with eyes pining the sea.

A different ocean,
with clouds and birds—
not crests and reflections,
another kind of mirror.

A looking glass, yes:
one reveals past and present,
the other is a blank portal,
not yet formed; possibility.

Burdened by years of earth,
the girl reached up high.
To fly free in the skies,
a plan she did birth:

Simple avian appropriation—
"What could go wrong?"
Manufactured imitation—
"In the skies I belong!"

Remnants of spent candles,
some old pillow filling,
so easily on handle
to construct her wings.

And like that, she flew!
Never close to the sun,
no solar balance due—
destination once begun.

Wise to not create cracks,
a creature in the sky;
falsified wings on her back—
her presence flies on lies.

Nary a muster, ******, or flock
would take this creature in.
Unwelcome, artificial stock:
a lost and confused being.

"I have no nest, no call, no cry,
no wind-song born from feathered kin—
yet higher still I ride the lie,
if not a bird, then what has been?"


Her wings were stitched from want and thread,
a blueprint torn from childhood dreams.
She passed the clouds, yet still she bled—
unseen by all, or so it seems.

"You gave me wax, you gave me fire,
a name I wore, a borrowed skin.
I climbed the hush of false desire—
but never learned the wind within."


{fin}
She Never Fell is a contemporary reinvention of the Icarus myth told through a lyrical, ballad-like structure. It follows a nameless girl who constructs makeshift wings from household materials—spent candles, pillow filling, and broom handles—in an impulsive bid to escape the burdens of earth and ascend into the sky. Unlike the traditional Icarus figure, she does not plummet from the sun, but instead succeeds in her flight, only to find herself isolated, unrecognized, and existentially lost in the very space she longed to inhabit.

The poem unfolds in a linear narrative, beginning with her yearning gaze toward the sky and culminating in a confessional coda from the girl herself. Through a series of stanzas that blend fairy-tale tone with postmodern detachment, the speaker reveals that her wings—and her identity—are borrowed, artificial, and born of haste rather than transformation. Despite achieving flight, she remains alien to the realm she reaches, neither welcomed by birds nor grounded by truth.

The piece was written as a metaphorical exploration of personal appropriation and the illusion of autonomy, inspired by a former partner. The poem critiques the idea of transformation built from borrowed identity—where the tools of liberation (symbolized by fire, wax, and flight) are taken from another without full understanding.

The intent was to invert the Icarus myth: instead of falling from ambition, the protagonist rises—only to discover that success without self-realization yields a different kind of fall. The line “so easily on handle” becomes emblematic of this—the effortless, almost naïve ease with which we reach for escape, without understanding what we're leaving or where we're going.

The poem serves as both a personal reckoning and a broader commentary on the complexities of identity, desire, and the silent costs of artificial ascension.
 Jun 13 st64
badwords
If you get it, you lost it.


I am here
(On this platform it is evident for your reading now)
I express myself
(Heads scratching, wondering what and how?)


I share pieces of me
(A defragmented glimpse of an experience deemed ‘worthwhile')
Callous, sensuality?
(Or a traitor in sheep cosplay?)


A dead-end hi-way?
Or this pawn from yesterday?
Here, your final say


This family we never asked
Amontillado without it's cask
Dry and cheery
Heart’s are bleary
We own this laborious task

My sins are scrollable, thumbed in haste,
Wrapped in ribbons of curated taste.
A gallery of masks, all timed just right,
My shadow dances in the ring light.
What of shame when shame gets likes?
What of thought when thought’s in spikes?
I weep in drafts, but post a grin—
The world won’t wait for the shape I’m in.
So brand the bruise, then sell the hue:
A wellness tip in sponsored blue.
This self I host in feedback’s cage—
A pet, a post, a digital page.
I bare my soul (or just its shell).
You’ll never know. I sell it well.

I logged on seeking something undefined,
A tether, maybe—some reciprocal ache.
But all I found were mirrors misaligned,
Each smile too wide, each word opaque.

The comments pile like leaves, not read.
Applause from ghosts, replies from ghosts.
I feed the feed, it feeds instead—
A hunger that consumes its hosts.

I draft a truth. I dress it twice.
Add polish. Then delete.
I write in blood, convert to nice,
Make trauma fit a beat.

No lesson left. No higher shelf.
Just one more version of myself.
I swim endless in despair
So that I do not drown in it.
I breathe only to breathe.

I am suspended in sunlight with no warmth.
I am surrounded by notes that make no melody.
I fumble, falter, fail.

Heavy as a raindrop whose cold
Penetrates deeply into loneliness
Is the air, the light, the lingering.

I forget too much.
I remember too much.
I am too much, and not enough.

A shallow pool is that in which we swim
A void wants only to be filled.
Misery takes us all.
Heavy handed, for certain. But not fresh.
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