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These Barbie influencers —
perfect plastic gods
with ***** sculpted by scalpels
and smiles so white
they could blind heaven.

Bodies built for the scroll.
Attitudes sharper than jawlines,
serving chaos and temptation
on filtered silver plates —
even Luzifer pauses and goes:
“Whoa… chill.”

But it’s all an act.
A scream wrapped in selfies.
They burn out like fireworks
faking light in already lit rooms.
Wearing so many fake-real-fake masks
they forgot the shape of their own face.

Nose fixed. Lips pumped.
Ears clipped.
Soul?
Untraceable.

And the crowd cheers.
“Freedom!”
While they’re chained
to trends and trauma
in silicone smiles.

Think, world.
Men, women, children with filters in their dreams —
if you stripped the mask,
the edits,
the contour,
the surgeon’s signature…

not even a troll
would want you
for soup.
A raw thought on the obsession with perfection — physical, digital, emotional. If we peeled back all the layers we’ve added to fit in or stand out… would anything truly real remain? Or have we become strangers behind silicone smiles?
I can be your nightmare or your friend
The darkness or the light
The day or the night
The peace or the fight

The predator or the prey
The rainbow or the gray
Dark as the night
Or bright as the sunlight

The fire or the ice
The smile or the frown
The sky or the ground
The quiet or the sound

The demon or the angel
The healing or the pain
The sunshine or the rain
The happiness or the sadness

What am I
I don’t know anymore
Am I the ceiling or the floor
The truth or the lie

The law or the crime
A million dollars or the dime
The pause or the time
The sleeping or the awake

The living or the dead
It all hurts my head
I’m to tired to figure out
To tired to figured it out

I just want to go to bed
Let me go to bed
I don’t want to think
So just let me fall into a dream
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.
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