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There was a dream here. It passed over in the night; a blur that burnt a fever into the earth. It died in the gap between. Fingers unlaced. Hand to the side. The sun runs soft tendrils through thick curtains. Or something like that.

Have you seen the new Star Wars movie? No. You’d like it. It’s the same thing all over again, but with a black guy and a chick as the main characters instead. I guess that’s what you call progress.

There was a dream here. A thick, unfurling mass of potentialities. Sartre once wrote existence precedes essence. Schopenhauer believed the essence of a chair was as much willed into being as the essence of a man. There was choice once, but it died when we chose. The breath you took before your last smoke. The air is stirred by a passing train. A woman steps off a bridge, into the mourning blue of an autumn lake. There is an empty car on fire. There is a man inside. His brother sleeps through his exam, doped up on too much codeine. There is the stench of lack. There is death passing a mirror, seeing herself in haste, but too rushed to make sense of it.

He runs fingers down the scars of her arm. A trickling, stream awakening from a long winter thaw. Vessels blue. Oceans of laughter tucked deep in the folds of her skin, so faint you can barely see them any more.

The sheets are black. The city folds itself. The sky collapses into the gutter; Jupiter bleeds into the apartment block on east side. A man leaves his home, but never reaches his destination.  There is a movie Face Off, where the identity of Nicholas Cage is challenged through the transplantation of his face. If reincarnation were possible, would we even be capable of recognising our reincarnated selves, stumbling through the visage of a billion other, unknown vessels? The skip collectors come at 4am. Metal grinds against metal until all that is left is dust.

Hands shaking a pit of coal. Shake shake. Shake shake. Your mother is dead. Shake shake. Shake shake. Jesus working at a shoe store. Shake shake. Shake shake. An atheist. Hah hah, hah.

The channels fill. Ink drops on water. Fireworks blackening the contours. There is a sun in Peru. Waste water pumps through the vessels of the city. The mayor drinks punch. The catacombs crumble like desert bones. The roads split above. Traffic stalls. Shadows stretch. Meet at the centre. A core. Slender fingers. The infinite. A hollowed heart. A heritage.

Drink your punch, says the mayor, try the grape and cheese.

There is a comic. Five or six woodland friends play grab the tail. After one round, they look over to find friend raccoon sleeping. They laugh and shout next round. Friend scorpion looks at his tail with tears in his eyes. It is funny, because death is boundless, amoral, and imminent.

A group at a party. Someone brings up the right-wing branch of their government. Everyone begins laughing, red in the face, spit flying from their mouths, arms noodling into the sky. Yeah, yeah. Hella. It is an imitation game. A laugh track on repeat. Maybe someone scratched it on purpose, or the sound guy fell asleep on the button. Now everyone is stuck, laughing. They begin to doubt themselves, but look up, reassured by the glowing sign above their heads that displays the text laughter, in bold black Helvetica. The sign is faded from heavy use, a sickly cream that looked bad before it left the factory. They were made in batches of a thousand and shipped across the country. One begins to choke, spilling her drink, bunching the cloth on the table beside her. They keep laughing. She is purple now. Another group spots them and joins in. The party next door. The whole neighbourhood. It is broadcast across the city. A wave of hysteria sweeps the nation. An online celebrity creates mugs. A famous rapper uploads himself eating pancakes. The sound guy wakes up and turns off the display, but everyone keeps laughing.

God died today. Crumpled jacket at the foot of an apartment block. Creased ticket. Crooked can rolling down suburbia. American dream wakes up. Finds herself an amnesiac in a foreign land. Catches bus downtown. Wanders vacant sun. Blood trickles from wrinkles. So many now. Creased, crumpled, crooked. Drinks from gutter. Chokes. Stumbles into abandoned church. Blood dries into grotesque mask. Hard to feel through it. Like second skin. Tired. Rests head against wall. Waits for pulse. Finds nothing.

A joke to break the gloom. Two crows are perched opposite one another, partitioned by a one-way mirror. Both break into laughter.

No, wait. Maybe tears.
January 2016

(Crows are one of the few birds capable of self-recognition.)
a song in 3/3 time

O, Lord, I've been in a prison dark
With jailers harsh and cruel
Searching for the smallest spark
This sentence overruled
I just hold to Your promises
Which bright and glorious be
I hold onto the precious light
Where I, in blindness, see.

Hallelujah!
Your blessings to impart
Hallelujah!
You're harrowing my heart

Though I am in the wilderness
I have no food nor drink
I hunger more for your goodness
I'm nearly at the brink
You put my shoulder to the plow
And I am weary, worn
But when a harvest you allow
It's then I am reborn!

Hallelujah!
You're working at the plow
Hallelujah!
My harrowing allow

Now I'm on the mountaintop
My hardships in the past
I look down at the growing crop
And I no longer fast
Abundant hope, abundant life
I bask in perfect grace
I've endured the deepest strife
But now I see *YOUR FACE.


Hallelujah!
Worthy is the Lamb!
Hallelujah!
Christ... the great I AM.


SoulSurvivor
(C) 1/27/2016
During the times of deep darkness
Know God is giving you a deeper
Hunger and thirst for Him
But stay faithful! He is harrowing.
And will plant a more abundant crop
In your heart as a result!

I'm back... I went through the book
Of unforgiveness and have closed it
Finally and forever!

HALLELUJAH!
Andre Andre Andale Ariba!

So do my fingers slide up,
And they slide down my guitar neck,
Getting hurt is imminent.

These guitar licks will hurt sweetly.
My HP Poem #1002
©Atul Kaushal
~~
This afternoon wears the dark Shirt
After demonstration of the moon,
End of the waiting of pied crested cuckoo,
I did not end

A little bits of interval,
Blinking the distant Stars
My friend could count,
very romantic,
In me cast the shadow

Her beloved lives outdoors,
All the apartments of the mind has rented
Taken from the first floor up to twelve
I did not

I saw the race of cars on the street,
Standing at corner of the roof
When hunger the fingernails,
Subconsciously
Playing an illusion of gravity

This time the drone of insects,
Occasionally shout of bull frog
In fresh water of the rainy season,
Breeding multiply
Nature of the Nature

Cut off the yarn, the kite ran out of the sky
In the Kans forest,
The shadows of white clouds,
very Absurdly,
I could not even catch you  

In the body of mind,
Emptiness came home
Lost days song come up from the deep sea
In the silence the sound of sighs

Sleepless night as the rhythm of the strange poem
While the star drops in front of a traveler
Even though when my time has gone
Still could not understand the unknown poetry
~~
@Musfiq us shaleheen
It rains.
A truffled scent
glitters
in dead leaves,
naked trees.
Transudation
into the depths
of the night.
13.12.15
~~~
Thank you, deeply, to all the friends that so kindly read, liked and supported this poem! Here, to you all, at Hello Poetry, cheers, the prize is yours!
25.12.2015
This one goes to the real poets.
To those who decide to carry the world on their own.
To those who carry hell in their head and a graveyard of lost love stories in their heart
To the brave ones who fight darkness with darkness.
Tho those who the only answer they seek from a god is if there's eternal life for their loved ones, because they know there's no space for them in that paradise.
To those who know that suffering is the most humane feeling there is.
To those who loved and hated the wrong person.
This goes to Lorca isolated, hiding in a closet in New York.
To Unamuno craving to believe in something impossible.
To Quiroga drinking the poison of his sorrow at a hospital.
To Becquer and Espino for dying so young.
To Neruda for cheating on himself so many times.
To Machados' lost spirit.
To Marquez and his melancholic ******.
To Poe's tormented soul and his raven.
To Shakespeare and his Juliet.
To Dante and his story of woe.
This goes for the only beings who can live with a hell inside of them, and still manage to write heavenly things for those in need to read.
This one's for us.
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