how wonderful is the essence of childhood innocence and naivety?
children who question even the simplest daily tasks you complete so many times you’ve lost count make you wonder what it was like to complete the task for the first time.

how wonderful is the simplicity in thinking, the yearning for knowledge that is yet to be obtained?
the question as to why you drink coffee instead of a babyccino or wine over juice allows for our true motives to be exposed; for we do not always consciously choose coffee over babyccino. the idea, to an average adult, would be absurd!

‘me, an adult, drinking a babyccino? how childish.’

but why wouldn’t you choose babyccino over coffee? coffee makes grown ups shake and trip over their words, eyelids jammed open exposing their bloodshot soul.

do we choose coffee for fear we’d be perceived as childlike if we’d have chosen babyccino? what is so terrifying about the ideology of childhood? why do we crave growing up so badly and with such haste? what is so shameful about the questioning of existence and looking knowledge in the eye, desperate to have the last word?

why don’t we choose juice over wine? is the taste of sweet comfort too overbearing for your tongue? does the colour of orange juice remind you of wednesday mornings when you come downstairs, keen to work with jellybeans in maths as your teacher had promised you the day before? or maybe the coloured counters which had been stored away for a while because a classmate was caught trying to eat one.  

the truth is, wine is bitter. no matter how refined your taste might be, there is an undeniable bitterness in wine which adults love to ponder, the same way they love to ponder over pessimistic news stories that are equally as bitter. they discuss the wine, using pretentious words to describe the undertones and how sensual it tastes, refusing to acknowledge the overt bitterness they are so eager to gobble up when they return to sobriety.

‘it’s too sweet,’ they’d shake their heads at the palm which offers apple juice, while eagerly smiling and nodding at the dark, tinted glass which induces headaches.

how about the brittle roll of grey, tossed on our doorstep every morning? the one you ask me to fetch you in the youth of the day, when sparkling sun-rays dance on my face? what do you make of the fine print that tells you what is occurring on the side of the world submersed in slumber while you’re in your wake?
what do you make of the numbers that tell you it’s warm outside?
why not feel the warmth from the orange orb above yourself?
why not dance under the small droplets of the ‘mist’ setting on your hose?

and why do we lose ourselves to the pursuit of validation, to the judging eyes of the streetwalkers which our eyes never lasted more than a second on when we were younger?
i now write as someone who is tired, ability to think in a childlike manner worn down heavily from the constant chafing of dawning adulthood. but i also write in the hope that small moments like these will recur, like clouds in the sky clearing momentarily for the sun to smile at me.

though looking up i’m often met with a vast, grey face, i shall continue to smile at the silver wrinkles, engraved by years of laughter and juvenile innocence.

If a ship is replaced piece by piece, part by part,
It will eventually become an entirely new ship.
Not a shred of the old one will remain,
Except in memory.

I have tried to die a thousand times.
I think I’ve killed a piece of myself in each attempt.
In theory, if I **** and rebuild myself piece by piece, part by part
Eventually the “me” that is left will be entirely new.

Sylvia Plath once said, “Dying is an art”;
I wonder if I’m finally an artist.

The doctor's not in
But he makes housecalls
Especially upon young ladies
Who read one another's sacred
Journals, hoping to steal dreams
Dreams of callipygian
Dreams of tryst
Dreams of embrocation
Dreams of frisson
Each able to be held
In the hand, but
Lost to the wind
Father Physician
Is a savior of sorts
Curing them of all their ills
Yet, only for a day
Tomorrow the mind
Shall play tricks on them
Once again

Out of the window,
They fall like slush
White and clumpy.

They are bonded by their freezed-wet flesh.
They gather and fall
Gather and fall.

The buildings loom in winter fog
That rises and stalls
And like my mood,
I am foreboding.

I wish it could come and go
This winter-ous fog
This smog of doom
The stale flesh, the memory that
Broods.

And in my head, it a beehive,
That drills holes in two.
And like the other day,
I decided to do

The very act I did
At fourteen
Perched on my tongue
Two by two

The same time the german elder
Told the same joke of the train
That stops at the station
Two and to.

If I could die, I would have done it
Swiftly and true.
But I cower and I cower and I cower.

And like the snow out the window,
I disappear in twirling crystalline cotton
That falls into the same
abyssal, black hue.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Infinity's Mirror by Nat Lipstadt

Two mirrors, set in opposition observe created notional blending,
a reflecting pool of bonding's of unglued, contrary compositions.
Mirror to mirror, his imagery, fuses to Sylvia's images, hers,
faintly recollected, now living face, face to face, with his past insurrections, alters his future visions.

From cold water lake she's drawn, impaled by refracting regrets,
retrieved, drawing her words upon him, an awakening slap to drink,
beloved, tragic magic, infinitely captive.  But this old man's tiddlywinks, land-locked words, blunted instruments, needy for release & salvation, are neither silvered or exacting, just stains on a dulled, tarnished brass spittoon, except for the brunt'd bunting of lines across his roughened terrain'd face, black and white, pen and ink etched illustration of howling agitation.

His words worn down, hardened, red faced, purloined speckled pellets, damp to roll on down her rutted, almost ancient, tear streak paths, disbelieved superstitions, sacrificed for one of her living morsels of words.

Man, here to her, pledges allegiance, audaciously defiling her poetic sanctity, a visage endless repeated, delivers her shiny poem-poised countenance, even though no forgiveness from time can a mirror afford for either, from her words,  confession born, terrible truths beyond, beyond the finite.

                                                
~~~~~~~­~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mirror by Sylvia Plath

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
What ever you see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful---
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

Fluted cap dripping skull matter thin as blood
as ice, as milk,
we sat rotting in the sun
alone and pretending we werent
lest we be left out again
not again, my lover
my motherly carer my sister my brother
please see that the first to die does so
in the other's arms
corrupt and corroded beyond
ae looking glass charm.

The night floats through the day
    as
Sun skins the dirt underfoot
  and a whole winter seeps
our morphine stasis,
    planted cosmically in place
   forever and ever for a day,my love that I must one day forget
    
that one day must die as the earth dies as i must

     only to be reborn as we dreamt

In the cold ashen season where coal
   lines the cracks along our wall.
Heavenly July days that seem so far a way.

You gathered my thoughts,nirvana shepherdess
   that shed lively shards of grass over formica;
You held me warm as the flies peeled my skin,
    budding me close warm enough to make the needed death
feel not so drastic, feel calmer than words could express.

Red. Blue. Green balloons skip from hand to air.
Their buoyance pulling taught on string without a care
For cutting of birthday cake or pink frosty icing melting
In the sun, party plates pass from Nanna to Papa.
The sleek magic man pulls another trick, waves his hands and ‘ta-da’.

The birthday boy sits unblinking,
Whilst those around make merry clinking,
Stupor with drinking.
Unmoved in his party of one.

Pink candy, fluffy pillows, sugar spun round like may pole in June
Sun, gliding through shrouds of baby blue glue on the day when somebody loved you,
The faded scent of burning popcorn scars memory.
Faint, old, warm voices rise in chorus of lukewarm water, embrace the scene
As children in play, chase white rabbits through hedges all summer day.

The birthday boy sits with guard folded,
and his mind is moulded,
his memory of play is shrouded,
thoughts making merry grounded,
unmoved in his party of one.

Sweet, suckling, pig aroma, dancing through the air and making merry
all the guests, with hustle and bustle, meeting and greeting with every
burst of laughter, rising and drowning in the air like Ariel,
Enchantress of Garden chairs, thin napkins caped in Tomato,
Children bounce around on castles, kings clinging to memories of tomorrow

The birthday boy sits far away,
Where his thoughts are free to flay,
All memory of that savage day,
Where innocence and virtue lay,
Unmoved in his party of one,

Ice cream Sundaes glitter as diamonds, yawning and smiling
As cream floats down the exquisite vase in timing
To lecherous looks promising requiem to appetite,
A chorus of laughter fills the air with, pop- another bottle,
Warm embrace of familiar friends, we smile soft as a bubble…

The birthday boy,
with stern and solemn stare,
Dares not cut the air,
Or insist on what is fair,
But sits to fester in the sun’s cold glare,
Looking like he does not care,
Unmoved in his party of one.

Sun flakes leaping over my neighbour’s
Stubbly white palace, beams trickle round its walls in party favours,
Death lightning blinding, level-climbing, stupor rising, smiling clowns,
Gracefully rummage through pockets for silver-shining keys,
Embraces kind faces with kinder eyes and another cherished memory leaves.

The birthday boy sat silent as the grave,
His parents want him to behave,
No boy like fancies left to save,
Stooped low in his plastic cave,
Ruing the knife that thought him brave.
Unmoved in his party of one.

Art might be beautiful as long as it's true.
I might hope I'm Sylvia Plath.
But at the end of the day I'm just an emotional wreck hoping my neurosis sounds like poems.