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Note: Jigglypuffs are the best pokemon

#001 #001 Bulbasaur Bulbasaur Grass Poison
#002 #002 Ivysaur Ivysaur Grass Poison
#003 #003 Venusaur Venusaur Grass Poison
#004 #004 Charmander Charmander Fire
#005 #005 Charmeleon Charmeleon Fire
#006 #006 Charizard Charizard Fire Flying
#007 #007 Squirtle Squirtle Water
#008 #008 Wartortle Wartortle Water
#009 #009 Blastoise Blastoise Water
#010 #010 Caterpie Caterpie Bug
#011 #011 Metapod Metapod Bug
#012 #012 Butterfree Butterfree Bug Flying
#013 #013 Weedle Weedle Bug Poison
#014 #014 Kakuna Kakuna Bug Poison
#015 #015 Beedrill Beedrill Bug Poison
#016 #016 Pidgey Pidgey Normal Flying
#017 #017 Pidgeotto Pidgeotto Normal Flying
#018 #018 Pidgeot Pidgeot Normal Flying
#019 #019 Rattata Rattata Normal
#020 #020 Raticate Raticate Normal
#021 #021 Spearow Spearow Normal Flying
#022 #022 Fearow Fearow Normal Flying
#023 #023 Ekans Ekans Poison
#024 #024 Arbok Arbok Poison
#025 #025 Pikachu Pikachu Electric
#026 #026 Raichu Raichu Electric
#027 #027 Sandshrew Sandshrew Ground
#028 #028 Sandslash Sandslash Ground
#029 #029 Nidoran♀ Nidoran♀ Poison
#030 #030 Nidorina Nidorina Poison
#031 #031 Nidoqueen Nidoqueen Poison Ground
#032 #032 Nidoran♂ Nidoran♂ Poison
#033 #033 Nidorino Nidorino Poison
#034 #034 Nidoking Nidoking Poison Ground
#035 #035 Clefairy Clefairy Fairy
#036 #036 Clefable Clefable Fairy
#037 #037 Vulpix Vulpix Fire
#038 #038 Ninetales Ninetales Fire
#039 #039 Jigglypuff Jigglypuff Normal Fairy
#040 #040 Wigglytuff Wigglytuff Normal Fairy
#041 #041 Zubat Zubat Poison Flying
#042 #042 Golbat Golbat Poison Flying
#043 #043 Oddish Oddish Grass Poison
#044 #044 Gloom Gloom Grass Poison
#045 #045 Vileplume Vileplume Grass Poison
#046 #046 Paras Paras Bug Grass
#047 #047 Parasect Parasect Bug Grass
#048 #048 Venonat Venonat Bug Poison
#049 #049 Venomoth Venomoth Bug Poison
#050 #050 Diglett Diglett Ground
#051 #051 Dugtrio Dugtrio Ground
#052 #052 Meowth Meowth Normal
#053 #053 Persian Persian Normal
#054 #054 Psyduck Psyduck Water
#055 #055 Golduck Golduck Water
#056 #056 Mankey Mankey Fighting
#057 #057 Primeape Primeape Fighting
#058 #058 Growlithe Growlithe Fire
#059 #059 Arcanine Arcanine Fire
#060 #060 Poliwag Poliwag Water
#061 #061 Poliwhirl Poliwhirl Water
#062 #062 Poliwrath Poliwrath Water Fighting
#063 #063 Abra Abra Psychic
#064 #064 Kadabra Kadabra Psychic
#065 #065 Alakazam Alakazam Psychic
#066 #066 Machop Machop Fighting
#067 #067 Machoke Machoke Fighting
#068 #068 Machamp Machamp Fighting
#069 #069 Bellsprout Bellsprout Grass Poison
#070 #070 Weepinbell Weepinbell Grass Poison
#071 #071 Victreebel Victreebel Grass Poison
#072 #072 Tentacool Tentacool Water Poison
#073 #073 Tentacruel Tentacruel Water Poison
#074 #074 Geodude Geodude Rock Ground
#075 #075 Graveler Graveler Rock Ground
#076 #076 Golem Golem Rock Ground
#077 #077 Ponyta Ponyta Fire
#078 #078 Rapidash Rapidash Fire
#079 #079 Slowpoke Slowpoke Water Psychic
#080 #080 Slowbro Slowbro Water Psychic
#081 #081 Magnemite Magnemite Electric Steel
#082 #082 Magneton Magneton Electric Steel
#083 #083 Farfetch'd Farfetch'd Normal Flying
#084 #084 Doduo Doduo Normal Flying
#085 #085 Dodrio Dodrio Normal Flying
#086 #086 Seel Seel Water
#087 #087 Dewgong Dewgong Water Ice
#088 #088 Grimer Grimer Poison
#089 #089 Muk Muk Poison
#090 #090 Shellder Shellder Water
#091 #091 Cloyster Cloyster Water Ice
#092 #092 Gastly Gastly Ghost Poison
#093 #093 Haunter Haunter Ghost Poison
#094 #094 Gengar Gengar Ghost Poison
#095 #095 Onix Onix Rock Ground
#096 #096 Drowzee Drowzee Psychic
#097 #097 Hypno Hypno Psychic
#098 #098 Krabby Krabby Water
#099 #099 Kingler Kingler Water
#100 #100 Voltorb Voltorb Electric
#101 #101 Electrode Electrode Electric
#102 #102 Exeggcute Exeggcute Grass Psychic
#103 #103 Exeggutor Exeggutor Grass Psychic
#104 #104 Cubone Cubone Ground
#105 #105 Marowak Marowak Ground
#106 #106 Hitmonlee Hitmonlee Fighting
#107 #107 Hitmonchan Hitmonchan Fighting
#108 #108 Lickitung Lickitung Normal
#109 #109 Koffing Koffing Poison
#110 #110 Weezing Weezing Poison
#111 #111 Rhyhorn Rhyhorn Ground Rock
#112 #112 Rhydon Rhydon Ground Rock
#113 #113 Chansey Chansey Normal
#114 #114 Tangela Tangela Grass
#115 #115 Kangaskhan Kangaskhan Normal
#116 #116 Horsea Horsea Water
#117 #117 Seadra Seadra Water
#118 #118 Goldeen Goldeen Water
#119 #119 Seaking Seaking Water
#120 #120 Staryu Staryu Water
#121 #121 Starmie Starmie Water Psychic
#122 #122 Mr. Mime Mr. Mime Psychic Fairy
#123 #123 Scyther Scyther Bug Flying
#124 #124 Jynx Jynx Ice Psychic
#125 #125 Electabuzz Electabuzz Electric
#126 #126 Magmar Magmar Fire
#127 #127 Pinsir Pinsir Bug
#128 #128 Tauros Tauros Normal
#129 #129 Magikarp Magikarp Water
#130 #130 Gyarados Gyarados Water Flying
#131 #131 Lapras Lapras Water Ice
#132 #132 Ditto Ditto Normal
#133 #133 Eevee Eevee Normal
#134 #134 Vaporeon Vaporeon Water
#135 #135 Jolteon Jolteon Electric
#136 #136 Flareon Flareon Fire
#137 #137 Porygon Porygon Normal
#138 #138 Omanyte Omanyte Rock Water
#139 #139 Omastar Omastar Rock Water
#140 #140 Kabuto Kabuto Rock Water
#141 #141 Kabutops Kabutops Rock Water
#142 #142 Aerodactyl Aerodactyl Rock Flying
#143 #143 Snorlax Snorlax Normal
#144 #144 Articuno Articuno Ice Flying
#145 #145 Zapdos Zapdos Electric Flying
#146 #146 Moltres Moltres Fire Flying
#147 #147 Dratini Dratini Dragon
#148 #148 Dragonair Dragonair Dragon
#149 #149 Dragonite Dragonite Dragon Flying
#150 #150 Mewtwo Mewtwo Psychic
#151 #151 Mew Mew Psychic
Generation II
Jdex Ndex MS Pokémon Type
#001 #152 Chikorita Chikorita Grass
#002 #153 Bayleef Bayleef Grass
#003 #154 Meganium Meganium Grass
#004 #155 Cyndaquil Cyndaquil Fire
#005 #156 Quilava Quilava Fire
#006 #157 Typhlosion Typhlosion Fire
#007 #158 Totodile Totodile Water
#008 #159 Croconaw Croconaw Water
#009 #160 Feraligatr Feraligatr Water
#019 #161 Sentret Sentret Normal
#020 #162 Furret Furret Normal
#015 #163 Hoothoot Hoothoot Normal Flying
#016 #164 Noctowl Noctowl Normal Flying
#030 #165 Ledyba Ledyba Bug Flying
#031 #166 Ledian Ledian Bug Flying
#032 #167 Spinarak Spinarak Bug Poison
#033 #168 Ariados Ariados Bug Poison
#039 #169 Crobat Crobat Poison Flying
#176 #170 Chinchou Chinchou Water Electric
#177 #171 Lanturn Lanturn Water Electric
#021 #172 Pichu Pichu Electric
#040 #173 Cleffa Cleffa Fairy
#044 #174 Igglybuff Igglybuff Normal Fairy
#046 #175 Togepi Togepi Fairy
#047 #176 Togetic Togetic Fairy Flying
#161 #177 Natu Natu Psychic Flying
#162 #178 Xatu Xatu Psychic Flying
#053 #179 Mareep Mareep Electric
#054 #180 Flaaffy Flaaffy Electric
#055 #181 Ampharos Ampharos Electric
#086 #182 Bellossom Bellossom Grass
#132 #183 Marill Marill Water Fairy
#133 #184 Azumarill Azumarill Water Fairy
#107 #185 Sudowoodo Sudowoodo Rock
#075 #186 Politoed Politoed Water
#067 #187 Hoppip Hoppip Grass Flying
#068 #188 Skiploom Skiploom Grass Flying
#069 #189 Jumpluff Jumpluff Grass Flying
#123 #190 Aipom Aipom Normal
#103 #191 Sunkern Sunkern Grass
#104 #192 Sunflora Sunflora Grass
#101 #193 Yanma Yanma Bug Flying
#056 #194 Wooper Wooper Water Ground
#057 #195 Quagsire Quagsire Water Ground
#188 #196 Espeon Espeon Psychic
#189 #197 Umbreon Umbreon Dark
#213 #198 Murkrow Murkrow Dark Flying
#082 #199 Slowking Slowking Water Psychic
#219 #200 Misdreavus Misdreavus Ghost
#061 #201 Unown Unown Psychic
#108 #202 Wobbuffet Wobbuffet Psychic
#149 #203 Girafarig Girafarig Normal Psychic
#093 #204 Pineco Pineco Bug
#094 #205 Forretress Forretress Bug Steel
#052 #206 Dunsparce Dunsparce Normal
#193 #207 Gligar Gligar Ground Flying
#063 #208 Steelix Steelix Steel Ground
#125 #209 Snubbull Snubbull Fairy
#126 #210 Granbull Granbull Fairy
#163 #211 Qwilfish Qwilfish Water Poison
#112 #212 Scizor Scizor Bug Steel
#168 #213 Shuckle Shuckle Bug Rock
#114 #214 Heracross Heracross Bug Fighting
#218 #215 Sneasel Sneasel Dark Ice
#198 #216 Teddiursa Teddiursa Normal
#199 #217 Ursaring Ursaring Normal
#216 #218 Slugma Slugma Fire
#217 #219 Magcargo Magcargo Fire Rock
#195 #220 Swinub Swinub Ice Ground
#196 #221 Piloswine Piloswine Ice Ground
#173 #222 Corsola Corsola Water Rock
#174 #223 Remoraid Remoraid Water
#175 #224 Octillery Octillery Water
#194 #225 Delibird Delibird Ice Flying
#202 #226 Mantine Mantine Water Flying
#203 #227 Skarmory Skarmory Steel Flying
#214 #228 Houndour Houndour Dark Fire
#215 #229 Houndoom Houndoom Dark Fire
#192 #230 Kingdra Kingdra Water Dragon
#200 #231 Phanpy Phanpy Ground
#201 #232 Donphan Donphan Ground
#221 #233 Porygon2 Porygon2 Normal
#131 #234 Stantler Stantler Normal
#159 #235 Smeargle Smeargle Normal
#145 #236 Tyrogue Tyrogue Fighting
#148 #237 Hitmontop Hitmontop Fighting
#154 #238 Smoochum Smoochum Ice Psychic
#156 #239 Elekid Elekid Electric
#152 #240 Magby Magby Fire
#151 #241 Miltank Miltank Normal
#223 #242 Blissey Blissey Normal
#243 #243 Raikou Raikou Electric
#244 #244 Entei Entei Fire
#245 #245 Suicune Suicune Water
#249 #246 Larvitar Larvitar Rock Ground
#250 #247 Pupitar Pupitar Rock Ground
#251 #248 Tyranitar Tyranitar Rock Dark
#252 #249 Lugia Lugia Psychic Flying
#253 #250 **-Oh **-Oh Fire Flying
#256 #251 Celebi Celebi Psychic Grass
Generation III
Hdex Ndex MS Pokémon Type
#001 #252 Treecko Treecko Grass
#002 #253 Grovyle Grovyle Grass
#003 #254 Sceptile Sceptile Grass
#004 #255 Torchic Torchic Fire
#005 #256 Combusken Combusken Fire Fighting
#006 #257 Blaziken Blaziken Fire Fighting
#007 #258 Mudkip Mudkip Water
#008 #259 Marshtomp Marshtomp Water Ground
#009 #260 Swampert Swampert Water Ground
#010 #261 Poochyena Poochyena Dark
#011 #262 Mightyena Mightyena Dark
#012 #263 Zigzagoon Zigzagoon Normal
#013 #264 Linoone Linoone Normal
#014 #265 Wurmple Wurmple Bug
#015 #266 Silcoon Silcoon Bug
#016 #267 Beautifly Beautifly Bug Flying
#017 #268 Cascoon Cascoon Bug
#018 #269 Dustox Dustox Bug Poison
#019 #270 Lotad Lotad Water Grass
#020 #271 Lombre Lombre Water Grass
#021 #272 Ludicolo Ludicolo Water Grass
#022 #273 Seedot Seedot Grass
#023 #274 Nuzleaf Nuzleaf Grass Dark
#024 #275 Shiftry Shiftry Grass Dark
#025 #276 Taillow Taillow Normal Flying
#026 #277 Swellow Swellow Normal Flying
#027 #278 Wingull Wingull Water Flying
#028 #279 Pelipper Pelipper Water Flying
#029 #280 Ralts Ralts Psychic Fairy
#030 #281 Kirlia Kirlia Psychic Fairy
#031 #282 Gardevoir Gardevoir Psychic Fairy
#032 #283 Surskit Surskit Bug Water
#033 #284 Masquerain Masquerain Bug Flying
#034 #285 Shroomish Shroomish Grass
#035 #286 Breloom Breloom Grass Fighting
#036 #287 Slakoth Slakoth Normal
#037 #288 Vigoroth Vigoroth Normal
#038 #289 Slaking Slaking Normal
#042 #290 Nincada Nincada Bug Ground
#043 #291 Ninjask Ninjask Bug Flying
#044 #292 Shedinja Shedinja Bug Ghost
#045 #293 Whismur Whismur Normal
#046 #294 Loudred Loudred Normal
#047 #295 Exploud Exploud Normal
#048 #296 Makuhita Makuhita Fighting
#049 #297 Hariyama Hariyama Fighting
#054 #298 Azurill Azurill Normal Fairy
#060 #299 Nosepass Nosepass Rock
#061 #300 Skitty Skitty Normal
#062 #301 Delcatty Delcatty Normal
#068 #302 Sableye Sableye Dark Ghost
#069 #303 Mawile Mawile Steel Fairy
#070 #304 Aron Aron Steel Rock
#071 #305 Lairon Lairon Steel Rock
#072 #306 Aggron Aggron Steel Rock
#076 #307 Meditite Meditite Fighting Psychic
#077 #308 Medicham Medicham Fighting Psychic
#078 #309 Electrike Electrike Electric
#079 #310 Manectric Manectric Electric
#080 #311 Plusle Plusle Electric
#081 #312 Minun Minun Electric
#086 #313 Volbeat Volbeat Bug
#087 #314 Illumise Illumise Bug
#094 #315 Roselia Roselia Grass Poison
#095 #316 Gulpin Gulpin Poison
#096 #317 Swalot Swalot Poison
#097 #318 Carvanha Carvanha Water Dark
#098 #319 Sharpedo Sharpedo Water Dark
#099 #320 Wailmer Wailmer Water
#100 #321 Wailord Wailord Water
#101 #322 Numel Numel Fire Ground
#102 #323 Camerupt Camerupt Fire Ground
#105 #324 Torkoal Torkoal Fire
#110 #325 Spoink Spoink Psychic
#111 #326 Grumpig Grumpig Psychic
#114 #327 Spinda Spinda Normal
#116 #328 Trapinch Trapinch Ground
#117 #329 Vibrava Vibrava Ground Dragon
#118 #330 Flygon Flygon Ground Dragon
#119 #331 Cacnea Cacnea Grass
#120 #332 Cacturne Cacturne Grass Dark
#121 #333 Swablu Swablu Normal Flying
#122 #334 Altaria Altaria Dragon Flying
#123 #335 Zangoose Zangoose Normal
#124 #336 Seviper Seviper Poison
#125 #337 Lunatone Lunatone Rock Psychic
#126 #338 Solrock Solrock Rock Psychic
#127 #339 Barboach Barboach Water Ground
#128 #340 Whiscash Whiscash Water Ground
#129 #341 Corphish Corphish Water
#130 #342 Crawdaunt Crawdaunt Water Dark
#131 #343 Baltoy Baltoy Ground Psychic
#132 #344 Claydol Claydol Ground Psychic
#133 #345 Lileep Lileep Rock Grass
#134 #346 Cradily Cradily Rock Grass
#135 #347 Anorith Anorith Rock Bug
#136 #348 Armaldo Armaldo Rock Bug
#140 #349 Feebas Feebas Water
#141 #350 Milotic Milotic Water
#142 #351 Castform Castform Normal
#142 #351 Castform Castform Fire
#142 #351 Castform Castform Water
#142 #351 Castform Castform Ice
#145 #352 Kecleon Kecleon Normal
#146 #353 Shuppet Shuppet Ghost
#147 #354 Banette Banette Ghost
#148 #355 Duskull Duskull Ghost
#149 #356 Dusclops Dusclops Ghost
#150 #357 Tropius Tropius Grass Flying
#151 #358 Chimecho Chimecho Psychic
#152 #359 Absol Absol Dark
#160 #360 Wynaut Wynaut Psychic
#171 #361 Snorunt Snorunt Ice
#172 #362 Glalie Glalie Ice
#173 #363 Spheal Spheal Ice Water
#174 #364 Sealeo Sealeo Ice Water
#175 #365 Walrein Walrein Ice Water
#176 #366 Clamperl Clamperl Water
#177 #367 Huntail Huntail Water
#178 #368 Gorebyss Gorebyss Water
#179 #369 Relicanth Relicanth Water Rock
#183 #370 Luvdisc Luvdisc Water
#187 #371 Bagon Bagon Dragon
#188 #372 Shelgon Shelgon Dragon
#189 #373 Salamence Salamence Dragon Flying
#190 #374 Beldum Beldum Steel Psychic
#191 #375 Metang Metang Steel Psychic
#192 #376 Metagross Metagross Steel Psychic
#193 #377 Regirock Regirock Rock
#194 #378 Regice Regice Ice
#195 #379 Registeel Registeel Steel
#196 #380 Latias Latias Dragon Psychic
#197 #381 Latios Latios Dragon Psychic
#198 #382 Kyogre Kyogre Water
#199 #383 Groudon Groudon Ground
#200 #384 Rayquaza Rayquaza Dragon Flying
#201 #385 Jirachi Jirachi Steel Psychic
#202 #386 Deoxys Deoxys Psychic
#202 #386 Deoxys Deoxys Psychic
#202 #386 Deoxys Deoxys Psychic
#202 #386 Deoxys Deoxys Psychic
Generation IV
Sdex Ndex MS Pokémon Type
#001 #387 Turtwig Turtwig Grass
#002 #388 Grotle Grotle Grass
#003 #389 Torterra Torterra Grass Ground
#004 #390 Chimchar Chimchar Fire
#005 #391 Monferno Monferno Fire Fighting
#006 #392 Infernape Infernape Fire Fighting
#007 #393 Piplup Piplup Water
#008 #394 Prinplup Prinplup Water
#009 #395 Empoleon Empoleon Water Steel
#010 #396 Starly Starly Normal Flying
#011
Kendall Mallon Jul 2013
Book One


Prelude:

As Romans before them, they built the city upward—
layer ‘pon layer as the polar caps receded
layer by layer—preserving what they could, if someday
the waters may recede back into the former polar
ice caps; restoring the long inundated coastlines.


Home:

A man sat upon a tall pub stool stroking
his ginger beard while grasping a pint loosely
in his other hand. An elderly gent stood
next to him. The older gentleman noticed
that the ginger bearded man’s pint sat almost
quite near the bottom of its tulip glass.

A woman with eyes of amber and hair
as chestnut strolled through a vineyard amongst
the ripening grapes full of juice to soon
become wine. She clutched a notebook—behind (10)
thick black covers lay ideas and sketches
to bring the world to a more natural
state—balancing the wonders and the merits
of technology apace with the allure ‘n’
sanctity borne to the natural world.

When the ginger bearded man finished the
final drops of his stout, another appeared
heretofore him—courtesy owed to the elder
gentleman. “Notice dat ye got d’ mark
o’ a man accustom amid the seas,” (20)
he inferred; gesturing the black and blue
compass rose inscribed inside a ship’s wheel,
imbedded into the back of the ginger
bearded man’s weathered right hand.
                 “I have crewed
and skippered a many fine vessel, but I
am renouncing my life at sea—one final
voyage I have left inside of me:
one single terminal Irish-Atlantic
voyage t’ward home.” (30)
“Aye d’ sea can beh cold
‘nd harsh, but she enchants me heart. Ta where
are ye headed fer d’ place ye call home,
d’ere sonny boy?”
     “’tis not simply a where,
‘tis a who. Certain events have led me
to be separate from my wife. For five
eternal years I have been traveling—
waiting to be in her embrace. The force
of the Sea, she, is a cruel one. For (40)
it seams: at every tack or gybe the farther
off I am thrown from my homeward direction
to stranger and stranger lands… I have gone
to the graveyard of hell and the pearly gates
of (the so called) heaven; I have engaged
in foolhardy deals—made bets only a
gambling addict would place. All to just be
with Zara. I am homesick—Zara is my
home—it doesn’t matter where (physically)
we are located, my home is with Zara. I (50)
was advised to draw nigh the clove of Cork
and wait; wait for a man, but I was barely
given a clue as to who this man is,
only I must return him this:” the ginger
bearded man held out a dull silver pocket watch
with a frigate cut into the front cover
and two roses sharing a single stem
swirling upon themselves cut into
the back.
   “Can it be? ‘Tis meh watch dat meh (60)
fat’er gave t’ meh right before he died…
I lost it at sea many a year ago.
It left meh heartbroken—fer it was meh only
lasting mem’ry of him… Come to t’ink I
was told by a beggar in the street—I
do not remember how long ago—dat
I would happen across a man wit’ somet’ing
dear t’ meh, and I’d accomp’ny dis man
on a journey, and dis man would have upon
‘im d’ mark of a true sailor…” (70)
    “Dear elder man,
my name is Abraham; the mark you see
represents the control that I have on my
direction—thought it appears the Sea retains
some ascendancy… Yet now, it appears,
the Sea is upholding her bargain—though
a bit late... Do you, by chance, own a vessel
that can fair to Colorado?—all across
this mist’d island no skipper ‘ll uptake
my plea; they fear the sharp wrath of the Sea (80)
or (if they have no fear) simply claim my home
‘is not on their routes…’ i’tis a line I’ve
heard too often. I would’ve purchased a vessel,
but the Sea, she, has deprived me completely
of my identity and equity.”

Zara, with her rich chestnut hair sat upon
a fountain in a piazza—her half empty
heart longing to savor the hallow presence
of Abraham, and stroke his ginger beard…
Everyday she would look out at the sea (90)
whence he left…
     All encouraged her to: “forgo
further pursuit”; “he is likely deceased
by now”—his vessel (what left) scuttled amidst
the rocks of Cape Horn, yet Zara could feel
deep-seated inside her soul he is alive;
Alive (somewhere) fighting to return home.
Never would Zara leave; never would she
abandon post; she made that promise five
years ago as Abraham, ‘n’ his crew,
set out on their final voyage; and she (100)
would be ****** ere she broke her promise—a promise
of the heart—a promise of love. Abraham
said: “You are my lighthouse; your love, it, will guide
me home—keep me from danger—as long as you
remain my lighthouse, I’ll forever be
set to return home—return home to you.”

Out from Crosshaven did the old man take
steadfast Abraham en route to his home.
Grey Irish skies turned blue as they made their
way out on the Irish Sea, southwest, toward (110)
the southern end of the Appalachian Island.
The gentle biting spray of the waves breaking
over the bow and beam moistened the ginger
bearded face of Abraham; his tattooed
hands grasped the helm—his resolute stare kept him
and the old man acutely on course.
A shame,
it struck the old man, this would be the final
voyage of Abraham… he: the best crew
that the old man had ever came across; (120)
uncertain if simply the character
of Abraham or his pers’nal desire
to return home in the wake of five long
salty-cold years—a vassal to the Sea
and her changing whim. Never had the old
man seen his ship sail as fast as he did when
Abraham accorded its deck—each sail
set without flaw: easing and trimming sheets
fractions of an inch—purely to obtain
the slightest gain in speed; the display warmed (130)
the heart of the old man.
        And thus the elder
gent mused as he lightly puffed on his pipe
while sitting on the stern pulpit regarding
at Abraham’s passion to return home
(as he calls her):—maybe dis is d’ reason
d’ Sea has fought so hard, and lied, t’ keep
Abraham from returning home… Could not
bear t’ lose such fine a sailor from her
expanses—she is known t’ be quite a jealous (140)
mistress…
      But for all Abraham’s will and passion,
the old man insisted for the fellow
to rest; otherwise lack of sleep would cause
the REM fiddler to reap his debt—replace
clarity of mind with opacity.
Reluctantly stalwart Abraham gave
in and retire below deck—yet the old
man doubted the amount of rest that he
acquired in those moments out of his sight. (150)

For the days, then weeks, in the wake of their
departure from the port-island Crosshaven,
the seas were calm as open water can:
gentle azure rolling swells oscillated
and helped impel the vessel forward. The southern
craggy cape of the Appalachian
Island pierced the horizon. Like a threshold
it stood for Abraham—a major landmark;
the closest to home he had been in five
salty long years—his limbo was beginning                               (160)
to fade, his heart slowly—for the first time since
he left port in eastern Colorado—
started to feel replete again. The Great
Plains Sea—his final sea—he would not miss
the gleam of his lighthouse stalwart on shore.




Book Two

Oracle:**

Upon a beach, Abraham found himself alone—gasping
in gulps of moist air like that of a new born baby first (10)
experiencing the breathe of life; he felt as if he
would never become dry again… the salt burning his skin
as it crusted over when the water evap’rated
into the air; Abraham took the first night to rest, the
next day he set to make shelter and wait for a rescue
crew; out he stared at the crashing waves hoping for a plane
or faint form of a ship upon the horizon…days and
nights spun into an alternating display of day then
night: light then dark—light, dark, light, dark, grey, grey, grey…

Abraham (20)
gave up marking the days—realized the searches are done—
given up after looking in the wrong places (even
he did not know where he was…) the cold waves and currents took
him to a safe shore away from his ship and crew, in a
limp unconscious float…
From the trees, and what he could find on
the small  island, Abraham occupied himself with the
task of building a catamaran to rid himself of
the grey-waiting.
Out he cast his meager vessel into (30)
the battering surf; waves broke over his bows and centre
platform—each foot forward, the waves threatened to push him back
twofold… Abraham struck-beat the water with the oars he
fashioned; rising and falling with the energy of the
waves; Abraham stole brief looks back with hopes of a van’shing
shoreline—coast refused to vanish… his drenched arms grew tired;
yet he pushed on knowing he would soon be out passed the
breaking waves; then could relax and hoist sail; yet the waves grew
taller—broke with greater power… Abraham struck-beat the
water with his oars—anger welled—leading to splashes of (40)
ivory sea-froth instead of the desired progress
forward; eventually, his arms fell limp beyond the
force of will… waves tumbled him back to shore as he did the
first night upon the island…
Dejected Abraham lay
in the surf that night—the gentle ebb of the sea added
to insult, but hid the tears formed in the corner of his eyes—
salt water to salt water… the next day Abraham took
inventory of damage: the mast snapped in multiple
places, the rudders askew—the hulls and centre structure (50)
remained intact; the oars lost (or at least Abraham cared
not to search); over the next weeks he set to improve
the design and efficiency of his vessel—the first
had been hurried and that of a man desperate to leave;
the bare minimum that would suffice—he set to create
a vessel to ensure his departure from the des’late
accrue of sand and vegetation; Abraham laboured
to strengthen his body—pushing his arms further passed the
point his mind believed they could go—consuming the hearty,
protein-rich, mollusks, and small shellfish he could find inside (60)
tide pools or shallows—if lucky, larger fish that dared the
nearby reefs.
Patiently, Abraham observed the tides and
breaking water; he wanted to determine the correct
time to set off to ensure success—when the waves would not
toss him back to the beach; the day: a calm clear day—only
within few metres of soft beach did there exist any
breaking waves, and those that broke were barely a metre high;
loading provisions upon the vessel, Abraham bid
farewell to the island (out of wont for the sustenance (70)
it gave not for nostalgia) grasping his oars, he set forth
to find open sea—where the waves do not break and set you
gingerly on foreign shore(s); Abraham paddled passed the
first few breaking waves, his heart pounding with hope—he stifled
the thoughts (celebrate when the island is but a subtle
blue curve upon the horizon); as the island began
to shrink in his vision, the sky to his back grew darker…
the waves started to swell—moguls grew to hills—Abraham
stroked up and rode down; the cursèd Island refused to shrink…
if not begin to grow wider… stroke by stroke Abraham (80)
grew frustrated—stroke by stroke frustration advanced into
anger—stroke by stroke anger augmented into fiery
beating of the water!—Abraham struck and struck at the
Sea—eyes closed—white knuckles—trashing!—unsure which direction
he paddled…sky pitch-black, wind blowing on-shore Abraham
bellowed out to the Sea in inarticulate roars of:
hatefrustrationpitydesperationheartache!
Towards
Abraham’s in-linguistic roar, the sky let out a crack
of authority! a wave swept the flailing Abraham (90)
into the ocean—cool water only heated the rage
in Abraham’s mind—his half empty heart only wanted:
to sail home, become whole  again—sit under and olive
tree and stroke the chestnut hair of Zara as she drifted
off to sleep on his chest while he would whisper sweet verses
into her ear… Abraham’s rage, beyond reason, forgot
the boat and all clarity, he tried to swim away from
the cursèd island—scrambling up waves only to tumble
back with their breaking peaks—salt, the only taste in his mouth;
churning his stomach to *****; his kidney’s praying he (100)
would  not swallow anymore… his gasps stifled any curse
Abraham’s head wished to expel onto the Sea—yet she
swore she heard one final curse escape his lips! at that the
Sea tossed Abraham (head first) into his ghost-helmed vessel—
all went dark for hostile Abraham…

Contemplating back
at his rage—knowing the barbarian it makes of him,
Abraham peered into the band inscribed into his
ring-finger and saw the knot tying him to Zara—shame
at his arrogant-uncontrolled-fury sent Abraham (110)
into a meditative exile inside of his mind
(within the exile of the island…) in his mental
exile Abraham spun into deeper despair at his
two failures—even more at the prospect of failing the
vow he professed onto Zara: return home—home from this
final voyage, grow old with her on solid ground, never
to die apart and cause the pain of losing a loved one
without the closure of truly knowing the death is real,
to die by her side white, white with the purity of age…
Abraham’s destitution turned inward—his fury, the (120)
lack of control, the demon he becomes when rage surges
through his muscles; equiping him with untamed strength without
direction or self-possession—so much potential, yet
no productive way to use it… Abraham’s half-full-heart
burned, ached with passion and anguish—all desire
focused on home, his return, but the mind’s despondency
and insistent ‘what-ifs’ kept poor Abraham prostrate in
his mental cave—all his wishing for anger and vi’lence
to force his will, it did more to retain him upon the
cursèd island than bring his heart closer to fulfillment: (130)
his long awaited home…
Out of his mental exile did
Abraham’s irises dilate and contract with blinding
illumination—self-pity is not what make things happen—
it would only serve to anger Zara—nothing other
than I can be to blame for my continued absence; I
am stronger than that!—looking at the tattoo in his hand,
he remembered the reasons for the perennial brand—
the eight-spoke ship’s helm: the eight-fold-path—I must cut off my
desire for anger to be the solution and focus (140)
on the one path to Zara—the mind can push the body
further than the body believes is possible—the star:
the compass to guide me via celestial bodies
to where my heart can see the guiding beam of my lighthouse!
This is the Final Voyage epic thus far. I am converting Home into blank verse and it is taking longer than I thought to do; which is why that part is incomplete here. I also added line numbers. I changed The names as well.
Making the most of my day
Riding back and fourth from station's
139 poems wrote
But the route never changes
Blasting pop punk anthems to get me by
Instead of dwelling in my room furthering connection with the outside
On mission with no destination
To find the people or place that feels like home
A community found when the lights go down and the band  starts to play
My 140th poem wrote on the same bus heading the opposite way
Slightly less lost
Alex Higgins Dec 2014
There are 140,490 miles of railroad in the United States,
21,000 miles of Amtrak rails,
Amtrak owns 2,142 railway cars
plus 425 locomotives,
only one station near Atlanta,
(the ones by Toccoa, Jesup, and Savannah don’t ******* count)
and just the two of us.
My point is:
There’s a good chance I’ll see you again someday

Maybe plans will never work out,
and I won’t have you in my life the way I’d like.
Maybe we’ll grow into two completely different lives,
but we promise to meet up every five years.
Maybe we both just disappear for a while,
and just happen upon the same town/train station one day.
Maybe we’ll never be close friends,
or lovers,
but maybe,
just maybe,
there’s a good chance I’ll see you again someday.

When I was young,
I used to follow the train tracks.
For miles and miles and miles,
just waiting for my train to take me away.
And when I got home I’d have so many stories to tell.
I saw two dogs *******,
And a family of opossums,
And a dead deer,
And a really pretty bug,
(And I got you some flowers but I dropped them,
when I thought the dogs were chasing me)
But your parents would always get mad at me for disappearing
when they’re supposed to be watching me until
my mom gets home.
And they’d tell me,
“do you have any idea how upset she’d be if
she knew you ran off like that?”
And I’d apologize for going off by myself
And they’d say,
“We forgive you. We won’t tell her
Just this once.”
But they’d never
never hear me
when I tried to tell them:
I can’t help it. There’s a big, beautiful, country out there
…and I want to see it.

Then when I got older,
I kept following the train tracks.
For miles and miles and miles.
Except now, I was a little more grown up.
I didn’t just disappear anymore,
walking along the tracks.
No, I had responsibilities
and obligations
and most of all,
a little money.
So, this time, I actually got to ride the train.
So my trains took me away,
And when I got home I had so many stories to tell.
I saw two drunks *******,
And a family of musicians,
And a ****** on the nod,
And a really pretty tree,
(And I got you some jewelry, but I dropped it,
When I thought the drunks were chasing me)
But more than all of that,
I saw a girl.
She was beautiful and funny and kind and smart.
But they didn’t have time to listen to my stories,
About the drunks and the tree and the girl,
Because we had responsibilities and obligations.
So I didn’t even bother
Trying to tell them,
I have to go back. There’s a big, beautiful, country out there
…and I have to see it.

So,
I don’t know if I’ll see you again, or
If I’ll get to follow all the train tracks I want,
But there are 140,490 miles of railroad in the United States,
And it’s a big, beautiful country out there,
So it might be planned,
Or by mistake,
Or luck,
Or divine providence,
But I think
I hope
I pray
There’s a good chance I’ll see you again someday.
Diana Aug 2020
What makes you feel the most beautiful?
  ->doing whatever the fu€k I want
edit 1: I usually thought this way, but now I would say when I’m worshipping or praying
edit 2: I would add it is when I am completely vulnerable. It is a different kind of beauty. One that is emotionally strong
(usually a person will say when they look a certain way which is sad to an extent because it reflects the way in which they associate beauty immediately with an external reflection; however, most people think this way)

2. Who do you love the most in your life?

3. Who has shown you and made you feel the most loved?
—> I had a 11 year old ask me this once

4. What would you do during the summers as a kid?
—> it can reflect the socioeconomic background one comes from

5. Do you think you’re an aesthetically  beautiful person?
—> this is quite interesting, bc if a good looking person says yes, then they’re proud and stuck up; if they say no, then they’re obnoxiously oblivious and seeking attention; if a not so good looking person says yes, then they are praised for their confidence; if they say no, then they are pitied and encouraged, the best answer is to give an answer back: do you believe that everyone should feel aesthetically beautiful?

6. Do you have any siblings? If so, how many brothers and sisters, and are you the oldest or youngest?
—> learning about birthing order can be huge! Oldest tend to be protective, responsible, mature at a very young age, selfless, and carry more of a silent burden and stress, introduction to adulthood is rather quick. Middle child is often overlooked and will seek a sense of family/community elsewhere with friend groups and such; they feel like their thoughts/existence goes unseen by the ones that are supposed to care the most youngest tend to seek the approval of others especially of those older than them, outgoing, irresponsible, and babied. They can have a harder time managing task without it being done for them by others.

7. When we fall asleep, where do you think we go?

8. What is a thought that has kept you up at night?

9. What was the most humbling moment you’ve had in your life?

10. What is a piece of advice that you still hold today that transcends time?

11. What’s a favorite quote of yours?
-> the unexamined life is a life not worth living; don’t take yourself too seriously; come back home to yourself and choose to show up authentically; growth is a dance not a light switch; Harriet Tubman- I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed  a thousand more of only they knew they were slaves.

12. Who has impacted your life the most? How and why?

13. What is an overlooked or under appreciated strength that you have?
—> honesty, forgiveness

14. How do you give love? How do you receive it?
—> 5 love languages: words of affirmations, physical touch, acts of service, quality time, gifts

15. How do you communicate when in repairs after a rupture has occurred?
—> discuss as soon as possible, take a five minute break, wait a few days, words, touch, gifts, silence, etc. so you never repair after a disagreement?

16. Do you enjoy the late hours of the night or the early hours of the morning?

17. What’s your favorite type of weather?

18. Do you prefer exploring and staying in the gray, or the black and white?

19. Of you could study anything what would it be?

20. What are ways that you work on your emotional intelligence and character?

21. What type of communicator are you?
—> words, touch, actions, silent, loud, stoic, expressive, curt, bombastic, blunt, passive, etc.

22. Would you say you have a better face or body?

23. What is a moment where you felt a supernatural appreciation for the earth due to the view you saw?

24. How do you handle seasons? The ends and beginnings of them?
-> journal, reflect, avoid, acknowledge, cry, run backwards, move forwards, etc.

25. What book had a huge effect on you? What was it about the book?
-> all the bright places, Fahrenheit 451, the curse of the good girl, it ends with us, great gatsby, the voice of archer, etc.

26. What is the worst thing you can take from another person?
-> their time

27. What’s the greatest act of love (that you can do for another) ?
-> to die for another since the greatest fear is death

28. What is something that brings you peace that not many people do or notice?

29. What is the worst form of loneliness?
-> when you are uncomfortable with yourself

30. When do you feel the most vulnerable?
-> sleeping, expressing emotions, sick, crying, etc.

31. How do you handle seasons? The end and beginning of them?

32. Liquid or bar soap?

33. Have you ever closed your eyes, plugged your ears, and listen to the noise that comes when you let the water from a shower head pour over your skull

34. What is the most beautiful sound you have ever heard?

35. Do you think your parents are soulmates, or do you question their love for each other?  

36. What are important qualities to have in any relationship (platonic, romantic, etc.)?
-> trust, love, loyalty, respect, empathy, compassion, boundaries, autonomy, differences, effective communication, etc.

37. What are qualities that you look for in a romantic partner?
-> thoughtfulness, observant, confidence, wisdom, romantic, humorous, self-driven, self-discipline, humility, grace, etc.

38. How do you know that your (insert name/ relationship) loves you?

39. Would you rather be hated or alone?
-> interesting philosophical question in regards to being hated would mean that there is a recognition of your existence as opposed to being alone

40. How did you learn to ride the bike? Ice Scate? Snowboard?

41. When was the last time you felt rejected? By who? For what?

42. When was the last time you cried?

43. What has a kid said to you that has made you stop and reflect?

44. Which is a worse fear: the fear of dying or the fear of not being worthy of love
-> Jordan Peterson claims that the greatest fear that humans have is not death because then how would we explain suicide...the fear of death is a subcategory for the greatest fear which he believes to be the complexity issue (people **** themselves not because they want to die but because their life has become too complex for them to handle emotionally and/or physically)

45. What is the most destructive thing a person can do to themselves?
-> to deny themselves; to place the responsibilities of loving and accepting themselves onto others such as lovers or family members; to believe they are not worthy to be loved

46. What is something you want to experience/feel in a relationship
-> unconditional love; lol I have a while poke dedicated to experiences

47. Tell me about a dream that you have had multiple times

48. What do you like most about yourself?
-> my mind/thinking process; understanding, and open to conversation

49. Would you be friends with yourself

50. What is the worst thing you have done or said to another person? How old were you?

51. Why do you choose to wake up and participate in society?

52. What makes a woman or man their gender? Their body/attitude/characteristics?

53. Would you let your child date someone that has the character of you?

54. What makes you special? Since the beliefs you hold and the personality traits that you have aren’t exclusive to you?
-> it’s the combination and ratio that makes us unique

55. when was the last time anyone ever told you how important you are?

56. what are things you do when you need to feel nurtures?
->hot bath, foot rub, curling up in a comfy chair with a comforter and a good book, or making a *** of soup or a nourishing hot drink

57. what are ways that you neglect your physical and emotional well-being?

58. where in your life are you not protecting what is precious in you?

59. what adjectives describe your relationship with your mother? do you like the closeness or is it uncomfortable in some ways and hard to fully accept?

60. What do you do when you cry? do you try to stop it, cover your eyes, in the dark, into a pillow, silent, loud, sooth your body?

61. What was something that someone said to you that made you feel seen for the first time in a long time? what is something that touched you heart?
-> you are do brave, you have a courageous heart, you are a natural teacher and psychologist, you lean towards healing, you do not realize how much you impact other people's lives

62. what is a go to song that you could listen to at any moment in your life?

63. What do you do when you feel lonely?

64. What is something that puts a smile on your face?

65. What smell brings you joy?

66. would you rather get caught or catch your parents?

67. what is one of the biggest lies you have told yourself?
-> you are unworthy of love

68. what is a memory that reminds you of the beauty in life?

69. what is your favorite word to pronounce?
-> tantalizing, satiate, revere

70. what stereotype do you think people put you in when they see you?
-> pretty, (not super smart) blonde

71. what are things about you would shock other people?
-> first generation. youngest of five, 4.0 student, write poetry, love to read, not active on social media, don't like taking pictures, never been kissed, played the violin and cello, struggled with insecurity

72. tell me the accomplishments that you might be hesitant to share bluntly in fear that it comes off as being a show off?
-4.0 since sixth grade to nursing school in college, won a poetry competition in senior year of high school, got a full ride to UW Seattle and declined, won best dressed in high school, squatted 225lbs, muscular body, sang in a few songs (good at singing)

73. how do you interact with others when they are invading your personal space?
-> don't do anything, interrupt and tell them to move, slowly do something on your own without saying anything to them

74. what do you do and how do you feel when someone cries next to you?
-> hug/touch them, talk to them, remain silent, get stiff and uncomfortable, try to get them to stop crying, walk away

75. how do you regulate your emotions when they are out of homeostasis?
-> don't know how to, take deep breaths, walk away from the situation so the stimulus/source is not in front of me, cry

76. name as many emotions as you can
-> reflects their ability to accurately label their emotional experiences and can possibly be a marker/indicator for their emotional intelligence/maturity

77. how do you feel about death, do you talk about death, do you see others shut down or open up when you express this topic?
-> isn't it ironic how death is an inevitable event yet so many humans are uncomfortable with talking about it. I believe that it interrupts the natural grieving process. I talk about death with my dad and he is more open with talking to me about when he passes; my mom gets uncomfortable and gets upset and tries to switch the topic.

78. would you rather eat any form of noodles or burgers for the rest of your life?

79. when was the last time you sat in silence and was comfortable with it (excluding before you fall asleep)?

80. when was the last time you had a conversation with yourself about something deep? what was it about?

81. what is a revelation in your life that made you cry?
->only God can provide me with unconditional love; no one else can

82. what do you think is the root of all fears? what do you think can remove them?
->ignorance; distraction/knowledge -> unconditional love

83. What is the most unique response you’ve received when you’ve asked someone how they are doing?
-> still breathing

84. Do you think humans are easy to love?
-> I don’t think they are easy; it is complex just like they are

85. When was the last time you read a book? What was the title called? what was it about? Why did you read it?
-> the emotionally absent mother by Jasmin Lee Cori

86. If you’re comfortable with sharing, talk to me about the life of someone that has passed away? What were they like? How did they make you feel? Who were they to you? How did you cope when you realized they passed away?

87. Who are addicts? What do you need to do to be one? Do you think everyone is an addict to some extent? Why do you think people become addicts?
-> whenever faced with such questions it is imperative that we must ask ourselves the question of why! Yes, I believe all of us are addicts to dopamine; our brain is wired that way. But when we think of addicts, we forgot to ask the question of why they are addicts. Life became too difficult to manage and the body found a way to stimulate the mind in such a manner that it either numbed the pain or provide sensation to a chronic state of numbness

88. Other than the lips, where do you like to be kissed the most?
-> forehead, cheek, behind the ear, neck, top of head, hand, nose, shoulder, chest, back, collarbone

89. What type of kiss do you enjoy the most?
-> slow, fast, French, peck, open mouthed, short, long, sloppy, hungry, passionate, affectionate, sweet, etc.

90. it is easy to agree with the statement that dehumanization is not okay, but is it more gray than we think? is there a degree of dehumanization that is okay or needed? if so, what is that degree? also, do you think we commit acts of dehumanization regularly? if so, when and what are these instances?
-> i believe that as humans we have a tendency of wanting to see our light and ignore the aspects of ourselves that are casted in that shadow. to have a light is to also have a shadow; i believe that we dehumanize almost every time we meet someone by limiting their mystery to small snipits of who they really are; also, sometimes it is very difficult to handle and hold such emotional space that our minds need to shut off and dehumanize for our own sake of well-being

91. are soul mates meant to be with each other?
-> A soulmate is a person with whom one has a feeling of deep or natural affinity. This may involve similarity, love, romance, platonic relationships, comfort, intimacy, sexuality, ****** activity, spirituality, compatibility and trust

92. what are ways that you can take a break from reality?
-> sleep, reading, gaming, showering

93. do you have people in your life where their presence is enough? no conversation is necessary, just each other's presence is comforting enough.
->celesa, kristina, michelle, marta,

94. what is a memory you like to relive time to time?
->dancing with celesa at the bistro to adore you; trinity; late night phone calls with close friends

95. how would you describe your relationship using 5 adjectives or phrases with your best friend, sibling (if you have one), and care giver?
-> "If you love yourself, you love others. If you hate yourself, you hate others. Because in relationship with others … the other is nothing but a mirror." - Anonymous

96. how would you describe yourself using 10 adjectives?
-“I’m selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best." I like this quote because it acknowledges the negatives of who we all are. we aren't all only happy, funny, bubbly, hard-working, etc. we are also grumpy, boring, rude, and lazy. we are a combination of every adjective out there; it just depends on how aware we are of our expressions of these adjectives. So, notice the kind of adjective the person uses when they respond and also note the context and circumstance of your relation to them.

97. do you prefer a hot drink on a cold day or a cold drink on a hot day?

98. if you could be famous would you? famous for writing, acting, food, music, sport, YouTube etc.
-> for me personally it depends on the exposure i get. if i get a lot of focus on myself then no (music, acting, etc.) but if my work gets more focus than i do and i can still live a "normal" life then yes (writing, food, etc).

99. which musicians or artists do you think deserve more recognition?
-> emotional oranges, Justice Der, cigarettes after ***, the 1975, pink sweat$, A. Chal

100. what is one of the most thought-provoking questions or statements you have ever heard?
-> "not all of us can afford to be romantic" - Pride and Prejudice;
"when will it be enough; how much more do you need to finally be happy"- My dad; "do you believe that everyone deserves to look and find themselves to be aesthetically beautiful" -My brother

101. Favorite piece of clothing?
-> yuriy’s wedding: the dress I had, red socks, fuzzy sweater

102. What’s your full name?

103. What’s the weirdest saying an old person has said?
-> don’t go spending your money in a wooden nickel

104. What age would you consider a person to be old?

105. Do you believe that life requires s purpose?

106. What is your purpose?

107. What is one of your biggest fears that you believed in (as a child, adult, etc)?
-> that I was unlovable at some point in my life

108. When you are in an emotional emergency, do you have someone you can call? If so, who is it and why?
-> I don’t really...I try to stick through it...weird since I have had people tell me that I could call them but I still don’t feel comfortable to talk to them...

109. Do you have relationships where you felt valued, a sense of belonging, calm, accepted?

110. What is your earliest memory of feeling left out?
-> the social pain overlap theory (SPOT) describes the overlap between the pain of being physically hurt and the pain of being left out. In our bodies, there is literally no distinction between the two.

111. If you could only have one for the rest of your life, would you choose to keep limes or lemons?

112. Have you ever experienced the relational paradox? If so, with whom?
->  when you’re convinced that your friends won’t tolerate who you really are so you decided the best way to be excepted is to leave a part of yourself out of those relationships; By hiding yourself you may preserve the friendship but at the cost of feeling that you don’t legitimately belong but if your friends can see who you truly are they would cut you loose

113. Have you ever done a relational mindfulness exercise?
-> set a timer for 10 minutes, and then stare into each other’s eyes silently. It should sync your cardiac systems as well as your respiratory systems. Hold each other’s pulses to identify; I find it weird how we get stared at lovingly when we are babies and then that goes away as well get older...

114. What is a secret that you have kept from your partner, family, or closest friends that you believe if they found out they would reject you?

115. Do you have a person in your life that can be categorized as “the one that got away”? Someone you either dated or never dated?

116. Is there someone in your life that you don’t see anymore that you would like to have a conversation with? Dead and/or alive.

117. Sunset or sunrise?

118. Do you want children? What is your opinion on men who don’t want children; what is your opinion on women who don’t want children?

119. Have you ever felt forced to do something that you didn’t want to do or say? Like give a handshake, hug, take a picture, have a conversation, give a number, compliment someone, disclose personal information, go on a date, say I love you?
-> there’s a difference between not wanting to do something and feeling forced to do something, and I find it interesting that we all do things that we feel are forced upon us when no one is directly stating that we have to do it; it’s like an invisible force

120. what is something that another person did that made you uncomfortable but you never addressed it?
-> sing terribly while they are genuinely trying, get physically close to me, compliment me in a creepy way, talk in a movie theater

121. What is a pet peeve of yours?
-> leaving garbage on a table after you eat (not cleaning up after yourself), having poor etiquette with servers or cashiers, saying “mom” instead of “my mom” if I don’t share the same mother as them (missing the possessive pronoun before a parent).

122. Who is someone that you find attractive that is the same *** as you?
-> Arbby, Irina, Jessica, Sara, Valentina

123. What is the most sweet/****** compliment you have given to someone?

124. What is the biggest plot twist you have ever seen in a movie or book?

125. When did you  feel the most loved (in your entire life, this week, by me)?

126. what is something I have said that you have always remembered?

127. Blue or red Gatorade?

128. Star gazing or sunset picnic?

129. What is something that is underrated?
-> our bodies (specifically our our hands, eyes), stars, cologne/perfume

130. have you ever tried to impress the other? If so, for what reason and when?

131. Which do you prefer: breakfast, lunch, or dinner for the rest of your life?

132. Are you missing someone right now? Do you think they miss you?

133. What was the happiest meme out you have had this year?
-> dancing with Celesa at trinity, at the apartment, after hours at the bistro, French dip at lost like with Celesa, holding Lorenzo, seeing a birth and colostrum, making my first song and listening to it for the first time, board game with Hayden, D.E.A. Hat guy, Fourth of July with kristina -> ride back with questions, eagles falls, yuriy’s wedding and gelato boy, euphoria makeup with Bella, painting with Michelle at green lake, reading books

134. where were you born?

135. how many states/countries have you visited?

136. what color would you use to describe your life

137. would you say it is better or worse to listen to sad music when you are sad?

138. what is the #1 factor that predestines people for failed relationships?
-> no examples of healthy relationships

139. what is the weirdest ice cream flavor you have ever tried?
->black licorice, peppercorn/caramel/goat cheese

140. What’s the most exciting dream you have ever had?

141. What’s the most peaceful dream you have ever had?

142. What’s the most terrifying dream you have ever had?

143. Who is the most misunderstood person you know?
-> Mark; he wasn’t well liked, but I remember thinking that the was just misunderstood...

144. Who in your life are you misunderstood by?
-> my mom

145. Do you prefer handshakes or hugs?

146. Do you prefer movie nights or dinner dates?

147. When was the last time you read a paper book for pleasure?

148. What is a comment that someone said to you that you were honestly shocked by? Like, you couldn’t believe it came from their mouth?
-> when I was in sixth grade and my friend’s mom said, “aren’t you jealous of [her daughter/my best friend’s name] ****”?; “do you even know what wings are”?

149. As a kid in elementary school, where did you play during recess? Tetherball, four-square, hopscotch, jump rope, soccer, basketball, slide, monkey bars, swings, sandpit, etc?

150. What otter pop flavor was your favorite?
-> the pink one

151. When you brush your teeth, are you messy or clean? Meaning, does the toothpaste get outside of your mouth at all?

152. What do you remember about elementary school in terms of field trips, punishments, recess, fun run, day of activities, lunch food, movie nights, fundraisers, assemblies, and reading points?

153. what do you remember about middle school in terms of the change from elementary school with no recess, classes, $ex ed, lockers, assemblies, P.E., lunch food?

154. what do you remember about high school in terms of the change from middle school, classes, assemblies, P.E., sports, lunch food, standard tests, dances, friends from your first year to your last year?

155. what do you think is a poet's aphrodisiac in the form of a person?
->intelligence, originality, mystery, intriguing personality

156. what is a bad habit that you know you should quit ( can be a substance, activity, or person)?

157. How often would you say you reflect on your life? with the mundane activities and the more impacting activities?

158. what's a song that you are replaying right now?
-> redbone x childish gambino by Jospeh Solomon

159. what is the most random food combo that you really enjoy?
->mashed potatoes/gravy with corn; hot dog with jelly

160. who is a person in your life that was the most mysterious to you?

161. would you say that you were shown healthy relationships throughout your childhood? in particular, your parents' relationship?

162. would you say that your family made you feel seen, heard, and understood? if not, would you say that you subconsciously expect this in your adult relationships? what have you done to unlearn this mentality?

163. would you say that you are always the one doing the caretaking in your relationships?

164. do you have a hard time listening to others?

165. do you act differently with men than with women?

166. do you get hurt easily and withdraw when there is conflict; what are you like during conflict?

167. what are you like when you don't get your way (aggressive, sad, quiet, loud, irritated, calm, unbothered, indifferent, annoyed, happy, frustrated)?

168. what are the molds for your ideas about how relationships are supposed to work?

169. what do you believe you're entitled to within a relationship (any/ friend/ romantic/ family)?

170. what was your closest experience with death?

171. do you prefer cauliflower or broccoli?

172.  what's the weirdest thing you have ever eaten?

173. what are your favorite tv shows or movies?
-> bridgerton, pride and prejudice, law abiding citizen,

174. what is the most controversial thing you have ever done?

175. what is the most controversial thing another person has done?

176. what is your superpower?
->there is no one on this planet that is quite like me

177. what do you believe is the purpose of a romantic relationship? Marriage?

178. do you think love is needed to marry someone? would you find yourself ever in a situation where you would marry someone that you did not love?

179. what is your weirdest talent? hobby? experience?

180. do you bring your phone with you when you go to the bathroom? if so, when was the last time that you went without your phone?

181. what is something that most people have done but will not admit to?
->eat a ******, smelling their **** out of curiosity, ma$turbate, blame a **** on someone else, etc.

182. do you believe that there should be aspects of yourself that no one else on this earth except yourself should ever know?

183. what's the weirdest conversation you've ever had with someone?

184. How old were you when you had your first kiss? Describe the situation? Who made the first move?

185. What is the spiciest thing you have ever eaten?

186. what is the most bitter thing you have ever eaten?
-> unripe pear!!

187. what is the most spontaneous thing you've ever done and/or said?
->eagles falls with kristina, lorenzo's birthday with selesa

188. how would you want a girl/boy to shoot their shot at you?

189. if you could be someone else for a day (someone you have met and know) who would it be?

190. if someone wasn't interested in you, how would you want them to rejected?

191. do you prefer buttered popcorn or the sweet kettle popcorn?

192. what is the rudest thing you've wanted to say but stopped yourself from saying?

193. what is the most genuine, heart-felt compliment you have received from someone?
-> you are courageous/brave; you are a natural psychologist and healer; you're my best friend, I can tell you anything

194. what is an experience you look forward to in life?
-> walking down the aisle and maintaining eye contact with my man the entire time until I have to hug my dad goodbye; my wedding night; going on vacations with just my husband; going to Jamaica; holding my baby in my arms for the first time; watching my husband play with our children on a beach as I sit under the shade; trying fruity cocktails on my 21st; going on my first date; my first kiss; moving into my house

195. what is a moment that you tend to relive in your mind?

196. what is something that you have learned to accept in life as you have gotten older?

197. who was your first crush? how old were you? what about them made you like them?
->ruslan at church; I was maybe four; he was really sweet to me and I thought he was cute; at yuriy's wedding, I saw him and told him about it which made him get really excited

198. what is something that you hate to eat? you've tried it and you know that you will try to avoid it at all costs.
->parsley, celery, beets, ginger

199. at what age would you say you lost your child-like innocence?

200. your turn. create a question!

201. how old were you when you found out that santa wasn't real? how did you handle it?

202. what is something that people hate, but still choose to participate in?
->beauty standards

203. what super power would you wish to have?
->time control

204. if you had the chance to have the superpower of mind control, would you accept it?

205. how would you decorate your ideal house?
-> different vibes for different rooms; monochromatic black room with lava lamps, white room with dark brown wood accents and lots of plants, pastel light pink with neon glass decorations

206. who is a person that had made you cry?

207. what is one of the most scariest thoughts you have had run through your mind?

208. what is one of the most sad thoughts you have had run through your mind?

209. do you believe you should have to pay to live on a planet you were born on?

210. what is a candy that you hate?

211. what is a song that you try to avoid because it is too personal?
-> apple bottom jeans

212. would you say that you are alive or merely living?

213. what is something that someone said to you that you have never forgotten?
-> you have a lot of knowledge, but you lack experience

214. what is an example of a person that you thought was good but turned out to be a genuinely bitter, horrible person?

215. When was the last time you felt truly understood by somebody? Who was it? What did they understand?

216. Can you think of someone in your life who understands you better than anyone else?

217. Is your relationship with yourself healthy or unhealthy?

218. Growing up, the relationships I primarily saw were healthy or unhealthy?

219. Do you attach guilt with growth?

220. Have you spent too much time today comparing yourself?

221. When did you feel the most trapped?

222.who do you feel most yourself around? Why?

223. what parts of yourself do you need to break up with?

224. what is your favorite conspiracy that you believe in right now?

225. do you prefer to work with people are are the same or opposite gender as you?

226. what was the most intense experience of $exual tension that you have had?

227. what activity do you do that makes you feel most at home/ yourself?

228. what was the most painful truth you have ever been told?

229. who is someone you will never forget even though you have only had one encounter with them?

230. when was the last time you felt adrenaline pumping through your veins due to excitement?

231. what about you feels easiest to love (physical and character)?

232. what about you feels hardest to love (physical and character)?

233. What kind of love feels more familiar to you -> peaceful or chaotic love?

234. to what extent to you feel your appearance is the most important aspect of who you are?

235. do you think being attractive is a privilege? are you nicer or meaner to people you find attractive?

236. what was the hardest thing that you forgave someone for?

237. how would you define forgiveness?

238. who have you farted the loudest or most often?

239. what is an embarrassing story of when you really needed to **** in class but struggled to hold it in?

240. what is something that made you blush really hard?

241. if you had the opportunity to be famous, would you choose to be?

242. what is the longest you have not dated someone (or was flirting or thinking with someone)? In other words, what is the longest you have been alone?

243. what separates us from God?
-> ignorance (spiritual) and death (physical) - Jordan Peterson

244. what is a message that everyone deserves to hear in life?
-> "you deserve someone who's going to work hard to find ways to care for you." You are worthy of unconditional love.

245. what is a difficulty in your life right now?

246. what is something you've always wanted to try but haven't yet?
->fall in love, go on a trip by myself, go to Europe with Itzhel, drink a mimosa at brunch in a sunny place

247. what are qualities that you really admire in people?
-> attentiveness, observant, thoughtful, thought-provoking, mysterious, charming, honest transparency, vulnerability, calm curiosity, humble confidence

248. what is one of the most important connections you can have in life?
->your relationship with yourself

249. what memory comes to mind when you think about the ocean/beach?

250. what memory comes to mind when you think about carnivals?

251. what memory comes to mind when you think about water balloon fights or snowball fights?

252. Do you think your parents have thought about killing themselves?

253. Do you think your best friend has thought about killing themselves?

254. How often do you think people have thought about harming or killing themselves.

255. Do you believe in the concept of marriage?

256. what is the worst advice you have ever received?

257. was there ever a time where you were vulnerable and regretted it? if you are comfortable with it, what was the situation?

258. if you could go to any concert, who would you go see?
-> chase atlantic, post malone, cigarettes after ***, ariana grande, the 1975

259. why do you think people protect their pain? what does that look like - to protect one's own pain?

260. what is an acoustic version of a song that sounds better than the studio version?
-> like a rockstar & what u call that & cassie - chase atlantic

261. what is an experience that you wish to never experience again?

262. how do you feel about silence? is its presence comforting?

263. have you taken any drugs? if so and you feel comfortable sharing, what are they?

264. what is advice you would give to your 15yo self and your 40yo self? (a much younger and older version of yourself?)
-> younger self: you are worthy to love; you are worth getting to know and understand; you will one day believe that you are enough and choose healing with a life filled with authenticity that will get challenged; you'll be more unconventional; your way of thinking will not be like most that are around you - this is okay and expected
older self: I hope you are happy and live a life that you chose and not one that you compromised on for the sake of other's happiness and comfortability; I hope you live authentically and continued the process of living actualized as Maslow would saw; I hope you married your best friend that is your match in his own unique way; i hope your communication is better and that your relationships are healthy and boundary enforced

265. if you knew you were going to interview God for thirty minutes and could ask him only one question, what would it be?
-> who am I?

266. what would you do if knew you could not fail?

267. how are you, really?

268. how would you behave if you were the best at what you do in the world?

269. are you finding your dream job or are you creating it?

270. if there was a solution to your anxiety, what would it look like?

271. why are you worth knowing?
-> well, you're sitting in this seat listening to me

272. when was the last time you did something for the first time?

273. how do you treat people who can do nothing for you?

274. do you stack the plates and clean up your table when at a restaurant?
->analyze SES and their behavior to working class

275. what or who lights you up?

276. what would your perfect day look like?

277. what is an underappreciated fruit and vegetable?

278. what is something that guys/girls are insecure of that guys/girls do not really care about?

279. tell me about a time where you threw up in public?

280. tell me something illegal that your family did?

281. what is a word that would always make you laugh whenever you heard or said it when you were a kid?

282. what is the first cuss word you started using often in your vocabulary?

283. if you could be one animal, what would it be?

284. what insect were you the most fascinated by as a kid?
->ladybugs, dragonflies

285. if you could blow one thing, what would it be?
->paint, slaughterhouse, firework stand

286. what emotions would you associate to every color in the rainbow including pink, brown, black, and white? If that is too much, if you could choose one color, what emotion would you assign to it?

287. what is the saddest thing that a person has ever said to you about themselves or their life?

288. if you could be any pair of shoes, what would it be?
->professional rock climber, work boot

289. would you consider yourself to be an addict?
-> I think we are all on a continuum and are all wired to be addicted to dopamine and love we just go about it different ways.

290. if you could have any dog in the world, what would it be and why?

291. if you had to describe love and what it feels like to a young person, what would you say? OR
if a kid asked you what love feels like, how would you answer them?
-> able to feel no judgment and feel free to be who you are without the fear of rejection

292. how would you define healing?

293. how would you know that you are healing or healed?

294. where in your life have you compromised and lived for someone else?

295. what is a thought or idea that scares you?

296. why do you think people protect their pain?

297. how would you like to be cared for when you are experiencing an emotional crisis?

298. what is something that you were told when you were a kid that you have never forgotten because it provoked you so much?

299. who is a friend in your life that you know you should stop the friendship with but you struggle to?

300. what is a motto that you would tell your kids that you have lived by?
->be the man/woman that you would want your daughter/son to marry one day

301. when was the last time anyone ever told you how important you are?

302. Who have you spoken the most genuine I love you to?

303. What social situation are you the most anxious of?

304. What is something that people would never think or associate with you that you’ve thought or done?
-> I love to binge on romance novels, I played the violin and cello, I’ve never been kissed/had a bf, I have a song on all platforms, I’ve had a 4.0 most of my life, I tend to write ****** poems, I was in a drill team for five years, I wasn’t born in America, I love country music

305. What is something you’d like to say to someone who has already passed away?
-> Robertson: I hope you’re proud of me in the way that I am; thank you for supporting me in more ways than one

306. What is something you’d like to say to someone who hurt you badly?
-> i deserved better than your projected insecurities, but I was too naïve to understand any better

307. If you were forced to only listen to three songs on replay during the deed for the rest of your life, what would it be?

308. Like all of us, we are replete with contradictions -> we are walking contradictions. What are yours?
-> a desire for intimacy and a fear of touch/commitment; a desire to be known and a fear of vulnerability

309. Do you think you ever turned a teacher on?

310. What is the greatest lesson that the other person has taught you?

311. if people could not take pictures, do you think they would still drive to the tulip festivals?

312. why do you think we met?

313. which is the hardest for you to say
(1) I love you
(2) I was wrong; I'm sorry
(3) Worcestershire sauce
(4) I need help
(5) I appreciate you

314. what is one of your favorite lines in a song?
-> hoodie on low cuz I stay focused yeah, hard to stay low when everybody notice
-> heart on your sleeve like you've never been loved; I don't feed her fears I feed her habits; type to make you f*ck 'till you finish
->said you needed this heart then you got it turns out that it wasn't what you wanted

315. Are you struggling with your mental health right now?

316. Are you afraid to admit the things that go on in your head?

317. Have you ever met a person that made you so nervous that you avoided them at all costs due to the way that they look?

318. Who is the most selfish person you know?

319. Who is the most selfless person you know?

320. How many Costco hotdogs could you eat in 45 minutes for a hotdog eating competition?

321. What do you put on your Costco hotdog?

322. What’s your favorite cereal brand?

323. Stargazing or sunset?

324. What is an underrated aspect of life that is mundane to most?
-> breathing, eyesight, touch

325. If you could only keep two out of the five senses, which ones would you choose? What if you could only keep one?
-> taste, touch, smell, eyesight, hearing

326. Would you consider yourself to be more black and white or gray in terms of your thinking?

327. What was your favorite kind of candy cane: the peppermint, chocolate, or fruity ones?

328. What’s an American tradition that you do not follow?
-> I'm not a huge fan of chocolate chip cookies, PB cups, peppermint candy canes

329. what do you love most about your family?

330. what is something you would like to change about your family?

331. what is a fashion trend that you think is overrated?

332. what is an aspect about people that you have only encountered a few times in your life?
->humble/ confident authenticity, thoughtfulness

333. what do you think is the ugliest trait one can have?

334. which is worse to be super insecure or to have an inflated ego?

335. would you call yourself a good person? how do you define good?

336. what is something that fascinates you that you think about time to time?
-> reality doesn't really exist; it's our perception of the stimuli in our life that we come to understand as our own reality which is only one side of the narrative. Also, people have conversations that are quite incompatible in the sense that their definitions of words and their life experiences impact how each person enters the conversation. It is like there are two conversations that are being shared and understood in the same space.

337. what is a job that you think is much more difficult to do/live with?
-> acting: how do you separate and keep hold of your authentic self and the characters you play if you can play them really well. Does life become your stage?

338. what is a movie or song that is about to release that you look forward to seeing/listening?

339. how do you feel about your inevitable mortality?

340. what do you think about graves? how do you think society has shaped or challenged your opinion of them?

341. what is a reason for why you cried?

342. when was the last time you laughed so hard you couldn't breath?
-> talking to Bella's family and Devin jumping into the conversation with his friend that his lactose intolerant when we were talking about birth control

343. what is the best vacation that you have had? what made it so special?

345. what is the greatest lesson a friend has taught you?

346. what is the greatest lesson a parent or adult has taught you?

347. what is the weirdest thing you have done with someone in public?

348. have you ever looked at someone while they're doing something like driving, laughing or eating and just smile because they mean so much to you? If so, who?

349. what do you think is the most influential relationship that you have that impacts all other ones that you have?
-> yourself or with your parent(s)/caregiver(s)
-> "never forget that the relationship you have with yourself sets the tone for the relationship you have with everyone else. If you want to work on your relationships, start working on yourself"

350. what was a phase of your life that you would go back to if you have the chance. why?

351. what is a warning that you wish you got before knowing me?

352. what is a question that you have wanted to ask someone but got too nervous to announce?

353. talk about a time where you needed toilet paper but it wasn't there. what did you do? were you in public or at home?

354. what is an instrument that you think is harder than it actually is?
-> the drums!! that is multiple rhythms to keep up with...

355. describe a time where you thought you were going to cry but tried really hard to keep your composure?

356. when you would cry as a kid, what would your parent(s) say? other adults? if they shamed or shut you down immediately, do you still do this to yourself today?

357. what is the craziest drug you have ever taken?

358. what is something you would miss if your home burned down?

359. if you could move anywhere, where would it be? would it be in the city or country?

360. what is knowledge that you wished you knew when you were younger?

361. what is the most expensive item you have bought that you regretted?

362. if you could hug anyone in the world, dead or alive, who would it be?

363. what is the most messed up thing you have seen another person do to another?

364. what do you tend to think about during the time where you are laying in bed and trying to fall asleep? where does your mind tend to go to?

365. what is an event in the future that you are looking forward to?

366. Is a hotdog a sandwich?

367. If you were diagnosed with Alzheimer's and you could remember only one memory, what would it be?

368. What aspect/version of yourself are you the most ashamed of?

369. What aspect/version of yourself are you the most proud of?

370. Is there someone in your life that you hide aspects of yourself from? Do you believe that if they knew all of you unfiltered that they wouldn’t accept you? is this true love?

371. Do you know how to swim? If so, how and where did you learn to?

372. What is a song that makes you cry/emotional? W

373. What song reminds you of another other person?

374. What is the name of a song you will not listen to again because it is too painful?

375. Who has emotionally hurt you the most in your life?

376. When was the last time someone told you that they loved you? How did it make you feel?

377. What did you dream of last night? If you do not remember any dream, then what was your most recent dream?

378. If you had to either eat and **** out of your mouth or *** which one would it be?

379. What's something a stranger said to you that you remember to this day?
-> I think that your body is perfect

380. What is a lesson that the earth has taught you?

381. What is a lesson that your body has taught you?
Feel encouraged to add on in the comments.
Which takes us on a direct path to:
THE  INCIDENT.
Say you are a normal man—whatever that means—
But say it’s late June of 1993 and you’re laying on the couch,
Scratching your *****, trying to intuit your LDL level
Based on the two bowls of the Old Lady’s Cholesterol Chowder.
The Old Lady-- you can call her Peg or Mrs. Bundy—
Served it up in her special legacy china,
An assortment of recycled tin foil casserole dishes &
Vintage melmac handed down by your mother-in-law.
You are on the couch giving digestion your best shot,
Still scratching your agates when Peg comes
In from the kitchen with your second glass of
Two-buck chuck and a smoking fatty she’s just ignited,
Miraculously without burning the house down.
The TV is on—the TV is always on because
The TV has had no off button since 1984
You are tuned to the CNN evening news &
A report comes on that makes you sit up,
Snap to attention, straight up and take notice:
"WOMAN CUTS OFF HUSBAND'S *****!"
The media shrikes in Atlanta have your attention now,
Your complete attention;
Your eyes are riveted to the telescreen &
Your blood pressure spiking at 240 over 140.
During the previous night of June 23, 1993,
John Wayne Bobbitt arrives at the
Couple's apartment in Manassas, Virginia,
Highly intoxicated after a night of partying.
According to testimony given by Lorena Bobbitt
In a 1994 court hearing, he then rapes her.
Afterwards, Lorena Bobbitt gets out of bed,
Goes to the kitchen for a drink of water.
According to a journal article in the
National Women's Justice & Defense
League of Psychotic Castrating *******,
While in the kitchen she notices,
A carving knife on the counter & "memories of
Past domestic abuse races through her head."
Grabbing the knife, Lorena Bobbitt enters the bedroom
Where John is sleeping & proceeds to
Cut off nearly half his *****,
Half his Johnson,
In this instance aptly named.
So you have some schnook who’s named
After the iconic Hollywood superstar John Wayne . . .
Now understand something, John Wayne—
The ******* Duke of Earl--
Personifies everything alpha male:
Physique, animal magnetism & a pair of
Huge ***** swinging in his chaps as
He sashays across the screen.
In real life he’s a bullfight & cigar aficionado,
A big game hunter and sport fisherman, &
A hard drinking Hemingway hero
Who spends most of his time aboard
A customized WWII U.S. mine sweeper
******* to a pier behind his house in
Newport Harbor, California.
He’s the proverbial man’s man, &
There’s no one like him in America
Until maybe Eastwood or Willis comes along.
There’s a statue of him out in front of
The Orange County Airport that bears his name.
I have a photograph of him hanging in my garage
Next to a Mad-Dog 20-20 poster.
But I digress.
We return to the Bobbitt story because
It gets better, keeps getting crazier.
After assaulting her husband,
Lorena leaves the apartment with the severed *****,
Drives around aimlessly for a short while,
Then rolls down the car window &
Throws the ***** into a field.
Only then does the loony ***** realize
The severity of the incident.
She stops and calls 911.
After an exhaustive search by
Volunteers from the local Humane Society,
The ***** is located, packed in the ice-slurry of
A banana-flavored 7/11 Slurpee, &
Taken to the hospital where half-**** John Bobbitt
Gets a short-arm inspection and treated,
Mostly for shock and awe.
His ***** is later reattached by Drs. James T. Sehn &
David Berman during a nine-and-a-half-hour surgery
Filmed by Ken Burns and broadcast in its entirety by
WGBH Boston, a stunning illustration of
Your tax dollars hard at work
At the National Endowment for the Arts.
An abridged version later becomes the season premier of
"Girls Gone ******* ******, Manassas!"
Lorena goes on Oprah to explain herself.

Lorena Bobbitt ((née Gallo) was born in Ecuador.
Her maiden name, ironically,
Means **** in English.
Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Phoenix had this to say:
“Deport the *****. She may have an INS green card
But there’s no way she had a government permit to
Go around lopping ***** off in Virginia or any other state.
Who does she think she is, Janet Napolitano?”
Napolitano could not be reached for comment.
Shortly after the incident, episodes of "Bobbittmania,"
Or copycat crimes, were reported.
The name Lorena Bobbitt eventually became
Synonymous with ***** removal.
The terms "Bobbitt Punishment" and "Bobbitt Procedure" gained
Social cache with a radical break-away sect of N.O.W.
COPYCAT Catherine Kieu Becker, 48 (Garden Grove P.D.)  
Woman Accused of Cutting Off Husband's *****
Pleads Not Guilty/ VIDEO: Watch Jennifer Gould's Report
KTLA News   10:40 a.m. PST, February 3, 2012 /SANTA ANA, Calif.
"A 48-year-old woman accused of cutting off
Her husband's ***** and putting it
In the garbage disposal has pleaded
Not guilty to all the charges against her.
Catherine Kieu, of Garden Grove,
Was indicted earlier this month on
One felony count of torture &
One felony count of aggravated mayhem.
She also faces a sentencing enhancement for
Practicing surgical medicine without a license."
Sign up for KTLA 5 Breaking News Email Alerts
Comments (130) Add / View comments | Discussion FAQ
Happy627 at 10:35 PM January 18, 2012
"So my x-wife is a violent drunken *****?
Never once did I ever think of hurting her
But now I see I was wrong.
Vengeance's is the true answer & payback is hell.
So basically I should put an M-40
In her *** and light the fuse.
I should be acquitted from any wrong doing
Because she was a violent drunken *****.
Maybe all men should do this to their
Violent wives/girlfriends & teach them a lesson.
Cyanmanta at 1:10 AM January 11, 2012
In response to Doreen Meyer:
"So you're assuming that because he was the victim
He must have done something to deserve it
In some small way?
Typical of convenient feminism:
Assume all female victims are innocent &
Pure as driven snow,
While dismissing all male victims
With the idea that 'he had it coming.'
I wish I could pander shamelessly
To the media for preferential treatment,
But sadly, I am male (or as feminists would say)
The Evil Gender."
Westfield at 5:47 PM Jan.09, 2012
She should get her own show on the ***** channel.
(Bravo). KABC radio's John Phillips & his girlfriend
Nathan Baker would love to watch it."
Sluff it off, take a load off, baby.
Take a load off?
“Take a load off Annie,
Take a load for free;
Take a load off Annie, and
Bom bom bom bom
Bom be bom— & Dddddddddd,
You can put the load right on me.”
Send “The Weight” Ringtone to Your Cell

. . . Snipped, fixed, neutered, gelded,
Emasculated, eunuchized, or castrated?
(Castrating Forceps  (www.alibaba.com/
Showroom/castration-tool.html).
Bobbittized!
I am prey to the unyielding Sun
here in this open field
void of shade
holding precious pieces
untouched for 140 years
200 acres of Virginia farmland beneath my feet
where bullets flew
where strong men screamed
and the soil looked as if it had rained blood
death can come quickly or painfully slow

A soldier rips the Eagle breastplate from his chest
and throws it to the ground where I am standing
and here in the sweltering heat
of a calm June afternoon
I pull it from its resting place
no longer shining
140 years removed
from the failing heart
beneath it
re-post
A collection of my thoughts in 140 characters and less.
Will be updating more.
--

Play the piano
As you let those hands
slide from one key to another
Let the raging emotions
Echo in the room
Until that final note subsides

--

Smile
Even though you're drowning
I'll save you
Reach out your hand
I'll be your lifeline
I'll be there
Dont worry
I wont let you go
Promise

---

Maybe if you tried
To love him
The way she did
Maybe he wouldn't
Be looking for someone
Better than you

---

Look into his eyes
You can see the beauty
Of the unknown
The longing he has
For something
He can never have
You will see--
Yourself

---

It's 1am
I'm still thinking about
What could have been
What I could have held
and What i could have done
For you to stay
Forever

---

Do not give me
flowers and chocolates
They cant suppress my desire
to hold you tight
and tell you
"you're mine"
while we lay under the stars

---

It's a special day
For you and I
As you get ready
For the ringing bells
Of the church
And I,
Get ready for my
First day at work

---

When I saw your name
I no longer felt the pain
I couldn't remember the happiness
I won't go back to the past
And I was sure
I was over you

---

People are like puppets
We can constantly deny it
But there are strings
Attached to our souls
Manipulating us to do what must be done


---

If I were given a chance
To turn back time
I won't change my past
Instead, I'll visit myself
Drop a note with the lottery's
Winning numbers

---

We're not friends
We're more than that
You're just too arrogant
To acknowledge that fact
Because of that,
You lost me in the sea
Of sorrow


---

My vision started to blur
When you told me
You wanted to leave
I never really enjoyed
Smoking and drinking
But it's all I could
Think about

---

Maybe you're right
We've grown too different
To understand each other
We've drifted apart
From the neutral ground
We used to call home

---

If you saw me in a different light
Would you take the risk
Of falling in love with me
Even though it probably
won't end right
Would you?

---

You're going to slip
Through my fingers
Like you always do
But today's different
I'm going to let you go
Without hesitation or regret

---
III. TO APOLLO (546 lines)

TO DELIAN APOLLO --

(ll. 1-18) I will remember and not be unmindful of Apollo who
shoots afar.  As he goes through the house of Zeus, the gods
tremble before him and all spring up from their seats when he
draws near, as he bends his bright bow.  But Leto alone stays by
the side of Zeus who delights in thunder; and then she unstrings
his bow, and closes his quiver, and takes his archery from his
strong shoulders in her hands and hangs them on a golden peg
against a pillar of his father's house.  Then she leads him to a
seat and makes him sit: and the Father gives him nectar in a
golden cup welcoming his dear son, while the other gods make him
sit down there, and queenly Leto rejoices because she bare a
mighty son and an archer.  Rejoice, blessed Leto, for you bare
glorious children, the lord Apollo and Artemis who delights in
arrows; her in Ortygia, and him in rocky Delos, as you rested
against the great mass of the Cynthian hill hard by a palm-tree
by the streams of Inopus.

(ll. 19-29) How, then, shall I sing of you who in all ways are a
worthy theme of song?  For everywhere, O Phoebus, the whole range
of song is fallen to you, both over the mainland that rears
heifers and over the isles.  All mountain-peaks and high
headlands of lofty hills and rivers flowing out to the deep and
beaches sloping seawards and havens of the sea are your delight.
Shall I sing how at the first Leto bare you to be the joy of men,
as she rested against Mount Cynthus in that rocky isle, in sea-
girt Delos -- while on either hand a dark wave rolled on
landwards driven by shrill winds -- whence arising you rule over
all mortal men?

(ll. 30-50) Among those who are in Crete, and in the township of
Athens, and in the isle of Aegina and Euboea, famous for ships,
in Aegae and Eiresiae and Peparethus near the sea, in Thracian
Athos and Pelion's towering heights and Thracian Samos and the
shady hills of Ida, in Scyros and Phocaea and the high hill of
Autocane and fair-lying Imbros and smouldering Lemnos and rich
******, home of Macar, the son of ******, and Chios, brightest of
all the isles that lie in the sea, and craggy Mimas and the
heights of Corycus and gleaming Claros and the sheer hill of
Aesagea and watered Samos and the steep heights of Mycale, in
Miletus and Cos, the city of Meropian men, and steep Cnidos and
windy Carpathos, in Naxos and Paros and rocky Rhenaea -- so far
roamed Leto in travail with the god who shoots afar, to see if
any land would be willing to make a dwelling for her son.  But
they greatly trembled and feared, and none, not even the richest
of them, dared receive Phoebus, until queenly Leto set foot on
Delos and uttered winged words and asked her:

(ll. 51-61) 'Delos, if you would be willing to be the abode of my
son "Phoebus Apollo and make him a rich temple --; for no other
will touch you, as you will find: and I think you will never be
rich in oxen and sheep, nor bear vintage nor yet produce plants
abundantly.  But if you have the temple of far-shooting Apollo,
all men will bring you hecatombs and gather here, and incessant
savour of rich sacrifice will always arise, and you will feed
those who dwell in you from the hand of strangers; for truly your
own soil is not rich.'

(ll. 62-82) So spake Leto.  And Delos rejoiced and answered and
said:  'Leto, most glorious daughter of great Coeus, joyfully
would I receive your child the far-shooting lord; for it is all
too true that I am ill-spoken of among men, whereas thus I should
become very greatly honoured.  But this saying I fear, and I will
not hide it from you, Leto.  They say that Apollo will be one
that is very haughty and will greatly lord it among gods and men
all over the fruitful earth.  Therefore, I greatly fear in heart
and spirit that as soon as he sets the light of the sun, he will
scorn this island -- for truly I have but a hard, rocky soil --
and overturn me and ****** me down with his feet in the depths of
the sea; then will the great ocean wash deep above my head for
ever, and he will go to another land such as will please him,
there to make his temple and wooded groves.  So, many-footed
creatures of the sea will make their lairs in me and black seals
their dwellings undisturbed, because I lack people.  Yet if you
will but dare to sware a great oath, goddess, that here first he
will build a glorious temple to be an oracle for men, then let
him afterwards make temples and wooded groves amongst all men;
for surely he will be greatly renowned.

(ll. 83-88) So said Delos.  And Leto sware the great oath of the
gods: 'Now hear this, Earth and wide Heaven above, and dropping
water of Styx (this is the strongest and most awful oath for the
blessed gods), surely Phoebus shall have here his fragrant altar
and precinct, and you he shall honour above all.'

(ll. 89-101) Now when Leto had sworn and ended her oath, Delos
was very glad at the birth of the far-shooting lord.  But Leto
was racked nine days and nine nights with pangs beyond wont.  And
there were with her all the chiefest of the goddesses, Dione and
Rhea and Ichnaea and Themis and loud-moaning Amphitrite and the
other deathless goddesses save white-armed Hera, who sat in the
halls of cloud-gathering Zeus.  Only Eilithyia, goddess of sore
travail, had not heard of Leto's trouble, for she sat on the top
of Olympus beneath golden clouds by white-armed Hera's
contriving, who kept her close through envy, because Leto with
the lovely tresses was soon to bear a son faultless and strong.

(ll. 102-114) But the goddesses sent out Iris from the well-set
isle to bring Eilithyia, promising her a great necklace strung
with golden threads, nine cubits long.  And they bade Iris call
her aside from white-armed Hera, lest she might afterwards turn
her from coming with her words.  When swift Iris, fleet of foot
as the wind, had heard all this, she set to run; and quickly
finishing all the distance she came to the home of the gods,
sheer Olympus, and forthwith called Eilithyia out from the hall
to the door and spoke winged words to her, telling her all as the
goddesses who dwell on Olympus had bidden her.  So she moved the
heart of Eilithyia in her dear breast; and they went their way,
like shy wild-doves in their going.

(ll. 115-122) And as soon as Eilithyia the goddess of sore
travail set foot on Delos, the pains of birth seized Leto, and
she longed to bring forth; so she cast her arms about a palm tree
and kneeled on the soft meadow while the earth laughed for joy
beneath.  Then the child leaped forth to the light, and all the
goddesses washed you purely and cleanly with sweet water, and
swathed you in a white garment of fine texture, new-woven, and
fastened a golden band about you.

(ll. 123-130) Now Leto did not give Apollo, bearer of the golden
blade, her breast; but Themis duly poured nectar and ambrosia
with her divine hands: and Leto was glad because she had borne a
strong son and an archer.  But as soon as you had tasted that
divine heavenly food, O Phoebus, you could no longer then be held
by golden cords nor confined with bands, but all their ends were
undone.  Forthwith Phoebus Apollo spoke out among the deathless
goddesses:

(ll. 131-132) 'The lyre and the curved bow shall ever be dear to
me, and I will declare to men the unfailing will of Zeus.'

(ll. 133-139) So said Phoebus, the long-haired god who shoots
afar and began to walk upon the wide-pathed earth; and all
goddesses were amazed at him.  Then with gold all Delos was
laden, beholding the child of Zeus and Leto, for joy because the
god chose her above the islands and shore to make his dwelling in
her: and she loved him yet more in her heart, and blossomed as
does a mountain-top with woodland flowers.

(ll. 140-164) And you, O lord Apollo, god of the silver bow,
shooting afar, now walked on craggy Cynthus, and now kept
wandering about the island and the people in them.  Many are your
temples and wooded groves, and all peaks and towering bluffs of
lofty mountains and rivers flowing to the sea are dear to you,
Phoebus, yet in Delos do you most delight your heart; for there
the long robed Ionians gather in your honour with their children
and shy wives: mindful, they delight you with boxing and dancing
and song, so often as they hold their gathering.  A man would say
that they were deathless and unageing if he should then come upon
the Ionians so met together.  For he would see the graces of them
all, and would be pleased in heart gazing at the men and well-
girded women with their swift ships and great wealth.  And there
is this great wonder besides -- and its renown shall never perish
-- the girls of Delos, hand-maidens of the Far-shooter; for when
they have praised Apollo first, and also Leto and Artemis who
delights in arrows, they sing a strain-telling of men and women
of past days, and charm the tribes of men.  Also they can imitate
the tongues of all men and their clattering speech: each would
say that he himself were singing, so close to truth is their
sweet song.

(ll. 165-178) And now may Apollo be favourable and Artemis; and
farewell all you maidens.  Remember me in after time whenever any
one of men on earth, a stranger who has seen and suffered much,
comes here and asks of you: 'Whom think ye, girls, is the
sweetest singer that comes here, and in whom do you most
delight?'  Then answer, each and all, with one voice: 'He is a
blind man, and dwells in rocky Chios: his lays are evermore
supreme.'  As for me, I will carry your renown as far as I roam
over the earth to the well-placed this thing is true.  And I will
never cease to praise far-shooting Apollo, god of the silver bow,
whom rich-haired Leto bare.

TO PYTHIAN APOLLO --

(ll. 179-181) O Lord, Lycia is yours and lovely Maeonia and
Miletus, charming city by the sea, but over wave-girt Delos you
greatly reign your own self.

(ll. 182-206) Leto's all-glorious son goes to rocky Pytho,
playing upon his hollow lyre, clad in divine, perfumed garments;
and at the touch of the golden key his lyre sings sweet.  Thence,
swift as thought, he speeds from earth to Olympus, to the house
of Zeus, to join the gathering of the other gods: then
straightway the undying gods think only of the lyre and song, and
all the Muses together, voice sweetly answering voice, hymn the
unending gifts the gods enjoy and the sufferings of men, all that
they endure at the hands of the deathless gods, and how they live
witless and helpless and cannot find healing for death or defence
against old age.  Meanwhile the rich-tressed Graces and cheerful
Seasons dance with Harmonia and **** and Aphrodite, daughter of
Zeus, holding each other by the wrist.  And among them sings one,
not mean nor puny, but tall to look upon and enviable in mien,
Artemis who delights in arrows, sister of Apollo.  Among them
sport Ares and the keen-eyed Slayer of Argus, while Apollo plays
his lyre stepping high and featly and a radiance shines around
him, the gleaming of his feet and close-woven vest.  And they,
even gold-tressed Leto and wise Zeus, rejoice in their great
hearts as they watch their dear son playing among the undying
gods.

(ll. 207-228) How then shall I sing of you -- though in all ways
you are a worthy theme for song?  Shall I sing of you as wooer
and in the fields of love, how you went wooing the daughter of
Azan along with god-like Ischys the son of well-horsed Elatius,
or with Phorbas sprung from Triops, or with Ereutheus, or with
Leucippus and the wife of Leucippus....
((LACUNA))
....you on foot, he with his chariot, yet he fell not short of
Triops.  Or shall I sing how at the first you went about the
earth seeking a place of oracle for men, O far-shooting Apollo?
To Pieria first you went down from Olympus and passed by sandy
Lectus and Enienae and through the land of the Perrhaebi.  Soon
you came to Iolcus and set foot on Cenaeum in Euboea, famed for
ships: you stood in the Lelantine plain, but it pleased not your
heart to make a temple there and wooded groves.  From there you
crossed the Euripus, far-shooting Apollo, and went up the green,
holy hills, going on to Mycalessus and grassy-bedded Teumessus,
and so came to the wood-clad abode of Thebe; for as yet no man
lived in holy Thebe, nor were there tracks or ways about Thebe's
wheat-bearing plain as yet.

(ll. 229-238) And further still you went, O far-shooting Apollo,
and came to Onchestus, Poseidon's bright grove: there the new-
broken cold distressed with drawing the trim chariot gets spirit
again, and the skilled driver springs from his car and goes on
his way.  Then the horses for a while rattle the empty car, being
rid of guidance; and if they break the chariot in the woody
grove, men look after the horses, but tilt the chariot and leave
it there; for this was the rite from the very first.  And the
drivers pray to the lord of the shrine; but the chariot falls to
the lot of the god.

(ll. 239-243) Further yet you went, O far-shooting Apollo, and
reached next Cephissus' sweet stream which pours forth its sweet-
flowing water from Lilaea, and crossing over it, O worker from
afar, you passed many-towered Ocalea and reached grassy
Haliartus.

(ll. 244-253) Then you went towards Telphusa: and there the
pleasant place seemed fit for making a temple and wooded grove.
You came very near and spoke to her: 'Telphusa, here I am minded
to make a glorious temple, an oracle for men, and hither they
will always bring perfect hecatombs, both those who live in rich
Peloponnesus and those of Europe and all the wave-washed isles,
coming to seek oracles.  And I will deliver to them all counsel
that cannot fail, giving answer in my rich temple.'

(ll. 254-276) So said Phoebus Apollo, and laid out all the
foundations throughout, wide and very long.  But when Telphusa
saw this, she was angry in heart and spoke, saying: 'Lord
Phoebus, worker from afar, I will speak a word of counsel to your
heart, since you are minded to make here a glorious temple to be
an oracle for men who will always bring hither perfect hecatombs
for you; yet I will speak out, and do you lay up my words in your
heart.  The trampling of swift horses and the sound of mules
watering at my sacred springs will always irk you, and men will
like better to gaze at the well-made chariots and stamping,
swift-footed horses than at your great temple and the many
treasures that are within.  But if you will be moved by me -- for
you, lord, are stronger and mightier than I, and your strength is
very great -- build at Crisa below the glades of Parnassus: there
no bright chariot will clash, and there will be no noise of
swift-footed horses near your well-built altar.  But so the
glorious tribes of men will bring gifts to you as Iepaeon ('Hail-
Healer'), and you will receive with delight rich sacrifices from
the people dwelling round about.'  So said Telphusa, that she
alone, and not the Far-Shooter, should have renown there; and she
persuaded the Far-Shooter.

(ll. 277-286) Further yet you went, far-shooting Apollo, until
you came to the town of the presumptuous Phlegyae who dwell on
this earth in a lovely glade near the Cephisian lake, caring not
for Zeus.  And thence you went speeding swiftly to the mountain
ridge, and came to Crisa beneath snowy Parnassus, a foothill
turned towards the west: a cliff hangs over if from above, and a
hollow, rugged glade runs under.  There the lord Phoebus Apollo
resolved to make his lovely temple, and thus he said:

(ll. 287-293) 'In this place I am minded to build a glorious
temple to be an oracle for men, and here they will always bring
perfect hecatombs, both they who dwell in rich Peloponnesus and
the men of Europe and from all the wave-washed isles, coming to
question me.  And I will deliver to them all counsel that cannot
fail, answering them in my rich temple.'

(ll. 294-299) When h
Michael R Burch Feb 2023
SAPPHO'S POEMS FOR ATTIS AND ANACTORIA

Most of Sappho's poems are fragments but the first poem below, variously titled "The Anactoria Poem, " "Helen's Eidolon" and "Some People Say" is largely intact. Was Sappho the author of the world's first 'make love, not war' poem?

Some People Say
Sappho, fragment 16 (Lobel-Page 16 / Voigt 16)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Warriors on rearing chargers,
columns of infantry,
fleets of warships:
some call these the dark earth's redeeming visions.
But I say—
the one I desire.

Nor am I unique,
since she who so vastly surpassed all mortals in beauty
—Helen—
seduced by Aphrodite, led astray by desire,
departed for distant Troy,
abandoned her celebrated husband,
turned her back on her parents and child!

Her story reminds me of Anactoria,
who has also departed,
and whose lively dancing and lovely face
I would rather see than all the horsemen and war-chariots of the Lydians,
or their columns of infantry parading in flashing armor.



Ode to Anactoria or Ode to Attis
Sappho, fragment 94 (Lobel-Page 94 / Voigt 94)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

So my Attis has not returned
and thus, let the truth be said,
I wish I were dead...

'Honestly, I just want to die! '
Attis sighed,
shedding heartfelt tears,
inconsolably sad
when she
left me.

'How deeply we have loved,
we two,
Sappho!
Oh,
I really don't want to go! '

I answered her tenderly,
'Go as you must
and be happy,
trust-
ing your remembrance of me,
for you know how much
I loved you.

And if you begin to forget,
please try to recall
all
the heavenly emotions we felt
as with many wreathes of violets,
roses and crocuses
you sat beside me
adorning your delicate neck.

Once garlands had been fashioned of many woven flowers,
with much expensive myrrh
we anointed our bodies like royalty
on soft couches,
then my tender caresses
fulfilled your desire...'

Unfortunately, fragment 94 has several gaps and I have tried to imagine what Sappho might have been saying.



The following are Sappho's poems for Attis or Atthis...

Sappho, fragment 49 (Lobel-Page 49 / Voigt 49)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
I loved you, Attis, long ago...
even when you seemed a graceless child.

2.
I fell in love with you, Attis, long ago...
You seemed immature to me then, and not all that graceful.

(Source: Hephaestion, Plutarch and others.)



Sappho, fragment 131 (Lobel-Page 131 / Voigt 130)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You reject me, Attis,
as if you find me distasteful,
flitting off to Andrómeda...


Sappho, fragment 96 (Lobel-Page 96.1-22 / Voigt 96 / Diehl 98)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Attis, our beloved, dwells in distant Sardis, but her thoughts often return here, to our island, and how we honored her like a goddess, and how she loved to hear us singing her praises. Now she surpasses all Sardinian women, as, after sunset the rosy-fingered moon outshines the surrounding stars, illuminating salt seas and meadows alike. Thus the dew sparkles, the rose revives, and the tender chervil and sweetclover blossom. Now oftentimes when our beloved goes wandering abroad, she is reminded of our gentle Attis; then her heart assaults her tender breast with its painful pangs and she cries aloud for us to console her. Truly, we understand all too well the distress she feels, because Night, the many-eared, calls to us from across the dividing sea. But to go there is not easy, nor to rival a goddess in her loveliness.



Ode to Anactoria
Sappho, fragment 31 (Lobel-Page 31 / Voigt 31)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

How can I compete with that ****** man
who fancies himself one of the gods,
impressing you with his 'eloquence' …
when just the thought of sitting in your radiant presence,
of hearing your lovely voice and lively laughter,
sets my heart hammering at my breast?
Hell, when I catch just a quick glimpse of you,
I'm left speechless, tongue-tied,
and immediately a blush like a delicate flame reddens my skin.
Then my vision dims with tears,
my ears ring,
I sweat profusely,
and every muscle in my body trembles.
When the blood finally settles,
I grow paler than summer grass,
till in my exhausted madness,
I'm as limp as the dead.
And yet I must risk all, being bereft without you...



Ode to Anactoria
Sappho, fragment 31 (Lobel-Page 31 / Voigt 31)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

To me that boy seems
blessed by the gods
because he sits beside you,
basking in your brilliant presence.
My heart races at the sound of your voice!
Your laughter? ―bright water, dislodging pebbles
in a chaotic vortex. I can't catch my breath!
My heart bucks in my ribs. I can't breathe. I can't speak.
My ******* glow with intense heat;
desire's blush-inducing fires redden my flesh.
My ears seem hollow; they ring emptily.
My tongue is broken and cleaves to its roof.
I sweat profusely. I shiver.
Suddenly, I grow pale
and feel only a second short of dying.
And yet I must endure, somehow,
despite my poverty.



The following poems by Sappho may have been addressed to Attis or Anactoria, or written with them in mind…

Sappho, fragment 22 (Lobel-Page 22 / Diehl 33,36)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

That enticing girl's clinging dresses
leave me trembling, overcome by happiness,
as once, when I saw the Goddess in my prayers
eclipsing Cyprus.



Sappho, fragment 34 (Lobel-Page 34 / Voigt 34)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Awed by the Moon's splendor,
the stars covered their undistinguished faces.
Even so, we.



Sappho, fragment 39
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

We're merely mortal women,
it's true;
the Goddesses have no rivals
but You.



Sappho, fragment 5
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

We're eclipsed here by your presence—
you outshine all the ladies of Lydia
as the bright-haloed moon outsplendors the stars.

I suspect the fragment above is about Anactoria, since Sappho associates Anactoria with Lydia in fragment 16.



Sappho, fragment 2 (Lobel-Page 2.1A)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Leaving your heavenly summit,
I submit
to the mountain,
then plummet.

Sappho associates her lovers with higher elevations: the moon, stars, mountain peaks.



Sappho, fragment 130
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

May the gods prolong the night
—yes, let it last forever! —
as long as you sleep in my sight.



Sappho, fragment 102 (Lobel-Page 102 / Voigt 102)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Mother, how can I weave,
so overwhelmed by love?



Sappho, fragment 147 (Lobel-Page 147 / *** 30)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Someone, somewhere
will remember us,
I swear!

'From Dio Chrysostom, who, writing about A.D.100, remarks that this is said 'with perfect beauty.''―Edwin Marion ***



Sappho, fragment 10
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I lust!
I crave!
**** me!



Sappho, fragment 11 (*** 109)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You inflame me!



Sappho, fragment 36 (Lobel-Page 36 / *** 24 & 25)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
I yearn for―I burn for―the one I miss!

2.
While you learn,
I burn.

3.
While you discern your will,
I burn still.

According to Edwin Marion ***, this fragment is from the Etymologicum Magnum.



Sappho, fragment 155
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A short revealing frock?
It's just my luck
your lips were made to mock!

Pollux wrote: 'Sappho used the word beudos for a woman's dress, a kimbericon, a kind of short transparent frock.'



Sappho, fragment 156
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

She keeps her scents
in a dressing-case.
And her sense?
In some undiscoverable place.

Phrynichus wrote: 'Sappho calls a woman's dressing-case, where she keeps her scents and such things, grute.'



Sappho, fragment 47 (Lobel-Page 47 / Voigt 47)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Eros harrows my heart:
wild winds whipping desolate mountains,
uprooting oaks.

The poem above is my favorite Sappho epigram. The metaphor of Eros (****** desire)  harrowing mountain slopes, leveling oaks and leaving them desolate, is really something―truly powerful and evocative. According to Edwin Marion ***, this Sapphic epigram was 'Quoted by Maximus Tyrius about 150 B.C. He speaks of Socrates exciting Phaedus to madness, when he speaks of love.'



Sappho, fragment 130 (Lobel-Page 130 / Voigt 130)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Eros, the limb-shatterer,
rattles me,
an irresistible
constrictor.



Sappho, unnumbered fragment
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

What cannot be swept
aside
must be wept.



Sappho, fragment 138 (Lobel-Page 138)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
Darling, let me see your face;
unleash your eyes' grace.

2.
Turn to me, favor me
with your eyes' indulgence.

3.
Look me in the face,
smile,
reveal your eyes' grace...

4.
Turn to me, favor me
with your eyes' acceptance.

5.
Darling, let me see your smiling face;
favor me again with your eyes' grace.



Sappho, fragment 38 (Incertum 25, *** 36)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I flutter
after you
like a chick after its mother...

From the 'Etymologicum Magnum' according to Edwin Marion ***.



In the following poem Sappho asks Aphrodite to "persuade" someone to fall in love with her. The poem strikes me as a sort of love charm or enchantment…

Hymn to Aphrodite (Lobel-Page 1)
by Sappho
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Immortal Aphrodite, throned in splendor!
Wile-weaving daughter of Zeus, enchantress and beguiler!
I implore you, dread mistress, discipline me no longer
with such vigor!

But come to me once again in kindness,
heeding my prayers, as you did so graciously before;
O, come Divine One, descend once more
from heaven's golden dominions!

Then with your chariot yoked to love's
white consecrated doves,
their multitudinous pinions aflutter,
you came gliding from heaven's shining heights,
to this dark gutter.

Swiftly they came and vanished, leaving you,
O my Goddess, smiling, your face eternally beautiful,
asking me what unfathomable longing compelled me
to cry out.

Asking me what I sought in my bewildered desire.
Asking, 'Who has harmed you, why are you so alarmed,
my poor Sappho? Whom should Persuasion
summon here? '

'Although today she flees love, soon she will pursue you;
spurning love's gifts, soon she shall give them;
tomorrow she will woo you,
however unwillingly! '

Come to me now, O most Holy Aphrodite!
Free me now from my heavy heartache and anguish!
Graciously grant me all I request!
Be once again my ally and protector!

'Hymn to Aphrodite' is the only poem by Sappho of ****** to survive in its entirety. The poem survived intact because it was quoted in full by Dionysus, a Roman orator, in his 'On Literary Composition, ' published around 30 B.C. A number of Sappho's poems mention or are addressed to Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love. It is believed that Sappho may have belonged to a cult that worshiped Aphrodite with songs and poetry. If so, 'Hymn to Aphrodite' may have been composed for performance within the cult. However, we have few verifiable details about the 'real' Sappho, and much conjecture based on fragments of her poetry and what other people said about her, in many cases centuries after her death. We do know, however, that she was held in very high regard. For instance, when Sappho visited Syracuse the residents were so honored they erected a statue to commemorate the occasion! During Sappho's lifetime, coins of ****** were minted with her image. Furthermore, Sappho was called 'the Tenth Muse' and the other nine were goddesses. Here is another translation of the same poem...



Hymn to Aphrodite
by Sappho
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Rainbow-appareled, immortal-throned Aphrodite,
daughter of Zeus, wile-weaver, I beseech you: Hail!
Spare me your reproaches and chastisements.
Do not punish, dire Lady, my penitent soul!
But come now, descend, favor me with your presence.
Please hear my voice now beseeching, however unclear or afar,
your own dear voice, which is Olympus's essence —
golden, wherever you are...
Begging you to harness your sun-chariot's chargers —
those swift doves now winging you above the black earth,
till their white pinions whirring bring you down to me from heaven
through earth's middle air...
Suddenly they arrived, and you, O my Blessed One,
smiling with your immortal countenance,
asked what hurt me, and for what reason
I cried out...
And what did I want to happen most
in my crazed heart? 'Whom then shall Persuasion
bring to you, my dearest? Who,
Sappho, hurts you? "
"For if she flees, soon will she follow;
and if she does not accept gifts, soon she will give them;
and if she does not love, soon she will love
despite herself! '
Come to me now, relieve my harsh worries,
free me heart from its anguish,
and once again be
my battle-ally!



Sappho, fragment 113
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

No droning bee,
nor even the bearer of honey
for me!


Sappho, fragment 113
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Neither the honey
nor the bee
for me!



Sappho, fragment 52
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The moon has long since set;
The Pleiades are gone;
Now half the night is spent,
Yet here I lie ... alone.



Sappho, fragment 2 (Lobel-Page 2 / Voigt 2)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Come, Cypris, from Crete
to meet me at this holy temple
where a lovely grove of apple awaits our presence
bowering altars
  fuming with frankincense.

Here brisk waters babble beneath apple branches,
the grounds are overshadowed by roses,
and through the flickering leaves
  enchantments shimmer.

Here the horses will nibble flowers
as we gorge on apples
and the breezes blow
  honey-sweet with nectar ...

Here, Cypris, we will gather up garlands,
pour the nectar gracefully into golden cups
and with gladness
  commence our festivities.


Sappho, fragment 58 (Lobel-Page 58)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Virgins, be zealous for the violet-scented Muses' lovely gifts
and those of the melodious lyre ...
but my once-supple skin sags now;
my arthritic bones creak;
my ravenblack hair's turned white;
my lighthearted heart's grown heavy;
my knees buckle;
my feet, once fleet as fawns, fail the dance.
I often bemoan my fate ... but what's the use?
Not to grow old is, of course, not an option.

I am reminded of Tithonus, adored by Dawn with her arms full of roses,
who, overwhelmed by love, carried him off beyond death's dark dominion.
Handsome for a day, but soon withered with age,
he became an object of pity to his ageless wife.



Sappho, fragment 132 (Lobel-Page 132)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
I have a delightful daughter
fairer than the fairest flowers, Cleis,
whom I cherish more than all Lydia and lovely ******.

2.
I have a lovely daughter
with a face like the fairest flowers,
my beloved Cleis …

It bears noting that Sappho mentions her daughter and brothers, but not her husband. We do not know if this means she was unmarried, because so many of her verses have been lost.



Sappho, fragment 131 (Lobel-Page 131)
loose translations/interpretations by Michael R. Burch

1.
You reject me, Attis,
as if you find me distasteful,
flitting off to Andromeda ...

2.
Attis, you forsake me
and flit off to Andromeda ...



Sappho, fragment 140 (Lobel-Page 140)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

He is dying, Cytherea, the delicate Adonis.
What shall we lovers do?
Rip off your clothes, bare your ******* and abuse them!



Sappho, fragment 36
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Vain woman, foolish thing!
Do you base your worth on a ring?



Sappho, fragment 130
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

May the gods prolong the night
—yes, let it last forever!—
as long as you sleep in my sight.



... a sweet-voiced maiden ...
—Sappho, fragment 153, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I have the most childlike heart ...
—Sappho, fragment 120, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

There was no dance,
no sacred dalliance,
from which we were absent.
—Sappho, fragment 19, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I love the sensual
as I love the sun’s ecstatic brilliance.
—Sappho, fragment 9, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I love the sensual
as I love the sun’s splendor.
—Sappho, fragment 9, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You anointed yourself
with most exquisite perfume.
—Sappho, fragment 19, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Awed by the moon’s splendor,
stars covered their undistinguished faces.
Even so, we.
—Sappho, fragment 34, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Sappho, fragment 138, loose translations/interpretations by Michael R. Burch

1.
Darling, let me see your face;
unleash your eyes' grace.

2.
Turn to me, favor me
with your eyes' indulgence.

3.
Look me in the face,
           smile,
reveal your eyes' grace ...

4.
Turn to me,
favor me
with your eyes’ indulgence

Those I most charm
do me the most harm.
—Sappho, fragment 12, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Those I charm the most
do me the most harm.
—Sappho, fragment 12, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Midnight.
The hours drone on
as I moan here, alone.
—Sappho, fragment 52, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Once again I dive into this fathomless ocean,
intoxicated by lust.
—Sappho, after Anacreon, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Did this epigram perhaps inspire the legend that Sappho leapt into the sea to her doom, over her despair for her love for the ferryman Phaon? See the following poem ...

The Legend of Sappho and Phaon, after Menander
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Some say Sappho was an ardent maiden
goaded by wild emotion
to fling herself from the white-frothed rocks of Leukas
into this raging ocean
for love of Phaon ...

but others reject that premise
and say it was Aphrodite, for love of Adonis.

In Menander's play The Leukadia he refers to a legend that Sappho flung herself from the White Rock of Leukas in pursuit of Phaon. We owe the preservation of those verses to Strabo, who cited them. Phaon appears in works by Ovid, Lucian and Aelian. He is also mentioned by Plautus in Miles Gloriosus as being one of only two men in the whole world, who "ever had the luck to be so passionately loved by a woman."

Sappho, fragment 24, loose translations/interpretations by Michael R. Burch

1a.
Dear, don't you remember how, in days long gone,
we did such things, being young?

1b.
Dear, don't you remember, in days long gone,
how we did such things, being young?

2.
Don't you remember, in days bygone,
how we did such things, being young?

3.
Remember? In our youth
we too did such reckless things.

Sappho, fragment 154, loose translations/interpretations by Michael R. Burch

1.
The moon rose and we women
thronged it like an altar.

2.
Maidens throng
at the altar of Love
all night long.


Even as their hearts froze,
their feathers molted.
—Sappho, fragment 42, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Your voice beguiles me.
Your laughter lifts my heart’s wings.
If I listen to you, even for a moment, I am left speechless.
—Sappho, fragment 31, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Sappho, fragment 57
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1a.
That country ***** bewitches your heart?
Hell, her most beguiling art's
hiking her dress
to ****** you with her ankles' nakedness!

1b.
That country ***** bewitches your heart?
Hell, her most beguiling art
is hiking her dress
to reveal her ankles' nakedness!

2.
That hayseed ****
bewitches your heart?
Hell, her most beguiling art's
hiking her dress
to ****** you with her ankles' nakedness!

3.
That rustic girl bewitches your heart?
Hell, her most beguiling art's
hiking the hem of her dress
to ****** you with her ankles' nakedness!

Keywords/Tags: Sappho, ******, Greek, translation, epigram, epigrams, love, ***, desire, passion, lust
Edna Sweetlove Jan 2015
O how I recall with joy a visit to Jackson, proud capital of Mississippi,
The land of the fearless fatties, the glorious land of the uber-obese,
A paradise enjoying amazingly high blood pressure and diabetes rates,
Thanks to the greed and gluttony of its 'proud-to-be-portly' inhabitants.

How delightful to stroll along its leafy boulevards, admiring the advertising
For junk food shops: "Super-Size Your Deep Crust Giant Pizza for only $1!"
"Real Men love our Emperor Size Cheeseburgers, King Size is for Kids!"
And "Come Try Our All Day Giant Breakfast with Triple French Fries!"

How enchanting to see furniture stores offering discounted extra big sofas,
Builders and carpenters with their cut-price floor-strengthening deals,
Tailors' shops with their displays of buffet pants and elasticated jeans,
Realtors promoting houses with double porches and wide internal doors.

And, O the trailer parks, those truly splendid residential areas,
With their giant size immoveable vehicles with spacious entry portals
To allow the immaculately dressed residents to carry in an armful
Of multi-packs of chocolate iced crème flavour filling Krispy Kremes.

But most wondrous of all, the myriad rival Pentacostal Chapels
With their guaranteed reinforced concrete padded sofa-pews
And their portrayals of plump Jesuses to make the fatties feel at home.
And all those "funeral parlors" with their gaping super-wide caskets.

How I loved the blinking stares of the sleep-deprived bible students
As they staggered out of an architectural wonder of a chapel,
Bleary-eyed after an all-night bible study session, and all eager
For a healthy breakfast of a dozen flash-fried sugar encrusted "donuts".

I was there in this glorious world centre of ever-escalating obesity
With my latest gorgeous lady love (at only 140 pounds and five foot two,
possibly the slimmest woman in the entire Jackson Metropolitan Area)
And we decided to try some good ol' Mississippi fine dining as a treat.

Holey Moley! What a feasts on offer: pan-fried catfish, deep-fried catfish,
Steaks the size of an encyclopaedia and all accompanied by unlimited fries!
Sweet potato and pecan pie with butter, sugar, eggs and extra cream,
And Mississippi Mud Pie with its chocolate crust and sticky chocolate filling!

(The chef de cuisine in our upscale diner told us that Southern cooks
had created this wondrous dessert because its sophicated ingredients
were available cheaply and the recipe required only minimal culinary skill,
and what's more it came with a treble serving of supermarket ice cream!)

We declined the bottomless cup of watery coffee with compulsory sugar
And enquired if we might have a bottle of his finest wine. Quel faux-pas!
The dear fatso was mortified and told us his was a Christian establishment
And strong drink was frowned upon. Did we think he was a degenerate?

That night we lay bloated like beached whales in our tasteful motel room
(its bed reinforced with ferro-concrete to deal with the horrid possibility
that any gargantuan visitors might wish to copulate vigorously);
Oh how we burped and farted, longing for a dose of bicarbonate of soda.

All good things come to an end so, after a nessy session on the toilet
(we filled it thrice), we bade farewell to the desk clerk and sloped off.
"Be sure y'all come back real soon," he declared, patting his fat gut,
"Cuz you both sure do look two real skinny Limeys, ya hear me?."

As we drove out of this elegant city that steamy Southern summer morn
In our rented 4X4 super-strong chassis Land Rover, how we smiled
At the scene outside Walmart where the special offer of the day
Was five pounds of free candies with every single assault rifle sold.

But alas! And alack! Tragedy was not so very far away that day:
Some corpulent teenagers toppled off the sidewalk under my auto's wheels
In their indecent haste to take advantage of the latest McDonald's bargain:
A quart of complimentary Dr Pepper's with a whole oven-fried McTurkey.

Oy! What a horrid mess my fender made of their pudgy, mottled flesh
And how wise we were to speed off before the cops arrived
At least, we avoided being beaten us to a pulp for being leftist libtards
Come to laugh at the dear redneck ways south of the Mason-Dixon Line.
Michael R Burch Aug 2023
These are my modern English translations of ancient Greek poems by the immortal Sappho of ******…

With my two small arms, how can I
think to encircle the sky?
—Sappho, fragment 35, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Mother, how can I weave,
so overwhelmed by love?
—Sappho, fragment 90, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

What cannot be swept ——— aside
must be wept.
—Sappho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

What cannot be said
must be wept.
—Sappho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The moon has long since set;
the Pleiades are gone;
now half the night is spent,
yet here I lie—alone.
—Sappho, fragment 52, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Midnight.
The hours drone on
as I moan here, alone.
—Sappho, fragment 52, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You are,
of all the unapproachable stars,
the fairest.
—Sappho, fragment 155, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Someone, somewhere
will remember us,
I swear!
—Sappho, fragment 147, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Gold does not rust,
yet my son becomes dust?
—Sappho, fragment 137, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

No droning bee,
nor even the bearer of honey
for me!
—Sappho, fragment 113, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I have a delightful daughter
fairer than the fairest flowers, Cleis,
whom I cherish more than all Lydia and lovely ******.
—Sappho, fragment 132, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I have a lovely daughter
with a face like the fairest flowers,
my beloved Cleis ...
—Sappho, fragment 132, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Attis, you forsake me
and flit off to Andromeda ...
—Sappho, fragment 131, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

He is dying, Cytherea, the delicate Adonis.
What shall we lovers do?
Rip off your clothes, bare your ******* and abuse them!
—Sappho, fragment 140, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Awed by the moon’s splendor,
stars covered their undistinguished faces.
Even so, we.
—Sappho, fragment 34, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Those I most charm
do me the most harm.
—Sappho, fragment 12, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Just now I was called,
enthralled,
by golden-sandalled
dawn...
—Sappho, fragment 15, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Once again I dive into this fathomless ocean,
intoxicated by lust.
—Sappho, after Anacreon, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Did this epigram perhaps inspire the legend that Sappho leapt into the sea to her doom, over her despair for her love for the ferryman Phaon?

Sappho, fragment 138, loose translations/interpretations by Michael R. Burch

1.
Darling, let me see your face;
unleash your eyes' grace.

2.
Turn to me, favor me
with your eyes' indulgence.

3.
Look me in the face,
——— smile ———
reveal your eyes' grace!

4.
Turn to me, favor me
with your eyes’ indulgence.

Preposterous Eros
by Michael R. Burch

“Preposterous Eros” – Patricia Falanga

Preposterous Eros shot me in
the buttocks, with a Devilish grin,
spent all my money in a rush
then left my heart effete pink mush.

Keywords/Tags: Sappho, translations, ******, lesbian, love, Eros, ******, Greek, Greece
softcomponent Oct 2013
Chekhov and Murakami came to me in short spurts of memory; as if the life of a keyboard was a retro invention sinking the ancient sea bona fidelis. Temper Fidelis and sorry larks wish upon the galoshes you wore to repeated proms instigated in large moral distances between burning barns (it's a dangerous hobby). Starved for trapped frogs with claws and violence was a question answered in blood so two wrongs made a state of nothingness free of wrong or right (you nihilistic *****!) she suggested a better drink to pick at Starbucks: 'a flaming frappucino at 140 degrees.' (what are you, some angry Russian aristocrat contemptuous of an English wife T-minus a decade ? )close-bracket)

God is sick of two things: my continued and addicted references to Judaeo-Christianity and the dragged sympathy of humanity for his lost son ("it's been 2013 years for Chrissake")

you melt on me like a strange evening spent with a stick of butter

*self improvement 46% complete
Be wise as thou art cruel; do not press
My tongue-tied patience with too much disdain,
Lest sorrow lend me words and words express
The manner of my pity-wanting pain.
If I might teach thee wit, better it were,
Though not to love, yet, love, to tell me so,
As testy sick men, when their deaths be near,
No news but health from their physicians know.
For if I should despair, I should grow mad,
And in my madness might speak ill of thee,
Now this ill-wresting world is grown so bad,
Mad slanderers by mad ears believèd be.
    That I may not be so, nor thou belied,
    Bear thine eyes straight, though thy proud heart go wide.
tread Jun 2013
Chekhov and Murakami came to me in short spurts of memory; as if the life of a keyboard was a retro invention sinking the ancient sea bona fidelis. Temper Fidelis and sorry larks wish upon the galoshes you wore to repeated proms instigated in large moral distances between burning barns (it's a dangerous hobby). Starved for trapped frogs with claws and violence was a question answered in blood so two wrongs made a state of nothingness free of wrong or right (you nihilistic *****!) she suggested a better drink to pick at Starbucks: 'a flaming frappucino at 140 degrees.' (what are you, some angry Russian aristocrat contemptuous of an English wife T-minus a decade ? )close-bracket)

God is sick of two things: my continued and addicted references to Judaeo-Christianity and the dragged sympathy of humanity for his lost son ("it's been 2013 years for Chrissake")

you melt on me like a strange evening spent with a stick of butter

*self improvement 46% complete
i have 140 characters to tell you how i feel
in my aggressive manner
but with 59 characters left
and 60 thoughts in my head;
I am struggling
it wasn't enough
Jammit Janet Jun 2022
The power of play
The power to make you feel alive
Remember that existence isn’t meant to be lived in vain
But to be experienced
If you care to thrive.
Austin Heath May 2014
My Mom took me to the casino to gamble with her money.
Played video poker and roulette, and very well could have
just lit $80 on fire.
The casino was my Vietnam.
We sit down and order sodas from a machine
called "Fairies of the Forest".
No intention or idea how to play it.
Put in $20.
Press a couple buttons.
Won $140.
I think the laws of physics break down
under that ceiling.
Like Alice in Wonderland on acid...
or would it be more acid?
B M Clark Apr 2015
Body image *****.

Let me tell you something,
It may surprise you but I hope not.
Body image *****.
For everyone.

Not just big girls,
Hell not even just girls,
Everyone feel this.

I weigh 140 lbs.
I. Feel. Too. Fat.
When I weighed 115 lbs.
I. Felt. Too. Thin.

Body image *****.
Help.
Us.
We need to feel pretty again.
v V v Jan 2016
Sometimes I awaken to
a hovering swarm of
stinging can’t be sures.

I have learned from experience
that on those days
it is best to avoid all reflection.

Mental or optical,
either one if given rope
will string you up,
tie you down to guilt
like a sinking ship
where the longer you
stay on board
the harder it is to get off.

I’d like to think
a long drive
would clear my mind.

A long drive driven at night.

I’d head out west toward
the widening sky and
reflective green mile markers,
400 to be exact.

They have seen
their fair share of
my failures.

Dallas - Ft Worth
To New Mexico,
I could drive it
eyes closed
and never miss
a turn.

But in years past
It wasn't so easy.
Back then I missed
a lot of turns
and messed up a lot of life.

From the guilt
of the sinking ship
to the heat of
midnight pavement,

at least the pavement
brought a tiny bit of pleasure,
still brings a tiny bit of pleasure.

For 30 years
I’ve gone this way
leaving ashes of me,
bits and pieces here and there

while white reflective numbers
count out the many milestones
I’d rather soon forget:


                    Tears of regret at mile markers
                    349, 288, 275, 263, 217, etc.

                    Swerved to miss a deer
                    at mile marker 321,

                    First on the scene of a 2am
                    accident.  Quiet moaning,
                    mile marker 285,

                    met my guardian angel
                    on a cliff with no guardrail,
                    mile marker 250,

                    panic attack at 249,

                    219 in drifting snow,
                    invisible except for green paint
                    found on my bumper,

                    Stopped the car to *****
                    at 216, 201, 185, that’s all,
                    wait, one more time,
                    mile marker 59.

                    Attacked by giant frogs
                    at 213,

                    The wind whipped giants at
                    the gates of Fluvanna, 201,

                    saw Christ come forth
                    from a swirling fog
                    at 192,  barefoot,
                    dragging a cross uphill,
                    I had seen him in the dark
                    at marker 195 at 4am,
                    so I stopped and waited
                    for the suns to rise over
                    an eastern hill,
                    and when they did
                    I went on.

                    The suicidal lure of
                    velvety pillowed
                    train tracks at 155,
                    unfortunately inaccessible
                    from the road,
                    occasionally they still call my name.

                    at 140 I threw away everything
                    that was true about love,
                    the repercussions of such
                    are still felt 3 decades later,                         
                    so be careful of the promises      
                    you make, and stay away from
                    mile marker 140,
                    Satan lives there beneath a rock.
                    
                    Smothering loneliness
                    at mile marker 125, 101, 94.

                    76 total emptiness.

                    Nothingness  45, 44, 43, 42, 41.

                    Amnesia from 40 to 1.

                    At the state line
                    there are no numbers
                    only a huge red and yellow sign
                    that says  “Bienvenido!”

                    I breathe a sigh of relief
                    and roll up my window,

                    no more hovering swarms
                    past or present
                    at least for tonight,

                    at least on this side of the line.
Mateuš Conrad Jul 2016
you need not be looking / looked upon so aloft with the music, of course it's dramatic settling the heart to a frenzy - less happily endorsed feet dancing, alt. Jews in Europe rather than Muslims in a similar state of geographic - they call all appreciators of classical music fascists these days, it doesn't matter.... what matters is that the heart once danced, and the feet were wheelchair bound - but now the heart is wheelchair bound, crippled... and the feet dance, indeed, a dance of fiddled thumbs of a confused coliseum spectacle awaiting Caesar's nod.

~48 hours away from seeing *Nabucco

at the Royal Opera House;
i better get drunk before the opera,
so that i might cry at
the chorus of the Hebrew slaves -
gold-digger of tears at my christening;
that old hummingbird;
take a Scotch pouch of whiskey into
the toilet for a one-two impromptu
and a nutmeg past the goalkeeper -
whatever high European culture professes,
the countryside alliance will always
make peasants of us all.
Sethnicity Mar 2016
I gave her the full 140
No Punctuation Necessary
HottoTrot LickedandLocked
Missed the spot and blued my rocks
Cause she was on her.
Dats what i called #Twitterpated!
Babu kandula Jun 2012
i love you అన్న పదానికే నేడు అర్ధం తెలిసోచ్చిందే నీవల్ల
i hate you  అని నువ్వు అంటున్నా ఆగనంటోంది నా జన్మ
jolly గా తిరిగే మనిషిని కాస్తా road side romeo లా మారిపోయానే
love at first అంటే గిట్టనోడిని love లో పడిపోయానే
నా దారిన పోయేవాడిని నిన్ను చూసినాక ఆగిపోయానే
నీ పేరుకి అర్ధం తెలుసుకోవటానికి websites అన్ని search చేసానే
flames లో మన relation గురుంచి positive గా answer వచ్చిందే
love calculator మన ఇద్దరి బంధం గట్టిదని తేల్చిచెప్పిందే
జాతక చక్రాల మాట మరచిపోవే నా చెంతే నువ్వు చేరిపోవాలే
stars comets అంటూ separate చేయకే మహరాణిలా చూసుకుంటానే
colorful గా life ఉండేలా రోజపువ్వులనే రోజు present చేస్తానే
నీ కొచ్చే కష్టం ఏదైనా అది ఇష్టంగా నేను పంచుకుంటానే
happy గా ఉండేలా foundation వేసాలే planning  తో సిద్ధంగున్నానే.
Steve D'Beard Feb 2013
Technology:
how I love you and loathe you
in the same breath

your phonic ears
listening out for
a babble of distress
from a childs vest
sleeping soundly
in the next room

your ten tentacle arms
purge my words
and shelter emotions
across vast distances
for long lost friends
to find comfort
in 140 characters

your innovations
are the respirator
the breathing lungs
the beating heart
the bionic limbs
that help without want
to walk again

if only you could
just once
guess my words
correctly
just once
is all I ask

I invited that girl
for a pint
not a riot
and the black berry
ripens in the east
is now an improvised
IED

Technology:
will you ever be perfect?
or will you always
be evolving

how will you know
that you have not
stepped back
to be overshadowed
by an ape

punching numbers
searching for Shots
and finding Pints
in the middle of
a dusty Riot
This is inspired by the love/loathe of technology, and the calamity of sending a text message where the auto-checker has decided what you wanted to write before you wrote it. Ironically, Pint comes between Shot and Riot, on a mobile phone, hence the title. Again, this poem came out of a comment from a fellow poet on here - D A - who kindly responded to my poem about text-speak. So yeah, cheers.. you can read their work here: http://hellopoetry.com/-d-a/
ERR Apr 2012
Successes plus failures
Divided by lifetime
Does not equal a man
You are more than the sum
Of the moments you cannot relive
And the moments you cannot undo
Freedom breathes in the insignificant
Recollection is not your prison
Peaks speak loud in passing
While the footprints line the level ground
When travelling the shortest distance
From B to D
Remember your straight line
Intact
RAJ NANDY May 2015
Declared as an UNESCO Heritage Site in 1983, is today a place of tourist attraction, - this ancient city of Inca pride! Please read its absorbing story, you will not regret it ! Thanks, - Raj Nandy

MACHU PICCHU: THE LOST CITY OF THE INCAS!

(I)
At those ethereal heights where only eagles dare,
And where the Condor glides to gently perch;
Above the Urubamba Valley of Peru, -
Stretches the peaks of Machu Picchu and Huayna
Picchu;
Where the sky above is a clear cerulean blue!
And on a cloud-draped ridge connecting both
these Andean peaks, -
Lies the magnificent site of Machu Picchu, –
which many tourists seek!
A city hewed and carved out of rocks and stones,
Which in proud defiance to marauding time,
Stands there for nearly six hundred years, -
A majestic symbol of Inca pride!
(II)
The Inca Kings were the ‘child of the sun’,
Their chief deity was the Sun God - ‘INTI’,
Their ninth king who expanded and consolidated
their Empire,
Was known as the great Emperor Pachucuti!
This king and his architects, at an altitude of
8000 feet built the great Inca City!
To worship their gods and honor their ancestors,
And as a royal family resort and a summer retreat!
Inca religion was based around Nature, and their
architecture blended with the landscape around!
At Machu Picchu they felt closer to their gods,
And could almost hear His sound!
Pachucuti also built the city of Cuzco, the capital
of the Inca Empire,
They never had horses or wheels those days,
Their ‘runners’ covered their kingdom entire!
With posts located at suitable distances, for
relaying messages throughout their Empire!
(III)
The ruins of Machu Picchu covers 13 sq kms,
Lying some 70 kms north-west of Cuzco city,
Nestled amidst the navel of the mountain rocks,
Hidden from the praying eyes of all adversaries!
Surrounded by gushing mountain rivers and
yawning chasms going down deep;
And with secret ropeway bridges, this Inca hideout
was all complete!
It escaped the greedy Pizarro’s eyes, that Spaniard
who came for Inca gold,
Leaving Machu Picchu untouched, for the entire world
to behold!
So the urban sector of Machu Picchu has 140 buildings
still intact;
With steps and terraces cut into steep granite face,
And streams and aqua-ducts to irrigate their lands!
(IV)
The citadel lies on a flat surface, which is a 20 hectares
spread!
With a sacred and a residential area, and houses for
priests, nobility and guests!
‘Amautas’ were men both holy and wise, conducted
ceremonies and read the stars;
But the Incas had no written script, and took help of
the ‘quipu’ by far!
The ‘quipu’ was a numerical system using many
knotted strings, -
With which they kept records and accounts of almost
any and everything!
(V)
A Sacred Area had temples and buildings,
All dedicated to the Gods by Pachucuti;
A Sun Temple, and the sacred Intihuatana Stone,
For ‘binding the sun’ – the great Inti !
During the Equinox on the 21st of March and September,
When the sun was directly above the Intihuatana Stone, <
The priests performed ceremonies and offered prayers, -
To keep the sun caged and in control!
Legend has it that should a sensitive man, keep his
forehead on this sacred Stone, -
His ‘third eye’ would open up, and the ‘spiritual world’
he shall behold!
(VI)
It was Hiram Bingham a professor from Yale University,
Who in July 1911 rediscovered this miniature Inca City!
He took three years to clear the jungles and the wild
vines;
And the artifacts he had found were sent to the US -
as precious finds!
The modern architects who visited Machu Picchu,
all marvelled at the techniques used;
A ‘dry stone technique’
* without mortar, had all of
them pretty confused!
Many stones weighed around fifty tones, and others were
cut into various shapes and size;
And were fitted with such precision, leaving no room
even for a blade of knife!
The peaks there often get covered with mist,
And is the abode of white fluffy clouds;
This stairways to where the Inca gods dwell, #
Is where Machu Picchu is to be found!
- Raj Nandy
(- ALL COPYRIGHTS RESERVED -)
Notes: -Huayna Pichu stands behind Machu Picchu -
40mtrs higher! It has a steeper climb and has the ‘Temple of
the Moon’ inside a dark cave! +Declared a Heritage Site
by UNESCO in 1983.< Sun being directly above the sacred stone did not cast any shadow, so the priest said he had caged the Sun! *
Dry stone
technique without mortar also used in Egyptian Pyramids! #Many
tribes believed Incas were Gods! Thanks for reading, - Raj Nandy.

............................................. ................................................. .....................
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
First Living Organism

Anyway, there is love and death and governance. With the birth of my sons, love was fulfilled. There is no romance left in love for me, women are another form of men. Perhaps their toes are painted rather than blood-encrusted, but blood runs from their bones, their eyes are friendly as camera lenses, muscles hungry. Death continues to be my every third thought, fittingly. Occasionally I feel strong, but when I don’t it’s death waiting. I think I know it’s a waste of time to imagine being dead, as if being dead were a form of living. It’s not, but last night I was reading about the efforts of astrobiologists to identify LUCA meaning Last Universal Common Ancestor and FLO, first living organism, and that gave me a calmer feeling. Bringing me to governance, how we manage together between birth and death. What can I say that hasn’t already been said by Aristotle and Plato, the Republicans and Democrats, Hamilton and Jefferson. To start, your daily discipline is a personal governance. There are many ways to know a person: by their god, by their fears and appetites, by how they spend their money or organize their time. Who is in authority, who is in command here? The one in authority is not necessarily our leader.


Patience

I live in a mountainous community about 140,000 strong. My irascible, aggressive temperament toward my fellow citizens has exiled or sidelined me to a peripheral almost insignificant role although when I arrived I was considered a problem solver, even a savior of the poor and the wealthy classes who feared for the future. Why mention this. He who knows patience knows peace. I have surely lost face often in my life. As a kid, lost most fights, as a man, chosen last to lead the squad or platoon. Only when every known leader had died did those in authority decide to use me. Someone must begin to write the federalist papers for the world. And, of course, it’s being done and heard. Books in print, blogs, debates. My vision is a world where you can fly from Madagascar to Mississippi and be greeted by a sign that says Welcome to our land. Go about your business, setting off no bombs, and fly home. Perhaps take a lover for one afternoon.


The Machine and the Season

The machine and the season are so far incompatible. The machine claims electrical problem. The house leaks from rain. The men who left the machine have started their own business. A new endeavor by which they will keep warm and purposeful. The junior partner, heavier, says the Grand Canyon’s not so grand. Jaded individual or one to set himself against the depths, abyss? Man’s systems. Man made the machine (and the town) from rocks mined next door. Some few men understand these invisible electrons moving the machine to perform. I still cannot imagine, i.e. my mind cannot move fast enough to know how so many particles can be sorted and split so quick to make words on a screen. My simplicity is terminal.


Saving Grace

Today it is fall, first day for long-sleeved shirts. The boys at school. I admonish Zach not to whine and complain about the work. Lately reading or practicing piano, prone to fits of frustration. To the point of claiming belly pain. Last night I dreamed I had pushed him to suicide. It is so important for a man to do no harm. This is what makes us crazy against Wolfowitz, willingness to **** to do good. Someone very sure of himself and shining, much wiser and more compassionate than me, has calculated for the world that more lives now for fewer later shall be sacrificed. The people he serves are cantankerous, disorderly, selfish and complaining. The same diverse, spoiled, unpatriotic revolutionaries as at the nation’s beginning. Their refusal to be more than the sum of themselves is their saving grace.


Politics

Politics can be an escape from the personal, the debates are of little interest to a man in hospice. Will the machines do their work? How will we make decisions together? Roger Johnson’s gravel pit must be killing his neighbors with the noise of boulders being pulverized to rock but Roger is certain his business is necessary for the public good. He knows he has a right to use his property as he sees fit. There is a noise ordinance, a state employee will travel out to measure the decibel level in your front yard as compared to the ambient noise level. There is a measurable amplitude beyond which the legislature has determined no citizen may be exposed or corporation go. It can be measured.


Measure for Measure

Measure for measure, all’s well that ends well during a midsummer night’s dream for the merry wives of Windsor. A million or more poets but only one Top Bard. How did he know so much about kings and fools and murderers? An Elizabethan and no Freedom of Information Act. Today it is fall. The legislature and president are at work and so are our machines. One by one and then in armies the leaves come down. It is not that someone must decide, we must decide how we will make decisions and where authority resides. What am I learning, sitting, watching the season turning? Content this morning to admire my sons’ photos, reread my own poems searching for the prize answer, and answer the phone. I seem to be alienating potential business partners with a take it or leave it comme-ci comme-ca attitude. All you can do, the best that can be done is to go to your daily discipline. Driving home or waking up at night I think I’m dying. Do the much-admired writers of our time die more content than that?


War All the Time

War all the time. I’ve been fond of saying what distinguishes America is its daily low intensity warfare. Endless but not fatal conflict. Chambers of commerce, municipal government, big corporations wrestle nearly naked and will lie as needed for what? I tire like an 80 year old man of the storm and worry. I remember my early years when I had no known skill to offer and elections occurred without my vote being solicited. I noticed no harm or good I did was noticed. Autumn was all mine, mine alone, I was alone in the world with autumn. My mind could not stand it. I cried out for comfort, someone to obey. I needed to grow up and know money.


The History That Surrounds Us

I’m not going anywhere, I chose to stay and hold my clod of soil in the landscape of community oh blah dah. I want like Shakespeare and other writers to discern the motivations of women, men, see through their lies to a humorous truth careless about success and able to explain why what happens today or on September 11th obtains. I was impressed by the critic who found that Shakespeare in Hamlet had tried to write about the thoughts of a man suspended between having decided to act and the act itself. Why bother he soliloquated why commit or submit to the great moment when mere men of bones and dust, disgusted with themselves and others are the actors of the moment, beheaders, rhymers, debtors. And, of course, the answer comes to one in the night like Chuang-tzu, or Lao, why not? The great moment is no greater than the small and the small no smaller than the great. You perform the history that surrounds you and go to your daily practice.


A Systems Guy

I’m something of a systems guy. I want the truth and death and worth to be independent of individual motives, paranoias, prejudice, peccadilloes, virginities, crucifixes, paradoxes, protons, protozoa or curses. I want pure human machinery, stainless steel, clear thinking, even handed, not a doubt that every doubt is wanted, needed, good to the last drop toward the ultimate ignition into outer space, colonization of diverse planets and immortality of the genome. Here’s what’s odd. While enduring ever more frequent panic attacks (and nudging toward survival and self-sufficiency my offspring) pounding and pinching my skin to stay sensate, maintain consciousness, I parabolate (always orbiting myself, eye on the tip of my *****) to another extreme, i.e. my belief mankind can escape the earth unlike Hamlet’s dad’s ghost. A system is a set of inputs–values, policies, objectives, procedures, data–organized and repeated to generate significant quantities of desired outcomes without redesigning the system for each individual outcome. I told John Russell from Amnesty International at Jack Shwartz’s daughter’s coming of age party about my plan to reorganize the U.N. so only the democracies can vote and no nation has a veto. He said the world’s not ready, with absolute certainty, knowledge and authority. I looked out the hotel window, this was shortly after 9/11, at dozens of American flags and a lone security guard. I’m always right I said to myself.
www.ronnowpoetry.com
Martin Narrod Apr 2014
When at first it happens I want none of it. I even say no. I discard the plane tickets, the train stamps, the envelopes of money into a safety deposit box some train station off The Embarcadero and just head East. It frightens me, I'm horrified. The potency is developing in my inner organs, I can't cough right, sleep right, I just suffer and complain. Instead of doing things differently, they've made it so you can soak right in. Just strand yourself on the side of the roadway and they've got rules for you too. The sounds are torturous, the rooms are empty, and the men grow complacent and empty. Nothing is as serious as this. Four years ago a car, three years ago a plane, now I just shuffle and complain. I search for a key to my happiness. I look for it in desktop monitors, caramel apple lollipops, new cashmere vanilla candles, consuming six or more bottles of water a day, E-Cigarettes even, even those, I use apple juice, lychee nectar, mango sorbet, and chocolate fudge sundaes. I'm 40 up on the 140 I went down with. All the miles I'd walked in a firm step, a fever, a bag full of cheap wine for a man that works the car park. 43rd between 8th and 9th. Every thing is bright lights and theater nights. More pacing, there is gum stuck to every square of sidewalk, men and women wheel around a block away selling discount drugs in the streets and outside the Subway on 44th, in the Chinese food mart on 7th. They blow blow blow in their little plastic straw tubes and for $12 a drop they ask you to reach your hands inside their pockets, "take what you like and leave the rest. No one remembers it like this, the girls laugh practically upside down, they wear sky-blue light dyed denim overalls, covering all the parts of their shoulders but exposing their ****, they have plastic bags in their boots, and cute bobby bobbing hair cuts like water crest shoots exploding in lime juice. They pace too, but their legs are shorter, their conversations longer, the horns in their heads grow slowly out from midnight. The devil put the hate on them too.

Even the children are bigoted in this bicentennial. The ******'s nook is no longer the sewing shop in the corner of the strip mall up by Deerbrook Mall. I haven't seen a fountain with change in it since the 80's. The newest thing I heard about imaginations are that, "They come out the first and last Wednesday of the month, you gotta check with Game Stop if you want to pre-order the right ones." I think we must be on number 18 by now. There were four of us riding shotgun in the boxcar up to the valley last month, now they don't even run the trains anymore. One third of everything left to go.

I'm growing quiet; if they can't tell it's not my job to teach them. If they can't spell, I ain't gotta word to word combat that's going to come down on 'em. My brain is so uptight I can't sleep before sundown or sunrise. I see legs and oil futures with every blink. I listen to the old phone messages constantly. I make up stories to go with the missed calls. Still I hope everything will work out okay, because nothing is as serious as this. It makes me sick. It makes the guy undo itself with a brass nail, the blood unclogged from the rash from last month, I find out I'm toxic to poisons, and then I'm told that they're a prescription for that too. It wasn't a ******* rumor. The time to back up or move is now. A idle figure in an orange shirt, a tapestry that moves with every hallucination, forty, fifty, sixty hours I've never slept. I may have been years. My stomach is rusting from water with nowhere to go. I feel sick. I feel woozy, but I don't believe in feelings. I sit upright because I'm uptight, I turn my head around and look over my shoulder. But I know that any friend that's worth looking at me wouldn't arouse my spirit at this hour. There is a net that they speak of when everything's gone. It's the madness that transforms nothingness when the devil's around. Whole empires are crashing. Whole bottom drawers of unworn clothing, tagged and abetted stuffed into black crape garbage bags and drove off into the moonlight. I'm sweating and soporific, living half by half two in and two out, if I had the chance I'd try to remember just which way I get out. When I check on the rumors, when I say my goodbye, I know that I'm the only one sitting in this room of cocksure spirit animals and half-plastic book casings, and that no one whispers and no one cries, not even the bereft can produce a lullaby. I am dying to figure out how to move voicemails from iPhones to iTunes, I googled it while sitting down in the city last night. Poor service. 10 months. Not even one blame the famous few.

After tired comes guilty, after guilty the shame, after that apathy, after that I'm awake. I've never been good at being better than me. But those voicemails, I want them somewhere permanently.
Inspired by a Voicemail, Written for Britni West
Christopher Lowe Nov 2014
140 characters or less
What a world we live in
Obsessed with quick wit
and invisible friends

Stuck to screens
As we drone away
Punching keys
Wasting away in disbelief
Nat Lipstadt Jun 2019
poems are cheap they say, the supply exceeds the demand,
all are product of criminal mischief, and Lord, I know,
I’m one of the most thieving, most mischiefing ones

when no one was about, I scribbled many notes,
transplanted from my eyes, for a bottled voyage
to fallow beaches for sandy seeding

no matter IF these poems are from your womb ripped,
****** red concoctions of life’s cute cutting edge inscriptions,
no one cares re your titanic love’s labors, your children’s betrayal

no one cares from whence and wherefore they birthed,
all words, low class and progeny, not prodigy, of demeaning circumstances, best tossed back without much foolish hesitation

writ with pen tip of broken green glass from a parking lot,
the point I broke once more before my commencement,
inked from a wicked witch’s melted green spittle pooling alongside

poets of no way, falsely prophesying falsehoods most singularly bad,
waste not-want not, time better spent than reading rhymes of stolen disrepute and cloudy ownership and ignoble authorship

unless you among a blessed few, who see a full blown poem in glassine clarity, birthed fully formed Elton songs in a mouth full of amniotic fund, you, put down thy laboring eleven instruments

if words you claim of new parentage, you as the mother dear,
know there is nothing new under the sun, even these very words,
scripted by Israelite king whose tomb gone, he, too, poet forgotten

join me in a needle park of junkies who tried and failed, nickel bag
smoking budget dope words, in cigarettes of mostly discarded seeds and twigs, hallucinatory inhaling the same vision again & again

you refuse, naturally, glamming in notional newness, your arrogance, a plentiful commodity of wood-be writers by thousands buried in wooden caskets, under wooden inscription-less crosses

and of the trillion readers possible, to coloring picture books and instant grams, all have gone to the labor-free glancing look-see
of a seconds-short, lengthy meme, 10 second videos, 140 limitations

of the greatest, of Shakespeare and Coleridge, reader’s fast-dying, sunburned neurons reply; “free ***** of his Love’s Labour’s Lost, and the Ancient Mariner, overdue, free him too!”

ancients mock you aware that there be no verbal combination yet to foretell, what Lear said, that’s the the idea, “When we are born, we cry, that we are come to this great stage of fools.”^

fools we are, for there be no fore, the tale already told, once before & more, vaingloriously does this poet’s false vanity speak, so, so boisterously,
  
“why my tale, why my tail, is as new as the oldest fossil”
^ King Lear, Shakespeare
Aztec Warrior May 2016
Friday Night Fantasy**

The sky was a jade tangerine hue,
lightly sprinkled
with caramel colored stars,
while the moon
cried its silver beams
and a gentle breeze caressed your skin
making you shiver and smile
as you ate my eyes
with your temptation.
You swayed over me
dripping your sweet passion,
honeyed apricot nectar
over my tongue.
~~~~
I wanted you,
needed your movements,
your music
and poetry,
the haiku of your desires
and the way
as you spoke it,
from inside out.
All I could do
was rock with you,
my mouth savoring
your nippled senyru.
~~~~
I sang you a Friday night fantasy
of analogies, similes
and serenades,
mixed occasionally with
the raw desires of sexuality
and secrets of your femininity.
I was ablaze;
your name colored my heart.
I felt every silver moon beam
as you floated
and faded
away in the night sky.
You carried with you
all the poetry of me.

Aztec Warrior/redzone 5.6.16
....thanks for reading...
tangshunzi Jun 2014
In primo luogo .questa sposa è il mio eroe moda.Non solo ha roccia un abito tutto pizzo - life changingly stupenda ma commutato in due abiti più splendidi prima del giorno era finito .E se questo è ottenuto tutti verdi di invidia solo aspettare fino a vedere l' intera vicenda francese dal Knot \u0026Pop .Laetitia C e Xavier Navarro .Questa .miei cari .è uno dei libri .

Condividi questa splendida galleria ColorsSeasonsSummerSettingsEstateStylesAl Fresco

Da Knot \u0026Pop .. Ayse \u0026Fred ha sposato in Provenza nel settembre 2013 .sotto i vasti cieli e le stelle tra le più belle di impostazioni francesi.Ayse è da Londra origine .ma ora vive a Parigi con Fred .dove rappresentano Artisti e gestito una galleria d'arte insieme .Con la coppia che ha solide radici in Francia .e Fred ' famiglia dal sud della Francia .hanno scelto di sposarsi in Francia la più singolare di luoghièun borgo privato pieno di arte e di curiosità che completavano alla perfezione la coppia ' amore per l'arte.Con la cerimonia legale in un piccolo municipio locale .e la famiglia immediata del 10 per assistere .Ayse \u0026Fred ha poi chiesto loro amici Valerio e Sam di agire come celebranti per la cerimonia informale a Le Grand Banc .di fronte ai loro 140 ospiti .

Sposato con vista sulle colline della Provenza .gli ospiti sono stati invitati a creare un cono coriandoli dalla Confetti Bar che ha visto splendida argenteria pieno di ***** di fiori e semi.Dopo il più divertente di cerimonie che hanno visto i due amici raccontano le storie di Ayse \u0026Fred .drink di accoglienza ha avuto luogo il bordo piscina e sul prato .con gli ospiti poi a piedi attraverso la frazione al tendone per la cena .

Per completare le impostazioni naturali.il tema eschema per il giorno mescolato una palette morbida di blush rosa.verde oliva .azzurro .argento e bianco che è stato poi il mirroring di tutti i fiori.decorazioni.cameriere guarda e table- top.Mescolato con la tavolozza .la coppia e il loro evento designer .Knot \u0026Pop pin punte ulteriori temi chiave per l'aspetto grafico che comprendeva motivi a stella per riflettere il senso delle celebrazioni che si svolgono sotto le stelle .e gli animalièin particolare gli elefantièun amore assoluto della sposa ' .

Il motivo stella è stato ripetuto in tutte le ghirlande di nastro che a cascata da archi .i lati cerimonia tendone e alberi focali .Il piano tavolo disegnato da Knot \u0026Pop utilizzato anche il disegno della stella con ghirlande che parte da un bellissimo albero di fico .che ha visto gli ospiti vengono realmente coinvolti nella scoperta delle loro sedi .Piani tavolo miste dipinte plinti stelle legno in mostra splendido fiore riempito di bottiglie d'epoca .con rametti di rami di ulivo immerso in per tovaglioli .e una stella dipinta come favoreèrosa per ragazzi.e blu per le ragazze .

A tavola i bambini era tutto sul fattore divertimento con una stampa wallpaper di marchi e matite colorare collocato fuori per tenere i bambini occupatiècontempo riflette ancora una volta la coppia e il loro amore per l'arte con la galleria stile carta da parati incorniciata .Il bar è stata ribattezzata la Star Bar con un pi argentoeata fondale.stella cocktail agitatori e cocktail su misura prende il nome la coppia a scegliere.

elefanti vernice spray argento apparsi su ogni tavolo con un cartellino attaccato spiegando che la coppia sarebbe in visita un rifugio per animali in viaggio di nozze in Kenya .dove



abiti da sposa pizzo sarebbero donare a nome dei loro invitati alle nozzeèuna bella e sentita alternativafavorire .Gli ospiti sono stati certamente sentendo la magia animale aver doned maschere di animali per una divertente sessione di photobooth prima di andare in cenare .Foto Polaroid degli ospiti sono state prese in un contesto nastro.con gli ospiti scrivendo poi un messaggio alla coppia e mettendo in una tela a forma di cuore .rendendo il perfetto keep- sake della giornata che si trova ora un posto d'onore nella coppia ' a ​​casa .Ayse \u0026Giorno Fred ' era pieno di divertimento .che riflette tutti i loro amori .con tutta la loro cari intorno a loro per celebrare nelle impostazioni più singolari .memorabili ed elegante di .
Fotografo: Xavier Navarro Photographie | Fiori : Laetitia C | Abito da sposa: Pronovias | Altri Abiti : Oh My Love | Rosticcerie : Helen Traiteur | Scarpe sposo : Hugo Boss | Vestito dello sposo : Hugo Boss | scarpe da sposa da sposa .Main Ricerca: Dolce \u0026 Gabbana | scarpe da sposa da sposa .look vintage : Dune | Abiti ragazze di fiore : Etsy .adattata dal fratello della sposa abiti da sposa pizzo | Marquee : AR Eventi | Hamlet privata: Le Grand Banc | Argenteria Auto : Knot \u0026 Pop | Abito da sposa Vintage: GabrieleVintage | abiti da sposa outlet Wedding Planner e Event Designer : Knot \u0026 PopLaetitia C. - fleurs d' atelier è un membro del nostro Little Black Book .Scopri come i membri sono scelti visitando la nostra pagina delle FAQ .Laetitia C. - fleurs d' atelier VIEW
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Le Grand Banc Provence Wedding_vestiti da cerimonia
140

An altered look about the hills—
A Tyrian light the village fills—
A wider sunrise in the morn—
A deeper twilight on the lawn—
A print of a vermillion foot—
A purple finger on the *****—
A flippant fly upon the pane—
A spider at his trade again—
An added strut in Chanticleer—
A flower expected everywhere—
An axe shrill singing in the woods—
Fern odors on untravelled roads—
All this and more I cannot tell—
A furtive look you know as well—
And Nicodemus’ Mystery
Receives its annual reply!
The sun shines forth in full array
Everywhere - and all around
Yet sometimes things get in the way
Making shadows on the ground

I cannot say the sun’s now gone
As grayish shadows herald night
In my mind I “see” the dawn
My faith is stronger than my sight

Prosperity flows endlessly
Everywhere - it can be found
With my “in-sight”, I can see
Though limits on my eyes abound

I cannot say my wealth is fled
At times when it seems far away
On firm and faithful paths I tread
And peace and riches flow my way
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