One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound
except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember
whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve
nights when I was six.

All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky
that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in
the snow and bring out whatever I can find. In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidays
resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the firemen.

It was on the afternoon of the Christmas Eve, and I was in Mrs. Prothero's garden, waiting for cats, with her
son Jim. It was snowing. It was always snowing at Christmas. December, in my memory, is white as Lapland,
though there were no reindeers. But there were cats. Patient, cold and callous, our hands wrapped in socks, we
waited to snowball the cats. Sleek and long as jaguars and horrible-whiskered, spitting and snarling, they
would slink and sidle over the white back-garden walls, and the lynx-eyed hunters, Jim and I, fur-capped and
moccasined trappers from Hudson Bay, off Mumbles Road, would hurl our deadly snowballs at the green of their
eyes. The wise cats never appeared.

We were so still, Eskimo-footed arctic marksmen in the muffling silence of the eternal snows - eternal, ever
since Wednesday - that we never heard Mrs. Prothero's first cry from her igloo at the bottom of the garden. Or,
if we heard it at all, it was, to us, like the far-off challenge of our enemy and prey, the neighbor's polar
cat. But soon the voice grew louder.
"Fire!" cried Mrs. Prothero, and she beat the dinner-gong.

And we ran down the garden, with the snowballs in our arms, toward the house; and smoke, indeed, was pouring
out of the dining-room, and the gong was bombilating, and Mrs. Prothero was announcing ruin like a town crier
in Pompeii. This was better than all the cats in Wales standing on the wall in a row. We bounded into the
house, laden with snowballs, and stopped at the open door of the smoke-filled room.

Something was burning all right; perhaps it was Mr. Prothero, who always slept there after midday dinner with a
newspaper over his face. But he was standing in the middle of the room, saying, "A fine Christmas!" and
smacking at the smoke with a slipper.

"Call the fire brigade," cried Mrs. Prothero as she beat the gong.
"There won't be there," said Mr. Prothero, "it's Christmas."
There was no fire to be seen, only clouds of smoke and Mr. Prothero standing in the middle of them, waving his
slipper as though he were conducting.
"Do something," he said. And we threw all our snowballs into the smoke - I think we missed Mr. Prothero - and
ran out of the house to the telephone box.
"Let's call the police as well," Jim said. "And the ambulance." "And Ernie Jenkins, he likes fires."

But we only called the fire brigade, and soon the fire engine came and three tall men in helmets brought a hose
into the house and Mr. Prothero got out just in time before they turned it on. Nobody could have had a noisier
Christmas Eve. And when the firemen turned off the hose and were standing in the wet, smoky room, Jim's Aunt,
Miss. Prothero, came downstairs and peered in at them. Jim and I waited, very quietly, to hear what she would
say to them. She said the right thing, always. She looked at the three tall firemen in their shining helmets,
standing among the smoke and cinders and dissolving snowballs, and she said, "Would you like anything to read?"

Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of red-flannel
petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt
like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the
English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the
daft and happy hills *******, it snowed and it snowed. But here a small boy says: "It snowed last year, too. I
made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea."

"But that was not the same snow," I say. "Our snow was not only shaken from white wash buckets down the sky, it
came shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow
grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely -ivied the walls and
settled on the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb thunder-storm of white, torn Christmas cards."

"Were there postmen then, too?"
"With sprinkling eyes and wind-cherried noses, on spread, frozen feet they crunched up to the doors and
mittened on them manfully. But all that the children could hear was a ringing of bells."
"You mean that the postman went rat-a-tat-tat and the doors rang?"
"I mean that the bells the children could hear were inside them."
"I only hear thunder sometimes, never bells."
"There were church bells, too."
"Inside them?"
"No, no, no, in the bat-black, snow-white belfries, tugged by bishops and storks. And they rang their tidings
over the bandaged town, over the frozen foam of the powder and ice-cream hills, over the crackling sea. It
seemed that all the churches boomed for joy under my window; and the weathercocks crew for Christmas, on our
fence."

"Get back to the postmen"
"They were just ordinary postmen, found of walking and dogs and Christmas and the snow. They knocked on the
doors with blue knuckles ...."
"Ours has got a black knocker...."
"And then they stood on the white Welcome mat in the little, drifted porches and huffed and puffed, making
ghosts with their breath, and jogged from foot to foot like small boys wanting to go out."
"And then the presents?"
"And then the Presents, after the Christmas box. And the cold postman, with a rose on his button-nose, tingled
down the tea-tray-slithered run of the chilly glinting hill. He went in his ice-bound boots like a man on
fishmonger's slabs.
"He wagged his bag like a frozen camel's ****, dizzily turned the corner on one foot, and, by God, he was
gone."

"Get back to the Presents."
"There were the Useful Presents: engulfing mufflers of the old coach days, and mittens made for giant sloths;
zebra scarfs of a substance like silky gum that could be tug-o'-warred down to the galoshes; blinding tam-o'-
shanters like patchwork tea cozies and bunny-suited busbies and balaclavas for victims of head-shrinking
tribes; from aunts who always wore wool next to the skin there were mustached and rasping vests that made you
wonder why the aunts had any skin left at all; and once I had a little crocheted nose bag from an aunt now,
alas, no longer whinnying with us. And pictureless books in which small boys, though warned with quotations not
to, would skate on Farmer Giles' pond and did and drowned; and books that told me everything about the wasp,
except why."

"Go on the Useless Presents."
"Bags of moist and many-colored jelly babies and a folded flag and a false nose and a tram-conductor's cap and
a machine that punched tickets and rang a bell; never a catapult; once, by mistake that no one could explain, a
little hatchet; and a celluloid duck that made, when you pressed it, a most unducklike sound, a mewing moo that
an ambitious cat might make who wished to be a cow; and a painting book in which I could make the grass, the
trees, the sea and the animals any colour I pleased, and still the dazzling sky-blue sheep are grazing in the
red field under the rainbow-billed and pea-green birds. Hardboileds, toffee, fudge and allsorts, crunches,
cracknels, humbugs, glaciers, marzipan, and butterwelsh for the Welsh. And troops of bright tin soldiers who,
if they could not fight, could always run. And Snakes-and-Families and Happy Ladders. And Easy Hobbi-Games for
Little Engineers, complete with instructions. Oh, easy for Leonardo! And a whistle to make the dogs bark to
wake up the old man next door to make him beat on the wall with his stick to shake our picture off the wall.
And a packet of cigarettes: you put one in your mouth and you stood at the corner of the street and you waited
for hours, in vain, for an old lady to scold you for smoking a cigarette, and then with a smirk you ate it. And
then it was breakfast under the balloons."

"Were there Uncles like in our house?"
"There are always Uncles at Christmas. The same Uncles. And on Christmas morning, with dog-disturbing whistle
and sugar ****, I would scour the swatched town for the news of the little world, and find always a dead bird
by the Post Office or by the white deserted swings; perhaps a robin, all but one of his fires out. Men and
women wading or scooping back from chapel, with taproom noses and wind-bussed cheeks, all albinos, huddles
their stiff black jarring feathers against the irreligious snow. Mistletoe hung from the gas brackets in all
the front parlors; there was sherry and walnuts and bottled beer and crackers by the dessertspoons; and cats in
their fur-abouts watched the fires; and the high-heaped fire spat, all ready for the chestnuts and the mulling
pokers. Some few large men sat in the front parlors, without their collars, Uncles almost certainly, trying
their new cigars, holding them out judiciously at arms' length, returning them to their mouths, coughing, then
holding them out again as though waiting for the explosion; and some few small aunts, not wanted in the
kitchen, nor anywhere else for that matter, sat on the very edge of their chairs, poised and brittle, afraid to
break, like faded cups and saucers."

Not many those mornings trod the piling streets: an old man always, fawn-bowlered, yellow-gloved and, at this
time of year, with spats of snow, would take his constitutional to the white bowling green and back, as he
would take it wet or fire on Christmas Day or Doomsday; sometimes two hale young men, with big pipes blazing,
no overcoats and wind blown scarfs, would trudge, unspeaking, down to the forlorn sea, to work up an appetite,
to blow away the fumes, who knows, to walk into the waves until nothing of them was left but the two furling
smoke clouds of their inextinguishable briars. Then I would be slap-dashing home, the gravy smell of the
dinners of others, the bird smell, the brandy, the pudding and mince, coiling up to my nostrils, when out of a
snow-clogged side lane would come a boy the spit of myself, with a pink-tipped cigarette and the violet past of
a black eye, cocky as a bullfinch, leering all to himself.

I hated him on sight and sound, and would be about to put my dog whistle to my lips and blow him off the face
of Christmas when suddenly he, with a violet wink, put his whistle to his lips and blew so stridently, so high,
so exquisitely loud, that gobbling faces, their cheeks bulged with goose, would press against their tinsled
windows, the whole length of the white echoing street. For dinner we had turkey and blazing pudding, and after
dinner the Uncles sat in front of the fire, loosened all buttons, put their large moist hands over their watch
chains, groaned a little and slept. Mothers, aunts and sisters scuttled to and fro, bearing tureens. Auntie
Bessie, who had already been frightened, twice, by a clock-work mouse, whimpered at the sideboard and had some
elderberry wine. The dog was sick. Auntie Dosie had to have three aspirins, but Auntie Hannah, who liked port,
stood in the middle of the snowbound back yard, singing like a big-bosomed thrush. I would blow up balloons to
see how big they would blow up to; and, when they burst, which they all did, the Uncles jumped and rumbled. In
the rich and heavy afternoon, the Uncles breathing like dolphins and the snow descending, I would sit among
festoons and Chinese lanterns and nibble dates and try to make a model man-o'-war, following the Instructions
for Little Engineers, and produce what might be mistaken for a sea-going tramcar.

Or I would go out, my bright new boots squeaking, into the white world, on to the seaward hill, to call on Jim
and Dan and Jack and to pad through the still streets, leaving huge footprints on the hidden pavements.
"I bet people will think there's been hippos."
"What would you do if you saw a hippo coming down our street?"
"I'd go like this, bang! I'd throw him over the railings and roll him down the hill and then I'd tickle him
under the ear and he'd wag his tail."
"What would you do if you saw two hippos?"

Iron-flanked and bellowing he-hippos clanked and battered through the scudding snow toward us as we passed Mr.
Daniel's house.
"Let's post Mr. Daniel a snow-ball through his letter box."
"Let's write things in the snow."
"Let's write, 'Mr. Daniel looks like a spaniel' all over his lawn."
Or we walked on the white shore. "Can the fishes see it's snowing?"

The silent one-clouded heavens drifted on to the sea. Now we were snow-blind travelers lost on the north hills,
and vast dewlapped dogs, with flasks round their necks, ambled and shambled up to us, baying "Excelsior." We
returned home through the poor streets where only a few children fumbled with bare red fingers in the wheel-
rutted snow and cat-called after us, their voices fading away, as we trudged uphill, into the cries of the dock
birds and the hooting of ships out in the whirling bay. And then, at tea the recovered Uncles would be jolly;
and the ice cake loomed in the center of the table like a marble grave. Auntie Hannah laced her tea with ***,
because it was only once a year.

Bring out the tall tales now that we told by the fire as the gaslight bubbled like a diver. Ghosts whooed like
owls in the long nights when I dared not look over my shoulder; animals lurked in the cubbyhole under the
stairs and the gas meter ticked. And I remember that we went singing carols once, when there wasn't the shaving
of a moon to light the flying streets. At the end of a long road was a drive that led to a large house, and we
stumbled up the darkness of the drive that night, each one of us afraid, each one holding a stone in his hand
in case, and all of us too brave to say a word. The wind through the trees made noises as of old and unpleasant
and maybe webfooted men wheezing in caves. We reached the black bulk of the house. "What shall we give them?
Hark the Herald?"
"No," Jack said, "Good King Wencelas. I'll count three." One, two three, and we began to sing, our voices high
and seemingly distant in the snow-felted darkness round the house that was occupied by nobody we knew. We stood
close together, near the dark door. Good King Wencelas looked out On the Feast of Stephen ... And then a small,
dry voice, like the voice of someone who has not spoken for a long time, joined our singing: a small, dry,
eggshell voice from the other side of the door: a small dry voice through the keyhole. And when we stopped
running we were outside our house; the front room was lovely; balloons floated under the hot-water-bottle-
gulping gas; everything was good again and shone over the town.
"Perhaps it was a ghost," Jim said.
"Perhaps it was trolls," Dan said, who was always reading.
"Let's go in and see if there's any jelly left," Jack said. And we did that.

Always on Christmas night there was music. An uncle played the fiddle, a cousin sang "Cherry Ripe," and another
uncle sang "Drake's Drum." It was very warm in the little house. Auntie Hannah, who had got on to the parsnip
wine, sang a song about Bleeding Hearts and Death, and then another in which she said her heart was like a
Bird's Nest; and then everybody laughed again; and then I went to bed. Looking through my bedroom window, out
into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other
houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas
down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept.

I need to finish the story for convenience I have the original Aftermath to be read first on the bottom
What was not stated in Aftermath was my concern for my writing you can’t write with two legs
Screaming when I got to the hospital my kidneys were of a concern eight alieve three times a day about
Thirty aspirins something like Tylenol didn’t count them no relief my mistake I would bang my ****** leg
Against the wood of the desk that would make it crazy for a few seconds so I finally had to stop for over
Two months well the devil won it seemed when I talked to my cousin I was at eighteen thousand reads a
Little while let me break in here for a second I know I’m talking about numbers it isn’t ego if I come in
Contact with any of you in any setting and I pass you by with just a glance I am your sworn Godless
Enemy I have just joined the cruelest damnable assassins Hell has ever released on the world I know
What awaits the lost even the Apostle Paul worked fervently because he knew the end cost of God’s
Holy severity can I do less I look but I take in all manner caring thoughts but without fail I am led to that
Future now no one even gives the last day a thought I will put this in as an excerpt this is the dream I
Had when I was seventeen or it starts this way your life began in the great head waters at Eden they will
End at the mouth of eternity. I was given a view into the celestial I was just a teenager while a sleep this
Dream came I looked into the heavens and saw two great wheels made of stars the hands of God started
To pull the wheels down as I continued I knew what was occurring God was stopping time. The wheels
Stopped then God turned to the seamless darkness grasped it and started to lift as he did it tore away
Reveling the bright true world of the spirit that was before hidden this was alarming since I hadn’t made
My peace with him Not long after this I was seventeen working at the refinery I just walked out of the
Boiler room into the section that was known as the flathead when a voice said time is finished all life and
Its concerns flowed out leaving me with the greatest sadness other men standing by laid down their
Tools and started milling about mindlessly on this wise in some manner this will happen all over the
World the great enterprises so important to man and society will halt government rule and authority
Abolished in an instant majesty and power will take the reins the river previously known will be
Empowered its first charge make the deserts bloom as a rose…

And I take the liberty to insert I am a person of deep feelings to make the case I wrote two pieces for
Roberta Merrifield’s birthday sorry your flowers are late then I forgot your card this was talking about
Her friends as flowers each of them need to go to their door and imagine nine hundred people standing
There reading about their lives that are filled with grace and beauty and earthen treasures that are in
Vessels of clay but to see them truly you will be speechless so I return to the numbers so it was
Eighteen thousand a little later when I couldn’t stand the pain any longer I called my retired preacher
Uncle and our pastor brother Russell I explained to them about being whipped and my writing had to be
Shut down it was thirty five thousand reads then so keys were stilled my lifeline to needy souls was at
A deadly stillness so then two months later I wrote fourteen pieces bringing the total to four hundred
And fourteen pieces and then Gods love demands the his heart be represented this is the one I am
Pleased about the most I wrote a piece called the mirrored pool over four hundred souls read this I’m
Sorry this is too important to excerpt it in you are not obligated to read I leave that to your discretion

Mirrored Pool
Wonder for all the hurts
First I knelt just to see my reflection then the depths started to reveal first the flowing thoughts were
Restrained and then a bubbling seemed to dislodge from greater depths hard truths churned with
Violent twisting but the motion made it impossible to turn away there were great large white clouds
From depths then even above the pool they rose fourteen stories high the sensation was you were
Standing outside clear air intoxicating views the pulse of many were throbbing in your ears their
Thoughts and dreams were known and their sorrows were weights that pulled you from the heights
It was a colossal game of tag and you were it first reaction fear then the appearance of bundled gifts
Broke down the fear it was promise in different sizes that met the required needs it was like a divine
Warehouse had just made a delivery there were cards with names and writing gave clarification tears
And smiles intermingled then the outer knowing postulated the difficulty the puzzle an enormous
Streaming that was now congested and it was beginning a vortex all was understood now human thought
With doubts was pulling the answer into this destructive hole where was one to find the lever to stop
This action that would disallow was the answer to touch the water bring the finger to my lips possibly
A blazing thought would occur that would strike the mind no all that brought was words that had the
Letters jumbled they made no sense unless there is a special book that is alive in it the letters and words
Are already set but they cover every act in the human condition the broken can pour over the pages
You won’t find thorns to repel your efforts there are thorns but they will speak and assuage your hurts
At the most basic and needed levels the points of your hurts will begin to dissolve from your eyes to
Your mind this inward rush and power will dislodge even spears driven deep by enemies carried for
Years you searched in vain over sad and lonely paths and days now you journey is at an end thorns of
Suffering for another produces profound power and mercy go in peace beloved one another bears your
Burden now maybe words cut you at depths you can’t even identify what if there is an antidote in a
Book you pick it up with trembling hands your body tingles from the knowledge that this is ancient texts
It will have a revival of appreciation in this world of texting but with gentle fingers and eyes that glow
With respect as you see the wisdom and the love cannot be denied you leave the world you know and
With total abandonment you swim in this sea of words until the your tears spill on this rich world of
Words those cruel barbed words that pierced tender skin and have bled internally all of these years
Begin to dissolve with stories and accounts of betrayals then the swells love and mercy you read about
Restoration not always found after apologies are given but the teaching of forgiveness strikes a cord
You have been made free from your prison the tangles of life are great as a great black cloud it hangs
Over head many are its troubles this isn’t mild but the disruptive made to strike and pierce deep the
Hidden that steals the morning blessing while other feast your hunger and unrest only enlarges a
Tormenting unquenchable fire a slow burn this is a forest being burned at the thermal level the hidden
Roots a slow process destructive but not so visible agony torture I have seen men crawl in war or fire
Fighting that where all else is lost you will know greater thrills than any other living soul with the
Desperate and those heavy burdened unable to stand a word will flow it puts out fires and gives
The luxurious buoyancy heaviness changed to joy the bouncy laughter every outward blast attack
The enemy launches is within its pages they are repelled overwhelmed by love you suffer unduly
If you don’t hold this fortress this informative book of stratagems that have made everyone a victor
Who has ever found themselves at their wits end no place on earth has a contingency plan though it
Will make the greatest claims all is just empty air when life as it too often does ***** the very air of life
Out we practically are unconscious but this help this rescue is activated by one name it’s not just a book
But the word is a person what a pool you will find what a reflection will engage you beyond your hope
To imagine just say Jesus all will be total peace your heart will know no more sorrow peace will surpass
Sorrow love will disallow the specter that was once a constant it will disappear it will return to the
Darkness from which it came stand in this newness totally free abide by still waters as the good
Sheppard stands by bless you

So the success against the evil one stands like this while he body slammed me the number of
Souls touched has risen to sixty three thousand five thousand while I was in Braidwood so I
Thank the father whose love and concern never wavers by Christmas I am hopeful I will reach
A hundred thousand if I make heaven I don’t want to see you at judgment and hear you say the
Words of that old song he knew I was lost but said nothing to me!!!!!!!!!!

The Aftermath
Please read this to see in my limited way I want to show you your true worth and value and you will see
what the devil never can get.
This is what I would stand and testify in church but what I have to say is lengthy here it can be read or
Not I would first say this to love souls is agonizing it comes with pain and great tears I went to the site
Where they started the church years ago on my Grandma Brown’s front porch as I set there I pleaded
With God to help me make a difference I turned and looked down the old street that held so many
Memories of course Tommy and Elise and Glena are the only ones that remain but I looked farther
That’s when God moved wave after wave of hard rocking sobs that lasted for thirty minutes or more
And after getting back home some will say this is foolish and I’m the first to know we can’t take the devil
On by ourselves but overcome with emotion I turned from the computer and spoke to evil its self that I
Was declaring total war for souls this is what it has cost me so far at the time I had one open wound on
My shin above the ankle two appeared directly above the first one then one to the side and then I knew
What was to come because I have sleep apnea I sleep in a recliner I knew the sores would ring my leg
And they did you can’t lay your leg out on the ledge with open wounds with nerve endings screaming
Then it jumped to my other leg so that was the first volley when I write I get lost time doesn’t exist many
A time daylight would surprise me coming through the window then the onslaught increases I go to the
Hospital I got there in early afternoon they got me in the room at ten thirty but just before a lady comes
In and takes my blood pressure it is close to perfect and then she comes back in five minutes and tells
Me take these three blood pressure pills trusting her I take them well about twelve or one they come
Into and take my blood pressure they had driven it down to seventy over thirty and plus my first
Experience with morphine I was sick and strangely loopy I wasn’t in the bed I couldn’t lay my legs
Down and no one else was in the room only one bed I did set at the end of the bed with it all the way up
In the back I put my head on it and slept comfortably one funny they have it posted call don’t fall I didn’t
Do this on purpose but when I was pulling the drawer out of the stand it came out with a wonderful
Crash Steve the male nurse made record time from down the hall at the nurse station he lunges in the
Room it wasn’t humpty dumpty just the drawer I couldn’t tell if he was relived or ticked off then it was
Their shot back over the net intravenous antibiotics five days needed a doctor from disease control to
Release me then there version of cons scarring kids with tales about prison to keep them messing with
Drugs scared straight now was scared healthy I walked out the same as I walked in I got a bill for thirty
Thousand well at least I didn’t have a bad heart then it was eleven weeks at the wound center this was
Where I met as I lovingly call them my healing angels they finally got all twelve open sores to close then
for the rest of the problem it was six weeks three times a week forty five miles to and from hundred
Degree heat every day you have to pay a hundred and seventy dollars yourself for the compress wrap
Material then you turn around a pay for compress socks that insurance doesn’t cover least the inside is
Pure silver so missed the Olympics but I got silver in fact every six months I will get silver again this is
Kind apropos I asked the compress wrap therapist where Lymph edema comes from and I will spare you
The pictures but the infection and lymph edema pictures even grossed me out but interestingly the
Therapist said an ancient king in Israel had the disease hello devil no cure just mange it from now on
This is the biggest cut of all someone else has to put them on I have always been called a free spirit
Try to take off on your own and what say hey stranger would you put these on my leg it’s like trying to
Put a baby squirrel skin on a full grown body the therapist does speeches internationally with a doctor
From India she asked permission after taking pictures to show the audience I wouldn’t want to see that
Show give the devil his due he is good at being bad I crossed swords with him he rampaged all over me
I didn’t include everything I have gone through and that doesn’t include my poor wife but I am profane
Corrupt undone should I speak to you of such great things as eternal verities matters that involve where
You will spend eternity there is the cleansing of the word the cleansing of changing my corrupt nature to
His by the spirit but know this no one will ever approach or in any way defile the very ones that as the
Finest gems will be placed in his Holy diadem this takes the cleansing of suffering and brokenness with
The heart Broken for souls and the most necessary of all this nature that is too much like the evil one
That’s what he doesn’t get the more he beats up on a person he is doing God’s work of purifying the
Most elemental evil that must be scourged if I touch you it has to be purist intentions of holy deign
We are awash in the lowest dregs dare I say quick sand only holiness can enable us to traverse this
Killing place of a dark and ever turning evil that compounds itself the devil will never lose the majority
On The Broad way that leads to destruction but there are the blessed few that stop and say oh no this is
Not for Me I was his child and I will be again thanks for the load you made me bear serving you devil now Only Love will be the weight I feel it comes by a great price of God Himself and His people

I need to finish the story for convenience I have the original Aftermath to be read first on the bottom
What was not stated in Aftermath was my concern for my writing you can’t write with two legs
Screaming when I got to the hospital my kidneys were of a concern eight alieve three times a day about
Thirty aspirins something like Tylenol didn’t count them no relief my mistake I would bang my ****** leg
Against the wood of the desk that would make it crazy for a few seconds so I finally had to stop for over
Two months well the devil won it seemed when I talked to my cousin I was at eighteen thousand reads a
Little while let me break in here for a second I know I’m talking about numbers it isn’t ego if I come in
Contact with any of you in any setting and I pass you by with just a glance I am your sworn Godless
Enemy I have just joined the cruelest damnable assassins Hell has ever released on the world I know
What awaits the lost even the Apostle Paul worked fervently because he knew the end cost of God’s
Holy severity can I do less I look but I take in all manner caring thoughts but without fail I am led to that
Future now no one even gives the last day a thought I will put this in as an excerpt this is the dream I
Had when I was seventeen or it starts this way your life began in the great head waters at Eden they will
End at the mouth of eternity. I was given a view into the celestial I was just a teenager while a sleep this
Dream came I looked into the heavens and saw two great wheels made of stars the hands of God started
To pull the wheels down as I continued I knew what was occurring God w

Five years to the day your heart attack began.
Thinking of you, my own chest hurt;
I imagined pain in my shoulders,
Felt the weariness of years...
Even shed some tears.

April Fools Day, 2012, long on the shelf,
Returns fresh, cuts like a blunt knife,
Tears my innards; causes me to gasp...
The phone call of your imminent demise
Returns to mind,
Drives the blade to the hasp.

Heavy days, these April Fools'
Not the tom-fool days they used to be.
These are days to shake my core,
To stomp and worry my heart sore,
And ask if I'll live through many more.

I'm shooting people again
And ignoring your texts
Staring into an alternate reality
Trying to forget

I don't even ******* like this game

I took 3 Aspirins
I said I was hurting
A pathetic excuse for trying to numb my thoughts
It didn't work

Though not in pain, I
ache for the times not far past
when I ached for you.

i walked along a strange and darkened place
the citizens of which abused themselves
a man who chewed his lip and ate his face
then laid inside a coffin's wooden shelves

aside his neighbors' corpses and their pets
and sang his song long after all his bones
were eaten clean, aligned in metric sets
beside the graveyard's glistened stones

the humid air, pneumonia in lungs
leaked out from nostrils as i ran away
slow motion through molasses climbing rungs
my fear of here and sanity left frayed

a woman over-hunched, upon my "hi",
like pill-bug touched had curled into herself
her head in **** and hissed her grumbled sigh
accused that I had killed the mighty elf

a girl who stabbed her migraine with a knife,
whose teeth were aspirins, dripped from bleeding gums
and claimed her husband was her lawful wife
was following his trail of stale breadcrumbs

town criers cried for Argentina, sobbed
"Evita was evicted from our hearts!"
then rushed upon me these un-living mobs
to eat my chest in torn and ****** parts

chihuahua babies swarmed my ankles hard
and bit with rubber teeth and razor gums
i fell and crushed them like a house of cards
they barked like children yelping in their slums

i bled to death from gaping hollow wounds
and flowed my soul into a sewer grate
under the darkened place's shining moon
an angry molten lava stream of hate.

(C)2013, Christos Rigakos

the more i stick to a routine
that might leave a few people in a mental
asylum,
    who would not welcome
frustration, doing the same thing,
over and over again,
   i.e. going to a supermarket and buying
whiskey and coke, becoming "too" friendly
with one of the shop assistants,
    knowing her name,
that's she's diabetic:
i'm only in here for the whiskey luv...
it's not that i mind,
  it's about as close i'll ever become
bewildered at life, in general...
      **** Jupiter and a moon-landing,
this bothers me more,
   i don't get the puppy-eyed look
of people embarking on a philosophical
odyssey -
i don't know why i should be prescribed
the Aristotelian: beginning with awe
  type of management of the subject,
or what Nietzsche predicted,
   and is currently known:
the narrative in the west,
alias: talking for the entire human species...
   that ****** uber-schnurrbart
really did see something...
   now i'm experiencing it,
  it's called 2 billions worth of China and India...
i'm actually, sometimes found,
listening to pointless youtube videos...
  i get it: it can get a little bit *****,
my bachelor status isn't exactly orientated
around diapers, although,
as Borat might have said:
that would be nice...
         you know they filmed that movie
in Romania, and not Kazakhstan?
              it's almost a bid sad to be around
poverty, and tribalism,
     can't make a joke out it,
couldn't make a mid-western gothic out
of it either... what with t.v. in your own company....
and yes, oddly enough...
   i have a bed, and i turn on the radio,
i never fall asleep watching the t.v.,
must be a western thing... you dig?
    1950s slang, more comprehensible than
anything i could ever hear from the slang
quarter of language these days...
   the latin quarter? busy...
literally... greece and italy backrupt...
    so, hey man, what's it like not able
to *** around the country doing factotum jobs?
    what's with that over-arching
castration concept of living with your parents?
ah, you know man,
   ****'s on the stove, and i hit a ****** note
with my saxophone...
sound very much like a wet ****...
you know, the **** you **** that almost feels
like ingesting carbonated water through your ****,
what's the word: trembling, frizzy?
    you know: do the motorboat with your lips...
i woke up today and didn't feel like living,
but the noose wasn't exactly an option...
my grandparent's neighbour?
hanged himself on a door-****,
i was visiting them when it happened...
****'s sake! on a door-****?
                      that's really desperate...
    i mean: i wish i was that guy...
but at least in the case of capital punishment:
when it was still active...
   you got the scaffold... and you dropped...
and your neck broke, and it was death in an instant...
   he had a gimp for an executioner...
   so yeah, life's cool,
i drank that wine i made in less than a week,
35 litres of it...
         i woke up today, thought:
give me the downhill... right now!
i thought i'd delay *******...
          built a quasi lego piece of the Eiffel tower,
then decided... i need to brush my teeth...
had a shower...
              then i cooked dinner...
  well... dinner two days in advance...
one sauce was a spaghetti bolognaise...
another a sauce for cottage (i.e. using beef,
not lamb) pie...
made some funky cool poh-ta-toes...
               for yesterday's roast beef,
left uncarved the previous day by being
left to get the thrill man gets
   ******* and jumping out of an ice bath...
so the juices condense, and you can almost
make out the pink flesh on the second day...
and some ménage à trois.... oh sorry...
too much Dell Boy Trotter in me at the moment:
gosh... the memories of watching that twichy
character on screen... mangetout...
and in between i took off the washing from
the washing lines in the garden...
             faked smoking sitting in the february
cold for a while...
   that's 2 meals in advance that is...
      and this really belongs to a creed that states:
if you can read... it's better to read about
something that doesn't have cars blowing up,
or avalanches... or dams bursting in northen
california... well: it's not exactly
   tolstoy's war and peace... but it's something
that allows for sensationalism of the news
and the odd chance of seeing a good movie...
    or i guess: the antidote to a good poem,
is the worst imaginable poem, actually...
saying that: people call poems bad when
they are rigid in using technique...
poetic technique... i prefer a stance on
spare of the moment / spontaneity than something
that might require a hammer of metaphor
and a nail of a pun...
           some call it innovation,
others can't say much because they're myopic...
and lo! yonder the savannah and the buckling
gazelle! right on the chin...
hoofs, no shoelaces, back legs made front legs
into spaghetti... and there... a plum on the chin...
boom... down onto the green...
          another consideration would be
a man in clown make-up crying,
    and a fat-cat billionaire laughing...
    or was that ever, not the case?
  it has to be idiosyncratic, this english "thing"
of calling laughter crying and crying laughter...
     it actually is a very english "thing",
when you get too much psychology,
about how keeping the word ego can complicate
merely saying i...
  and there's no other latin word in sight,
and you then get egoism, and egocentrism...
    i mean: what's up with that basis for a theory,
    evidently it's a case of the word becoming
too uncomfortable, since no one actually says
  ego cogito ergo ego sum... it suddenly drops off
and people who say the above end up only saying
cogito ergo sum... and is that why people
you can actually ascribe so much theory to the ****** word
that might rob people from having a narrative?
    rob the people of a narrative and you return them
into a state of being pulverised by 5 vectors,
the pentagon of the senses,
    and evidently they're unable to narrate their
day-to-day, because they're herded like wild
hysterical animals... even though they are
given the membrane of civilisation...
      it really is a case of somehow not embarking
into keeping the latin and the north barbarian
words... how can you keep up
with ego, i, self? how long will this italian
**** of bulimia and gluttony last?
     you want to keep spewing that *******
for another 100 years?
evidently there is no theory concerning i,
there's merely an ipod...
              sure sure, you could only derive a
theory if you said the unit wasn't i
(because that would be too personal to construct
a narrative) - but had to be
   the reflective ego, and the reflexive self...
i.e. that string of pronoun compounds known
as myself, itself, himself...
   and when given the scalpel... my self
   (which becomes a reflective stance on meditating
the words, rather than a reflexive pronoun
in its original... no huh? but thump!
on yer bike! go!).
   i call them for what they are...
        yes, and my parents are great,
cooked them dinner...
   just about now, when in the 1970s and 1980s...
when the first cold war was happening,
the americans / the west merely wanted
to feed stories into the soviet union,
if every spying was a c.v. joke, it happened
when ian flemming wrote his series...
   what ever happened to a campfire and telling
stories, or when we told horror stories to each other?
  spying: can you just imagine
what the job description would look like?
pst... it's a secret.
       but you know, the americans had this thing
of telling stories to the "enemy",
     false news...
                it's so obvious now, since everyone
seems to be onto it...
     well... it's happening in england, right now,
but it's not exactly an attack scenario...
it's self-mutilation, yes, a masochism...
  you reach a real dead-end when you tell lies
to yourself... and that's what england is sitting
on: an implosion of well... the n.h.s. in crisis...
the housing crisis...
                 you name it...
  i guess there were many people out there,
willing to sacrifice their sanity, by appropriating
the excesses of c.c.t.v. voyeurism,
mingled with the excesses of ***** that paved
the way to this massive delusion of the next
jain boond to swing on a rope into a gorilla
enclosure and beat the **** out of a 300kg gorilla,
Klitschko style! bang! bang boom!
    silverback gorilla on a torture rack!
job done.
       no, i get it... a girl got to kick-box and a girl
got to play footie... cos girl can...
     wait till she don't get a: fragile heart...
like mine, writing odes about
walking past a church when the church bells ring
eleven times, and there's the moon...
  it will become very very pointless writing
about hearts of porcelain in the future,
      but just as nietzsche pointed out:
imagine talking for the entire human race...
yes, i can, or should i say could? because i don't
have to...
   the western narrative is so up it's own
*** talking about species, while the Moldovians
are talking about Ukranians,
the Poles are talking about Germans,
   the Italians... they talk all the time,
so who cares?
                but it's this globalisation vocabulary
that's halting, and making me think:
the Genghis Khan tribe isn't exacrtly in
the news? they must have neighbours!
they must actually know the people living near them...
well...
   on my street... 6 houses in a row of
identical architecture, i.e. built in the 1940s...
   first house, sikhs...
    parents went to the daughter's wedding,
woman brought over some curry,
   i ended up making even better curry...
my cat is left in their care while i'm away
visiting my grandparents,
   i get this panic attack premonition
  that i need to be back home when i'm away...
   i come back home, the cat is dead...
   we rarely speak these days...
  he was on aspirins, and yes, cats take a ******
long time to die from kidney failure...
ever watch a cat ****? cats take a shorter amount
of time to take a **** than ****...
   watching a cat **** into the toilet it like
watching a person drinking a melchizedek sized
wine bottle...
   a cat could be a man
   as a man taking a **** as in the cat taking a ****
and reading a newspaper...
     seems we're parallel creatures,
  i exfoliate and massage my **** muscles
by taking extra time with them stretched open
once the bombs away passes...
    and i'm just sitting there:
  to vank?! or not to vank? or what i call:
the 3 in 1.
        well, you can't exactly think about
lighting scented candles and doing it in bed,
can you?
      you'd have to be a woman to do that,
and invest in a good ***** replica
of a man that would only tell her:
honey... tree bears.
    do i sometimes think about putting it into
a moist couch-like environment?
   yeah... but i guess ******* is a bit like
doing ****... **** the bone and those muscles man!
   ****? yeah... never did it...
biblical regulations...
              about the same time when
heterosexuals take over from the once famed
taboo provocateurs in the homosexual department...
haven't seen a worthwhile Oscar Wilde come from
that scene for years... maybe i wasn't looking,
ah yes, they're too busy being "normal" and starting
families... funs over... and so is the art.
no wait, all i wanted to say is that
what nietzsche said in the 19th century,
  the anglophone world is trapped in it's own
end product of globalisation, and this whole:
speaking for the entirety of humanity doesn't have
and local thrill to it, no local accent,
      it's scary, to be the only language willing
to speak for the entire human race,
  and, when travelling to other places in the world
realising that you were pretty much:
not thinking, and merely talking to your self...
    i have that taste for foreign cultures...
   you can hardly hear an existential argument
in the same vein as you might hear in england...
     basically... i just think that english is
over-streched...
     in the case of russian, it's stretched:
but contained with interlocking tribes of people...
if i want to hear english sprechen in the pacific
it's a 12 hour flight to australia...
               i can't imagine talking for
the entire human race... and given this
seemingly ancient german, i'm imagining it
as the counter-argument of the current narrative,
because i can't even state that i'm in awe of it,
but more or less apprehensive about it...
given the numbers... the total anglophone world
doesn't even number that of China...
and you know, infiltrating that place with
the complexity of the encoded sounds that are
later echoed back as Xin Ping...
    who lived in Beijing...
            you really have to address either silent,
or talking about something so complicated,
that it would equal the Chinese encoding system...
  otherwise it's falling through the holes...
oh look... q r o p a d b g...
  the best we can do is make silence complicated,
since what i'm hearing: isn't exactly complicated...
on youtube most noteworthy...
   oh right, almost forgot...
the other neighbours on my 6 house line
are a Jewish family... well... sorta...
   just a literal mad-house... we get on fine...
and after that: 3 houses, natives, so yeah, english...
all of them broken families...
   the neighbours next to mine are:
woman in her late 40s... man in his early 50s...
about to have a child...
       after that it's single mother and son,
and after that divorcee and... like... dunno...
     they thought the indians were savages
moving across the pond...
              i'm sitting here having a right old laugh...
and it's a malicious laugh for the laugh in itself...
        last time i remembered
  taking a mouse from the mouth of my cat
after he caught it, and then releasing the mouse
  into my neighbour's garden...
   or a fly... crawling over my forehead
     while i took a selfie to exfoliate my face
like that of an acne riddled moon.

So i read a book
Can you guess the name?
V for Vendetta
This title's to blame
For this anarchic writing
In my head, not the wall
I'd just like to know,
How far, as humans we can fall
Not much from reality
I was stolen by fate
Writing of mortality
Making my head ache
Taking drugs as aspirins
Figuring out what living means
Stolen by Fate and triggered by time
It's ****** up like a pink truck and slithering into my sick mind
A painted red soul ran afoul of God forbid individuality
Only to have your mind crushed by reality
No im not going in
I refuse to think of timing and pain
Left home as a better writer to leave the game
Putting guns to my head
Thinking im mislead
Being a fool and too selfish
To realise im sane
Remember remember
The fifth of November
The day the voices began to plot
I see know reason why high
Mental treason should ever be forgot
So now walk with me
Ill make you all see
That circles are redder than triangles
As the sea of memories tangles

They gathered
in skinny packs,
in laughing circles
around him.

He stitched their cuts,
bound their wounds,

gave them,
like some OD Santa,

chocolate bars,
antibiotics,
aspirins and
C-Rations.

They laughed louder,
begging for more,
shrieking and calling him
Doc-san #1.

This phony comedy
made him feel better,
feel human,
even though he knew
at night their parents
would do their best
to take his life.

Decades on,
he knows behind those grins
they must have hated him:
his height, his food,
his round eyes
and the doom
he had brought their world
that no trinkets
could ever allay.

Now, there is nothing to do
but remember and be sorry.

   mce

I came home from work late that day.
I wanted to get under the covers and slip away.
I took my shower, then had a bite to eat
Took some aspirins, then rubbed my feet.
I climbed into bed then closed my eyes
Then into a hypnotic trance I did fly.

I found myself floating high in the air
All my worries seemed to disappear.
I seen myself back at heavens gate
Asking ST. PETER if I was late.

I saw the guardian angels with their
Wings enclosed in their backs
Waiting for the ones who had passed away
Leading them to their judgment day.

I saw the cherubs frolicking and laughing
With the creatures of the land
While children with the sea animals
playing in the sand.

I saw the bright lights floating in the air
Paved roads all crystal clear.
I saw all the birds in flight
Children screaming with delight.
MAN OH MAN ! WHAT A BEAUTIFUL SIGHT

There were waterfalls, rivers, and streams
    What a fantastic scene.
There is never any darkness in the heavens above
For the lights around us , come from our love.
Every heart, every soul radiating its own light
And colors which emit a glow
And of this I did not know.
The path, the road that led to my LORD, my KING
Was paved with gold, with diamonds
with emeralds and rings.
All the riches in the world laying at my feet
But none of that was of interest to me.
I just wanted to see the face of my KING.

I looked at his face and a sense of exhilaration
came over me, and I knew that my soul was free.
I heard myself screaming in my bed.
MY LORD. MY GOD, take me away
For with you is where I want to stay.

The wrinkles on her brow are essay lines she has worked years to write. The twitch that turns the corners of her mouth up when she's winning comes from her father, says her mother. Her father's daughter is not a title she wears proudly. Refuses his name, runs from it like the plague. She feels like a refugee in her own home. Her home is war torn and divided. And the only way out is a piece of paper that determines the rest of her life. Her head and her heart have always been two deciding factors but she has always chosen to ignore the heart. In a body ruled by logic, emotions have no place, no room to speak. Wrapped up in old library books and hours of sleepless nights, her mind is weary of the journey ahead. It is tired of working and wants to rest but she won't stop until the paper is in her hand. Ink stains her calloused fingertips and her tongue is drenched in coffee and aspirins. When she looks the mirror she is nothing more than a machine. She sees the gears behind her eyes; cranking and spinning. Her actions are calculated quick figured out by the ticks and wurs in her head.
//Click click click//
She stops. A voice calls her name from beyond her window, small rocks tap the glass. Her breathing slowing, and her cheeks redder than before. The gears shift, begin to rust and fall away as her heart rate increases. When he finds his way up to her bedroom, she'll say
"You are more of a mechanic than you thought."
"I am more human than I ever believed I was."

I hath fall’n in love with death, again;
And those sirens in silence! Pain;
A rugged dose of fevers, rise;
All those healings are but lies.

I hath said to my doctors, too sick;
My skin is throwing, old and weak;
To chew and *****, every week;
To cast the health I should not seek.

I hath returned my sight, and see;
Hard of sayings, hard of tone,
Painlessly, being death as I can be,
To rot and vanish, all alone.

I hath veneered my light, and shut;
Drawn a satin cross across my heart,
No more loneliness, then, to see,
The Earth is being brought to me.

The fatal chaos, dances out there;
I was there about, for long hours,
But to be misconstrued as unfair,
To be at dawn, crushed and sour.

The fatal course, lingers up there;
I was not listened to, my poems,
But the weakest of my glooms,
None came to my words, nor chair.

The horrid case, remains still;
Matters no more that I am ill,
The poet, that the world shunned,
Ever on the move, the stunned.

The horrid fate, regrets still;
But to change, souls never will;
Perhaps, ‘tis only within this tomb,
Youth’s chained desires shall find a home.

The white casket, and cardboard box;
That speak of the love one knew not of;
And the tired stories that were locked,
And the paled faces feeling not enough.

The doomed gown, glowing in death;
Comes in on me as it takes my breath,
And puts my coffin atop its shade,
To forgive, and love that is too late.

And thus said, the nurses;
“We are a threat to flavoured pains,”
“We are Relief to unsaid plains,”
“We are belief to a thousand words.”

And thus said, the doctors;
“We are yet the best to the worst,”
“We are the poems to every symptom,”
“We hold the future of your poems.”

And thus said, the surgeons;
“We are those cancerous’ nightmare,”
“We have not tears in our hairs,”
“We melt the cold, we freeze the burns.”

And thus told me, the syringes;
“We are right behind thy windowsill,”
“We are a comfort to all those ill,”
“We are ever there in the morning.”

And thus sang, the medicine;
“We are the minuet of healing,”
“We are the health in singing,”
“We are what the living hath been.”

And thus bragged, the aspirins;
“We are the arms of aspiration,”
“We are the breathing’s best hints,”
“We are but delightful potions.”

And thus boasted, the drugs;
“We are cold honey to your lungs,”
“We are solemnity and hugs,”
“We are thy steadfastness, and rungs.”

Who lives to hear my shrieking songs;
And roam those scientific melodies,
But my healing is not on those lists;
I cannot so be here, for long.

Who lives to hear my ragged breath;
Insanely ill, flailing like death,
A being among the worst of charms,
The cruelest of evils, and harms.

Who moves to swallow, these tablets;
At the very sign of my last breath,
And the final shots, plain and rough;
That even they shan’t have enough.

Who moves to yield, to those tests;
The sightings that bring unrest,
The gurgling sounds that nest,
The writhing noises, in my chest.

Who wants to heal still, and erase;
The death from whom they shall run,
Who still likes to seek their face,
Dancing to youth, and mimicked fun.

Who wants to heal still, and come back;
To the gruesome crowds’ drawbacks,
To fall in laughter and get drawn,
To be engaged, but to be alone.

Who wants to heal me, and hold all;
The wishes I erased, that fall,
To be lone again, like an unborn,
To be at night, with no noise like morns.

Who wants to heal me, and bewitch;
The last of my nerves glide and twitch,
To be back in sorrow, and tomorrow,
To be the cries thou want not to know.

Who is to write to me, or read me;
The unwritten poems I could not see,
To be back in love and get torn,
To be the one birth not yet born.

Who is to write to me, to belie;
To pretend their coarse roads shan’t lie,
To pretend that there is no truth,
To pretend that age is at youth.

Who is to lie by me, to beget;
To pretend we are not rife in regrets,
To pretend all is fine, and shred—
Tears into rained clouds of fate.

Who is to lie by me, that I shall see;
This intoxicated wrath leave me,
Leaving me to the dead, thou hear,
In one minute then, I shan’t be here.

Who is to love like me, o my dear;
All I am hearing is this pain that hurts,
And all that rounds is cross and fear,
Like desperate chords, unheard.

Who is to love like thee, but not;
Thou hath cut my small story short,
And retreated like ill apparatus,
By the midnight sun, I cursed.

Who is to live like me, but weird;
Hark, I hath not any feeble heir,
To pace with the course of a poet,
To think with age, but see in youth.

Who is to live like thee, this spell;
Thou hath bound me to hell,
And while I die all shall look gray,
With my washed tears and sins of today.

Who is to curse like me, but see;
None that heard was capable of talk,
I saw none, but a sweet thee;
But that not lingered, after the walk.

Who is to curse like thee, o believe;
Who shall taste the sand of regrets,
The forgiveness I cannot yet give,
The chastity tainted with risked fate.

Who is to write like me, about;
I hath not spoken up, out loud,
When all die, souls shall behold;
That they are heat, and no longer my cold.

Who is to write like thee, around;
Where can my missing poem be found,
All I can hear is this close to my heart—
‘Tis screaming in pain, dying hard.

Awakening at 06:30.
Make the bed in a hurry, wash Your face.
Get ready.
You are at work at 07:30.
It's not a great job, but you don't have another.
Try not to be late.
Insert the card, sign yourself in book of arrivals.
Say “hallo” to colleagues.
When You arrive, drink your coffee.
Struggle like others, you're not the only slave.
Pay attention for  a lunch break. Eat something.
Manage out for a couple of aspirins.
**** it up. They own You till  15:30.
Have lunch. Take a bath.
Play up your favorite video game.
Empty up, kick *** of some bad guys.
Reply to a text message from your girlfriend.
Make some plans for a weekend.
Not every weekend is going to be free.
Do not neglect art.
Work on the story.
Write down a few sentences.
Lie down a bit.
Close your eyes. Open them.
Read.
A friend have borrowed You a book.
Take some bite to eat.
At 21:05 play some movie.
Betty Blue, or Barton Fink.
At 23:40 You are already soundly asleep.
You made it…?
Dream.

That bug took her by surprise,
knocked her down in the first round,
it pasted her mouth shut.

She didn't make a sound for days,
the fever took her out,
she was poppin' aspirins.

Normally,
I'd tell her
to bite the bullet,
take a shot of whiskey
& call me in the morning.

But I'd never wish
the devil on her tongue.

So tonight,
I'm dreamin' of
black tea and roses
for that sweet baby.

I'm on the brink of extinction
every pound , penny and note
wasted on cigarettes.
this infatuation is killing me
you're all killing me.

Mum , the counsellor noted
that  I  took ten aspirins a week after he left me.
That's why my nose was bleeding
like a pure red rose in the morning.  

All that I ever wanted was someone to hold me
someone who'd always care , I guess i'm just awful
committing unlawful activities
at a short grimly modern age of fifteen.

Life is so short , I feel like I've lived it all already.
I "give out" too easy as I act cute
when i'm really just ******.
I never get what i want ,
and i make out it's every ones fault.

Meeting people who I hadn't known could be so mean,
it still leaves me in awe remembering we're only teens.
when i give it my best..you'll break me down and ask for less.

The last 4 months have been hell,
I keep backtracking , making sure what really made you yell.
Developing into my current state took a lot out of me.
I used to be so toxic free and happy.

As of now I'm on the brink of extinction.
drowning sorrows with drink,
embracing the intoxication.

I will shake and still whisper I love you
because without him up until now
i have felt nothing.

Please god, give me something.

meanwhile,

he lay still, weeping on his bed
never his option to want to have as his fate
never his option to have a face like that,
never his option to want to be laughed at.

little did they know how much he has suffered
how the bruises were from his father
how he looked up at him as a hero
how his mother used to hug him, now she's no more .

if only they would try and ask him about these things
then life would've been better for him
then he won't be lying in bed weeping
after taking a mouthful of aspirins.

so now he lay still on his bed
not weeping, not breathing, not sad but he was glad
that he made everyone else's life better
by ending his much more sooner.

You taste like salt
And the brokenness of calm
An unease of the heart
Eyes that close and see
The formation of a new world
A new day different from the day you lived
Of a life merged into mundane days
To a start that has no beginning
Away from the wilderness of pain
Hurtling through time and space
A time to where you look at the sky once again
And the beams of the sun are not just a taunting harsh glare in your face
No more fumbling for aspirins in the cabinet
That no longer exists

Every time I open my mouth to
Response to idiotic people my language change
It was so early in the morning,
And believe me, I wasn’t in the mood

For female nonsenses: one drops on her knee
And raise her hand to the ceiling, open her mouth
And let out a bunch of nonsense. The other whispered
“God protect me from these evil people,

I look at my co-worker, and he looked at me
Such juvenile malarkey, so early in the morning:
“He said” with a loud Sigh!!!!

I lost another one, it gone, it no longer moves,
What, whom and where, and why!  The baby!
My eyes drop to her knees with such unspoken grief,

I was told that’s where they go for safety:
It had to be some conspiracy:  five small angels
In five years, how does she control those tears?

At the moment, I need a glass of water and two aspirins;
She looks so emotionless and calm: the same exact composer
Like my friend had after the death of her son:

I on the other hand saw myself standing on the edge
Looking down into the darkness of a bottomless pit

Each night, when I go to sleep, I die. And the next morning, when I wake up, I am reborn.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

** If you gave someone your heart and they died,
did they take it with them?
Did you spend the rest of forever with a hole inside you that couldn't be filled?”
― Jodi Picoult,

You grabbed me by the hair and led me out behind the woodshed. In the morning, you took in my purple eye, my lacerated arms, and my winced movement, and asked what had happened to me.

Your storm rolled in last night and caught me in its vortex. In the morning, you took in the downed tree limbs, the upturned picnic table, and the broken glass, and started playing in the standing water.

Your shadow threw a party last night and kept me up until 2 am. In the morning, you took in my slow walk to the shower, my two aspirins, and my dry toast, and asked if I wanted to go for a run.

No, I don’t want to put on my Nikes right now, no, I don’t want to splash in the puddles with you, and yes, I do know what happened to me.

clear gloss lipstick, sweet and see through
like you are, like you could be
like being in that 99 cent store for the first time all over again
and you can smell sour watermelon and plastic
all about the glitter packaging and all the different flavors could be the paths you decide to take one day
in seafoam t-shirts and tattered sneakers that bite at your heel
until it's the color of pink taffy but when you touch it something
bursts and you decide that skin is your favorite ***** afterall
you pass by the glitter and the fake flowers but waste your cents
instead in aspirins for your mother
but you steal those chips and that drink too and call it benevolence that you don't get caught
and you never will because you get what you give

17 ****** trials later, my mind is clear. Oh, the terrible pain that 70 aspirins can't relieve! I hate aspirin salesmen! They'll promise you anything to sell aspirins! President Harry Truman was a great lover, but now he's dead. [30 miles of Earthen terrain = 600' of curvature and yet the Earth doesn't curve.]

Oh, the terrible pain that 70 aspirins can't relieve!
I hate aspirin salesmen!
They'll promise you anything to sell aspirins!