you're turning me into lights, i'm glowing in the dark
you put them inside of my eyes and then you called them stars
you used them to make constellations, i am so very complacent
'cause i just need your radiation, and i'm so caught up in this rotation
oh, gravitational pull, your laughter's such a moon when it's full
your intergalactic soul is home here,
you're well-known here, and i've got no fears, no not yet

when life gets a lot more than a little bit heavy,
i could fly to the moon, bring back the zero gravity,
and everyone's so serious and grave,
buried six feet under pain.
but i assure you, you will always have me

you're turning me into lights, i'm glowing in the dark
you put them inside of my eyes and then you called them stars
you used them to make constellations, i am so very complacent
'cause i just need your radiation, and i'm so caught up in this rotation
oh, gravitational pull, your laughter's such a moon when it's full
your intergalactic soul is home here,
you're well-known here, and i've got no fears, no not yet

when life seems to fade into a greyish breeze,
i could fly into space, bring you the colours of the galaxies
and everyone's gone so numb
ten degree burns, and black hole suns.
but the look on your face has been dusted by pixies.

you're turning me into lights, i'm glowing in the dark
you put them inside of my eyes and then you called them stars
you used them to make constellations, i am so very complacent
'cause i just need your radiation, and i'm so caught up in this rotation
oh, gravitational pull, your laughter's such a moon when it's full
your intergalactic soul is home here,
you're well-known here, and i've got no fears, no not yet

when life's like a cloud of rain, no silver linings,
and you feel like you down pain without even trying,
and everything's gone so dark,
come on, let us make a spark.
our souls can mingle in the air we'll be flying.

you're turning me into lights, i'm glowing in the dark
you put them inside of my eyes and then you called them stars
you used them to make constellations, i am so very complacent
'cause i just need your radiation, and i'm so caught up in this rotation
oh, gravitational pull, your laughter's such a moon when it's full
your intergalactic soul is home here,
you're well-known here, and i've got no fears, no not yet

Those poor, misunderstood teachers,
Counting down days till retirement.
Like grunts in The Nam,
Waiting for a reprieve like it was a
Papal dispensation or a Presidential pardon, or
Last minute stay of execution from the Governor.
Teachers: dying a slow death
On the same lame stage day after day,
Performing amateur comedy,
Hosting their very own Karaoke Club;
Filling barely enough seats in the joint
To crack their daily job satisfaction nut.
The kids who do show up for class are too bored,
Or too apathetic to stay awake,
Heckle you or walk out.
Most teachers hate their jobs.
So many teachers, so many miserable mooks
Wishing they had some other job, any other job,
Like plumber or astronaut,
Mortgage broker or CIA assassin,
The last two with similar personality & career profiles
On The Myers Briggs Type Indicator MBTI® Step I Interpretive Report. Anything’s got to be better than being
Trapped in a 40 by 40 foot box all day,
Stuck in some Dungeons & Dragons classroom
All day with 40 chaotic, evil, teenage
Gary Gygax-ed kids, used to entertainment
Of higher quality and sparkle.
The cardinal sin of teaching:  Thou shalt not be boring!

Teachers complain constantly about how bad the money is,
Having to work almost 185 days a year,
Whining about only getting 8 weeks off in the summer &
Every freaking holiday on earth known to man.
Snap out of it: you get paid what may be one of
The last livable, middle class salaries in America,
Not to mention health and defined retirement benefits, &
You’re still kvetching.
Meanwhile, Good Teachers—
Those deliriously happy few,
That small rare band of subversives,
Maybe you can count them on one hand &
Still feel lucky you had that many—
I’m talking about the good teachers,
Who view teaching as an art form,
Atypical teachers with both brains and heart.
These are the teachers that make the difference.
These are the vital early role models we need
To encounter when we first leave home as toddlers.

I can still hear you, Mr. Feeny:
“I want you to go home this afternoon and open a book! I don’t care what you had otherwise planned, I order you, nay, I command you. Go home and open a book.”
Books are sine qua non.
Good teachers start out by reading a lot of books—
That’s the brain stuff.
It is life lessons of the heart, however,
That really counts,
Stuff they’ve learned the hard way,
The pain they’ve felt personally,
Particularly while young themselves.
That’s where the heart comes from.
And for **** sure they never read about it
In whatever passes for textbooks in
Most graduate schools of education,
Largely lame crap masquerading as academic rigor
In the diploma mills serving the education profession these days.
I taught in 15 high schools across the American southwest &
I’ve known some really breathtakingly dumb,
Essentially illiterate teachers.
Even at the highest institutions of higher learning,
The average educator of teachers is
Rarely known for intellectualism.
With the possible exception of Diane Ravitch,
Jonathan Kozol, Paulo “The Brazilian” Freire--&
Maybe that Marxist hold-out, Eric “Rico” Gutstein--
Instructional staff at most university
Graduate Schools of Education are not
Taken seriously by the rest of the academic faculty.
What was your source of heart, Mr.Kotter?
I can assure you, it was not something you
Picked up at a teacher in-service, Gabe, &
Welcome back, by the way.

If you remember one thing about
Teacher licensing, remember this:
Albert Einstein, at the height of his fame &
Intellectual prowess, could not walk in
Off the street from out-of-state, or
Anywhere else in the universe, &
Qualify for a secondary single subject
Preliminary license to teach physics.
Not in any public high school classroom in
California or in the state of New Mexico.
He simply lacked the requisite education,
Hadn’t taken the plenitude of pedagogic courses,
Expensive college credits in such vital subjects as:
Methods of Teaching Science for Dummies;
Educational Technology for Idiots;
Band Aids & First Aid;
Tae Kwan Do for the Inner City;
Teaching & Testing the Test Takers;
Touchy-Feely 101, 201 & 301;
Understanding Special Kids:
Gifted Kids, Not-so Gifted Kids,
Kids with Attitude & Kids with ADD;
Curriculum Simulacrum;
ELL/Cross-Cultural Learning;
Self-Esteem for the Worthless; &
Last but not least, Foundations of Education:
Sarcasm & Humiliation for Fun & Profit.
And I didn’t even mention taking & passing
That sublimely subtle CBEST or NMTA/NES,
Teacher licensure tests,
Essentially 8th Grade literacy exams
Quite a few applicants take 3 or 4 times
Before earning a passing score.

Blame society?
Blame the parents?
Blame the politicians?
No, teachers:
Blame yourselves.

“Nullus enim locus sine genio est.”

  Servius.

“La musique,” says Marmontel, in those “Contes
Moraux” which in all our translations we have insisted upon
calling “Moral Tales,” as if in mockery of their
spirit—”la musique est le seul des talens qui
jouisse de lui-meme: tous les autres veulent des
temoins.” He here confounds the pleasure derivable from
sweet sounds with the capacity for creating them. No more
than any other talent, is that for music susceptible
of complete enjoyment where there is no second party to
appreciate its exercise; and it is only in common with other
talents that it produces effects which may be fully
enjoyed in solitude. The idea which the raconteur has
either failed to entertain clearly, or has sacrificed in its
expression to his national love of point, is
doubtless the very tenable one that the higher order of
music is the most thoroughly estimated when we are
exclusively alone. The proposition in this form will be
admitted at once by those who love the lyre for its own sake
and for its spiritual uses. But there is one pleasure still
within the reach of fallen mortality, and perhaps only one,
which owes even more than does music to the accessory
sentiment of seclusion. I mean the happiness experienced in
the contemplation of natural scenery. In truth, the man who
would behold aright the glory of God upon earth must in
solitude behold that glory. To me at least the presence, not
of human life only, but of life, in any other form than that
of the green things which grow upon the soil and are
voiceless, is a stain upon the landscape, is at war with the
genius of the scene. I love, indeed, to regard the dark
valleys, and the gray rocks, and the waters that silently
smile, and the forests that sigh in uneasy slumbers, and the
proud watchful mountains that look down upon all,—I
love to regard these as themselves but the colossal members
of one vast animate and sentient whole—a whole whose
form (that of the sphere) is the most perfect and most
inclusive of all; whose path is among associate planets;
whose meek handmaiden is the moon; whose mediate sovereign
is the sun; whose life is eternity; whose thought is that of
a god; whose enjoyment is knowledge; whose destinies are
lost in immensity; whose cognizance of ourselves is akin
with our own cognizance of the animalculae which
infest the brain, a being which we in consequence regard as
purely inanimate and material, much in the same manner as
these animalculae must thus regard us.

Our telescopes and our mathematical investigations assure us
on every hand, notwithstanding the cant of the more ignorant
of the priesthood, that space, and therefore that bulk, is
an important consideration in the eyes of the Almighty. The
cycles in which the stars move are those best adapted for
the evolution, without collision, of the greatest possible
number of bodies. The forms of those bodies are accurately
such as within a given surface to include the greatest
possible amount of matter; while the surfaces themselves are
so disposed as to accommodate a denser population than could
be accommodated on the same surfaces otherwise arranged. Nor
is it any argument against bulk being an object with God
that space itself is infinite; for there may be an infinity
of matter to fill it; and since we see clearly that the
endowment of matter with vitality is a principle—
indeed, as far as our judgments extend, the leading
principle in the operations of Deity, it is scarcely logical
to imagine it confined to the regions of the minute, where
we daily trace it, and not extending to those of the august.
As we find cycle within cycle without end, yet all revolving
around one far-distant centre which is the Godhead, may we
not analogically suppose, in the same manner, life within
life, the less within the greater, and all within the Spirit
Divine? In short, we are madly erring through self-esteem in
believing man, in either his temporal or future destinies,
to be of more moment in the universe than that vast “clod of
the valley” which he tills and contemns, and to which he
denies a soul, for no more profound reason than that he does
not behold it in operation.

These fancies, and such as these, have always given to my
meditations among the mountains and the forests, by the
rivers and the ocean, a tinge of what the every-day world
would not fail to term the fantastic. My wanderings amid
such scenes have been many and far-searching, and often
solitary; and the interest with which I have strayed through
many a dim deep valley, or gazed into the reflected heaven
of many a bright lake, has been an interest greatly deepened
by the thought that I have strayed and gazed alone.
What flippant Frenchman was it who said, in allusion to the
well known work of Zimmermann, that “la solitude est une
belle chose; mais il faut quelqu’un pour vous dire que la
solitude est une belle chose”? The epigram cannot be
gainsaid; but the necessity is a thing that does not exist.

It was during one of my lonely journeyings, amid a far
distant region of mountain locked within mountain, and sad
rivers and melancholy tarns writhing or sleeping within all,
that I chanced upon a certain rivulet and island. I came
upon them suddenly in the leafy June, and threw myself upon
the turf beneath the branches of an unknown odorous shrub,
that I might doze as I contemplated the scene. I felt that
thus only should I look upon it, such was the character of
phantasm which it wore.

On all sides, save to the west where the sun was about
sinking, arose the verdant walls of the forest. The little
river which turned sharply in its course, and was thus
immediately lost to sight, seemed to have no exit from its
prison, but to be absorbed by the deep green foliage of the
trees to the east; while in the opposite quarter (so it
appeared to me as I lay at length and glanced upward) there
poured down noiselessly and continuously into the valley a
rich golden and crimson waterfall from the sunset fountains
of the sky.

About midway in the short vista which my dreamy vision took
in, one small circular island, profusely verdured, reposed
upon the ***** of the stream.

So blended bank and shadow there, That each seemed pendulous
in air—

so mirror-like was the glassy water, that it was scarcely
possible to say at what point upon the ***** of the emerald
turf its crystal dominion began. My position enabled me to
include in a single view both the eastern and western
extremities of the islet, and I observed a singularly-marked
difference in their aspects. The latter was all one radiant
harem of garden beauties. It glowed and blushed beneath the
eye of the slant sunlight, and fairly laughed with flowers.
The grass was short, springy, sweet-scented, and Asphodel-
interspersed. The trees were lithe, mirthful, *****, bright,
slender, and graceful, of eastern figure and foliage, with
bark smooth, glossy, and parti-colored. There seemed a deep
sense of life and joy about all, and although no airs blew
from out the heavens, yet everything had motion through the
gentle sweepings to and fro of innumerable butterflies, that
might have been mistaken for tulips with wings.

The other or eastern end of the isle was whelmed in the
blackest shade. A sombre, yet beautiful and peaceful gloom,
here pervaded all things. The trees were dark in color and
mournful in form and attitude— wreathing themselves
into sad, solemn, and spectral shapes, that conveyed ideas
of mortal sorrow and untimely death. The grass wore the deep
tint of the cypress, and the heads of its blades hung
droopingly, and hither and thither among it were many small
unsightly hillocks, low and narrow, and not very long, that
had the aspect of graves, but were not, although over and
all about them the rue and the rosemary clambered. The
shades of the trees fell heavily upon the water, and seemed
to bury itself therein, impregnating the depths of the
element with darkness. I fancied that each shadow, as the
sun descended lower and lower, separated itself sullenly
from the trunk that gave it birth, and thus became absorbed
by the stream, while other shadows issued momently from the
trees, taking the place of their predecessors thus entombed.

This idea having once seized upon my fancy greatly excited
it, and I lost myself forthwith in reverie. “If ever island
were enchanted,” said I to myself, “this is it. This is the
haunt of the few gentle Fays who remain from the wreck of
the race. Are these green tombs theirs?—or do they
yield up their sweet lives as mankind yield up their own? In
dying, do they not rather waste away mournfully, rendering
unto God little by little their existence, as these trees
render up shadow after shadow, exhausting their substance
unto dissolution? What the wasting tree is to the water that
imbibes its shade, growing thus blacker by what it preys
upon, may not the life of the Fay be to the death which
engulfs it?”

As I thus mused, with half-shut eyes, while the sun sank
rapidly to rest, and eddying currents careered round and
round the island, bearing upon their ***** large dazzling
white flakes of the bark of the sycamore, flakes which, in
their multiform positions upon the water, a quick
imagination might have converted into anything it pleased;
while I thus mused, it appeared to me that the form of one
of those very Fays about whom I had been pondering, made its
way slowly into the darkness from out the light at the
western end of the island. She stood ***** in a singularly
fragile canoe, and urged it with the mere phantom of an oar.
While within the influence of the lingering sunbeams, her
attitude seemed indicative of joy, but sorrow deformed it as
she passed within the shade. Slowly she glided along, and at
length rounded the islet and re-entered the region of light.
“The revolution which has just been made by the Fay,”
continued I musingly, “is the cycle of the brief year of her
life. She has floated through her winter and through her
summer. She is a year nearer unto death: for I did not fail
to see that as she came into the shade, her shadow fell from
her, and was swallowed up in the dark water, making its
blackness more black.”

And again the boat appeared and the Fay, but about the
attitude of the latter there was more of care and
uncertainty and less of elastic joy. She floated again from
out the light and into the gloom (which deepened momently),
and again her shadow fell from her into the ebony water, and
became absorbed into its blackness. And again and again she
made the circuit of the island (while the sun rushed down to
his slumbers), and at each issuing into the light there was
more sorrow about her person, while it grew feebler and far
fainter and more indistinct, and at each passage into the
gloom there fell from her a darker shade, which became
whelmed in a shadow more black. But at length, when the sun
had utterly departed, the Fay, now the mere ghost of her
former self, went disconsolately with her boat into the
region of the ebony flood, and that she issued thence at all
I cannot say, for darkness fell over all things, and I
beheld her magical figure no more.

I see through that deathly daze of yours.
I see the opportunity,
The regret, the heartache, the gratefulness.

You told me that you weren't sure,
If you are happy you get another chance,
Or sorrow-filled because it isn't over.

Those words broke my heart.
So I left this whitewashed room,
Of demonic devices,
And went to my car.

I wasn't sure what I was doing,
So I sparked this cigarette,
Put it to my lips,
And let everything go.

I looked crazy, I could tell.
Punching my steering wheel,
Crying like you were in a meeting,
With the coroner.

I opened my glove box,
Saw my antidote,
And swallowed.

I dried my sorrows,
Picked up my hope,
Locked my insanity in my car,
And slapped this smile back upon my face.

I couldn't let you see me like this.
I couldn't let you see how upset I am,
Not with you, but with your decision.
You have enough on your mind.

I return back to Hope's deathbed,
Give her a smile to assure her I am fine,
And crawl into the bed next to her.

Back to reality, I sink.
Only to be stolen from sobriety.
It's easier this way.
I feel nothing.
I'm numb.

Numb as usual.
But this time, body matches soul.
And not another tear shall be shed,
For the worst is over...

And for us all,
Recovery commences.

beginnings
i see how we are.
We are cute.
We are "perfect" as everyone tells us.
But i see one problem.
i don't know how to love You.

i thought it would be easy:
after all my trials and tears,
i figured that i could love someone
if they loved me too.
Now i find that is not the case.
Now i find that even now i am still broken,
trying to keep from bleeding into Your own wounds.
Do i walk around on tiptoes trying to please You?
Do i hold my tongue while You hold me?
Maybe that is how i comfort You-
by forsaking my own.
Maybe i will grow to be this girl.
Maybe comfort is something that comes with the passing of time.
Time.
It always comes back to that.

After all,
i had my doubts.
God knows they were plentiful.
But now i look at You as if he stars aligned in Your eyes.
Your brown eyes.
How strange for me to like someone without eyes that remind me of water.
Water always brought me comfort as well as fear.
Maybe that is why i am always so drawn to them.
But now, as Your hands mesh with mine,
the world meshes with understanding.
Things seem...
okay.
That hasn't happened in oh so long.
i may have had spurts of happiness.
A period of contentment here and there.
Okay is a much different feeling.
But beyond this touch, how do i comfort You?
Do i touch the deepest parts of Your consciousness?
Will i ever touch Your unconsciousness?

i see our story.
i can picture it enveloping
days
or weeks
or months
of our lives.
And maybe that just makes me a silly schoolgirl.
But you know what?
This time,
i don't care.
Hurt me.
End up hating me.
Break me like i've been broken before.
But right now,
hold me like i am everything you have ever wanted
because i am starting to think
that you are everything i need.
i've given You more than anyone has ever had from me.
Do not make me regret it,
that is my one request.
i've never been happier.
Please don't ruin that for me.
Continue to treat me like a princess because as cliché as it is,
it's a worthwhile surprise.

The way i've fallen for You-
oh it's a mystery.
i lose all reminiscence of self-control with i’m with You.
i never expected the happiness that accompanies Your name.
i wasn't aware that i had the option
to be happy;
to heal;
to love.
But that's what i have now.
This is my life.
Who would have thought i could be this content?
This okay?
When i look at You i see someone i could fall in love with.
But that terrifies me.
Please don’t make me fall in love with you.
We're both broken,
but maybe we can temporarily heal each other.

i never thought i would mean
anything
to
anyone.
Why would i?
i am nothing special:
an average girl with impossible dreams.
i didn't expect You to treat me so wonderfully.
i didn't think i deserved that,
so i didn't expect it.
But You,
lovely You,
made me see that i deserve to be treated like the person You see me as.
You keep saying that You are worried that You could be treating me better,
well i am here to say that You have treated me better than i ever imagined
and i couldn't ask for more.
i never saw myself as being respectable
or deserving of love.
Yet somehow You saw me from afar
and decided You would be the one
to open my lifeless eyes.

update: I'm still learning to love
i am not used to these emotions and it scares the heart out of me.
i’m scared of happiness.
How ****** up is that?

But let’s go back to what i’ve said before:
“How do i make You happy?”
i was never going to be good enough for You.
How am i supposed to measure up now?

i know:
i’ll hide the scars
to protect You from worrying.
That’s my gift to You.
And i hope You never have the chance to say
“thank you.”
Could You really not see?
You are so easy to fool.
I could put scars anywhere on my body
and you would ask the same question
"did I do that?"
What a life it must be to not know
what the marks mean when they are right in front of You.
Think.
No, You didn’t do them.
And they aren’t cat scratches, darling.
Think.

i may scare You away
and i may not have the strength
to beg You to stay.
i’ll try to be better for You.
i’ll try to be the girl You see.
i’ll try to give You everything You need.
But I won’t let You in, let You know,
when doing so would just confirm
what i’ve been saying all along.
i. Am. Nothing. Good.

i will never be good enough for You
and i will always be crippled by the fear
of disappointing You.
Those are the fears i have never been able to
escape.
You don’t get it.
i am not someone that You want to love.
And as guilty as i feel about that,
i hope You always stay blind.

The melancholy’s dragging me down.
Please don’t let it drag you down as well.
i’d rather let you go that do that to You.
Today, i’m sorry that Your friends had to be the ones
to open Your eyes to how much of a mess i am.
But i think we are all kind of crazy,
not just myself.
And occasionally there is someone who matches Your unique flavor of crazy.
Oh and then things become magical.

i have found that people (me) are funny.
They crave love,
but reject it because they think they don’t deserve it.
What kind of strange sense does this make?
How odd to pick a person to give yourself to.
You.
i pick You to love me.
And You to hurt me.
You to heal me.
And You to break me.
i hate that You know me.
You know every inch of my skin,
but i’m still keeping the gates locked on my heart and soul
for as long as i can.

i am afraid that when this is all said and done,
i will despise all the little things i love about You.
i mean if we think in terms of reality,
this is going to end completely and utterly wrong.
There is no other outcome.
So is there really a point?
Why be happy now
only to be crippled by pain later on?
Can’t You see the pain in my eyes whenever i hear those words?
The way You romanticize death terrifies me.
So much of You is unknown,
so much of us is questionable.
But for now all i want is something of Yours
so that when i’m scared of losing You,
or ******* this up,
i can put it on
and fall in love with the comfort.

You told me one night in a low voice
(the one You use when You both remember or anticipate pain),
“i don’t want to be the mistake you made in high school.”
Oh love, i can assure You that i will be Yours.

Forelsekt (Norwegian): the euphoria you experience when you are first falling in love.
Words are strange and language is beautiful.
i think You have even described me in such a way…

at least i was Your first something
I had a panic attack yesterday
as I was driving you around.
I was stupid and don’t worry,
I know I deserved it.
I made a mistake
and we could have paid.
It was the first one I had had
in such a long time.
And the first one I had had
in front of you.
I think it may have been the first you had seen too.
I’m glad I could be your first something,
even something as broken and chaotic a panic attack.
But isn’t that what we are?
We’re both a whirlwind of broken chaos.

As the panic took over,
all I could think,
and what made it all the worse,
is that you must have thought I was insane.
“Did I make a mistake with this girl?
Everything’s okay now.
Why doesn’t she just calm down?”
Only crazy people panic for such a long time
(and it was; it was the longest attack I had ever succumbed to).
Only crazy people start shaking even once they’re safe
(although I am sure you didn’t feel all that safe).
Only crazy people so desperately grasp for air that is easily accessible
(even I can’t explain it).

Once,
I had a panic attack in front of a boy before.
And you know what?
All he said was,
“It’s no big deal.
Just calm down.
Why are you freaking out?”
But that’s paraphrased of course.
It happened months ago and after that,
I promised to save my broken moments for solitary
because I could not deal with someone whom I cared about
not caring about me.
But you didn’t do that.
You were kind and you were calm.
And yes a little confused,
but that’s to be expected.

You’ll always take care of me, won’t you?
You’ll always protect me, won’t you?
I’m beginning to see that now.
Who would have thought that anyone
would ever want to care someone
so **** broken to the very core?
Not me,
that’s for sure.

Thank you darling,
for you words
and your actions that prove to a hard heart
that maybe love is real.
And maybe someday,
I’ll feel it too.
I want it to be you I fall in love with.
But right now,
I’m still closed in my tiny, claustrophobic cell
that I constructed around myself for the past few years.
I built it up with every harsh word,
and every bad day,
and every painful moment.
But if anyone can push through it,
babe it might be you.
So again, thank you
for you.

for you**
Is it really 2014?
Wow.
I made it this far.
That may be my greatest accomplishment.
It hasn't been easy.
Nature is telling me no,
and well nurture has yet to be a kind, nurturing force.
How much farther do you think I'll make it?
I won't die of natural causes,
of that I am sure.
Someday I will become the murderer of my own soul.
I still have most of 2014 let to live,
but how will I life it?
I can only hope it brings better luck than 2013 showed me.
In 2015 I'll be dragging myself through senior year,
and then off the dorm rooms and lecture halls.
Do you think I can survive that too?
I barely know where I want to go.
I barely know if I want to be alive to choose.
So how am I expected to think about the future,
if I am unsure that a future is what I want?

They used to say I was so strong.
I am beginning to think that "strong" is a jinxed term,
like "best couple" or "most likely to succeed."
Strong.
More like "tired, lost, and uninterested."

I made a promise to a very nice boy,
and I intend to keep it.
Here is what I have to say to him-
I won't hurt myself anymore.
I'll do that for you.
Much of the time, I don't want to live.
I don't really see the point to it all.
I've never been good at life
and I don't enjoy doing things I am not good at.
But you I will live for.
When I am with you,
I can see why people appreciate this whole thing called life.
I'll live for the day to day things that make me laugh,
because we all know that it's the little things that matter most.
I'll live for hope and a future,
that may or may not involve you
but I kinda wish it does.
I think that would be fun, don't you?

I thought I was a lost cause
but then you swooped  in and changed that.
You changed me.
So thank you.
I don't think I tell you that enough.
I.
Am.
Grateful.
For.
You.
So yes.
I'll live for you
because you taught me an crucial thing.
While everything may not be great,
things can still be good.
Laying next to you,
I feel safe.
Life for me is mostly a torrent of hits and misses,
of cards that I wish could have been dealt further apart.
But my life with you is... good.

I will live for no loner seeing your face contort into a terrified expression formed around puppy dog eyes as you ask,
"no more, please?"
while you trace the cuts on my arm.
I will live for days spent in your room because somehow we never get bored
(and I get tired of people at an alarmingly fast rate).

I will life for you because simply put,
I am in love with you.

Crystal lived alone in the cabin Ray had built for her. Ray had left long ago but she thought of him often and sometimes went to see him in the city. She was an artist and a dabbler in many fields. Her house was a kaleidoscope of stained glass windows and half finished art projects. It was built almost entirely of wood with a beautiful stairway to a loft bedroom replete with a skylight window on the stars. Set in the mouth of a valley next to a clear stream the cabin looked almost as if it had grown there.

Crystal spent most of her time on her art projects, in fact she made her living that way. She was well known for the macabre nature of her works and they sold well at the local art fairs. Most of the scenes she painted could not possibly have existed on earth. Take for example the orange sky and purple mountains of Mariners Delight or the river of blood in Cosmic Conception.

Often Crystal would meet Ray at the art shows and they would discuss his books or her latest works. It was just such an occasion that preceded the first of her dreams.

Although Crystal had often dreamt of playing in a large meadow surrounded by reflections of her art work this dream had been different. She awoke from a scene in the woods where she had been the object of a grotesque conclave of creatures almost beyond description. There had been a huge goat like creature leading a chant, "Rada nema nestos Yreba, Rada nema nestos Yreba", for a group of creatures that resembled animals. There was a black toad sitting on a rock of seemingly impossible crystalline form, while an agile spider danced on the spokes of its luminous web above her. The smell of blood, the heat of the fire, and the constant and oppressive chant, "Rada nema nestos Yreba, Rada nema nestos Yreba" with all eyes directed at her. She woke with a start, it was early morning, her bed was a tangled mess, and she was covered with sweat. She felt she could almost smell wood smoke, and somewhere in her mind she could still hear the echos of the horrible chant.

It wasn't until almost a year later that the dream repeated itself. She had just completed what she considered her greatest work, a large mural like painting called Id Conclusion. It was a matrix of human forms in contorted and deformed conditions against a backdrop of misty images of human holocaust, war machines, and atomic clouds. She had gone to bed in a storm of thoughts on human depravation and greed. The scene was the same, the spider, the goat, the half human animals, all seemed the same, except for the chant, it was different. "Rada nema nestos Yreba, Raga mantra nestos reale, Yreba Yreba Shiva kommt da." Lightening cracked and a creature appeared. He seemed a man but was built more like a large monkey. Light seemed to follow him like an aura. He was the obvious master of the conclave and all stood back at his approach.

Crystal was lying on the stone altar in the center of the glade and although not bound she was incapable of motion while held in Yreba's gaze. That this creature was Yreba was obvious since all had bowed down now and the chant had changed, "Yreba Yreba teach us to grow." Crystals eyes were glazed and her naked body shown in Yreba's light. All her past works were floating across her mind like a collage. Lost in ecstasy she responded to his aggression like a wanton beast, screaming and writhing in the flow of his energy.

She woke to find her cabin in shambles and she was lying in the center of the living room on the floor, she panicked and ran to her car, slammed it into gear, and sped off down the road.

Ray was sitting in his office at the University that morning when Crystal burst into the room. "Ray, Ray, I've had a dream, a horrible dream, it was, I was!" "Slow down Crystal! You've had a what?" said Ray. Crystal sat down in a ball of frenzy and continued.

About an hour later Crystal had finished her story. Ray spoke, "So you say this is only the second time you've had this dream. Tell me more about Yreba. Does he resemble any of your art works?" "No", she said, "He seemed a lot more like that creature you told me about that day we were discussing witchcraft. The one who was supposed to be the personification of ****** desire evoked for the *** ****** of the ancient Persians."

Ray walked to his bookshelves (he was a professor of ancient mythology and religions) and pulled out a book called Necromancer by Abdule Azerod. "As I recall" he said "that creature was also a god of fertility." He thumbed slowly through the book, "yes, here it is. What did you say this creatures name was? Yreba? Very strange that's almost exactly this Persian deities name, Youruba. It seems he was evoked every year on the vernal equinox to assure ****** reproductivity and if you think thats frightening, feature this, last night was the vernal equinox." Crystal was stunned. "Do you think there's a connection" she stammered? "Don't be silly girl, this was seven thousand years ago. Why don't we drive out to your cabin and see if we can find some clues."

Twenty minutes later they were standing in Crystal's cabin. What had seemed so disorderly to Crystal in the morning was now clearly a purposeful state of order. All of her sculptures were arranged neatly on the stairs to the loft, and her pictures were arranged so as to face the spot on the floor where she had awakened. On the floor where she had lain was a large five pointed star. "What does it mean Ray?" "I think it's a pentagram" he stated. "Is anything missing?" "Not that I can see" she said. "I don't think we had better stay" he said, "Find what you need and we'll go back to my house. You can stay there until we figure it out."

Crystal never returned to the cabin. Ray sold it for her and bought her a new house in the city.

Crystal got sick a few weeks later. She was sitting in the doctors office now awaiting his return. "I have good news" he said. "Good news" Crystal groaned. "Yes" he said, "Your pregnant."

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world...  Moby ****, Herman Melville


Call me
Ishmael.

I hail
from
the clan
of Adam.

I am the
beloved
child
of Hagar;
unbowed son
of an upright
Ibrahim.

I am
the older
half brother
of Musa,
cousin to
Isa and
father to
Muhammad.

I work
in a bakery
that
overlooks
the roiling
waters of
the Nile.

It’s
owned
by an
Egyptian
General,
managed
by a
platoon
of his
hand picked
lieutenants.

I fire the
ovens,
roll the
dough
and pack
the loaves.

We bake
all day
but it seems
we cannot
quench
the hunger
that grips
our people.

My
brother
Musa
says
I bake
the bread
of tyrants
and serve it
to a people
starving for
freedom.

Musa
likes to say
if we wish
to feast at
the banquet
of liberty
we must
refuse
to eat
the bread
of fear.

In winter
our hunger
blends with
the misery
of living
in frigid
apartments.

My
dilapidated flat
in Darb Al-Ahmar
is one of a
thousand owned
by Cairo’s
most notorious
police chief.

The roofs leak,
the plumbing
is broken,
no heat in winter,
in summer
it’s a sweltering
furnace.

My home
is the
handiwork of a
cold blooded
landlord’s
indifference
to the freezing
rooms they
force us
to live in.

In their eyes,
our sole purpose
in life is to feather
their nest.

They demand
that the rent be paid
on the first of every month
and will make our life miserable
if we’re one day late
or a half a pound short.

Do they
actually
think
that we
live
only
to assure
the
warmth
and comfort
for them
and their
children?

In winter
they freeze
us into
inaction;
while
during the
summer,
swirling
ceiling fans
fail to relieve the
oppressive heat
of fire they
breathe down
our necks.

The batons
of the police
freely swing to
crack a head if
we fail to bow to
their authority
or grease
the extortionists
palms with
tributes to their
*******.

They never
shake down
their friends
that drive
the fancy
silver
Mercedes.

The big guys
roll wherever
they want.  

They
roll over
anything
they
choose.

They take
up parking
spaces in our lives;
leaving less room
for us to park
our tiny scooters.

I’m certain
the name
on their
drivers license
says privilege
and impunity.

Yet
somehow
we
always
get stuck
picking up
the tab
for
their
tolls.

Some slavishly
put coins
in parking meters
for them and get
compensated for it
by being offered
the opportunity
to wash their cars.

I’m glad
that I get
to bake
bread.

I was talking
to my friend
Isa at the
coffee shop,
he said,
“We needn't
live in a constant
state of
want and fear.”

A young man
sitting at
the next table
was a zealous
believer from
The Muslim
Brotherhood.

His name is
Muhammad,
he hands me
The Holy Quran.

My dear
Muslim
brother
exhorts
me to
submit.

He says that is
the way to a
fearless life;
free of any
need,
save
Allah’s
salvation.

My  
Muslim
brother
is firm
in his
belief
that
all
the answers
to
all
my problems
and
all
the answers
to
all
Egypt's problems
were
breathed on to
the pages of
The Holy Quran
with
The Prophet Muhammad’s
-(may peace be upon him)-
own breath;
his tongue
inscribing
the holy pages
in Arabic
squeezed
out by the
loving
embrace
of the
Angel
Gabriel.

Mubarak also boasts that
he too has all the answers to
alleviate the ills that plague us.

He’s
been ruling us
for forty years;
while the
Holy Quran
has been
with us
forever.

Our  
impatience
grows
as we yearn
for these promises
to be filled.

Mubarak swears  
he knows what is best
for the children
of Egypt.

Mubarak insists
that the way to
freedom from
want and fear
is submission to
his perpetual rule.

I get uneasy when
someone suggests
an infallibility.

I accept the
supreme dominion
and divine knowledge
of the Quran and Hadiths
but I’m not too sure
that the Imams,
politicians and
generals who
swore by its
truth really
understand
it themselves.

I am left
to question
if any of them
even see me?  

I am more of a
person then a
Muslim;
and
sometimes
I wonder
if even
Allah
has forgotten
the peril of
Ibrahim’s
children.

I wonder have
I disappeared
from Allah’s
unblinking eye
as well?

Sometimes
I look into
the mirror
to see if
I am real.

I am relieved
to see my image.

I have not
become invisible
to myself.

I am
emboldened
to know
that I am a
real person
of flesh and bones
with a mind
full of conviction
refreshed
with the blood
of a warm beating
heart.

I remind myself
I am a man,
not a faceless
subject
to be ruled.

I am an individual
not just another
submissive being
under the control
of a pious Imam.

I am Ishmael.

I recognize the fire of
life in my own eyes.

I can see the scars
of my decisions,
that my life has
etched upon my face.

I am not invisible.

I am not a casualty
of the twists of history
or the events of fate.

I take
responsibility
for me.

I am not a fish
swimming within
a giant school
trapped in an
ocean current
propelled
to a
predetermined
destination
of a well
laid net.

I am a man.

Let it be known
that I claim
responsibility
for my manhood
and I will
command
respect from
those who now
lord over me.

Like my father
Ibrahim, they
will recognize
me as an
unbowed
upright man.

They will
call me
Ishmael.

As I stand
I will raise my voice.

I will not remain
voiceless.

I am one voice
of many
who like me
have not
been heard.

We were once
grovelling dogs
that have been
transformed
into free range wolves,
set free from its cage,
we now form in packs
howling for justice.

We
will raise
our voice
in concert
so all
may hear.

We
will
make
them
listen.

They will
know who
I am.

Call me Ishmael.

Music Selection:
Muddy Waters
Mannish Boy

Oakland
2/9/12
jbm

I can assure you
that you are not my first.
I have kissed and "love" before.
But what defines love?

I loved in a superficial way,
not caring about the rest.
But baby the way I love you
is not like another friend.

I can assure you
that you are not my first.
But I love you
like to no one else.

I feel strange when i'm with you,
Why i just feel this way with you?
You were not supposed to be the only one,
but perhaps you are the real one.

I can assure you
that you are not my first.
And baby i can assure you
that you are the real first.

In the wondrous story book of night,
               I fully absorb and contemplate,
You were the one omnipresent,
               in light years far and flames near.

                                   As orbs of light, in many intensities and hues
                                                     the ray of infinite grace that envelops,
                                      That feels like the caressing of lotus petals,
                                                    was you my eternal beloved.

Soft, frothing moon light has been
         at times of pain my true consolation,
The moving comet my source of wonder,
          that takes me to you in imagination.

                                             A reader, I was keenly searching.
                                                      ­for meanings of things in light and dark
                                               Being another character formed
                                                        of­ dust sedimented from many stars.

You are enshrined in the diamond
               temple of my mind's still center
making you my lover was
               in honor of my yen for sublime.

                                               The story book of night has pages
                                                         on spirited mornings, noons and dusk
                                                  your benign presence in each step,
                                                           ­ moves galaxies and milky ways.

I see your moving eye brows
   in the tumult of dark rain clouds,
Your intense eyes flash love to me
    when in pain,if  I feel some doubt,
                                                          ­  

                                                     In waves one after another of ocean,
                                                          ­   your hands embrace me to assure,
                                                       mountain wind from far distance
                                                        ­     brings your songs nightingales sing.

I am a living monument that's breathed
         from the elements , to keep on loving you
not ever a  jealous lover,I am like  a millioner
       ready to sacrifice all just for your presence.
                                                       ­   

                                                Is there any other lover with such care
                                                  who brings  boundless grace, like you?
                                                   you've the very same eyes of my mother
                                                          ­ that reach me the moment I fall.

In days I am moving within a dream
       for which, you are the creator, moving spirit,
I turn the pages of storybook of night
   whenever I want to be closer to your warmth.
                                    

                                                    A mirror you are reflecting my candor,
,                                                        ­ more than anything I ever yearned for,
                                                     You are the river that flows along  me,
                                                      ­   to the ocean, eternally seething in wait.

MY SON
To My Son
My baby, my son,
my precious prince
Sent straight from
Heaven and loved ever since
A gift from
God to handle with care
A heart of gold for you to share
A smile so big with such happiness and joy
The pride I have,
to have such a good little boy.
Just one month
away from turning two
I hold my head high
to be strong for you
To love someone so much,
I never knew
I could
The things I do for you,
for no one else
I would It feels so good to hold you, Just for a second though
Because you scramble down fast and off you go
I'm blessed to be with you every second of the day but I can’t be selfish, things just can’t go
my way at sometimes
I wish
I could protect you from anyone hurting your golden little heart
So many things
I want to tell you but don’t know where to start
People will tell you a lot of things son and only some of them will be true Which ones you want to believe my boy
I hope you’re smart enough to choose It’s a mean world out there someone told me life is all about the fight
So I’m going to do my best to make you strong my son
So you can choose wrong from right
I know it seems
I’m going on and on but these things
I just don’t want you to forget
Life is full of lessons baby never hold any regrets.
My baby, you are so truly exquisite, Blessed with a beauty quite infinite.
I am so happy to have you,
My love for you will never fade
Of that
I assure you.
I promise to take care of you,
I promise to guide you true,
I promise to teach you right,
I promise to raise you the best
I can,
I promise to guard you day and night. Grow and thrive, my little one,
Always be good and full of loving,
A special being like no one,
Keep your smile sweet and giving.
You will always be my baby dear
My son,
My heart will beat for you,
strong and clear.
You are my life, my everything
I promise to cherish you till my last breath, To be always there, at any height or depth.
I love you.
You the reason behind my daily hustle.

The butterflies in her stomach
assure her she is alive
with a nervous glance
and anxious sigh
she dreamily wonders about "her guy"

Dear Mrs. Nagley

Oh my dearest mother-in-law,
Did Brandon my king write you?
I am in my utmost state of agitation,
I don’t know what to do, I’m going “non compos mentis”.


Did he left a letter for me before he go?
He said he’ll be in my arms for less than a week,
Oh my goodness it’s been more than 2 weeks!
Oh, this throe is burying me alive in my grave.


Mother-in-law, Oh, mother-in-law,
I am in extreme dejection,
Oh where is my soulmate, my king, my all?
Where is he, please tell me where is he.


Please assure me nothing bad happened,
Oh this eyes shed bucket of tears,
They’re swollen and I am so weary,
Please mother-in-law, tell me what’s going on.

Sincerely your daughter-in-law
Earl Jane Nagley
September 27th, 1876



(Mrs. Nagley's response letter)

Dearest daughter in law Jane........

He left over two week's ago, didst he not correspond?
Mineself either hath no way to knoweth;
I'm worried mineself, me and his father,
We hast not heard one word from ourn son, dearest daughter.

Do not fret Jane, maby mine son's cruise ship is late
If he doth get there, telleth him to write his mum;
I'm crying now from this stress, there art no word's to calm,
Me and his father heard a storm was coming in, I'm anxious.

We need to hath faith mine son wilt maketh it.
Maby the captain's running late, maby the ocean's shaking;
Mine baby is strong, as I prayest he mayest hold on to the thunderous lightning that's hitting the dawn, I want mine son.

Im on mine knee's now, begging God to bringeth him to thee
If he dost not maketh it to thee Jane, mine daughter and sweet;
I wouldst not knoweth what to do without thy king, mine son!
I'm beseeching Yahweh's mercy, mayest god protect his ship run.

Your Mother in law, Juna Nagley............
October 9th, 1876


ONE WEEK LATER MRS. NAGLEY WRITES ONE LAST LETTER TO HER DAUGHTER IN LAW JANE NAGLEY ON THE NEWS OF BRANDON........


Dearest daughter in law Jane.........

Me and mine husband hath received news on mine son, and thine king, I'm heartbroken to telleth thee, but the ship succumbed to the storm's ferocious sting; I prayed and begged to god, yet mine son no longer couldst cling, he passed at twenty-seven. The front half of the vessel broke into many pieces, the lightning struck the sail as tis all the men were flung west and east: Mine baby found some wood to grasp onto, though shark's were around, as ******* they made there move. He was taken by the man-eater's and sunk into the deep blue. O' how saddened I am, O' how I miss mine son, this ****'s mine soul and break's me in ways more than one...... Here is the letter mine son left when they found him floating by the blood of his vest.
Sincerely mom ...
October 16, 1876

( Brandon's letter to his wife Jane Nagley)

Dear amour', I canst not write thee much, mine limbs art bleeding out from the shark bites and cuts. Mine ship went down, as tis this is God's will, please if thou shalt get this letter please knoweth thou art mine queen, mine body shalt be renewed in the presence of the Lord's feet; thou art not losing me, remember? No goodbye's, if I'm to goeth now and if I'm to die, smileth for me lass, drieth thine eye's; I'll meeteth thee in the third celestial, i'll meet thee there.... By the pearly gate's. On cloud nine.

Thy king and soulmate, always and forever

Brandon Cory nagley........
September 23rd, 1876........




©Brandon nagley \Earl Jane Nagley duo
©Lonesome poets poetry
©Hari-reyna incorporated

hold me,
never let me sink.

hold me,
don't let me drift.

hold me,
I'm drowning.

hold me,
I'm slowly fading in surreality.

hold me,
I just need someone to assure me.

hold me,
I'm forgetting more and more of my existence.

Show me all the scars you have,
and the stories behind them

I want to see the scars on your fingers.
And hear about all the demons you had to fight off with your bare hands.
did you win?

I want to see the scars on your back.
From all the people who have ever hurt you.
And how I vow to not add to that collecetion.

I want to see the scars on your heart.
well i can't see them, but i can assure you i feel them.
those are the scars that hurt the most and im  sure some of those wounds are still open.

And i want to see the scars on your face.
those distinct markings that give you your features.
those marking that say you were not afraid to get up close and get hurt
for a reason you saw fit.

Will you show me all your scars?
I wont try to fix them, i promise.
because i know some of them you hold dear.
you can give me any scar you want though. i want a reminder of you.
i wont flinch, it won't even hurt.
Im used to it, so cut as deep as you want.

Darling, show me all your scars.

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art critics are like tourists in the art world / australian cricketers,
they come to see the major sights, like bling ben, the eiffel tower
and the leaning tower of pisa... and they leave very quickly...
when the atmosphere of each town allocating each momument
strikes them as both unappealing and unwelcoming.
+ we're not living in the age of the culture of celebrity,
the celebrities were fooled...
we're looking at living in the age where the culture
is defined as: looking for the doppelgängers:
just check out the galaxy chocolate advert - the 2nd reneissance
happened between the nineteen 50s 60s 70s 80s and 90s
and now everyone is bemused when they have to
entertain showing up on trivia-knowledge shows.*

there won’t be a spoiler alert with this book,
you will basically not read it,
it took me two years and a few books in between
to finish heidegger’s opus being and time,
at the end he’s quizzical about either being
the strand of philosophers who follow aristotle
or a strand that follows plato,
given he allocates 15 years to study aristotle
i assure you he’s from the root of aristotle,
and as a poet i favour him and aristotle,
given heraclitus was almost a poet: it really doesn’t
make you a poet if you express yourself
without using a paragraph... a paragraph is not
among the poetic techniques, so don’t bother:
it’s just a ****** ref. to a square.
i never quiet knew why the beatles made a bigger impact
than the doors... i blame lucy and her fishnet stockings
rather than van gogh’s night with reference to diamonds
as jubilee stones of carbon.
i find it fascinating that contemporary schizophrenics
have the delusion of thinking their friends are spies,
i walk in a german army shirt to prove the point...
of course men affected in greater no. by this condition,
after all the spermatoid is the creative element
given the **** singletons are blank canvases...
but you know what single “thing” undermines
psychiatric diagnostics? empathy...
empathy is a divergence from solipsistic apathy... otherwise
known as self concern,
and i know that if you itemise further on an atomic level
(kabbalah) you get a- pathos...
apathy meaning without pathology...
but everyone, each one of us has some sort of pathology,
the most frequnted domain being the domain of phobia,
arachnophobia e.g.,
to intend to be wholly without pathology would
turn the notion of the ego into a-, in casual usage,
one can be pathological with or without one’s request...
one can be pathological in relation to oneself...
i once said that apathy breeds no pathology, and it’s true,
but concerning this statement there’s the kantian
thing-in-itself (noumenon): that apathy is self-caustic,
self- implying automated, and is a cause of concern to either party
concerned.... if apathy is seen as a quasi- / pseudo- pathology
then all subsequent pathologies are understood better...
because why testify an apathy without an adrenaline rushing
through the system? better still... why not call apathy
a misguided exfoliation of inserted / produced adrenaline?
as akin to atheism - if a- (without) -theism (softer logic akin to god,
god via experience rather than theory / the -ism expression, not the logos expression)
is to be expressed why is there a necessary concern to exclude
any logic of the existence of, when it’s argued that experience is not necessary
to prove anything, but rather non-experience has a basis of adequate logic?
you know that point... when using words and subsequent reading
becomes akin to arithmetic in terms of complexity,
where words such as i and think, are unified by the equivalent of +, -. x
by guidance of noun, verb, adjective, etc.

they say
he must be lucky
the guy who gets to have me
and i just look in your eyes
and see the hell i have put you through
they fell in love w my words
but i wonder do they know
that this is not beautiful
all these words may make depression look pretty
but it is not
it is not easy to be w a girl
who wants to crawl into the tiniest space of you
and make her home there
it is not easy to be with a girl
who makes you her air
it is not easy to see her
cringe at her own reflection
it is not easy to love her
when all she has is hatred for her self
it is not easy to look at her
when you read her poems about how she wants to peel off her skin
till nothing of her remains
it is easy to say
he must be a lucky guy
lemme assure you
he is not
im not blushing cheeks and perfect smiles
Im not about classy looks and vintage dresses
im like the storm and the only way i know how to show my love is to destroy
it is not easy to talk to her
when she replies in proses and riddles
it is not easy to hold her
when one moment she is warm and cuddlable
and the next she is spitting fire
it is not easy to tolerate her
when one small mistake and
it has already been
carved as a poem
it is not easy to survive her intense gaze
it is not easy to look back into her eyes
when she is looking at you w too much emotions contained in her eyes
too strong for you to take
she is everything
or nothing
or both
at the same time
she is every shade of every color
simulataneously
Ill overwhelm you
or i can make you question your own existence
cause i dont know any other way
to love
than to make you my all
and to be your all
ill love you w a passion
you have never seen before
but can your feeble heart
take it?
do you think
your calculated actions and diplomatic decisions
will help you then?
you may be fooled by my smile
and my gentle voice in which i talk to you
but there is a lot to me
than what meets your eyes
there will always be more to me
than you ll know
and you may think it is easy to love me
but it is not
you are a dreamer, you are in love with the idea of me
while you remain oblivious of
all the stories behind the words i have not yet written
and the words you ll never see.
It is effortless to fall in love with a poem
but being with a poet is a totally different thing
don't you now agree?

There is never nothing new
Just rearrange things

I don’t write poems
I just remove the extra words that are in the way

Hold on to the words like whispers and shadows and wings
Recklessly insert adjectives
Tie it all to your delusions of profundity

Dig down deep for pain
no matter how senseless
Pick at your emotional scabs
Bleed

No one likes poetry
Constantly remind people of that
Tell them that you make it sound good to you and **** them
(Even though their ovation means everything)

Slip, dip and weave
With ambiguous wet dreams
Full lips and thick tongue
Mouthing…
Come
to an understanding
***** is much better than clean
Make it filthy
Soil it

Make it nostalgic
People need to be reassured that you were really ******* up as a kid
and that this poetry **** doesn’t just happen to people overnight

Make it esoteric
That way, when no one knows what the hell you are talking about,
you will have a good word to explain why

Say things that are so ill mannered that they are weighty
I will give you an example
“I’m not looking for a girl that is beautiful
I'm looking for one just barely ugly enough to **** me”

Incite large groups of people to *****

Get so personal that it gives people headaches

Expose yourself until everyone is embarrassed for you

Spew it all over the bar
In a drunken stupor
flaunt it lasciviously with your genitals
Pour yourself into reckless collisions
Drink from your soul until it rots your liver

Write until you want to **** yourself
then write about that

Make it as bitter as a Wal-mart associate
Make it so sweet she will swallow it all
before looking up at you with eyes like tiny puddles
To say, “that was beautiful”
(even though it was disgusting)

It should be raw
It should make you itch
It should be like rubbing up against it spreads it
It should be like VD

Make really long
Like it’s your *****
No,
Make it really, really long
Like its my *****

Make it rhyme
I mean don’t
Don’t

Don’t ever write another ******* poem
because I assure you
if I did not write it
than it must ****

and that is how poetry works

Michael L Sutter

Seventeen years ago
America was shaken to the core.
Since not too long after that
We've been involved in a non-stop war.

Homeland security
Became an issue that since then
Hoped to assure Americans
That such attacks won't happen again.

During the past seventeen years
Many measures have been taken
To make us safe; however, it's time
For sleeping minds to reawaken.

Lacking foresight, our president
Has gone after the people who
Have worked to make us safe. The man
Doesn't seem to have a clue.

Discrediting investigators,
Removing them from key positions,
And pulling security clearances
Because of paranoid suspicions

Will only make us vulnerable
To future terrorist attacks.
Watch how his Republican friends
In Congress support him. Political hacks!

The president also hates
When investigators eye
American involvement with
The Russian mafia. We know why.

It's hard to watch as the president--
With almost each careless endeavor--
Stupidly goes out of his way
To make us more unsafe than ever.

-by Bob B (9-11-18)

1.  My mind is a 20/20 vision pair of eyes.
I can see the specks
and seeds of irritation before they grow.
Plants,
They were never really good for these eyes.

2.  Let's go to the moon.
And I assure you,
While you sink your feet in moon dust
And swim in empty craters,
While I worry about how dark it is out here,
I get to enjoy the simultaneous twinkle of the stars.

3.  And because I'm paying too much attention,
I might even get to see one fly.

4.  You're thinking about how delicious this lunch is.
I'm counting calories.

5.  So,
what's for dinner?


6.  Hey, if she is
Indeed
Stabbing my back
With word weapons,
My 561-letter comeback speech
Is always ready
in the front pocket
Of my school bag.

7.  Its always  just a headache,
Never brain cancer.

8.  I love the newly opened eyelids,
In the mornings,
My first breath is a sigh of relief,
Yes.
I didn't die in my sleep.

9.  She's got a great body.
Her bones read,
No food and a ton of gym time,
I'm sure it's to make you smile.
And I hate to brag,
But I'm mentally fit.
I get to exercise
Analyzing every single detail
Of the twinkle in your eye
Of the flick of your lips
Of the depth of that frown
When you said
you were leaving.


10.  I think I've figured out why.

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY
OF HISTORY IN VERSE : PART ONE
              BY RAJ NANDY
              INTRODUCTION
The very mention of History brings to mind
many civilizations, its wars, with endless
succession of ruling dynasties and kings;
Its many dates and events, which appear to be
rather dull and boring!
“If history were taught in the form of stories, it
would never be forgotten”, said Rudyard Kipling!
So if a good teacher of History narrates those
events like a story within a broad chronological
frame work,
While skillfully linking the present in light of the
past;
Mentioning both important and lesser known
interesting facts to arouse the interest of his
class; -
History would be better appreciated by us!
Perhaps in its narrowest sense, History may be
viewed only as a chronological succession of
dates and past events!
But let me assure you that History is a dynamic
linear progression, adapting and evolving with
changing times,
As present recedes into the past all the while!
These changes could be environmental, socio-
economic, or political changes faced by mankind.
But we remain as a living part of History all the
while!
Yet while we live through History, we fail to realize
the impact we make upon history and time;
And this is perhaps the very magic and enigma of
History,
Which occasionally lends it a touch of mystery!
Our family album is a record of our history we
create and leave behind at the micro level;
Just as past civilizations have left behind their imprints
in their architecture, statues, literature, and works
of art at the macro level !
History breathes and speaks to us from the distant
past,
If only we could pause to hear its unspoken words,
As the Romantic poet John Keats had once heard!
Keats’  “Ode on a Grecian Urn” composed during
early 19th century, -
Harks back to the Classical Age of Greek History!
Keats waxes eloquent in his description of pastoral
scenes painted on the urn which lies frozen in time;
While Keats leaves behind his exalted and eternal
aesthetic message - ‘Beauty is Truth and Truth
Beauty’, - which shall outlive our mortal time!
So it is with History, like the Grecian urn the past  
remains eternalized in time with its lessons and
stories;
While it beckons us to unravel her mysteries!
For the historian, the architect, the geologist,
the anthropologist, scholars and the artist,
‘’History is a continuous dialogue between
the present and the past’’;
As observed by the English historian and
diplomat EW Carr.
Even though we cannot change the past, we can
surely absorb the lessons it has left behind for us!
The Spanish born American philosopher George
Santayana had said; -
“Those who cannot remember the past are
condemned to repeat it!”
The Dutch philosopher Soren Kierkegaard had
once remarked; -
“Life must be lived forward, but it can only be
understood backward.”
So let us learn from past History to create a
better future for humanity.
For the past gives us a sense of belonging
and an identity;
Since our very roots lie enshrined in History!
By the time you complete reading my entire
composition,
I hope to convert you into a Lover of History
by broadening your perception!

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF HISTORY!
Ancient Greece, the cradle of Western Civilization
during the 6th century BC, -
Saw the birth of Philosophy!
Thales of Miletus, Anaximenes, and Anaximander,
from the Greek colony of Ionia on the west coast
of Asia Minor,  (now Turkey)
Broke the previous shackles of all mythical and
superstitious explanations.
With their questioning mind and rational thinking
they sought,  -
To seek the real behind the apparent, and substance
behind the shadow;
By seeking natural and logical reasons for explaining
natural phenomena, -
Free from all previous religious and mythical
interpretations!
Thus, these Milesian School of thinkers in their quest
for truth with their intellectual lust, -
Gave rise to ‘philosophia’, Greek word for ‘love
of truth’, an early birth!
Subsequently, this newly born Greek Philosophy with
its progressive thoughts inspired scientific methods
of inquiry;
Along with Logic, trial by Jury, and the very concept
of Democracy!
The Greeks also inspired Literature, History, Tragedy,
Comedy, the Olympic Games, Astronomy, and Geometry!
Around 500 BC the Greek written script had stabilized,
going from left to right;
And the first addition of vowel letters by the Greeks
to the adopted Phoenician consonants, can never
be denied!
The first two Greek letters ‘alpha’ and ‘beta’ which
gave the name to our Alphabets forms a part of
early History.
Now Herodotus, during the 5th century BC, had
inherited this intellectual Greek Legacy!

HERODOTUS – ‘THE FATHER OF HISTORY’
Herodotus is said to have been born in the ancient
Dorian Greek city of Halicarnassus in south-west
Asia Minor, which is now Turkey;
During the latter half of 5th century BC!
During his days, the city was under the rule of Persia;
Since the Persians had captured the Greek colonies
in Asia Minor!
Frequent revolts by these colonies against the
Persians with help from Athens,
Made the Persian King Darius, and later his son
Xerxes, - decide to invade Athens!
The Persians also wanted to extend their Empire
into Europe across the Bosporus Strait, -
Which divided Asia from Europe in those days!

In 490 BC, when the massive Persian army of King
Darius landed at Marathon as assured victors;
The Athenian running courier Pheidippides ran
150 miles in two days, to seek help from Sparta!
Again later, he ran 25 miles from the battlefield
near Marathon to Athens, to announce that the
Greeks became the final victors!
This historic run by Pheidippides gave rise to the
discipline of Marathon, in our Olympic Games
later on!
Such Marathon runs are now held in many cities
of the world annually,
Thus we remain connected with our past as you
can clearly see!
Years later in 425 BC, Herodotus narrated these
invasions in his famous narrative ‘Histories’.
Cicero the Roman scholar, philosopher and orator,
Had called Herodotus the ‘Father of History’ many
centuries later!
Very little is known about Herodotus’ early life,
But from historical evidence which survive,
We learn about his stay in Athens, and his many
wanderings;
Visiting Egypt, Libya, Syria, Babylon, Susa in Elam,
Lydia, and Phrygia;
Collecting information which he called ‘autopsies’
or ‘personal inquiries’, and hearing many stories;
Prior to composing his famous ‘Histories’!

“THE HISTORIES”: HERODOTUS (430-425BC)
This was written in prose in the Iconic dialect of
Classical Greek,
Covers the background, causes, and events of the
Greco-Persian Wars between 490 and 479 BC.  
Scholars divided the entire work into 9 Books, with
each dedicated to a Greek Muse, - those goddesses
of art and knowledge,
Thereby the Homeric tradition they did acknowledge!
For example, Book-I was dedicated to Calliope, the
Muse of Epic Poetry, and Book-II to Clio, the Muse
of History.
Herodotus begins his narration with these following
words;-
“Here is the account of the inquiry of Herodotus of
Halicarnassus in order that the deeds of men not be
erased by time, and that the great and miraculous
works – both of the Greeks and the barbarians not
go unrecorded.”
Now Herodotus with his lucid narrative style, had
pioneered the writing of History with a specific
framework of space and time!
His style got emulated by later writers of History,
Who improved their narration with better authentic
source and methodology;
Thereby giving birth to the subject of ‘Historiography’.
(Historiography = critical examination of source & selection
of authentic material, synthesis of particulars into a narrative
whole, which shall stand the test of critical methods.)

HERODOTUS’ ‘INQUIRY’ GAVE BIRTH TO ‘HISTORY’!
The ancient Greek word “historia” meant ‘knowledge
acquired by investigation or inquiry’’, and the Greek
‘histore’ meant ‘inquiry’.  
It was in this sense Aristotle later used it in his ‘’Inquires
on Animals’’- during the 4th Century BC;
And this mode of ‘inquiry’ later became ‘History’!
The term ‘History’ entered English language in 1390
as a “record of past incidents and story”.
However, the restriction to the meaning “record of
past events” only, came during the 15th century.
But the German word ‘Geschichte’ even to this day,
Means both history and story, without making
distinction in any way!
Since the story element remains inbuilt in all historical
narrations,
And also remains as a tribute to its author’s creation!
CONCLUDING PORTION WILL BE POSTED LATER AS
PART-TWO. Thanks, - RAJ NANDY.
**ALL COPY RIGHTS WITH THE AUTHOR RAJ NANDY,
OF NEW DELHI

This is who I am and it will always be ILLOGICAL, IRRATIONAL and above all, STUPID.

I miss you.

You don't understand me. Its not feasible. Everything won't work. You won't work. I won't work. We won't work. You can't reason your way out of this. Not enough time. Not enough time for me. Not enough time for us. It would've ended anyways he tells me. I tell myself this over and over. Convince yourself, I AM INDEPENDENT. I will vitalize and intoxicate myself by myself. Thats what people do everyday. The issue being, I am not a genuine person. I persuade and assure myself I can handle this role and it satisfies my craving for normalcy. I'm not a gifted actress. I lose more and more social contacts due to this complication. I must learn from the independent ones so I can stop breaking apart these silly boys limb by limb.

You must stop making them care for you. You are not a whole person and therefore cannot be an authentic concern of others. You are imaginary. You are empty. Two opposite minds, insanity and sanity, fighting over the same body is an immense misadventure. Insanity wants to ******* boys, intently watching the peculiar escape routes they design. She sneers as they try and try, withered by a constant sense of defeat, each of them exhibiting exciting, unique and new qualities. She forces the body's muscles into a terrifying object. Then she denies his superiority complex of its primary function as he realizes that this damsel is in a permanent brand of distress. Sanity, however, is fleeting. Sometimes, she truly gives a **** about others. She is the pure example of meek, anemic and decrepit aftermath. She is selfless for selfish reasons. She wants them to adore her. She will exceed expectations, impresses and astonishes them. The product of this relished humanistic quality, acceptance, nourishes her. She savors boys who tell her she is strong and capable. Lies lies lies lies lies is all they speak. Its been too many years. She's forsaken by insanity.

Never enough time for this. Nobody has enough time. Who will give me the time? These days the clock shows seamless progressions to worse and worse. Sleepless nights remind me of night after night after night of our restless, unsetting and ineffective dialogues. Lets just go in circles for a little longer. Why not a little longer? Where do I find someone willing to linger with insanity? Just give me more time. I need a few more moments with real people to feel okay. Let me practice my part with you. Coach me. Tell me what to do next. I'm craving a sense of reality. I trusted you with it. Give it back. Give it to me. Let me have it. Feed it to me. Now.

I kid myself. If you get to know me a bit further I might let you peer at my Dali-esque picture of the present. Wonderland has me descending head first down the rabbit hole. Alice found herself stationary, bruised and filthy with temporary madness years ago. I've kept plunging for decades after and suddenly I'm gaining speed. Momentum, its all about physics. They throw ropes, then yarn, then thread to me. Once again the thread brushed my skin and I found possibility. The sensation of active nerve endings engaged my curiosity. I search for the sort of matter that could interrupt this regression. One faint wonder to what could have been is met by pathetic and pointless conclusions.

You are so associated. Everything and everyone is marked by inclinations. What affects you is the fact that you are now aware of it. You recognize that I see something different in you. I see something unusual. I see a habit. Nouns are consistently becoming verbs. You are not beneficial to this at all. I allowed you to be my unhealthy. I linked you to infection. Is that why I need you so badly? Is that why I want you back? You gave me composure from your expectations.You raised questions and I gave you the appropriate answers conjured from my ideals. I store a list of rules that are rarely followed. I let you in on every ***** secret so I had to abide by constructs of sickness. I had no other choice.

Will I ever be able to do this? If this is me and I am me forever who will swallow it? Who will take responsibility for my downfalls? Faults that are too confusing for explanation are menacingly sweet if you hold inquisitiveness, in place of a heart, on your sleeve. I can't understand. You can't understand. There is no more on and off switch somewhere in a dark basement. I'm not twelve anymore. I can't blame mommy and daddy. Its all my fault. I got myself here. It's my transgression. Don't you dare blame them. Recognize my liability. I ****** up this time but I found an oddity; I found perfection in this imperfection. It's something of a conundrum.

Computer science is fruitless thinking. I AM NOT A MACHINE. I am not a computer, not a mechanism, not a problem. I am not a riddle to solve. I am contradiction in every sense of the term. Its broken, shattered and pieces have gone missing. They were outdated and oppressive. They were thrown out, burned, buried, and forgotten. Once treasured, they became cumbersome and then dropped along the way. With them, logic vanished beneath my feet. Its gone now. I'm gone now.

Weightlessness necessitates a higher being than the imperfect human. It requires me to remain underwater, letting go of the compulsion to meet the surface for air. These ancient seas compel me and draw me further down with their loveliness and passion. I am mesmerized by the mania involved. You won't spot me in the engrossing waters. The black surface holds many afflictions.

RUN. FAST.

Since I have no other way
And am in utmost need,
Painter girl,
I filch one of the eight lambs
You have made plump with
Green jackfruit leaves and
Thin gruel with paddy bran.

I will take it to the goat market
And sell it in a jiffy.

I assure you
I will not sell it
To any butcher-
The lamb you made chubby
With sweet sweet words
And much much petting
And nice lilting croons,
Mixing and mixing
Greens with browns.


Don’t be sad, painter girl.
I hear you come running
Searching for your lamb and
Cry out “O my dearest one
Who went grazing in the green fields,”
As the sun in your canvas
Sets in the sea and
The saffron blends with the dusk.
And, see your tears mingle
With the black that you wanted
To adorn the brow of
The naughtiest of them.

Painter girl,
It’s all because I have no other go
And it’s of utmost need.
I could have broken into the
Two-storeyedhouse you sketched
And stolen the ornaments in
Secret lockers that even
You are unaware of.

Or, I could have
Palmed the golden girdle
Of the beautiful ***** princess
Whose portrait you made,
The one with a nose stud.
Or, drugged her with my kisses
And plundered the harem.

Or else, I could have
Entered the snake shrine
Guarded by the dark serpents
That you often drew
And fled the country with
The precious jewel.

Or, I could have shot down
The birds that you drew
And sold them grilled.

I could have axed down the
Mahagony trees you nurtured
And sold them as timber.
I could have blinded your Kanhaiah
And made him a beggar
To become rich from the alms he earned.
I could have enslavened his Gopis
And handed them over
To the red light streets.

Painter girl,
It’s not for anything of this sort.
I take just one of your eight lambs.
Sell it for a good price
And fulfill my need.

Now, perchance,
If a new tenant comes to rent
My brain where nothing resides
And if they pay me a fat advance,
Painter girl,
Surely will I buy back your lamb.
And tether it in your painting.
Don’t you dare say then
Don’t you say then
That you have forgotten it.
Don’t you say then
You have exhausted your stock of
Green jackfruit leaves.


(Trans from Malayalam by Ra Sh)

The first time I heard it, I could not believe it. Did I hear it right? My son, Kyle, had a girlfriend, and her name was Jezebel Kawalak. That was her true name, honest to God. I thought maybe Kyle was joking, but that really was it.  Kyle was surprised himself, thinking she was joking, so Jezebel showed him the proof on her birth certificate. It was her mother’s idea to name her Jezebel. Her father was against it.

“She goes by Jez”, Kyle told me. “Everyone calls her Jez”.

I was making dinner when he told me the news of his new friend. I stopped cutting up some carrots and looked at him with great skepticism. “Jezebel? Who on earth would name their daughter that? Don’t her parents know that the name, Jezebel, is a putdown?”

I remembered the old Betty Davis film, and she was supposed to be some kind of ******. I decided to look up the name in the Bible, and Jezebel was not a nice woman, but an evil seductress and the daughter of a king. I didn’t know much about that Jezebel character from the Old Testament, but I knew she was far from nice.  Now Kyle reassured me that Jez was not all what her name implied. She was a shy, sweet girl who lived across the street and twelve houses down from us. She was petite, gentle in nature, which added coolness and calm to the picture, for her sweet nature coexisted in tune with my son’s impulsively creative disposition.

“Jez wouldn’t hurt a fly”, Kyle told me.

“Oh, sure” I said back. “But will she hurt you?”

Kyle and Jez were both sixteen and both in the tenth grade. They also attended the same high school, making their friendship all so more convenient. They were even in one class together, an English class. Like Kyle, Jez came from a divorced home and both were only children. Jez’s mom, Tammy, worked three jobs to keep things afloat, and Jez was often left alone at home to fend for herself. It was not surprising that she got quite lonely and was in need of a good, solid companion.    

Kyle never had a serious girlfriend before. He had gone out a few times with a few girls, but none of them were ever more than a brief date or two. I was glad for that. I sometimes worked a double shift as a hospital nurse and, ready or not, I was forced to deal with this new path in my son’s life. I could not always be around to make sure my son was doing what he was supposed to do. And he was far too old for anyone to really watch over him. He was still working on getting his driver’s license, slowly gaining more freedom as he was gradually gaining more trust from me. I did not like this hesitation in me, for I always knew quite well that this time would eventually come. Yet everything seemed like it was coming too fast, and I could not contain the breaking dam of my son’s ever increasing entrance into manhood.

“It is probably not like you think”, my mother told me about Kyle and Jez. “They seem like just good friends, like she is the sister that Kyle never had”.

My mother could not convince me that she knew what she was saying, not with that remark. Come on! I wasn’t born yesterday!

For the longest time, it was just the four of us, which is until my sister moved to Miami.  Kyle, my mother and I lived in Cleveland, and that seemed like a stab in the heart to me when my sister first left. But I eventually convinced myself that I could not be so selfish, and I learned to adjust to just now only “the three of us”. Kyle saw his father but his father and I divorced when he was the age of four. Since that time, he had three strong women in his life, his mother, his aunt, and his grandmother. We were not a big family, but we were a tight family unit. Whenever I had to work and when Kyle was in need of a sitter, my mother watched him. She deserved the credit for raising my son just as much as I did.

Kyle reasoned with me that he and Jez could be good study partners for each other. I rolled my eyes at that one. There would be more of Kyle playing his guitar than anything. He loved his guitar, practically was self-taught, and I had to admit that Jez had a beautiful singing voice.  Kyle loved to compose his own songs as well as he liked to play some from other artists, and he was pretty good at his talent. The trouble was that as soon as made something up in his head he quickly forgot how some of the songs went. Sometimes, he could get it right and sometimes not. But that was not because Kyle wasn’t smart enough. Actually, he was very bright.  Kyle could dream in his sleep about music and wake up frantically trying to remember what new song he was dreaming up.

The two of them sounded really sharp together, Kyle’s strumming and smooth singing and Jez’s soft back up vocals. There was no denying that they looked just as good as they sounded together. I would study Jez over as she sat next to Kyle on the couch with her golden brown hair clipped up on the back of her head, her eyes peacefully closed, and her small frame swaying in the rhythm of the music they were making.  If they weren’t working on live music, they’d be cranking up the stereo or watching television much more than they would be hitting the school books.

I was shocked when Kyle and I were alone at home and he said something quite out of the blue and totally unexpected. “You practically gave up on men, didn’t you?” he asked me.

“I beg your pardon, young man!” I snapped at him. I gave him a sharp glance and that was all that I had to say about that. I never expected him to say such a thing. Frankly, I was dumbfounded.

I did not feel like I had to answer to my son, but driving to work that day I had wondered if he was right. If my life was not wrapped around the needs of my son, my energies were put into my career. I enjoyed my independence, not like my mother who never worked outside the home once she was married. And when my father died, my mother’s financial needs were taken care of because of all those years of his hard work. It seemed like my mother came from a dying breed, not that I faulted her for who she was, but I had to take care of myself. I felt it was the right choice and better than the alternative of marrying for convenience.

Was I really that fearful of another commitment? It seemed that no man I had met since my divorce could be a good enough stepfather figure for my son. At least, I believed that was a good enough reason for me to remain unattached. How could Kyle ask me that anyway?

One day, he was destined to leave the house and have his own life. I was always so smug about women who seemed to have no life outside of their children, but was I only fooling myself? Before I knew it, I would be coming home to an empty house. Would I be alright being all alone?

All I knew is that I wanted my son to be happy, and I thought I did a pretty good job of helping him be that so far. For now everything seemed fine, but I could see how Kyle was really falling hard for Jez. In my worried mind, there was no denying that.

“You assure me that you will do nothing that you cannot undo”, I warned my son. “When I am not here, there is to be nothing done under my roof. And you know what I mean!”

“Mom, come on”, Kyle answered me. “I would never do anything like that in your house!”    

I looked at my son with a mixture of pride and sorrow. It was now I who had to look up to him to talk to him. It seemed like yesterday when I was the one towering over him. Now he was almost six feet tall, was now shaving, and was handsome like his father, his dark shaggy hair dusting his light brown eyes. I sure could not stop him from growing up. Trying to control that situation was like trying to control heaven and earth. Slowly, I was learning that I had to let go of him, for his sake and for mine.

Deep down, I knew Kyle wouldn’t do anything in my house. But I also knew that those two did not need my house to do the unspeakable, what I would not quite say to my son in proper words. I knew I was being unrealistic for some silly fear that if I said “***” it would egg on his teenage desire all the more.  Nor could I keep my son under lock and key to stop those flooding feelings.
  
It soon came to be that Jez was over every day. Why didn’t they ever go to her house? But then I was glad they were under my roof, like that would keep them out of trouble.  Jez’s house was rented and much smaller than ours, even though ours was not spacious by any means. Jez seemed to feel more at home in my house, and soon she was growing on me. Before long, I was quite used to her, for she somehow crept into my heart and won me over.  I had to admit that she almost seemed like a daughter to me.

“You did not have to make these”, I told her about a batch of oatmeal cookies she baked me.

Jez smiled at me and said, “Your favorite, with no raisins”. She put them in a cake box that she ******* with a purple ribbon and handed them over to me. She had such a sweet disposition that I wanted to tell her to go yell at her mother for giving her such a ridiculous name, but simply smiled back and gave her a hug.  

“I can see you really like her”, said my smirking mother. She had come over for dinner and was sitting with me at the dining room table. “She is really good for Kyle and you know it, too”.

Kyle just came around from out of the kitchen. “Thanks Grandma”, he said to her, and gave her a quick hug and kiss on the cheek. He then gave me thumbs up as if to show that if Grandma approved, it was a done deal.

I could not disagree with my mom. Yet I wondered what Jez’s mom would think of everything. Even though she lived down the street I never met her. I wanted to invite her over, but she was always too busy working or taking care of things. How did Jez cope with her always being gone? She needed her mother just as much at sixteen as she did when she was a young girl.

“She works pretty hard”, Jez once told me. “I feel kind of bad because maybe she would not have to work like that if I wasn’t around”.

“Jez, don’t think that way!” I exclaimed.  I could see the tears welling up in her eyes. Kyle, sitting next to her, put his arm around her and gave her a good squeeze to make her smile.

Kyle admitted, “Jez’s dad always told her she is welcome to live with him. She could but she’s not so geeked about it. He lives in California, in San Diego”.

“And he has a swimming pool and a Jacuzzi”, Jez added. “So you think I’d be crazy not to go there”.

“I’d rather live in warm weather, all year round, with a pool to swim in every day”, Kyle confessed to her.

Emphasizing her remark by playfully dotting his nose with her fingertip, she said to him, “Kyle, you know that Cleveland has one thing that San Diego does not have”.

“What’s that?” he answered in a silly voice, gleefully playing dumb.

Giggling a little, she said “You”.

Kyle leaned over, and pecked her with a kiss on her mouth. I could feel the heat in my face, embarrassed that I was blushing over an innocent kiss. But I never saw my son kiss a girl before, not in a romantic way. I got up out of my chair before they could see my discomfort. How foolish I felt! After all, I was a nurse and nothing should have shocked me like this.

There were times I felt that I had more than a leg to stand on with my fears. There was a fine line between innocent times with each other and too much togetherness, and it seemed like Kyle and Jez were crossing it.

Usually on Friday or Saturday nights, Jez and Kyle would watch a horror movie. They both loved horror flicks, the more blood and gore the better. Both loved the classics, from the original Night of the Living Dead to the modern ones like Drag Me to Hell. They’d always snuggle together on the couch with the lights off and big bowl of popcorn, and if I was not working I would be extra watchful. They could be up till past one o’clock in the morning and, even if I needed the sleep, I stayed up right with them.

Often, Kyle and Jez would fall asleep together on the couch before the movie ended. They had gotten that cozy. A few times, Kyle would wake up to still find Jez sound asleep. She was quite a sound sleeper, more than Kyle was. Instead of waking her up to take her home, Kyle would scoop her up in his arms and carry her to his bedroom. In turn, she barely made a stir but rested her head upon his shoulders, letting him take her away from the living room. After laying her upon his bed, Kyle would come back to sleep on the couch.

“How are you going to explain this to her mother?” I asked, confronting him about it”.

“I’m not sleeping with her, Mom!” he argued with me. “You can see I am staying on the couch! Jez’s mom has some new boyfriend, so why would she feel like she even belongs home? Yeah! That’s right! He is crowding Jez right out of her own house! Do you have to look at me like that? Like I am the bad guy, or something? He is living with her mom, sleeping in her bed. Why do you think Jez never wants to go home? The guy’s a total loser! He creeps her out.”

I knew I had to eventually talk to Jez’s mom. I needed her input and she needed mine. As much as I liked her, I just did not feel like Jez should be around so much. It seemed like she lived at my house when she really did not.  The only news I heard about her mom was that Tammy was angry at her daughter for not helping to clean up the house more. So now I found a sound excuse to help Kyle to listen to reason.

I had to tell him to listen to me, to trust my better judgment and experience in spacing out his time with Jez. Perhaps, he needed to see her every other day. To Kyle, that was a hard sacrifice but, along with becoming an adult, came some necessary lessons.

“If Tammy wants her daughter to be more responsible at home” I told him, “you have to learn to respect that”. Deep down, Kyle knew I was right.

So those in between days, with no visits, Kyle was either instant messaging Jez on our computer or talking to her on the phone.  He may have listened to his mother, but he was finding enough ways to not take me as seriously as he should have.

I found myself wishing that Jez would just go away. That feeling did not last long before my guilty conscience got the better part of me. Jezebel Kawalak really was a sweetheart. Everyone who really knew her loved her.

“Do you feel like she is competing with you for Kyle’s time with you?” my mother asked me.

At first, I was ready to tell my mother how out-of-line she was with that statement. Did I seem that selfish? This was the time in Kyle’s life when the childish diversions in life were being replaced with more important things like earning his own money and planning what college he wanted to go and what he wanted for his future.  Or maybe I had to accept that he would tell me that college was not for him. Now he could play his guitar and dream of being a rock star, but reality was ready to kick in for both of us.  More carefree days like these were beginning to look scarce.

I had to admit that Jez became a threat. I worried that she had a high likelihood of ending up pregnant. What would happen then? Kyle was not mature enough to deal with that possibility. I still had those desires to see Jez just go away.

One night, I was going to get what I wanted. But it was something what I never would have wished for.

It was a long day at the hospital for me. I had barely the energy to eat the diner that Kyle had made for me. He was a pretty good cook as he had to learn to make his own meals when I was working. I was brushing my teeth when I thought I heard a knock at the door, but the television was on and I wasn’t sure.  

“Kyle, is someone at the door?” I asked him.  I heard no answer.

I went into the living room and the front door was open. In the dark, I made out the two silhouettes of Kyle and Jez sitting on the cement on the front porch.

I turned the porch light on and gasped. Jez was leaning on Kyle, her face battered and her lip bleeding.

“Let’s get her inside!” I ordered Kyle.

He helped her up but she was stumbling badly. Kyle lifted her up into his arms, and she winced in pain as he carried her inside.

Kyle sat in a chair and kept Jez cradled in his arms, caressing her bruised face with his

My eyes, python-like, swallow the sky,
greedy for the wrongs in me to go right
at the sight of your gleeful greenery
spilling over creek beds and hills.
The wind, combing out my worries,
blowing away the blockage built
by the fumes and filth collected in city gutters.
I want to be
let wild, made free.
But one wrong turn in your winding maze and I am gone,
a place like this will chew you up and spit you out.
You should leave, something tells me.
No one ever leaves fully intact,
the longer you stay, the more you will fall apart.
“On the contrary” I scoff.
“I am becoming more myself, not less.”
But this is what everyone says
just before they leap in joyful pursuit
to tumble headlong down hidden gullies.
But I am more careful, I assure myself.
I hunt the way crocodiles do,
watching patterns with keen intention,
offering my hands and eyes.
But what should I do if, when the time comes,
You resist?
Disregard me, like an unworthy suitor?
And what if that is what I am?
I see, I take note of
the way the wind blows and the shadows fall,
the way the trees twist clockwise
or counter-clockwise.
The way animals flee when I approach and
the way they keep perfectly still
hoping they are invisible.
And there are times when I see all this, and more.
Like heat distortions above a fire,
something peripheral or liminal,
almost outside the spectrum of what can be perceived
or communicated or defined.
All these trails, the ones seen and unseen
and the ones somewhat seen
lead me to a terrible suspicion:
that the likes of me lacks to tools
to understand the likes of you.
that in harmony with one another
we would both cease to be what we are.
that you will never regard me with love and worse—
you will never regard me at all.
Then I, in frustration, stop going with you.
Start to go against you.
And keep going, finally on my own.
Still myself, but less.

Dear Dad,
I love you - oh so much!
I understand
that you were the one
who stood beside me
ever since I was little
ever since Mom lost it
and fled off, eventually.
But I still thank Him
for every single day
He gave you to me.
And Dad,
I know you're scared -
Daddies get scared too -
And I understand
that ever since Mom -
you have lost too much
But you won't ever lose me, you see?
I won't ever leave you!
The wind won't ever carry me away
to places you can't go
Well-
unless it takes me to the ladies' room
then you'd have to let me go.
But after that,
I'll find you outside and
hold your hand.

Dear Dad,
There's no need for P-38, no.
That P-38
You swore you'd use
that on every boy
who breaks my heart
But Dad, cant you see?
It's okay!
I want to get my heart broken.
I want to know how pain
is associated
after the expiration of love
I want to know how you felt before
Because I want to be wary,
I want to take caution
on the next dates I'd have.
And I have to get hurt
to build my own muscles
to become as strong as you.
So that the next man who
breaks my heart
I wont cry so hard all night
that I'd feel the guilt
because I kept you awake.
You'd then call me a princess
and pledge to avenge me
because princesses, you say,
shouldn't be in distress.

But Dad, I am not a damsel
of course not!
I am a warrior!
A ******* goddess at war.
You have to ingest
the fact that your baby girl
has grown into a soldier
in a war she trained herself into
because it is her war.
Keep your P-38, Dad.
There's no need for that.
She's in a battle -
let her win it
without you.

But dearest Dad,
at the end of the day,
I will fall inside the
castle of your arms
and tell you my
whimsical adventures
and assure you
that I'm still your baby girl.
That way,
you won't feel old and
you won't feel like disappearing.
Because you are my King
and kings don't leave
their daughters alone in the woods.

*

Dear Dad,
Somebody broke my heart today.
Where are you?

I saw what you did,
You *******,
You barely got away,
Over a stupid glitch,
The mistake wont repeat itself,
I can assure you of that,
You can hide away nightly,
In your pervy little flat.
All those little ones you took,
And disposed of their souls,
Ripped at their dreams,
**** all over their goals,
But you didnt figure me,
You pathetic slime ball,
I will haunt your dreams,
I will watch you crawl,
Wherever you are going,
Ill be there first,
To dampen your ugly addiction,
And to dry up your ***** thirst,
I will make you suffer,
For every one you hurt,
Your redemption is too late now,
You paedo piece of dirt!!!

The cherry blossom tree will bloom tonight
It will be a lighthouse in the dark
I will be back, my darling
Just as I have been.
I assure you
That things will be alright
You will look for me when you wake,
But I cannot be there
I apologize, my darling.
I will see you in your dreams.

I'm the girl who is lost in space, the girl who is disappearing always, forever fading away and receding farther and farther into the background. Just like the Cheshire cat, someday I will suddenly leave, but the artificial warmth of my smile, that phony, clownish curve, the kind you see on miserably sad people and villains in Disney movies, will remain behind as an ironic remnant. I am the girl you see in the photograph from some party someplace or some picnic in the park, the one who is in fact soon to be gone. When you look at the picture again, I want to assure you, I will no longer be there. I will be erased from history, like a traitor in the Soviet Union. Because with every day that goes by, I feel myself becoming more and more invisible.

I.
Dear Mr. John, always the usual.
We go out every morning, greet
each other the way the sun greets
our skin. We let our fingers do their
own travelling on our palms. Like the
way the sun’s fingers set foot on our
skin. I am talking about the sun today
so that you may be reminded of warmth,
warmth, like the way you eagerly
take the cup of coffee to your lips,
and your tongue sets foot on Mexico
or Dubai. The desert’s sands flooded
your lips all too quickly the moment
you spew out that first sip of coffee.
I don’t recall being stifled the way
you expect me to be. My lungs are
bellowing to the laughter you had
brought me, warm, fuzzy, like it should
be. I find it hard sometimes to take
it seriously—to think that you are
in pain at that moment, first degree
burn and all of that. Smoke rises up
from your cigarette, why should I
worry? Languid as the air in the café,
we let the day stride itself, too serious
for detonation of seriousness, to the point
that even this poem or letter is a joke
worth some peso from your pocket.
It’s not hard. It’s hard to let this moment
sink in, melt like the sugar, granules of
coffee, and creamer on a boiling
cup of water. Boiling, like blood
that goes around our rooted veins;
we let this boiling pass through our
hearts, let it stay a little while till
languid takes it all away. It’s not
that hard, to be honest. Not that
hard to make your own coffee
at the morning’s call. I don’t understand
why you need me so much only on
sunrise due.  I fell tired of your voice,
high and low, as my alarm clock,
every morning till
the sun says we got to go
on our separate paths. I always find it
too hard, like chemistry had not taught me
to separate the mixture of water and coffee.
Too hard as it is easy to combine them. Morning
is easy and when the sun bows down at night,
I remember the whisper of the wind, how it is cold,
freezing what I thought as summer touched heat
of my cup. Cold and heavy like the block of ice
that is my mattress. I find it too hard to recollect myself,
lay bare and stay still as midnight whisper your name,
blew yourself into my window. And I wait for the morning,
heated like the coffee we enjoy. I wait for you
at that moment. But I realize my time is only worth
the length of sipping a hot cup of coffee,
and not a length of conversations worth spilling
on our tongue. I wish it was the words that we
spilled. And not the coffee.

II.
Dear Mr. John, thank you.
Thank you for the invitation to be
at your side every seven in the morning.
I find it warm, like the coffee that centered
between us. Between bellowing laughter
and languid awkwardness. The wind whispers
northbound as it should be. It says to follow its voice;
it’ll take me home. Alone. Like I was programmed
to do. The caffeine had lied enough. It’s normal
after all, for drugs to set in, form delusions and
whatnot. I’m tired, and perhaps I need
a little sleep, slumber for eternity without any
whistling midnight calls, no coffee smoke
to tickle my nostrils, no rising. Nothing.
That’s enough sleepless nights to think
you good. There’s the barista, I assure you
she’s good at what she does. Call her,
ask for the coffee you’d want at seven
in the morning. Converse with the newspaper
so that your mouth will spill not just words,
but important **** that you’ll never thought
worth a peso off your pocket. Spend the morning
not alone, but with the company of ghosts
that are too warm to even call a ghost.
And this time, when the sun had finally
heated your coffee, learn how to wait.
So that this time, a kiss on a cup
won’t burn your lips. Like how
it’s supposed to be.
So that this time, you won’t ****
your cigarette like you used to.
And this time, I can sleep
till noon.

The sadness in me is leaking out,
it’s on my foe’s hand, my friends’ arm,
I cried and I cry,
once again, those tears did not slip away.


It’s harder to breathe but you know this time- you’ll stay,
but you don’t want to.
Holding your breath in for 4 - 7 - 8 they said,
I held it in for like a minute and my body fights it-
but my body didn’t fight the chemical on the top floor,
or actually, it’s perfectly normal.
I am just a plumber who blames the leaking of the tank,
when I am the one who broke the taps,
leaking all the sadness,
splashing the blue on everyone who comes close and closer,
Blue and bluer.


The colour blue I painted is me asking for help,
silent scream, so loud- into people’s eardrums.
But somehow those who came near always got betrayed,
because I am a waste of time, a renegade, a ******* thing that fades,
even though I listen to everything they said-
but the voices in my head sang in unison
‘you are no good, the least you can do is be a nice friend to those helping hand but you’re still a needy ***** who only knows how to take but never give back’.
and I replied ‘Yeah maybe that’s true, maybe that’s right’
That’s why I should have left.


Because the truth is that I am incredibly selfish and guilty.
I am trapped between choking to death with those toxins
or splashing it out to a loved one.
At the last moment- when I was suffocating to death;
I realized that I am gonna die- I desperately begged for someone to come near
I begged them to say, to stay, not to be away.
At the same time, the voices in my head are louder
Using my mouth as a speaker,
Mouthing all the words I don’t know whether I meant to say.
Deepen into the core, choking on loved ones.


Yet again, I look at myself in despair.
Yet again, I said the same old sorry as I meant it but it means nothing.
Yet again, I crossed all the lines, I broke all the rules.
Yet again, I am blue because I hurt my close one, my closet one, my lifeline.


But in the end, what hurts me the most
is the fact that I am just another one of the bad friends,
bad employee,
bad daughter,
and also
a waste of
human being.
My intention was to survive and be good but in the end,
my action was
baseless,
useless,
worthless even.


To those who were painted with my blue,
I am sorry-
I tried but I am too full of sorrow.
I never meant to hurt you but still,
I did.
Didn’t mean to dump the whole bucket,
but you’re still wet
But rest assured that those will soonly dry,
no stains,
cos’ I shouldn’t stay.


I am deciding whether I stay or I stray,
Whether I fight or flight,
Whether I pray or I prey,
Whether I ride or rhyme,
Whether I live or laugh or love.
Hahaha, that’s too cringe.

Because
in order to live,
I must hold it in,
I must stop leaking the blue,

Because
in order to laugh,
I either find joy in my life,
or just look back at this pathetic so-called content.

Because in order to love,
I must leave.
Leaving this town,
press stop on the *******,
no more leaking the blues,
and rid me for good.

Because in order to continue this ride,
I must get better.
But here I am
rhyming the **** out of my feelings,
spraying the water that’s way too cold, it’s not chilling.

And nowadays, I pray for all of you now
because the wishes wouldn’t work for me
no more - I am too far.
I am a prey who prays and preys.

Lastly,
I am tired of the battle.
Thinking every day for a life
where I don’t have to fight
but it seems easier for me to flight.
Flight from all the circus,
the madness,
the_I-don’t-know-how-to-define or just call it life.
Flight from all of you,
my loved ones,
mon amies,
my best thing to ever happen to me
but have to bare me with a black dog that whispers my biggest insecurity


My biggest fear right now is that-
the sadness in me,
the sadness that is me.
The one that is eating me inside,
will crawl out,
eating up people I love.
Just to remind me I exist for no good,
to assure me to flight and to die.

This time, it’ll be for good.
This time, the tears will slip away.
and so will I.

Practiced pain and misery memorised
A shawl swirling round but nothing is covered
—nothing safe
Little woman—

Why do you roam so free on these greasy roads
People—
people are everywhere, don’t you see?
Do you not know how easy a shell is broken
—how swiftly the pearl is stollen
Little woman— little woman
Where do you hide your crystal wings—
Did you sell them for some loaves of breads?
Don’t assure.

Your eyes bear no tragic fruit and
I wish they did— Lord, how I wish so!
Anything but this casualty
Placidity—
Have they long forgotten
the sky-high castles they were robbed from?
All those moon-struck crowns—
Don’t, don’t assure!

Don’t spread out that hand
Don’t show me that tight stomach
I beg you don’t show them that
stomach—waiting to be filled—
Where in the hell do you sleep?
Don’t you have a door to lock?
Don’t assure—

You priceless, prince-less little woman
Why do you roam so free on these greasy roads
Why do you beg? Why do you—
I wonder why I ask— I with my flowers and bees
wonder what I even know—

If I stayed any longer,
Who knows?
I might have gone insane too.

He told me his name.
I never asked him why he was there,
Why everyone else avoided him.  

I regret it now
But now is not the time,
There is no time left.  

He said he could get out
Whenever he wanted.
He just had no reason to go.  
He told me if I would come with him,
Stay with him forever, we’d leave.  

Can you imagine that?
He even said he loved me.  
The weirdest part is, I think I loved him to.
I would keep trying to remember
Where this love was taking place,
In this asylum but, I always forgot.

All we had to do was walk out.  
Nobody touched us.  
When we were out, we ran, and ran, and ran.  
In the middle of the forest,
There was no way they could find us,
We still wanted to be safe.

We found a cave in which we could stay,
Until we had enough strength to explore.
There was plenty of apples and firewood around.  
That first night, I just ate, and ate, and ate.  

I noted the big willow tree
and boulder next to the exit.
Natural, and calm.
This was a place of my refuge,
Where I would be happy.

We set out to explore,
The cave must have been close to the surface,
There were cracks in the ceiling that lit our way.
The cave was filled with tunnel after tunnel.  
Sometimes the tunnel would split into five or six
And we would have to choose one.
Giving the false sense of direction
As we wandered, aimless.
  
When I got scared,
He would assure me it would all be fine.
That must have been the worst lie,
Anyone has ever told me.

I finally worked up the courage
To ask him why he was in the asylum.  
He told me he could fool the mind.
Fool it into believing its body was in pain,
He said his looks could ****.

I scoffed.  

He stared at me,
Completely bewildered.  
I clearly thought him insane.  
He let that slide.  

He never kissed me fully, passionately.  
They were always short and sweet.  
He only brushed my face
When he wanted me to calm down,
Making jokes whenever
I was having second thoughts.
  
He was using me.  
I was a shield, nothing more.  
I would have to be disposed of.

Back to staring,
I realized that his back
Is not made of duck feathers.
My scoff doesn't slide.

I ran faster I’d ever run before.
All this flew through my mind
As I scrambled up from the cave floor for the third time.
The exit was just around the corner.
It just had to be.  

As I stumbled back
Onto the cold hard rock
The exit came into view.
I saw the light shimmering on the broken rock.
The shadow of a willow tree.
Ironically I was so happy I could cry.  
I’d hide in the trees
I’d never have to see this murderer again.  
Tripped for the fourth time.

I looked up,
Still sprawled out on the cave floor.  
There was a hole in the ceiling,
Sending shattered shafts of light to where I was lying.  
I watched the dust fall in lazy spirals.

I jumped off the floor.
Back to my peril,  
I heard his sluggish footsteps.
Turned around for one last look.
He stood in those shattered beams of light
Glaring at me.

Now on my feet, I stood
In the dark half of the spacious hall of rock
As if that would help my situation.  
If only I could fade into the shadows.  
I was trapped.
With no escape but the cave's tunnels behind me,
Or the death awaiting me.  

Just a few more steps back.  

He’s eyes snapped to my feet,
"You don’t want to do that.”
Back to my face.
His smile was only evident in his voice.
He was right.  
I didn’t want to die in that moment.  

The room’s light darkened
As if someone had put out the sun.
I knew it was coming.

I loved him.
He may not love me now.
He may never have.
But I don’t care.  
If I never loved him,
I may not be in this situation,
I might not be about to die.  
But I think just maybe,
It was worth it.  

Those smiles,
Stolen kisses and touches,
Just the sound of his voice.
Running in the middle of the forest
Away from the asylum.
It was all worth the pain I was about to feel.  

We stood staring at each other,
Waiting for the other to make the first move.  
The tension mounted.
Hatred started coming off him in waves,  
Hitting me over and over
Threatening to pull me under.  
I could feel his anger.

The air seemed to thicken,
Weighing down on me,
Forcing from me my last breath.
Draining me of what little strength
I had left to remain standing.

I began to gasp for air,
Unable to feel my lungs expand.
Feel the relief of oxygen in my blood.  
My eyes were locked in his
Begging to turn away,
To save my life.  

I was mesmerized.
Like prey waiting for the snake to strike  
I watched helplessly as his face,
Distorted with anger, began to twitch.  

I could see the words that would end this,
Begin to form on his lips.
Waiting to be released.
***** off his spit stained *****.  
After the agony of anticipation seemed to reach its peak.  
They dropped like acid into the open air.

I lost the fight against the pressure.
Finally crumbling under the strain,
I rested on my knees.
Holding my head in my hands
Preparing to resist the attack.

It hit me full force
Like a subway train at full speed.
I did all I could not to cry out,
To give in to this miserable existence,
To give him the satisfaction of my death.  

I broke out in a cold sweat
As my muscles continued to fight,
Melting with the strain.  
Adrenaline pumped through my veins
As the true attack began.  

The pain started at the tips of my fingers and toes.  
Slowly crawling, burning,
It continued to eat away at my flesh.  

Much to my dismay
I remained intact
But paralyzed by the pain
Unable to run away,
To escape it.

I was unaware of the storm of tears
Falling from my cheeks.  
Oblivious that he continued to circle closer,
Waiting for his moment to strike.  

The pain began to worsen,
Shifting from fire to lava,
Lava to lightning.  
It was unimaginable, indescribable.

Then I lost control.
This body– it was no longer mine.
It began to betray me.  
It shuddered, then shook spasmodically.  

Its back arched knowing what was to come next,
Preparing as the bubble of air was pushed slowly
Up its tongue, against its lips.
Its blood curdling,
Gut wrenching shriek
Lasted mere hundredths of a second.

He comes into view for a brief moment.
My eyes roll back into my head,
And I lose myself in the blackness.