They punch me in the face
Until it is apparently asymmetrical
They call me human waste
And tell me not to be sentimental
When they're insistent
On our difference
I begin to see asymmetry
In the way they're treating me

Does anybody remember or even care
About what happened in Nisour Square?
A Blackwater slaughter
Killing sons and daughters
An unprovoked
Macabre joke
The militants were convicted
The victims remained deceased
The locals were livid
When the problem would repeat
We don't mind taking innocent lives intentionally
When we see their value asymmetrically

Does anyone remember when the city of Fallujah
Smoked like a hookah?
Thermobaric rocket launchers
That used depleted uranium
To melt insurgent craniums
Left behind waste
That is radioactive
The citizens could taste
The shame of being passive
When they couldn't reject
The spike in birth defects
A child is born with its heart protruding from its chest
So we can more easily grab it
That child was born with an asymmetrical breast
Because of our capitalist habit

Contractor corpses hang from a bridge
While we stand on a ridge
Separating chaos and order
A symmetrical border
Order oppresses
Chaos undresses
Both cause messes

We need to see each other equally
Or we'll continue seeing sequel sprees
We need to stop seeing asymmetrically
And adopt a completely loving creed

In my absence
My mind has been doing back-flips,
back-spins and hand-springs.

They really should be called head-springs.'

Off a spring board I began vaulting.
Trying to spin, tumble, turn des pairs
of thoughts stuck in the landing area

Threw a little french in there for ya.

Grasping at hysteria asymmetrically with sanity
must be stronger than anxiety. Like a glass coat, it blankets me
however you can see to the core, translucent rings of a tree.

Walking the balance beam
between life and suicide sporadically.
Being pushed on both sides by a jet stream

Surviving is a pipe dream because we are all dying.

Once again I am on the floor. However,
I am implored to look forward by poetic neighbors.
All I gotta do is knock on their door and they'll gladly give me a cup of esprit de corps.

*More french, Au revoir

Something tells me that you’re going to be magic someday.
That same something also told me that our intelligence is dying, fading deeply into an artificial existence,
swirly, milky, warm and familiar.
Oh! This cry reminds me of time spent inside of my mother’s womb, it’s the ******* essence of life, division creates one,
things come undone, wheels are spun and respun.
Oh, existence is exciting. De…
Spite what I say, I as a human have this exciting urge to believe in everything and nothing all at the same time, and yet feel completely content with the uncertainty immediately following. Why?
Why slide down the backbones of your friends instead of creating your own out of silly putty and *******? Because that’s all that’s REALLY going on here, right? Just a whole lot of utter and complete *******. We’re all just in search of something substantially and outrageously righteous to believe in.
Something profound, yet enticing. Never arrogant or stringy, stretchy, worn.
We live in mad days, a mad daze of terror, rage. Disgusting filth, mesmerizing measurements, fat men and their walrus struggle, THERE’S TOO MANY BABIES!
Everything’s real frothy, fluffy, CUSHY.
And this comfortable comfort aides me late past the second noon, where bubblegum and clownfish skies look so beautiful when you’re looking through smoky spectacles.
Let’s clasp hands and stroll down that crooked stretch of land far from electronic arms and bionic senior citizens, super as they may be.
don’t let anyone catch that regret in your voice, dear. This is just another rat-race, fast paced and now we’re stopped at some electronic gate while we travel down the Information Super Highway. ****’s wack, man.
What’s with all the can’ts and stops and yields? I say I can’t read fuzzy bear, so stop harassing my mood and demeter, you don’t see me checking out your gun.
STOP. WAIT! HALT!!
I’m going to threaten your life now, or at least I would if I could threaten any shredded living remains of a tale probably sadder than my own. Get going, you’re going to late for your Living in Denial workshop meeting that you attend every Sunday morning.
Don’t go throwing my sheep into the fire now, you never know what you might spark. And you don’t see me checking out your gun.
Just don’t hate me because I don’t follow your logic, it’s my world too man. See, you spark my petite taste for “sincere apologies” and throw another polished rock in my face. “Sorry” is no ******* excuse for greed.
You’re going to be pure, radiating magic someday. I can see it in your eyes, they’re asymmetrically wise. Now expand your voice like a strong Whitney ballad, hauntingly emotional and loud. LOUD.
So loud that your cousin Stanley can hear you all the way from his random mid-life crisis backpack excursion in the Swiss Alps.
Take my hand, friend, and in the park by the trees with the birds and the bees we’ll slowly fade into the grass, every atom meshing and combining, it’s science. Do you hear it? The pulsating of the massive brain, the all-knowing library?
Knowledge is flowing. We’ll get massively drunk and pass out in a cozy embryo sack full of words and goo (but don’t worry, we’ll be wearing raincoats).
Warm and surreal, we’re happy and we’ll wake up still drunk off of knowledge.

And then. We feel that stinging magic, and it’s bittersweet, glamorous and harsh. And just as euphoric as we were, we fall.
As with every high, there is a low
And you are a giant ticking grandfather clock counting each moment carefully and precisely, making sure to take note of the glow and grandness of it all. Everything.
Is ignorance bliss? Do you wish to be left in the dark?
Because, to be honest, I’m scared of the dark, and sometimes I need a little light.

Asymmetrically
                we
connect;
                                        yet
           ­                              **perfectly fit!

for Daniel,
                   and anyone else who cares*

I'm relatively new at this,
if you consider that I've
never done this before.

And this is the only time I'll read this;
this is the cherry
exploding in your mouth,
between your hungry teeth
digging into the skin.

You are a window pane,
but you are not stained glass.
You are less clear than that.

You make less sense than
the spider veins of a kiss imprinted
on a bus window.

You make less sense than kissing a bus window,
arching and aching for that semi-perfect,
seventy percent reflection of yourself
as you float above and before
birds picking at beetles in the grass.

You make more sense than a thousand
kisses on a bus window
the driver has to keep cleaning off because
who really wants to kiss a bus window, anyway?

And still they're there, the oils and grease
immortalized for a few months,
the impression of imagined romance
pressed against the scratched glass on which someone tried to write,
"*******," backwards with a safety pin.

This is my first time reading this,
and the last time I will say it,
though it sounds much better when
the man inside my head so charismatically reads it aloud
to his audience
kind of like a dry comedian would tell a joke.

This is my first time standing before you,
and let me say that sometimes
I might offend you,
preachers, and speakers, and pew sitters;
evangelists and full blooded, God-fearing sinners alike.
And maybe you can forgive me
if I occasionally step on your closed-minded toes
in your sensible shoes.

Or perhaps they aren't so sensible.

And I got a haircut recently--
and here I'm expected to say something profound.
Something that perhaps sounds like,
"I got a haircut recently
while you stood in the bathroom with an electric razor
and shaved ten months of memories from your scalp."

Scalp.
The word makes me think of natives,
and it makes me wonder how long it takes
to collect the bleeding wigs from
the hairless children you left in the street.

Street.
That word makes me think of--
and here again I must choose my words carefully,
because the next thing I say will expose myself
poetically and psychologically--
spinal injuries.

All the careless children walking down sidewalks
not thinking of their mothers as they step
on every single crack in the pavement.

But what if everything we were superstitious about
were real?

Would we repave the world every week
so that there would be no chance of breaking
an innocent woman's back through carelessness?
There will be no cracks for thoughtless children
in their sneakers
they are too young to tie on their own.

Or perhaps the world would be covered in grass,
and every day mother would wrap the scarf
tightly about her son's ears and whisper,
"Don't step on any rocks today, my love.
I'm still recovering from last week."

But that's ridiculous.

I suppose it's surprising to me how many words
the man in my head can say while staring at a
Manhattan Morning in black and white
hung on your wall by three thumb tacks.
The lower right corner hangs idly where I took
the fourth one out to make this poem sound better.

There is a solar system in your ceiling,
did you know that, my love?
It is not in the asymmetrically placed
glow in the dark stars you placed at random,
nor is it in that one dolphin that seems to
swim amongst the Saturns and galaxies
that make no sense in context.
It isn't the seahorse, either.

Would you say that the Milky Way is made of wishes?
When I lie next to you in the darkness
uttering soft lullabies, I make wishes to your ceiling
that my voice doesn't crack
and you don't wake up again.
And also that perhaps one of us is wrong about God
and maybe he is out there after all
and mass-delusion doesn't exist.

I still think I'm right, though.

You make less sense than a kiss that means nothing.

But you, my love, you are more than a thousand kisses.
You are more than the thousand words
a picture may be worth.
And if I were better at saying things
maybe I could preserve you in a poem.

But I don't think anyone can.
No one can shape words and pages to your figure,
the fullness of your lips and
the strength of your nose;
the holes in your ears and
the life between your legs.

I got a haircut the other day
and cut twenty months of memories from my scalp.
It feels nice to not remember,
anymore.

Light the funeral pyre.
The fleeting fire of desire
will never keep you higher
than a space devoid of *******,
or the clever whiff of wit.
(whether or not I deserve it)
I looked you in the eyes;  I shook.
The embarrassing strength it took.
The longing I have for you
is asymmetrically split in two.
A love for the rendezvous,
but a run from the morning dew.
That's you.
But realistically,
I'll be me.
And to be free,
I'm finally happy.
And she's out there-
a heart of care,
soft, translucent hair,
some lacy underwear,
a smile to defeat despair.
Every time I doubt,
I see you there.
And then you're everywhere.
You're my sturdy, wooden chair,
and the cowlick in my hair.
And to be fair,
I've got some pretty sweet underwear.
But ****, when you’re there,
you're there.
And for me,
you're everywhere.

I felt your breath and smoke like
adjacent trains.

------------

I lost my heart in the war between
what took place in normal Syrian towns
(just like the ones I learned how to read in
and the ones I danced through your hair like
asymmetrically curling waves in,
and the ones where
I saw love die like a
half-lit cigarette still burning)
and  
what your skin looked like when the wind blew off the sheets so softly that mice could have ran marathons-
where shrouded shadows cleared vision like your cornfields of tightening nerves,
forever unwinding mine.

It was hiding in between your teeth and all of the other places that were too brightly shaded for me to sun-tan under,
where
you are sixteen acres of magnolia trees donning the darkest leaves that forests will ever see,

and we mirror each other's company so tragically.

----------

Inside,
your fireplace warmed our souls like
Phish Food
and whatever chemical reactions occur when love overpowers self-loathing.

In an age of braless nymphettes wearing lululemon
Who speak of unequivocal virtues
We seek **** role models and female superheroes
Ambition has no equal in all its atavistic ambivalence
Still we ****** our ******* feminine values into each other’s faces
Disrespecting our past predators and predecessors
And the pirate priests who prepared our souls for fiery salvation
In wartime circuses we are all pretzels and pantyliners
Who necessitate no changing stations for these gyrating giants of industry
And the gentle guardians of the spirit
With giraffe sized necks and human hearts that beat in their vulturous beaks
Who tear each and every naive feminine seeker into thousands of tiny pieces
Till all that’s left are precocious and imperfect targets
Seeking articulations of their convulsive
Nay, compulsive addictions to affection
With dinosaur sized scars and crocodile scales covering their erogenous parts  
We hide beneath a pile of beautifully styled business cards and good marks
Like we are a bunch of naughty children caught lurking in someone else's basement
Until the morning comes and we heed the need to once again impale our flailing limbs on another angry treadmill
While pilates preachers speak tender secrets from palaces of perfection
A hungry intersection of underwear and diamonds
When we finance our families’ vacation with blockchain investments
That eventually all end up feeding the same weapons dealers who control the world’s most vulnerable food chains
We are all deniers of the warnings of climate change specialists
Who liberate their minds with psychedelic toad poison
Moist as the dawn we overcame the wolves of oblivion
And covered up a significant number of Mother Nature's sounds that we abhorred for all the wrong reasons
Preferring fir-scented yoga rooms to an authentic forest floor covered in pine-needles, acorns, cones and a plethora of edible fungi
We’ve come to detest our own chthonic scents, senses and instincts
So we try to pretend that we've never sweat before
Exactly like a pile of compassionately discarded compost
Innocently left to rot in the sun for several weeks on end
So now for fun we back-bend over thundering volcanoes
Earthenware bowls asymmetrically formed in our souls
If all our pelvises tilt slightly to the left of west
Then the forest’s health is a direct reflection of our own faulty perspectives
And now you justify selling your soul for meager earnings
For next to nothing is always better than being wholly broke
Or broken holy or even sometimes just a little bit more hungry

not a morning person
she’s content to hide in leafy shadows
wildly overgrown purple and green vines
surround and ensnare her
beneath a canopy of pink antique tea roses

she stands inside a maple platform
designed and handcrafted with care
three asymmetrically positioned 2 by 4 risers raise her
about a foot off the ground
two golden plaster cherubs hover above her on either side
fine grayish wood grain, like carpenter’s fingerprints
peek out through faded cerulean backboards
a painted backdrop made translucent by exposure
fresh cut miniature roses in miniature vases
brighten the stage like foot lights
behind the platform, at the back of the cave
clumps of ferns intermittently reveal
mud swirls splashed on a mint colored wall
up front, a row of marigolds and strawberry plants
embank a retaining wall border
of cabana-like sculpted brick
glistening white quartz stream before her
like a river of rocks at her feet
completing the grotto

she comes alive as the afternoon sun
brings out the color in her cheeks
she steps out from the shadows
and stretches her arms out close by her sides
palms facing outward
fingers pointing down
as if something were emanating from her hands
while she blesses us with peaceful contemplation

We*
      asymmetrically connect,
                             yet,
                             *perfectly fit

my life ends here / on a Sunday’s evening
after the cross and the globe on the church’s steeple became cooler
I have never felt more non-pain non-love non-fear
the asphalt feels empty and dull for my soles / the resounding box lost its echo
I step further asymmetrically / my soul is slanting / I have no better thing to do

than to stare at people right into the whole / the full of them
without any thought
only the shadow of my elbow embraces other shadows
en passant
silhouette after silhouette
Modigliani’s women / Brâncuşi’s magic birds
la dolce morte della luce
everything flows into thoughts / thoughts into other thoughts even Charon’s boat
and right now my lips paralyzed to stop me from proving something

She smiled asymmetrically
Challenged a stroke that paralysed her
Then lifted up dramatically
The broken hopes i had for her

I had strived to help her recover
But it was a single raindrop on a barren land
A decent yet so frail endeavour
A spark of life lost in dessicated sand

But life is not in the sparks we achieve
It's an imploding light
In the minds of those who truly believe
It's the persistent fight
The will to throw yourself on the battlefield
Against the illusion of fright
And the fear that you will eventually yield!
and even someday, you might
Rise up then and hold again your shield
'cause if you don't survive this everlasting night
It is also me that you will deceive

It was rather my mind that paralysed me
And rather her smile revascularised me
This dope I received
was the hope that I need
An inspiring pill
For an expiring will
A lifelong set of treatments
for my postponed disappointments

~Epic Monkey

It gets quite ridiculous
         When you compare
              Our uneven efforts

I thought we could make each other
asymmetrically
happy

I was wrong.
There was no
               thrill
There was
a c t i o n

Poetry
Infected me
With flecks of ink
Asymmetrically.

I never could forget her
Though she could forget me

Isn't that the way love works
Asymmetrically?

I have multitudes
spread throughout me asymmetrically
eyes of 3 shades
leveled as if portrayed vertically
sunshine captured in them deep
oceanic blue sky lit by lightnings cloudless open airy & free
lonely writer
wired to a chosen scheme
reinvented blissfully
Morning calm another day of resting under apple trees

troublesome ways awoken by no cost
transits rule the world - including all those created by me
scene of april
By the fortress nowhere lying near to a brand new land formed
-down my Ravine
where the meandering valley stops-
(and starts running later on)
Lonely writer in shallow love
eyes deep
trust in the transit

Although so frantic no place is vile to sit
rethink
or overthink...

Anyway - I have strong faith in my destiny
I obey
all the glitter wisdom and great glory
of it - and all its closest surroundings.

u ought to know
In times when the dull winter sun descends behind the skyline
and it darkens progressively
crazy fast as if sped up
I try to find a brighter light in those green eyes of yours
find calm amidst thunderclouds miniature thunderstorms
and inhale the magic orbiting you like a handmade universe so perfect
so quintessential
that I don’t mind being in love
with your eyes
your auburn hair
and extraterrestrial reputation.

But as I said:
I don’t mind being blue nor rosy
next to u
The reason for this staged adventure across galaxies is true
I love u
for the fun of it
I don’t need u
but keep u close to my shoulder as if I was orbiting u
As a planet - in your handmade universe - in your emerald eyes - in my sober mind.

I am the poet in big need and
captivated
by ur olive green vividly glistening eyes
which fit my fractured consistency unattached from everyone
ur hair gold like fallen leaves in fall
a celestial archer from Orion
areas of thinking I have for an armor
against unwanted corruption-
u have things i wanna gain
in the future
distant but plain

Evenings come
it darkens now
I see summer in your sweet eyes
I feel bliss empowerment magic midnight lit by fire
you create
Masterfully

And the things you do to me
make no sense
why I stay?
Simple answer:
you are the perfect bartender to align with to become something what’s larger
to move forward with u
or without u
doesn’t matter.

Epic story to be written past boring beginnings later
after everything has happened
nonchalant and happy after.
Lonely lover
favorite poet
writing with ur hands narrative
To acknowledge my true thoughts
roaming through my unpaired visually eyes
To remember that I love you
for forever
when u leave i’ll live in peace
somewhere in the deep of my
sweet overpoetic mind.

Pieces of sparrow against the tourist trap window
The laminated pages of trifold maps yellow asymmetrically in the sun
There as the light dances

The plastic palm
Not growing
Leaves


Irresolute

The

Ac bolted above the front door making a lot of racket but doing **** all otherwise

Healing is not linear
I like to say as tears fall parallel
Why can’t I let that go
Loosen my grip
On the anger
The injustice
The lies
Why can’t I let that go
For every second that passes
Not the pain you caused
But that I let myself be pained
Over
And over
As the tears fall asymmetrically
Onto a tight fist
And his unopened letters