autopilot
once you're on you dont stop
autopilot
in one ear and out the other
autopilot
life passes by like a dream
autopilot
this is so simple
autopilot
dangerously simple
autopilot
why cant i pay attention?
autopilot
this is your captain speaking
autopilot
and i am asleep at the wheel

I've never been able to get good sleep.
My eyes darker than black holes, I spiral down.
I try to clamber up, but I'm in way too deep.

Daydreaming at night.
The loss of myself, but very aware of my state of mind.
Release is only found within the sunrise.
Every night I stumble on the moon.
I jump star to meteor, hoping gravity pulls me into the space between. Maybe then I can get some real good sleep.

History book worthy battles, I wonder who will be the victor.
Love or loath; a sword drawn to my heart.
Arms apart, head thrown back.
I'm not even entirely sure what part of me I'm killing, I'm just praying for relief, I just want some sleep.

I was sick of the suffering, autopilot is my new definition of personality.
Memories have turned into sadistic nightmares.
Let me free myself from this close eyed, open mind torture.
I cant even stand to walk around my own mind, silence is full of beasts I have yet to slay.    
I'd rather hide in the wounded parts of me, call myself a survivor.
A survivor of nothing out of the ordinary.

I autopilot can pretend
I autopilot can feel
I may go about my chores
I may go unnoticed
Punctual is my middle name
But can you see what I feel
And can you feel what I see
Do you know what lies beneath the surface
You who are of many words
I could make you laugh
I could make you feel great
I could even cause myself to lose
To enable you to win
Deep within myself I hide
I dream of better days to come
I autopilot remain on mute throughout the days
I speak only when spoken to
I watch the moving of the trees from my favourite window in my home
And I dream ... simply dream ... just dream

And now, their desperation and panic sink to an all-new low. They actually begin an attack on my sexuality, my familial relations and even my ability to have an ****** ...

  An ******?

  When you stop laughing, take into consideration that they are also regressing throughout all of this because this dysfunction that they suffer from is deeply rooted in their youth. Thus all the silly name calling and accusations that they could not possibly be able to know or prove and yet they state them as fact, like a child. I.E: A child calling out: "Your mama is a *****". Now those words come flying out from a frightened child when they really have no idea whatsoever about this target's mother. It is just an attempt to hurt. Nothing more.

But in this next bit, you can really see this desperation and panicked choice of subjects to try and use "against me", as-it-were. They don't know what else to do. Their ego is on autopilot, telling their fingers what to type ... and their ego is regressing back to childhood. Thus the childish subject matter.


(Name Deleted) Jeff the TROLL..
Has never and will never reach ****** ****** with either female or male partners.

Has never had a stable and fulfilling love life.
Will NOT and can NOT never ever love anyone UNCONDITIONALLY.
Has never been loved UNCONDITIONALLY by anyone male or female.
Has always been consumed unto bitter and fierce hatred of anyone who has!!.
A deep and bitter jealousy leading to violent hatred consume this TROLL.
Get back under your bridge Jeff.
Any replies from you in future will be deleted unread-even your long overdue apology.
AUM

 0 
 1 reply 
15h

Jeff Gaines  SOOOO MUCH FUN!

Ok, (Name Deleted) ... THAT was your most humorous YET!

Your actions are truly textbook of a person with your deep psychological issues. So ... if you will not read any more of my responses to YOUR trolling, then I needn't worry about you then sending a new volley to this one ... Hum? Good, I'm glad. This is truly getting boring. It's not too challenging to have a battle of wits with an unarmed person ... and a predictable one as well.

Sadly, we both know that your silly, over-inflated ego will NEVER allow you to NOT read something written about you. And you not responding would be a cover for your pathetic attempt to have the last word. (Again, we both know THAT won't happen)

Funnier still, you call me a troll, then go to one of my pieces and begin yet another troll campaign on the same day that you claim to not read any more of my responses.

So, you are trying to say ... "I will continue to troll/bully you, but I will read none of your responses, so I win". (hands on your hips, stomping your tiny foot on the floor, no doubt)

You say you are married? I pity this person ... your behavior is that of a post-pubescent, angry little boy with serious ego and self-esteem issues. Her life must be a living hell, as I would bet money that you are an overbearing control freak with an intense king-baby syndrome to boot. Of course, I could be completely wrong and it is SHE who wears the pants in your household and THAT is why you must come here to find some sense of "control" in your world. But that is all conjecture that I do not wish to even BEGIN to address.

Your need to appear like some type of "guru" or all-knowing person who is better than everyone else is deeply seated, so I think it started very early in your life.

As I've said ... 'TEXTBOOK".

So textbook in fact, that I have decided to make this entire exchange into a piece about trolls/bullies and bullying. But don't worry about that ... I will leave it up long enough for you to read it, leave one of your hysterical troll responses to further prove my observations ... and I will have had the last word.

Then, predictably, you will write something about me on your page, then block me so that I can't respond (thus making your poor, decimated ego feel like it had the last word), which will not only further prove my observations about you, but it will lead folks over to my page to read my piece about you.

It'll be fun!

Now, on to your latest huffing and puffing:

"troll"

Once again, you accuse me of something that YOU are guilty of.

Once again, you are crying about me doing something that YOU did first. (I can't stop laughing about this. Just like a bully to cry and whine when he himself is punched in the nose and doesn't receive the response that he is seeking when HE does the punching!)

*** - Kettle/Gander - Goose, little man.

I am only guilty of responding to your trolling ... which is my right. Because, as is well established, you began this little soiree when you called me an "Unreconstructed alcoholic with no personal sense of shame" in a comment about a piece I had written about a friend that had recently died! Sadly pathetic, indeed.

Then, as I've stood up to you, you have spiraled down, like a burning airplane, in your pathetic child-like name calling and such to the point where you did schoolyard (at best) name-calling ("Electronic ****"? I LOVED THAT ONE!) and attacked my race, my religion and political stances (I picture you, a terrified little schoolboy, trembling in a schoolyard, shouting these things as you wee your pants in fear).

Then. you actually threaten me with physical violence (punching me in the nose). Now ... when NONE of that ridiculous posturing and panic-stricken chest-beating has worked, you take a jab at my sexuality and interpersonal relationships?

You are the one with "No personal sense of shame" here. You are publicly getting more and more pathetic and your ego won't even let you see that! Your imaginary pedestal is way too high, (Name Deleted). The fall from there is really going to hurt you.

Attacking my sexuality, love life and relationships?

Really?

There are few straws left for you to grasp at, huh?

Again, having never met me, something you couldn't POSSIBLY make accurate conjectures about. ANYONE reading this would laugh, knowing where this is truly coming from.

My FAVORITE was the bit about me never achieving an ******! It took me SEVERAL minutes to stop laughing about that one.

How old are you (Name Deleted)? 12 ... 13, maybe?

No matter your actual birth age, these silly claims and insinuations are definitely NOT those of a grown-aged man. They are straight out of the playbook of an early teen. To make such an unfounded accusation is nearly disturbing on SO many levels.

Wow ... just ... "WOW".

You spew them from your imaginary ivory tower, the one that makes you believe that you are above everyone else, so they MUST be facts, right?

And in true (Name Deleted) form, you state them like facts to the public.

A public that can readily see that it is all coming from a wee little man, standing on an imaginary pedestal trying to convince the world that he is a "somebody". You should have taken my earlier advice and just closed your mouth. But it is all too late.

Deep nasal breaths (Name Deleted) ... DEEP nasal breaths.

I've no need to respond to this silly notion with tales of my ****** bravado or adventures, nor my past love life. That is none of your business and a true gentleman NEVER kisses and tells.

Besides, THAT is the action of schoolboys and men who are lacking in the "endowment" department ... as is attacking OTHER men about these issues.

I won't bring my family into this either. (Taking shots at my familial relationships (Name Deleted)? Hmmm, I wonder if this a Freudian confession of your own family issues. But I won't go there. It's a can of worms best left on the shelf, I should think. It does pose some possible explanations for your behavior and persona though, doesn't it?)

So ... I hope you stick to your word and "not read/delete" this so that I needn't respond again. But, (long sigh) I highly doubt that you will. Your life AND your behavior are CONTROLLED by your fully delusional ego.

Watch for my upcoming piece, which will feature this exchange for ALL of the world to see. It will be cut and pasted verbatim, and I will even add a few additional notes.

I'm going to use it to help educate others on how to recognize and handle egotistical, cowardly, wanna-be bullies such as yourself.

Please, allow me to at least thank you for writing all these responses and demonstrating in such a textbook fashion, how your type acts and reacts and even letting us see inside of you a bit, thus letting us see what makes you tick.

And most importantly ... THANKS for the laughs.



This last one is where we can see the bottom of their barrel. As predicted, they can NOT “not read/erase” something that is written about them. Their ego would NEVER allow this. They MUST read and respond because THEY must have the last word. So, we are back to schoolyard names like “**** wipe”, attacking my sexuality and chest beating by attempting to assert that I have somehow “FAILED”. (You see? They HAVE to win, so it is easier to just let them think that they did.) After this, they can only lash out with slurs against my Mother and such. I think I've made my point here.

And now you, dear Reader, will have seen nearly the complete downward spiral of a bully/hater/troll when you stand up to them. I thank them for their 'help” in making this new piece and then show that I am the better man and offer to let them have the last word. I've no idea what that will be, but if you would like to see it, just go to the piece titled “Message To A Friend” (Link in notes below), it will be there soon enough. Their desperation to be dominant is so readily apparent here, it is sad. As I said, they can't help it. Their ego is on autopilot because these issues are so deeply ingrained in their self.



(Name Deleted) To Jeff the TROLLISH LOSER.
WOW so many words just to prove you are a piece of white liberal **** wipe.
You must really hate life with your filthy mouth spewing out
non stop TROLL NONSENSE--as if its a Fight or a Battle to be fought with any stranger just to prove you are a MAN!!!.
WELL JEFF YOUVE FAILED.
YOU are not a MAN but you do have a Male Body.
Never will be a Man.
Always a sexless TROLL.
.
 0 
 1 reply 
13h

Jeff Gaines Well, (Name Deleted), I want to sincerely thank you for all of this. You don't realize it now, but you have helped me to compose something that will, in turn, help other people. It is very admirable. I/we have taken something awful and made it into something positive.

Balance in the universe doesn't get any better than that. Besides, from here, there's not much left but you making verbal attacks on my Mother and such. Even I won't let you reduce yourself to that.

I wish you well. I hope all of your dreams and wishes come true, and moreover, I hope you get the help you need to finally find peace. A peace that will let you stop trying to belittle others with your condescension and bullying demeanor. I truly hope that you can release the tortures that keep you with this agonizing persona. It must be horrible for you.

And again, THANK YOU!

Leave any message you wish after this so that you can sleep well, knowing that you had the last word. I know how important that is to you and your ego, so have it ... as a gift from me to you in appreciation for all of your help here. I promise ... I won't respond. It's all you, Dude. My job is done here.



This one, sent to me on a completely different page/post, involves the “truce”. They did this on the comment section of another piece called “I'm Sorry If You Miss Me” (Link in notes below). They couldn't do this where we had been in our volley, that might appear as a weakness to someone who'd been watching it all.

They offer an olive branch (for all that's worth), but with it, they also offer to take me to enlightenment and save me somehow. None of this is sincere in ANY way. It is once again, them, trying to condescend to me that I am in need of THEIR help. That I am less, and they are more. Just as I described in the beginning of Part I.

(Also note that upon realizing that this has all been an analyzation of them and their behavior, they attempt to spin it around that it is THEM analyzing ME. Once again, textbook predictability)

If for some silly reason, I took this “truce”, they would feel that they have dominated me and nothing would change. As you read it, you will see just what I mean, especially in the way they go on and on about how accomplished they are at 'helping” others and how they can lead me to some new and better existence, as I am such a “sick human being”. The megalomaniac is really showing through here:



(Name Deleted) Dearest TROLL,
TRUCE?

Though you so obviously write vicious TROLL Gibberish you so obviously cant spell the word gibberish correctly.Not very Self referential eh?.
Diminishes your projected self mage of being a 'nice guy' somewhat eh?.
I have analysed your crippling problem and can offer you the only way out of it.
The presence of an individual Mind superimposed in strategic command over all your brain centres in the last hour before birth has led to you being NON Self Realised(which is your problem basically).
You don't know your Cosmic Identity--and the Mind in your head has led you to believe that you are not the Individual Isness but are the Mind created operating device the Conditioned Identity.
This replaces the ID and takes control over the Glucose and Oxygen supply to all Brain centres from the Individual Isness.
Send me a Poste Restante address and I will send you(for FREE)a copy of my only CD--on which I play Alto Saxophone and Alto Clarinet andAmplified C Silver Concert Flute and my wife who is my life companion plays Electric Bass.
We use the name Maneesha which is Sanskrit for Beyond Enlightenment.
The CD which is called 'Rolling Home' is as recorded--every track in one take-no electronic messing around!.
It was recorded under strict Tibetan Tantric rules of performance--I was a Flute playing Pujari in a Temple on the Burning Ghat in Varanasi where I played for Hindu Cremations for 6 years in the 1970s.
The intention is that the listener--you--will become Mindless .According to the sacred texts of the Vedas one must become Mindless as that is the only openly accepted way to reach the final end of Yoga Meditation.
Temporary union with the Isness of the Unverse.
Yes I know you will go off into paroxysms of laughter at my very absurdwritings but I must offer as you are a very sick human being--and your TROLLISH sickness will only get much worser as you age.
I have offered.
You will ridicule me.
Your choice.



And there you have it, dear Reader. A (disturbing) look, into a very disturbed mind. I am not, nor would I ever condone or recommend doing what I have done here. I did this for you. I had the idea while reading one of their demeaning comments on someone's daily. So, when they came to my daily … I put my hook in the water. The best thing you can do is give no reaction. Soon enough, they will go off in search of the attention they so desperately need and leave you in peace. As I have shown you here, engaging them brings a never-ending string of buckets … buckets FILLED with waste-of-time.

All you need to do is keep in mind this one simple thing when they write horrible things in your comment sections, or you encounter one in your life …

Something you are doing, or have done, is SO amazingly awesome, that it brought out ALL that darkness in them!

Just ignore them and they will go find someone else to pick on. Give them an “LOL” and ignore all that follows, or just delete their comment and block them. Your time is limited and so very precious. Don't give one second of it to these types of people. It simply isn't worth it.

Besides … You have MORE amazing things to accomplish!

                   Big Love,
                           ~Jeff

I* remember the feeling of waking up for nothing
                   The empty, gray taste everything had
        How I'd stare off
Out windows
Or across streets

                              I remember walking to the river
           And the grass not bending beneath my feet
              The current wouldn't change nor stop for me
   And I imagined it would always be this.
               Having everything I had always wanted right in front of me and it not matter

            I remember being stuck in the rain and not getting wet

         Watching
             Quietly accepting what was, and simultaneously not acknowledging what it meant.
    
        It was comfortable, but now *I want control.

She sits there
At the desk
Her head spinning
As it begins

Day in and day out
All she ever feels
Is the feeling
Of being everything

She's underappreciated,
And under rested.
She's overtired,
And overworked

Her friends are the only ones
Who appreciate her
For who she is
Not what she does

They're the reason why
She’s still hanging on
To that rope she's clinging to
That just keeps fraying.

Sometimes she just feels
Like she's nothing at all
Or even worse-
Like the energizer bunny

She keeps going and going
But not on her own terms
There’s always something that needs to get done
And it's up to her to do it

What she wants to do
Keeps getting put on hold-
Things that she needs to do
Take a number and wait in line

She feels empty
Like she's nothing at all
She’s running on autopilot
And it’s running her life


Even sleeping doesn’t help
For the horrid dreams kick in
But I guess when you're on automatic
Nothing seems right

But yet there's hope
That keeps peeking through
This dark soul
That has engulfed me

For as long as I have a heart
That continues to beat
My soul can remain pure
Even if no one can see

running on autopilot

and no one knows

oh i'm running on autopilot

and I don't care

let it take me away from this

sleepless dream

take me away with that

breathless stare

with that grinless glare

to the timeless fair

somehow i know

it'll make me stay

a little longer

running on autopilot

and no one knows

oh i'm running on autopilot

and I don't care

----epic guitar time---

take on 1,2,3

can't you see?

it can't ever be

what you need

what you neeeed...

---pause---

somehow i know

it'll make me stay

a little longer

somehow i know

it'll make me stay...

You seeing me rapping will never happen
Before that I’ll start cappin
Walk off like nothing happened
Since I’ve mastered this art of war
I tend to take things too far
Don’t give a **** who you think you are
Your rap handle doesn’t exist anymore
My rhythms galore, your rhythms manure
Best left in a bag
On your steps
At your front door
Hottest your rap crap will ever get
I’m so polished this is a blemish not a scrimmage
I treat you little *******
Like a teacher’s pet
Up against a Vietnam war vet
Giving you your first shoots
Flipping the script
Double barrel twelve gauge extended clip
Special grip pressed against your lip
Having a hard time talking ****
A pistol whip left your tooth chipped
Fake rappers rapping hard
No street creed; they ain’t legit
This wack imitation ****
Got me *******
Don’t get me started
you rip offs should get lost at all cost
dealing with a real boss I can handle a loss
Testing me lyrically, you must be previously *******
Now you are dearly departed
I’m styling on you I’m wilding
Bloodline of Goliath  
So go ahead start a riot
With my mic on autopilot
You can get chewed like trident
Eating wack MC’s
essential part of my diet
this ain’t even a battle verse
it’s a gift and a curse
running its course
on my high horse

the sounds are there, they come through walls
right around the corner
they're not visual, they're miserable and in need
they're equal opportunity exhibitionists
lovers of a family get together, taking everything in
parasitic and aware, destitute and stuck
but they're also there at the wrong time
the wrong time for the person who's alone
the wrong time for a person who's disconnected
because they want to be enjoying peace and quiet
alone
by themselves in an old house
with summer outside making its noises, crickets
trees rustling under a jeweled sky, the pinnacle of up high
breathing in the home air of cannibus, lotion and food
being disturbed is far from a thought, but unavoidable
simultaneously
because the house has a strange history
the basement floods, and the machinery kicks in
the mind ponders as the constellations wander
the nights grow and shrink, the body is dry, bone dry
the shower is turned on, soap, shampoo
lost in the mind on autopilot
until the spine stiffens
its without a doubt that I'm not alone now
a minute ago i was the master of this house
a minute ago I was naked in the hallway, smoking a cigar
now I've been usurped and I just want to barricade myself
in this house that I've live in for 15 years, now i beg for permission
to stay just one more night
I beg because how could I possibly fight
It's my conscious or the pontius pilate
I hope it's the former, because if not, blowout the pilot light
There's little hope for re-ignition or stellar recognition

Living life on
autopilot,

Wishing I wasn’t
Going insane.

Look around me
And everything

Stays the same.

The neuropathways
In my brain

Have the wires
Crossed and
There’s

Messages that
Always change.

I’m left to
Figure it out
On my own,

Miscommunications and
Exiled from a
Place I used to call home.

I just don’t get why,
I keep trying to change,

But life pulls me to
The other side

To a place where
the stars never
had a chance to
shine.

Floating above the rifts of apperception I glaze over the gaudy faucets of imagined vector thrusts in hibernation by the lucubration of space-time materialized crystal in the somber beats of fetched farrago of choice slices in delicate hums of hemmed balance rantipole only in ethereal importance but otherwise supersolid above the sprauncy vagrancy of dilettantism. We shout a clarion virtuosity so that the conclamation of neovitalism conjures upon a spell of lapse and regress a motive for further crystallization of epidemiology into harmony with syndicated admonition sleek in design and parceled into renown by feats of completion rather than slugabed gregarious fountains of wasted ingenuity bleeding from the vacuum of an empty hearth in a hospitable dwelling otherwise cleared of imperfection. Right now, I levitate with transcendence with an approximated eidetic memory that is the surgical vibrancy of renewal rather than the chameleons of hidden talents buried by the walls of Jericho sounding tocsins of alarm that the anointed favor of choice destruction is only an encircled rapture of rhapsodies of confluence found in axiomatic truths ribbed with the futtocks of seaworthy but cauponate recidivism into the donnybrooks of apocryphal revelation preceding the whimsical fall of cascading permanence just as gravity so ordained it. We breathe the life of the ethereal numinous spirit of isangelous repute because we navigate the exquisite cobweb of reconciliation to surpass all understanding in peace what would be a miscegenated carcass of war otherwise apart from the incidental apartheid of the drones of causality ignoring the antecedent reality too much to register fathomed streaks of preventive endeavor because of the scars of a scrappy schlep of the rampicks of ecbolic servitude to moth-eaten star-crossed lovers of the mean menagerie of gutless succor renowned only in tepid rejections of harbingers bequeathed in succession but ignored because of the procession of “Billie Jean” politics.

   The citadel aflame with controversy buttresses carnality by witless contaminants of hidebound scaldabancos of ineffable destitution so craven in eisoptrophobia for their hypostasized indolent fatuousness of capitulation that they are but a minor punctuation in the largesse of centuries to favor audacity in candor over the prevarications of catastrophe to dented human pride against humane dictates of theodicy in fatalism that predestination experimented with its own vaulted verve to find permanent solutions engraved in the agrapha of time to solidify the redintegrated truth of God’s divine stewardship above the quisquilous deism of former regnant centuries of blench and blandishment. We revolt at the specter of rot only when the effluvia of disgust elevates the visceral reality above the utilitarianism of recycled prim nuisances of noisome lineage that yet balk because they are bereft of attention but not a vacant talent and therefore should the subsidies of man surpass the ignorance of appearances he will shrug of the demur of the scrimshank and sharpen his scrivello in the service of redemption found through cultivated prowess of gardens beneath where rivers flow above a cubic centurion of embattled visages of the heavens becoming the rampart for the vestigial clarity of Secret Masters to foresee the bypass that heals decadence and rebukes the formalism of puritan endeavor to sweat with exhaustive patience over the gossamer intertesselations of a ripe reality rather than a groveled fragmentary world shattered too much by exigent metanoia to mount the crenellated catchpole of vigilant enmity towards the stew of listlessness found in epigone and farce more than in organic fortunes. We flip the upheaval of society to squander our proportionate degrees of wealth on the necessity created by dire quandary which enamors by interrogations of pulchritude the verisimilitude of participle ivory dalliance of etched canvasses of simultagnosia for the librations of the liberated rings of betrothed liberation despite profound lurches of the mistetches of ignorance presiding dismally over the hulked disdain of glamborge rather than resselenque.

     The winter is a poor porcine glut of ciconine swelters because the prickly obtuse recoil of the delopes of caution find their permeable balance with a sort of photographic photosynthesis that braves the dearth of reprieve for the reprisal of nostalgic deeds found in the docimasy of riveted reflections because the preordination of God is the superlative champion of the witeless grandeval protectorate of infinite concepts guarded from the parvanimity even of the most strident minds squabbling over the braseros and battues of history as though those funereal stains of lachrymose regret outweigh the traditions of vaunted human progress because they are finicky about importunate pleas of subsidiary injustice rather than fulminations of the modern rebuttal to the disclaimers of an uneven history that shepherds the doubts of nihilism into ripe fruition at the expense of very expensive moral rot for the codlings of urbacity and mendaciloquence used to foment that tribalism of totemic justice. We see in Penuel the wrestling match of specters and heroic giants documented on the ageless pages and we notice the ironic twinges of struggle that kneaded the propriety of gentilian privilege that ultimately fostered an insurrection against chosen bravado among those that sear with zeal beyond the yordim afflictions of yobbery because the Jewish heart is stronger than any calamity even if it departs from the reverence of the colporteurs of the integrated syncretism of the attempted monolith that beseeches polyphiloprogenitive growth in mindset rather than in testy abeyance of forbearance because of known scrutinies into the tropology of wilted facts remanded by curious historicity that crumples without disdain when we memorialize the erasure of scepsis by modern standards of thaumaturgy.

    The minauderies of growth are a repositioned tacit allegiance to the untold fanfare and hearsay immunized against the broach of facetious levity to buoy discordant hearts above fumatoriums of relentless ignorance because coherent masterwork can be cobbled without such lapidary toil and toll on sincere affectations of wizened brevity. The seismic precautions for the forefathers of incidental convergences between expectancy and crystallized history are an ironic intortion of priorities because the heralds and tribunes matched the peerless foresight with the gerrymandered figments of apartheid between the imaginary and the real so that the delicate synchrony of events could unfurl a riveting carapace from the shells of protection even in amiable squalor for its impenitent attrition on the volleys of sensible rumor becoming fashioned in covert bedazzled errors in judgment leading to the triumph of the eventual civilization over the futtocks of the burial of the former trekleador of zenkidu belonging to provincial cadasters found so tucked in the hedges that discernment of frikmag would be an indelible scourge on the biognosy of the diagnosed endeavors that elapsed into remediated circumstances that brave the depths of deontological violation for the breadth of apportioned loaves and two swanky fish earning a place among the miracles of transcendent liberation from articles of decree imperious by sardonic disdain becoming nullified by the histrionics of a delicately staged orchestra that cements human achievement.

       We relish the frescades of a ruffled autumnal reminder of flourish above pothers of the screed of admonition swamped by nostalgic backtracks in the séance with ultimatum of design and the impregnated and carnal lusts of a world pitched in darkness with guarded lambent lights fomenting a perjury against tact for the deliverance of freedom in tacit agreement with owleries that every bonanza be tithed in their favor regardless of hibernation of spoilsports or their subsidiary remarks on indelible quills of invented manufactured realities we crave with desperation rather than cower from in requited nescience urging us to depart from affairs and stagnate the loyalty of fealty above the limber of utility mobilized above levities for solemn remarks and rejoinders. Promulgated above the robotic rubble of staffage haywire in wiredrawn contemplative resonance of tremulous subterfuge vestigial but immediate to the yardsticks of reprehensible malarkey, is the barnstorm for erratic dimples sauntered by the saunas of shelter above the chaos of ruined ginnels for the gimcracks of auxiliary duty to service, is the glorification of the sultry intimations of legions of remonstrance in guarded decorum about sunken atrocities lapsed in memorial to the incumbent brunt of sockdolagers of justice returning revenants from the bridewell of historical internment. The symphily of orchestras to cineaste symposiasts of surquedry in impudence beyond the brays of betrayal is the aborning mythos of regimented perceptions of a world that when magnified by minutiae appears starkly contrast to the gapped gubbertushed reality of the average patron of the arts to such an extreme gulf of receptive understanding that the qualia are dovetailed only in the swink of careful kisswonks to certify certitude itself when all the fragments coalesce into subjoined harmony to the substructures of inherent conscientiousness. The miracles at work that are vesicles and vessels for the swage of imprint above the loyalty of the imprinted tribunes of the fluminous is how hidden protrusions can emerge so victorious over popularized glazes on the pastures of a farmed culture itching for timmynoggies of innovation but only finding the etched remarks of pristine imagos of heroism dwindling in motivation to surpass the imaginative leaps accustomed to a newfangled laziness that bedazzles the guzzle of crowds but not the discrimination of the crowded morass of incompletion found in mosaics missing enigmatic philters of intoxicated love for the profound. So to be intermediary as a custodian for artistry we must cozen the wheedled imaginations not of the relic but the archaeologist that discovered the embedded prisms of attentive scrutiny for glinting sunshine inherent in troves of surpassed excellence beyond parochial sympatric blandishment of donnism rather than a resselenque that floats above demeanor to usher the cosseted age of treasure above the glib brocards and florews of past success.

      Immanent to the provisions of God as decreed from a syncretic reconnaissance of the pitiable gulfs that separate boundless divine love from the clavigerous potential for scrappy sympatric affiliation to **** through the barnstorms of internal comestions of conflated priorities we are ourselves prismatic in the indulgence of a tasty life sprinkled with zest rather than tempered with the vengeance of retorted animosity that we knead the pottery of ironclad resistance to a metallic conduit of pruned fulminations of unguided intuition so that the natural accord supersedes the goad of materialism for the sustenance of antiquity beyond its heyday for vital gains against the tauricide of panic and frenzy. The linchpin of all realistic attempts at the sympatric symphily of civilization is a guided remorse through the torment of affliction that sizzles without anteric barbs as it measures through engrenage how to pilot the vehicles of prosperity through the minefields of contingency that invisibly bequeath new hurdles and inestimable obstacles that collude surreptitiously to fulminate measured controversy against the backbites of restrained equipoise created by polities of the macadamized fabric of a welded smithy of a universe that with ubiquity proclaims above the senseless the harvest of conjugal repartee in sensible pride against militant bastions of incidental prejudice for a careen against the flyndresques of danger and the flyndrigs of glaikery alike for a humane spurt of enlightenment to tower peerlessly in supervision of entelechy created by esemplastic unity in apolaustic purpose. We cannot be puritans engaged in a pilgrimage to a palimpsest of priggishness because the daring elements of adventurism are necessary ingredients to catalyze the supply-chain of the innate gluttony of ego-seeking endless balance with a natural sustained biognosy that prizes biocentric harmony above bibliognost scepsis so that the enthused can flock with liberty divorced from libertinism. The ultimatum is a war between hedonism wed with donnism against eumoirety and self-restraint and this battle will be waged on the indolence of a future of cordslave tethers to interrogation of privy conceptualism hamshackled by the gradgrinds into the neat nexility of precise conformity that blacklists the samizdat because the genizah profoundly twists the already jumbled jengadangle and provides a junediggle of procession and ceremony rather than pomp without substantial grit embedded in the showmanship of a reality in need of a fourth-wall.

        It is ironic how we bewrayed our stewardship of the planet as a plenipotentiary sentience waged against the vesicles of instinct but more fundamental to this tattered but pregnant psalm is that the stronghold of our future is the tenacity of filial duty to enthrone the household with husbandry and restraint as an emolument to divine justice that sparkles opalescent in its own redacted notions of gravity imperfect in the taradiddles of science but refined by the eclat of the combustible syncopation of a reiterative trope of realism combined with surrealist caprice to henpeck affectionate violation above inviolable screeds of blood sport rather than conjugal affections afforded to the brood and the feast of the flocks that rein supreme over all things but exert inclement justice over the cattle and chattel of civilization itself. The minkumpf against the sacrilege of a prioritized kosher is to abhor the suffering rather than embrace the penitence of perceived but specious sacrifice which is an ornery thorn on the stained conscience of the yobbery of both the apikoros and the obedient because to attenuate all suffering even of instinctual beings we anneal our hearts to a glorified compassion that supersedes the relegated relics of pushful genuflection by succedaneum of sacrifice waged against the docile whangams of otiose theodicy. The filibusters against the regnant complexity of regalia that is a sprauncy poivrade with terpsichorean flairs to transmute the intimations of hibernated perfidy into finicky transmissions for the riometers that accord orbific merit in a lackluster time enchant the rollicking audience of this auditorium of the prevenance of the conquered universe bracing for the camorra of the insipid entreaty of defalcated casuistry—the prominent exchequer in hoodwinked political agitprop that forges ironclad allegiances to flimsy facades of the verisimilitude of dignity with recalcitrant but incondite bruits of venom militant against secular apostasy—that the fitful arrivistes that swim in dire dearth will be welcomed into the reconciliation of all time with a tempered lurid glint of revelation bounded by sunken albatross of hype unbounded with a peace insurmountable in prestige rewarded only with the highest reservations.


    On 3-1-2020 when I penned my philosophy—even at a slowpoke margin of crafty precision above rapid empirical faucets of folly—I was entirely selfsame with the autotelic engravings of the smoldering aboriginal talents within that many can swing through by tenacity for enormous plaudit but a flagrant majority will apprehend with flippant scollardical tenets of rebuke and remain honest in their appraisal only in meek resignation of parvanimity.
Consider the postulates of rarefaction whittled into a vehement zeal against the prostitution of our species to the anteric cycles of residual molds of dingy spectacle mired by the tyrannical towers of supercilious squirms of revamped novelty rather than enhanced by the freebooters of dirigisme that borrow from time the behest of philandered flairs divorced from the cadges of secular instinct and enthroned by the qualms of engineered virtuosity that is stark, barren but peerless in its outstretched clamor for luxuriant sprees against the silentium of grandeval asylum incurred by the flippant filigrees of recalcitrant modernism endangered by the irredentism of the future upon the whimsy of the present-minded momentary glare of rapture.  This impending architecture of nimble but subservient endeavor is a pinprick rejoinder against the wernaggles of prepossessed fountains of configured animosity against the stapled heed of a modality of trayned invictive invectives against the plodding course of fustilugianation that swerves in apathy of autopilot junediggle to emanate the surrender of epigone to the raktendure of the synaesthesis of the attuned perception of all superimposed minutiae delegated by calculated design into a synclastic focus on veiled caprice that is vaulted above the choppy and sketchy verdure of remiss perception to stellar continuities rather than mundane knickpoints of stodged blurs that magnify syncretic qualia into baseline congruity rather than staid torpefied resignation of the visage of thunder without the pangs of the widely vituperated lightning that bequeaths all certain notions but flouts the tortious saboteurs of the prim trucage of brittle fundamentalism.

     As the flawed paragon of a picaresque youth punctuated by vibrant plumage of self-wrought tropophilous usucaption of remote groomed frontiers of desolate luxury but buoyant morale into the ballasts of a nimble usufruct that hikkles yet still against still-framed thilloire--fatuous in endearment only to the polity of the waterdrip of craven but gravid disingenuous flickers of lambent cloaks of perfidy—that earned its birthright by meditative fruition rather than prodigal tallespin of indolent frapplanks of a vicarious personage rather than an autotelic haecceity showcases the folly of heterodyne inclinations meeting an impasse of accidental dislodgement. The interregnum between the spurts and sprees of luxuriance is a staid pause between continuities of afforded parlance becoming stapled demographic solidarity affixed to a strident gallop of effortful pushes against the tenacity of the slumberous wicked hibernation of vetust magpiety without hieratical internment because youthful industry beats hackneyed bludgeons of wiseacres of a stilted manufacture of steamy nostalgia for lickerish moments that dignify but undermine moral virtues but splash anointed and sometimes disjointed favor upon the congeners to a rabid escapade of a heedless love frowning on the girdles of the prim balderdash of heralded jolts dim on levity and puffed with elusive contextualized control of libidinous serrated defilement because the crotaline **** outmantles the sweedled limber of exploitable folly. The cosseted reality of wheedled gourmands of continuous perception rather than the Gaussian blur of the protean invention of stitches in time that obscure rather than magnify the supernal levity inherent to most artistry is a linchpin of lenient gravitas that levies the lavaderos of ripe perception into annealment.
Excuse the bravado of the gait of winnowed forks in a bronteum for heralds of megaloscopy fastened to the macroscian reality of indelible filigrees of countermanded controversy becoming its best behest in the sempiternal flowering of burgeoned demonstration rather than illustrious overhang of drab slabs of manufacture rather than organism that should be interposed between the constellated concepts of both apperception and the aggrieved counselors to obtuse obsessions that are an improper tutelary for a designated reprisal of the once profane now immediately gratified by ramshackle tenets of a guarded sublimation of the tenets of post-modernism into a sustained force of the internalized tabernacle of haecceity shepherded into exuberance by the manumission of spirit from the ******* of purblind scalds of defamation that incurs the penalty of flippant privation. The refuge the Lord provides is not contingent upon the vagaries of deliberation nor the calculus of oversight but the remontant amaranthine glower of a listed deed becoming an eternal reminder that a dismantled and disjointed world fathoming only remorse rather than the trudge of gentility against the headwinds of brunt asperity will always flout the successor rather than atone for the failure of the imponent condition that constellates around rudimentary drivel grubbing the momentary out of avarice for allotted merchandise rather than glommed magnets to amoeba sentiments for the kisswonk of ulterior motive beyond dungeons of desperation that lurk ghoulishly with spectral frights at the disfigurement of morale created by errors askew rather than a contagion of righteous valor.

   Ask the heedful servant if the captaincy of reneged commitment owes homage to dutiful instruction or whether it is a balking corpse of necrosis accorded to the omphalism of brutish carnal repose in times of sedentary silt siphoned in spelunked rijuice for preordination is a predominant specter for a world scared scurrilous and skittish in a diatribe against the very notion of tribal screeds embedded in the sedimentary heft of traditionalism above the pother of vacillation commended to the apikoros but counterfeit fiat system of a ruddy governance without a supreme magistrate. Now lets venture into the territory of visagists as we envision the swanky subversion of impoverished and nebbich visions of oligochrome that fixates on belabored but dead notions of rigid propriety and levitate above those concerns with a querulous transcendence that never wernaggles about the profaned irrelevance of burlesque tropes of sidereal friction but instead memorializes the thermolysis of permeable endeavor above staid countenances of imposture that lurk in the shadowy penumbra of the connivance of persona above the archetype of the tutelary guardian spirit that through windlass and sometimes deliberation affixes nobility to even the pedestrian in order to assize its proper proportions to granular ironies expounded into megalography transformative by the very rivets of its supersensible existence and cohabitation with histrinkage among human taboos.

   The handiwork of a permeable race prone to exacerbated proclamations of prerogatives bulldozed by the rapid percolation of insoluble quandaries to the gripes of the feast of foofaraw sometimes shelters our otherwise regnant concern about the plenipotentiary God that observes all latent affairs without the paramours that conflate vivid carnality with appeased luxury and superimposes a crafty system of seismic shifts in rantipole dances with numinous flux rather than dissipated militant suppression of the fracklings of dissolute pollution which swirk in their dastardly desperado endeavors to corral the entire monoliths that guard each province into a winnowed rumble of rubble by tarnish of Tyre rather than by the upstart rejoinders of Canaan. Every creature which has the capacity to perceive language is afforded benedictions by the overhailing force of the hypaethral heights of superlative ingenuity founded in the bolted speculation of the endearment of all to tropological seesaws embattled against the hearsay of nyejays that contaminates the telmatology of the ecosystem of revivalism rather than buries the leaden debts of the disjointed revenants of past prominence into recycled irrelevance for posterity rather than for anything but a machination of a clockwork apple rigged for a rotten worm to swindle the sweet delicate tempests of unforeseen disaster to perjuries against financial solidarity.

The spinsters of sardonic drollery underscore the imminence of an incondite cutthroat collapse blackguarded by the hucksters of incontinence grubbing every fetched noisome notion and congealing a bonnyclabber of desiccated mildew that proves vestigial when the victors of time earn their joyous serenade to the pinnacle of the totem of jaundice slits in wavy endeavors for the participles of sejungible syntax of the ephorized furor to outlast the draksteng of droned dereliction manned by half-baked spies of ulterior recitals for imprinted vicissitude in supremacy in synquest for frizzlounges rather than the pedestrian circulatory system of careworn polity. We vaporize the petty hatred of sympatric regelation that neuters the virulence of motivated impediments to the draconian surge of asperity that sinks temporal haplessness as a regaled blasphemy that crowns only the ringed betrothal to spumid serrated halts in slick superstition that is a buggery to the idea of insectivores devouring the erratic chantage of germane germs that pauperize rather than even blind the deafened to be a crutch to vehicular homicide. Melismatic sennet is a dirigible of immense herculean sinew without the traces of vestibulary retches of kisswonked grisly tepid intimidations of eccedentesiasts by the radioglare of wizened corrugations in thanatism that exhort the avatars of narquiddity over the natural departure of revenant souls back to their temporary hostility to crass lifeless decarnate immediacy that slinks with foibles magnified by vertiginous heights of scollardical reputes rigged by the rijuice of the plackiques of meaningless spoils for swashbuckler bonanza borrowed from serrated vengeance exacted in prominence to provide false avenues of extenuation to malefaction that is confidant to the panopticon of exemplary dimples meager in the largesse of the composite realism of a sizable imprint on megalography that outlasts impertinent excuses for dangerous trout swimming against the mobilized selachostomous frizz of sharks gathering to avenge disclosure with insolence and gravid atrocity of incisive surgical evisceration of attempted depositions that falter by innumerable facets of countenance that belie ultimate realism and the perdurable construction of a sturdy hive of bibliognost revelry.

     Even with the blaring sennet of majesty inundating my piecemeal perception with the marstions of flarium that is an efficacy in a flaccid world of otiose pretenses limpid only in folly but contraplex in ironic skewbald skerries of grubbed destination that is the terminus of karezza despite the maledictions of vehement guarded betrayals that conjure up lurid noisome virility against the gamines and gallywows that populate interstellar fictions of virtu rather than mundane pragmatica that astound with the resselenque of contaminated skeumorphs of latent fracture belonging to a skeletonized ossified reification of farce above historicity in seemly seamless countenance with overwrought princely stature deserving integrity to ripples through sparkling opalescence. The vapid insularity of the self-contained mythos of appeased groundlings is based on the rhizic and rhizogenic fracklings destitute in predicative flares to swelter above stratospheres of the illimitable into the dwelling of the highest serenity inherent to the pacification of truth to neglect its egregious errors of mistetches of a ripened pachyderm of bravery in times of austerity and now a reclaimed notion of sempiternal charades swimming above the punitive draksteng of dranger that is enlarged by acclimated attempts at foiled raltention hikkling against its own superior forces of galvanized preterition to elide over screwball insanity of derangement in this virtual paradise of inhabited souls belonging to former times congregating on the pasture of the evanescence of now for all eternity having the optative condition of incarnation above the ferules of the stagnant brevity of oversight in heavenly realms by postulate but not confirmed by regal logic.

     The troponder of the flickered lambent niceties of polity is a countenance that piggybacks on simpered jostles of negligent engrenage to appease sworn enmities among beatific havens for certitude swarmed by the fisticuffs of darbied bridewells of desiccated drainage traversing the distant disdain for the gravel of cemented slits of stilted pragmatica that is a gavel of atrocious estoppel mediated by heroic heresiarchs against pitiable betrayal for forceful remedies in acclimated servitude to the groans and groaks of a life of remorse and dearth rather than the glut of luxuriance in forbearance to its own intorted mirrored ironies that etch infinity with every scrawled rejoinder to austere ploys of checkered rumbles of threat and exigency posed by the clairvoyant hypocrites who benefit greatly by the design of the omphalism above the frays and brays of corporate dogmatism slowly outmoded by vibrant plumages of heteronormative originality beyond petty chantage. A hesitation overcomes the bluster of bravado as the restive earnest concerns of tribulation beset the minauderies of divine affection to reaffirm the teachings of the Gospel so that future generations genuflect beneath the altar of the ultimate stroke of sociogenesis and the blood ransom of suffering that promoted the human latitude and liberty against incarcerated throngs of virtue over caesaraproprism accorded to genuflection beneath denarii rather than absolution by tether to the eternal vine of sensation of the supersensible entelechy of all valiant insurrections against defective polities and renewed policies.

     We thus seek a transdimensional bridge between the morphean virtu of rudimentary alchemy of propitiation divulged by leverage and the teeming rambunctiousness of fiduciary tribes to the ultimate duty of man to consummate the future of eternity even in slowpoke mannerisms that sidle through rigors of entelechy and assize the masterwork of tutelage above the circumforaneous entrenchment of glut above the mastery of the subtle subaudition that beleaguers an adept conflagration of harnessed human ignorance staid in the incarceration of exotic virtues of freewheeling sapience never vulnerary to hospitable concerns that entrenches the verisimilitude of a refracted justice to reign over the stultification of a primitivism inherent to man and not man alone.

I was cursing on autopilot,
not reay taking responsibility
for my life.

I lived a decade or more in a daze
and confused by my own illusions,
thinking somehow I was in control.

I was lucky enough to be given a moment of grace,
a tiny window where I surrendered and cried out
for help and actually took the help offered to me.

Three years ago I was alone drinking myself to death
in my basement apartment, bitter and resentful.
I was praying everyday for God to **** me.

Today, I am grateful that I am alive.
I am free to make mistakes, but more importantly,
I can be grateful today for my life with all it's beauty and pain.

I am grateful that I got to see my baby girl for the first time,
in her mother's belly and that I am alive today
welcome life instead of trying to end it.

Each day I sit: numb hands, numb feet
Waiting for the autopilot to take my space
So I can fall asleep in the passenger seat
And wake up in a different place

Or even drift right past tomorrow
If I'm his hostage, he's my plague
Because the bumpy road he tolerates
Always rocks away my aches

My body is held by strings
And my eyes no longer blink
So I stay in the passenger seat
And keep choosing not to think

i have words inside of me
and i can’t say
any of them.
i don’t even know
what they are.
what happened to my voice?
it feels like it’s been a while
since i had something to say.
living underwater, living like a corpse.
i wake up and then go back to sleep
because “awake” is not “autopilot”.

why am i so tired?

The first time someone called me a poet
it was in the cramped back hallway of a party in early July
heat rising between our ****** spaces
sweat collecting at the base of my brow to keep anxiety at bay
I listen as someone who I could barely call an acquaintance describe me to a boy I just met:
“she is an amazing writer, trust me, she’s so cool”
As if me using metaphors for antidepressants
and words as bandages for wounds
was reason to make me worthy to get to know beyond my first name
to pin my feet onto a pedestal I didn’t ask to stand on to begin with
I press autopilot in my muscles,
mechanically flip my hair,
split my lips into a half-*** smile,
****** my hand,
and let my laugh ring with the music.
Little does everyone know I am the broken jukebox
with a disappearing voice.

I hide behind love and at 19, I wrote “What High School History Taught Me”
It was for you
you, the NYU junior with a mouth that clung onto vowels
and whose fingertips could read the braille embedded in my skin
You loved chasing storms,
I was almost named after a hurricane,
and this was how we were born after Hurricane Sandy-
it was never a question how we found comfort in destruction
But I still remember telling you
that I wanted to love you forever even if you didn’t stay to find out
And ever since I spit that
men come to me looking for their taste of mystery
for their chance to be immortalized
They don’t know I only speak in train station
and everybody is always a few minutes too late
No one has gotten the chance to get too close
because it’s never romantic to **** the girl who makes love to her own sadness every night

I’ve stopped seeing the fire in my poetry like most strangers do
because to them
my pain is pretty
my heartache is dressed in a bow so
they can all sleep better at night knowing
some 20 year old girl in California understands them
better than she understands herself.

I have been singing in a language I never fully understood
because I am the girl who attaches my reflection to a man
whose memory I still keep prisoner in my mind
and this is how I hide from myself
this is my disappearing act

This isn’t poetry anymore
and it hasn’t been for a long time
This is the sound of survival
This is my heart leaking gunpowder and discharging bullets
Right here
on this stage
is where I understand what it feels like to choke on the gas chamber of lost dreams
Right here
is a dusky New York City apartment
with a boy dressed in the mask of a man hunting me as prey
This stage is where I come home to after being at war with myself
This stage is my peace
my prayer for forgiveness once a week
Right here
is why friends from school don’t call me that much anymore
This stage
is why me and Joe broke up
This place
is why I don’t sit with my family at the dinner table no more
because why
Why share grace with those who can’t understand
how these lights I stand under make the full moon I need
to break my neck and howl at some nights

This is where I pluck the guitar strings of my throat to sing like a bluebird and slow dance with every ghost
This stage is the only place I can forklift
all the misunderstood out of my chest and force you to watch
and you
will still call it art
you
will still call it poetry

But this isn’t poetry anymore
it hasn’t been for a long time
This
is the sound of survival
This
is the sound of me using the inhale of night
just to make it to the exhale of morning.
Right here.
On this stage.
This
is where
and why
I
fight.

How many times can I check facebook, check facebook check facebook?
Glance, browse stalk, stalk harder.
How many times can I watch a show on my computer?
Watched, finished, next episode next episode next episode-caught up
How many times can I get distracted, get distracted check emails—no new messages
Entertain me, distract me, disconnect
I want to be turned on standby, autopilot, you can think for me
Keep the walls of paper from burying me, suffocating me
Intellectually flat-line, a mental goodbye
Lose consciousness, fake my awake
Get lost, then found then actually find my way back to my workload
Attempt the task that terrifies
Look it in the eye,
Unafraid eager and tackle it down to the ground
One subject two three,
But the pile it looms over me, consumes me
I bit off more than I can chew
Teeth that don’t release, don’t retract
All I think of is how I should act
Attack, straight on? That’s the best bet
Nothing was ever accomplished by sitting down in fret
The stakes are just too high to try
A failed attempt changes impressions
Self-Conceptions

Sometimes you get bored and decide to send me an "I miss you" text. My fingers reach for my phone, ready to type a message as if on autopilot, but then I remember why we don't talk anymore in the first place. Loving you destroyed pieces of me and it was either I let you go or lose the small part of me that was left behind. I decided a long time ago that I will not tear myself down to help build up someone else. So then, when my fingers grasp the phone and click on your message out of habit, I realize I can no longer say the same about you. I begin typing but the message you received is not the one you were expecting.
*-I sure as hell hope you do.

How many times can I check facebook, check facebook check facebook?
Glance, browse stalk, stalk harder.
How many times can I watch a show on my computer?
Watched, finished, next episode next episode next episode-caught up
How many times can I get distracted, get distracted check emails—no new messages
Entertain me, distract me, disconnect
I want to be turned on standby, autopilot, you can think for me
Keeps the walls of paper from burying me, suffocating me
Intellectually flat-line, a mental goodbye
Lose consciousness, fake my awake
Get lost, then found then actually find my way back to my workload
Attempt the task that terrifies
Look it in the eye,
Unafraid eager and tackle it down to the ground
One subject two three,
But the pile it looms over me, consumes me
I bit off more than I can chew
Teeth that don’t release, don’t retract
All I think of is how I should act
Attack, straight on? That’s the best bet
Nothing was ever accomplished by sitting down in fret
The stakes are just too high to try
A failed attempt changes impressions
Self-Conceptions

you tell me that it's hard
and the news falls soft
on deafened ears &
a hardened heart
brimming with fears

I know you will be missing
something, you don't have
to utter a word, no sound
needs to be made
the silence resounds
our essence will stay

I won't tell you it's hard
rivers flow no second-
thought, clouds will
neutralize the day, rain
falls drop by drop,
the wolf hunts
and kills its prey

I'll smile on the garden
where you planted
plenty pretty flowers
the same tender
hands that tended
to me in our hours
the way we swayed
the way you towered
over me and myself
shaking beside me,
I will remember you

I fly through life on autopilot
Do you think they'd ever realize?
I arrive and depart on time
The ground greets me no differently
With no knowledge of my vacancy

Calculation is a constant and lifeline
To connect me with my kind
Kind only in anatomy, general size,
The way we obey parallel lines.

Ground control, do you read me?

I’m thinking about the doctor's hands shaking as she
                                               struggles to intubate a cat.  
I’m thinking about the technician's hands squeezing the cat’s rib cage,
pulsing life with a delicate force; she is much more gentle than
                                                      practition­ers are with humans—
hard and quick down with the palms; the ribs snapping,
                                                                ­     the sternum sore.  

Some time ago an 80-year-old woman on my unit was
opened up bedside for a cardiac procedure during a code.  
After a week in ICU, she came back to us on the unit, was up and
walking and talking, and was discharged home within another week.

Meanwhile, the 60-year-old man was dead in the morgue
       after a 45-minute code failed to resuscitate him.  

The flip of the coin.  The thin line.  The blessing or the curse.  
The absolute darkness of a body bag.  The cold chill of absolute zero.  
The fresco painted on the catacomb walls could either depict the
light of the sun or the multicolored lights that the
brain shoots off minutes before death.  
                                                        ­               The eleventh hour,
                                                                ­  isn’t that what it’s called?  

We don’t want to talk about body care, death care.  
We have to, but it won’t register.  
                                                     ­       After a loss, after a trauma,
                                                                ­   we are on autopilot.  
I think of my mother,
                                        six feet beneath frozen soil in
                                      a pink padded casket and think:
                                                                ­                             I don’t want that.
I think of the prearranged plots my grandparents picked out
next to her in an above ground crypt and think:
                                                          ­                                   I don’t want that.
Bacteria still causes decay after the embalming process.  
Putrefied flesh.  Bones visible.  Muscles eaten.  Tissues disintegrated.  
We don’t talk about it.  

We try to think the opposite.  The positive vs the negative.  
(But that’s not always possible or healthy.)

I’m thinking about hands inserting IVs, hands taking
blood pressures, hands documenting the code notes
on a clipboard in the back of the room.  
I couldn’t do these things.
                                                 My hands tend to break what they touch.  
The glass bowl in the pet store.  
                               The clay project in art class.  
                                                        ­    The succulents, the basil, the orchid.
I’m good at things I don’t have to think about:
good at the autopilot, good at the autonomic,
                                                                                    good at trauma.

.
Bare feet pound along the pavement
yet there is not feeling.
The connection with the tangible solid
has with it no true healing.

The detached mind floats up high
a million miles away.
Terra firma are just empty words,
stout rock becoming clay.

As retraction of the emotions sits
apart from what is real.
A no-man's land of security shrieks
'this is what I feel'.

Withdrawal has its positive notes,
protection from the pain.
Keeping close the hearts secret safe,
never to be killed again.

Autopilots most clever disguises hide
that which should be faced.
But burying reality in cold defiance
renders it all but erased.

© Pagan Paul (29/08/17)

i went to my doctor this week.

"i feel
disconnected
from everything. like i am living
in a dream--
i am numb,
and i am scared.
i'm on autopilot all the time."

she asked me questions
about my dark thoughts,
my sicknesses;
acid boiling in my stomach,
crippling hammer-and-nails-to-the-temple headaches,
sweating even in winter's bitter chill,
my inability to sleep without fear.

i'm rubbing the tops of my hands and it hurts.
it feels like rug-burn.
my hands are turning red, raw.
i will be picking the scabs for days.

"do you think about hurting yourself?"

"no, i would never do anything," i lie, as i am currently hurting myself.
she doesn't notice.

"do you ever think, when you go to bed, about not waking up the next day?"

"yes."
it caught me off guard,
i couldn't lie to that.
i am shaking.
i am rubbing the tops of my hands.
i am repeating phrases in my head.
i am shaking.
i am rubbing the tops of my hands.
i am scared.
i am scared.
i am scared.

i am on autopilot.
i can't turn myself off.
i am scared.
i am rubbing the tops of my hands.
they are raw.
they are raw.
i am thinking about the scabs.
i am on autopilot.
i can't turn myself off.
turn me off.
turn me off.
turn me off.

Every Move I Made Was Bionic,
I Was Lost In My Thoughts,
It Was Like I Was Hypmotized,
Sitting Back And Eating Popcorn,
As Someone Else,
Was Working My Controls,
Me The Great And Powerful Oz,
Sits Behind A Green Curtain,
Mortal As The Rest,
Disconnected From The Electricity,
Leaving The Bombastic Sydney Behind,
I Haven't Felt More Useless In My Life,
I Felt Like I Got Punched In The Gut,
****** And Battered I Retreated,
And Let Autopilot Take Over,
Every Word Said Was White Noise,
And Every Word Whispered Was Grasped,
And Clenched,
And Torn,
And Sobbed Over,
*Me The One Working All The Magic,
Sat In Shock And,
Watched As Autopilot Got Shot Down

hey, hi, hello
—this is your life,
the view is vaguely familiar
out of the passenger seat window,
two years of autopilot
isn't generally recommended—
the mind can time travel or so it thinks
unannounced comings and goings,
quiet reintroductions occur daily
as to alarm no one of your departure

My mind on autopilot,
Life just goes on.

But if it were up to me.
I'd put it on pause,
Forever.

the thick september dusk is wrapped
in clouds of barbie pink, topped with a
royal crest of rich purple and swirls
of orange creamsicle, slowly fading
into a smoky gray slate.
the air is cooled, complemented by a
crisp breeze that loosens the dying leaves
from their precarious perches atop the
firm pennsylvania maples.
together, we walk through the thick of
the forest, guided only by the skeleton of
an old railroad track, bending and twisting.
our sense of adventure has led us away from
the tiny park, past the dilapidated basketball
courts, and onto the former highway of a
belching beast, forgotten and replaced by
its sleek and faster baby brother, SEPTA.
our rusty path is lined with dying weeds,
turned from ***** green to dull brown by
the creeping chill and the burning sun.

conversation passes between us, topics
that have since slipped my mind because
they are as unimportant as the napkins
we threw in the trash an hour beforehand.
at first, i am on autopilot; we discourse, but
my answers are not considered.
my eyes are glued upon the rise and fall
of my black sneakers, white laces turned
boring brown, and the dust they kick up
with each and every footstep.
moments pass as hours, when suddenly i am
compelled to stop.
when i first lift my eyeballs, the world
spins and bends and loses focus--
maybe those were not just mushrooms
on my pizza? but no, just an illusion.
when i regain my eyesight, i can view
a family of deer--the proud father on
guard and adorned with a crown of antlers,
a skittish mother watching with careful
observation, and three children, halfway
grown; when i realize how long i have
been staring and that you must be long
gone, i look up, but there you stand,
closely regarding the family as i was.
and when i follow your gaze, they
are gone, vanished.

without speaking, we both silently agree
that we must research the disappearing
deer, so we begin to climb downward.
the bank is steep, but lined with thick
branches, dying grips and stepping stones.
we make our way down and find
the river sprawling in front of us like
a lazy snake making its way home, to the
bright point slowly sinking into the horizon.
an impossibly big maple sits on the levee,
and giant roots make wonderful benches,
so we sit ourselves among the beautifully
colored ground of late fronds, and i light
a cigarette, my own slow death.
the delaware tributary gurgles around us,
and for those few minutes, we are totally
silent; i can taste the death in my mouth,
but i do not wash it away--i must remember.

after the moment has passed, we ascend the
***** and resume our trek along the pathway.
"what is that!?" you ask suddenly.
i follow your pointing finger and at first,
i only see the never-ending tail of power lines.
but i look further, and i see something odd--
a non-sequitor, a cluster of red in the trees.
"i can't tell," i reply. "it's too far."
"it's unnatural. we must investigate."
again, we let our feet carry us along, but
now we have a destination.
"i wonder what i could be," i say aloud.
"it must be a tic-tac," you answer.
my brow furrows and i question you with
amusement. "a tic-tac?"
"yes! doesn't it look like a tic-tac?"
i examine the clump, and see it is oblong.
"the shape is right," i say slowly. "maybe
it is a cinnamon tic-tac."
"exactly," you reply. "it is a giant red tic-
tac, just sitting here in the trees!"
"i wonder what it is waiting for?"
"another giant, a giant person," you
speculate. "yes," i continue, "it must
be waiting for somebody with a big enough
mouth to come along and slurp it up."
as our feet draw us closer, the clump gets larger
and larger, and its definition begins to wane.
"a giant tic-tac, right here under our noses,"
you say. "what are the odds?"

after what seems like an eternity, we are finally
close enough to examine it fully--surprise!
it is only a thicket turned red by its annual death.

I wake up.
I took two pills before I blacked
I forgot I did,
I'm on autopilot.
You might worry,
The circles around my eyes
are a tell-tale sign
I assure you I'm not fine.
I am not in control of my life
I'm living in strife
everyone I know has left me
You see,
You don't see
And that's the thing
I don't want you to see
But why doesn't anyone see?

they called me a whirlwind
of tragedy and affliction,
a life controlled by suicide and addiction.
a corrupted mind plagued
with over-reliance and self-doubt
and that kind of self-destruction
the doctors have warned you about.
a constate state of numbness
the kind of sadness you don't see
all i wish for is what i will never have:
some sort of stability

I was a child filled with wonder
filled with love and curiosity.
I was a child who loved questions
and to wander without anxiety.

Not even a year old
had my heart turned cold.

As a child,
I was relied on,
depended on,
beaten on.

As a child,
I only knew pain,
heartache
and how life
truly was.

Life wasn't fair
not even to a child.
Not to a child's heart
without a care.

Only a few rays of light
shed through the cracks
in the wall of my heart.

Not even an adult
had my eyes become
so old . . .so alone.

The only thought that remained
"Become stronger. Stronger.
No limitations, no excuses."
I had to be stronger for her.
So she wouldn't crumble.

I have become stronger
but I have become a stranger.

My strength leaves me though,
when he holds me tightly.
His arms become my home.
and his heart is my life.

This was my answer,
she has also grown stronger.
I have been on autopilot all along.
I should have just known.
I am Strong on my own.
But I am Stronger
with the friends I have found.

a helicopter flies above my neighbourhood at 7 in the morning
I'm awake
whether it is because the sound slapped my snooze
or because I hadn't yet fallen asleep
my autopilot doesn't choose to be annoyed
I let apathy trickle down my throat and settle in my gut, it freezes
chill to my forehead
and my heart stops being so soft
perhaps
I forgot
birds eat worms and I am a good liar
I take naps while my roommates eat their dinner
and that pulling my curtains shut to neglect the sun
is not the same thing as Schrodinger's Cat
- I think I'd like to be a werewolf
so the full moon could strip my hesitancies and my horrors
letting out a shrill holler, on all fours, barefoot in the soil
I'd just like to let go
just
let it all
go
to be forced instead of contemplation
to be loose instead of stagnation
it is kind of like when your whole heart begs to be seen
but is paralyzed by limelight
I want letting go to be easy
I don't want to work this hard for it.