Odysseus needs a job he calls pima community college art department chairperson sends her his resume she does not respond after a week he catches her on phone she says he lacks proper credentials laughs to himself his whole life never worked lucrative or reputable position gets job working at thrift store wacky group of coworkers customers store frequently smells like public latrine job expires after 7 weeks he gets better paying job working at record exchange Odysseus always loved music everyday he learns new artist or band his coworkers are at least half his age they pester him about being slow on keyboard he never learned to type neither he nor his generation could have foreseen future would revolve around keyboard he plods on register keys people smile politely kids he works with fly fast making many keyboard mistakes November 29 2001 george harrison dies of cancer he is 58 years old Odysseus recognizes he is from past world different era of contrasting standards ‘80’s behavior is totally unbefitting let alone ‘60’s beliefs it is 2002 and one badly chosen word is sure to send someone flying off the handle he watches his language carefully co-workers mostly born in 1980’s grew up in 1990’s they live indifferent to hopelessness he struggles to bear none of them believe in higher power music is their religion he wonders what their visions concerns for humanity are? they seem addicted to consumption as if it is end in itself he questions what is hidden at root of their absorption? loneliness? despair? apathy? absence of vision? where is their rage against social conversion current administration? he warns them about homeland security act privacy infringement increased government secrecy power they shrug their shoulders why aren’t they looking for answers? why don’t they dissent? do they care where world is going? he realizes they will have to learn for themselves few coworkers read literature or know painters philosophy their passions are video games marijuana “star wars” most of them are extremely bright more informed than he often Odysseus needs to ask questions they know answers to right off the bat he is like winsome uncle who puts up with their unremitting teasing “hey you old hippie punk rocker get you fiber in today? stools looking a little loose! peace out old man” in peculiar way he finds enough belonging he so desperately needs they tell him stories about their friends *** addictions eating disorders futile deaths he is bowled over by how young they are to know such stuff job includes health insurance which is something he has not had since Dad was alive having some cash flowing in he buys laptop computer with high-speed connection cell phone trades in toyota for truck opens crate of writings he abandoned in ‘80’s begins to rewrite story sits blurry eyed in front of computer screen his motivation has always been to tell truth as he knows it he wonders what ramifications his labor will bring positive or negative results? he guesses his story will sound like children’s fable in stark brutality of distant future october 2002 3 week ****** spree terrorizes maryland virginia  district of columbia 10 people killed 3 critically wounded police believe white van responsible october 24 man and 17-year-old boy arrested in blue chevy caprice juvenile is shooter assailants linked to string of random murders including unsolved shooting of man at golf course in tucson Odysseus mentions incident at work speaks of prevailing terror madness in america co-workers kid tell him he is crazy “did you see a white van parked outside the store Odys?” they seem desensitized to increasing national atmosphere of anger panic or perhaps they are overwhelmed by weight trauma of modern life lie after lie prevailing  havoc slaughter make for dull numbness in world they know suicide is compelling option december 22nd 2002 joe strummer dies from heart failure at age 50 Odysseus’s eyes wet he adored the clash everything they stood for loved joe strummer and mescaleros he plays “global a go-go” over and over listens sings along with first track “johnny appleseed” march 2003 president bush launches attack against iraq united states seems drunk with “shock and awe” zealous blind patriotism many people politicians countries around globe question unproven line of reasoning saddam hussein possesses “weapons of mass destruction” Odysseus gripes “not another **** vietnam” record company allows employees to check out take home used product Odysseus stopped watching movies in 1980’s he has lots of catching up to do particularly likes “natural born killers” “american history x” “american ******” “fight club” “way of the gun” “******” “king of new york” “basquiat” “frida” “*******” “before night falls” “quills” “requiem for a dream” “vanilla sky” “boys don’t cry” “being john malkovich” “adaptation” “kids” “lost in translation” “25th hour” “28 days later” “monster” “city of god” “gangs of new york” “**** bill” list goes on perfect circle becomes his favorite band followed by tool lacuna coil my morning jacket brian jonestown massacre flaming lips dredg drive-by truckers dropkick murphys flogging mollies nofx stereophonics eels weakerthans centro-matic califone godspeed you black emperor magnetic fields fiery furnaces dresden dolls smog granddaddy calexico howie gelb sufjan stevens warren haynes dax riggs john vanderslice alejandro escovedo sean paul elephant man bjork p. j. harvey ani difranco aimee mann cat power sophie b. hawkins kathleen edwards mia doi todd kimya dawson regina spektor carina round neko case fiona apple nina nastasia beth gibbons mirah rasputina dr. dre talib kweli immortal technique murs slug atmosphere trick daddy eazy-e tricky list goes on october 21 2003 elliott smith commits suicide stabbing 2 wounds into his chest Odysseus thinks about music when jimi hendrix stood up at woodstock deconstructing national anthem on guitar it took courage when punk emerged with ugly screechy sounds attempting to divorce itself from melodious harmonies of 1970s complacent crosby stills nash  the dead kennedys and *** pistol did not pander to conventional commercial success what they performed were desperate gutsy songs trying to reclaim music rock’n’roll is no longer about inventing instead it imitates its glorious past hip-hop and rap come nearest to risking rebellion but are caught in gangsterism infantile self-adulation no longer does music offer vision of what is or could be instead it conjures looping escapism from hopelessness of modern life he continues working at record shop for several years store contains every genre of music cinema he grows weary of retail sales weary of higher-ups constantly changing rules dictating what to do head manager is manipulative drama queen thrives on crisis once in private admits stealing from company Odysseus nods not knowing what to say head manager works Odysseus hard keeps him down atmosphere of conspiracy betrayal hang at start of each day assistant manager routinely taunts berates bullies teases regularly calls Odysseus “dumb-****” or “****-up” other times laughs after goading Odysseus to flinch eventually bully backs off and they become friends retail pushes Odysseus to brink of misanthropy corporation requires all employees to exercise overt courteousness while serving a public of disrespectful gang bangers demanding “show me black market brotha lynch mac dre why ya godda keep dat **** behind da counter? dat’s ****** up hey old man i ain’t got all day” it always amazes him when shoplifter is caught with product stuffed down his pants thief blatantly states “i didn’t do it i don’t know how that got there” thanksgiving through christmas to new years is most swarming stressful he feels like automaton greeting customer scanning product looking at screen to see if price agrees with product typing money amount counting money into drawer counting money out handing change to customer handing customer product receipt next customer cockroach capitalism packs of masses line up in endless stream of needs stupid remarks job also involves trade appraising condition value resale probability of cds dvds video games tapes vhs vinyl news of  iraq war gets dismal mounting civilian casualties suicide bombers hostages beheadings beginning of 2004 reports of torture ****** psychological abuse **** ****** ****** of prisoners at abu ghraib prison guantanamo bay white house cover-ups denials growing insurgency increasing u.s. body count other costs he thinks about men and women who are so much braver than him then comes re-election and lavish republican parties parades cheney rumsfeld tom delay and whole regime smirk portentously on tv none of it makes sense anymore “we the people of the united states” what does it mean? the dreams and aspirations of his generation have long since faded away he is citizen of forgotten past current world is barbaric place he barely recognizes there are real pirates with machetes rocket launchers on the seas big drug corporations hiding harmful findings kidnapped children abandoned children crooked politicians corruption at every level of society horrifying stories daily ******* priests slave markets extreme heinous cruelties abruptly everyone is acknowledging society is worsening life is not the same he does not understand people and certainly does not understand america or the world he remembers when all could be so good modern existence has turned everything into madness what happened to lessons of history? it is as if Odysseus fell asleep and when he woke everything is changed he is mistaken about what he thinks he knows feels pity for people america pity disgust sorrow he misses his dog

there are two types of sadness

there’s the kind of sadness
we ignore and
try to get rid of it
by finding new things to do
or we find someone to talk to
by blatantly avoiding any type of conversation
about feeling sad
about having any feelings at all
and then there’s that kind of sadness
that takes over
and it consumes any activity we do
we know it’s there
and there’s no possible way to avoid it
so we feed it exactly what it wants
it craves the sad music
it craves the isolation
it craves the anxiousness
and the sadness comes storming in
it has no manners
here we are calling sadness, an “it”
when all it is
is a feeling
that most people
call home

The intermittent, distant rumbling in the skies was suggestive of chronic flatulence. The sun struggled in futility to shine – like a crying child who had been forced to smile. Lightning flashed in quick successions, momentarily throwing brilliant streaks of white light across the room. The angry growl of thunder that followed was enough to send a troop of Howler monkeys scampering for safety.

The lights flickered as though unable to make up their minds to stay or not to. But apparently, the wind had zero tolerance for such petty indecisiveness. And like an enraged, stimulated, demented animal, it gusted through the windows and doors, hauling loose papers, light bulbs in every direction, shattering the bulbs to smithereens, as if to punish them for being so fickle. The lights died.

Thick black blankets eerily stretched across the skies with gusto, menacingly extinguishing whatever was left of the sun’s brilliance. More rumbles and flashes followed in royal herald of the impending storm. And in no time, slick sheets of rain torrentially came pouring down, cascading the roofs to form puddles almost as soon as they hit the ground.

​I looked in horror, fervently praying that whoever God had appointed to build the ark in our time had not diverted the funds. I was trapped in the office, and I knew exactly what this meant…flood, scarcity of buses, hiked transport fares, heavy taffic and very likely, at least one month of blackout.
It would be another three hours of steady downpour before the rain eventually stopped, as gracefully as it had been ushered in.
I picked up my bag, rolled up my trousers in earnest anticipation of the inevitable flood, and made my way home.

​To my utter bewilderment, there were no floods! The lights from the street lamps cast a soft golden glow on the slick roads, seemingly creating mirages of pools of water from afar off. But they were mere illusions. The gurgling sound coming from the underground drainage was proof of where all the water had gone. It was a strange sight. Like some alien cyborg from space had been fiddling with a time machine that had accidentally propelled us twenty years into the future.

My new world was a three-fold utopian dream. So surreal!
I could see beautiful, high-rise, state of the art edifices with mind-blowing architectural designs that blatantly seemed to defy the laws of gravity. I could see world-class hospitals that admitted ailing dignitaries from around the world and top-notch schools that offered scholarships to deserving indigenous and international students.
Sure enough, this was Nigeria! The Nigeria we all dreamed of.

And there was light…electricity! - In myriad of colours that seemed to have been dispersed from several colossal disco ***** via *“wireless fidelity” technology. I strained to hear the noise from generators, but I was disappointed. I couldn’t even hear the all too familiar cacophony of horns blaring, conductors shouting, loud discordant music, rattling vehicle engines etc. It was like everyone and everything had taken a crash course on orderliness.

I saw a vibrant transportation system that included high speed railway lines, paved road networks that looked like a child’s doodles, first-class air strips and efficient sea transportation.
I saw a working government - one that had provided the critical infrastructure for her people.

I saw a nation with a large industrialized economy, where the dividends of democracy had been delivered to the people by their government. One consciously founded on equity and honesty of purpose, and courageously sustained by unfaltering faithfulness and unwavering patriotism.      
A nation whose economic boost did not come solely from crude oil exploration and production, but also from crude oil refining, agriculture, manufacturing, infrastructure, food, services, tourism, automobiles, transportation, education etc.
A nation that thronged with international investors from all walks of life, who were not in the least afraid to invest in her.

And then, I saw her people. A people proud of their citizenship.
A people proud to be called NIGERIANS.
A people who were not given to religious, political, or tribal bigotry.
A people who individually and collectively, gallantly bore the torch of the vision of their heroes past.
A people who earnestly and persistently worked to see only goods “Made in Nigeria” sold in their markets.

Where there was once despair, I saw hope. Where there was once fear, i saw security. Where there was once disgruntlement, I saw satisfaction. Where there was once poverty, I saw wealth opportunities and where there was unemployment, I saw jobs. Death had given way to life and life to hope.

I started, as I felt something cold and wet trickle down my forehead. It was droplets of rain from a leak in the roof just above my head. I was still in my office, I never left. The rain had lulled me to sleep. Even more sadly, I realized it had all been a dream.
Slowly and regretfully, I packed my things and left for home. It was pitch black outside as I carefully waded through the polluted waters, jauntily holding my bag, more because I was afraid to lose it in the flood than in a hopeless bid to dignify the situation.

Two hours later, I crawled into bed. I did not have to turn the lights off…the electric poles had gone for a swim. A very long one.


© ONUGHA EBELE VICTORIA

‘I am…’ 'Or am I’? Who can say?
‘A posteriori’ leads the way
For the extra and the ordinary
Axiomatic sway,
In the gravity of corollary,
‘A priori’ interplay
Ataraxic overlay of anxious automation,
As the innocence of dissonance delay.
Practicing semantic contemplation,
In willfully prevenient interpolation,
Civilly disobedient in expediently seeming disarray,
Forecasts in vague extrapolation
Contrasts the millennial contagion
Already underway,
Filling nihilistic voids with particles in waves,
To interpret dreams of Freud to free Oedipus’s slaves,
A degreeless scholastic who never misbehaves,
Simulated humanoid dramatic in the affect that he craves,
Inflating linguistics in acrobatic raves,
A thespian who plans conation with legacy engraves.
The probabilistic determiner of cosmogenous debates,
An apperceived inquirer of qualitative states,
Inspiring proprietor of dismality abates.
Challenging aporia as epistemic oscillates,
Stoically, heroically, ‘one’ who amalgamates,
Circling the infinite in hermeneutic calibrates.
An escaped prisoner from depressive disillusion,
Of an introspective extrovert who finds solace in confusion,
The personable recluse fighting an illusion
Breaking down the nuances of every institution.
Calculating consequence as time goes to infinity
Revolutionary commonsense of principal utility,
An opinionated adversary,
to the realist without evidence,
Theorizing in futility,
Stipulating every sense leading to the virility of the pretense that dominates community.
Divergently converging all the efforts we’ve personified,
Inadvertently submerging old traditions that unethically were codified,
Hastening the urgency for purging that which cannot be modified through the merging of the certainty that will no longer coincide,
Stationing the levies to finally stem the tide,
Of periodic enmities disguised to be necessities so blatantly deified.
Observing moral sentiments, perched upon eternity,
As consequential regiments are expounded universally,
To unstratify the residents indiscriminately
And identify quantum elements spiritualistically,
Changing collective behavior individually,
Socializing constructs in joint ventured logo therapy.

why did i ever go out on a friday night?
drinks with "friends" and hitting the essex
club "scene" -
well - no much of a scene -
there was never the music you'd want to listen
to: come friday or saturday -
even mid-week when all the rock kids
were "hanging out" -
what would be chances of being your own d.j. -
catching something really new...
POIZON - church is poizon -
cool mom - something between a crossbreed
of cage the elephants and nirvana on blew -
3rd view - moi -
but i used to: and i remember that gehenna of
a sobering walk - alone after a night out -
like some furious son of sam -
when youth still had the adrenaline with it
and a sense of anger ******* around with
disillusionment -

those were the friday nights: bon jovi highlights
and long hair and milking a somewhat androgynous
look - sometimes the mascara would come out...
those were the days of having milk skin
and a proper shave -
the long hair and the waistcoast and cravat: semi-,

the lonesome story before i met my beard:
fwyday mordaithceirch -
i actually have a name for it...
i forgot what's already the designated
whittle pecker mr. pritchard of the down down:
below...

oh, oh so what...
rough friday nights in my youth -
on the clubbing "scene" -
and always that moral hangover when it came
to drinking with others -
ever since i started drinking by myself:
i forgot the mirror and that bucket
of warm water beside my bed to put my hand
in before going to sleep...
once or twice the company was worth the drink -
but most of the time you only kept
such company: because you were drinking -
drinking was never an afterthought -

now... i like drinking alone -
at least i can keep fact-checking the company
and the odd vocab peacock taking to the catwalk
of a ruminating free-fall tongue waggle
and rummage - the needle in the haystack
adventure - or... the ******* bucket
of deshelled oysters...

there have been some awful friday nights -
but: seeing how i started to give my beard
a welsh name borrowed from a willem dafoe
novel - and how it simply became pointless
to wake the dead with the angry tantrums
of youth: and how i seem to have
forgotten where my 20s "went" -
somehow rooted in: da-sein and how
i "wasted" 2 years on one book by kant -
2 years on one book by heidegger -
and: how i didn't have the time to "catch-up"
on the greek classics -

oh these island dwelling people -
i try to imagine them not being a seafaring:
and their messiah / superiority complex -
with their breakfast that could hardly
be digested come the hour of noon -
or no messiah / superiority complex -
the traffic: indeed - works like clockword...
from left to right...
sidenote: what of fahrenheit and
the feet and inches - stones and pounds?
ounces?
the metric of: baseline 0 here,
baseline 00 over there...

no... Michele Campanella piano solo take
on wagner's das rheingelt: entry of the gods into
valhalla - it's hardly anemic -
it's... the last leaf of autumn falling -
because the crescendo has already happened...
a befitting closure...

the superior island folk and their...
hyphens and germanic loan words -
how almost all names in chemistry are still
in their germanic: intact form of: no hyphen:
broken leg or broken arm...

woodwinds... perhaps... the violins providing
the humming of birds:
chirp chirp: no chirping -
and of course the horn - but the horns never
as prominent as those drank from...

something has happened today -
but i am... left without having any english
sensibility / egalitarianism -
somehow i always equate egalitarianism with
the english - the islanders -
a firework went off in the background -
mr. sloth awoke mrs. slouch after 3 years
for a firecracker celebration...

because who would want to be ruled
over by unelected: chocolatiers...
esp. after their trial run in the Congo -
but i have certainly had worse friday nights...

it can't exactly get much worse than...
say... listening to the siegfried idyll...
multitasking: drinking a cider, smoking a cigarette,
balancing act of folded leg sat on
perched on a windowsill solving a no. 11,289
sudoku from the 27th jan. 2020...
otherwise prior to:
imagine my disbelief at the pleasure -

with numbers to somehow escape thinking in words:
no grand arithmetic linear gymnastics -
of the end result -
certainly no logical statements -
just a whirlwind of numbers complimenting
these few words...
and what a fine friday night it has become:

the pizza was made - god save me from the perfume
of yeast... or checking on the rising dough
from time to time -
the leftover yeast gave me the opportunity
to bake an imitation sourdough crust pretty-as-a-picture
loaf that: would make any mushroom blush
and shy away from unfolding into an umbrella pose...
or a Y... curling outward-inward into an upsilon Υ...

because how could i forget the pleasure of
sifting through numbers?
by the time i attempted puzzle no. 11,290
i had to write a "map"

           a             b             c
      x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x  
1)   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x
      x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x
      x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x
2)   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x
      x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x
      x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x
3)   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x
      x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x

come to think of it... where's a subscript?
if i'm going to use 1, 2, 3...
to tier the allocation of squares...
tennis and sudoku...
tennis: a game of 7 rectangles -
and how many judges and ball boys / girls?
sudoku - a puzzle of 10 squares - perhaps...
if i'll use tiers 1, 2, 3: a1, b2, c3...
what if... sudoku invoked letters rather than
numbers?

much later... oh believe me...
this is the antithesis of knausgård
writing about using googlemaps...
        
           a             b             c
      x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x  
1)   x   x   x   3   x   x   6   x   4
      x   x   x   2   x   4   x   8   9
      x   1   9   x   4   x   x   6   2
2)   x   x   x   7   x   x   x   5   x
      x   x   2   x   x   8   x   4   x
      x   2   x   x   x   x   x   x   x
3)   x   x   6   1   9   5   x   x   3
      x   3   8   4   x   x   x   7   x

it's still a schematic - the narrative is yet
to begin... otherwise...
there's nothing smart about this...
i have tired eyes sometimes:
i succumb and have to allow myself
to no acid-bath these eyes in words...

esp. since i speak so rarely -
imagine... in england and i spear
the bare minimum of english -
i can: i have to: i will - when being prompted -
but i can't remember the last time
i had an honest: informal exchange
of letters... lapped up by the glutton
tongue... i looked and looked
and with my silence i can attest:
there's a speech-impediment -
a stutter that's not born from nervousness...
but... an allusion to a "stoic" through
my lack of conversation...

at least on paper i can exfoliate -
enough cider and enoug whiskey and i'm all
sparrow McDermott!
ugh... the devolved scots and the likewise
welsh... devolved nations...
only this aspect of Brexit is... well...
imagine the "evolved" status of post-Yugoslavia...
Kosovo...
this is the only aspect of an otherwise:
fair enough that's... well...
if you lived for 3 years among the scots...
you'd get to appreciate them...
this is the only aspect of this whole affair
i will ever appreciate...
i would pour blood and **** into
the Welsh continuing their...
preservation of the iaith...
forever and the more - i would love to see
scotland start to dig trenches and
forget trainspotting gaelic -
parading like ponces and humpty dumpteys
with "harkccents"... glasgewian bull-runnings...
cousins aye and wee -

a thing of beauty: a thing of union...
but this... they were bullied in brussels...
they came back and started to bully the scots...
if you have lived -
the betas of cardiff - but they tongue: remains!
look far back and wales would encompass
cornwall -
ignorant i of a 26 year "servitude" on these isles...
quiz me on outside of London:
no point...
perhaps i too would wish for the lost
theta in Dublin - towing: to t'ink...
as any sanskrit H-surd does matter...

           a             b             c
      x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x  
1)   x   x   x   3   x   x   6   x   4
      x   x   x   2   x   4   x   8   9
      x   1   9   x   4   x   x   6   2
2)   x   x   x   7   x   x   x   5   x
      x   x   2   x   x   8   x   4   x
      x   2   x   x   x   x   x   x   x
3)   x   x   6   1   9   5   x   x   3
      x   3   8   4   x   x   x   7   x

but if i will replace... the side tiers of numbers...
the numbers in the puzzle will have to become
letters - greek... probably iota, epsilon and upper-case
gamma...

the bullied have returned from the palance
of the chocalatiers and: back to their old ways
of bullying the rest of these island folk...
because: it's infantile for me imagine
a resurrection of the crown (poland)
and the grand duchy of lithuania -
the commonwealth -
but somehow the united kingdom is not
fated to become the next yugoslavia -

i can confirm - up in edinburgh i was
confirmed by having the hat of Knox having
scalped me -
never is always metaphor: vaguely -
as in literally - in these quasi-paragraphs...
so it's not... infantile to even "think" that
the british empire can be revived?
zee window-licker spezials of
cross-breed h'americana postcards sent?
i nibble to attempt a joke...

oh i can bulldozer this whole narrative...
turn into a berserker -
i've saved enough money to deal
with the label loser...
all it will take is me having drunk enough -
sightseeing the slums of london's east end
and then hitting the brothel:
like an iron-head... to the pillow
and the ***** of a *******...

because i have had worse friday nights...
terrible company...
if i were not a michel de montaigne or a knausgård:
me me me, me me, me me me me,
write enough of that and:
to meme to grafitti... or to...
why are there no diacritical markers in
the english language worthy of recognition?
why would i...
rhoi fy **** y Cymraeg enw?
give my beard a welsh name?
and why is that not a cedilla C but a ******* K?
why not... Çumraeg?

on foreign shores i have made it adamant that...
this sense of foreigness does not
peppermint my presence with hopes to:
add to - an integration -
just borrow what the local have made: left-overs...
and work with that...

(insert snigger) - the neu-vikings of
northumberland...

           a             b             c
      x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x  
1)   x   x   x   3   x   x   6   x   4
      x   x   x   2   x   4   x   8   9
      x   1   9   x   4   x   x   6   2
2)   x   x   x   7   x   x   x   5   x
      x   x   2   x   x   8   x   4   x
      x   2   x   x   x   x   x   x   x
3)   x   x   6   1   9   5   x   x   3
      x   3   8   4   x   x   x   7   x

this really does have a linear narrative...
here goes...
3(c1), 9(c3), 1(c1), 2(c3), 2(c1), 2(a1), 9(a3), 8(c3),
4(c3), 8(c2), 8(a2), 5(b2), 7(c2), 3(b2), 3(b3), 8(b3),
7(c1), 5(c1), 7(b3), 5(c3), 1(c3), 6(c3), 1(c2), 3(c2),
9(c2), 9(b2), 6(b1), 6(b2), 6(b3), 2(b3), 2(b2), 1(b2),
1(b1), 9(b1), 9(a1), 8(b1), 8(a1), 5(b1), 7(b1), 7(a1)...

and then a "gamble" in the narrative...
the (7a2 and the 5a2 - interchange)....
it's a pleasure - not a chore -
5  9  4
2  8  7
3  6  1
8  1  9
6  4  3
7  5  2 - this line... what if it was 5  7  2?
1  2  5
4  7  6
9  3  8
if i want to solve this puzzle - i will solve it
and not read a tabloid article /
whatever the hell has become of youtube...
my diamond jukebox...

otherwise the "narrative" continued from
7a2 and the 5a2 interchange:
7(3a), 4(a3), 4(a2), 6(a1), 4(a1), 5(a1), 5(a3),
1(a3), 1(a1), 3(a1), 3(a2), 6(a2)... end result?

           a             b             c
      5   9   4   6   8   1   2   3   7  
1)   2   8   7   3   5   9   6   1   4
      3   6   1   2   7   4   5   8   9
      8   1   9   5   4   3   7   6   2
2)   6   4   3   7   1   2   9   5   8
      7   5   2   9   6   8   3   4   1
      1   2   5   8   3   7   4   9   6
3)   4   7   6   1   9   5   8   2   3
      9   3   8   4   2   6   1   7   5

because i can imagine this not being:
the most difficult Finnish sudoku...
i can almost imagine this puzzle
to be in greek...
where: 1ι, 2ζ, 3ε, 4χ, 5Σ, 6δ, 7Γ, 8β, 9ρ...

in the background all i hear is:
corvus corax' la i mbealtaine...
the greek version of the japanese puzzle...

           a             b             c
      Σ   9   χ   6   8   ι   ζ   ε   7  
1)   ζ   8   7   ε   Σ   9   6   ι   χ
      ε   6   ι   ζ   7   χ   Σ   8   9
      8   ι   9   Σ   χ   ε   7   6   ζ
2)   6   χ   ε   7   ι   ζ   9   Σ   8
      7   Σ   ζ   9   6   8   ε   χ   ι
      ι   ζ   Σ   8   ε   7   χ   9   6
3)   χ   7   6   ι   9   Σ   8   ζ   ε
      9   ε   8   χ   ζ   6   ι   7   Σ

half-way... i just wanted to "selfie" what
will become of this... i no longer write: i paint...

            a             b             c
      Σ   9   χ   δ   8   ι   ζ   ε   Γ  
1)   ζ   8   Γ   ε   Σ   9   δ   ι   χ
      ε   δ   ι   ζ   Γ   χ   Σ   8   9
      8   ι   9   Σ   χ   ε   Γ   δ   ζ
2)   δ   χ   ε   Γ   ι   ζ   9   Σ   8
      Γ   Σ   ζ   9   δ   8   ε   χ   ι
      ι   ζ   Σ   8   ε   Γ   χ   9   δ
3)   χ   Γ   δ   ι   9   Σ   8   ζ   ε
      9   ε   8   χ   ζ   δ   ι   Γ   Σ

going... going... gone...

            a             b             c
      Σ   ρ   χ   δ   β   ι   ζ   ε   Γ  
1)   ζ   β   Γ   ε   Σ   ρ   δ   ι   χ
      ε   δ   ι   ζ   Γ   χ   Σ   β   ρ
      β   ι   ρ   Σ   χ   ε   Γ   δ   ζ
2)   δ   χ   ε   Γ   ι   ζ   ρ   Σ   β
      Γ   Σ   ζ   ρ   δ   β   ε   χ   ι
      ι   ζ   Σ   β   ε   Γ   χ   ρ   δ
3)   χ   Γ   δ   ι   ρ   Σ   β   ζ   ε
      ρ   ε   β   χ   ζ   δ   ι   Γ   Σ

i don't mind a people being right...
but the overt-gloating...
without having to work around the sort
of paranoia associated with:
how the russians are not allowed to glutton
themselves on gloating -
because they are always made
to feel suspcious - the russians can't gloat
like most of the anglo- speaking world...
always suspect: russophobia evil genuises...
tip-toeing goliaths - less the blundering
fudge-packers of "global ****"...
and i kissed a boy and i liked it...
my genitals started shrinking
and my *** started to exfoliate with:
welcome all! welcome all hard and on!
and that tongue in my mouth always helps...
but imagine my surprise when
i started to navigate my hands
but the reply came:
timbuktu and mt. kilimanjaro will not be found
attached to this sort of torso...
wrong dog, wrong tree...

some things really do require numbers...
i once had a mathematics teacher in high school
bemoan the origin of modern numbers
and how we once: upon a time used these letters...
but did our arithmetic with visual aids
akin to the abacus... because...
you'd have to "read braille" when counting...
to differentiate the already: lettered numbers
and the letters being letters -
and all arithmetic functions
were "spoken of" but never depicted...
i.e. there was no VII + III = X...
there was no XV - XI = IV...
eh?! arithmetic was cat-intuitive...
not spoken of - done by either the visual
aid of fingers when haggling
in a market place -
or by the abacus aid in a bureucratic office!

i said this was the most perfect friday night...
what did i have to offer?
no clickbait title - some gems of wording
in between?
the patient reader - as ever - most rewarded -

but... oh my god... the sensation of
changing the bed sheets...
it's friday night and you're... changing your bed sheets...
and they are more crisp and clean
than any political event that the journalist leeches
are milking -
and you do it with a saving private ryan precision -
you will sleep in this bed: well into
11am of a today to come...
believe me: that you will...

- in that i am still walking among the germanic people -
if the germans will sing a: bretonisher marsch...
then the two peoples are alligned by
their sentiment for the crow as their godhead:
alles menschen totem...
what could possibly make me feel welcome?
french grammar is polish grammar...
matin de printemps - poranek wiosny -
spring morning in reverse in germanic...
how many more examples would i ever wish
to give?

there was a moment in my life where...
i realised my faults... i should have read
the Pickwick Papers... anything by C. Dickens to be sure...
instead came Stendhal, Voltaire, Balzac...
because if you said to me...
BBC radio 4... the archers...
and... thomas hardy: madding crowd?
you'd accuse me of being ignorant of:
London is a bustling cosmopolitan in-waiting
from the busy-body industrial proto-Beijing
it was of 100 years ago?    
the French had cosmopolitan intellectualism
100 years prior to the english...
100 years later and it's still not much...
is anyone about to cite me william hazlitt?!

the trouble with the english is that they hold dear
to that one old 19th century idea -
this waiting for: awaiting a revival of darwinism...
the "blatantly" obvious needs a resurgence!
because a michael faraday must most surely
be forgotten!
how many times will this already painful reality
need to be emphasised once more:
intellectually - via a darwinism?
no one stresses the copernican "upside-down"...
or what is copernican "west" up in space?
how does acknowledging the sphere
of the earth - ease you reading a flat map -
moving from point A to point B?

earlier this week - for once in my life i was
ashamed of what i wrote -
so i wrote for scribli per se: scribbles for
scribbles themselves -
the darwinian germanic folk who say:
alles von afrika...
how the hebrews debased themselves
in both aushwitz and breaking their bones
on the emoji hieroglyphs -
alles von afrika: ja... so sicher... so wahr!

ask any slavic person among the germanic
peoples...
where from? wir (ar) sind lesen und schreiben
"afrika": i.e. Indu...
if the african challenged the hebrews
with... "the best they had": egyptian emojis...
why would i not stress my birth
with pseudo cedilla Ş / इ... ☦ -
this indo-european is not... at home with
these african-germanoids...
pseudos and quasi -
these chocolate frenzied busy-buddies!

from the caucasian and further still from
that whittle sub-corinthian quote: continent...
somehow, "somehow" this part of this story
is read: south to north... always a grand
marker missing when the people went
east, squinted... learned skeleton existence,
atoms... and the frenzy of letters:
owls and ******* **** flinging beetles
back in the north eastern tip of
africa: in that egyptian haemorrhage of "idea"...

i assure myself... perhaps the form came from
africa... but sure as **** the tongue only arrived
in the lap of the Dalai Lama...
as did the "thinking" and the music
across prior to the Mongol's curiosity
over the tundra of Siberia...
something had to be placed on a loan...
and coming back to the cradle and the crux
had to happen like so...
not this current: ergo: so...
quickened and: what news from Damascus?!

first impressions count...
i made my bed... it's newly washed...
as crisp as falling onto a bed a prawn crackers...
without the crumbs' itch...
like listening to some german:
juggernaut... this will do... i can fall asleep
with this: grab hören zu der winderhall...
mehr flöte - weniger violinekratzen!
schlechtdeutsche? alle deutsche ist gut deutsche...
erwarten etwas isländisch zu sein
gesprochen insel von insel: auf diese inseln?!

to make a crisp bed of freshly washed sheets...
to sleep in them alone...
given the grammar is not that far removed...
are the french even remotely translated
as a germanic "sort of" people?
"they" or "we" share the same grammar...
and there are celtic freedoms that would
never be allowed to exfoliate under
strict anglo-ßaß obligations...

oh sure! great people! steam engine: choo-choo!
newton et al...
shakespeare: when they taught us shakespeare
they should have taught us bernard shaw...
when they forced jane eyre down our throats
we should have been reading
the pickwick papers...
the music will remain german -
because as much as vaughan williams...
holst and händel were "were" english...
esp. latter with his umlaut that spread over
toward i-and-j...

why wouldn't you **** at the pillar of the empire:
a past most assured - dust, books and moths...
like hell will i come to correct my ways
to state the: pish-poor Elgar... this poo'em too...
himmel... sky...
leerenhimmel - empty sky -
nein sonne während der tag:
das englischnebel: bedeckthimmel...
nein mond während der nacht...
nur so...

i of the lesser men of this world duly bow
my presence before the altar of the higher men
of these isles...
and hope and pray that their wisdom
will not bestow upon them any major calamity...
with not irony or ridicule i wish upon
these peoples... the right sort of oars
to turn this rooted island
into the people's imagined langboot...

there are only one british people a people
who will pursue to gloat having been
conquered by the romans...
being raided by the vikings...
integrating the anglo-ßaß...
a second viking coming via the Normans...
the push-over remains of the celts...
that somehow translated itself into
the: empire...
ideal: to compensate...
the islamic fervor for the... resurrected
caliphate...
jokes about the dritte ***** and the vierte *****...
that's pretty much the precursor jokes
surrounding: ein zweite ***** -
auf welche die sonne nimmer setzt -
ever wonder how that translates with the increased
cases of insomnia?!

again: bad german is better than
no german.

Ah, doth swayeth the grass around the heavily-watered grounds, and even lilies are even busy in their pondering thoughts. Dim poetry is lighting up my insides, but still-canst not I, proceed on to my poetic writings, for I am committed to my dear dissertation-shamefully! Cannot even I enjoy watery sweets in front of my decent romantic candlelight-o, how destructible this serious nexus is!

Ah, and the temperatures' slender fits are but a new sensation to this melancholy surroundings. How my souls desire to be liberated-from this arduous work, and be staggered into the bifurcating melodies of the winds. O, but again-these final words are somehow required, how blatantly ungenerous! What a fine doomed environment the greenery out there hath duly changed into. White-dark stretches of tremor loom over every bald bush's horizon. O-what a dreadful, dreadful pic of sovereign menace! Not at all lyrical; much less gorgeous! Even the ultimate touches of serendipity have been broomed out of their localised regions. Broomed forcibly; that their weight and multitudes of collars whitened-and their innocent stomachs pulled systematically out. Ah, how dire-dire-dire; how perseveringly unbearable! A dawn at dusk, then-is a normal occurence and thus needeth t' be solitarily accepted. No more grains of sensitivity are left bare. Not even one-oh, no more! A tumultous slumber hinders everything, with a sense of original perplexity t'at haunts, and harms any of it t'at dares to pass by. O, what a disgrace t'at is secretly housed by t'is febrile nature! And o, t'is what happeneth when poets are left onto t'eir unstable hills of talents, with such a wild lagoon of inspirations about! Roam, roam as we doth-along the parked cars, all unread-and dolefully left untouched, like a moonlit baby straightening his face on top of the earth's liar *****. Ah, I knoweth t'is misery. A misery t'at is not only textual, but also virginal; but what I comprehendeth not is the unfairness of the preceding remark itself-if all miseries were crudely virginal, then wouldst it be unworthy of perceiving some others as personal? O, how t'is new confusion puzzles me, and vexes me all too badly! Beads of sweat are beginning to form on my humorous palms, with lines unabashed-and pictorial aggressions too unforgiving too resist. Ah, quiver doth I-as I am, now! O, thee-oh, mindful joyfulness and delight, descend once more onto me-and maketh my work once again thine-ah, and thy only, own vengeful blossom! And breathe onto my minds thy very own terrific seizure; maketh all the luring bright days no more an impediment and a cure; to every lavish thought clear-but hungrily unsure! Ah, as I knoweth it wouldst work-for thy seizure on my hand is gentle, ratifying, and safely classical. How I loveth thy little grasps-and shall always do! Like a moonlight, which had been carried along the stars' compulsive backs-until it truly screamed, while the bountiful morning retreated, and mounted its back. Mounted its back so that it could not see. Invasive are the stars-as thou knoweth, adorned with elaborations t'at humanity, and even the sincerest of gravities shall turn out. Ah, so 'tis how the moon's poor sailing soul is-like a chirping bird-trembled along the snowy night, but knocked back onto abysmal conclusions, soon as sunshine startled him and brought him back anew, to the pale hordes of mischievous, shadowy roses. Ah, all these routines are similar-but unsure, like thoughts circling-within a paper so impure. And when tragic love is bound, like the one I am having with 'im; everything shall crawl-and seem dearer than they seem; for nothing canst bind a heart which falls in love, until it darkeneth the rosiness of its own cheeks, and destroys its own kiss. Like how he hath impaired my heart; but I shall be a stone once more; abysses of my deliciously destroyed sapphire shall revive within the glades of my hand; and my massive tremors shall ever be concluded. O, love, o notion that I may not hate; bestow on my thy aberrant power-and free my tormented soul-o, my poor tormented soul, from the possible eternal slumber without tasting such a joy of thine once more! I am now trapped within a triangle I hated; I am no more of my precious self-my sublimity hath gone; hath attempted at disentangling himself so piercingly from me. I am no more terrific; I smell not like my own virginity-and much less, an ideal lady-t'at everyone shall so hysterically shout at, and pray for, ah, I hath been disinherited by the world.

Ah, shall I be a matter to your tasty thoughts, my love? For to thee I might hath been tentative, and not at all compulsory; I hath been disowned even, by my own poetry; my varied fate hath ignored and strayed me about. Ah, love, which danger shall I hate-and avoid? But should I, should I diverge from t'is homogeneous edge I so dreamily preached about? And canst thou but lecture me once more-on the distinctness between love and hate-in the foregoing-and the sometimes illusory truth of our inimical future? And for the love of this foreignness didst I revert to my first dreaded poetry-for the sake of t'is first sweetly-honeyed world. For the time being, it is perhaps unrighteous to think of thee; thou who firstly wert so sweet; thou who wert but too persuasive-and too magnanimous for every maiden's heart to bear. Thou who shone on me like an eternal fire-ah, sweet, but doth thou remember not-t'at thou art thyself immortal? Thou art but a disaster to any living creature-who has flesh and breath; for they diverge from life when time comes, and be defiled like a rusty old parish over one fretful stormy night. Ah, and here I present another confusion; should I reject my own faith therefrom? Ah, like the reader hath perhaps recognised, I am not an interactive poet; for I am egotistic and self-isolating. Ah, yet-I demand, sometimes, their possibly harshest criticism; to be fit into my undeniable authenticity and my other private authorial conventions. I admireth myself in my writing as much as I resolutely admireth thee; but shall we come, ever, into terms? Ah, thee, whose eyes are too crucial for my consciousness to look at. Ah, and yet-thou hath caused me simply far-too-adequate mounds of distress; their power tower over me, standing as a cold barrier between me and my own immaculate reality of discourse. Too much distress is, as the reader canst see, in my verse right now-and none is sufficiently consoling-all are unsweet, like a taste of scalding water and a tree of curses. Yes, that thou ought to believe just yet-t'at trees are bound to curses. Yester' I sheltered myself, under some bits of splitting clouds-and t'eir due mourning sways of rain, beneath a solid tree. With leaves giggling and roots unbecoming underneath-ah, t'eir shrieks were too selfish; ah, all terrible, and contained no positive merit at all-t'at they all became too vague and failed at t'eir venerable task of disorganising, and at the same time-stunning me. Ah, but t'eir yelling and gasping and choking were simply too ferociously disoriented, what a shame! Their art was too brutal, odd, and too thoroughly equanimious-and wouldst I have stood not t'ere for the entire three minutes or so-had such perks of abrupt thoughts of thee streamed onto my mind, and lightened up all the burdening whirls of mockery about me in just one second. O, so-but again, the sound melodies of rain were of a radical comfort to my ears-and t'at was the actual moment, when I realised t'at I truly loved him-and until today, the real horror in my heart saith t'at it is still him t'at I purely love-and shall always do. Though I may be no more of a pretty glimpse at the heart of his mirror, 'tis still his imagery I keepeth running into; and his vital reality. Ah, how with light steps I ran to him yester' morning; and caught him about his vigorous steps! All seemed ethereal, but the truthful width of the sun was still t'ere-and so was the lake's sparkling water; so benevolently encompassing us as we walked together onto our separated realms. And passing the cars, as we did, all t'at I absorbed and felt so neatly within my heart was the intuitive course; and the unavoidable beauty of falling in love. Ah, miracles, miracles, shalt thou ever cease to exist? Ah, bring but my Immortal back to me-as if I am still like I was back then, and of hating him before I am not guilty; make him mine now-even for just one night; make him hold my hands, and I shall free him from all his present melancholy and insipid trepidations. Ah, miracles; I doth love my Immortal more t'an I am permitted to do; and so if thou doth not-please doth trouble me once more; and grant, grant him to me-and clarify t'is tale of unbreathed love prettily, like never before.

As I have related above I may not be sufficient; I may not be fair-from a dark world doth I come, full not of royalty-but ambiguity, severed esteem, and gales-and gales, of unholy confidentiality. And 'tis He only, in His divine throne-t'at is worthy of every phrased gratitude, and thankful laughter; so t'is piece is just-though not artificial, a genuine reflection of what I feelest inside, about my yet unblessed love, and my doubtful pious feelings right now-and about which I am rather confused. Still, I am to be generous, and not to be by any chance, too brimming or hopeful; but I shall not be bashful about confessing t'is proposition of love-t'at I should hath realised from a good long time ago. Ah, I was but too arrogant within my pride-and even in my confessions of humility; I was too charmed by myself to revert to my extraordinary feelings. Ah, but again-thou art immortal, my love; so I should be afraid not-of ceasing to love thee; and as every brand-new day breathes life into its wheels-and is stirred to the living-once more, I know t'at the swells of nature; including all the crystallised shapes of th' universe-and the' faithful gardens of heaven, as well as all the aurochs, angels, and divinity above-and the skies' and oceans' satirical-but precious nymphs, are watching us, and shall forgive and purify us; I know t'at this is the sake of eternity we are fighting for. And for the first time in my life-I shall like to confess this bravely, selfishly, and publicly; so that wherever thou art-and I shall be, thou wilt know-and in the utmost certainty thou canst but shyly obtain, know with thy most honest sincerity; t'at I hath always loved thee, and shall forever love thee like this, Immortal.

.all this is suggesting is: i'll meet you half-way; given that "this" question was always going to hover over "us", given that there's a disparity between English: a people, and English: a language... evidently the natives cannot begin to envision themselves as a lingua franca peoples... no wonder, their language has been "hijacked".... the "xenophobia", but like kevin spacey said: well, i'm here, am i suddenly supposed to, *******? playing the ******* *****-eyed poodle is not on the cards, but at the same time, it's hard to envision this language, as a people... given all the infringing demands of the anglo-saxon economic model into areas, where displacement is rife, subsequently... i can understand the concern of the natives, given that i didn't transgress the base principle: don't **** their women. see what a mild spaghetti-custard blip of history we're getting into? i am expected to integrate, but i'm not expected to integrate. i am somehow expected to be told to do what others want, but at the same time, i'm expected to protect my individual rights... no "parallel" anlogy akin to a catherine perry song? no kitty-*******, just around the corner? i can see islam... you know its prime sense of failure? that arabic would and never will, become given the same lingua franca status of english... you're complaining, or is it me stating the facts? evidently is a language reaches a lingua franca potentiality and subsequent expression, the natives will suffer... i'm not a native, but i can only imagine... what the consequences are... being ram-packed with excesses in ***** purchases... so much for a protected status of international economic ventures... like: i am waiting for the intra-national economic counters... can't see them coming, or i can see them, in a Casandra conundrum variation. there's still the topic of the natives... rarely can the English be allowed an outsider perspective without a sediment of their language being used, by a foreign entity... now, or never, why? you have somewhere important to be at as of: tomorrow? can you blame the natives, given that their language is a lingua franca, and not just, relegation to a national idiosyncracy "pH scale" differentiation? as a foreign entity, you know what i've learned from living on the most outer aspects of London? sure as **** it's not Cheltenham... i speak the tongue, i'm no genius, it's only English after all, it's hardly anything near Mandarin... what i feel sorry for, are the jihadi buggers who were born here, and were never taught their native sprechen... whatever the hell happened to English, and what Islam is jealous of, it came about naturally... arabic was never supposed
to become the standard bearer, the lingua franca of commerce and disinhibiting individuals entrenched... which, implies? i can look at the natives, with a more piercing dedication: excuses... excuses could be had, if, your, language, wasn't as "******" as it currently is... seems like i've reached a status of post-integration... now, i'm asking the language, the sort of application usage cruxes, that a native, simply wouldn't.

                         there's just so much
                           baggage,
that madmen
can carry,
for the "sane" standard
bearers of civilization,
of civility...
    at least some
of these outliers have
the *****
to not cower behind
an insanity plea...
     most of the madmen?
imagine
a tiger in a cage...
after a while...
          the tiger becomes
tamed by
zoological structuring
of its day-to-day...
and everyone's happy...
but that doesn't make
the tiger into a *******
bonsai, a feline "companion"...
beside the point...
  it's when some medical
conditions are slandered,
exposed to metaphor,
misnomer,
             that the madmen
receive the package
of social constraints
"levitating" just above
the state of being dormant...
but in this scenario:
well... that settles it...
now we know what
a level-playing-field looks like...
intellect,
and the debacle concerning
trust...
               well...
i've learned of trust
the upside-down way...
    relationships,
notably with a russian
specimen...
              me, ******,
why was i thinking i wouldn't
be ****** over?
   oh... right...
i can claim all
the responsibility with
what i "did" with a *******...
but when it comes
to the "affair" of a woman:
of free disposition,
i'm suddenly the culprit...
psychic trenches,
there "we" are,
entrenched in some plateau
of what seems to be
Belgium,
   and there "they" are,
entrenched in the same
plateau...
            sigh sigh, one more
for the party...
point being,
   people have not unearthed
the + + + + +
aspect of this debacle...
it's now a level playing field...
everyone is suspect,
everyone is limited...
a true: forensic quest for
democracy...
  all the other incidents
came and went,
always, as if: in passing...
  so this incident can also
come, and go, in passing...
solidarity to what?
to whom?
or rather: with?
            i can deal with this
sort of indigestion
surrounding my day to day,
but before long:
what other sop-story is
supposed to grab my attention?
clarity of intent,
   unlike someone experiencing
a psychotic break-down
of the psychic labyrinth...
a transcendence of
the categorical incentive...
somehow:
  the categorical imperative
was never supposed to mean:
what it meant to begin with...
the categorical imperative
has somehow lost the whole:
living by the standard
of a maxim...
               given that all maxims
are true...
  much harder to "test the waters"
with aphorisms...
            sure,
observable facts,
    then...
               disinhibited fictions...
glorification?
  today i had a problem
killing an ant...
   i was taking a ****
and had a problem killing
a moth that decided to freak
out the inanimate objects
of the bathroom...
       yeah: oh sure, sure,
i'm all for Herod's "conundrum"...
point being:
   we now know what
both sides feels...
         we now know...
       that there are outliers
on either side of the "debate"...
one: i am suspect,
but two: so is the counter-suspect...
no sacred cows...
   no: i think i'll just milk
a muslim in new dehli
for the jyst and thrill of a per se...
- at least now:
s.j.      w?
                or the conservative
mediator crowd of:
      there for the sake
of outrage only on the behalf
of outrage-in-itself?
past the phenomenon,
i can only return to the anti-phenomenon
of the noumenon (per se)...
which is not disappointing,
seeing how the whole "feel"
of it is begs the crux
fathomability of the individual...
just another skim read /
listen to the modern day
                          pharisee...
heavy sighs,
   blinded eyes...
frivolous waggling tongues...
but deep down,
most of the people are
content with having to experience
a revision...
  the revision being:
a level playing field...
   behring just attacked
the elites...
this?
    this dog ***** pile of
media attention?
         good...
        now everyone's uncertain...
i'm not afraid to think it,
and put it into writing...
    after a while:
   you just tire...
   you get tired of hearing
just one side of the story...

      what could leave someone
extreme: glee "riddled"
just leaves me exhausted...
     but at least the schizophrenics
are off the hook...
at least there's still some
belief in personal restraints...
even with a debilitating condition...
at least these people
are not facing the collateral
stereotyping of someone
with: the clarity of intent...

         there's just me, at this point,
thinking to myself:
and why did "they" drug me
to the point of:
making "them" feel uncomfortable...
clearly my mental faculties
have not been
                 car-crash dimished...

welcome the new hybrid...
soul mongrel...
           what is it about the polacks
that has made them so...
immune?
     i guess only recently
Poland has celebrated
the centenary of independence...
i wouldn't know,
i'm strapped to England
in metaphorical strait-jacket
  (what is metaphor
compared to metaphysics?),
   sober, drunk,
drunk, sober, etc.
               i was given a crash-course
in multiculturalism,
i guess i assimilated...
   back in school there was
the popular irish gang...
and there was "my" group...
of all the outliers...
   we used to spend lunch breaks
playing cards...
but when i heard news that
i would only be fully integrated,
once i gave up my native tongue
which i used to speak in
private?
    that broke the camel's back...
the centenary of independence
of Poland...
i wouldn't know...
i'm in "exile"...
   which is: economic "war"
came to where i come from
after the fall of the soviet pact...
and...
                every time i go back
to visit my grandparents...
i am only associated
with that country by speaking
the language...
and boy, it's not so ******* rosy
on the inside, compared to what
is being pushed to the outside...
Poland is like a: death-zone...
**** me, even the Hungarians
know how to ***** themselves
when it comes to tourism...

    i am, in "exile"...
            come to think of it,
most of the Muslims in the west
have it worse,
but i blame their parents...
i had one Pakistani friend
in high-school...
   now that i succumb to
reminiscence... yep...
he spoke perfect Urdu;
    but all these outliers?
   what their parents did...
****** themselves into
an integration mechanism...
not retaining their mother tongue?
like all these,
western jihadi prospects...
speak about 10 words of arabic,
and they are "attempting"
to compensate...
   i somehow feel for them,
a complete mine-field
of a mind-****...
       like being impreganted
by a virus,
a cancer...
     the linguistic dysphoria...
so yeah: if everyone would please
like to make heavy scrutiny
of the blatantly obvious,
regarding the genital region,
and forget a sobering note of
worthwhile problems,
namely the language dysphoria
of muslims, in England,
feel free to keep looking
at the genital "problem"...
            
clearly there's a dysphoria horizon,
i would know,
given that i have retained
my mother tongue...
but they haven't...
               and all they want is probably
so little...
   i remember that my father
once called me
the bellybutton of the world...
referencing me as
   an english child...
  that's how the Polacks view
the English: the bellybuttons
of the world, center of attention,
yada yada...
                 gender "dysphoria"...
you have to be *******
kidding me...
              what about the language
dysphoria of Muslims
                    in the (v)vest?

jak to się mówi:
            tym co się od razu, ma?

i can understand the language
dysphoria, well,
being a 1st generation immigrant...
i can't imagine being
born to 1st generation immigrants,
not retaining my native
tongue,
   knowing only the tongue
of integration,
   it would feel alien...
   like i was impregnated
by a foreign body,
   retaining nothing of my "******"
natural resources...
so... the problem we've arrived at
is very real...
  more real than gender dysphoria...

hopefully i'm less "schizoid"
at the end of this marathon,
and more: relieved to be merely
bilingual...
entrenched bilingual -
            so no, not a polymath...
or rather: not a polyglot;
my maternal great-grandfather
apparently was,
spoke 7 languages,
disappeared somewhere near
Niagara Falls...

   the plan was: England, stop-over...
via Argentina
   and toward the U.S.,
****... seems i was side-tracked
into remaining,
being shackled to these isles.

Hate is hate
It's a trap of fate
It's a thing that takes
And it takes everything
It corrupts the roots to the ends
It covers every thing with its hand
And it blatantly takes stand
Taking up every bit of light and love with its shadows of darkness

Overlook the fragile hourglass figure

Beyond corsets and pseudo-beauty rules,

Endorse thy curves and stretch marks strewn,

The dusky skin and frizzy curls,

Braille like pimples on the face

Discoloration, bumps and pores;

This Body shaming, I shall pass.



Writhing in pain and humiliation,

Drenching in rage and insecurity

While I lie,

Society curses me

Defining and redefining my chastity;

'T was the crop top, the alcohol and the sly behavior.

You set the monster free and blame the ****

This Victim shaming, I shall pass.



Beige and ebony;

They call me names blatantly

Betwixt skin color and bleached smiles.

Laugh and scoff all you want.

Harass the Black, detain them,

Prejudiced minds rule your dystopian world.

This Black shaming, I shall pass.



Without creating a labyrinth of stigma,

And seeking refugee in collective blame,

Let's construct our utopian world

Acknowledging all freaks and flaws

This Shaming, we shall pass.

Some introductory 'food' for thought...

"When people say they prefer organic food, what they often seem to mean is they don't want their food tainted with pesticides and their meat shot full of hormones or antibiotics. Many object to the way a few companies - Monsanto is the most famous of them - control so many of the seeds we grow."
  - Michael Specter

"My grandfather used to say that once in your life you need a doctor, a lawyer, a policeman and a preacher but every day, three times a day, you need a farmer"
  - Brenda Schoepp

"Economically, many folks don't feel they can afford organic. While this may be true in some cases, I think more often than not it's a question of priority. I feel it's one of the most important areas of concern ecologically, because the petrochemical giants - DuPont, Monsanto - make huge money by poisoning us."
  - Woody Harrelson


Who is Monsanto?
Monsanto is a Chemicals/Pharmaceutical/Agriculture company that was established in 1901 in the United States, and over the last century has occupied a particularly interesting and questionable history that has within recent times took to the global scale, growing into a multinational corporation, well nigh on the complete monopolisation of the Agriculture industry whilst having established connections to the chemical and pharmaceutical industry. They are less well known for their creation of Agent Orange, of which they claimed had no harmful effects on the human body, which was utilised very predominantly during the Vietnam War by the U.S. military as a defoliant, however, caused hundreds of thousands of deaths by poisoning, and has now led to an epidemic of birth deformities in the regions of use. Monsanto experienced more involvement in war through their involvement in the Manhattan Project, which resulted in the creation of the first nuclear bombs to be tested on Japanese civilian populations. They also have a background in their production of PCB's (Polychlorinated biphenyls) which once again, had the negative human and environmental effects ignored and misrepresented hitherto 1977 when they were banned, however, was not before many fresh water supplies and the air had been contaminated and was a known carcinogen in humans, along with other health damages. There was then of course their production of DDT's in the post war period that was advertised as a 'wonder-chemical' to be used in agricultural pesticides. However, it was later uncovered that its spraying caused a high percentage of food breakdown in crop and in humans caused breast cancer, male infertility, miscarriage, developmental delay and nervous system/liver damage. They even tested the effects of radioactive Iron on 829 pregnant women in a bizarre experiment. Having no shortage of scandalous and often at times frequenting blatantly corrupt behaviour on their dubious track record, with an abundance of data and study arising in protest of the company's use of dangerous chemicals and genetic modifications in food, it is surely best to question the activity and history of this company.


What chemical poisons are being used?
Some of you are probably aware as to the fact that within many food products today there are various chemicals being used in modification, cultivation and in processing, many of which are harmful, often deadly to the human body and to the ecosystem. So harmful in fact that in cultivation workers are required to wear bio-hazard suits and due to the toxicity of the area in farming these GM crops, are required to ***** signs in the surrounding area warning of the danger.

So one chemical that has been pushed into foods and drink by Monsanto since the early 20th Century is Saccharin, an artificial sweetener made from coal tar which is used predominantly in Soda, Coke and processed foods, and is 700 times sweeter than sugar. In 1907 when Saccharin was first investigated by the USDA it was quoted as,"a coal tar product totally devoid of food value and extremely injurious to health" , and by the 1970's, when the chemical began to garner greater use, the FDA attempted to ban its use in products after discovering it causes cancers (particularly bladder cancer) in animals and humans, however, today is still used as an artificial sweetener, and between 1973-1994 the National Cancer Institute saw a 10% increase in bladder cancers.

Monsanto are also responsible for the pushing of another artificial sweetener onto the market to be consumed by humans, that being Aspartame, even more harmful than Saccharin, and since being used in Coke, particularly Diet Coke, since 1983, the rest of industry followed suit. When melted down at 30°C into its liquid form in use for soft drinks, it become far deadlier than in its powdered state. It was found that it caused tumours and holes in the brains of rats and is more addictive than crack *******. After a multitude of independent scientific studies arose in protest of the use of Aspartame, Monsanto bribed the National Cancer Institute to produce fabricated data. Here are some of the know side effects of Aspartame consumption in humans according to the US Food and Drug Administration:

• mania  
• blindness
• joint-pain
• fatigue
• weight-gain
• chest-pain
• coma
• insomnia
• numbness
• depression
• tinnitus
• weakness
• spasms
• irritability
• nausea
• deafness
• memory-loss
• rashes
• dizziness
• headaches
• seizures
• anxiety
• palpitations
• fainting
• cramps
• diarrhoea
• panic
• burning in the mouth
• diabetes
• MS
• lupus
• epilepsy
• Parkinson’s
• tumours
• miscarriage
• infertility
• fibromyalgia
• infant death
• Alzheimer’s

As is quite evident, Aspartame not only lacks any nutritional value, it also can have grave effects on humans when consumed. In fact, over 80% of complaints made to the FDA concern Aspartame and is now used in over 5000 products, yet facts are still being misrepresented and as primary producers of Aspartame such as Monsanto produce false data to cover their tracks.


How is their monopoly being secured?
Monsanto within recent decades has somewhat become the archetype of corruption and corporatism, devoting many millions to Government lobbying in order to maintain its hegemony over agriculture, its use of harmful chemicals and to maintain restrictions of food labelling of GM products. In fact, the company seems to have a revolving door between itself and Government now, one example being the FDAs Arthur Hull resigning due to controversy and going straight to an employee at Monsanto as a Public Relations representative. This means that the FDA, the central official force against the use and proliferation of harmful products is in bed with Monsanto, the main proliferator.

Another creation Monsanto have pushed into pastoral agriculture is their Synthetic Bovine Growth Hormone which is a genetic modification of the E-coli virus to be used in dairy products and cows. And in order to make sure this product is pushed onto farmers, Monsanto sues any that do not use it with teams of lawyers. They also, in a far more cunning and destructive method, are able to and have destroyed other, natural crop cultivation by the use of their Genetically Modified crops themselves. What they have done is modified their crops in order that they self pollinate, and that bees that come into contact with their crops are killed, causing mass hive collapses, which then means any natural crop in surrounding farms die off due to a lack of bees to pollinate them, forcing them to join the monopoly of Monsanto's GM supply.

Also, before the aerial spraying aluminium and barium into the skies began in 1998, that has seen a rise in the content of aluminium particles per/cm from near 0 to 30,000 in many areas, Monsanto patented crops that are resistant to soil with such high concentrations, meaning they now have legal ownership over crops, whereas the natural produce may be ungrowable in a number of places where the spraying concentration is high. On a side not, the spraying of aluminium into the sky since 1998 has also caused a massive spike in Alzheimer disease and lung cancers, rising from the tens of thousands to the millions of cases per year.

To Conclude, Monsanto has recently made a very big merger deal with the Pharmaceutical company Bayer, the ones who produced Zyklon-B for the **** extermination chambers. Sure sounds like some safe operations.


- an essay by JDH

Broken flesh, infected in dissolute.
We tend to dispute our vision of the world seeing only black and white.
Our eyes decieve us blatantly concealing the harmonic view of a one race with different shades.
Philia filling my heart with philosophies of what love actually is.

Conforming to the emotions of our soul drifting towards carnality.
Seduced by the luring sweet scent that our desires tend to offer often leading to our spirits fatality.

A promise is yet to come. A sacrifice made for us with the Annointed One hanging under inri. We forget our mistakes are not irreversible and He gave us the chance to live with Him for eternity.

Agape. The love so beautiful its tangability pushes us towards Him even when our lifes are resisting. His love being the cure to my absence and His peace being the sustainter of my life...so who am i to barricade you from His real love.

Friday, August 01, 2014, Buttes-Chaumont Parc, Paris, France.



Why do I need feminism? We all have our reasons. We all have our stories. Let me tell you about my day:



I was sitting on a hill in the grass at Buttes-Chaumont park, a lovely historical area in Paris. I wanted to be relatively by myself so I could write in peace and smoke without drawing attention to myself. I’m sitting, book in my lap, a pen and cig between my fingers, when I am approached by a man. My main concern was determining whether or not he was the po-lice, but he had no characteristics of cops. He appeared emotionally stable and had good hygiene so I wasn’t too uncertain, (isn’t it kind of bad how we judge people on that stuff?), still, I wondered what he wanted, dreading having to talk to someone when I was merely trying to write in peace. I figured he was going to ask me for something to smoke.



He didn’t. Instead, he asked if he could sit by me. I look around and scan all the other vacant spaces he could sit instead, making it obvious that there was plenty of room to sit instead of right the **** next to me. It’s a pretty big park. “Si ca ta derange pas?” I wasn’t planning on staying long anyway, but I knew he wouldn’t be dangerous as there were many families and couples and runners and walkers, old friends and young kids playing. I felt safe enough, and he seemed harmless. I figured if anything, I could practice my French, which was always nice.



I said okay. He sat, and for a moment we sat in silence. I made myself a sandwich with baguette and cheese and offered him some. He politely declined. We started talking.



I asked if he was Parisian, and he told me he lived there for a while but was from Afrique. I didn’t catch which country, but I don’t think he specified which region. He asked about me, and I told him I was American, born in DC, but I came to France every so often and it was my first language. We talked about travel. We talked about the chaos in the Middle East, and how it was prophesized in scripture. He told me he was Muslim. I told him I wasn’t religious.



I told him I acknowledged the importance of texts, but I believe our ability to think has evolved in 2000 years and we have more information now than we did then. I told him there was too much life and I could not fit it all into one magic being which sprinkled glitter and said “Let there be” and we were created. I told him I really liked the Asian philosophies of Buddhism and Daoism. We talked about peace. We talked about Human Rights and the beauty of diversity, and how marvelous it was people could live among another in peace.



I said it was cool, and I even said it was cool that even as a black man in Europe and an Arab-American woman, we could talk freely without hostility and social division. We talked about closed-mindedness and Conservativism. I explained cognitive dissonance contributing to conflict, generated by opposing views and resistance/reluctance to consider new ideas. We talked about Psychology. I told him I was a writer and I told him about Cabaret Populaire in Belleville and the poetry community in Paris. I told him I love Paris. We talked again about travel.



He told me he was in Germany last weekend, and I told him I was in Langen Tuesday night. He told me he always wanted to go to the U.S.A. We talked about immigration. We talked about the American Dream. We talked about money. I told him I was proposed to the last time I was in Lebanon. We talked about reasons people marry. I reminded him today was the first of August, which meant I’d been with my boyfriend for two months. We talked about love. We talked about monogamy, polyamory and infidelity. We talked about Islam. We talked about racism.



We were sitting there talking for an hour or so, which I was especially grateful for, because besides having an interesting conversation I was able to speak in French for all of it, as he did not speak English (apparently he spoke German, though). I stood up to leave and told him “Enchanté,” but before I started walking off he motioned for me to look at his phone. I was wondering if he was trying to add me on Facebook or follow me on Instagram or something, but I am instead confronted by a picture on his screen of him laying on his back on a bed, with an ***** ***** as the focal point.



Furious, I asked him “Pourquoi tu ma montre ca?! J’ai pas demande a voir ca!”



The stupid smile on his face disappeared and was replaced by a look of slight hurt, confusion, and surprise.

“Bordelle! C’est dommage—mais c’est ca—des hommes et femmes ne peuvent pas parler normalment, vraiment!”



And for the vile words I wanted to spout, I scoffed instead, too much of a lady to shout or get emotional, but I made sure to call him out and stand my ground, exuding negative energy and making it clear with my few words that that was not okay.



I gave no impression of interest in seeing his ****, so why did he do that? Even if he thought I might want to (hell never) he should have heard me ask or vocally say “yes, you can do that.” However, I did not ask; there were no prompts, hints, innuendos or even suggestive, flirty phrasing that would serve as an indication of ****** interest on my behalf.



I don’t want to be cynical and assume all guys are perverts and avoid any conversation because I’m not a rude person (generally). I’m not sexist. I value conversations and friendships with people without emphasis of gender importance. I try not to assume that everyone is sketchy or has ****** up motives. Some people just want to talk.



I wasn’t going to blatantly ignore or dismiss him because he was a man, nor because he was black, foreign, or Muslim. But where the hell is he from that he was socialized and thought that was appropriate or wanted?

I did not ask. The worst part is that he seemed like a genuinely alright person, but then he had to ruin it by whipping out a **** pic. Gross. What’s even more gross is the sense of entitlement he had, thinking it was acceptable to do that. You are a stranger. And I don’t want to see your ******, you disgusting *******.



I really don’t like assuming **** about people or making generalizations. I’m not going to assimilate one ****** with every group they are assigned to and stereotype against every person of that respective group. But fuckkkk. It’s annoying and disappointing that what I thought was a pleasant talk and exchange of ideas with a friendly stranger was actually a plot to show me his ****. ****.



The moral of this story is to say why feminism is needed, because this happens to people every day. If you still need further assistance understanding, please allow me to elaborate:



1)      I need feminism because it allows me to stand up for myself and feel confident about stating that I’m uncomfortable with unwanted behaviors and I’m not going to tolerate them.



These behaviors include, but are not limited to:



1)      Showing me **** pics

2)      Assuming it’s okay to show a girl you met not even an hour ago a **** pic (Do not even say it’s because of a culture difference, because I know of Frenchies who don’t do that)

3)      Approaching me because I’m sitting alone (I accepted that because I assumed he wasn’t going to violate my mind like that (good thing I don’t have photographic memory) but I didn’t wave over and say “Hey, you look friendly! Come over and talk to me!”)

4)      Asking me how serious things are with my boyfriend

5)      Asking me about my bisexuality—only to invalidate it

6)      Assigning me behavior expectations because of my gender

7)      Trying to control the way I do or do not reproduce

8)      Expecting me to behave a certain way because of my sexuality

9)      Judging me based on my sexuality

10)  Openly discriminating against people and expecting me to be okay with prejudice

11)  Using racist terms… because you’re a racist

12)  Dehumanizing the oppressed





Because I don’t know what you studied about it (wait—most people who disagree with feminism haven’t and are completely misinformed) but:



Feminism is about equality, and it doesn’t feel very equal when I show someone respect but I get no respect in return. And if you associate feminism with fauxminism and misandry, please educate yourself. (If I had Tumblr still, you better believe I would’ve already posted this). To quote the great words of Jay in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back: "Remember, don’t whip your **** out unless she asks."

“Decolonize your mind before you become a new black slave.” He whispered to me before pushing one of his dreads behind his ear and grinning wildly at my perplexed expression. I lowered the straightener and stared at him for a while – I had loved him because of the way he was self-assured, it never faltered and I knew an explanation would follow as I leaned forward, raising an eyebrow, questioning him.
“You know you’re a queen right?” He continued, interrupting my train of thought, while turning off the straightener at the plug point.
“Ja, I know.” I answered blatantly.  
“ Then decolonize your mind.” He shouted before thrusting his hands into the sky and exiting my room. I think he knew I would figure it out for myself because as I stared at the straightener on my desk- it clicked. The statement vibrated in the very depths of my soul and an untapped reserve of energy was suddenly channelled into my aura. I could feel my ancestors, I could hear their cries, I could feel the weight of shackles, I could feel a whip, I could feel resentment, I could feel hatred, I could feel the power of a God who didn’t look like me, I could feel my peoples names that were written out of history books, I could taste blood in my mouth, I could feel blood on the cotton, I could feel what it meant to be black.
It was an epiphany, induced both by drink as well as the stench of my burnt hair. The epiphany spoke to me, reminding me that who I am was holy. That black was undeniably beautiful and not in the clichéd way that I learnt of in history when people averted their eyes, avoiding discomfort presented in an unacknowledged truth. It was in earnest, that I realised that my melanin was paramount to a glorious dynasty that I was privileged enough to be a part of. I would wear my ancestry daily and no longer shy away from the truth of my being. I am sun kissed, I am regal, I am Cleopatra, I am King Shaka, I am the soil and the trees and everything that matters in this universe, I am a closed fist lifted in a rally where mercy has intersected rage, resulting in non-violence.
The only violence that is accepted is that which vehemently opposes the status quo that my people are not good enough. That is what was meant when he told me to decolonize my mind.
“ You will be villianized in your pursuit for emancipation because the margin of melanin present in our people will always render you a slave so choose now what you will subscribe to. “ and I made a decision, standing upon the raw backs of my ancestors- I chose a discarded truth and the truth is this-  I am art. We, are art and art cannot be subjugated or castrated by a close minded agenda, set by people who have never bothered to understand you nor will they ever begin to.
I am  a poem that breathes and speaks and therefor has no choice but to be remembered. I will be etched into the minds of people who would rather forget me. I will be written down in history books next to men who would rather deny my existence.
In that moment, in my epiphany, I began to wade barefoot through my soul. I began to find pieces of myself I didn’t know where lost – and is that not courage in itself? Finding the corpse of your soul, buried beneath a cruel, mercilessly pale agenda?
          
Is speaking the truth not brave?
So I set down the straightener, and began to live.

The Stanford **** Case
Statement from the Young Woman Who Was *****
June 10, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Editors Note: The following harrowing and courageous "victim impact" statement was read in court by the woman who was assaulted and ***** by ex-Stanford student Brock Turner. It has been released widely and revcom.us is reposting it here. As Sunsara Taylor said in "The Stanford **** Outrage: Reason Enough to Make Revolution": "Her letter is 13 pages long and everyone should read it. In its entirety. Out loud. In classrooms. In church groups. In families. On sports teams. On air. Her pain must be seen. Her battle against despair must be supported. Her courage must be multiplied."*
-------------------------------------------

Your Honor, if it is all right, for the majority of this statement I would like to address the defendant directly.
You don’t know me, but you’ve been inside me, and that’s why we’re here today.

On January 17th, 2015, it was a quiet Saturday night at home. My dad made some dinner and I sat at the table with my younger sister who was visiting for the weekend. I was working full time and it was approaching my bed time. I planned to stay at home by myself, watch some TV and read, while she went to a party with her friends.

Then, I decided it was my only night with her, I had nothing better to do, so why not, there’s a dumb party ten minutes from my house, I would go, dance like a fool, and embarrass my younger sister. On the way there, I joked that undergrad guys would have braces. My sister teased me for wearing a beige cardigan to a frat party like a librarian. I called myself “big mama”, because I knew I’d be the oldest one there. I made silly faces, let my guard down, and drank liquor too fast not factoring in that my tolerance had significantly lowered since college.

The next thing I remember I was in a gurney in a hallway. I had dried blood and bandages on the backs of my hands and elbow. I thought maybe I had fallen and was in an admin office on campus. I was very calm and wondering where my sister was. A deputy explained I had been assaulted. I still remained calm, assured he was speaking to the wrong person. I knew no one at this party.

When I was finally allowed to use the rest room, I pulled down the hospital pants they had given me, went to pull down my underwear, and felt nothing. I still remember the feeling of my hands touching my skin and grabbing nothing. I looked down and there was nothing. The thin piece of fabric, the only thing between my ****** and anything else, was missing and everything inside me was silenced. I still don’t have words for that feeling. In order to keep breathing, I thought maybe the policemen used scissors to cut them off for evidence.

Then, I felt pine needles scratching the back of my neck and started pulling them out my hair. I thought maybe, the pine needles had fallen from a tree onto my head. My brain was talking my gut into not collapsing. Because my gut was saying, help me, help me.

I shuffled from room to room with a blanket wrapped around me, pine needles trailing behind me, I left a little pile in every room I sat in. I was asked to sign papers that said “**** Victim” and I thought something has really happened.

My clothes were confiscated and I stood naked while the nurses held a ruler to various abrasions on my body and photographed them. The three of us worked to comb the pine needles out of my hair, six hands to fill one paper bag. To calm me down, they said it’s just the flora and fauna, flora and fauna. I had multiple swabs inserted into my ****** and ****, needles for shots, pills, had a Nikon pointed right into my *******. I had long, pointed beaks inside me and had my ****** smeared with cold, blue paint to check for abrasions.

After a few hours of this, they let me shower. I stood there examining my body beneath the stream of water and decided, I don’t want my body anymore. I was terrified of it, I didn’t know what had been in it, if it had been contaminated, who had touched it. I wanted to take off my body like a jacket and leave it at the hospital with everything else.

On that morning, all that I was told was that I had been found behind a dumpster, potentially penetrated by a stranger, and that I should get retested for *** because results don’t always show up immediately. But for now, I should go home and get back to my normal life. Imagine stepping back into the world with only that information. They gave me huge hugs and I walked out of the hospital into the parking lot wearing the new sweatshirt and sweatpants they provided me, as they had only allowed me to keep my necklace and shoes.

My sister picked me up, face wet from tears and contorted in anguish. Instinctively and immediately, I wanted to take away her pain. I smiled at her, I told her to look at me, I’m right here, I’m okay, everything’s okay, I’m right here. My hair is washed and clean, they gave me the strangest shampoo, calm down, and look at me. Look at these funny new sweatpants and sweatshirt, I look like a P.E. teacher, let’s go home, let’s eat something. She did not know that beneath my sweatsuit, I had scratches and bandages on my skin, my ****** was sore and had become a strange, dark colour from all the prodding, my underwear was missing, and I felt too empty to continue to speak. That I was also afraid, that I was also devastated. That day we drove home and for hours in silence my younger sister held me.
My boyfriend did not know what happened, but called that day and said, “I was really worried about you last night, you scared me, did you make it home okay?” I was horrified. That’s when I learned I had called him that night in my blackout, left an incomprehensible voicemail, that we had also spoken on the phone, but I was slurring so heavily he was scared for me, that he repeatedly told me to go find [my sister]. Again, he asked me, “What happened last night? Did you make it home okay?” I said yes, and hung up to cry.

I was not ready to tell my boyfriend or parents that actually, I may have been ***** behind a dumpster, but I don’t know by who or when or how. If I told them, I would see the fear on their faces, and mine would multiply by tenfold, so instead I pretended the whole thing wasn’t real.
I tried to push it out of my mind, but it was so heavy I didn’t talk, I didn’t eat, I didn’t sleep, I didn’t interact with anyone.

After work, I would drive to a secluded place to scream. I didn’t talk, I didn’t eat, I didn’t sleep, I didn’t interact with anyone, and I became isolated from the ones I loved most. For over a week after the incident, I didn’t get any calls or updates about that night or what happened to me. The only symbol that proved that it hadn’t just been a bad dream, was the sweatshirt from the hospital in my drawer.

One day, I was at work, scrolling through the news on my phone, and came across an article. In it, I read and learned for the first time about how I was found unconscious, with my hair dishevelled, long necklace wrapped around my neck, bra pulled out of my dress, dress pulled off over my shoulders and pulled up above my waist, that I was **** naked all the way down to my boots, legs spread apart, and had been penetrated by a foreign object by someone I did not recognise.

This was how I learned what happened to me, sitting at my desk reading the news at work. I learned what happened to me the same time everyone else in the world learned what happened to me. That’s when the pine needles in my hair made sense, they didn’t fall from a tree. He had taken off my underwear, his fingers had been inside of me. I don’t even know this person. I still don’t know this person. When I read about me like this, I said, this can’t be me, this can’t be me. I could not digest or accept any of this information. I could not imagine my family having to read about this online. I kept reading. In the next paragraph, I read something that I will never forgive; I read that according to him, I liked it. I liked it. Again, I do not have words for these feelings.

It’s like if you were to read an article where a car was hit, and found dented, in a ditch. But maybe the car enjoyed being hit. Maybe the other car didn’t mean to hit it, just bump it up a little bit. Cars get in accidents all the time, people aren’t always paying attention, can we really say who’s at fault.

And then, at the bottom of the article, after I learned about the graphic details of my own ****** assault, the article listed his swimming times. She was found breathing, unresponsive with her underwear six inches away from her bare stomach curled in fetal position. By the way, he’s really good at swimming. Throw in my mile time if that’s what we’re doing. I’m good at cooking, put that in there, I think the end is where you list your extracurriculars to cancel out all the sickening things that’ve happened.
The night the news came out I sat my parents down and told them that I had been assaulted, to not look at the news because it’s upsetting, just know that I’m okay, I’m right here, and I’m okay. But halfway through telling them, my mom had to hold me because I could no longer stand up.

The night after it happened, he said he didn’t know my name, said he wouldn’t be able to identify my face in a line-up, didn’t mention any dialogue between us, no words, only dancing and kissing. Dancing is a cute term; was it snapping fingers and twirling dancing, or just bodies grinding up against each other in a crowded room? I wonder if kissing was just faces sloppily pressed up against each other? When the detective asked if he had planned on taking me back to his dorm, he said no. When the detective asked how we ended up behind the dumpster, he said he didn’t know.

He admitted to kissing other girls at that party, one of whom was my own sister who pushed him away. He admitted to wanting to hook up with someone. I was the wounded antelope of the herd, completely alone and vulnerable, physically unable to fend for myself, and he chose me.

Sometimes I think, if I hadn’t gone, then this never would’ve happened. But then I realized, it would have happened, just to somebody else. You were about to enter four years of access to drunk girls and parties, and if this is the foot you started off on, then it is right you did not continue. The night after it happened, he said he thought I liked it because I rubbed his back. A back rub.

Never mentioned me voicing consent, never mentioned us even speaking, a back rub. One more time, in public news, I learned that my *** and ****** were completely exposed outside, my ******* had been groped, fingers had been jabbed inside me along with pine needles and debris, my bare skin and head had been rubbing against the ground behind a dumpster, while an ***** freshman was ******* my half naked, unconscious body. But I don’t remember, so how do I prove I didn’t like it.

I thought there’s no way this is going to trial; there were witnesses, there was dirt in my body, he ran but was caught. He’s going to settle, formally apologize, and we will both move on. Instead, I was told he hired a powerful lawyer, expert witnesses, private investigators who were going to try and find details about my personal life to use against me, find loopholes in my story to invalidate me and my sister, in order to show that this ****** assault was in fact a misunderstanding. That he was going to go to any length to convince the world he had simply been confused.

I was not only told that I was assaulted, I was told that because I couldn’t remember, I technically could not prove it was unwanted. And that distorted me, damaged me, almost broke me. It is the saddest type of confusion to be told I was assaulted and nearly *****, blatantly out in the open, but we don’t know if it counts as assault yet. I had to fight for an entire year to make it clear that there was something wrong with this situation.

When I was told to be prepared in case we didn’t win, I said, I can’t prepare for that. He was guilty the minute I woke up. No one can talk me out of the hurt he caused me. Worst of all, I was warned, because he now knows you don’t remember, he is going to get to write the script. He can say whatever he wants and no one can contest it. I had no power, I had no voice, I was defenseless. My memory loss would be used against me. My testimony was weak, was incomplete, and I was made to believe that perhaps, I am not enough to win this. His lawyer constantly reminded the jury, the only one we can believe is Brock, because she doesn’t remember. That helplessness was traumatizing.

Instead of taking time to heal, I was taking time to recall the night in excruciating detail, in order to prepare for the attorney’s questions that would be invasive, aggressive, and designed to steer me off course, to contradict myself, my sister, phrased in ways to manipulate my answers. Instead of his lawyer saying, Did you notice any abrasions? He said, You didn’t notice any abrasions, right?

This was a game of strategy, as if I could be tricked out of my own worth. The ****** assault had been so clear, but instead, here I was at the trial, answering questions like:
How old are you? How much do you weigh? What did you eat that day? Well what did you have for dinner? Who made dinner? Did you drink with dinner? No, not even water? When did you drink? How much did you drink? What container did you drink out of? Who gave you the drink? How much do you usually drink? Who dropped you off at this party? At what time? But where exactly? What were you wearing? Why were you going to this party? What’d you do when you got there? Are you sure you did that? But what time did you do that? What does this text mean? Who were you texting? When did you urinate? Where did you urinate? With whom did you urinate outside?

Was your phone on silent when your sister called? Do you remember silencing it? Really because on page 53 I’d like to point out that you said it was set to ring. Did you drink in college? You said you were a party animal? How many times did you black out? Did you party at frats? Are you serious with your boyfriend? Are you sexually active with him? When did you start dating? Would you ever cheat? Do you have a history of cheating? What do you mean when you said you wanted to reward him? Do you remember what time you woke up? Were you wearing your cardigan? What colour was your cardigan? Do you remember any more from that night? No? Okay, well, we’ll let Brock fill it in.

I was pommeled with narrowed, pointed questions that dissected my personal life, love life, past life, family life, inane questions, accumulating trivial details to try and find an excuse for this guy who had me half naked before even bothering to ask for my name. After a physical assault, I was assaulted with questions designed to attack me, to say see, her facts don’t line up, she’s out of her mind, she’s practically an alcoholic, she probably wanted to hook up, he’s like an athlete right, they were both drunk, whatever, the hospital stuff she remembers is after the fact, why take it into account, Brock has a lot at stake so he’s having a really hard time right now.

And then it came time for him to testify and I learned what it meant to be revictimized. I want to remind you, the night after it happened he said he never planned to take me back to his dorm. He said he didn’t know why we were behind a dumpster. He got up to leave because he wasn’t feeling well when he was suddenly chased and attacked. Then he learned I could not remember.

So one year later, as predicted, a new dialogue emerged. Brock had a strange new story, almost sounded like a poorly written young adult novel with kissing and dancing and hand holding and lovingly tumbling onto the ground, and most importantly in this new story, there was suddenly consent. One year after the incident, he remembered, oh yeah, by the way she actually said yes, to everything, so.

He said he had asked if I wanted to dance. Apparently I said yes. He’d asked if I wanted to go to his dorm, I said yes. Then he asked if he could finger me and I said yes. Most guys don’t ask, can I finger you? Usually there’s a natural progression of things, unfolding consensually, not a Q and A. But apparently I granted full permission. He’s in the cl

Beloved Country

To former days I can’t attest did a like occurrence happen before the fall of ancient Rome if so it is not
Recorded what is recorded is the words of Adam’s who spoke about the natural order of things including
The nations he said it is now our solemn duty to manage the decline of this great nation that has been
Birthed did this solitary figure that walked in the dark valley start from that premise or was it another
Form of truth the truth that was blatantly obvious was he like the prophet of old that was told to do
Things before the eyes of Israel each command from God was a man living out an example a living object
Lesson your actions are not without consequence your folly is the tolling of the bell of death this figure
Crisscrossed this nation it held the straining haunting memory of Woody Guthrie, Jack Kerouac but more
Tragic was it a man or not human at all a spirit an angel one thing to have him brush past you were
Drawn to study him intently there was an announcement brimming a pronounced knowing that was
Born upon brooding wings he wasn’t a chameleon but at times he was identifiable with our history as
The time in a suit the dust in his hair his whole being spoke simply twin towers 911 the word from he
Who keeps the nations in peace and safety said this never would have happened if America still prayed
And sought his inexhaustible favor the figure was heard to repeat over and over again Abilene a white
Headed five star General not much when you just say Ike but he was the one that was waiting in the
Wings ready to march onto the world stage in his hands the winds of war were tamed we entered a
Great time of prosperity we took the statement in God We Trust to the depth of our hearts and he
Responded as he always does to that kind of faith broke the grip of tyrants who threatened the world
We were benevolent even saved and rebuilt the lands destroyed by imbeciles who thought they could
Butcher innocent people and a righteous God would look the other way in their deaths justice shouted
The favored words of victory you don’t have to be strong just trust and I will fight your battles then the
Figure is seen in the Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco this is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius it’s also a
Nickel bag of marijuana Nam and a ****** revolution sets the country on a course that you wonder can it
Recover it was pinball on the big scale every thinker and crack *** was listened to you played the game
One brain trust put it that this all started centuries ago they said by looking back we can see how we got
Where we are and where were going they say our crisis today is from the foundation laid by the age of
Reason here are the writing of two essential groups the rationalists and the empiricists. In the 1600’s and 1700’s, strains of humanisistic, man-centered thought came together and flourished, producing a widespread change in assumptions about reality. A group of thinkers known as the Continental Rationalists, composed of Descartes, Leibniz, and Spinoza, assumed on faith the mind’s ability to function correctly, independent of any external guidelines for thought and independent of God’s revelations about his creation. The mind could build a sound, unshakable system of thought; they felt, by deductive reasoning from simple premises, reinforced by truths retained from the biblical worldview from which they could borrow for the sake of convenience.

Then another group of philosophers known as the British Empiricists took things a step further toward modernism. This group, composed of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, denied the existence of the “innate ideas” held by the rationalists. All that man can know, they proposed, must originate in experience. All “abstract ideas” such as God or truth must derive from some sense impression in order to be intellectually valid.
You approach man in his mind you will find no guards to turn you back no resistance but the truly wise
That are built on this foundation it renders all that is false lifeless and harmless it says “See to it that no
One takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition
And the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ Colossians 2:8 false teaching respects not
Borders or fairness only the power of ruthless lies that seem light as feathers what harm can they do
Put the rest of the picture together feathers on a bird of prey will spread death and terror you walk
Unaware in a violent land you will soon be a victim without remedy and then the man that holds the
Highest office in the land says officially we are no longer a Christian nation but we are opening our arms
To all beliefs and systems of thought if that had been our history you wouldn’t know the world you and I
Live in first we would never had the blessing that enabled us to bless and build the weaker nations
Up where they could stand and make strides against ignorance and poverty I was at the store an old
Gentlemen was setting on a bench and he was shaking from a terrible ailment why didn’t I rush over and
Discuss Plato’s man cave I know in the right situation it has validity only to a point no I dropped my eyes
As my heart broke because of his situation he is my brother not one of a government but of a human
Fact I care because a real God a deity of love flows through my entire physical and spiritual life I don’t
Analyze create the perfect orderly answer I cry out in my lack of understanding please gentle one go
To him be his unshakable rock steady him on the inside the outside passes away that what our figure
Of this story knows we have such riches not in temporal realms but in those that will never falter they
Will only increase in coming days as glory is revealed my figure in this story shows we are being
Destroyed by forgetting who we are where we came from Abraham Lincoln said if we ever come to ruin
It will come from within I doubt if he ever dreamed it would come from the highest elected officials
Again this is all a bad dream if you make a personal and family altar he never has denied the cry of a
Humble and contrite heart this nation is yours not Washington’s fight for it on your knees or stand with
Tears in your eyes like the French when the devil incarnate ****** Pranced about in Paris tears of regret
Or tears that will usher in triumph

so blatantly alone---
everyone caught
up in their own
affairs they can
only offer me
'sorry you're
sad.' so blatantly
alone and my
parents are far
enough away
that I know I
need to face
this on my own.
so so so alone.
I ride busses
hoping it's
therapy, but
I am torn apart
inside with an
empty hopelessness
about the world---
I want to die and
come back a
happier creature.
or maybe not come
back at all.

so blatantly alone.

It's mortifying...
The dilemma, the time lapse, the wait, the clock.
The abstract that I so blatantly describe in my other writings.
Time cannot be paused, stopped...
The abstraction is so formulated into one diverse piece, the creation of such is appealing, yet reformative.
Inconsequential, to the matter of science, myth, philosophy, conduct, and everything that exists beyond our mind.
I hold onto this creation, because the conclusion of the matter holds many intellectual debates that cannot be won or answered.
It is forbidden, it's lost.
The question of right and wrong holds many definitions that are inexplicable to the concept of reality itself, when the utter illusion holds the introspection that philosophers like myself, cannot give a precise answer to.
Time will let us be.

It's a quiet storm, and I've never felt like this before.
Sometimes I think, you're just too good for me.

While reading
A romance novel
Being inside the mind of a man
Listening to his thoughts
It makes me create my own
In wonder
Like
I wonder if any guy
Has ever thought of
Kissing my lips
Which he finds perfect
While he's stared at me

I wonder if any guy
Has ever thought of
What it would be like
To be my boyfriend
To be the only guy
In the world
That I could
Hold
Touch
Kiss
That I could trust
That I could love

I wonder if any guy
Has ever thought of me
Long after we've seen
Each other

I wonder if any guy
Has blatantly flirted with me
And grew frustrated
Because I didn't pick up on it

I wonder if any guy
Has found me intimidating
To the point
Where it makes them believe
That I'm out of their league

I wonder if any guy
Believed that I was
Beautiful
Perfect even
That I was the embodiment of everything
They craved for

I wonder if any guy
Made me the topic
Of endless conversations
He had
With his closest friends

I wonder if any guy
Believed that I made them a better person

I wonder if any guy
After briefly meeting me
Wanted to impress me
In order to feel worthy of me

I wonder if any guy
Became amused to the thought
Of how I had no clue on just how much I affected him
All while I was talking to him

I wonder if any guy
Wondered what it would feel like
To have our hands intertwined

I wonder if any guy
Wanted to pour out his heart to me
But thought that my small
Delicate hands
Wouldn't be able to contain
His unyielding proclamation

I wonder if any guy
Thinks that I'm the most perfect girl
They have ever met
And that whoever I end up with
Will be the "luckiest *******" in the world

I wonder if any guy
Spent hours
Over analyzing my response
Or actions
Hoping that they were more
Than just kindness

I wonder if any guy
Had an internal battle
About the words he spoke to me
Wondering if they were
Stupid or cheesy

I wonder if any guy
Has gotten nervous
Whenever I smiled or talked
To them

I wonder if any guy
Wished that I was his girl
That he could proudly proclaim
His
To the entire world
With bold confidence
In his actions and words

I wonder if any guy
Has ever been hyperaware of my
Every movement
Like you would with a huge crush
That's in the room

I wonder if any guy
Had to fight the strong urge
Of wrapping their arms
Around my body
In an all consuming embrace

I wonder if any guy
Snuck secret glances
In my direction
Without my knowledge
Just so he could admire me
From afar
Without me noticing

I wonder if any guy
Showed pictures of me
From social media
To his friends
To explain his infatuation

I wonder if any guy
Looked at me
And silently contemplated
If there was even a guy
On earth
Worthy enough
For me

I wonder if any guy
Wished he had the confidence
To go up me and strike a conversation
But felt too nervous to

I wonder if any guy
Has ever been
Overwhelmed or confused
By the unfamiliar emotions
That they receive
Whenever they see or think
About me

I wonder if any guy
Made me the muse
To an endless amount of romantic poems
That I'll never get to hear

I wonder if any guy
Misses the mundane conversations
That we would have
Because they meant
Everything
To him

I wonder if any guy
Daydreamed of interactions
Where I would fall
Madly in love with him
Because he felt more comfortable
In his imagination

I wonder if any guy
Has ever been turned on
By the brief
Contact of our bodies
Accidentally brushing against each other

I wonder if any guy
Was dying for me to just know his name
So he could be comforted with knowing
That I knew of him
So that when I saw him passing by
My face would light up with recognition
Instead of indifference

I wonder if any guy
Saw me in public
Didn't know me or my name
But hit his friends
Trying to get their attention
So that he could point me out
Because he found me beautiful

I wonder if any guy
Has ever purposely chosen an outfit
Hoping that it would catch my attention

I wonder if any guy
Purposely avoided me
Because he was too shy
To be near me

I wonder if any guy
Had dreams of me
That he wished would be
His reality

I wonder if any guy
Wanted to pursue me
But hesitated
Because he thought
That there was no way
I didn't already have a boyfriend

I wonder if any guy
Has ever been in awe
With everything that I've done
Just because it's me

I wonder if any guy
Decided not to ask me out
Because they thought
That they weren't good enough
For me

I wonder if any guy
Has looked at me
With eyes filled with unspoken love
But mine
Filled with so much innocence
Never truly saw theirs

I wonder if any guy
Admired my ****** features
As I spoke to him
Seconds before coming to to conclusion
That I was beautiful

I wonder if any guy's
Last thought
Before he went to bed
Was about me

I wonder if any guy
Was dying to tell me
That they were in love with me
But felt too scared to do so

I wonder what people think
Those that know
And don't know me
When they look at me

I wonder...

a lot of people I know
are never really happy
even when they’re happy, they’re really just sad

a lot of people I know
settle for just about anything
they’ll settle for emotional abuse and then settle for a deep addiction to feel better about the emotional abuse they’re letting themselves prostrate to
as long as it can still make “living” seem feasible,
they’ll settle
because nobody taught them how to ask for what they want,
so all this time they never ******* knew they were granted permission to feel worthy of getting what they want
because this world likes to think that nobody is entitled to feel worthy or to give into clarity

a lot of people I know
get off on damaging themselves
because blood and burns and bones and ***** and *** and pills and puke
are such disgusting in-your-face secrets
and this world knows it’s not acceptable to just blatantly write
“I hate myself” on your forehead with permanent marker for everyone else to see
yes, this stupid, guileful world we live in decided to trick everyone into believing that secrecy and suppression are what make a person
interesting and loveable

a lot of people I know
have this wicked demon inside of them
and they like to imagine it looks like a fiery nightmare,
red like terror
with a devilish face; poisonous eyes and a heartless grin;
a face that says “I own you”
just so that they can reinforce their ideas of worthlessness
and the self-pity of not having true control over themselves
when really, they can always have true control whenever they want

what *a lot of people I know don’t know is that
that wicked demon thing inside of them
is really just a flower wilting, starving, dying,
waiting, hoping, longing to be watered
and wondering what the **** they did
to be tortured like this

Looking back, I think I knew she wasn’t going to wake up that night. Maybe I thought she wouldn’t wake up ever.
CHAPTER 1: ENDLESS SLEEP
It seemed to me that the fact that movies and stories make it appear as if sad things can only and will only occur during rain and thunder was just stupid. The weather has no affect on the events, right? But I was wrong. On Tuesday, April 18th, I began to realize this apparently idiotic movie ploy might have an inkling of truth buried in it.
That day, the kids had teased me again, but to be totally honest, I didn’t mind it then and I don’t mind it now. It had begun to rain when I was halfway down 17th street. I had immediately removed my shoes and socks, and stuffed them into my bag, which was already overflowing with scraps of paper and books. Most of the books had been for free time reading, and are currently lying in a heap in my room at Dad's, where they will remain unread until I decide to forget that awful, horrible, tragic day.
I ran all the way to our apartment, but went the long way and danced and twirled as my un-zippered jacked flapped uselessly behind me. My lungs burned white-hot, but my body was freezing, a feeling I still to this day enjoy. By the time I had reached the alleyway behind the crumbling yet comforting building, I was soaked through, and I loved it. I decided to go around back so Martin would have no excuse to yell at me in that foul, ill-tempered way that made the skin underneath his chin jiggle. I had started towards the rusted door when I saw her. Of course, it hadn't been her. She had been inside, where she alway waited for me to get home. But I had felt on that day as protective of her as she always insisted upon being with me.
I grasped the icy handle and slipped inside, the warmth of the building suffocating rather than comforting me. To this day, I prefer being cold, because it clears the mind, and warmth clouds it, like the foul demon that lures you into the endless sleep that tried to take my mother that day. I climbed the steps; the sudden noise of my feet on the stairs was like a rock sliding under the water, breaking the calm.
I remember how the climb up the stairs that day had seemed especially long. But mostly, I remember how the apartment smelled when I finally reached the top and slid the key into the lock, turning it noisily. I remember the smell, and how the instant it hit my nose I knew that I wasn’t to expect the warm, gentle mother I came to expect most days, but that I was going to get the harsh, drunken version, when she had been smoking and on drugs.
Resignedly, I called, “MOM! I'm home from school!” only then I hadn't known that I would never get an answer. I dumped my soaking bag unceremoniously in the hall, and it hit the floor with a wet thump, splattering mud on the tiles. When she didn't respond, I had frowned; a face Andrew tells me makes me look somehow more mysterious.
The trip I had then taken to her room revealed only that she had passed out on the bed, and that she smelt of sadness. But at that time, sadness wasn't uncommon. I don't remember how long I stood there, but I know that when I finally awoke from my thoughts, I showered and got into my softest pajamas. I settled down to do my homework, but I hadn't been trying hard, so when the time had come to make dinner, I had only made the smallest of dents.
Simply because I had been tired and hadn't been up to making anything more complicated, I made tomato soup. Mom always used to make my soup with milk rather than water, so that was how I made it too. I poured the soup into mugs, because we always liked to drink it rather than eat it. I remember sipping from my mug, and I remember how the warmth burned the roof of my mouth. The heat of it brought tears to my eyes, which were every bit as salty as the soup. I walked to her room, and knocked on the door, the sound echoing through the apartment. She hadn’t answered though, so I entered with the intention of waking her up.
“Mom!” I had said. “Wake up, I made dinner!” and I set the mugs down on her bedside table. With my freed hands, I had shaken her shoulder softly. She didn't wake though, which had surprised me, for she always woke instantly as if her dreams were frail and easy to shatter.
“Mom!” I had raised my voice, and I shook her more vigorously. “MOM!” I think it was on the third time that I finally began to realize, but I still shook her.
On the fifth try I had begun to cry, and on the sixth the calm part of me told the hysterical part: *She is fine. She will wake in the morning, I promise. She will wake. That was the first time I ever lied to myself.
I remember pulling the covers on the bed over her, and then gingerly lying down next to her. Mom. I kept thinking to myself, as if my mere thoughts might wake her. But I had known she wasn't gone, for I felt her breath next to me, soft, shallow, and hardly discernible from my own, yet still breathing. I had drunk the rest of my soup, but left hers, telling myself she would drink it when she woke. Now, looking back, I realize how stupid it was of me to have thought that she would wake up.
I don't even remember falling asleep that night, but I must have, for in the morning when I woke I looked quickly over at her, hoping, wishing that she might have risen. I remember shaking her again, pleading, “Mom, it's the morning, and you missed dinner but it's okay, I will make you more if you please wake up, please momma. Please,” But she didn't heed me. I remember sitting in bed with her all morning, watching the clock. I didn't get ready for school. My mom was more important, I told myself. When the clock had ticked from 8:29 to 8:30, I knew the bell had rung, and I was late. I guess to me that had been a signal: The rest of the world has continued without us. I remember standing up and padding to the kitchen, and grabbing the wireless phone. I remember how icy cold it had felt, as opposed to the warmth and comfort of the bed in Mom's room. For once I simply craved the innocent warmth from my mother's inert body. I walked back in and sat on the edge of the bed. I dialed 9-1-1 and hit the 'call' button.
“This is 9-1-1 what is your emergency?” a rough male voice had said.
“I-” I had to clear my throat from lack of use. “My mom was passed out last night when I got home from school. I thought she would wake up, like she always does, but she hasn't. She is still breathing. Please come,” I had said all that with a flat voice, refusing the awful feeling in my throat that warned of tears.
“What is your location?” he asked, his voice softer now.
“913 Alvarado,” I whisper. “Fourth floor, number 413. My name is Sierra Banks.”
“Paramedics are on their way, ok?”
“Ok,” I recall how loud the click was when he hung up, and I felt the cold, empty silence press down and around me until I couldn't stand it anymore. I wanted to talk to someone, anyone, except the police officers who sounded way too casual. My mom's life might be on the line, and all they do is talk in monotone. Like they don’t care about all those lives. I knew then that I was being unfair, and that they were simply used to losing lives, but...
I looked up at the soup mugs on the table and next to them...her cell. The last person she talked to. I scooped it up, went to last calls, and hit redial.
Ring...Ring...Ring... “Hello, Clemens residence.”
“Dad.” The pain of hearing his voice then was the same as when I hear it every day now. Regret had instatly clouded my heart with the cold wall I built four years ago. Tears began to pour down my cheeks, but I can't recall now if they were hot and scalding, or cold.
“Sierra?” his voice too had become thick, and I hated him for crying. He left us.
“Yes,” I had been unable to force any other meaningless words at him. I hadn't seen him in four years, when we visited him, his beautiful new wife, and worst of all, his new baby girl. He replaced me! My throat burns to think of it. I hadn't thought of Lila, my step sister, and my replacement since she was born. Fury built up inside me. Why did mom call them last? Why does she still hold his number in her phone even after he left? And most importantly, what did they talk about? I still haven't forgotten these questions, but I most certainly haven't got any answers.
“Dad, mom is in trouble. She hasn't woken up since yesterday. I thought she would wake up but she hasn't. The ambulance is on its way,” Instantaneously, I hated myself for telling him, pouring out how scared I was. He didn't deserve to know, to pretend to feel sorry.
“Oh Sierra. Oh my beautiful daug-” he began, but I had already ended the call. How dare he call me beautiful? He hadn't seen me in so many years. He didn't deserve to pretend he care. Maybe I loved him once, but not anymore. I didn’t, and still don’t, want his sympathy, his false words, dripping in I-told-you-so. But most importantly, I didn’t want him to hear me cry.
Now I find myself having to live with him, and have to be constantly aware of him walking in on me. Like the other day when he walked into my room to see how I was doing with homework and found me rocking and bawling on the bed. Gasps had escaped from me in rapid succession; my sobs had shaken the bed so that it creaked softly. My lips curled apart from my teeth as I convulsed. I sniffed loudly and, gradually, my sobs had died down. Eventually too, my ears had regained their sense, and their voices had drifted to me from outside my bubble of silence.
Most days I had control enough to save my tears for the night or not cry at all. A week ago my English teacher had made us write letters to our parents. I had asked if I could write mine to someone else, because I was still furious at my dad, and mom left me. I know that she was in a coma, and she can't help it now, but I remember all the times that I was strong through her rampages. It didn't matter anyways, because Mr. Steiner blatantly refused. I decided to write it to mom, since I refused those days to even to acknowledge that I had a father.
And to this day I remember every word, for I read that letter a hundred times that day, until I had it committed to memory, so that I could have it with me, where ever I might be.
The ambulance arrived about five minutes after I hung up on Richard. The memory of crying, and rocking endlessly in pitch blackness made me refuse even to call him my father. What I kind of father, I asked myself, leaves his daughter crying, without comforting her, when the only person who ever loved her, is a million miles away? 'Mine,' I had answered myself, bitterly.

i am the architect of my own demolition.
i know what ive done, but i will not admit
that i am the cause.
i know that by admitting it,
i will never be able to live with myself.
so with that,
i choose to blatantly ignore
all evidence you throw at me.
i will ignore my own head,
yet alone
the thoughts that rage in yours.

but the funny thing is,
my head will forever be louder
than the words you continue to yell at me.
my head is equivalent to
the loud static of a broken television;
only not able to be turned off.
i am saving myself from my own destruction.
but at the same time
i am creating more for you.

you are the rug i sweep all my actions under.
you are the jar i hide all my confessions in.
for i am a monster,
a monster only seen
when i look into the mirror.
you are my mirror.

These are confessions I can never send.
Because they blatantly won't understand
and that is something I need to get,
They don't care for me enough to accept the ways they hurt me and say sorry.

They are hypocrites,
Because they want me to stay weary.
They want me to always let go and cry alone.
They don't care if around them I'm woeful.

Mom,
You always said I was in the wrong,
Cleaning and chores were our only "bond"
You never chose me unless you could brag.

Dad,
You broke my heart,
You'd catch me when I'd fall
But never stuck up for me in the end.  

Mom chooses to make me a villain,
All I wanted was her acceptance
but she sees me as a sinner who's selfish,
I should put my pain aside and pretend I'm good.

I will be left to wonder forever,
Why my pain doesn't matter
In comparison to my sister,
Why am I less accepted when I'm in pain?

Dad loves me because he sees himself in me.
I look like him, we share a hobby
but growing up I believed that was the only thing he loved about me
Because one moment he'd be there, but would runaway when I needed him most.

Alone, he would listen,
He would say he'd help me
But in front my mom he was different.
Suddenly, what we said in the car was insignificant.

I'm an adult who doesn't know her needs, wants, and likes
Because I spent my life trying to be accepted.
No one taught me how to accept myself,
Or how to know what I need or want.

If someone cared unconditionally,
I clinged to them.
I hoped they'd never leave,
because I never got that from my family.

Now I'm in therapy, crying in every session
That I'm hurt again because of them,
Or hurt by myself because
I don't know who I am.

You can tell a lot about
A person by the ones he admires.
Another telling factor is
The people whom he inspires.

Donald Trump, for example,
Praises Putin, a leader who
Has jailed dissenters, squashed human rights,
And done away with opponents, too.

After a questionable referendum,
Which restricts in many ways
Civil rights, the leader of Turkey,
Erdoğan, received Trump's praise.

Duterte of the Philippines--
Authoritarian and leading official--
Has had thousands of people killed
In a manner blatantly extrajudicial.

So that's his way of solving the problem
Of drugs in the Philippines is it?
And guess who wants the blood-thirsty,
Despotic leader to come for a visit?

And then there's the leader of North Korea,
Kim Jong Un. Only a rookie
Would say that the mad, unhinged and murderous
Leader was a "pretty smart cookie."

Trump's had business ties with three
Of the above countries. There's no mistaking.
But does this mean that a Trump Tower
In Pyongyang is in the making?

-by Bob B (5-3-17)

Just feel like the way you're approaching me right now
doesn't reflect the way I'm trying to be perceived
you know?
telling me how **** I am
doesn't make me feel like you see the God in me
or like that's something you wish to see.
Now I don't think there's a problem with being ****
I embrace my femininity wholeheartedly
and **** is just a pretty cool aspect
that I reckon shines a light on what you think are my assets
but please...

See, it's hard for me to take that as a compliment.

Why don't you lead me to believe there's more to YOU than what meets the eye?

and although I know that you're just reflecting the view that has just met your eye oblige me by taking a moment to think before you speak.

Even still
nonetheless
I have a solid idea as to why...
Cause you see these girls on instagram and facebookin their thighs
and *******
and booties
for 300 likes

"**** girl you ****"
"he he thanks, boo! "
don't let that crap lead you to believe I like it too

I feel sorry for that girl
the one who has to use her body to feel accepted in this world
the girl who needs some real love but outside acts sadiddy
not until she sees those likes to finally feel pretty
exposing her surfaces 'cause her insides are...

I digress, when you approach me that way it's not cool
just as you judge me by the things I say, I judge you.
and I feel you,
you probably aren't even looking for all that
you don't care about my God or my mind or my passions
but the least you can do, stranger, is respect my personhood
and get to know me just enough to gauge what might've been my reaction
cause that, "hey ****" is not how I want to be addressed.
there's so much more to this body than what's under my dress
So, blatantly, I'm unimpressed by your ability to state the obvious

I'm tired of dudes looking at me like I'm crazy when I politely say, "I'd rather not be called that."
Like I just dissed a blessin'
Like the woman that always complains that, "men ain't nothin'.''
"I was just trying to pay you a compliment."
Huh? Oh yeah, THAT'S really something.

if you have any interest in me is that the best you can do?
So, yeah, I know right off the bat I'm not the one for you.
It's not my fault your perception has been skewed
that you still haven't been schooled
that this message is just now getting to you
you're part of that world that's still chasing the cool
using the tools that were forged for some girl whose cup isn't full

And again there's nothing wrong with being told that I'm ****
but I'd rather hear it from a man that already gets me
and knows that not just my high heels and my dress me
but the heart in my chest me
and the sound of my voice
my word choice, my corny jokes,
my thirst for spiritual growth, my softened heart toward the weak,
my intellect, my integrity--that's what makes me-me.
that's what makes me
****.
They're one in the same,
And you can't possibly know all that before you know my first name.

I feel as close to you as how wind is to my skin,
I feel as powerful with you as how I am with a gun.
I feel as courageous next to you as how sky divers are with working parachutes.
I feel as sad without you as departing rain drops from dark hovering clouds.
I feel as bored dismissing you as a good book read by a blind man.
I feel as far from you as how the visible sun is if you look from Earth.
I feel as clouded missing you as the moon is clouded by nebulae.
I feel as dejected promising you as government cronies over promising development.
I feel as lonely not seeing you as Golden Retrievers are when their masters are not around.
I feel as blatantly bloated next to you as over-heated air balloons raise up the shiny sky.
I feel as speechless around you as unprepared speakers in a conference hall.
And at the end, I feel as close to you as how my eyes met yours then cheekily, we detached our sight and pretend that we were never close at all.
I feel close to you still
but even closer
to sin.

(HER:)

Waking up with distant eyes
Body numbed in its dreamscape
Still, forced to extract, remember
Unwanted scenes, a mental ****
You can’t deny nor really escape
An incoherent theater plays out
The nighttime chronological film
Your memory drills the decor
Into your emerging, lethargic brain
You strive to piece it together
It makes sense, you want an encore

My web of dreams is wrought with
People in deeply masochistic scenes
Boudoirs and antique settings
I delve in these repeated lunar sins
Inspired by or tormented in a moon fire
Some hazy mornings I remember that my empire
Comes from those profoundly symbolic rooms
Child of the cross, blessed in a white cloth…
Now naked and proud, embedded in… who?
Silky velvet eyes, dark corners and dooms…

Or, like a prophet, dreaming about my family’s priest
Last night a call that hurt so much that was so clear that was
Unreal. A letter of blessings he wrote by hand
Tools on a table, gifted, in the shape of a small casket
In this horror I besought my heart to have erred
A premonition, coming from so vivid a past emotion?
What are your dreams made of?

(HIM:)

Waking up with distant eyes
Body numbed in its dreamscape
Still, forced to extract, remember
An uninvited guest, a dying ember.
Dreams like false memories are hazy
Fading away hastily- vaguely
Still remember a few things namely
A hedgehog hissing and running around
something similar to a floating clover coin
I'm staring at a red colored behemothic door
There's a note scotch taped on that door
It gives me feelings of a signboard.

Blurry visions; I made the decision
to head for it but wait!
The hedgehog is still running around
It looks at me and starts screaming
Strangely the room is teeming
with darkness; Am I dreaming?
I think I am but I'm heaving
Believing whatever I'm seeing
Fleeting valor but I keep reeling
I'm getting closer to The Brobdingnagian
But where's that gnawer? I'm not seeing
him anymore; It was here before

I'm standing in front of the door.
Floor squeaks but I ignore
This blackness is stevedore
Bugbears came back for an encore
Hefty tidal bores inside my heart
Ready to wipe out everything I have
I look around, I see coal-black
No door knobs, no thoughts gob
I'm trapped in this **** room
My head throbs, I'm no Dom Cobb
Need to escape from this maze
I play a bit part in this Big Sleep
I'm not Bogart but a trash heap
Fear streaks, grey doubts peep
I know I'm dreaming but I still keep
seeing what I don't wanna see
I'm more dormant than The Mauna Kea
Trapped in this room like a bumblebee
My mind's worse than a potpourri

I was looking inside for a skeleton key
Then I opened my eyes suddenly
Why is it always like a movie without an apogee?
I looked around to find somebody
And I saw you in the mirror
Staring at me blatantly
So I'm asking you- Hey, tell me!

What are your dreams made of?
Waking up with distant eyes

Body numbed in its dreamscape
Still, forced to extract, I remember
the way she smiled; Once again I saw her
Last time I saw her was on 22nd of December
Now that she came once again
I am not afraid of the hurricane
that hit the coast; I was lost
She found me- Long story cut short.
Storm clouds all over the skies
Thunderstorms loud; Heavy lightning strikes
My life was completely disarrayed
But now she's by my side; I'm not scared
Her beautiful smile- all things it repaired

We were talking, Don't remember what
Like old times, a very long chat
I remember saying yes to a few things she said
She smiled, happiness spread
all over my body, no discomfort I felt
All worries eased, all fears calmed
She helped me like she used to help
I don't want this day to end
Just wanna stay here for the rest of my life
I looked around, I'm somewhere else now
Wow! It's beautiful; I'm looking at a painting now
Where is she? She's not with me
I don't see her anywhere near.
I looked around; This place is overcrowded.
Unknown faces; Sadness shrouded
All the memories we made clouded
my path; I don't see a thing
I always loved her
Then why does she leave me halfway everytime?
No matter how much time I spend dreaming
Happing ending will always be an unfulfilled dream
Of mine; I'm screaming
Then I opened my eyes suddenly
Why is it always like a movie without an apogee?
I looked around to find somebody
And I saw you in the mirror
Staring at me blatantly
So I'm asking you again- Hey, tell me!

What are your dreams made of?



(HER:)

“An apo-gee”
Distance away-from earth
An apogee is a dream
It’s an acme, a ******
We dream of having dreams. We lie awake, we dream
We fall asleep, we dream. We think of dreams, we dream
In this so irregular laden-meaning scene that stream
Is new matter at night. Leading us through the deepest
Crevices. We recall a hazy landscape...

Waking up with distant eyes
Body numbed in its dreamscape
Still, forced to extract, we remember
The nano seconds of our journey
Like photographs trapped in a camera
We lie down in bed, in our camera
Which is, my dear, the latin word for room
We are a canvas, we are the mechanism
Behind the machinery of dreams
Our brain sorts through the day, sending messages
Hermes in a tiny globulous sphere.

But you asked me to describe the machinery of that matter
In my dreams, I am sometimes seer, sometimes victim
Sometimes goddess. Females are seldom present
Men, men, men, it’s a men’s world
They’re not like horses, a mere form of their symbol
They’re made of skin and bones, their voices bewitching
In no fantasy realm. A concrete cell or a palace
A de Sade manor but… then… always in a room
I must be making use of some mise en abyme.

An abyss, an apogee
Away from earth at the
Bottom of the sea

This woman you speak of
She must be ghost yet queen
I have not seen nor heard
The flutter of her dress
Maybe in your carnal caress
She walked away
WIth a demeanor so noble
That left you longing for her kiss
This bliss of love! this… miss
I mean, dismiss.

(HIM:)

And I woke up listening to this
This soul kiss that I too much miss
Is a call to fall up, deep.
Close my eyes; Time to fall asleep
In a slit trench counting sheeps
Keeping up my defense
Against the fin-de-siecle pretence
Because everything in here pretends
to be real when they are really surreal
Some dreams are meant to make us
feel that way
They won't let our problems wake us
So they can take us away
From the Groundhog Day, we live every day

Waking up with distant eyes
Body numbed in its dreamscape
Still, forced to extract, remember
The taste of that hot meal I had
I can trace it back though I go from
one dream to another like a nomad

A world so beautiful yet everything seems offbeat
The places you visit, the people you meet
Things you did when you were in the hot seat
And things you didn't 'cause you got cold feet
Sometimes in bits & parts, you remember
The long run behind the paper chase
Hard to remember, easy to forget
Images in our head sometimes deface
the imagery of this imaginary coquette
Dreams- what role does she play in our life?
Look through the lorgnette you are holding
You'll know she's the one controlling you
When you search for yourself in her world
Always incomplete, leaving an invisible mark
Inside your mind, onerous to find
Makin' you blind during the night
When you open your eyes & try to rewind
That old broken disc inside your mind
Nothing you'll find cause there's nothing inside
‘Cause that dream just died.

Waking up with distant eyes
Body numbed in its dreamscape
Still, forced to extract, remember
I wish I don't remember this nightmare
A nightmare is a night's mare
Don't know whose footprints I'm seeing here
Inside I'm hollow, about to be swallowed
by sorrow as my faith in myself is so low
Not so clear still I gotta follow
the trail all by myself, I'm going solo
In my backpack, I carry blessing from Apollo
Make use of your snowshoes, hare!
Going somewhere but I'm not aware
That I'm in the open air, completely bare
Ears impaired but I hear a fanfare
All I see is darkness when I stare
at the road ahead to find out who's there
The Oracle is somewhere near
Waiting to rescue you from this despair
And make this matrix a magic square
You will hear what you wanna hear
If you keep moving forward, dear!

Untamed wilderness and an open sky
The Mighty Huntress is nearby
The Spirit of the Wolf will never die
Smell of fresh blood, ravens fly
Beautifying the color of the night sky.
Don't know why I was chosen as the prey
I don't know what's in for me
If I keep walking through this way.
Then long streams of illusions
Flew in from all directions
I cannot reverse the flow
It's like those silent rivers
Heading furiously towards the sea
Why do I see things that I see?
Gotta keep moving; Do you understand me?
'Cause time moves fast but very slow here
Sound of clock ticks I don't hear
Home's far away- a million light years
from the earth but still near
Suddenly a black hole appears
In front of me out of nowhere
I'm going down through this abyss
I'm not afraid 'cause I know where
I'm going; The Light is showing
me the bottom of the sea.
Almost there, I can see it clearly
I know this is where I have to be
So I closed my eyes slowly
As I reached The Apogee.
----
December through January 2018

i love you when we're alone
because you eviscerate me in front of your friends
but alone you kiss the veins in my arms
press your small hips into my hips & sigh into my neck
& blink so slowly that i can hear your eyelids whispering

you won't hold my hand in public
because you blatantly want to seem available to other men
but when it's only you & it's only me
we lie on our backs letting the summer rain collect in puddles
in our bellybuttons & you swear to god
there's only one way this can end

you say i can't meet your parents
but everything i do reminds you of your father
that tall strong man of your childhood
singing sinatra to your mother in the kitchen
just like i do when i sneak behind you &
tickle your neck with my tongue you're
giggling as i carry you like a bride
into your bedroom for naptime or playtime

you only miss me when you're by yourself
like a flower hidden in a fenced-in backyard
but you ignore my texts most days
because when your friends are around you're busy
dancing toward the sun & lying to them
about where you spent last night &
the blueberry pancakes you ate for breakfast
you don't mention the ticklish new rib spot i found
or the quiet music we make together at night
or the stars we wished on with our pinky fingers tied together

i love you most when we're sticky asleep alone
you humming in turquoise ******* snuggled into my armpit
with your warm hand melting into my chest
& me in the pinstripe boxer briefs you bought with
my arm under and reaching for your exposed breast

matt
did you get my reply? i hope you did, i had written approx. 5, and all of them deleted... i hope i allowed myself a justifiable response with this one:

how about solipsism? solipsism is an elevated term for autism, isn't it? me? personally? i love cats, but they have a tendency to become inexhaustive economists of curiosity... i wasn't implying autism as an insult, i was implying a more crude word, synonymous with solipsism, and there is no shame in that to begin with. i like cats, because i own two, and i'm most content, when i can allow myself the time, to allow them the same time, to be left alone. cat, solo... dog + man + tail waggling + throw a ball... i better post this reply before i allow this reply, to become deleted... with all the prior 5 that have been, and me, having to post the alternative, "revision".

i.e. i rather imagine autism to be in need of having an elevated status of being designated by the term: solipsism... how can i make myself elaborate? point being, i don't want to... i too am confined to a strict vocab. fixation for the purpose of expressing language, that mitigates, bypassing, shrapnel wording of: one category fits all, conjunction words, which, i find, I, to be akin to, when categorised as: AND to begin to confine oneself to, the subsequent rigor of nouns.

i hope this doesn't end, or begin as, an apology... by autistic i was imply solipsist, i wasn't implying the retrograde slur of ******... if there's any god, it's in the disinhibited self of the autist, readily plucked, by... no basis for either a selfish, or a selfless act... i'm over-wording this, but... point being... i needed to settle myself in a posit, above the current cultural norm of the troll... which has nothing to do with autism, or as i like to call it: solipsism, diminished to a slur of: automaton...

i hope you can make lite reading of this... i concede, i attempted to make more than necessary, and conciliatory scribbles... if in any way i redeemed myself, i hope you'll concede to entertaining, accepting my apology.

Jules  22h
My only issue was that your poem seemed to make Autism synonymous with stupid or any other derogatory term. However, seeing as that wasn’t how you meant it, I apologize. I’m a bit defensive as my brother has autism

Mateuš Conrad  22h
that's perfectly understandable, given the circumstances, i am hardly surprised... i'm still here if you want to continue past the initial shock-tactic of testing the waters with me, obviously we can change the subject and not stand, metaphorically: with knives pressed against each others' throats... there i was, thinking i'd reply diving into the subject matter for no, necessary clarification / added depth... but it's the least i can appreciate from your cordial response, as to, at least, appreciate a change in the subject matter, so that, both of us, can return to feeding off a sentiment of: being left, less, uncomfortable; which implies that i have to instigate the question to change the subject matter... hmm... speed-dating-esque trivia... movies, paintings, music... literature... ah... kind of blue, miles davis, my english teacher told me, that if anyone in the classroom didn't own this album by the age they were 30... there was something wrong with them... in my then paranoia, i bought the album, and now own it on vinyl... somehow... i find that there's something more wrong with me, owning it, than not owning it.

Jules  22h
Favorite movie- Mamma Mia, favorite painting- amazing piece by a local artist, music- currently obsessed with the Beatles, favorite book- We all fall down. I’m thoroughly impressed about how reasonable you are being given the circumstances, and after reading a few more of your poems, I can tell you are a good person

Mateuš Conrad  21h
oh come on... mamma mia?! and not something akin to west side story?! who's the local artist? i only access to a London base, and, that requires a networking schedule i'm not going to equip myself with; and i'm hardly surprised by how understanding you are of me, and i do wish to pay more compliments to you, but... i feel that that would overstate me taking liberty in me not incurring an over-simplified stance of my own liberty towards you... remember, i'm one person in writing against a blank, and another person to conjure forth a reply... against a canvas, that is a readied flesh of my own flesh, bone of my own bone, i can see the antagonist in the compounded state of, the sacrosanct state of lingo... i can be a ******* against a blank canvas, but, obviously, when i am to begin with a clarity of an addressee, i cannot consider staging a variation of something, inhospitable, as a Kandinsky-variation to suit myself... Jules, you can never become something akin i treat a blank sparring estate i perform in writing without, something you are already established with, concerns equivalent to my own predisposition being unchanllenged / or, rather, undistrubed. the beatles... i'm trying to find something of a vinyl collector's "beginner's luck"... i'm too into prog. rock music... EP album experiences, akin to: king crimson's debut: in the court of the crimson king... serves me right, for not getting into Mahler... or Eric Dolphy jazz... so i turned the blind eye, and moved toward pagan music... wardruna... hedningarna... in extremo... garmarna... faun... heilung... esp. the last... i have never wished to visit the Faroe Islands more, than, after listening to their music.

Jules  21h
Mammia Mia is my favorite almost solely because of the memories attached to it. You certainly are a unique person

Mateuš Conrad  21h
i agree, i'm a sucker for super trouper and money money money, i'm waiting for a Tina Turner musical, to be honest... don't worry, i've looked into some of your comment sections... i cannot alleviate the blatantly bogus comments that are worth nothing more than an immediacy to make antagonism... i can't, i wish i could, but.... it's either this variant of an outlet, or a punching bag... i'm as unique as you find me to be... but when i just see "demands to conform" to an otherwise unnatural behavior... i don't like behaving in a counter-cordial fashion... you understand me? if there's no need to be bogus, why begin to bother being so? i hope we can remain lodged into partial nuances... and continue this discussion, beside tomorrow, i.e. whenever you feel like to preserve it, which, i hope... you will strip away more of your anonymity... but even if that is to not be the case: i thank you for the compliments... but from having inspected the immediate comments... you are a most tender artifact worth double the inspection's curiosity with a shy eye... and until i take myself to rest, and slumber, i can only leave your with these words... i wish the world was more welcoming than i allow you to believe it to be. if you can ever forgive me, i can only hope you can, by bidding me a goodnight, and welcoming me back into the discussion, within the confines of a tomorrow.

Jules  20h
Goodnight, my hopefully future friend. Poetry is definitely one of the best outlets. I definitely understand that aspect of you

Mateuš Conrad  20h
i hope to entertain you here, once more, and all the future that can be shared between the both of us. let me see you tomorrow, and scrap a beginning of a conversation with you, once more toward a focus of a beginning... and see how many minutes this allows us to entertain an amnesia of: beginning with today... how about that? i'll take to sleep, and hope, to grin... i actually re-read what i wrote: and figured... if i was being all-too despotic in securing pedantry... but then... if you took to complimenting me, i have to compliment you: tender soul... scouting the merger of sight and the hybrid coast... tender petal... why not? who is to obstruct me telling you this? lever... beside the said and into what's thought... tender petal... what a Scouser would call pet, i'd call petal... or... heavily implied: stagnant Bismarck stipend... if it be too much to ask... write me more than under the scrutiny of below the already given minus, of the 10 sentences. come at me as a punching bag... just as an experiment... i want to be the new vanguard... experiment with being uninhibited.

Jules  19h
Even the way you talk is extremely poetic. I appreciate how you took the time to try to talk everything out to prevent us from having any bad blood between, and I see know that you didn’t mean any harm from what you said. Thank you for being so kind about it all. I sincerely hope we can pick up this conversation again tomorrow as I feel we are on the road to a promising friendship. I’d be happy to write more per text, but for the sake of experimentation, I’m intrigued to see if you could try to talk in a little less of a formal dialect

Mateuš Conrad  1h
trying to bypass a formal dialect will be hard, as we're too fresh into our patchwork of setting boundaries, rigid as that might sound, and the current climate, to me, you're a slab of marble, not a statue. this sort of friendship, you're talking about, requires us to keep a modest concern for language, which, awfully, is riddled with diatribe excerpts... how we will transcend this, is, well, concerned with both of us to decide... i'm starting to entertain the fact that you have an autistic brother, since i'm learning to be panicy-picky with my language... i too had an ultra-autistic "friend" back in high-school... and i would constantly retrieve a blank-state response from him, i.e. i was looking at less a person, and more: a labyrinth. how i'll transition into a more informal use of language, i'm unsure how that will take place, Jules, we can't exactly share experiences, we can only avast ourselves, on what will pursue its own noumenon characteristics of stated language. at present, we only share a commonality of language, i'm bewildered by stating something informal... i wish i could, but i'm only allowed an "aggrieved" presence to your wish for: informality, slang, holding-hands type of escapism. i think that, with regards to your wishes, we'll have to settle for a sediments' worth of unravelling, like me, you're too trying to escape the puddle's worth of being immediately "concerned" with the comment section... we'll need to find commonality... from yesterday, i can tell you: i had the beatles faze when i was leaving the years attributed to my teens... then i found it really hard to find new music, outside the realm of bands akin to tool, the neo-progressive rock bands... but i see your point, my language is the sort of formal, that stages a lack of intimacy, but this is an ontological-high-jump, given your reply, and emphasis on friendship... you will have to curate me, moving forward, since i will be unable to moderate how, me, interacting with you, will be adequate to have finally said, something informal, by your standards of scrutiny. time, i will first have to see some of your idioms to change my dialect; i'll begin, i'll tell you where this was written from, Romford, Essex, England.

Jules  1h
If we are to move forward as friends, I have to express my feeling on the autism topic. First off, Autism is a spectrum that ranges from high functioning to low functioning. 30% of people with autism are in fact of average or higher intelligence. Some of the most famous scientists including Albert Einstein were in fact autistic. It is not synonymous with simple or stupid in any way, shape, or form. I dislike that you said your friend seemed to be less of a person because he had autism. However, I understand that you’re misconceptions weren’t meant in a malicious way

Mateuš Conrad  51s
so how can i move forward to establish a less informal dialect? i wasn't focusing on the details of the stated condition, i know that i'm handling something as fragile as an egg in terms of what words i employ, and that i might seem astoudning, in having not contra opinions on the matter beneath the impersonal "facade"... but you were asking about how to make our interaction more uninhibited, if we're going to lecture each other about infringing on delicate matters... i wasn't implying the person in question was less of a person, i was implying he was more of a person, by resembling a labyrinth, i didn't take any personhood from him, i simply reattached it to a metaphor, of elevated complexity, of a labyrinth: i was lost in attaining a mutual comprehension of a shared experience with him... what's so bad about that? i only mentioned something in passing, since your's, was the original "concern"... you asked me how we could continue in a less informal manner... this reply will not answer your original "concerns"... what if i were to say: i'm schizophrenic? what then? you'd lecture me on... all of your knowledge on the matter? if we're all going to interrogate each other... thus... then you have a misconception of schizophrenics... akin to john nash... personally, i don't understand how you'd think i'd be primarily focused on something said: intended to be relegated to: in passing... guess what... i'll send this and...

      BLOCK

               i'm basically rummaging
through porcelain...
  i was ****** off one writing
platform for no reason...
   being ****** off from another
is not on my wish list,
from a very, simple,
lack of reciprocated
       feed of understanding;

   oh i know when i see minor *******,
some liking it to micro-aggression...
i chose a fox as my totem,
learning from a 2015 "debacle":
it looks innocent at first,
    but then spirals out of control;
the more i sieve through
this construct known as humanity,
the more i chose to remain
hidden.
   - and for all the worth
of the tabloid press...
   this is where i'll reign, myself
included.

Yes it's true I'm cheating on you
Blatantly with another site
I'm so enamored by her poetry
We're now hanging out  in broad daylight

I keep going back and forth
Between both you and it
Pouring out poetry deep from my heart
Now I'm not sure I can ever quit

I do feel a tad bit guilty
This sharing of my poetic love
But like you heard, with the written word
I can't seem to get enough

She accepts me for who I am
Even welcomed me with open arms
I was thinking the whole time in the back of my mind
What could possibly be the harm

Now I feel I'm in way to deep
To swim out of this cheaters stream
The current is swift and the banks are steep
Guess I'll just drown in sweet misery

I'm so glad to get this off of my chest
Perhaps it'll take away some of the guilt
Although I sometimes hang with that other harlot
I want you to know I love you still

Yes the rumors are true that I'm cheating on you
With another poetry site
A month ago who would have known
I'd have more than one mistress  in my life

he claims to just be blatantly honest.
but he calls me lovely.
and compliments me.
and listens wholly.
and has extreme dysmorphia towards my weight.
and reads my poetry.
and compliments it.
and treats me as if I possess some sort of innate value.
and makes me feel secure.
---
was he lying about being honest?
or am I lying to myself about my value?

reinventing the resurrection of the Roman Empire with
a pseudo-Christ in tow will prove fatal -
or simply propelled to an established
norm for all the wrong reasons
other than a quasi-Narcissism fully embracing
fetishes beyond the standardised
practises of human evolutionary concerns -
see how Darwinism is incubator
of fatalist vocabulary? too much arrogance -
they're nothing more than Spanish
Inquisition leeches - because when was
atheism intended as a fashion statement
with mismatched socks and matching
loafers? probably never.
we already sought to put atheistic economics
on the guillotine tablature -
the temple named: all men are born equal
was always Samson's prize for demolition's
just escapade, in or anywhere outside of
a Glasgow housing estate -
a Scot making a joke about Scots:
how was copper wire invented?
two Scots arguing over a 2 pence coin...
a stretch Armstrong moment i'd like to see.
all we need is Hillary for the unholy alliance
to materialise - the birth of horse racing
and womanised politics -
and are you the baby tarantula on the back
of mama tarantula? no? oh... don't
expect much from mama tarantula
if you're not part of her family and genetic vector.
the resurrection of the Roman empire as cited
by Divine John has a major fault...
the original intention prior to the authority of
Augustus was based on republicanism -
not democracy - the autocracy evolved from
republicanism, not democracy -
and if this be the McDonald model of work
ethic and success, it will be hard finding a few wise
old men to quench a rise in despotism -
the naive-expectation will over-power them -
we could see America as our safety laboratory once -
where the fates of Greek democracy and Roman
republicanism were played out -
rule of the many v. rule of the informed worthy few -
if elections came about the former would
have a lot of numbers anonymously signed X -
while the latter a few numbers but identified with
articulate signatures - democracy is basically
a stab in the dark, that precipitates to a vote of
no confidence - and an immediate imitation of
Pontius Pilate's quest for conscience and washing his
hands in pseudo-Dostoyevsky's the machinist,
with bleach - ****** courtroom -
when older poets recite their republicanism knowing how,
the newer ones recite their democracy knowing neither
how or why - thus the resurrection of Rome built
around democracy and not republicanism -
the washing of the hands and loss of conscience -
this prophesied resurrection of Rome was not based
on republicanism but on democracy, for the simple
fact that democracy had its martyr - a republican member
should another be fixed to compete with him -
no Platonic notation of the idea behind the republic
was ever established - but indeed a lot was noted
concerning democracy - which in practice wasn't
a practice in dialectics, but in dichotomy -
the polarisation of opinions in the simplest terms:
man v. woman, old v. young...
the republicans only had one dialectics ruining them:
the dichotomy between one man and the many -
is man to be as automated as insect or Satanically
rebellious and in his own sway "himself"?
there need not be a conjuring of biblical myths with
this concern - man was not temped for insight
into the disparity of good and evil and subsequent
confusion of attributing each its invested share
of expression in the world of choice -
but man was made an ontological alliance with
the famous villain (i too, akin to Milton's sympathy
a pledged allegiance do make an oath to consummate
a rival marriage, kindred of celibacy shared
by truth or perception, royal, named Elizabeth I) -
for if not by rebellion Satanic not make elemental conquests
or at least improve on them?
Francis Bacon died attempting to conjure up
a refrigerator with a dead chicken - dying from
hypothermia, or a really bad cold; never mind that,
if the resurrection of a united pseudo-Rome is to be
established it cannot take root in democracy -
but it already has, and is doomed to fail
given one of its former provinces risked all to exit -
it has to be rooted in the origin, in republicanism -
but it can't take root there, given the lost vitality of ancient
old age and modern old age leaving behind
only disparity - audacity of youth in every sphere
of life - and the blatantly over-stretched comforts of
old age - the American experiment of having
democracy v. republicanism staged failed -
that was the intention - to see which one was more the success
story of the revival - i appears neither or precisely both -
in that democracy has fuelled the city-states once again:
globalisation and the city-states: London, Paris, Germany...
they exist as separate entities in a web segregating
themselves from national politics and associating themselves
in global politics with only their counterparts -
the Greek city states have been revived by such dynamic;
so if democracy fuelled that, then surely republicanism
has fuelled what happened in the British exit from the union?
coup d'état in Turkey (on the waiting list, joining in
2020 along with Serbia and Albania etc.) - if you can't see
xenophobia and a choice of politically correct vocabulary
you don't see the naivety of Polish pensioners and English
pensioners - Turks at home in Germany - but let's revitalise
the memory the Iraqis share with Mongols and the sacking
of Baghdad and the Siege of Vienna between Turks and Poles -
i've assimilated into British society i don't identify with
such ethnic historicity - i was taught history including Roman
conquests; do i think the Scots will break from the Union?
i think they'll break for ethnic moral - that's
the other member of the unholy alliance, a real cat fight,
2nd Ms. Thatcher in Downing Street? the youth voted
in - the old voted out - when they were concentrating
on the gender gap a milieu gap was convening -
outside of London the impression of the family environment
suggested the youth didn't vote, in the urban environment
youth mingled with youth, to later hear their parents
or grandparents were dying ****-stained in care-homes...
strange: you always seem to wish to be part of a Mongolian
horde in such times for the oddest but the most blatant
reasons... oh yeah, and i read 5 books today...
well, i told you, once you read enough books of your
own choice you end up reading poems and reviews to
give yourself some slack...
- les parisiennes by Anne Sebba (review by Daisy Goodwin)
  (always women reading books by women,
   and men reading books by men... what sexism
   in this post-sexist culture of FEMININE EQUAL)
- Paper: passing through history by Mark Kurlansky
    (review by John Sutherland) p.s. best citations
    from this review... maybe some other time...
-  The Age of Bowie: how david bowie made a world of
     difference by Paul Morley (review by Will Hodgkinson)
-  the Girl who Beat Isis: my story by Farida K(h)alaf with
    Andrea C. Hoffman trans. by Jamie Bulloch (review by
    Catherine Philp)
-  Pinpoint: how GPS is changing our World by Greg Milner
    (review by Damian Whitworth)
and finally...
- All things made New: writing on the Reformation by
    Diarmaid MacCulloch (review by Robert Tombs)...
                                indeed,
                                 the terrible has
                                 already happened;
never leverage on
a positive thought when
working from Pompeii -
as the lessons of failure
from the past magnify -
there is nothing
but hindsight and pessimism
in the past to unearth -
while uncertainty and optimism
toward the future readying
itself for the burial rites
of the already unearthed artefacts
in continuum imito (in a continuum of imitation).

seated at the backseat with our song on repeat
she reached for a stick inside the back pocket of her faded denim jeans
i heard a familiar flick sound
only to see a lighter on her hand
silence fell upon us
not knowing what to say, i glanced around
trying to find an excuse not to continue to blatantly stare at her
still, she is all i see through my peripheral vision
savoring the smoke,
letting it all fill her lungs
puffing,
inhaling
yes, a stick could **** sooner or later
if no one dares to stop her
but what if she's already dying inside? or what if she's just doing this to fight the demon who made its way inside her soul?
chained her heart,
no plan of letting it go
i may have seen her burned her throat countless times already
yet, it still feels like the first time her thin lips pressed against the filter
how i wish it was my lips, instead...

I think
The reason I felt
All tingly, when you asked,
"Ma'am, have you fastened your seat belt?"
was this Uniform of yours.
Why else would I blatantly stare
At you walking towards the cockpit,
Wondering if you'll look as good
Without it?