This is a three-part, longer narrative poem, seen
as old photographs that follow the main character, My Aunt, Lillian Goldrick, across two decades.  It was written 30 years ago*
______

“Hey Kid!”     Part I

Photographs aren’t fair
stopping the soul where it’s not
in rectangular guffaws
surrounded by serrated edges, pickets, teeth?
to fence and stab in yellow, soft-covered booklets
with designated floppy phrase
“Your memories”

Happier than she could ever be...

A black and white day at Salisbury Beach, NH
hung over his hammock
Private pin-up girl
tilts her head against silver sheen of shoulder
Hair, dark chignon
except for a few wispy curls about her face
freed by wind
bleached by sun

Stopped

...for three decades
Legs slightly bent—long extended
that could stop trains, stop traffic

Stopped

Modest bathing suit, probably peach
cannot hide (not that she would)
the undeniable
And if there were question left
you could look at her smile—and love her
posed by he message scrawled in sand:

“Hey Kid!”

What kid? Where?
In the foreground?
In the camera’s eye?

In the background—
a Ferris wheel, a billboard
and  r-i-g-h-t  there—Can’t you see it?
Look again—behind her eyes
You can barely see it, but it’s there.
Remember?

The Depression
Only ten years before
It was April
Stroke, heart attack
Both of them gone, a year apart!
The priest came
Last Rites for mortally stricken
Candles, crucifix, the Catholic containment
of holy water that dams the tears

Kneeling around the bed
they said the Rosary

——————————

After VJ Day he came
to the house on the corner
of Commonwealth Ave.
She knew he was coming
but she could not be ready today
nor tomorrow
nor next week—or ever...

“Lill! Will ya come to the door?
She’ll be ready in a minute.
Hey Lill! Hurry up, will ya!
They’re waitin’ fer us!”

Upstairs in the dark hallway
her door clicks shut....
________


"Hey Kid"    Part II


The clock at Joe Rianni’s read 20 minutes to 12...

Crowd from the Phillip’s Theater—gone
though laughter lingers
in a Friday mood
in high-backed booths
where only an hour ago swinging free
were high-heeled shoes
legs crossed at knees....

Now on tables abandoned
deserted fields of French
fries lie cold in salt flurries

Only female straws wear lipstick
as do Luckys bent in ashtrays
Males, uniformly flattened
as powder burned, as mortar might
shells, casings—the evidence of war
Among explosions of tickled giggles
one was taken broadside...

listing     toward      stars
_______

...The clock read 20 minutes to 12

when she walked in--
And Rhea stopped swabbing black mica counters
long enough to absorb late-customer hate
and envy that such beauty can arouse
In voice hoarse and weighted like a trucker’s

“Whadaya have, Lill?”

“coffee”

The small answer settled at the soda fountain
and slowly struck a match...
She was falling from the slant
of her black felt hat
dripping off the point of pheasant feather
Gray gabardine suit
tailored from angle of shoulder
to dart diagonally
toward such a waist!
Turned to skirt hips
that arched and dove toward slit—
then seams that run the round of calf

that seem to flow
to ankles of naught—
...and all that seems

Black     high-heeled     above it

Coffee— cold, stale
Gray glassed-in stare
searches air and random walls
of coat hooks, menus, mirrors...
while lips ****** exiled words— replies

Dragging a demon from her Camel
slowly     purposefully
she exhaled a burly arm of smoke
that rose and laid its hand
against the ceiled atmosphere of embossed tin
Then leaning over her shoulder
in roiling emission of shrugs and sneers—

“Lill—There’s no way outa here!”
________


“Hey Kid!”    Part III

After kneeling backwards on their chairs
after nuns, catechism recited
After—
Five of them scuffed through leaves and litter
along the curbing
spotting cars that counted—
Bugs, beach wagons, flying bathtubs
A slower way home of hunting
shiny chestnuts and muddy finds
rare match book covers
and bottle caps that win ya things!

One breaks from bunch
and trials off to where
dimes turn to candies!
...at a dingy luncheonette...Joe Rianni’s
____

Here—behind smeary wall of glass
pleasure leers while holding back
those grimy fingers, lips that long
for jelly fish, gum drops, lollies
holding back the company
of Baby Ruth, and Mary Jane
O Henry or Bazooka Joe!
For less money but the same salivation
there were colored dots to chew and ****
from strips of paper that last forever!
For a little more, plus the sweet struggle
of desire denied
a kid could be proud owner
of a pea shooter or trading cards!
While in the mouth
were golden imaginings—
the chocolate foil of coins
and the candied pretense of cigarette adulthood
_____

Rhea didn’t see her in the line...

Only grownups with wallets and purses
Only grownups get waited on...
...because Rhea was a Gypsy!
Kids could tell!
by her big red lips and hair to match
by the nasty way she chased them out—
“****** kids!”
Only grownups get waited on....
_______

And the clock read 20 minutes to 12

While a child waits—
time stirs in a ceiling fan
   There’s a drift in attention
      along deepening endless walls
         toward a line of sleepy booths
              carved with

“I was here—in such and such a year”

Her aunt—at the last stool—like always
Their names too close
Confused too often

A little girl wonders
about the sight behind the sightless stare
loafers, ankle socks, the ‘40s hair
the gathered skirt that gathers ashes
as they fall from cigarette
held in yellowed fingertips
Tremors crimp the smoke that climbs—

              ...a strobing pillar

“Whataya want, girly?”

              ...the only movement

“Hey! What’s it gonna be!”

              ...in a shot—

“HEY KID!”

              Snapped

Poem 3
How to raise kids

How can you raise kids that are in good health when you don't see the lies that you're selling to yourself?

I got into to teaching to make a difference,
To add some joy to a kids existence,
I knew, so well, the hurt and pain
That kids in secondary school sustain
The tears and the fears and the dread and the...
"Ahahahaha! Look at his Nicks!! He thinks he's got Nikes but he's wearing Nicks!"
And how it switches you off and makes you not care,
Because you just don't want to go back there.
So, you wander into town to HMV
Til your parents feel let down when you only got an E
Until you failed Art and Graphics and Literacy
But at least you got an A in history...
Because academic subjects are "more important"

How can you raise kids that are in good health when you don't see the lies that you're selling to yourself?

So I left 6th form and I needed change
And wanted to go to somewhere strange
(And new)
Somewhere away from all the drama
At 19 I went by myself to Ghana
"God bless our homeland Ghana
And make our nation great and strong,
Vow to defend forever
The cause of Freedom and of Right"
And I taught
Maths and English
With no books
And no training
And no observing
And I was ******* at it... Really bad
But somehow, i felt the change
Just because I cared and they cared

How can you raise kids that are in good health when you don't see the lies that you're selling to yourself?

A few years later I started teachin.
GTP, hands on, straight in.
My teaching mentor was called Mr Hickey,
He smoked a pipe and drank down whiskey
(In school)
My first proper job was Bradford inner city
It was a bit rough and the buildin was ******
There we had a guy who was a lazy old ****
And he had kids tracing instead of learning Art
When I first got there I was overwrought
These weren't like the training lessons that I taught
These kids had opinions. They needed to engage...
To be taught in a way that suited kids of their age
I nearly gave up, because I felt so scared
But at the end of the day, I knew that I still cared

How can you raise kids that are in good health when you don't see the lies that you're selling to yourself?

In my 3rd year I had this year 11 class
They wanted a good lesson and they wanted to pass
But they needed convincing and I nearly cried
So I tried and I tried and I tried and I tried
To listen
And react
To change
And Adapt
And those kids made me better
And for 3 years I got better
Our grades were sky high
The kids wanted to try
They wanted learn, they wanted to know "why"
But I got to the top and I needed to fly
Because I needed somewhere that I could ask the "why"

How can you raise kids that are in good health when you don't see the lies that you're selling to yourself?

You have those moments sometimes in life, where you know that a decision is important, but you don't know why and you don't know which way is the right way to go with it. This was that point for me. Sat in the interview, saying I wanted to pull out but letting them convince me to stay. That was the point, I think where everything changed.

2010. New job. New government.

How can you raise kids that are in good health when you don't see the lies that you're selling to yourself?

I was head of Art and I got noticed
Within a year I got promoted
Faculty leader of creative skills
This is the part where it really kills
What do you do when you just aren't wanted
When people are angry that you're there
When all of your decisions seem to be haunted
By the ghost of a culture where they just don't care
Where nastiness and gossip always bite
Resting in the coffin of a lost tradition
Kids so bored they're turning white
Beaten down to bored submission
And everyone seems to have given up the fight
But they're still convinced that their way's "right"

How can you raise kids that are in good health when you don't see the lies that you're selling to yourself?

After so much pain, we were getting through it
We realised there was much more to it
No more easy working out of booklets
(The teaching equivalent of rhyming couplets)
But every time you made a shift
The goal posts seemed to start to drift
And this all caused a further rift
The final one I couldn't lift

How can you raise kids that are in good health when you don't see the lies that you're selling to yourself?

Gossip and lies caused by others stress
Creates a catastrophic mess
Turns people's lives upside down
Gives off the sense that they're a clown
They're trying. They're just really down
Simply trying not to drown
Marriage ending
Friends unfriending
Children's lives are slowly bending
House and finance are up-ending
Mediation sessions need attending
Everything seems to need mending
And the pain seems to be never-ending

How can you raise kids that are in good health when you don't see the lies that you're selling to yourself?

Professional life vs Personal life
Professional strife = Personal strife
Personal wife goes through professional strife
Personal strife =

"I understand what you're going through, but we need to think about the learners."

Stress in teaching is the expectation
Work life balance has no correlation
The pressures of a confused nation
Makes teachers into the poor relation

Goodbye btec, goodbye vocation
Hello Gove and his minds creation
Goodbye Gove and hello Morgan
Hiding behind a gritty slogan
Creating the pressure of pointless change
For teachers to correct and rearrange

How can you raise kids that are in good health when you don't see the lies that you're selling to yourself?

But here's the thing. It's not their fault.
Sure, they've no idea MPs
They've less common sense than a piece of cheese
But all MPs really do is set
Some criteria that need to be met
A league table
Academies
Appraisal
Curriculums
It's nothing new. They've always done it
But it's given to schools to interpret
We don't lose money, we just get judged
We need conviction that can't be budged
We need to get a message out
To every parent, round about
And what this message needs to say
Is "we aren't doing extra maths today,
We're going to go outside and play
Because whatever MPs say
We'll do what's right for the kids
And here's why it's right you know
Cause we want to see your children grow
We're not just for levels, grades, progress
We're also here to relieve stress
We're also here to make your child feel
That happiness is something real
That in spite of all the crap you see
You can become head of art when you failed gcse."
Learn People skills
Determination
Creativity
Imagination
Honesty
Integrity
Sen­sitivity
And empathy
It's not an easy sell I know
You can't measure how people grow
You can't report or give a grade
But they're qualities that are heaven made
And maybe think the same for teachers
We're all very caring creatures
We care about how kids are raised
We don't need to be constantly appraised
Default 100%?!?
Like energy is heaven sent
Like when your kids are down with flu
You just man up, there's work to do
When you've got a quality person who just needs backing
Why give pressure and then threaten with sacking?

How can you raise kids that are in good health when you don't see the lies that you're selling to yourself?

School - this week mark all your books
I need them up to date so I can look

Teacher - I've got to take my daughter swimming
I've got to see my son try winning

School - read through your teaching standards mate
And leave your children at the gate

End of the week the books are done
But head and deputies are overrun
"We'll have to put these books aside
To push our children down the slide"

And good for them. They work really hard. It's not a job to take lightly and they deserve to be there. But they don't have the time to step back and think "big picture"

Let's flip it round and just imagine

Teacher - I'm sorry, I'm afraid I'm ill
School - you can't be ill the learners will fail
Teacher - I need some patience, I need some time
School - the kids need work which is sublime
Don't they deserve that? Don't you think?
Do you really want your learners to sink?

And there it is. The teacher guilt.
Because that's the way that we've been built
We care too much
We try too much
We give too much
We work too much
And we lose too much
We get ideas above our station
About how this job is a vocation
When we stop and look around
The evidence just can't be found
Someone tells me what to teach
Someone tells me how to teach it
Someone tells me how to plan
Someone tells me when to plan it
Someone tells me how to mark
Someone tells me when to mark it
We work to targets, get appraised
Residuals to get profiles raised
It's industry. I rest my case.

How can you raise kids that are in good health when you don't see the lies that you're selling to yourself?

Or, put it another way.

I just think that teaching has lost all its common sense. And it's kindness. It behaves like an industry which is about getting results and meeting targets. There's nothing that measures people's happiness or how deeply moved or affected someone is by what they've learned. It just checks that they learned it. And we are given this guilt trip. That it's about children and that we are affecting their lives if we don't meet targets. We give up more and more because "teaching is a vocation"  "it's about kids", and yet schools use cover supervisors, cut subjects, limit choices etc to save money and get results. So the profession behaves like an industry but the teachers have to give their lives to it like its a vocation. It's not a vocation. At all. It's a job.

How can you raise kids that are in good health when you don't see the lies that you're selling to yourself?

i should be handling a champagne flute by now,
i don't know, maybe it's the laughter
that's curbing me from doing so... oh the fizzling
of my shizzle: or whatever's the trend in Campton.

now i'm watching videos on the pros and cons
and i'm thinking: it's really out of my hands -
i can do what Pontius Pilate did, back when
everything political required things to be hygiene prone
- and when there were literate fishermen who
miraculously broke from physical toils
       and wrote anti-Pharisee booklets.
forget Socrates defiling the youth:
it's me and a few old men -
will i become martyred because of it,
am i deluded with an invasion of
Shoreditch coolio across the depth and breadth
of London: who cares?!
       i like a good film, and this one is
always going to be good -
it only takes one word (well, two): the queen;
mainly the logic stuck true to the end
result: it would have been too good to be true...
take that logic and make it into a motto -
        wholeheartedly honestly,
      i have not an inch of my own wet *****
dipped into your ear: that's what
being independent means -
it also means that Copernicus ruined
   all things nautical, sunrise, sunset,
                  and thank **** the earth is
3D, now the problem, what shape is the universe?
   as it goes we're in a fudge swamp -
we aren't going anywhere, we think we are,
but people forgot to twin thought and doubt together,
   instead we have thinking and denial twinned,
which means: no matter how many facts are
spewed and later picked up as golden nuggets
we're not going anywhere.
       that's the beauty of a niche armchair,
      you get to bypass the comforts of crowd and airing concerns -
i'd never miss those emotional reactions
of people slyly: for the world!
    i love how they think that spying is masquerading
and not stating the obvious: which it usually is,
spying is stating that: the opposite has a tradition
built upon using sharpened knives:
                    me and my blunt knives:
i'm tearing into the meat like a vulcher -
what the hell can you do?
   sell the truth for 30 quid, buy it back for 20.
  that's a Homeric certainty -
    no, not the jokey Springfield variety:
the serious Grecian 2000 year old (if not more)
one - and i already asked:
what are you here for?
  me? i'm into writing a 2000 year old chapter
ranging from monkey, neanderthal and man -
     given the obvious disparities
and image issues and ****** favours considering
the pale anorexic Parisian modelling skeletors.
     you know what i found distinct in that story:
Slavs among the Germanic tribalism?
i concentrated on the eyes, rather than admit
a less pronounced *occipital bone: yeah,
that's almost a tail in evolutionary sprechen.
       all thanks to a girl in school who noted
that "defect".
     i just looked at the eyes and found they were
more ****, and subsequently quasi-Mongolian
and less Germanic fish-eyed fixative of ogling
out as if about to be gouged out, or simply
popping out with a reference to helium.
    once again: a stick has two ends.
         it's the historiological (why the iota in that
i'll never know) demand:
the pendulum simply said: too good to be true -
and it was:
  i'll go one better, better than black and female?
how about native?
   now that would be a game-changer -
      anything less than a native american is
as about as revolutionary or a status quo disciple
or a hamburger for breakfast:
hence the reason why sarcasm and apathy mingle
        and look down at the doormat:
  oh right, only wiping my shoes does it? hell,
i'll wipe my shoes: come in and take a ****.
     thus the misrepresentation of writing on
pixel-paper (or what's called:
       drunk, but still in want of having a chance to
revise, because we're all sloppy when
      staging what the original transgression was);
   i never write with a want to say the things i write,
i just think the misrepresentation comes
when i treat the internet as a punching-bag to think
things through: a voyeuristic-reversal,
        as such a great medium to think things out:
the new ****.
   nonetheless, it's hard not to laugh within
the framework of defending the freedom to sprechen
and leave the defence of the freedom to denken
  within a socialism that never manufactures
    anything: apart from protest marches -
the F. Gumps amid broken vocal chords.
                  you get suspicious about deaf people
hearing more than those able...
                                 to hear a crackpot mantra
and subsequently diffuse it.
                     i wish we lived in world summarised
by the words: all eyes on Mongolia...
            but that's what happens when you popularise
**** and industrialise it:
    a. China and India beat you in terms of industrialising
             it (over a billion buggers by my count, each!)
and b. it's a litmus test of youngsters in the future
              suffering from depression -
now that's really obscure - i don't really have a b.
     point to make... pornographic industrialisation
got me...            come to think of it:
if america didn't industrialise *** i'd be in a transgender
clinic trying to figure out whether i had
    any ego in my phallus - completely bewildered
whether i should accept my ******* as if a dog
accepting its canine extension...
        given women these days
and the fact that i had to pay for the pleasure tells me
a lot...
            i either pay for it and play the genteel role
or i go mad from ****** frustration and ****:
at least we're talking a contract,
like that bubbly Puerto Rican woman in Amsterdam:
                                         **** it... Freud!
so we solved the whole "earth is not flat" debate,
           even though we still require the n.e.w.s.
to go about our daily business... tragic: we now have
to encapsulate the universe as having a shape -
  milestones have been conquered,
  from a 2D earth into a 3D earth
      we now have an infinitely 1D universe -
                because it couldn't have been: a box
within a box, within a box: without an actual box,
or as the people said: hence we having the sport of boxing /
dentistry.
            the Russians put a man and a dog into
space: fair enough...
      we go a step further and end all fairytales
  and turn our children into ambitious astronauts
breakdancing on the moon -
                              then comes Mars...
if we're going with that sort of escapist route then we're done:
   these traditional capitalistic endeavours for
mere competition have turned into a variation of
simple escapism - as i was taught in a catholic school -
imagine yourself in a world, then leaving it -
always imagining the earth from afar, from the moon, say;
all that really was said was the Taoist motto
about not engaging with the world on terms of
rounding up, rabble talking and ******* whatever needed
******* (pervert, i know the slang in the engagement
     of the cultish excesses of skin; rough ***?).
   but that's what it is: escapism -
                         as they said: a message from former
communist countries -
                           a sprouting vogue in western
           societies: with their beards, and chequered shirts,
social conforming hippies know as hipsters:
i don a beard because it's cold around here:
plus i look less of a fat person -
alcohol fat ain't cutie pie fat: it's called being bloated.
       only among an obese population would you
get anorexia - again: historiological logic (the pendulum,
or the Newtonian impression) -
         once Newton was told he was less than accurate
people decided everything was relative:
the Greeks abhorred moral relativism -
   it's not that god died - cause & effect died
in what's modern, and reliably crescendo.          
sure, humanity will go on in any other argumentative suite,
      it's the one thing humanity can't be, i.e.: undermined.
*** is (after all), an existential variant of ******* -
you'd be daft to think that it was or could / would be
  otherwise.

A circle speaks volumes.
Revolutionize and tidy up.
Instruction manuals are read automatically.
Privacy parts the talon and now,
how the sky blinks a feather ever so unusually.

Ever wake up in your sleep to your head fully stuck in the sixth sense
stomach of a pillow, and thought to yourself in bed about how much of
a dream it must be to be stuffed turkey?

I haven't.

Or thought to your self made bed how making the bed as an edible
symbol of thanksgiving
is like taking a stand
on a landmine,
for eternity?

I haven't.
I also lie and lay awake to myself.

Although a traveler tends to do all of the above,
below the radar.
A farmer tends too.
Eats an earthquake,
aftershock, rattled rim, pacific clarity, clear the oceans, tremors, tremors,
Noah's ark is a humpback funeral home.
Noah riding a hearse by the hubcap, clean teeth grip.
Noah in my mouth, reciting odd numbers on my taste buds.

Noah licking a polished nail, course matte for me,
three by three, the poor
poor bones of a humpback whale singing sad on a mountain.

You have to wonder about coffins when it's death out.
And water among amidst when your lungs are thirsty.
And since it seems the tried and tested walk has all but run away,
some metal wood rubber leather latex silk wool boxes spit out tickets.

A materialistic downer on uppers levels off at acceptance.
And yeah, smoking will **** you, but this is about me and I need to inhale.
This is not about me, but about you, or was that nature?
The nature of nurturing seems as good a point to start this conversation.
But it's dead end talk to talk in line segments, and well, ****,
it's time for an advertisement:

This cylinder tin is full of everything your life is empty of!
Forget the cost; be content with the contents,
rehearse the ingredients, unload the all and do it again.
Infatuation is hot-air gas inflated in the belly of outer space.
I love the way those stars look and those stars love looking at me.

The cut and paste of our human race is unfairly lopsided.
The northern blade has a tumor the size of misdirection,
the scales are tipped, the whips are tipped, and the weapons are gripped.
Sudan doesn't own scissors; Angola is the axis of axe-less
but their ******* skyline is incestuously bright,
their constellations all make sense,
and their astronauts haven't lifted off, to jump and jive in the very
same sky we share with them.
No, not yet, there are animals to be slaughtered sedimentary still.
Ones with tribal names that come off the tongue like mouth sound effects,
they are almost people, without horns hammered in their heads.

Eating on all fours from a license plate.
Dig in, Donesia.
How is life in amnesia, brain pulp square?
Psychologically disturbed map and memory loss, southwest Asia?
Your address is a long walk, but the **** citizen on the roadside exhibit
is a refreshing remix to our boring, bragging billboards.
And your suffering is art to the skull and cross-bone pale cube galleries
that we call home sweet, home sweet merchandise.
And rest assured, your lack of rest will insure western survival,
North America will steal your toddler corpses
and sell them at the front gates of your orphanage ghettos.
It's the least we can do after gouging out your eyeballs.

I didn't even write this, it was drawn by a blind boy in India.

The black market pencil case people are going to a blow-out sale.
The sales on them and the jokes a bomb.
The jokes on them and the sales a bomb.
The bombs on them and the jokes a sale.
The female holds her breath and suffocates a male.
And the genders collapse in heaps and heaves, recycled and broke
like natural leaves caught in a mythological fighter
jet's propeller.
Like aeroplanes, several even, oddly amount conclusive crash-like.
Like, like, like, if the globe of green and blue were to still be alive
I would colour co-ordinate accordingly, and wear whatever hue
the big bang theory wasn't.
Dust particles getting it on and such.
Finger painting *** with a rag and pan pencil case.

The black market Darwin drawin' is on fire in the pockets of our youth,
elderly lint in same corduroy bent knuckle nameless, places
an introduction to i.v. and a never un-shook from his hinges
living room magazine holder.
So the flinching milli-metricks betwixt our beloved booklets brings
gratification, satisfaction, and eternal life.
And gravity with a runny nose.
Oh, oh!  My first ever and last edit: Make that ******.

So I'm infinite pass-time, tedious rusty grime
and dead llama on the zoo-way.
"Look Ma, a dead llama!"
"No dear, she is just sleeping with her blood out
and cage on".

No more rides for the unknown, let it be known.
Call your superiors, mega-impose their posteriors, an emphasis on
brittle lives.
And chew the fat, chew the fat, **** the marrow, narrow
weight-scale bound in chain-mail, accidental prediction protection,
magnify, mortify, modern sill overdosing on wake pills, horticultural hi.

I am coherent when the setting is all tens, when
the plot is all tens, when the characters are all reaping tens.
The catch is in the ******, looking scared cloth-less elevens.

Judges, what verdict gives you
the right to wig wear an oak arm chair
with an all too obvious worn-mallet-beating-desktop syndrome
bashing your would be innocent until proven rich-boy lashes, err, guilty?

Was that even a question,
or merely a stir-fried rant?

The master chefs are coming after us all in our under garments,
over bridges and mountains and tiger stance wisdom and
we need a Messiah like we need horseshoes on our foreheads.

Mule yoke split on the frying pan of till death do us cook.
Separation nation; a river plain, a barren abstract.
And the artists are painting droplets on their toes,
kissing themselves after a game of Chinese checkers,
determined to squirm sweet nothings while riding
question mark shaped seats from Sweden.

And under a hail of Mary's, Jason's, William's, Susan's, and missiles,
they touch their ankles where they know
nails should be,
extinct.

A circle sounds off,
a sky sounds awful,
a bomb sounds right,
a body sounds circles,
and a circle speaks volumes.

"Heart Mechanic" said the sign above the door.
In place of a sinking feeling my eyes just move on.
There's an old neon clock on the wall, half burned out.
"Hearty Stout Beer" it tries to say.
And in place of a smirk my eyes just move on.
A small clatter, couple clicks, and a boot stomp beckon
my attention to steel plate door.
Hip first, elbow after, she backs into the room,
wiping grease off her hands before fixing her hair.

"All done!" She says, "finished up quicker than expected."
"oh, really?"
"Yep. Ran into a few problems but everything just seemed to fall into place."
"oh. that's good then."
"You bet. Almost like it wanted to be fixed, ya'know?"
"huh."
"So all that's left," she sighs, "is to put it back!"
"mmm."
"Are you ready?"
"mmhmm."
"Alright, I'll be right back."
She walks back through the steel door, and begins to tinker.
My eyes float around the room once more.
Blue and white tiles hold my feet up, faded with wear,
probably faded since new.
Beside me, a small table laden with well browsed magazines.
"The Beat on Heart Science," says one.
"What regular maintenance can protect you from," I read aloud.
Fluorescent lighting through yellowed plastic guards saturates the walls.
A coffee stained coffee maker stands lonely on the counter,
a small red light beaming from one of its corners.

A boot kicks the door, then the handle jiggles before turning.
She walks into the room with my heart in her hands.
She's smiling.
"Are you ready?" She asks, "this is always my favourite part!"
"i think so."
She reaches into my chest and starts pulling out blood lines,
connecting them to the empty chambers
of my off brand heart.
"There we go! Now, have you ever done this before?"
"no."
"Okay, well I'll help you then. Here, give me your hand."
She takes my hand and puts it on my heart.
It's cold.
"Okay, now together we're going to prime it, okay?"
"alright."
"On three, we're going to gently but firmly squeeze for about one second, then we're going to let go. We'll do this three times and you'll be set, okay?"
"Three times. Got it."
"Alright, one... two... three," we squeeze and I feel
a rush of blood fill one of the chambers. It's warm.
"One... two... three," we squeeze again and my hand slips.
If she wasn't holding it I might have dropped it.
"Head rush, hey?" Her voice is fresh paint.
"Don't worry about it, that happens. Here, two hands now."
We both hold my heart with both hands each,
finger tips touching. Warm. And soft.
"One... two..." She looks at me, she's beautiful. "Three."
Her eyes are small globes, I see in them every place I want to be,
and her lips, a compass rose, a daytime northern star.
"There we go!"
Her words are sunlight at the mouth of a cave.
She tucks the blood lines back into my chest and the heart clicks into place.
"How are you feeling?"
What a question.
"How do I feel? I feel... I feel through a body that couldn't feel anything before you. I feel warm, I feel warmed, I feel like I was a boulder in a glacier, and this fresh blood has thawed me free. I feel like I am cascading down a mountain with no control over speed or aim. I feel like I have no control, I feel like I'm scared, I feel happy though. I feel happy that I feel."
She smiles, West to East, "that's good!"
"I feel!" I can't help but laugh, "I feel like your smile is a bed of coals that..."
"mmhmm?" She's waiting.
"Like your smile is an oasis in..."
"yes?"
"Your smile... is... oh."
"Oh?"
"Yeah."
"Does everything feel okay?"
"I don't know."
"****, okay, here, let me have another look."

She peeks inside my chest again and puts her ear to it.
She taps my bare heart with naked fingernail and pauses for a moment.
"Oh, shoot. We flooded it."
"yeah?"
"Yeah. It's no big deal, we just need to wait it out now. Should only take a little while."
My focus lands on the clock.
"but it's late. you should be closed."
She walks towards the coffee stained coffee maker and begins to pour.
"I love what I do," she says as she looks back at me, "I won't tell if you won't," and winks.
"alright."
"Want some coffee? It sometimes speeds up this whole thing."
"okay."
She fills another cup and walks back over to me, steam wafting behind her.
Silence.
A slight hum from the clock.
The sound of her blowing at her cup to cool it.
"So," she asks, "what do you think about after having someone else's hands on your heart?"
"umm, i'm not sure."
"I've never had to have it done, myself. I guess I'm just lucky. Do you think about anything?"
"uhh.."
Silence.
A slight hum from the clock.
The sound of her blowing at her cup to cool it.
"i'm thinking..."
She looks up from the paper cup.
"i'm thinking about how this table has four legs, and so do we, and how those legs," i'm an idiot, "..how those legs hold up two magazines, and ours hold up two people." i am an idiot. "and how those magazines were written by people, like us. and yet," hello, my name is help me, i’m an idiot. "and yet the table holds a better conversation than us right now, because i don't know what i'm thinking.”
"what i think," i tell her, "is that i'm an idiot."

She laughs, "Well I don't think you're an idiot, I don't think I ever would have thought of that. And I've even read through those magazines! Trust me, they aren't all that good for conversations."
"really?"
"Yeah, I mean, would you imagine the same person who writes instruction booklets and manuals," she picks up one of the magazines and tosses it down again, "would make for good conversation?"
"I guess not."
"Exactly, who wants everything to be so straightforward and objective? Might as well just be robots!"
"Yeah, I guess so."
"So, whe- wait, did you just laugh?"
"What?"
"Just then, I thought I heard you laugh. You did, didn't you?"
"No? I mean, maybe? I guess?"
"Good," she smiles, "that means it's working."
"Oh, that is good."
"Yep. So, where do you think you're going to take this thing?"
"What?"
"This heart. The one we just fixed. Well, the one that we're still waiting on to work again, but yeah."
"Where am I going to take it?"
"Yeah, like... Do you think you'll take it to Blake's coffee?"
"Down the street?"
"Yeah, that one."
"Um, I guess so. They've got good coffee."
"Do you think you'll maybe take it there tomorrow?"
"I mean, I can, I think."
"Say, around twelve thirty? I think that would be a good time. They pull their muffins out just before then so they'll be really fresh."
"I'll have to try one."
"I'll show you how to pick the best ones, there's a secret trick to it."
"You'll be there?"
"Maybe... I always go there for lunch."
"Mmm, that'll be nice."
"Hey! Look at that!"
"What?" What.
"You just smiled! And not even a little smirk, you really smiled! That's great!"
"Did I? Oh, I guess I did! I am!"
"Look at me again, tell me what you see. I mean, if you want to."
I do, I do, and I do.
"I see... your... face?"
She laughs. "Okay, what else?"
"I see... Wait, does it need to be something I see?"
"Oh, well, I guess not. You can tell me what you think about anything I gue-"
"Your laugh," I say, "is a flickering street light, and I a moth."
"Oh..." She watches me.
"Your breaths, while we held my heart, were slow tides, crawling in and out of my open chest."
She stares.
"And... Your smile..."
She smirks, then smiles.
"Your smile is tomorrow. It is a coffee shop date that I won't stop thinking about."
Silence.

"You know what I think?" She looks down.
"What do you think?"
"I think it worked. It sounds like your heart's working fine."
"I think so too."
"Are you dizzy?"
"No, not really. Am I supposed to be?"
"No, sometimes it happens and I'm not supposed to let anyone drive off if that's the case."
"Oh. I'm not driving."
"Are you being picked up?"
"No, I'm walking. I'm just a few blocks away. It's nothing."
"But it's raining."
"That's okay, I'm looking forward to how it'll feel, I don't know if I've ever really felt it before."
"Well, in that case," she walks around the office and begins turning lights off, "do you want to walk me home? I'm just a few blocks away too, but I hate the rain."
"Absolutely."
"Alright, are you ready?"
"Yes."
We walk out the door into the dark.

It's cold, and wet, and noisy. My feet are damp and the world looks lonely.
It's windy too, it's a wind that hates me. It's trying to push me into a post.
She locks the door behind us.
Steel bits moving into place to keep us out. To keep us outside in this cold.
"Whew!" She pulls up her collar, "it's more windy than I thought!"
"Yeah, it's cold, isn't it?"
"It didn't look this cold from inside either. What do you think? Still want to walk me home?"
"I... It's really dark."
"Oh."
"It's cold too, and windy."
She looks at a puddle.
"It's dark and cold and windy and the world feels lonely and miserable, and I don't know if I've ever felt like this before, but I don't like it for what it seems to be."
Silence.
"...but even though it's dark your voice is sunlight," I grab her hand. "And it might be cold but your hands are warm."
She looks at me again, it's dark but I think she's smiling.
"And I know the wind won't let us keep still but you made my still heart beat again, and even if this world is as lonely as it feels right now you're here and that's enough for me, so yes, I would love to walk you home. I don't know if I've ever wanted anything more."
"Good," she squeezes my hand, "me too."

In every tribe and culture, a wedding is cause for a celebration. And all of those celebrations involve some degree of negotiation among the couple, their families, their cultures and their traditions to make the experience meaningful and powerful for everyone.

Rabbi Adam Greenwald, director of the Miller Introduction to Judaism program at American Jewish University, said when it comes to Jewish nuptials, even born-Jews will have differences. Is one a secular Zionist and the other Modern Orthodox? Reform and Conservadox? The combinations seem endless.

But, for Jews by Choice, there is the added wrinkle of following Jewish practice while making sure beloved non-Jewish family and friends feel included.

When Jazmine Green, who went through the Miller program, and Jeremy Aluma started planning their Jewish wedding, Jazmine’s Catholic mother revealed that she had always dreamed of watching Jazmine’s father walk their daughter down the aisle. The Jewish practice of having both the bride’s parents walk her to the chuppah and remain there with the groom and his family throughout the ceremony was unfamiliar and she resisted it.

Greenwald, who each year officiates at the weddings of 15 to 20 couples in which one person is a Jew by Choice, often meets with non-Jewish families early in the preparation process to talk through these issues and answer questions. He recognizes that, for some parents, there is real sadness when a child chooses a different faith.

“I try to honor those complex emotions and assure them I only want to help create a special, meaningful day for everyone,” he said.

He suggests couples create booklets to explain Jewish terms for attendees who may not be familiar with them and that they make sure the officiating rabbi offers a few sentences of context before each stage of the wedding. These can range from a word about the Sheva Brachot, or Seven Blessings, to explaining to a Christian family that a traditional ketubah is written in Aramaic, the language spoken during the time of Jesus, as Rabbi Anne Brener, professor at the Academy for Jewish Religion, California, has done.

Of course, the wedding itself is not a classroom. Jazmine and Jeremy Aluma kept their printed program informal and friendly with questions such as, “What’s up with the circling?” Their explanation of the ketubah concluded, “It also puts a monetary value on Jazmine’s head so she can hold it over Jeremy for the rest of their lives.” About the glass-smashing, they wrote, “If you’re a Jew, you know that as a people, we’ve overcome adversity and make up a thriving global community. Being torn apart encourages us to grow and gives us the opportunity to come back stronger and more resilient than before. We break a glass as a symbol of this natural process.”

Des Khoury, another student of Greenwald’s, and Moshe Netter found a way to recognize many of their families’ traditions in their ceremony and afterward. They were married by Moshe’s father, Rabbi Perry Netter, who explained to the guests that the chuppah, which symbolized the house Des and Moshe were creating, was open on all sides to indicate that everyone was welcome.

Des is a first-generation American. Her father is Lebanese-Egyptian and her mother Armenian; her family’s faith tradition is Catholic. Her wedding program included ways to express congratulations in Hebrew, English, French, Arabic and Armenian. And after the ceremony, Des and Moshe emerged from yichud, or their moment alone, to the horah, followed by an Armenian song and folk dance, and then an Arabic tune. By that time, she said, everyone was dancing.

The material of the chuppah itself can be inclusive. Brener said she once officiated at a wedding beneath traditional Ecuadorian fabric brought to Los Angeles by the groom’s Catholic family.

Music, explanations and words of welcome are nice, but when it comes to actual participation by non-Jews, every officiating rabbi will have his or her own halachic opinion. Because the marriage liturgy itself can be completed in about 10 minutes, many feel there’s room to add appropriate ritual. The mothers of Des and Moshe, for example, lit a unity candle under their children’s chuppah.

Jessica Emerson McCormick, who was born into a Jewish family, researched clan tartans before her marriage to Patrick McCormick, whose Catholic family is Scotch-Irish. Jessica and her mother found a festive blue, red and yellow pattern, and had it woven into a length of cloth and made into a custom tallit for Patrick, as well as special kippot for him and his father to wear at the wedding.

Along with that plaid tallit, Jessica and Patrick’s ceremony included several rabbi friends reading the traditional Seven Blessings in Hebrew, followed by members of Patrick’s family reading English translations. Both of Jessica’s children from a previous marriage were on the bimah, and her son wrote and read his own interpretation of the seventh blessing.

Rabbi Susan Goldberg at Wilshire Boulevard Temple said having non-Jews read translations of the Sheva Brachot is “a nice way to include friends and family in the ceremony.”

Because all translation is a kind of interpretation, Greenwald said he also approves of participants riffing on the basic idea of a blessing to create something that especially speaks to the couple. He finds that the needs of the couple can get lost while they’re making sure everyone else is happy, and sees one of his jobs as helping them stay focused on what they need, how they can be kind and compassionate, but still have the wedding they desire.

“The most important thing,” he said, “is that the couple under the chuppah have a powerful, meaningful experience of commitment.”

Because the wedding day marks a transition to what Jewish tradition sees as a new life, many rabbis encourage couples to go to the mikveh before the ceremony. Often for Jews by Choice, it’s their first visit since their conversion and a chance to reflect on how much has changed since then.

It wasn’t clear at first that Patrick would choose to become Jewish. When he did decide, Jessica said, his family was supportive. Like the families of the other Jews by Choice interviewed for this article, his parents were happy that he had chosen to include religion in his life.

Des, who said she spent years searching for a spiritual practice that felt right to her, also found her parents accepting. “To them, it’s all prayer and God. They’ve even started looking forward to invitations to Shabbat dinner.”

Jazmine’s mother, too, witnessed her daughter’s spiritual seeking and was glad that she found a place that felt like home. In recognition of that, she even gave up her front-row seat and walked with her husband and daughter to take her place under the unfamiliar chuppah.

The officiating rabbi, Ari Lucas of Temple Beth Am, spoke to Jazmine and Jeremy about coming together with the support of their community. He reminded the guests that they were there not just to witness. Together, this mix of family and friends, cultures, languages and traditions would help — and go on helping — the couple begin their new life together.

read more:www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses

www.marieaustralia.com/evening-dresses

we may be the generation
of the next
shakespeares,
curies,
vernes,
einsteins,
akeleys,
sagans.

h­ow can we be boiled down
to a 'standard'?

and when we refuse to stomach
this diluted broth you have served us,
it is force-fed:
teargas for forks,
riot shields for spoons,
tasers for knives;
until our tongues are so awfully burnt
that all we may say is this:

'we are the standard generation.
we are the future for the past.
we have standard answers to extraordinary problems.'

leaders say change will come in
2014,
2015,
2020,
2030,
2050,
please ensure that the numbers on your booklets
match those on your answer sheets.

we will bubble 'a' for global warming,
'b' for the debt crisis,
'c' for war and famine,
but this is a test we didn't study for.

ever since i could remember
i would answer crosswords
in the newspaper
and fill in the tiny
vertically and horizontally
stacked boxes
with letters
that formed words
that made sense.
i would play connect the dots
in childish booklets
wherein i'd always
be able to
connect the dots.

moments i spent
with these silly games
and petty riddles,
have definitely not prepared me
for you.
never have i come across
anything as
…puzzling.

you are a jigsaw.

many times i thought
that i could be able
to complete you.
but then, every single time
i try to piece you together
i always end up
blankly staring
at the jumbled up mess
i leave myself with.
now, i realize
that i endlessly try
to create things
that will never
have the slightest chance
of making sense to me.
maybe not yet.

the more i try
to understand you,
the more i ask myself
if you will be worth it
because i’ve spent
too many nights
and have wracked my brain
way too hard
trying to solve a code
that i know
i could never crack.

(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 26, 2017)

In a square tomb attached to a 21st century dwelling, archaeologists have uncovered a massive trove of artifacts related to what they believe is an ancient deity called Chēr:

1. Something called a “Cher Makeup Head” which researchers believe is actually an altar piece for greasepaint and grooming ceremonies.

2. Over 75 circular shaped and mostly, but not all, black colored vinyl plates which were most likely used for holy feasts.

3. Eight 12-inch hard-plastic statuettes of the deity complete with various diminutive and sequined polyester costumes allegedly used at one time for ceremonial recreations of sacred and historical events.

4. One male statuette of a man with a mustache. Scientists are not sure the role of this statuette but believe he might have represented either the deity's male concubine, nemesis or svengali.

5. Various plastic cases with shiny discs inside. According to materials included in tiny booklets inside the plastic cases, these discs were used in some storytelling apparatus that projects sound and images onto a kind of archaic screen. These stories are believed to be mythologies related to this particular deity.

6. A miniature temple made of orange and blue plastic. The temple has various pieces that are very difficult to assemble but once constructed form a structure with revolving stages and rooms. Archaeologists believe this temple was used in conjunction with the small hard plastic statuettes in ceremonial recreations.

7. One shelf of bound manuscripts labeled “biography.” Researchers believe these books were bibles, possibly from contrasting religious sects, containing all mythologies and theories related to the deity creation story.

8. Various ceremonial pieces of clothing, mostly highly causal wear, usually white in color with some image of the deity on the front and a list of dates on the back. We believe these dates represent either major weather events or memorable war battles that took place during the deity’s lifetime.

9. Large scale representations of the deity, rolled up and stored in cardboard tubings.

10. Small boxes of perfumes, lotions and shampoos believed to be healing ointments, salves and meditative balms created by the deity or her representatives.

Thousands of other relics from other deities have been found in similar houses around the world since excavations of the 21st century have begun. There seems to have been no consensus in the 21st century around one or two deities. There are literally hundreds of them in storage facilities and tombs, and in some cases, domestic interpretive museums.

I looked with the intent to hear his thoughts-
Both of us held used booklets.

"She symbolizes passivity," he,
in acquiescence, whispered.

My espionage, my love, won thusly:
Before his whisp'ring ceased,

Great passivity fell like a curtain
Between that sweet boy and me.

Before you begin an essay the first thing you need is a topic. Once you have that its easy.
Or is it? I'm here to argue that it ******* is not.
When you are given the slightest glimpse as to what an essay even is, around age 10 or 11, you are taught the hamburger method.
                                                                 The top of the bun: Your intro.
                                                                   The tomato: Your first point.
                                                                      The lettuce: Second point.
                                                 The meat: Your last and probably strongest point.
                                                         The bottom of the bun: Your conclusion.
Although some methods and structures are different this is a summation of what I was taught in elementary school. I continued with this idea that while writing an essay all you had to write was your opinion on a certain subject.
When I arrived at high school my first two English teachers were less then willing to add upon this "hamburger technique". They gave me the A I wanted and didn't give any notes of improvement.
I was convinced that I was on the right track.
When I started my third year of English my teacher arrived with a rude awakening and a failing mark.
Confused, digging and shuffling through the relentless amount of sheets she'd given me I tried to figure out the rhythm of writing an essay.
I looked around. Some students had no clue, while others grasped the concept as if it were their birthright.
                                  I, however,
                                                    continued to fall
                                                                             into a swirl
                                                                                            of do's and don'ts
                                                                                                                        for writing an essay.
All the sheets mentioned all kinds of things. But in the midst of all these possibilities there still wasn't
          
                                                                               a clear answer.

The sheets and booklets I'd received seemed to talk down to me with words that even though I knew and understood were now foreign to me.
The overwhelming need to prove that I could write an essay always bit softly at the back of my head. And when finally faced with the challenge the need chewed deeper and harder. Confusion setting in once more.
Leaving everything I was taught about essays

                                                                                     as a big
                                                    sloppy,
                                                          
                                                                                 blurry,
                                                           jumbled
                                                                                                       mess.
                                      Filled with words that made me feel
                                          
                                                                                                                 completely stupid.
                                                                             And rules that made me feel

                                                  suffocated and limited.

None of my friends are coming home.
They’re too busy sleeping.
I’ve fallen awake and woke asleep.
Reality’s just another feeling.
False idols & complete cornerstones.
I’ve given everything.
Spirits and bodies call upon light.
To transcend almost anything.

Smudges on film.
Booklets to memories.
I won’t, I Will.
Turn over pages to find our reveries.
Rolls of tape.
Boxes with old books.
Photograph an old face.
And colour in lines we mistook.
For comfort.

Never change, just do it.
Complicate needs to breath deep.
See happiness as a risk.
Fill up spaces where bodies meet.
Friends can’t ever not be.
So I stand outside in wait.
No time to not be you and me.
I place my faith in day old hate.
Let’s walk forever.
But never move.

Poetry Reading in Oslo
Never had the lack of talent exhibited itself in so many poets.
I'm referring to a poetry fest in Oslo- years ago- for whom
Norwegian was not their first language.
On a wooden table booklets of third-rate poetry trying to
look invisible disowning the poet's feeble effort to make
words sing. The poetry reading was disrupted the readers
a military band next door a blessing for the listeners of
trite words of love. Among the naïve public, women looking
for *** with young poets thinking it was romantic.
What a moth-eaten group of poets assembled in this cold and
indifferent land, hope is when they came home sat down and
through hard work gave birth to poetry.

Some say the sonnets a dead form ¦ on yellowed pages and booklets torn,
Pentarchy shed and slain, replaced ¦ by memes I'm bicc, dat boi, he based

In synaptic pools, and neural spools, ¦ with cool *** claws, and digital jewels;
we set as one, booked up our sole ¦ while tindr/grindr take their toll

On sultry pages cast to withered dust ¦ while leaves left golden crust,
the muttered lines unbound escape ¦ to Tengri's starry 'voided gape

I think I am, I am I think, ¦ with wink and shirk and nod and drink
and cough, we splutter NoStros verse ¦ as fiery Gaia suffers curse

But then again, who are but we? ¦ a single sound, a drop in sea,
a dangling solace sharp in key, ¦ a lonesome sold for wired fee

When finally, undone we are ¦ our freedom sold, our chains bizzarre;
I'm caught between two planes that part ¦ a Second Life, and First (too dark)

So when again we sit and talk ¦ and fill the space with idle balk;
I'll notice parts of you I've missed ¦ and seek a comfort long dismissed

So when again we meet and stray ¦ to thoughts of hidden brevity;
I'm happy knowing it's just me ¦ Unhappiness my major key.

So finally, I'll try again ¦ to feel the pain, the roots and then
Pretty Pimpin? Scrimpin' life amock¦ Sat at home with screen and sock.

Second -hand smoke

it doesn’t bother me

anymore.

After all both of my parents

smoke

smoked

smoke

******.

I could name

so many people that I know

walking around with packs

of cancer sticks

in their back pockets.

All the people that

I have

walked with

behind

careful not the breathe too deeply.

All the people that

I have

talked with

kept quiet

inhaling and exhaling

in perfectly murderous synchronization

I want to *** a smoke

cancer stick

like you used to smoke

swallow their lighters

little booklets of matches

burn apart from the inside out

drowning in my own blood

Arms, are waiting.
Lips, are waiting.
Myself, is awaiting.
Are you ready?

Baby, are you?

Hands, are waiting.
Waiting to touch you, feel you.
And caress you too.
The question is, are you ready?

We don't need books to teach us.
We can do this ourselves.
Strange others need booklets to read to learn ways to please.

Pericles exposes: "Content of enchantment I receive your gift, arts, letters where you have to visit a sacred replied that I have made here in the Empyrium, here the Republic will boast of ancient theaters by the hand of Phidias that you will have entrusted to you. Our north has been traced in this replica of the Acropolis or Parthenon, which awaits us in the long chain of Colargos. Behold, I have resumed the descendants that live behind the lion's hooks, and of your name Strategoi whom I have acclaimed to see you perceive you more than silence from those who never knew of your prowess, and your incidence of Gaugamela and Delphi, you must to know that huge Lepidoptera brought me your messages every day of unknown liturgy that I only expected after your investiture, and then to be received here together with Themistocles, that the vulnerabilities would never revert to the disadvantage of Greece because the safeguard of interest is to beat up our surrounded land, not land and sea; but of famous Hoplites who are the ones who have contained the edges of each border, but not of the Areopagus where I had to see you in your Ekklesia or assembly and classicism insult that succumbed with the interference of the Achaemenides. Nothing will I dare to be equal to when redoing or undoing what memory only has to stick to my science, but what do my hands think more than the same thing I did or shouldn't have done...? We are guarantors of our solace and mendicant stay here where you have been privileged to be brought by your Mashiach, and by me for all the declined attempts or opposite that you see in the Sun with his wealth; and all that we have been able to recover from its insignificant parts of those fleeting flashes of democracy, in the Micro Empyrean I have also duplicated the marble that does not compare to Oenidea in the Gulf of Corinth, or of resolved ideas to face in the Peloponnese. There I could see that I could never observe you if someone had recruited you because he had no advice or formats of your existence to bring you. Your storms were already propelling you over the skies of Greece, where there was never time and space that was denied to you, but who belongs to the chroniclers who did not know you until you propelled your Parapsychologies with your Corinthian helmet, and the pompous Light that expanded when they cut the flanks of the world with your Xiphos. What incompatibilities could be added to this old discernment, by tomorrow you will be back on Patmos, and I could clear you from a ministerial or skillful congressional decree to highlight the contentious bodies that want to join all of Greece, with more life than they have fallen and take advantage of its heritage. Perchance a phoro or tax, which relieves the girdling of a mandate that runs with the same vigor of your steed to take it to its bare sender.

The sacred wars have given you the approval that is sensed in the oracles of the world, more than the edicts of a sporadic Apocalypse that will be reversed in the Kassotides. And that the oracles will be invisible particles that file and distill what tends to extinguish a conservative policy and maintenance of the kingdom that survives here in the empyrean. Namely and officially, all the depths of our ocean will never be able to cover up what the owners of their appearance or betrayal will merit to cower by hitting each other's elbows. My fleet will have great limits to take beyond the imaginable with your garments and virtues, as Sóter or Strategoi that vindicates the self-revelation of crushing with politics an alliance that is managed by a will governed by the real sense of Will spread further afield than any personal interest. At the bottom of the treasury, you will find an Acropolis with its priestess canephora and basket full of delicacies, subordinated to a treasury that pours on all the roofs of Greece the profits that will spread everywhere to your new abode, far from the antagonistic factions that, although they show a toast at sunset with your glasses full of must from your servant Pericles. I am and will be a witness that I will deny or that nothing and no one can deny you, because you are part of Hellas, where it's packed rattles roar that will bring bleating and screams of Prometheus, due to such immensity of a Greece that also abounds in the Divine Heaven.
Stay away from Hetaira and Aspasia, otherwise, they could unseat you from your purged being, which can confuse hunger with the icy frenzy of your human impulses, more than the Lacedaemonian wielders who fight for your skinned serge, for new accounts to surrender to otherness with Alcibiades if you find yourself near any wasteland here in the Empyrean. Already the fertilized land of Demeter is proof of a slip of flower clusters that have become encysted in Persephone's locks, and that it is already Equinox! The winds are strongest at more than seventy centimeters from the sheaf that brushes your hands, they are more ferocious if it is that the skies that fall before your eyes when they are more dependent on land, which has an intractable dry well of fewer than seventy centimeters…!

I will donate the Parthenon to you, the harvest and the gracious gesture of it will not tire of your determination to surrender to its perfection so that it may be optimized. On the present day of 323 B.C. C. the ashes of Alexander the Great of Macedonia fall into our hands, and Vernarth his commander, together with my fleets of thousands and thousands of Syntagmas, with the allegory of Camels and cowbells, will take your sheep together to your Kafersesuh or manger that only has a promiscuous thirst for brave odors of piety, if it is from the plausible future to write everything that I have told you today of the Duoverse on a puny Ostracon, writing your obsequies of what I will have to exile to the border of the sooty Angels so they don't have to intimidate you. All the lands belong to you and plead for your guardians, who in the hour of your departure have fled farther from the entangled leaders. Today I have addressed, and I have harangued you, leaving to your possession my own pecuniary, and duty of Hegemon that I would leave no one else from the Kathartyrium, and pecuniary so that they promote you with my purging bordering on your celebrity by enlightening me in the Stars of Athens "

At the culmination of the course, when he let go of the Mashiach's hand, Vernarth dropped from a strong and fast scene of Othónes or screens, which made him fall to a vacant farmhouse called amphiprostyles; with porticoes and snowy columns that made him green at his feet and above all his will that was preparing for the Opistho that precisely protected his Energeia of rest, which was his great treasure that will carry him through all the ages, times, spaces and galaxies of the which with his gnosis could accumulate it from the God of all who goes more to the other side of the divinity, who can be contained in a mural in which the entire universe goes to embed itself of all physical and material forms, here is the philosophy of a Universal man that appeared with great similarity to the scattered spaces of Parapsychology instilled by the conspicuous Parerga and Paralipomena; of which he vindicates his versar by saying that intelligence is not capable of monopolizing more than the ego itself that cannot stand itself, for this reason that in his collection on the shelf of this space he places it next to the hybrid booklet of Messolonghi's Koumeterium, on this versed metaphysics here not degraded of the minimum parts, adorning them with the largest microparticles of what is made up in murky and intermittent beats of the unviable of the soul, and etheric body that would now sustain it. The reason for these inclusions were supplements, and quilts that will be put in the universe to rest with this work. The soul of this mission would be read by the most daring professor decipherer…, The Messiah! that lay on the slopes of the Talamí river, or paths of leaves through this river of leaves that carried all the parchments of books from the creative world, of which these will be randomly in the ascending areas that traveled on this selected *****, and later they will be read by the Messiah and Vernarth. The generalization of this celestial philosophy was summarized in booklets that were growing, whose reality surpassed the unreal, making it the most evident stratum of a posthumous theory, and discernment that promotes the paths of the Opistodomos of the Talami universe, and its leaves that bring riches of all the literary works, architectural musicals and all art that is enrolled in the science of its unmistakable reality with the same presence of all the worshipers of Liberty from where its primary sanctified origin is born, more than any treaty of a work that should go through all the static of the world being able to do what they deserve by having in their hands the same book Schopenhauer's Parerga that sustains the entire world, and Vernarth that maintains the Universe of fusion called Duoverse with the exclaimed doctrine breaking the inertia and static of what reality becomes before your Being, of what is present is of any dimension of the body and its existential relativity. Of all that it cogitates or not, it could be individualized and alternate with the freedom that the object thinks by itself. In this evanescent instant, the aerial masses of the internal warm air of the Iridescent Nimbus addressed the absorption of the sapphic limit of the Opistodomos, in such a way that the words could have verses that could be long and short as a single in the womb of everything created..., The universe has been dismantled on its own implied, however, it folds…! That from the remains of your soul wounded in occasional disasters revives because what you saw is the light of heaven. In this way, the sapphic element swirled above everything that was not holistic, which was only going to collapse on the ground of ignorance that was beginning to rebuild itself. The obvious explicitness made all the beauty in the world fleeting and ephemeral, but Vernarth recomposed it with the seeds of the Talami leaves, and the garrulousness of the tributary of flax leaves and pasted leaves of wisdom that ran through the nominal and famous matte, wide and short.

ARE YOU THERE ELVIS? IT’S ME, MICHELLE
by Michelle Awad


My grandmother only
cries
in the face of death,
and even then,
it is shrouded in
laughter,
like her body is 
rejecting
the notion.



I have come to 
understand

that this

is hereditary.

Now.

An appointment card 
arrives

in the mail for you,

she breaks down; 
“Blue Christmas” plays

through the car stereo,

she breaks down; 
she doesn’t sleep, she thinks

she can hear you

moaning and coughing

in the next room. Yesterday,

my aunt asked her 
a question,
and she told her

she didn’t know,
to go ask 
you.


I remember your hands, 

as dandelion wishes, and

the smell of 
lawn clippings,
and
a stack of 
word search puzzle booklets

on your side table, but 

I never catch myself

talking about you

in the present tense.

It's something
I deeply wish
was hereditary.

When does it get better
When will the tides change
I glance through old leaves
Booklets reminding me
Of when I whispered your name.

And now no longer
Its just me in my rose colored light
Amid new crowds
New friends
New food
But not really.

It is hard to sleep tonight
I think and read into most things
My paranoia always getting the best of me
I feel as though you fly high
With your likes
And the past tells me
I feel as if everything tells me
And its in those moments
Where the darkness within my soul takes over
And with fleeting hands I have to
Fight my way out.

I guess there isn't a ******* thing I can do
Except for push forward and through
In this ******* ******' difficult *** time
That no one can really fathom
I've never felt more alone.

In the mirror late in the night
I'd come home and disrobe
Glitter on my cheeks.

I thought I was going to keep getting better at this
But the desire for love and approval
It just grows like a bone
Enveloped in
A real lack
Of motion.

I look around me at this city
And I think
Two more years
So I'll let the little hard moments go
Where I worry and I fear
I read deeply into behavior
Or fight the feeling of solitude
Well its not even the aloneness I fear
I prefer my own thoughts and company
But it is the fear of not being valued
That keeps me up
Into these late hours
The city humming all 8 floors beneath me
And calling the past on the phone
When there is no need.

But who wouldn't
If they were me
I can't expect anyone to understand
And I thought to myself
So vehemently this weekend
So stop
So stop expecting and wanting
Searching, reaching, needing
And reassure
Be there
Give
To just you.

You don't have to share anything
Tell all your tales
You don't need to
Its all your own
So just find power in that.

I felt badly for Pola for losing her father in a bowling accident when he was 38. He must've been a good man because just after his death the bowling alley was destroyed in a landslide that also took out a small *******. Pola seldom speaks of him anymore since she quit bowling and vowed to catalogue the 5,000 booklets in his library that inform young soldiers on the benefits of contracting venereal disease. Pola knew instinctively that she wanted no part of V.D. even though her 3 brothers loved being afflicted with chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis. "My sons were fools for deliberately ******* diseased prostitutes." Pola's mother wrote on a blood-stained mattress with a purple crayon 2 days before jumping to her death from the top of the Washington Monument when she was 67.

I felt badly for Pola for losing her father in a bowling accident when he was 38. He must've been a good man because just after his death the bowling alley was destroyed in a landslide that also took out a small *******. Pola seldom speaks of him anymore since she quit bowling and vowed to catalogue the 5,000 booklets in his library that inform young soldiers on the benefits of contracting venereal disease. Pola knew instinctively that she wanted no part of V.D. even though her 3 brothers loved being afflicted with chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis. "My sons were fools for deliberately ******* diseased prostitutes." Pola's mother wrote on a blood-stained mattress with a purple crayon 2 days before jumping to her death from the top of the Washington Monument when she was 67.