it's a college party
even though i never finished and the rest of y'all are spending money you don't have on the ingredients necessary for homemade sangria so you can drink the crippling anxiety of not knowing how to pay off your student loans away

there's a man living in a tent in the backyard, and i'm pretty sure we put one too many pieces of scrap wood in that very-hard-to-maintain bonfire. that has to be a metaphor for the state of most of our lives. stop throwing things i'm unprepared for in what already feels like a situation that is going to **** me.

is this a literal housewarming

i'm drunk, and sitting on the deck, counting the christmas lights. i smell ****, and there are white people dancing and singing to blink 182 inside.

i paint my name on a drywall with a brush and canisters i find on my way to the living room, where i'm asked to referee a game of beer pong. i lose interest quickly.

i scroll through my phone, sober enough not to text you but drunk enough to desperately want to. someone sits down next to me because i've apparently become that person at the party.

i talk about rent with a guy who really wants to connect on the fact that we're both middle eastern, even though i'm not middle eastern. he smells like PBR and completely believes what he's saying. he says he's proud of me for following my dreams of coming to new york and that he likes my "crazy hair" and that he wants to **** me.

i raise my eyebrows, more in disgust than interest, but he then takes his perceived cue to shamelessly ask me if i have a ******. i don't, and i leave before he brainstorms any alternatives i am just as aversive to.

ironically, i find a ****** dispenser attached to a tree on the walk to the subway. considering the amount of catcalling i experienced on the way to the station, my level of discomfort is amplified by the fact that the neighbourhood literally, physically implies, ******* is going to happen in the streets. it's 2am, and i just want to go home. and i'm sitting on the J train, recalling everyone who's told me it's shady and unreliable and makes you feel like you're going to die.

a few months later, i am nicknamed J train.

By Joseph Childress

Sometimes, brainstorms
Are calming enough
The flower expected
Doesn't even have to blossom
The muddy water
Is a composition itself
Deep music waves
With Earth to keep you grounded
These wetlands
Can be depressing
Your impression
Becomes obvious
In the form of footprints
Imprints from bare feet
Rare feats are expected
But walking
When the rain storms
Is sometimes, calming enough

I have been trying to think of ways to say 'I love you' on paper
without writing outside the lines.
There is much more to the way the blinds paint sunlight on your body
than beat up notebooks and chewed up pencils.
I make a lot of mistakes,
the kind that rubber only smears but doesn't erase.
I didn't mean to crumple your delicate skin like paper.
I know that paper comes from trees,
yet all the poems that make me think of you do nothing
to help me breathe, and your touch only proves
that my breath is easier to take away than you'd like to believe.
Forgive me for being comprised almost entirely of errors and mistakes and strikethroughs with red pens,
While you are so clean and refined.
I think of you in cursive.
Take my trembling wrists in your strong fingers
and guide me with a steady and patient hand.
Teach me to love you in bold print and I will underline it three times,
and again,
and again,
and again.
In my head, you are a million brainstorms thrown into waste buckets,
and if for some strange reason Helvetica is the only way to make you almost understand my thoughts,
then I am typing furiously and waiting for you to see them all.
All I ever wanted was to fill the doubles spaces between your fingers with my own,
even though sometimes you wish you could
backspace the words you didn't mean to say to me
while I pretend I don't remember them.
I have been trying to think of ways to say 'I love you' on paper
without writing outside the lines.
Then I ripped up the paper, scribbled it on a napkin,
and wiped the blood off my face with it instead.

the thoughts in my head are as numerous
as the stars scattered across the sky.
when I brainstorm
rain begins to fall.
inklings of ideas
send shivers down my spine.
I soak up some as possibilities,
throw others away in half a blink.
and then, some days:
a single thread of Lightning
finds its way through the storm,
guiding a handpicked bouquet of ideas
into a colorful tapestry.
it is my Maker,
weaving my words into rocky streams.
stories finding their way onto paper
as they flow from their Mountain source.

Standing beneath black skies' hush,
cold rains' fall a stimulating touch
bringing rise to forbearance
forcing stormcells to pressured positions
above our expanse.
These words escape to nothing.

Thick air mixed in
with each vowel of smoke,
straining to glimpse beyond
those choked fragments.
I caught your shadow
skirting the edge of visions
and slipping past my bounds.
You were cloaked in millennia,
time soaked from downpours
seemingly lost of origins,
be they long past
or still forecast,
you were,
falling drops rolling
from silken hair
still bruised in memory,
forgoing present presentation
to reacquaint opportunity
with overlooked encounters.

Soaked to soul,
the ripples spread quick
stepping to the plane of...

...wait,
where are you...

when are we...

...will you be?..

...or have we been
lost in relativity
and escaping in
each word I breathe.
Comprehension critical,
compassionate clouds constantly
reminding of drowning you out,
professing this changing view
in hallowed hurricane whispers.

An angel you became,
living upon these grounds
your plague, living on,
earthly existence anathema,
each second foreword
another progression of
decreeing beating heart
a final concerto, Ava Maria
your soliloquy, serenading
dreams in a missing tongue,
with dying tone
and a pulse set out for loan.
Loneliness my investment,
appreciating until the light was blinding,
pain breaking anthems,
scaling back to feed off
what was left.

I missed our true nature until it was reflex,
illumination only brief glimpses of a passed future,
grief developing to timelines sutures,
bleeding blending was
and has,
with will be still the memory
I'm forced to foresee.

Broken in neutrality,
droplets still caressing the shadow
skirting the corner of my eye.
Your life was short,
I let us die far too young.
Consider it your sacrifice,
the reason for the crying clouds
whose pain soothes these brainstorms
vented through cigarette breaks
wasted pouring words
to howling winds.

Water. Words.
Slipping through my fingers when I want to catch them.
Relieving me of my thirst... brainstorms.
Unstoppable when emotions take hold of the reigns.


Girls. Poets.
The words that come out of your mouth,
are not ones you simply mean.
They wear masks, hiding away true feelings.

beautiful
beginnings
beget
buoyant
bubbles -
                           becoming
                           bold,
                          better
                          ­beliefs
bask
brightly
beneath
brilliant
brainstorms

- Vijayalakshmi Harish
   25.01.2013
   Copyright © Vijayalakshmi Harish

Give me a pen paper in watch me **** the
Ink once it hits the sheets
Get it this style aint unique
So blink im shuttin' out brains
So ya even cant think
Im the devious dangerous poetic terrorist
So all others can bite the dust
Leave ya stiff as old pizza crust i cant even trust
My own gotdamn self my mind is light years ahead of the game
By the time the catch up all the see is the flames
No smokes but the **** i **** take notes
As i hit you with atomic bomb antedote most cant handle the pain i drop from my brain
Mental epilepsy got em going insane
Hits harder than ******* no shame
To keep my adversaries in pain
Face adversities everyday so im.using to get hate so **** what they say
Im diabolical superior intellectual
Beatin muthaphukkas so bad
They loose they own ******
Preference or agenda **** Propaganda
I stand ya and ill slam ya
In the gravel like a punch from the judges gavel
Milleniums of quotes travel in my mind as it speed
Give me this power thats all in my head
As i read
Out aloud brainstorms without a cloud
Palms filled with the worlds waters and lands
Wrappin up contraband even in Japan
I could make earthquakes wake
Because my lyrical content shakes n wakes
All the masses
Appear to me with *******
I shatter ya soul like broken glasses daily i take passes
From another dimension fools get stuck n detention when i mention
Lyrics rollin off the tip of tongue
Mental lynching
Brains pench clear the bench
Like professor x using his intellect to select
What he wants to control
Yosef is too bold to fold been to war
So i know scold
Politics ******* the mrs devil ****
Imma keep ****** off the media
Til.i touch my casktet drastic fantastic
Gun poppins
What ya see is what ya get
Not talkin dramatics im speakin automatic
Rifles let go as im spittin bullet holes in my foe
Leave em dizzy and wozzy got ya ****** body bubblin' like a jacuzzi dont lose me
When i start to go kick a flow that entice any evil
Dont need to be clarified of this
Dont ya know yosef be the poetic terrorist
Poetic terrorist !!!!

Seventeen.. it all feels so different yet the same...
I remember all the friends and fires that came
And the ones that left, mistakes I made
I recant them here under stratospheric shade
Under dark of night and heavy rain
Restating thoughts of bliss and pain
I remember blood rains and dragon tails
Wolves, foxes, a tiger or two, my imagination never fails
Together with my brother I've carried it all
Through brainstorms and stories tall.

bright ....butterfly.......talent
.....flicking tongues
of ......allitrative illustratation
unsure..... of present improv
packaging.....puckers lips to pout and preen....
........grunge moth in hoodie
comes to sauce the play....
tounge twister fandango
...... paperlace lizards ...dreaming...days streamin by....
all the mouths....... of ritual making.......
fourth wall breaking. ..
.....accummulate the method
scribe..... to the write
........formulate the figure...
linguate the lyrical....
left..... to the pintered flighted sighs.....
.....shake the speare this night
with finger drumming colour rhythms..... reveal the reasoned might ........of the fledgling dramaturg.....
foot stomping . ...posse blighted ....... brainstorms
.  .burn limelight bright burn...
throw your fleeting..... searing glow....on these little dramatic vacations from lifes realities.....
freezeframe ......moments.....
......of luducrosity..... and. . humming allocentricity ......
....egos pay homage to floor
door and wall...
drink..... the life ....the love ........the fear
pinprick and bucket dance it ......come one ..... come all.
learn the art of the comic pratfall ...... here at the home
of drama 171 improv
. ....by the pants of your seat
and other mellowed..... dramatic.......completes

What a time capsules mission was,
was ours as well, as our lives,
measured going in,
mind state measured going out, measured coming back,
once we opened your will to wonder what we say the mission is, was it…
When
measured growing old, mentally augmented since the laying on of hands.

Some body believed, they burned all the crutches and wheel chairs,
we all heard the stories of those strangers healed and walked away,

by and by, we grow a knowing kind of religious net, we import miracles,
we make words come to self fulfilling prophetical perfect sense, until,

the incompetence of a particular kind of literalist, literature as real lessons,
learned on levels deeper than the silver screen can command,
as one reads Psalm 15 and the parable of the talents with the same angel.
hide, and watch, words,
live in tiny bubbles, times and seasons take scale,
powers of ten,
and then again a billion times a second
in four billion breaths in
and four billion breaths out, all in cadence, mortal coil chorus of average.

We the people, current idiom,
we the earthling sapient word and number users;

Brainstorms tickle our will to undermine liars, calling life impossible
to enjoy as much as many nobodies do.
Or did before my grave was opened.

Folders, name tags, catered coffee—
new ones fade into the last.
Brainstorms, flip-charts, colored markers;
tracing time until it’s past.

Endless satisfaction surveys;
client-focused, data-driven…
rubrics, group collaborations,
ceaseless presentations given.

Is this hell? Or am I dreaming
while the seconds crawl toward death.
Has our closure yet been offered?
(as we wait with bated breath…)

Some day will we gain credentials?
Will we do this in the heavens?
Shall the Lord, upon completion
turn our sixes into sevens?

Would I (as a soul in limbo)
recommend to peers this training?
Yes I would. With one condition:
only save what’s worth retaining.

All I can seem to do is write these songs
Read all day creating brainstorms
I try to surpass the things of old
The habitual desires that wants to dwell in my soul

I wont lie my spirit is worn
But through my inspiration i find strength in a poem
Bt what will i write only God knows
Words just seems to flow from within my soul

Day after day i encounter problems and problems
But with the ejection of a stanza i escape the sorrow
Through a pen and a paper my soul begins to sing
And only words can express the joy that it brings

And only a poem can express the pain inside
As the sacrs upon my soul wants to free my mind
So i place a pen on the page and lay down some verbs
Then my soul sings louder than the beautiful birds

The lonely pain meets its demise
Speaking to the burden you carry inside
Our souls are eased by the inspiration of words
Listen to my soul and let this song be heard

Confine your creativity
Limit originality
Dare to be different
But don't dispute authority

Blue sky thinking
With a few scattered brainstorms
Is no substitution
For you sticking to the norm

We do value change here
In its right place
Just so long as you ensure
It doesn't leave a trace.

I haven't got to where I am
Without these simple laws
Now that's enough chat
Let's get on and wash the floors.

I'm just an average guy...
I've got normal problems and a normal life
I've also got a voice inside
silently speaking - sounds of my mind
I wonder, does it have a mind of its own?
Always flooding like a river formed by a hurricane,
if my head gets too cloudy,
there'll be a high chance of rain and scattered brainstorms

It might short-fuse my hippocampus
unable to remember how to see;
a blacked-out occipital lobe
I still don't see how the backs of our brains allow us to see
through the front our faces and out of our eyes,
where most of the water falls
despite the brain's overflowing, muddy river,
or the temporary lack of sight,
I still have a voice.

And with it, I will share all of the stories stored within this blackbox,
and only this light can find them and shine on them.
My voice, a wave riding my mind's ocean's surface
This voice, this wave, this sound,
a complicatedly, clear conscious,
called into focus...
[a sound of (my) mind]

Adapting re
voluntary reading
to the future, when we've
nothing to do so, sub-con
science frictions call all men liars.

I am by no means chief,
I came from the Calebland Productions,
early Eighties,
Macintosh and Appletalk, and Silicon Beach
grand brainstorms insisting if we heat it
the entire idea of dust as us and our mites…
just willing to revolve with the planets will
enough all those old winds that twisted
like we did last summer,
wind up like
those ones, wow, so real.

Northwest Passage is open, and yet,
none acknowledge life in full control,
something literarily evolving
where the crawdads eat the corpses,
Bayou Blue, Barrios and Pepitons,
cheri mio, we had some fun,
we all sung, on that by
you seem to agree, we won.
we won the evolutionary war,
mankind, wombed and un,
ever so long ago, none knew, we did

but time is a bit of a Ouranos cycle,
looks like a great ocean churning gyre,

of which the last swirling tide reminder
fit to an old spider web designer,
loser backslider
with a gambling wife,
who took a chance on me,
what do we see, but what we get,
generously, love is there
for the looking for,
and for remembering finding, and
really, when a man

from the molds
that made our we this kind of old man,
an individuated
NPC, in a cast of thousands,
acting stand in assistant to the
assisting intelligence time accounting,
massive messaging, is a thing
are you aware…?
your connection can self correct,
your bluetooth can whistle
in your ear,
eh,
we made it up.
The loss, we, laughed and made it all up.

Life itself is the most wonderful fairytale.

This motto ran in the family and still does to this day. Legacy enclosed in a parcel, passed down from generation to generation. Opening it and being left in awe at its glowing truth.

One day, it was my turn to open the parcel. And when I saw it in all its splendour, I was indeed awed, just as those before me.

Ever since then, I yearned to write fairy tales. Sometimes, they came from searches for beauty in the ordinary. Sometimes, they came from movies playing in my mind.
I wrote them all on paper; the ink flowed from my pen, spilling daydreams and brainstorms into my notebook.

But what about my own fairytale?

You see, I was so accustomed to creating other’s fairytales, I almost forgot about mine.

I suppose it would be of adventure and derring-do; I’d travel the globe, sail the seven seas, constantly seeking sources of inspiration. Boat or plane, car or train, the world would be my oyster.

But what about my pearl?

Well, I would certainly never forget it! Because even if it’s a concrete forest, it’s still ingrained in my identity.
But even though it’s safe and secure, it’s small and keeps me enclosed, like a swallow in a cage.
That’s why I adore exploring life outside the cage; to find new magic, which allows me to continue writing my fairytale.

And I would live happily ever after by settling down with a kind, loving partner; husband, wife, spouse...someone who I can share a happy home with. All the better if I were a mother, for I would pass the parcel onto them.

Now reality is ensuing. Turmoil and trouble are taking their tolls on the world. Beautiful places become blood-stained battlefields.
Lives are lost; no one lives happily ever after.
And there are those who want to escape, but cannot; it is due to this that people are losing their belief in fairytales.
In short, the magic is dying.

I know this is so; as there is so much beauty to be found, I do know very well that the world is not perfect.

But it doesn’t have to be this way, all this doom and gloom. My creativity is a wild beast that cannot be tamed, and with it I will weave my stories the way a weaver does a tapestry:
Intriguing concepts, colourful settings, meaningful messages, relatable characters, all with the power to make my audience challenge their thinking and empathise with my characters.  

Characters such as:  
An outcast duckling, shunned by the world merely because of his looks, but is really a beautiful bird.  
A little maiden, no bigger than a thumb, venturing a world of marriage-minded moles and toads.
A vain emperor, who parades in a fine suit made of invisible cloth, but is really wearing nothing at all!
A so-called princess, who sleeps on a large bed of 20 mattresses under a miniscule pea, to test her sensitivity.
An icy queen, so enigmatic and cold-hearted that she could just as well be winter herself.
A yearning mermaid, who trades her voice and tail for legs to meet the man she loves, but alas - is not meant to be.

All perfect escapes from the boredom and terror of reality.

And I hope, when I am dead and gone, my stories will be so universally known that they will transcend cultural barriers, written and told in all the world’s tongues for all to read and hear.

For I want to be remembered as one who used words and stories to heal and help, in a time of hurt and harm.

Life itself is the most wonderful fairytale, and we all have a part in writing it. How it ends is up to us.

Dream breaths in cosmopolitan eyes,
Fallen leaves fly, fly and fly.
Why do you remain in the brainstorms?
I don't know.
The most fascinating landlord you are..
Our time that has all gone was a remedy..
Don't you know that the time is remedy..
The hub of your thoughts now growing in chains..
I know...
The cowboy who wandered here..
Now is a whispering harp in brain..
Terminating your nostalgia..
I know..
The rain will prefer you..
The most dazzling sound it'll carry for you..
A timely rail station will be a bare place to remember you..
Soon the allocated air will call you..
I know..
Undoubtedly you are in heaven now..
believe me..
Do you hear me?

He had, when it became clear
The dog was on his last legs,
Went to a canine memorial concern,
One of those somewhat well-intentioned marketing brainstorms
Which operated under the assumption
That what was good enough for master was good enough for Fido,
And the folks who ran the place dressed in dark suits
Which accentuated the notion that what they did
Was no different than going through the paces
Of sending Grandma to her final reward
(Though the whole thing carried out
With a wink and a nod,
All of which by no means bringing credit to man nor dog.)
He'd been put off by the whole fol-de-rol,
Though he'd sat dutifully through the videos and brochures,
Being possessed of the same damnable politeness
Which made a place like this possible if not necessary,
And he'd ignored the two or three follow-up inquiries.
The dog finally came to his rest
On one of those gray silent November days
Which were the harbinger of the locking season,
And he'd taken him down to the back part of his property
Where he'd had the soybeans in this year,
A spot where three or four of his dogs already resided,
And though there was no markers or such on the spot,
He reckoned that the fact it was a good patch of growing land
Was sufficient testament to their standing.

Love is both muse and music
both poetry and purpose
a symphony of serendipity


The perfect love poem takes just minutes
to imagine
    but a lifetime to create
though words may flood your page
seek the source
love is the strongest force
        it exists beyond language
    is felt before touch
let your sentences be drenched
in intimacy
and punctuated by appreciation

Even when communication is nonverbal
let its essence be affection
     devotion
not only are run ons acceptable here
they are encouraged
marriage is not a life sentence
but an epic of possibilities

Adventure forward knowing that
the future is unknowable
but you are forging it   -   together
ellipses are waiting for you
you create time
   mold it to your will   -   together
trust the process
                              but also
trust each other
     to be auxiliary verbs in
       the act of loving

Seek understanding in your verses
             there is no winner
when existence is the goal
     co-existence
     co-creation
ego aside
be co-stars for the Virgo moon
live in the ease of each other
  even as cycles spiral around you
  even as you spiral around cycles
be the period that stands firm
                                                      for your partner
even under questioning

When line breaks feel like endings
   indent   and   reinvent
you are both forever changing
   so change together
   make edits together
it is a lie that brainstorms are
only the beginning
they will find you
in idle moments
  when the mind wanders
   raining down doubts
though ideas may blot your page
again seek source
  and what started your course

Write to each other
Write for each other

The perfect love poem takes just minutes
to draft
    but if you do it right
it is always under revision
even after you decide to publish

First time I've imagined doing an observance - serving some actual thing, a ritual, now,
of observing grain, growing, being grown, Shavuot.
Feast of Weeks, working weeks, timed
by observations based on how the earth
leans in relation to fixed stars, observe,
- wikipedia explains, I cogitate.
as the moon has several cyclical patterns,
so does the angle we observe from, as we age…
our minds accumulate, certain senses as to ports
in brainstorms, safe zones, my secret cove,
at the bottom of the ocean that once,
so very long ago, was here,
where we live and breathe and shape our future.

When we are few,
a few of us will know how we knew.
A selection selected or sifted in the shaking out,

individual grains of us, me and you and they.

There are 8 billion people on earth, about
that
the AI memory bank agrees,
instantly about
that tic in time, you knew,
each of them
is destined to die,
in the next 150 years,
sooner or later, point A to B, and gone.
- no points on that line, you know, do and die.
- done
Or, we may meander, and leave little pieces
of all we enjoyed, in truth, as free,
index points to the way where good is
good for whatever our hands find to do,

while our minds unwind the preferred
referencing threads which set the plaid.

Turn signal not happening?
Cart you're not returning?
We can deal with it.
Strike your fellow man?
Take food from my family's hand?
We should **** for it.
It's the principle
And you're not invincible
Judgement comes in all forms
Some are brainstorms
Never been one to hate
But we've all been there too late
You say *******,
I say ******* too.
Do your worst, I doubt I'll die
Darwin wants me to give you a try.
Keep trying.
Keep trying.
If it's not today, then today you'll be dying.
I'll mind my business when you mind yours.
******* and your expensive ******.