Life and its shade
canvased by god
God made it beautiful

But we are
adding shades of greys and black
enveloping the sky
turning fog into smog

Putting solute
in water bodies
that are not dispersible
making it turbid
mislaying its transparency
water is not pure anymore

Deforestation
converting the forest
into the barren land
beautiful landscapes are mechanized
by man
buildings and more building
watching stars sounds bookish
nature is losing its charm

Emotions are blowing over
relationships changing
accepting changes
changing our own self
mirrors are showing
someone else image
and asking you
who you are?

it will just end up
being a tale of a drunk looking into a metre
as if it was a kaleidoscope mile
in an l.s.d. fuelled centimetre seance,
conjuring the dead, esp. sergei with his kijé,
and thinking about turning the zoo inside out,
with the birds as fish in the great aerorium
of the missing stars to cook up a fluster with broken beaks
nudging achilles to kneel using his heels.
i mean i’d cage those parrots to seal their colour
into stamps and dutiful ink of borrowed bureaucracy,
but i’d stink of oysters doing so and very little else.
so why did they decide upon petting fish in an aquarium
and said that birds were simply caged chickens easing out
an omelette? if i was keeping goldfish in aquariums
i’d be keeping budgies in aeroriums.
don’t tell me, the glass eases the process for disney's
talking blue fish? no wonder, a caged animal
is reminiscent of a caged man, but put man behind glass
and there's little chance of a narcissist conjured;
hence the necessity of slicing iron of the ribcage innuendo
within the framework of a niqab to peer through
on that whitewashed backdrop some call a canvased sigh of beginning.

I want to watch all
The teeth fall out
Of my mouth
My eyes sink
Into my skull
Every hair
Fall out of my head

Brittle nails and blue fingertips
Yellowing patches
And skin
Clear enough to see rivers
Flowing beneath
Canvased tight,
as if my bones
Are just hoping to break free

To cut through
The canvas with
The knife my grandfather
Gave me
Spilling everything

Every word
I could never get out
Every time getting
Caught on
The tip of my tongue

No glass half full
Or half empty
I want to be as shallow
as it gets

When the waves
Crash against the shoreline
Making their way up
To meet your sand-covered toes,
That is as shallow as
The water gets

I could never
Be so versatile
As the ocean

I have to choose,
And what’s the point of
Such strong feelings
If they are always trapped
And writhing
On my inside

- S.G.

Hello Pigment.
I missed your squish-
your fingers staining my favorite picture books.

I need your oily claws
your head-mashing whiff
the way you smile with toothy indifference

you climb over
all walls I orchestrate
and sit turgid
with bright Grandiose on my blanched skin.

my life is your palette,
you have moved in like a sloppy roommate
and your haphazard possessions drape the cabinets,
the chair,
the sink.
I love it.

you inhabit every vacancy
-a bulky mass of
magical “art”
and
no matter how much I mix your
complementary colors,
you appear
ever so bright.  

please… don’t leave me open canvased.  
splotch to me left and right
taint any negative space
barge in without
pusillanimous footsteps.
whip your camel hair bristles
all over my pages.
color me, pigment!
                  
             Splatter, Paint.

I've been told; life is all about growth and maturity
Leaving the nest and learning to take on and embrace your surroundings
Then explain why I feel as though I'm shrinking, constantly fighting these ongoing insecurities? 
 
People always preach about being true to who you are
The unknown galaxy of the delicate mind is somehow bigger than our own body
Exile the unworthy nightmares and follow the dreams that may appear bizzar
 
But what do you do when you're all alone in a crowded room?
And extraversion and introversion are the two demons playing tug of war?
I wish I were plain and simple like a white rose, just allowing myself to bloom
 
What do I do when the glorious stars lose their twinkle?
Once so bright and majestic, now blurry and incoherent
How should I uproot these sorrows, when they're so profound and as deep as wrinkles?
 
If the lies and confusion are steering clear of the shadows of hope
And these tears, sharp as daggers are supposed to seize to a stop
Then why does it seem as though everything is heading in a downward *****?
 
It reminds me of a beautiful bird trapped in an iron barred cage
Struggling, and flapping it's wings in deprivation of escaping
It could shrill and cry, but no one shows interest in it's excruciating rage
 
If razors weren't sharp and scissors had no blades
If skin were tougher than rubber
Would these unruly memories and tortured thoughts drift into the distance and fade?
 
I despise how the facts are too hard to handle and never good enough
No matter how much you strive for change, god's never on your side
And frankly, I'm exhausted from putting up walls and having to always be so tough
 
No matter how hard I try, I am still lost and weak
Searching for the true meaning in blank canvased skies
At a loss of how to correct a lack of color in this never ending streak
 
I know who Faith is, and hopefully she'll grace her presence upon me soon
Maybe she'll teach me how to expand my wings and soar into the horizon
Allowing sublimity to perfuse like a butterfly, rather than falling into the darkness of a constricted cocoon

I helped Jesus down off the cross
And apologized for his terrible loss.
All through the night we traveled at length,
And slept through the day to regain our strength.

Nights came and went, the stars at our backs,
Warding off evil and constant attacks.
Canvased the sky with our own selfish rain,
Filled in the holes to make sure we were sane.
Shed our skin, with no way to know,
Where it would end or how it would go.

I trusted him, and he trusted me,
I helped him hear, and he helped me see.
Reason and fear, pleasure and pain,
That which must go, and which could remain.
Darkness and time, purpose and need,
The life that flows through this blood that we bleed.

Somehow the masses had gotten it so wrong,
But we took it well, and we played along.
Once they had finally seen what we’d seen,
They carved out their eyes and washed themselves clean.
Then they hung Jesus back on the cross,
And wept without eyes for their terrible loss.

Safe from reason, no need to fear,
Pleasure and pain were no longer near.
Now came their purpose, they’d fulfilled their need.
Of course they asked Jesus, and Jesus agreed.
He’d hang around, they’d carve out his eyes,
Covered in blood is a clever disguise.
And what about the masses as they sleep through the lies?
Together, never lonely, ascend into the skies.

Our fingers brushed in the gallery opening
not so long ago,
we were in a room full of art,
which only made me crave you more.

It reminded me of your hands,
finger-painting like a child using watercolors
onto my blank canvased soul filling in
every part of me that was missing colors.

Now, everything is in black and white.
When our fingers lightly brushed again,
I felt the flood of rainbows and stars rush back to me
before disappearing behind me, following you away.

westerners: we're basically the people with a big bang theory in our heads (what a ****** name for what used to be an awe-inspiring venture into the natural environment and colours, now just a black dot, no wonder the imagination dried-up at the end of the 20th century and it all became, "a little bit technical" / technology perfected the making of money / no -logy attache with art, the feel got the most of it), and having to still perform menial tasks, most of which became anti-physical, exports to China - an intellectual flatline of bureaucratic esteems, preferably lost among scientific theories that demean, devour and conspire to reach pinnacles of overstretched pronoun usage... too many nouns, too many nouns, there are to many names in this world that gather inert verbs around them - say the word aeroplane and i bet you won't end up being a pilot, able to fly the **** thing from London to Helsinki.*

i just realised i can't do it - applying
poetry to historical prose is exhausting -
the project has been terminated -
it's like two-hydrogen atoms coupled
to an oxygen atom defining the Atlantic,
the Pacific and a few lakes in between -
how can a single human being
encapsulate all that history? i don't
mind people spying on me, i know
spying is a form of fetishism, but trying
to encapsulate all that history in one
unit is counter-productive, non-representative,
i stopped on page 55, i didn't even get to
Greek history - what i love about all
that philosophical bollocking is that it's
airy, a modern arts gallery - you can fudge
in an elephant in there and people would say
that it's the five-blind men - or the sixth
deaf man, given the odd trumpet sound -
history literally does exhaust poetry the
easiest, philosophy at least antagonises it,
it's on the same playing field, both are in tune,
however well or however badly the strummed
guitar / ego - if i was going to sift through
another ******* of historical facts predating
antagonistic history like the events of
the Cold War or the horrendous disintegration
of Yugoslavia (Gorbachev was rightly
pompous to the end, the Soviets went their
separate ways peacefully, now Azerbaijan
sponsors the Euro football tournament) -
but if i were to shove all that **** into my head...
you know where Alzheimer's stems from?
i think i know - too much information,
too much information canvased against
easy, menial tasks... if they only taught us how
to not feel bored, instead of ******* us with
Pythagoras and calculus and whether it was
Newton or Leibniz who finished the finishing line
first... education in the West is a fool's game,
it's like that fable about giving an African
a fish or a fishing rod - they sell this **** in
Calcutta - me? i'm selling you a pirate copy,
don't bother - don't even go to university,
they'll turn you into a double-*** that you already
are, professional academics are not high school
teachers, they're the ones in line with ambitious
Higgs' boson, oh sure, Mr. Blair and that famous
'education, education, education,'
how about go **** yourself, go **** yourself,
go **** yourself?
the educated are in debt and the common
sense people,
well, they're also in debt - mortgages and what
not, but when i think about it...
i'd be earning super money to spend it... on what?
if  had children, fair enough,
the grand selfless act - maybe... erm...
never trust a female politician because she ends
up a tarantula, a black widow, caring for her own
rather than the ***** masturbated into a hanky?
listen, if you had a woman try to ****
you via your childhood friend... you wouldn't be
Kentucky frying chocolate bars to mush and
lovey hubby dub dub either.

there's a reason we don't look back
because we most definitely don't need that
there's a reason we haven't relaxed
under the weight of steel tracks atop an overpass

and we've yet to stop running
and we've yet to stop deconstructing
we've concluded we can conclude nothing
a trick so tragically cunning

we've been tending to processes of the heart
pretending and mending images in your yard
posted up against the brick wall behind K-mart
where graffiti fades from concrete canvased art

there's a reason we don't look back
there's a reason we haven't relaxed

Indigenous!
Belong, in place.
Eligible to be? (Unpaid)
Tracing comfort. (confronted)
Distribute all rawness.
Attribute all peace.
Abolish odd disturbances.
Against all odds, shadowing perspective.
Feeling at ease...  Just ME! (Relieved)
Canvased in dirt immersed in blood. (Rituals)
Unleash the royal beast.
Reveal all - ME. (Lead)
Smudged, focused on the challenge.
Do you see?
ME?

It was sticky hot and humid in Ferguson that Saturday.
Just another weekend where the little leagues would play.
I was riding unit 25 looking out for petty crime.
My units' radio sputtered to life: "shots fired on Canfield drive."
" Officer in need of assistance"

We just didn't arrive in time.

I recognized the body, my colleague and close friend.
Darren Wilson was shot six times, the last time in the head.
His service piece was missing. The shooter had fled the scene.
I called for a bus and backup and radioed what I had seen.
We then secured the crime scene as it drew a silent crowd.
Detectives looked for any clues and canvased the homes around.
No witness would come forward, either out of fear or dread.
"His new wife is now a widow." my disgusted partner said.
Darren face was badly bruised as he lay there in the sun.
I surmised he'd been assaulted in the struggle for his gun.
The coroner sighed and shook his head at the body on the gurney.
He'd perform an autopsy on my friend before his final journey.

The score was one dead man in blue, his murderer still free.
The streets that night were quiet, as I suspected they would be.
There was no public outcry at the killing that was done.
Blue lives never matter to a town like Ferguson.

Blood red,falling against the shadowed sky.
Amid, the blackened light it fell.
Canvased in darkens, extinguished  like a fire.
Its light gone,swallowed by the earth
A new shall come, in time.
Shall night fall, for morn I wait.