Stages and dance rooms,
makeup and costumes.
Auditions and lead roles,
complete self control.
State capitols and groups
of professional troops.
Judging my acting,
attention attracting.
Sweat, blood, and tears.
Realizing my fears.
Blocking and accents,
and never an absence.
Rehearsing for hours,
the feeling empowers.
I live for theatre,
but may be too eager.

stuff me full of arithmetic
Capitols, History, epitaphs,
Let me
dissect a frog, what glory!
Tell me, to forget, though, what bothers me.
I will soak in your trig geometry,
lonely,
relentlessly ignoring
your lessons.
Unless, you pay me
some attention.

I am but a boy,
who became a man.
And for every day I lived as myself,
I grew into something more.
Until I was more than I ever was before.
I lived a life's journey in 15 years,
Through every stone and sneer.
I have a strength that was always my own,
Yet it is a power we have all known.
I am strong with this power, as strong as your most powerful moment.
With this power I was there when You were hurt.
You with a capitol, because you are just as important as I.
With this power I felt your pain,
How you hated yourself.
You cut.
You starved.
You did your best to DESTROY yourself. To erase yourself. To... ****... yourself.
And you...

you...

you are still here.
YOU beat back depression.
YOU in all capitols because you are strong like I.
YOU took the talons of depression, hate, unhappiness, and you ripped them out,
One by one,
Each one took their tole, a piece of your beautiful soul.
But they left room to grow, to re-learn, and know,
Happiness, Peace, Joy.
You fought tooth and nail, you felt the pain like me, you gave all you WERE like ME, YOU sought FREEDOM from THE DARK like ME, YOU GAINED EVERY OUNCE OF POWER YOU HAVE NOW.
YOU gained it in saving yourself.
As I did the same.
Thats how I know I was there, along with everyone else like us.
I felt your power, Your strength, all your own, yet similar.
That strength... I admire it.
Never lose it, and I will never lose mine.
I love you, as a sister or brother.
For this strength we share.

A RANDOM STORY WITH A GRAMMAR CHECK
By Darcy Prince

It’s a long leep between knowing wisdom & the wise life.

I look at the mirror. “I have emotional needs and wants. Though my soul collapses in the confrontation of feeling fear.” I breathe and sigh. Lighting a cigarette than wiping a smudge of the mirror. “Why can’t write this **** on paper.”

The bathroom door opens and the music from the house blasts into the bathroom. It distracts me than I snap out my gaze. A random guy I haven’t meet had seem to get luck with Annais. She giggles, crunching her body up. Giggling loudly as the guys smoochies her. Making their way into one of the toilets. I must admit, I do laugh, internally wished them luck and exited the bathroom.

The dance music is loud. As most of the party invites are standing off to the wall. Either alone or holding one on one conversation. I puffed and made my way past people dancing, on the floor passed out or just standing there.

Outside, where the sound of the music is slightly quieter. I put out my smoke and walked to the side, the part of the fence that seems to be less occupied by people. It's a shame that my flaws are embedded into my being. I looked at my phone, flicked over my messages, she’s online, not talking to me, my heart sunk and grew a little more anxious. I lit another smoke and do my best to forget her. But I did only come here on account of her.

“Howard.” A voice behind me spoke. Clearly grabbing my attention. ‘****, it’s Bill’. Walking towards me, with his stomach hanging over his belt buckle. His baseball cap covering his bald head at night, and a half drunk beer in his hand. “I want to know why you quit being a literary critic and be an actual writer.”

I laughed. “There’s less money in it.” I answered.

Bill chuckles. Placing his hand on my shoulder. “ I love your work. I tell everyone that I know you.” Giving me a play slap on my chest. ‘The ladies seem to love your work.”

I now want to leave the party completely. “I know. I get fan mail.”

Standing about a foot away from me. “Despite my endless amounts of questions and your personal philosophy. I want to know if you are willing to read some of my Satanic poetry.”

I took his beer out of his hand. Sipping it empty. “It’s payment.” I Finished my smoke. Flicked on the garden bed, “You’re a Satanist now?”

Bobbing his head up down. “Yep. I read the Satanic Bible and decided it so.”

I plant my open palm on his shoulder. “Good-luck.” I walked away. “Thanks for the beer Bill.”

I decide to leave at impulse. It’s freedom on drugs. Abundant with choice. Ability to create. Definite modern God. Who is the Muse to all philosophers?

Out on the road where all the cars are parked. I look around. Gave one look to the house and said **** it under my breathe. I walked home. I conjure up words that I’ve always to say to her. Knowing full well I should be writing them down for the next time I see her and that at one random moment I will forget. But to what Bill asked me. Alone I diver into self-publishing. Funny enough, I made some sort of success. Im free again. And my thoughts drifted into the strange thing of fame in contemporary art. Classical terms. Fame as a by-product of hardwork and talent. Like Clapton or Dante.

Glorious endeavour with high rewards. Movements of my will. A desire with a proper end. Languishing such things now. I am nothing without art. Surprise to see Bill turn to something as such of Satanism.

I got home and fell asleep.

I woke up. Had a morning coffee and cigarette.

I read the daily paper.

A few chapters of my current book that I’m reading.

Another smoke and coffee.

I begun to write with the radio playing in the background.

The street noises aren’t distraction. It is the capitols music. Just without harmony.

I write.

Stopping in the middle of the dat for lunch.

I watched ****.

I wanted to sleep. But one thing more important than the success of one's art. The effort the artists puts to create art. I forlorn my vice and continued to write, this is one model of freedom.

We’re at liberty when we can create who we are. A noble calling, shaping the clay of my existence. I choose the ideals to embrace.

At the end of my writing day. I decided to open my lounge room window. Hanging out on the window still, smoking and reading a book by Camus. A couple below caught my attention. I giggled. It’s her. With another man and I instantly lose faith in romance. Like Bill, I too have read the Satanic Bible. I took the ideals of her Muse and applied it to myself. I have no vendetta against God. Only humanity.

I flicked my smoke down to the street. Closed my window. And went to bed for the night.

In vain I always seem to rise to a higher self. Funny. I never give credit to the pain I feel. Serene. Untroubled by the undying yearnings to blast humanity of not of their sins. But only their ignorance.

I awoke. Like most of my mornings. I start the day with smoking too much and spending a couple of hours of reading. Seemingly dull and mundane, but it does wonders for my eternal being. I am a sinful prince.

I finished my novel and decided to place it on the pile of planned unpublished manuscripts for life after my death. Like many Satanic based writers before me. I decided to write on similar themes. Late modern society is principally concerned with purchasing things, in ever greater abundance and variety, and so has to strive to fabricate an ever greater number of desires to gratify, and to abolish as many limits and prohibitions upon desire as it can. Such a society is already implicitly atheist and so must slowly but relentlessly apply itself to the dissolution of transcendent values. It cannot allow ultimate goods to distract us from proximate goods. Our sacred writ is advertising, our piety is shopping, our highest devotion is private choice. God and the soul too often hinder the purely acquisitive longings upon which the market depends, and confront us with values that stand in stark rivalry to the only truly substantial value at the center of the social universe: the price tag.
Wisdom is the recovery of innocence at the far end of experience.

I had forgotten about her. At random she never did find the guy she ever wanted and I ended up being namecheck in her suicide note. Stating I was the only true, complex, beautiful soul that could match hers and how the regretted turning me away. Bill did the same. But only because I ignored him that one time at the party. In the publication of my Satanic novel, the Pope condemned to Hell. I sent him a letter that I wanted to do a confession with him. I have not yet heard of a reply. Catholics still protest.

Proposals of intermediance, pearls to girls of sunshined radiance, playful tactics ruin the feeble mind, where states are select best of roast, biggest of all checks!
Pay it forward uropian mix-match of everything best!! Keefe pebbles to match rebels on machines called J-Pay, some get out early, retreaters and women beaters in their cages must they stay!!
What a day when all will be one, to not muse and pretend that were dumb, but to realize where and what we are!!!
Fast lives,
Fast cars,
Doth thou have all that thou needest yet?
Hath thou gotten old?
Didst we forget?
Remedic comforters,
Strategic Plunderer's of downfall Capitols!!!
Quotas you cannot meet if your presidents of Debauchery's height!!!
Thy ancient falcon,
Timeless pitching,
Your a runner in thy night!!

Neuraligias numbing stretches the tied suit evils,
Lorn away,
Away,
And away!!!!

Lingual we are when the lights call you for action!!!!!!!

To tired for innocent play?

I came from nowhere into the sunlight bright
staring harsh at the way it looked when released
from the thick of dark  dank  open spaces
of the mind like skyscrapers
looming in awe at unopened alleyways.

Writers and Poets with dark and dense language
lurked on every page offering
wisdom and wonder at all that existed
and I was taken aback by the grit and gristle
of their tongues in torture and bonehard
determination to say things real and true.
My first lesson was obedience
at the citadels of learning.

Soon the words began to form and fix
in the minds eye, each picture drafted
in the souls eternal fire of seeking solace
from within a lone slim space of knowledge.
We were wild then, travelling in jungles
where beasts roamed with hookahs and chains
and belted the night with rabid beats
of rhymes and rhythm bongo drums
that cascaded through waterfalls of lust
and loneliness.

woodstock soon came around with a growl
from Hendrix and a soulful guitar solo
that lifted our energies beyond mud
and music into higher ground where
love and peace co-existed with boundaries
and lines of policemen with batons.

Soon we loved each other on the streets
of shame uncaring for the masses that lay
strangled by traditions of the old
and battered regimes. Our music carried
us into a universal song which started
then and never stopped four decades gone.

what we started in those freedom years
still parades the streets of our individualism
today with a different costume.
The shackles that we unchained
were replaced by those who felt burdened
by the guilt of freedom and excess.

Even today the Capitols burn with angry mobs
tearing political fences and building barricades
of stone hard determination and raised fists
in defiance of subjugation and slaughter
as they race towards a wide open gate
where walls and ****** windows do not
get them down fast enough.

The cities will continue to burn
to mark the decades  we bled loose
the power from dictators armoured carriers
and concubines of greed and injustice
as we ourselves built shells of steel
around our embattled homes and liberties.
Freedom is a right. It will be fought.

In every continent there burns a bonfire
lit by few that smoulders and shudders
in the rubble of military might
but that will not deter the protection
and peace. The bonfires are fed by the few
who boiled their blood in their thinking
for all the others.

Over the radio and tv promises will
echo hollow and insipid as the faces
of the masters who seem impervious to pain
and unwilling to smear the ashes of their own born
against their foreheads of power.

A time will come when peace will settle again
and the rousing reception of rain bearing
clouds will cool the tempers of the trusted
and the untrusted.

We will soon be gone but we leave a legacy
of will that will course through the veins
of our children and grandchildren
and for years to come the poems
we write will stand testimony to the demons
we locked back into the cages of the past.

The power to pen will return to the people.

The other day something happened to me that hasn’t happened since High School
A scream audible, loud, but only for me
In my mind
Sustained for mere moments
And then gone
Rousing like a battle cry
But with a hint of anguish
Peeling back my eye lids like banana’s
Rattling its cage
Like a beast that has grown to large for its master
And is dumped down the toilet like a sewer crocodile
As if ready to burst from my skull
And spread its tattered bat wings
Heave the birth breath and swoop down lower Manhattan
To terrorize hipsters
Its fire breath singed my eyebrows
And burned down the walls of my capitols of reason
Biases and assumptions
Forever breaking my ties
And branding my forehead with the name Urgnd

I came from nowhere into the sunlight bright
staring harsh at the way it looked when released
from the thick of dark  dank  open spaces
of the mind like skyscrapers
looming in awe at unopened alleyways.

Writers and Poets with dark and dense language
lurked on every page offering
wisdom and wonder at all that existed
and I was taken aback by the grit and gristle
of their tongues in torture and bonehard
determination to say things real and true.
My first lesson was obedience
at the citadels of learning.

Soon the words began to form and fix
in the minds eye, each picture drafted
in the souls eternal fire of seeking solace
from within a lone slim space of knowledge.
We were wild then, travelling in jungles
where beasts roamed with hookahs and chains
and belted the night with rabid beats
of rhymes and rhythm bongo drums
that cascaded through waterfalls of lust
and loneliness.

woodstock soon came around with a growl
from Hendrix and a soulful guitar solo
that lifted our energies beyond mud
and music into higher ground where
love and peace co-existed with boundaries
and lines of policemen with batons.

Soon we loved each other on the streets
of shame uncaring for the masses that lay
strangled by traditions of the old
and battered regimes. Our music carried
us into a universal song which started
then and never stopped four decades gone.

what we started in those freedom years
still parades the streets of our individualism
today with a different costume.
The shackles that we unchained
were replaced by those who felt burdened
by the guilt of freedom and excess.

Even today the Capitols burn with angry mobs
tearing political fences and building barricades
of stone hard determination and raised fists
in defiance of subjugation and slaughter
as they race towards a wide open gate
where walls and ****** windows do not
get them down fast enough.

The cities will continue to burn
to mark the decades  we bled loose
the power from dictators armoured carriers
and concubines of greed and injustice
as we ourselves built shells of steel
around our embattled homes and liberties.
Freedom is a right. It will be fought.

In every continent there burns a bonfire
lit by few that smoulders and shudders
in the rubble of military might
but that will not deter the protection
and peace. The bonfires are fed by the few
who boiled their blood in their thinking
for all the others.

Over the radio and tv promises will
echo hollow and insipid as the faces
of the masters who seem impervious to pain
and unwilling to smear the ashes of their own born
against their foreheads of power.

A time will come when peace will settle again
and the rousing reception of rain bearing
clouds will cool the tempers of the trusted
and the untrusted.

We will soon be gone but we leave a legacy
of will that will course through the veins
of our children and grandchildren
and for years to come the poems
we write will stand testimony to the demons
we locked back into the cages of the past.

The power to pen will return to the people.

Author Notes
I come from a generation that tasted freedom from traditions in the best way possible. Four decades on that unshackling still unfolds.This poem talks of that transition. It is long and will continue on and on until that bonfire subsides!
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

You are nothing
but cheap thrills
and a midnight laugh.
A half cigarette
and nothing new.

You make no promises
but a thousand excuses.

You can name all 50 states
and their capitols,
but you never learned how to love.

The water of your knowledge
is above a sieve of apathy
and I don't know if any
of the bits left are
worth anything at all.  

You are not who you say you are
but you are who I know you are,
and I am what I am
and that is an afterthought
after thoughts
not worth having.

Operas
mount racehorses.
Idiom rubs elbows
with Billboard charts.
World capitols bow
to puns
and seabirds,
and long-dead winners
waltz,
cheek to cheek,
with subject-verb
agreement.

The things we love most
are the least important,
but how nice to find
them meeting
each other.