There are days in which it seems as if the whole world is falling down.
These are the days in which the ceiling crumples at my feet.
The days where everything I’ve ever known,
my very sense of being
is destroyed.

Who am I?
I thought I knew.
I have lived over seven-thousand days traveling on this earth.
Seven-thousand days as myself.
How didn’t I know?

My entire life,
one could say I was boy crazy.
Has that changed?
I have never been one to change childhood crushes every other week.
If I had a crush, it either lasted years,
or it never existed at all.

Just a wanting.
A wanting to feel.
A wanting to love.

But I can love.
I love my friends, my family.
I love the stories I read,
the characters I create,
the fabric of our reality.
I love being alive.
But I don’t love like that.
And I want to.

Now, I watch as the dust starts to settle.
I kick the white powder at my feet,
starting to regain my breath.

Focus, breathe.
You’re okay. I’m okay.
This is me. I am real.
This is me. I am real.

In the corner, by the rubble,
a slip of cardstock lies innocently.
Cardstock.
This is what my life has succumbed to.
A piece of paper with three humps and a tail.

I am okay.
I will learn to love myself.
I will learn to be proud.

Maybe one day this card will slip away,
the rubble will disappear,
and I will wonder what the fuss was all about.

But not today.
Today I will hold this card close.
I will slip a metal band around my fingertip.
I will do what I do best
and learn, and love, and feel.
Because that’s all we can ever do.
We can grow.
I want to grow.

Inspiration often manifests itself
in a female form
poetry, prose, pretty girls
igniting creativity. 

7th grade
heart smitten
hand clenched
scrawling, attempting
to formulate the essence
of the oak tree where we met. 
Charcoal pencil
cardstock paper
smudged hands
furrowed brow
stealing glances at her face 
(call it "motivation")
increasing heartbeat
blood flowing to my 
fingertips
through the wood and onto paper.

It's cyclical...
tree trunk felled 
for pencil and paper, reincarnated
as an oak
in a marriage of the two. 
Wood reformulated,
oak leaves reaching to the sun-- 
the glowing aura of her. 

The oak tree picture
its likeness
and she--
all left behind 
in time
distance
memory. 
Years later, I feel it again:
the siren song of a muse. 

But long abandoned charcoal,
cardstock paper gone. 
Now,
I am a painter
I decorate my canvases with words
of you, for you 
the one who makes
my fingertips prolific
they fumble
searching for the path 
to a Masterpiece.

I’m always falling
and I often end up drained.
I wish instead of tumbling that
I could fly on my paper cranes.

On my paper cranes
I’d fly over cardstock trees,
to land inside an origami garden
and sit on folded peonies.

I’d go on a newspaper sailboat
and float over the tissue sea
to visit cardboard whales
and foam board manatees

I wish that all my troubles,
were made of paper too,
and that I could solve them
by folding a world for you.

Some kind of craftsman is working at his bench
Peeling ribbons of soft wood under a dim lamp
He watches the growing pile of discarded strips.

The timecard is now an electronic monitor
An old woman at the factory wishes
That it were instead a thick piece of yellowing cardstock
So that she could use a hole punch.

Somebody’s daughter is dancing naked in the yard
A business man drives by and hopes that somebody will photograph her.
He is remembering the blush on his lover’s face
When he first saw the photo of her and her sisters
Flat chested, unclothed, and splashing together in the bath.

The waitress from town has left for school.
Somebody there is brushing the hair away from her eyes
And wondering whether or not it is a good moment to kiss her.
Meanwhile there is a young man sitting in his regular spot in her diner
Wondering if her eyes really were the color of the winter grass
He is contemplating joining the army.

A wiry beggar is sitting outside of a convenience store
He asks for a cigarette and gets not even a sideward glance
Later he asks a thin, young thing for a few dollars
Once she is gone he goes inside to buy a pack
And smokes them immediately.

There is a funeral processional going through town.
There is a woman at the end driving with clenched hands
She feels guilty because of her anger
But the traffic is making her late for work.

You may now kiss the bride.
And he does.
The older women are crying.

Without any of these things
It seems we would be left with nothing,

but an insatiable thirst for punctuation.

He was larger than life
   even shriveled
      even the size of a
septuagenarian
   even at 85
      even growing smaller in mind
and spirit
   the last year I saw him
he was larger than life and
   I still looked up . . . .

He was 59 and I
   was a child with
arms and legs dangling
       as though they were made of
purple and orange pipe cleaners
and when he said to hang on
   I thought of Forefathers
      of Revolutionaries
   hanging on to their ideals
and my arms wrapped tight
   like the rubber band on his bread . . . .

The long-ago far-away again and
   again of the
Last Year I Saw Him
   seems to come around
      like Fruit Stripe on a bicycle wheel
   seems to come around
      like a broken holiday of
can/can't come because/without
and you drop
   like a barbell weight
like a drop of blood
      like a ream of cardstock printed with maps
to find you and
   to find you and
to find you had just received a thick file from
   the Feds.

     Again.

my little blue boy
In the cardstock full moon
Don't you know you always go away too soon?
It's like looking through glasses too strong of a prescription
The lines are all hung up tangled and torn
Mismatched worn
right down to the umbilical cord
From a dusk morning
To a dawn night
Ugly ducklings not too ready for flight
And I'm singing a song to you
(Not that you can hear it
But I'm singing)

Behind the double oak doors at 71 Horatio Street, lower west side, there’s a pink striped hallway with a checkerboard floor. Up the stairs to the right there’s a corner bathroom with a drip in the whitewashed stucco ceiling that will start when you take a long shower upstairs. The window has rusty bars over it and looks out over a backyard made of brick, with potted plants. Past the corner bathroom there’s an apartment with long rooms and creamy walls. This was my house,, but across the apartment, past the corner bathroom, through the striped hallway, and down the stairs to the left was the entrance to my home.
**** and Liz Merryman to this day live in the bottom apartment at 71 Horatio Street, lower west side. Between each spindle on the carpeted staircase down is a wind up toy from ****’s antique collection. They still work, but my sister and I may be the only kids that he’s ever let touch them. Beneath the staircase is a jar of butterscotch that magically refills whenever someone takes one, or five, or sometimes even ten.. The living room in their house is where all the living goes on. The kitchen is in the living room, recipe’s hanging from the ceiling on bit’s of faded cardstock or stationary. The dining area is tucked between the spice jar and the bookcase,  a glass coffee table from which **** and Liz have eaten their way through thirty years of marriage. Out the sliding door is the brick backyard. If you sit on the faded stones and watch the unrestricted ivy wrapping around the potted fruit trees you can almost imagine you are in London, and that under the brick there is real soil not a subway station. I paddled my way through childhood in that backyard on 71 Horatio Street, lower west side, and if I cried when I left New York City, I cried for **** and Liz, and the apartment at the bottom of the stairs.

I've been writing this novel
For a long time
As long
As I have
Been alive
Centered in lead
Scratching on paper
Cursively engaging
Building in plot
Filling in the margins
With side machinations
Occasionally
Pausing
Lingering on a particular line
While taking the care to design
A bookmark
(Bookmarks
Those crafty place keepers
Designed in paint and pen ink
Thicker than page
Indenting the chapter
Permanently altering
The binding)
Ornanate slips of cardstock
Decorated
In delicate flourish
Complex mandellas
Sacred geometric design
This novel I am writing
It's leafs dogtoothed
Still awaiting it's leather
Porcupined and thickened throughout
Promises
To be the intrigue of a lifetime
If only for the art itself

(JL)

Time frame trackers permit staff with the idea to passively or by hand monitor time frame these people used jobs, jobs, along with get the job done. Inside the basic form, the idea shows an electronic digital alternative connected with cardstock timesheets.

While a good many providers continue to depend upon guidebook operations plus excel spreadsheets to trace moment, these kinds of procedures can be erroneous and hard in order to range. Together with reduced profits with billable time, malfunction to help properly trail moment can lead to undesirable facts, reducing ability to produce crucial small business judgements.

Plus, these people, one of the primary troubles is that checking your time and efforts takes time.

Time frame trackers automatic systems accomplishing this, reduce human being mistakes associated with tracking work as well as absences, plus track efficiency.

How you can Compare Time period Trackers

Incorrect time period monitoring contributes to unwanted at an increased rate, undesirable setting up, imprecise quotations, surpass finances, incorrect pay-roll, or perhaps canceled projects. Which has a best time system, you could make sure your firm offers trusted, appropriate details, that can help recognize along with get rid of complications early on. Also, the workers received spend more time tracking hrs along with do the job compared to obtaining elements performed.

Time frame tracking may help your enterprise maximize work productivity, since enterprise can observe just what exactly operations or even exercises bring about wasted occasion. Many methods automatically connect time to help accounts as well as produce exact expenditures with different predetermined fee minute card.

Conversely, if you would like a lot more ease projects or even personnel supervision versus the capabilities over present, take into consideration a project management software foundation using solid period tracking functionality.

Time frame system which in turn really helps your organization ought to include these functions:
Addition together with project management, data processing, CRM, along with Hours computer software
Details transfer to be able to documents like: .pdf file, Exceed, .csv, among others
Information significance using apps
Unlimited jobs
Custom billing steps
Purchase pursuing
Reports Or Google analytics
Course non-billable time frame
Career priced at stories
Compensated vacation time (PTO)
Vacation checking, attendance/absence control
Monitor offline time frame Or not doing anything timeout
Project/task-based moment tracking
Dashboards by using real-time coverage
Intelligent warns (work deadlines, in the long run, appointments, and so on.)
Activity categorization resources, for instance paying attention to or maybe coloration coding
Customer or even role-based stability
Details copy Local plumber trackers present an breakdown of the office or personnel. With CrocoTime time frame unit, you will notice that is presently doing work, the full hours worked well in a selected period of time, what are the most recent worker hobby seemed to be, and so on. The time tracker presents reports and this can be easily generated along with said to consumers, operations, or perhaps operatives.

http://www.passwordmanagers.net/products/Windows-Password-Recovery-Software-1.html Windows Password Recovery Software

There is a quilt on the bed in Shea's room,
Pink, red, blue, green, and violet,
Lace and stripes and polka dots,
White pillowcases with crisp corners.

There are books on the shelves, different genres,
Stuffed in sideways and upways and frontways,
old fantasy, thrillers, adventure,
Smudged ink in their yellowed margins.

There are papers on the desk by the wall,
Poems and Post-its and signatures,
Cardstock cut into star-shapes
Journal entries and unfinished sentences.

The closet is empty in Shea's room
Cobwebs and dead ladybugs lie still
A lamp has a cord around its middle
No breeze stirs the air; the curtains are closed.

There should be music in Shea's room.
There are songbooks, yes, but no hum of the heater
No branch scrapes the window outside
When a storm comes, the raindrops fall without rhythm
No longer are things made in Shea's room.
The colors are faded in Shea's room.

They say that there's something in Shea's room
Memories and fragments and pleasant dreams
They say stories came alive and still linger
Seeping through the cracks of the wooden floorboards
Horses graze in green pastures in Shea's room.

But I know what's really in Shea's room.

There's a year's worth of dust coating Shea's room
Not a thing has been touched for months
There's no Shea to be seen in Shea's room
Since she headed for the hills and never came back
There's no life and no soul in Shea's room
Shea's room is an abalone shell
The inner shine scrubbed away by disuse
Only shadows survive in Shea's room.

There is nothing alive in Shea's room.

Just an empty closet
And books
And Post-Its
And ladybugs
And remnants

Though paths remain uncrossed
And souls still give a friendly gesture,
The local haunts are still shuttered
To those that brave these occult and rural roads.
The busted macadam speaks volumes
Written in its faults those riddles and anecdotes
Long kept in the spirit of the place
And the etchings of otherwise mute country spaces.
Such is the clarion of a hero’s return
On the lips of a medium, forever for profit
Incanting enchantments upon grounds
Which formed his genesis and the ash he became.

Or so the flicker of passing trees conceit.

Delusions of that throbbing arrogant wound
Have played tricks on these eyes before
To all soothsayers and falsifiers with words
So dulcimer as they are harmful to restful nights.
This is the true passing of the hero:
A loss of a child’s wonder to the silver lines
In the unnatural twinning of reality and make-believe
As sung from cardstock ramparts of an ocean of carpet.
There is no looking backwards to a road disappearing
With the valley’s crushing winds to my back though
The battle grounds and olive trees suspending offerings of peace
Run headlong in their respective directions, those unrealities: present, past.
Only spirits can hold time’s scales
With such precision or precariousness
As preternature may devise—
Those creatures of children’s books.

Or so the flicker of passing trees conceit.

Smoke crafts the forms of three adolescents
Jogging along the culverts of the West Fall hill:
Among them, the long-haired boy I know, face as though a mirror
In fear, I fire my arrow straight and true in the name of reason.

They scatter into the fronds of wheat and I utter futile words of advice
To ask of him: do things differently.
And they seem to listen.

Or so the flicker of passing wheat conceits.

I come to the shores of that river where young men dive
Inside the crater that grave of bicycles inured twelve in all
Attempting to dredge the depth for a lost frivolity
And the scattered refuse of the year before: perhaps a trading card.
I throw myself to westward skies out from that sylvan steppe,
Whose lustrating turgid flow repelled the revenant of the past.
May its purity allow me to meditate upon its unwavering face,
And it shall shine back stern with an idol of a comforting familiar.
As it opens its eyes, halfway, its clear aspect scatters
Beneath the inflatable tubes where, hand-in-hand and sweetly as birds
The voices of those long-haired wraiths: the girl of his fancy,
Whose name was destined to be cast aside in the autumn wind.

They pass beneath and I utter futile words of advice
To ask of him: do things differently.
And they seem to listen.
Or so the flicker of the passing stream conceits.

And, oh, the mountains rise as the curtain
Upon which a young poet casts dispersions
And anger for the sclerotic moments in flowery metaphors,
For there at the altar of renunciation, one can only speak in tongues.
And over the young poet, the fog hangs lazily to mark the world’s turning away:
A blinding of witness to his offerings, the deafening of ears to his word.
For I am no mere present, but the possession of that which looms
And that which as passed—for whom am I, the present, a memory?
Yet, this knowledge sates all hunger and quenches thirst
For those wounds, those ashes,
Those songs written deeply
Have proven fertile for genesis before.

Or so the flicker of passing dreams conceit.

I spend my days
thinking in poetry-
perfection never penned,
perpetually falling upon
my own deaf ears
and disintegrating into
the great nothingness,
only to be recycled
into bits and pieces
of other poems
never to be read

with each night
the words vanish,
one by one,
as I repeat them
incessantly, hoping
that I just might
recite a stanza
upon waking

I wish that my
mouth would open
and out they would
come, perfectly pressed
upon cardstock, fresh
with that inky smell
I swear still lingers
on my finger tips and
pillowcases

instead, I lay still
and silent, and watch
hopelessly as
they drift into dreams

you wanna take a guess? you wanna take a guess at this? guess nice long and hard. take a second guess if you need one. it’s ok to second guess. in fact, i insist you take another and keep guessing because guessing is smoke. in this tight circle, we’re taking guesses.

i am an educated guesser.

bummed guesses for awhile. bought my first guessing glass one July. play the guessing game all my days and guess my days away. they make guesses into the same thing as candles and its spiritual. it feels like taking an infinite number of guesses in one breath.

your guess is as good as mine.

drop to the next level. it is the doctor’s thesis of guessing. It is conjecture and formality, but with the fractal reasoning of a true American pack of guesses. they’re the guesses at the end of something replete. the last guess you have left.

out of guesses.

There is a string of panic tied to the last guess, which we tuck, flip, hide in the bottoms of cardstock caverns. when the time comes to draw the last straw,

B. there is nothing to guess at but a missing paycheck. These are the only answers we ever get.

A. she is there, all smiles and fresh questions with a bunch of guesses. she is my best guess yet.

Sturdy
cardstock
with glitter and a gauzy
image on the front

and no metaphors
to describe the feelings inside
only words

plain heartfelt words

read
and spoken
over
and over again

whit howland © 2021

A brittle rose
and other broken parts
shards of our lives

glued onto cardstock
in a mishmash
collage

pieces
fitted together
with ****** fingers

we're trying
we'll do it
we can make it

© Whit Howland 2019

Way back in the dark ages
this might be coming from

Cleveland
these words that can

only be said on a piece
of cardstock

but they come courtesy
of a fiery Jovian afternoon

my remarks are very brief

even though the future
was not all that it was

cracked up to be
there is someone up here
in space

that still loves you

could we try again

Whit Howland © 2020