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howard brace Feb 2012
Inconspicuous, his presence noted only by the obscurity and the ever growing number of spent cigarette stubs that littered the ground.  It had been a long day and the rain, relentless in its tenacity had little intention of stopping, baleful clouds still  hung heavy, dominating the lateness of the afternoon sky, a rain laden skyline broken only by smoke filled chimney pots and the tangled snarl of corroded television aerials.

     The once busy street was fast emptying now, the lure of shop windows no longer enticed the casual browser as local traders closed their premises to the oncoming night, solitary lampposts curved hazily into the distance, casting little more than insipid pools mirrored in the gutter below, only the occasional stranger scurrying home on a bleak, rain swept afternoon, the hurried slap of wet leather soles on the pavement, the sightless umbrellas, the infrequent rumble of a half filled bus, hell-bent on its way to oblivion.

     In the near distance as the working day ended, a sudden emergence of factory workers told Beamish it was 5-o'clock, most would be hurrying home to a hot meal, while others, for a quick drink perhaps before making the same old sorry excuse... for Jack, the greasy spoon would be closing about now, denying him the comfort of a badly needed cuppa' and stale cheese sandwich.  A subtle legacy of lunchtime fish and chips still lingered in the air, Jack's stomach rumbled, there was little chance of a fish supper for Beamish tonight, it protested again... louder.

     From beneath the eaves of the building opposite several pigeons broke cover, startled by the rattle as a shopkeeper struggled to close the canvas awning above his shop window.  Narrowly missing Beamish they flew anxiously over the rooftops, memories of the blitz sprang to mind as Jack stepped smartly to one side, he stamped his feet... it dashed a little of the weather from his raincoat, just as the rain dashed a little of the pigeons' anxiety from the pavement... the day couldn't get much worse if it tried.  Shielding his face, Jack struck the Ronson one more time and cupped the freshly lit cigarette between his hands, it was the only source of heat to be had that day... and still it rained.

     'By Appointment to Certain Personages...' the letter heading rang out loudly... 'Jack Beamish ~ Private Investigator...' a throat choking mouthful by any stretch of the imagination, thought Jack and shot every vestige of credulity plummeting straight through the office window and amidst a fanfare of trumpet voluntary, nominate itself for a prodigious award in the New Year Honours list.   Having formally served in a professional capacity for a well known purveyor of pickled condiments, who  incidentally, brandished the same patronage emblazoned upon their extensive range of relish as the one Jack had more recently purloined from them... a paid commission no less, which by Jack's certain understanding had made him, albeit fleeting in nature, a professional consultant of said company... and consequently, if they could flaunt the auspicious emblem, then according to Jack's infallible logic, so could Jack.  

     The recently appropriated letterhead possessed certain distinction... in much the same way, Jack reasoned, that a blank piece of paper did not... and whereas correspondence bearing the heading 'By Appointment' may not exactly strike terror into the hearts of man... unlike a really strong pickled onion, it nevertheless made people think twice before playing him for the fool, which sadly, Jack had to concede, they still invariably did... and he would often catch them wagging an accusing finger or two in his direction with such platitudes as... "watch where you put your foot", they'd whisper, "that Jack's a right Shamus...", and when you'd misplaced your footing as many times as Jack had, then he reasoned, that by default the celebrated Shamus must have landed himself in more piles of indiscretion than he would readily care to admit, but that wouldn't be quite accurate either, in Jack's line of work it was the malefactor that actually dropped him in them more often than not.

     A cold shiver suddenly ran down his spine, another quickly followed as a spurt of icy water from a broken rain spout spattered across the back of his neck, he grimaced... Jack's expression spoke volumes as he took one final pull from his half soaked cigarette and flicked it, amid an eruption of sparks against the adjacent brick wall.  Sinking further into the shadow he tipped his fedora against the oncoming rain, then, digging both hands deep within his pockets, he huddled behind the upturned collar of his gabardine... watching.

     It was times such as these when Jack's mind would slip back, in much the same way you might slip back on a discarded banana peel, when a matter of some consequence, or in particular this case the pavement, would suddenly leap up from behind and give the back of Jack's head a resoundingly good slapping and tell him to "stop loafing around in office hours... or else", then drag him, albeit kicking and screaming back into the 20th century.  This intellectual assault and battery re-focused Jack's mind wonderfully as he whiled away the long weary hours until his next cigarette; cup of tea, or the last bus home, his capacity to endure such mind boggling tedium called for nothing less than sheer ******-mindedness and very little else... Beamish had long suspected that he possessed all the necessary qualifications.  

     Jack had come a long way since the early days, it had been a long haul but he'd finally arrived there in the end... and managed to pick up quite a few ***** looks along the way.  Whilst he was with the Police Constabulary... and it was only fair to stress the word 'with', as opposed to the word 'in'... although the more Jack considered, he had been 'with' the arresting officer, held 'in' the local Bridewell... detained at Her Majesties pleasure while assisting the boys in blue with their enquiries over a minor infringement of some local by-law that currently had quite slipped his mind at that moment.  Throughout this enforced leisure period he'd managed to read the entire abridged editions of Kilroy and other expansive works of graffiti exhibited in what passed locally as the next best thing to the Tate Gallery, whereupon it hadn't taken Jack very long to realise that it was always a good place to start if you wanted free breakfast, in fact the weeks bill of fare was tastefully displayed in vivid, polychromatic colour on the wall opposite... you just had to be au-fait with braille.
                            
     No matter how industrious Beamish laboured to rake the dirt there always appeared to be a dire shortage of gullible clients for Jack to squeeze, what would roughly translate as an honest crust out of, and although his financial retainer was highly competitive he understood that potential clients found it bewildering when grappling with the unplumbed depths of his monthly expense account, which would tend to fluctuate with the same unpredictability as the British weather, the rest of Jack's agenda revolved around a little shady moonlighting... in fact he'd happily consider anything to offset the remotest possibility of financial delinquency... short of extortion... which by the strangest twist was the very word prospective clients would cry while Jack beavered around the office with dust-pan and brush sweeping any concerns they may have had frantically under the carpet regarding all culpability of his extra-curricular monthly stipend... and they should remain assured at all times... as they dug deep and fished for their cheque books, and simply look upon it as kneading dough, which eerily enough was exactly the thick wedge of buttered granary that Jack had every intention of carving.

     Were there ever the slightest possibility that a day could be so utterly wretched, then today was that day, Jack felt a certain empathy as he merged with his surroundings... at one with nature as it were.  The rain, a timpani on the metal dustbin lids, by the side of which Beamish had taken up vigil, also taking up vigil and in search of a morsel was the stray mongrel, this was the third time now that he'd returned, the same apprehensive wag, yet still the same hopeful look of expectation in his eyes, a brief but friendly companion who paid more attention to Jack's left trouser leg than anything that could be had from nosing around the dustbins that day... some days you're the dog, scowled Beamish as he shook his trouser leg... and some days the lamppost, Jack's foot swung out playfully, keeping his new friend's incontinence at a safe distance, feigning indignance  the scruffy mongrel shook himself defiantly from nose to tail, a distinct odour of wet dog filled the air as an abundance of spent rainwater flew in all directions.   Pricking one ear he looked accusingly at Jack before turning and snuffled off, his nose resolutely to the pavement and diligently, picking out the few diluted scents still remaining, the poor little stalwart renewed its search for scraps, or making his way perhaps to some dry seclusion known only to itself.
  
     Two hours later and... SPLOSH, a puddle poured itself through the front door of the nearest Public House... SPLOSH, the puddle squelched over to the payphone... SPLOSH, then, fumbling for small change dialled and pressed button 'A'..., then button 'B'... then started all over again amid a flurry of precipitation... SPLASH.  The puddle floundered to the bar and ordered itself a drink, then ebbed back to the payphone again... the local taxi company doggedly refused to answer... finally, wallowing over to the window the puddle drifted up against a warm radiator amidst a cloud of humidity and came to rest... flotsam, cast upon the shore of contentment, the puddle sighed contentedly... the Landlady watched this anomaly... suspiciously.

     The puddle's finely tuned perception soon got to grips with the unhurried banter and muffled gossip drifting along the bar, having little else to loose, other than what could still be wrung from his clothing... Beamish, working on the principle that a little eavesdropping was his stock-in-trade engaged instinct into overdrive and casually rippled in their general direction...  They were clearly regulars by the way one of them belched in a well rehearsed, taken-a-back sort of way as Jack took stock of the situation and was now at some pains to ingratiate himself into their exclusive midst and attempt several friendly, yet relevant questions pertinent to his enquiries... all of which were skillfully deflected with more than friendly, yet totally irrelevant answers pertinent to theirs'... and would Jack care for a game of dominoes', they enquired... if so, would he be good enough to pay the refundable deposit, as by common consent it just so happened to be his turn...  Jack graciously declined this generous offer, as the obliging Landlady, just as graciously, cancelled the one shilling returnable deposit from the cash register, such was the flow of light conversation that evening... they didn't call him Lucky Jack for nothing... discouraged, Beamish turned back to the bar and reached for his glass... to which one of his recent companions, and yet again just as graciously, had taken the trouble to drink for him... the Landlady gave Jack a knowing look, Beamish returned the heartfelt sentiment and ordered one more pint.

     From the licenced premises opposite, a myriad of jostling customers plied through the door, business was picking up... the sudden influx of punters rapidly persuaded Beamish to retire from the bar and find a vacant table.  Sitting, he removed several discarded crisp packets from the centre of the table only to discover a freshly vacated ashtray below... by sleight of hand Jack's Ronson appeared... as he lit the cigarette the fragile smoke curled blue as it rose... influenced by subtle caprice, it joined others and formed a horizontal curtain dividing the room, a delicate, undulating layer held between two conflicting forces.

     The possibility of a free drink soon attracted the attention of a local bar fly, who, hovering in the near vicinity promptly landed in Jack's beer, Beamish declined this generous offer as being far too nutritious and with the corner of yesterdays beer mat, flipped the offending organism from the top of his glass, carefully inspecting his drink for debris as he did so.

     A sudden draught and clip of stiletto heels as the side door opened caused Beamish to turn as a double shadow slipped discreetly into the friendly Snug... a little adulterous intimacy on an otherwise cheerless evening.  The faceless man, concealed beneath a fedora and the upturned collar of his overcoat, the surreptitious lady friend, decked out in damp cony, cheap perfume and a surfeit of bling proclaimed a not too infrequent assignation, he'd seen it all before... the over attentive manner and the band of white, Sun-starved skin recently hidden behind a now absent wedding token, ordinarily it was the sort of assignment Jack didn't much care for... the discreet tail, the candid snapshot through half drawn curtains... and the all too familiar steak tartare... for the all too familiar black eye.

     To the untrained eye, the prospect of Jack's long anticipated supper was rapidly dwindling, when it suddenly focused with renewed vigour upon the contents of a pickled egg jar he'd observed earlier that evening, lurking on the back counter, his enthusiasm swiftly diminished however as the belching customer procured the final two specimens from the jar and proceeded to demolish them.  Who, Jack reflected, after being stood out in the rain all day, had egg all over his face now... and who, he reflected deeper, still had an empty stomach.  Disillusioned, Jack tipped back his glass and considered a further sortie with the taxicab company.

     "FIVE-BOB"!!! Jack screamed... you could have shredded the air with a cheese grater... hurtling into the kerb like a fairground attraction came flying past the chequered flag at a record breaking 99 in Jack's top 100 most not wanted list of things to do that day... and that the cabby should think himself fortunate they weren't both stretched flat on a marble slab, "exploding tyres" Jack spluttered, dribbling down his chin, were enough to give anyone a coronary... further broadsides of neurotic ambiance filled the cab as the driver, miffed at the prospect of missing snooker night out with the lads, considered charging extra for the additional space Jack's profanity was taking...

     And what part of 'Drive-Carefully', fumed Beamish, did the cabby simply not understand, that pavements were there to be bypassed, 'Nay Circumvented', preferably on the left... and not veered into, wildly on the front axle... an eerie premonition of 'jemais-vu' perched and ready to strike like a disembodied Jiminy Cricket on Jack's left shoulder, looking to stick its own two-penny worth in at the 'Standing-Room-Only' arrangements in the overcrowded cab... and at what further point, Jack shrieked, eyes leaping from his head as he lurched forward, shaking his fist through the sliding glass partition, had the cabbie failed to grasp the importance of the word 'Steering-Wheel...' someone wanted horse whipping, and as far as Beamish was concerned the sole contender was the cab driver...

     In having a somewhat sedate and unruffled disposition it had fallen to Beamish... as befalls all great leaders in times of adversity, to single handedly take the bull by the horns, so to speak and at great personal cost, alert the unwary passing motorist...  Waving his arms about like a man possessed whilst performing acrobatic evolutions in the centre of the road as the cabby changed the wheel came whizzing around the corner at a back breaking 98 on Jack's ever growing list... and why, Jack puzzled, why had they all lowered their side windows and gestured back at him in semaphore..?  Rallying to its aid, Jack's head and shoulders now joined his shaking fist through the sliding glass partition and into the cabby's face, "Who" Beamish screeched with renewed vigour ,"Who Was The Man", Jack wanted to know... *"a
Sacrelicious Mar 2012
Saturday Night.

I have no need to explain myself,
I am what you created.
As the artist who painted this canvas,
you especially should understand
the portrait I call myself.
If you find me to be a disappointment,
it’s your own **** fault.
I catch myself forgetting the
little things about you,
My puzzle is left unfinished.
Secretly, I believe
that I am somewhere in the middle of
Life
and
Death.
Just waiting until
I get the courage to close my eyes
and take the escalator
up and away from
Void's emptiness.
Into the heightened arms of Love.
Catch me, if I fall.

Sunday Morning

Time flies by
and I'm still here lost without you.
I am someone that
came from nothing at all.

All i can remember from that night
was,
running home to the Sun.

I found myself passed out beside a toilet.
I got a hangover and fresh start.
Raghu Menon Jul 2015
Patiently he untangles the net
Standing calmly
Brazing the breeze
On the dancing boat
With an oar on its side
Which is cooled by the
Waters of the river..

The sun will set in an hour or so
And he has to finish his catch
Before the dusk
And back to his hut
Where his wife will
Waiting eagerly
To make the dinner
With the fresh catch

Another day
Another catch
The river but
Remains the same
Greeting the fishermen
Who roam the river
With their boats
http://tprmenon.blogspot.in/2015/07/the-fisherman-and-his-boat.html
Gannon Dec 2010
Excuse me Miss,
Can you,
Wait,
Just a moment,
And let me,
Catch my breath?
I said,
Wait,
Just a moment,
And let me,
Catch my breath.

Let me try to,
Capture the air,
That you’ve,
Torn from my breast,
Let me try to find a way to,
Refill my chest.

I said wait,
Just a moment,
And let me,
Catch my breath.

Oh please can’t you wait,
Just a moment,
And let me,
Study you?
Let me study you like a brand new book,
Let me study your hair,
Your eyes,
Your look.

‘Cause I swear right now on my grand daddy’s grave,
You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen,
And,
I aint that brave.

But I just had to tell you,
That you made my day.
And if I died right now,
It’d be a happy death.

So won’t you please,
Wait just a moment,
And let me,
Catch my breath?
This was originally intended to be a spoken word piece, and of course every time I read it I hear it in my head as such,  so I'm not entirely sure that the cadence and timing translates all that well in the written form.
Frankie Gestone Mar 2013
He woke up in a rapid sweat, darkness surrounding him, his soaked pillow was pressing up on his neck as he could feel the uncomfortable stabbing cold run right threw his whole body. His mouth was dry and his body was in great pain. He lay there practically naked, but not just physically, also emotionally. It was like a catatonic state where the person’s body is paused in reality, but the actual person is far away and isolated even from himself. He wondered why he was so comfortable being uncomfortable and remaining frozen in time.  He saw nothing but the subtle moonlight that peaked through the blinds of his window. A point of existence, he feels nothing because all he has ever felt has drowned him. His numbness was being accepted and he embraced that if he remained this way, he would never have to feel hurt or heartbreak again. It’s better this way, he confirmed.

Eventually he got up out of his bed, walked outside to a nearby empty field. He looked up at the infinite night sky and contemplated the moon, the stars, and the endless space that sustained all of its existence. A tear fell down his cheek as he remembered the beautiful wonder of life and the universe; his realization that he is just a small spec of dust compared to all that is and all that is wonderful. Whatever happened to that universal happiness he used to feel? The feelings of the unseen, the cosmos, the mysteries that remain unsolved were all love. He then felt ancient and brand new at the same time-always being around all that is, but recently born into the unknown. The silence of the night swarmed him, and he suddenly embraced all the things he could not accept. The lullaby of the wind put him to sleep.

When he awoke, it was twilight. The sky was a lighter, deep blue and the sun in the far distance was rising in a fiery halo of mixed red, orange, and yellow colors, and the early morning clouds were clear and transparent. He heard the sound of a train horn in the far distance. He followed the sound with his ears as the sound became slightly louder and louder. Then, suddenly he could see the light of the early morning train.

The train had stopped as he approached it, and he hopped on with no hesitation or looking back. This runaway train was going to take him to where he needs to be, and he blindly and faithfully accepted that his fate was out of his hands now. No more heartbreak, no more reminders of the past, and most importantly no more drowning in his tears. As the train proceeded to move forward, he could feel fresh air gently touch his face, and all that he saw and ever knew were now flashing lights disappearing into eternity.

It was hours into the late morning when the train made its first stop. He listened to the train conductor speak out over the intercom, almost incoherently, say, “This is Brightstone Park. Next stop will be Riverhead.” A nostalgic feeling suddenly came over him as he could remember that his very first kiss was in Brightstone Park with Jessica Garzi. That was not his first true love, but his very first heartbreak. Riverhead was a forbidden memory, as he knew a classmate who had committed suicide off the Riverhead Bridge. He had not returned there in five years because of his haunting memories that would always come back to remind him just how cold and frightening the world really is.

While lost in thought, he felt a rough, sand paper-like wet feeling on his forearm. He looked down and it was a black cat, but not all black. The paws were all white like socks, and the chest and stomach were snow white. The loud prominent purr was a very peculiar reminder of a cat he once owned. Her name was Midnight. She was not the friendliest cat to strangers, but she loved him, especially when he massaged her paws. This cat was practically identical to Midnight. Midnight was put down three years ago though. As he began petting the cat’s back, it ran away and jumped off the moving train. He looked out in a hurry, but it was gone. It was just like everything else he loved. There for one moment, then gone the next. The strange thought that has one wondering if anything had actually existed that is now no more. A person, or a thing, could mean everything to you, but once they slip away, they become like the wind: occasionally brushing up against you, but never revealing its form.

On the train he began to wonder how he got where he was, and in general how the smallest decisions he made lead to bigger events and all in all, everything was all connected. There are no isolated events, or isolated people- it is all proven fact and science. Everything depends on each other to survive. The trees depend on the sun to keep themselves alive; we give off carbon dioxide to the trees and in return, we receive the oxygen we need from the leaves of the trees. He thought about the potential of a seed-for example, a tomato seed. Within that tiny seed is unlimited potential of life: The seed may produce one plant of several tomatoes, and within all those tomatoes are countless other seeds. This is all from one seed. Then, one may take a couple of seeds from a picked tomato and plant them throughout the yard creating a garden. That original seed came from another tomato seed inside a tomato on a plant, and that seed came from another seed. When did this cycle of reproduction begin and when does it end? Is it just another form of the infinite? When a person eats a tomato from that original seed, he receives certain essential vitamins his body needs for surviving and sustaining good health. This good health will effect his offspring and so on and so on. When he defecates, that will all return to the earth for potential fertilizer used for other tomato seeds. This is the same when he returns to the earth again. His dust will fertilize the same world that he came from, for all things come from it just to inevitably return to it.

He continued to think about how matter is never created nor destroyed and the same for energy. Nothing ever truly dies; the form changes into something new, like how water becomes a cloud and the cloud becomes water. Though this comforted him, he noticed that a few feet away from him was a former coworker and friend, Natasha Karev. She always infatuated him and they became close friends, but he always wished it had continued and gone even further than it did. One night, only a couple of years ago, they were at a friend’s party. Both were drinking, but not so heavily. That night they bonded and got so close, that she admitted she loved him. He was never quite sure how real that “I love you” was, but it was burned inside his heart ever since. That night there were moments she would tell him how much she wanted to make love to another guy at the party, Kevin, but was afraid to approach him. She told him she desperately wanted to lose her virginity that night to somebody because she was eighteen and only getting older. This was like a sharp knife slowly penetrating into his heart. He remained speechless for quite a few minutes. Finally he decided to go up in a bedroom alone. To his surprise, she followed him up and kissed him. He felt her clothed body up and down, and she touched areas not many have touched before. She told him she wanted to have *** and that she wanted him to rob her of her virginity. He was speechless, but extremely excited. Then, abruptly, she told him she could not because everything was happening way too soon. Why couldn’t she just make up her mind? He sat frustrated in the darkness, again, all alone. After that night, they spoke and remained close, yet that night was never mentioned again. It was as if it had never happened. After about two years of an on and off friendship, they just went their own ways. There were no fights or disagreements. Life just separated them.

“You’re just a figment inside somebody’s dream. So far from reality, you are a dream within a dream within a dream.” Startled by this soft voice, he quickly turned around to see Natasha smiling at him. “Ha-ha! I knew I could scare you. Were you abused as a kid, or something?” No words could come out at that moment, but he hugged her tightly. She explained to him that she is getting off at the next stop to meet a friend. He was sure he wanted to follow her and see where life would take him. She reminisced and told him how she had been away inside her own cave for several months, but is now very happy to meet up with everyone she had lost contact with.

The next stop arrived, but he did not catch the name of the stop he was getting off. As he got off with several others, both he and Natasha met up with her friend, Valeria, who he found quite cute. She resembled Natasha a bit in that they both had ***** blonde hair and blue eyes. They walked right into a giant street fair with a crowd of people looking at the foods and desserts, the trendy clothes, cheap jewelry, and children play rides.

As he looked around, he began seeing many familiar faces. He saw Kevin, a childhood and grammar school mate there with another co-worker of his, Jenny. Jenny was a Colombian beauty in his eyes and who was a flirt and tease to him, but never actually gave him any time alone. Incidentally, he knew both of them at different times in his life and had no idea they knew of each other. Kevin stopped contacting him during high school without any arguments or disloyalties that would tear a friendship apart. Keeping his head down, he walked a few feet to discover another childhood best friend, Jack, who was with a mutual childhood friend, Melanie. Melanie was a best friend of his and also a first childhood crush who also had a crush on him. He thought it was odd because even though Melanie and Jack were also best friends, Melanie never liked Jack in a special boy/girl way. He felt a moment of heartbreak, but quickly turned away and kept walking. A little further up the road, he saw two more childhood friends, Chris and Jimmy, who as children did not get along that well and only hung out with each other in the company of him. How peculiar it was suddenly seeing them together after ten years, and as seemingly best of friends.

That was not all. Things were getting stranger and stranger. It was like all the people who had made an imprint on his life were now coming together around him. He saw his two therapists, one he had gone to as a teenager and the other as a young adult, stand next to each other selling prescription drug samples. Both stared at him with a blank face, but with a prominent smile. He could barely nod at them. Natasha directed them to a local bar. Inside the bar was huge and also had a second floor. He noticed the music playing in the background was, Nocturne In E Flat Major, Op.9 No.2, by Polish born Romantic composer, Frederic Chopin. He became fixated on the elegant eighth note, left hand arpeggios, and the sweet and peaceful fast moving seven, eleven, twenty, and twenty-two notes from the right hand. If he thought about the most beautiful song ever written and all that is wonderful in one, this was the song.

They all took a seat and began looking at people and laughing at their behavior. Everyone was wearing masks. Social masks. They observed how different people act when they are in social gatherings, and how if you carefully study their body language, it will become clear that what they are saying and trying to put out is not what is actually being expressed through the body. One young man was frantically shaking his right leg as he tried to flirt confidently with a young woman he had just recently met. His face began to turn noticeably red, in an embarrassed flush, and he was making sudden hand gestures and quick eye blinking. She, on the other hand, pretended to be interested in what he was saying; yet her eyes would often look around the room and her body was a good distance from him with her arms folded.

Then as they were all laughing, he abruptly stopped and looked ahead to see two drunken women making out two tables away from them. As his eyes focused in on them, he realized they were two of his former crushes, Claire and Veronica, who he had no idea knew of each other because in fact, they were from different time periods of his life. He began seeing former teachers and professors from each stage of his school career, laughing hysterically with one another. Some of his most inspiring teachers and professors were gathered with other teachers and professors he despised. A young, tattooed hipster woman entered the scenery with a little Cairn Terrier that had an uncanny resemblance to his recently passed dog, Petey, who was put to sleep when he was away on a vacation, unexpectedly. His sorrow began to overwhelm him for not being able to say good-bye and see him for a proper last time. Everything about the dog’s high energy, playfulness, and watchdog attitude was exactly like Petey. A tear ran and fell off his cheek from his left eye right into the hand of Natasha. He looked up at her and she said, “Your tears are my tears. For what pain you withhold, I take and share with you.” She then wiped her right eye with the hand that held his tear. Natasha’s friend began to speak slowly into his left ear in Russian. Though he could not understand a word she was saying, it sounded just like a poem based on the pattern and rhythm’s consistency. It made him feel free of melancholy, but then thought of Angela Antonaci entered his mind.

He thought that the last painful experience ended with the break up of his closest best friend ever to play a part in his life. She was his girlfriend for the last three and a half years. They had known each other for ten years before they broke up their entire relationship. She was thirteen and he was fifteen when they first met in a park. She was always all over him like a little schoolgirl and he would often get frustrated with her obsession over him, for he believed he was no big deal. She was the first person to ever make him feel special and important, and even though he would resent her likeness towards him, he could never keep his eyes off of her or stop himself from always coming to her when he felt lonely. After about seven years, he realized he was in love with her. He had always been in love with her from the first time they met eyes. His long road had always lead back to her home in life. Every time he tried forgetting her and moving on, they would meet again. That person people search their entire lives for, he had found.

He rose out of his seat and briefly said goodbye to Natasha and her friend and went upstairs. He wanted time to be alone and walk around until he suddenly saw Jessica walking towards him. He stopped and waited for her to say hello, but she walked right by him, as if he had never existed. He felt a little insulted, yet relieved as any awkwardness that would arise was avoided. Looking ahead, he saw Angela’s two best friends, Kate and Julie, with her high school crush, John. John was playing an acoustic guitar on a lounge chair, singing to the two friends, almost enticing them with his eyes and voice. His jealousy overcame him, as Angela had been infatuated with him on and off even though he had played with her feelings throughout high school and college. John would tell her he loved her and make her believe he was a romantic, then when she fell into his words, he would leave her and keep a distance for long periods of time, leaving her in despair.

The conclusion occurred to him that maybe she was nearby. He searched throughout the entire bar not finding any other clues that she was around. When he went downstairs, he saw Natasha and her friend asleep, as well as most of the bar, except for the bartender. It was like everyone just passed out from the alcohol or possibly inhaled some type of knockout drug. The bartender was watching the news forecast of a tornado watch and dangerous thunderstorms. The bartender looked at him and said, “It’s better if you stay in here. It’s dangerous out there. I recommend you don’t go out!” He just listened, but decided to leave to the outside anyway.

He walked three blocks through the heavy rain and strong winds. He took a moment to stop and look at the black and gray clouds above him. As he looked across the street, he saw her. She was with her mother, sister, and mutual friends of theirs, Chrystal and Mike. He also saw behind them, his own mother and sister. He ran across the street to her and she shockingly with excitement screamed, “Hey!!! Oh my God!! Please stay with us. I missed you so much. You have no idea. We have to get to a shelter away from this storm. Hold my hand…” Smiling, he kept walking with them. They walked for twenty minutes and entered a giant field. After ten minutes of walking restlessly through the field, they all stopped to catch their breath. Angela’s mom ordered everyone to hold one another’s hand. An enormous gust of wind pushed them all to the grassy ground. He began to shake violently as he felt the touch of death nearby. He wondered if this would be the end, as he felt unaccomplished and left with so much left unsaid to her. Thoughts raced through his mind like a speeding highway about how to get to safety. Unable to control and remain focused on one rational thought at a time, he blacked out for a minute.

Then there he was right in the middle of a storm. In so many ways, he realized where he was ending was where he originally began. All the imprints from all he ever knew came back all at once to watch him finally leave all he ever knew from this life. And in the last moments, he found himself with her. He held her hand, while she held his, and the hands of their family and friends. The world was so dark and cold. The wind became much more rapid and an enormous bright light from it came within just miles of them. He kept looking up at the dark black and gray clouds over them, never as frightened as he was now. His focus was on the great strength of the wind. Whatever melancholic thoughts he had of his life, he would not give up hope. Maybe he was just hopelessly hopeful, but holding each other tightly might, in some miraculous way, save them. Then suddenly a deep peace began to sustain his very being. He remembered whose hand he was holding- the only woman to ever understand every level of his being. He looked down at her big, precious eyes pouring out tears. Their eyes locked, as she had been watching him the entire time. No words needed to be said from one another. They knew exactly what they felt and meant. For the first time in his life, everything was all okay. All was beautiful. The whole situation was beautiful, not tragic. In that moment, he understood this was where he was meant to be. This was where he wanted to be, for only in such a life altering moment does one comprehend the very nature of love and life. To just glance into her eyes and see the same person staring back in suspense, while all he ever knew was being born, growing, and dying simultaneously in complete acceptance. They began to fade and disappeared into the light.
I'm a goner
Somebody catch my breath
I'm a goner
Somebody catch my breath
I wanna be know by you
I wanna be known by you
I'm a goner
Somebody catch my breath
I'm a goner
Somebody catch my breath
I wanna be known by you
I wanna be known by you

Though I'm weak and beaten down
I'll slip away into the sound
The ghost of you is close to me
I'm inside out, you're underneath

I've got two faces
Blurry's the one I'm not
I've got two faces
Blurry's the one I'm not
I need your help to take em out
I need your help to take em out

Though I'm weak and beaten down
I'll slip away into the sound
The ghost of you is close to me
I'm inside out, you're underneath
Though I'm weak and beaten down
I'll slip away into the sound
The ghost of you is close to me
I'm inside out, you're underneath
Don't let me be gone

I'm a goner
Somebody catch my breath
I'm a goner
Somebody catch my breath
I wanna be known by you
I wanna be known by you
briano alliano performing on saturn


hi dudes and welcome to my show, today i am performing a few numbers for you

the first number is saying that i perform these songs so i can spread the word

that death is uplifting, i show you how much i live my life

the first song is coke is nice


coke is nice and redrafted my body

and made my tongue a bowl full of jelly

you see athena says coke is a medicine

and takes the stress out of my body

you seas i was walking down the road

the stress of what doctors tell me was making me dwell

you see i do believe in coke to cure you

and i also believe it can make you happy

because in this life you will die anyway

so what is the problem in dying happy drinking coca cola

medicine of the gods

you see i want the stress to stop, oh dear

and i want it to completely disappear

because dudes, ya see i am so low stressed

you see, i will never get the job i eant,

because they only want the young

you see i believe in happiness

and not feeling very sad

so please leave me alone, ya dead old hag

coca cola is the best medicine, dudes


that was a great number, and now dudes, here is the second song

called 16 pounds


16 pounds to buy a car with

it is a very cheap car if it costs that much

ya see a dollar bill can buy a car mat

it really protects your car floor from looking really bad

the australian cent isn’t around anymore

cause you can’t buy much with it, so i chuck it away,, my friend

a japanese coin is a wonderful coin

i notice there is a hole in the centre

so you can stick your finger in

$16 is a lot ya see

you could buy an expensive tub

of honey from the bee

so if you spend all this money now

just remember the old tune from yello in the 80s with oh yeah bow bow



thanks dudes, and now this next song saying, i am a family person

i am a family person and pretty **** cool

and i am too nice to break any golden rule

ya see i love life and i never stray, yeah i am a family person, dude, anyway

you see with me, i never get stressed cause i am a positive person

i believe in loving life almost every day

nothing can stand in my way

i believe in buddhism because i respect my friends and family

and that makes me alright, i guess

if i see anyone treating me like a hooligan you should freaking get a life, dude

cause i am a family person who loves life every single day of the year

ok dudes as we are partying up here on saturn, here is the spider milkshake


spider milkshake is good enough for me

spider milkshake is such a tasty treat

just catch a spider in your bug catcher oh yeah

add some milk and vanilla and have a party

at the mall i am sitting here having a nice vanilla slice

and suddenly it hit me, i need a nice cold drink

i cloud choose pepsi or coca cola man

but the only drink i can drink

is a spider milkshake yeah

spider milkshake is good enough for me

spider milkshake is such a tasty treat

just catch a spider in a bug catcher tray

add some milk and vanilla and have a party

you see this weekend i am going to live it up is sydney

i am going to darling harbour and manly and circular quay

you see i will head to the coffee shop to buy myself a gift

and that is a spider milkshake very tasty heaven forbid

spider milkshake is good enough for me

spider milkshake is such a tasty treat

just catch a spider in a bug catcher yeah

add some milk and vanilla and have a party

you see as we sit here and eat some nice humble pie

and one kid said i will never tell a lie

and as the time came for after school he said

please give me a delicious spider milkshake, oh yeah

spider milkshake is good enough for for me

spider milkshake is such a tasty treat

add some milk and vanilla and say to each other hey

this is the time that we really party

that was a great number, how many of you dudes want your earth bodies to drink a spider milkshake

and here is our next number for you


oh dear what can the matter be

oh dear what can the matter be

oh dear what can the matter be

i haven’t got much money to share

you see i go on holidays across all  the highways and byways

i wish i could have money oh yeah

i have been lost at the fair

i cheered for sydney at the SCG

as they won the big match oh yeah

oh dear what can the matter be

using all of your grey matter be

the devil is upon the bad people yeah

johnny is long at the fair

i went to the park

to play catch with a dog

the name of the dog was little fog, ya see

he was a very adorable dog

oh what a wonderful dog

oh dear what can the matter be

oh dear what can the matter be

i wish i was about 7.3

so i can go off to the fair

i called the police on my mobile

because this ******* was annoying me

i wish they would leave me fucken be

i want to be left in peace

oh dear what can the matter be

i think he thought i was someone else ya see

because i don’t want to have voices that are crazy

i am so long at the fair


hi dudes, that was my new numbers and i will see you in the cosmos next time, catch ya later, dudes
mjad Oct 2018
You run around
Shouting catch me if you can
Sticking your tongue out
Catch yourself a nice ***
Don't like the way she dress tho
And shes a bad kisser
You'd rather hit and miss her
Speed off in a Caddy
She don't call you Daddy
Caught another she a real ***
Running round your mind tho
Punch her heart after ***
Save feelings for the next
Run and catch her if you can
I just can't say no
Catch me if you can tho
Cartwright Mar 2010
you give me these rules to follow what do you Want me to write,
it says write about what I fell of pain,
darkness,
Sadness using words that I've Never Uttered or said..
When you say write what you feel thats what I've been doing wrather you give me an
F or an A for these assignments,
These are the ways that I feel.



You want me to write something Sad:
catch me on a Sad Day,

You want me to write something Dark:
Catch me on a Dark Day,

Want me to Write something Hateful:
Catch me on a Hateful Day,

want me to write something Sweet:
Catch me on a Sweet Day,

To write something Freaky:
Catch me on a Freaky day,

To write something Deathly Insane:

Well this one I just learned you gotta Catch me with a Question or a Simple Title
Havin me think of dark and Death Days
that Drag out into intense bleeding
and fulfilling
Abandonment issues toward myself;
A deep dark wreckless,
Careless secret toward myself,
thinking and contemplating What if I was to bring the Darkness to a full salute would I be me,
Would I be a Murderer,
Would I be an Assasin for Hire,
what would my life be like if I were to do that but alas I dont wanna find out that is why I stay me cause
I believe if I bring that darkness to a
full salute my Life as I know it will turn
Chaotic with no amount of Greatness
but for death and decay,

The Hatred to my Love,



The Death to my Life,



the Wrong to my Right,



The Loneliness to the Togetherness,



The Yang to my Yin,



The Sadness to my Happiness.



So I guess in writing Do I get it now?

Do I let this other side out for a full day not gaining any amount of light to that day...



My Beast to my Gentalmen,



My  Ingnorance to my Intellagence,



My Negative to my Possitive,



My Villian to my Hero,



My Rags to my Riches,



My Shade to my Shine,



My Impure to my Pure,



My Jekyl to my Hyde,



My Insane to my Sane,



My Padded Dark Room to my Clean Sunshine in place of Life,



So did I do it?
Have I uttered what has been dorment inside me for the Longest?



Maybe my Fist to my Mouth,



Maybe my False to my True,



My Body too my Brains,



My Unresraints to my Discipline,



Silence to my Spoken,



****** to my Protect,



What do I do,
Just for one day.



My Slave to my Free Man,



What do I do?



My Loose tongue to Knowing when to shut-up



Wha do you want me to say?



My Riot to my Gaurd,



How should I act?



My Without to my With You,



Would you stay?



My Demise to my Negotiation to Live,



How should I feel?



My Killer to my Protector



What should I do?



My Worst to my Great,



How should I stand?



All these Questions within myself for myself....
If Only for a Day I should go crazy,
Would you stay?



If only for a Day iI Lose Control would you still Love me ?



Chris I need to Know what do you want me to do,
to say,
to be,
to act,
to believe?



Im talking to you,
What would you have me do?



               Chris What shall we do its up to you now,
its always been.

As to my Beautifull Empress,
Our Babies,
and Our Unborns
Supports Me and keeps me Sane and Intensly
In Love with Her in all the Glory that is Life...
I LOVE YOU
complexify Apr 2016
Catch me
If I fall

Catch me
If you see me
Trembling across the street

Catch me
When I fell into your warmth

Catch me
When I fell into your arms

Catch me
When I look into your eyes
You're the drug I can never stop being addicted to.
Jason Schnepper Feb 2015
I'm just looking
for a little love and tenderness
I surrender all that is left of my heart
Catch me baby, now I'm falling
I'm just looking
for a little love and tenderness
I surrender all that is left of my heart
Catch me baby, now I'm falling
Please don't let me go
Hold onto my heart
and just hold me in your arms
let me get lost in this moment
feel a little piece of heaven in your touch
comfort me darlin, give me your love
I'm a writer
I write the truth
and if you knew me
maybe you would understand
everything I been through
and all this **** drama in my life
is like a shadow seems to follow me
everywhere I go
and maybe , baby I'm just to nice to say no
Just so hard to say no
Just let everybody take advantage of me
get what they want
then they vanish never to be seen
nobodies there to put a bandage on my heart
or pick me up when I fall apart
Nahhh..nobodies there
Where did everybody go
Oh, I forgot you only come around
when you want something.
I'm just looking
for a little love and tenderness
I surrender all that is left of my heart
Catch me baby, now I'm falling
I'm just looking
for a little love and tenderness
I surrender all that is left of my heart
Catch me baby, now I'm falling
Please don't let me go
Hold onto my heart
and just hold me in your arms
let me get lost in this moment
feel a little piece of heaven in your touch
comfort me darlin, give to me your love
I have been down and out
kicked around ****** over
cheated so many ****** times
I lost count
I live my life in the shadow
of sorrow I have to beg ,borrow,
and steal just for a little affection
I don't ****** know but this ****
gettin old.
I have been hated by many
loved by few
My pursuit of happiness
I traded my ****** heart for
a bruise
and that's the truth
I'm a writer
I write the truth
and if you knew me
maybe you would understand
everything I been through
and all this **** drama in my life
is like a shadow seems to follow me
everywhere I go
and maybe , baby I'm just to nice to say no
Just so hard to say no
Just let everybody take advantage of me
get what they want
then they vanish never to be seen
nobodies there to put a bandage on my heart
or pick me up when I fall apart
I'm just looking
for a little love and tenderness
I surrender all that is left of my heart
Catch me baby, now I'm falling
I'm just looking
for a little love and tenderness
I surrender all that is left of my heart
Catch me baby, now I'm falling
Please don't let me go
Hold onto my heart
and just hold me in your arms
let me get lost in this moment
feel a little piece of heaven in your touch
comfort me darlin, give to me your love
Mitchell Sep 2013
The retainer where she was put
Was made of concrete. My father told me they had
Dug the grave first, then poured the concrete in, waited for
It to dry and harden, then hammered in six
Circular spikes in the four corners, two on either side
Of the middle. They lifted the concrete cast out with a crane.
My dad was going to be charged 300 dollars a day for the rental,
But because of the circumstances, Home Depot let us have it for free.

-

Where was she?
Where had she gone?
Would I see her face again?
Would she want me to
Meet her on the other side of the river?

-

I answered my cell phone.

"Make sure to bring flower's."
She had been crying. Her voice wavered the way sun light
Does on moving water.

"Make sure to bring flowers," she repeated, "And
That you wear what your father and I bought you."

I nodded my head with the receiver pressed up against my ear.
We both let out a sigh. My mom hung up. I put my phone in my back pocket.

-

Lately, I had been seeing a shrink about repetition. He liked to use the word cycle.

"Everything is repeated," I would tell him.

"Life is a cycle," he'd disagree so to get me talking.

"Can cycles be identical?"

"Technically not. Some cycles are extremely similar, but no two cycles are
Completely the same. Are two people's lives ever exactly the same?"

"I wouldn't know. I don't know that many people. Maybe."

"You know lots of people, Camden. You have told me about many of your friends."

"Are we talking about the seasons?" I asked, changing the subject, "Like fall, winter, spring, summer? We are born, we live, we die, and we are born again?"

"That's a very natural way of looking at it."

"I know it is." I inhaled deeply, swallowing air and wondered what time it was.

"If you are so sure, why look for validation from me?" He liked this one, I could
tell. I imagined him shopping for clothes and then exploding in aisle 16 because of a sale on jeans.

"The word cycle is used by people too afraid to use the word repetition. Everything is
Repeated for the next generation, the next group, the next of the next of the next. We shift things
Around, give things to one another to shift life to make it look different, but, things remain the same. Everything contains the primal function we were all doing and living from the very beginning, only now, there is more of a separation. Music is still music, words are still words, paintings are still paintings, love is still love, death is still death, only done differently and more intensely."

"We are talking about man furthering technology because we, as people and creatures, are
Statistically more prone to flee than fight?"

"Why do you think it has caught on so quick?" I touched both
Corners of my lips with my tongue and suddenly realized I hadn't eaten breakfast.

"It is a theory," the psych nodded, "A theory with, I am sure, many
Palpable facts you could make a very nice report with to prove...something." He
Was at a lost for words and I felt guilty that my mom was paying him $75 an hour.

"We are very split. There are too many of us. Too many hands spinning the china."

"Who is we Harry?" The psych hadn't looked up from his pen and pad of paper, until now. I could
Tell he was annoyed with me either because he was making no progress or because the session
Had just begun and I was already digging into him.

"Culture. The government. You, me, my dad, my mom, the taco bell cashier, the geniuses at Apple computers, a paper weight, my dead sister. We're all apart of these shifts, all putting in a certain amount of energy and lies to keep the protection of the projection going. The question I keep asking myself is: do I want to use my strengths to be apart of this cycle or not?"

His eyes flared open for a moment like he'd swallowed a firefly, not at the question I had posed for myself, but from what I would soon see was from the mention of my sister. He had something.

"I was notified by your mother that you may not want to talk about your recently deceased sister. Is It O.K. if I ask you some questions about her?"

I was leaning forward on the couch with my hands clasped in between my legs. The psych had looked up at me now. He was sweating at the top of his thin hairline. Observing that I was staring at his building perspiration, he, trying to be nonchalant, took out a thin, white napkin from his grey shirt pocket and dabbed the top of his head. The napkin looked like cheap toilet paper. I'd have offered him some water, but I had no water to give and I didn't know where the sink and cups were to give him any. I figured he did - it was his office - so I asked him for some. He pointed me in the direction of the bathroom. I got up and found a stack of paper cups. I poured myself a cup and went back to the couch, but instead of leaning forward, I sat back, relaxed, and let the expensive leather couch take the weight I had been carrying away.

"So," the psych maintained cooly, "Would it be alright if we were able to discuss your sister?"

I lifted the paper cup over my head and the psych's eyes, after I poured the water over my hair, my face, and clothes, was a mixture of what my mom's eyes looked at the funeral, defeated, confused, and with a loss of faith and hope. My father's eyes had only held hate, anger and the need to lash out at someone, but the only someone that would have fit the bill would have been God.

"Sure," I answered, "Let's talk about my sister."

-

I finished drying myself in the car. The psych had let me keep the towel.
I leaned out the window to look at myself in the side mirror. I looked fine.
Presentable. Accountable. Like I had been through something where I had
Faced my soul. Like I had used and abused my emotions. There was comb in my glove compartment, so I took it out and rushed it through my damp hair. Slicked back. The sun
Was out, no clouds, burning up the inside of my car. That taste that comes after
Finishing something that's supposed to do you good didn't come. I was left with an unsure hand.
Putting my keys in the ignition, I turned them, and felt the engine rumble in front of my legs.
The sun sat in the sky like a lazy hand and I had nowhere else to go but home.

-

"Let's go to the river today," my dad said over coffee and two over easy eggs on top
Of burnt wheat toast. "I'll drive and you and your sister can sit in the back and sing."

I looked over at Ally. She was gazing into her fruit bowl she had prepared for
herself because dad didn't understand the concept or how to make it. The lamp light above us
reflected in the smooth apricot yogurt and the flecks of granola scattered on top
looked like beige, jagged rocks. My dad's offer hung in the air and neither
of us bit the lure. I had just woken up and was unable to speak clearly, a decent
excuse. Ally was simply choosing to ignore him.

"What you think there Ally?" I asked her. I sipped my coffee. It needed more cream. I got
U, got it and brought the carton to the table.

"We can take the truck down there and load the back with the fishing poles and tackle
And inner tubes. We haven't...done that...in a long time," he said, chewing his food as he spoke.

Ally poked her fruit bowl with her spoon, silent.

"What you think, Cam?" My dad was desperate. He knew I'd say yes.

"Sure. I've got no plans this weekend."

"No schoolwork?"

"It can wait till Sunday. Only math and some reading."

"Ally, what do you think?" my dad asked, leaning over to her. I could see he was
Trying to be as courteous and gentle with her as he knew how to. I felt bad for him.

"Sure," she muttered, "That sounds like fun." I could barely hear her, but somehow,
I could tell she sounded happy.

"Perfect," my dad smiled, "We'll pack the car up Friday,
Drive up Saturday morning early, camp one night, then get back Sunday afternoon." He
Took a long sip of his coffee and swished it around in his mouth, then dug
His fork into the dry toast and ran his small steak knife over the eggs. A silent pop came from
The egg and the light orange yolk spilled out. "Perfect," he repeated, "Just great."

Ally poked a grape from her fruit bowl and dipped it into the yogurt.
I took another sip of my coffee and looked up into the fan, spinning above us.
We were going to the river.

-

"Your sister turns five today," my mom told me, "And that means
I want you to be on your best behavior."

I nodded, unsure what the point of a birthday was. I had had one before, or at
least I thought I did, and all I remembered was that I got presents and the colorful balloons
and the cake we all ate with fire kind of floating and burning above it. Somewhere
in that moment I remember thinking that the cake was going to catch on fire, then they, everyone,
some that I knew and some people I had never seen before, yelled and shouted to
blow the fire out, so I quickly did, but not because it was for a wish, which I later found out it was supposed to be for, but because I truly thought the cake was going to catch fire and they wanted me to take care of it. At that point, I was unsure what it meant to be alive or why to celebrate it all.

"This is her day, Camden," my father told me, "So I want you to be happy for your sister."

"I am," I said. I was wearing my favorite white and blue striped t-shirt and
New shoes that my mom had bought me for the party.

"Sometimes you have to think of other people," my mother continued, "And today is one
of those days. I don't want any crying because you didn't get any presents or that none of your
friends are at the party. There are going to be a lot of Ally's friends there, but not many
of your's...do you understand?"

"Yes, Mom."

"Do you understand, Cam?" My father repeated. His skin was the color of a burnt
pancake and he smelt like stale sugar and sun tan lotion. He was in front of me and was
holding a thin magazine with a man in a boat holding up a fish on a line on the cover.  

"Yes, Dad," I said again. I was hungry. I wanted mac n' cheese, my favorite food.

I had been on the floor, laying on my stomach watching Ren and Stimpy. They were standing in front of the television and I remember trying to wish them out of the way. Behind them were two, large bay windows where three palm trees stood in a row like tropical soldiers. I could see there was no wind because the three of them stood still, as if posing for someone. Their leaves were bright green, a mixture of the neon green Jello I used to love to eat and the orange Jolly Rancher my dad would always have in a tiny tray in the middle of the dining table. My mother hated having them there because it always tempted Ally and I, but he never moved it until he moved out.

"Do you like your show?" my mom asked, turning to see what I was watching.

I nodded, absently. Ren was licking Stimpy's eye because he was complaining about having
an eyelash in there. Stimpy was completely still and smiling like he does - dumb and content.

"Interesting..." my mother trailed off. She walked to the kitchen behind the couch and
Opened up the pantry for something. "You hungry, Camden?"

"I'm starving," my dad said, "Let me go check on Ally in the bedroom. She should be up
from her nap."

I got up from my stomach and sat back on my legs, "Do we have mac n' cheese?" I asked.

"Let me check."

She reached up for the cabinet over the stove where I could never reach and
Opened it. I rose slightly up from where I was sitting to see if I could see the glorious dark blue and orange package, but wasn't able to see over couch. I hovered there, still like a humming bird.

"You're in luck," I heard her say, "We've got one box left."

"Yay!" I screamed and got up, running into the kitchen.

"But," she smiled, stopping me, "You'll have to share it with your sister."

"No! I don't want to! I always have to share."

"What did we just talk about Camden?" she said, lightly stamping her foot.

I tried to remember, but couldn't. I shrugged.

"You need to learn to share, Camden. You also need to listen better when your father and I are talking to you. You and your sister are going to know each other a very long time and I want you to learn how to share now, so you two can be happy in the future."

"The future," I asked, "What's that?"

She paused, then said, "It's a time," she paused again, "Ahead of us."

"Do we know where it is?"

"Not exactly," she sighed.

"What's it look like?"

"No one really knows. People can only imagine it."

"Is it very far away?"

She opened the top of the blue and orange mac n' cheese box and poured the dry macaroni into a large silver ***, lifted the faucet, and let it run inside for five or seven seconds. She placed the *** on an unlit burner and turned to look at me. Her eyes looked far away and right there with me.  

"Closer then you think," she said and turned the burner on.

-

I turned into the taco bell parking lot. There was something I was trying to remember that was in my trunk, but I couldn't recall the picture. A haze blew over the windshield that was a mix of heat and wind; I wished to be somewhere else, someone else, someplace else, but, there I was, sitting there underneath the sun, like everyone else. If I was able, I would have unlocked the door to my car and opened the door and walked out - but - there was something else lingering underneath my fingernails, something I couldn't name.

"Two tacos," I said into my hand, "And a water."

"Pull to the window," the voice buzzed over the muffled speaker.

"Yes," I said through my split fingers.

In front of me, over a patch of clean cut green grass and a yellow, red, and orange Taco Bell signature sign, was a fresh gas station with a willow tree *** near the front entrance. He had a sign that hung around his neck that read Juice Please - Very Thirsty. How I knew this was because I had seen it every time I had been asked to fill up my dad's car every other Sunday. I had never given the tree a dollar, yet, I felt that I owed him something. I tried to pull up to the window, but my clutch was grinding and a cloud slunk overhead. I was tired and only wanted to eat.

"That'll be a two twenty-five," the voice said through the thick, clear glass.

"Yes," I said to myself, digging into my wallet for three dollars.

I ****** the three onto the thick plastic platform. A quick sweeping plastic brush pushed the bills toward the asker, and the bills were gone. I had no food. I had nothing. My money was gone and all I had was a gurgling car in front of me and an empty front seat beside me. A pair of clouds waded by my front shield window. A shadow drew itself out in front of me like a **** model. A beep. Sudden and behind me. There was sound. I looked over my shoulder and a black  2013 Cadillac was sitting there, windshield tinted grey, the driver a shadow. I was unsure what to do...so I pulled forward six inches, hoping the offer would be enough. I wasn't in the best neighborhood.

The window to the left of me slid open. An arm erupted forward with a plastic bag,
"75 cents is your change."

The hand dropped three quarters next to the plastic bag. I grabbed the bag with the two tacos and three quarters and quickly wound up my window. The face in front of me was a dangerous blur: smiling, frowning, not caring either way what happened to me next. The hands had gobbled up the three dollars and I was happy to see it go. Who needed money? I tossed the plastic bag onto the passenger seat and sped off two blocks for my grandma's house. Salvation. The holy land. A place with free hot sauce and two dog's that were stolen without paper's. Eden.

-

"What are you learning right now?" I asked Ally.

She hesitated, then said, "Something to do with science." She paused," Lot's to do with rock's."

"Rocks?" I stammered, not remembering a time when I learned about rocks in school, "What kind of rocks?"

"I don't know," she grinned, looking up at me, "All kinds."

I laughed and kicked a stone into the river. The sun was out and reflected on the water like an unpolished diamond. We had grown up a quarter mile away, but still, it felt foreign to us.

"I like it. There's some things you could see that you would never think to read about it in books."

I had read plenty off books. Most, I took little from, but Ally, I could see, had taken plenty.

"What are you doing in school?" Ally asked me.

"What do you mean?" I
Ooolywoo Oct 2016
I LOVE MYSELF
With all my flaws
In my Beautifulness,
In my mistakes,
In my weakness,
In my darkness.
I love myself, because I am worth it.
I am a high power person who can move mountains with my love, thoughts and dreams
I am good, kind, funny, full of life and love, contagious with my explosive energy
Some things may be equally essential but nothing is more important than loving oneself
And at this moment the love I have for myself goes above and beyond.
It could reach the end of the universe if I just unwrap it
I love me in my inane, craziest, sanest, beautiful twisted, darkest and funniest way
I love me in a way that no one does
I love me in my fullest woes
I am everything that I can and will be
I am frightfully proud of my flaws and proudly wearing them as no one is perfect
This is the start of a new journey to me
The journey of love and self acceptance
The journey to fully embrace and value my own self
I allow myself to fall in my stupidest and biggest way, just to get back up and catch my breath again
Failure will not stop me but make me stronger
I am fully seeing me and smiling at my imperfected and distorted reflection
Hugging myself so tightly, refusing to let go
The more I am spending time with me,
The more and more my love grows
Is it bad for my health ? I do not think so.
It’s true, I am better, happier, more free, powerful, at peace
The sun is shining on me
I don’t need no help to be beautiful, ‘cause I’ve got me
I’ve got that uncontainable light from within me
I am smoldering a treasure, sharing laughter, joy and sadness with myself
I have learnt the phases of myself
So distant from that little insecure girl I used to know
As I allow her opinions to matter
I have accepted her difference
Her different kind of beauty, I have learned to love
This feeling of wholeness, self acceptance, comfort and love, is liberating
I wrap myself around my contorted and beautiful else to form a ME
As I am, Raw and Real
i smoke kush
incase you didnt know
but i am not scared
the feds cant get me
for reggae mon is only an entity
how can they catch
a fish that does not swim
a butterfly that does not fly
a rabbit that does not run
if they are not there
there is no way to catch
the merely superficial
there is no way to catch
the reggae mon offishal
we are free
ALY Jan 2013
how does a dreamcatcher know which
    dreams to catch?
what if it
swallows the good ones
and sneaks them off to another
    reality?
what if it
holds the bad hostage
to share at the most dreadful
     time?
           what is time to a dream?
but just look at how it twists
and ties itself in knots so
    beautifully
a community of individuality
cinching simplicity together to form
   brilliance
a spiderweb of spirit trapped between threads
strung tight like the ties of
   fate
showing me reality
far beyond
what we blindly
    see
    inspiration
    appreciation
absorbing the vibes reflecting off
questions of whether a second
                         is time to a dream?
unrecognized reality
mind outside of body
    sensory
    overload
a breath of fresh
light
a taste of foreign
thoughts
the touch of a
music note
and a vision of
    love
trickling quiet
tears down the
face of
                   time...to a dream
truth
can dance on the
    edge of reality
so when i wake up screaming open my eyes and
see
my mind momentarily remains
tangled in a realm of
    reality once removed
feathers floating softly
through worlds yet to be
unfurled
but shadows through breezy windows left ajar
blow my thoughts back to
    now
and the sounds
and sliences
and the colors
and expressions
of my mind
are altered
by a bombardment
of influences
out of control
reality
can be difficult to
embrace
now and
again
we must
    escape
                 to a dream
to contemplate the
    impossibly
intertwined strings of
eternity
    that
  spiral
through
and through
tossing and
turning new leaves
as the seasons cycle
time remains immeasurable
lest by our mere
      thoughts and ideas
so we
create
a geometrically
stunning display
of unspoken hope
to catch
                      a dream
and it hangs by the window
and if  the
truth
teetering on a tightrope
between worlds
could speak it
would tell of
endless
possible
imagination
where
dreams
are
reality
and there is
no such thing as
                               time
Nat Lipstadt Feb 2016
~~~


in a four lion pawed,
old fashion
bathtub,
soaping and playing
with my two boys,
then, young children,
splish splashing,
playing games,
a wet version of capture the flag,
the winner gets to scrub someone else's back
with a flag
of the slipperest bar of soap,
ever,
in a game we called,

catch the cockroach cuckoo

***.

the floor is totally soaked,
your mom's gonna **** someone,
the bath mat weighing now 'bout five pounds,
not including the no tears shampoo that miraculously
is bubbling up from it,
an actual
groundswell of
shining eyes

and oh crap,

your pj's!
on the floor!

we all gotta go hide real quick
in the crazy better-be-on-high dryer,
more happy shouting, tumbling,
to get them and
our selves
back to a
ready-to-wear- state,
with a wearable, Johnson & Johnson sham-poo,
sweet-smelling encasing,
ready to be swept beneath a talcum powdery snow-angel coverlet,
into a slippery ready-to-sleep state

"quit all that screaming you guys,"

a piercing late entrant
to our Las Vegas gaming bath~table,
heard through the door,
deserving of a ten second
almost silenced,
fearful, giggled appreciation

then some one sang out

catch the cockroach cuckoo

and the fun and games recommence,
all of us,
soap search engines,
began again,
fully reenergized

don't gotta clue,
why this old fool fills
his memory sac this day,
with this silly,
refried-ain't-worth-a-hill-of-beans
peyote poem-visions from
decades older(1)

nowadays, he still plays,
still a super soaker bath man,
reliving old-fashioned soapy games
with a new Kingston trio,
me, myself and I,

and still hearing voices,
absent and present,
coming thru the walls

"you making a mess in there? better quiet down!"

but today's voices heard
are from within born,
not real,
an updated, revised recollection of the
went, and now,
gone gone gone

these voice now mocking the messes made
of bathrooms and
lives,
his own,
and the other players,
their lives
that this man sealed and help fashion,
for better and some,
for worse

and the
updated "better quiet down" sound heard,
well, that's jes me trying
to convince the too familiar new trio,
that the
harmonies of that vision,
ain't real
no more

and he finds-the-soap game
nowadays,
can't give you relief,
cannot remove,
the uncleansed residue of them
other
oldest soap **** guilty memories,
consisting of too many undisclosed,
then, unrealized mistakes,
that any parent,
all parents,
or this particular parent,
raises up,
seals and makes


~~~
5:21pm
1/30/16 NYC

(1) I subsequently realized that Pandora
played Crosby, Still and Nash singing
"teach your children well.
their father's hell,
will slowly go by"
Sky Nov 2014
Frown upon my withered heart!
and wipe away my tears.
Catch the nightmares, catch my dreams,
ensnare my childish fears.

Protect me, Catcher, put me down
and watch me sleep to-day.
the worries they encase me,
my dream’s the price I pay.

The morning comes unfiltered
the cycle is broken for now
Oh Catcher! my Catcher!
My faithful night snatcher!
Laid a kiss on my wavering brow.
I love my dreamcatcher
Kat Aug 2015
Isn’t physically quick or agile.

Disappears in libraries.

Has been known to dissolve into the physical pages of books.

Is good at tucking herself into the stacks and retreating to reading nooks.

Blends in at coffee shops where her voice can be drowned out by the grinding and the steaming.

Can become indistinguishable in the dark of theatres, in the quiet shuffle of art galleries, the finger-snapping of poetry readings, the hum and jostle of the Tube.

Is indistinct. Adept at hiding in plain sight.
Toni Seychelle Feb 2013
The ground beneath the stiff leaves is frozen. The cold, brisk air invades my lungs, I exhale, my breath visible. I step over fallen branches and tugged by thorny vines. A red tail hawk screeches overhead, this is a sign of good luck. There is no path, no trail to mark our way, just an old, flat railroad bed surrounded by walls of shale, blown up for the path of the train so long ago. The only ties to remind of the rail are the rotting, moss covered ties that once were a part of a bridge that would have carried the train over a small creek between two steep hills. I see a fox burrow, and it's escape hatch is one of the hollowed railroad ties. I want to be a fox... The trek down this hill is not easy, thorny blackberry bushes and fallen trees impede progress. At the bottom, the small, bubbly creek is frozen at the edges, traveling under rocks and continuing its ancient path. I look up the hill that I just descended, and wonder how the return will go. Keep moving. The next hill will be easier, there are no thorny tangles, just treacherous leaf litter that will give under my feet if I don't find the right footing. The trick is to dig my boots into the ground as if I'm on steps. These hills are steep. Finally at the top, I look back at this little spring valley, I'm not that high up, but what view. Here, there is a dilapidated tree stand, falling apart from years of neglect and weather. Surrounded by deep leaf litter, there is a patch of rich dark earth, a buck has marked his spot, his round pellets are nearby. The saplings catch my hair as I walk by, and at these moments I am thankful for this cold snap that took care of the ticks. A creepy feeling takes over me, so thankful for this snap. A few feet further, as I watch where I am walking, another tussled bit of earth and I notice some interesting ****. It's furry and light grey; I poke it with my stick and find a small skull when I turn a piece over. Owl. I continue my walk, I didn't come here to play with poo. The last time I took this hike was three years ago, on a similar frigid day. It was a lot easier to make it through the shale valleys. Last summer, a wind storm felled trees and took out power for two weeks. The evidence of that derecho is clear here in this untouched forest. I remembered a tree, which now is a fallen giant, that had lost it's bark. The bark had separated and laid around this tree like a woman's skirt around her ankles. Now the tree lies with it's bark. I pass another tree I recognize whose branch extends out but zig zags up and down, as if it had three elbows. The tree signifies my next move, to descend from the flat railroad bed, down to a creek that flows through the tunnel that would have carried the train. The creek is considerably larger than the last creek I could step across. Descending towards the creek leads me over moss covered rocks and limbs, still bearing snow. Outside the tunnel, the hill walls are large stones, covered in a thick layer of moss, some of which has started to fall off due to heaviness. There's a sort of ice shelf in the creek, it's three layers thick and can support my one hundred and twenty pounds. Laying across the creek is another derecho-felled tree. Some sort of critter has crawled on this, using it to avoid the water below and as a short cut up the hill. His claw marks are covering the the limb, a few are more clear, it looks as if the creature almost slipped off. His claw marks show a desperate cling. I walk through the tunnel, in the mud and water; the creek echoes inside. I look above. There are drainage holes lining the ceiling, one is clogged by a giant icicle. I imagine the train that used to ride over this tunnel, I pretend to hear it and feel the rumbling. The last time we were here, we found cow skeletons. We placed a few heads on branches and one over the tunnel. We stuck a jaw, complete with herbivore teeth, into the mossy wall and a hip bone on a sapling. The hip bone reminded us of Predator's mask in the movie. All these bones are turning green. When I was here before, there was a bone half submerged in the creek; I had taken a picture of it but today, it isn't here. I'm sure it was washed away. After our exploration of the previous visit, we turned back. We are cold again, can't stay in one place too long. I climb through the deep leaf litter and over the rocks back to the railroad bed. Passing all the things I've already seen and spotting things I missed. I find two more fox burrows. They utilized the shale rock and burrowed underneath the jutting formations. Hidden coming from the south, the gaping openings seem welcoming from the north. My friends, the spelunkers and climber, want to descend into the darkness but I remind them, it is an hour to sundown, our trek is hard enough with overcast daylight. Wisdom prevails. We pass a tree, we didn't notice before, that was struck by lightening. The cedar tree was split in two and fell down the shale wall. I see the evidence of the burn and a smoldered residue at the base. Nature has a cruel way of recycling. The downed tree still has snow on it and the path of a raccoon is visible, I like the paws of *****. Though the way is flat, the walls of shale tower above us, limiting routes. At one point I can't see through the fallen trees I have to pass through. I have to crab walk under, crawl over, duck again and find my way around the thorny collections of bare black berry bushes. Finally into a clearing, still surrounded by sharp shale, there is another wall covered in inches of thick, healthy moss. I place my hand, taking time to stroke the furry wall. My hand leaves an imprint. I wonder how long that will last.. Back down the steep hill up and up the thorny tangle. I know I'm on the right path up, I see the fox's hole through the railroad tie, and his entrance burrow up the hill. Going down was definitely easier. The summit is literally overgrown with thorns, there is no clear path through. It is, again, impossible to see through the tangle of limbs and saplings and more thorns. Somehow we make it through. We are close to breaking off this path. We know this by the remains of a cow skeleton that more than likely fell from the top of the shale cliff. Femurs and ribs and jaws abound. On the last trip, we placed a hip bone in the "Y" of a sapling. The young tree has claimed it, growing around it. We add a piece of jaw to the tree's ornamentation and move on. We climb down from the railroad bed to our car - parked on the side of the road with a white towel in the window so that no one suspects a group of people walking through private property, past faded NO TRESPASSING signs.

When I undress for bed later, there are many small scratches up and down my legs from those ****** thorny vines. I'm okay with that, it's better than searching for ticks in my head.
I couldn't write a 'poem' about this hike. It was too full of nature.
If you've loved a cowboy
You know it can be tough
A cowboy's soul is different
They're made of sterner stuff

A cowboy loves forever
They are always moving on
But one thing bout a cowboy
That love is never gone

If you love a dreamer
You have to see in space
You know you've got a dreamer
You can see it in their face

A dreamer sees the future
They have to know what if
Thoughts always in motion
Flowing water, never stiff

Cowboys and Dreamers are one and the same
Loving one or the other can be a strange game
Cowboys look skyward to lasso the stars
Dreamers catch starlight and they put it in jars
Cowboys and Dreamers they have the same mind
Cowboys and Dreamers are the best loves you'll find

A cowboy's a loner
They believe what they see
They live by a code
Of what will be will be

A dreamer sees something
Where others ask what
They can not keep grounded
And they answer, why not?

Cowboys and Dreamers are one and the same
Loving one or the other can be a strange game
Cowboys look skyward to lasso the stars
Dreamers catch starlight and they put it in jars
Cowboys and Dreamers they have the same mind
Cowboys and Dreamers are the best loves you'll find

A cowboy who dreams
Is the one you should rope
They know that true love
Take work, not just hope

A dreamer can cowboy
They'll see the same stars as you
They'll lasso those stars
And they'll want the moon too

Cowboys and Dreamers are one and the same
Loving one or the other can be a strange game
Cowboys look skyward to lasso the stars
Dreamers catch starlight and they put it in jars
Cowboys and Dreamers they have the same mind
Cowboys and Dreamers are the best loves you'll find

You can love a cowboy
And a dreamer as well
If you're unsure of which
Ask your heart, it can tell

A cowboy has dreams
A dreamer inspires
They're one in the same
Burning two different fires

Cowboys and Dreamers are one and the same
Loving one or the other can be a strange game
Cowboys look skyward to lasso the stars
Dreamers catch starlight and they put it in jars
Cowboys and Dreamers they have the same mind
Cowboys and Dreamers are the best loves you'll find

Don't fence in a cowboy
He'll just move along
A dreamer must dream
To not would be wrong

Come along for the ride
No matter how hard it seems
Whether cowboy or dreamer
Hold on to those dreams

Cowboys and Dreamers are one and the same
Loving one or the other can be a strange game
Cowboys look skyward to lasso the stars
Dreamers catch starlight and they put it in jars
Cowboys and Dreamers they have the same mind
Cowboys and Dreamers are the best loves you'll find
I'm on a train.

One of those red ones with black trimmed windows you can imagine rolling through the suburbs on the way to NYC. Not a subway car but a classier vintage with proper rows of cushioned seats and a lever to pull if there is an emergency. There are sparse shrubberies on one side of the tracks and the ocean on the other. Young trees and bushes stroll by.  A little wind is pushing off the ocean, massaging the car ever so gently back and forth as we move along. A gentle click-clack is on the tips of our ears.

We got on together. I hadn't known you for very long but the connection was stronger than anything I had ever felt or have since. You practically sat on top of me for the first few miles. Couldn't keep your hands off me,  staring in my eyes like you were searching for something lost but you couldn't remember what. The edges of your lips turned upwards permanently as if you were always at the verge of a laugh. You interlaced my fingers with yours and held on like you would be ripped away if your grip loosened for even a second. Slender fingers holding so tightly that they were becoming red.

You were excited to to be riding with me, about where we were going and all the things we would do when we got there. I would see you peer out of the corner of your eye, then lean over to brush your soft cheek against my budding stubble. Kissing and gently biting my lips insatiably. The suns rays coming in at an angle and lighting up your perfect smile and dimple.

I had to remind you we were in public.

I was lost in your blonde curls and the incense of your neck. I had fallen incredibly hard and so fast that my face hurt from smiling and my heart beat with vibrations I had never known. Not even a whiff of anxiety or neurosis. Some of the best memories of my life, as fleeting as they turned out to be.

I yawned and you put your finger in my mouth. I bent over to tie my shoe and you would poke my **** and laugh with your own reflection in the window, like this was the first and best joke of all time. Maybe it was and maybe it is.

The waiter came and informed us that a thing called "the bar car" existed. We both jumped at the idea. I didn't exactly notice at the time, during our excitement, but that's when the train started going faster and everything out the windows began to blur.

The bar car was a wild ride and we took advantage of our lo'cal. All kinds of fine wine, liquors and illicit substances were available. We tried them all. You were beautiful, your laugh infecting everyone around you, I was charming and held a captive audience.   It was a dark, loud and glorious blur. We were the life of the party and it chugged on till dawn.

We woke up in our seats, disheveled and discombobulated. It was dark out already. Did we sleep through the entire day? The train was slowing down, maybe approaching a station. The party was amazing but we were certainly paying the price for the black out. You moved over to the seat across from me to have some more space and lay down. I saw myself in the reflection. My hat, charm and smile from the night before had vanished. I must have left them in the bar car the night before.
      You had changed, beauty uninterrupted but different somehow. I couldn't put my finger on it. Irritated maybe? I invited you to cuddle and battle the hangover together but you ignored me. Like you couldn't hear me or didn't want to. I decided to let you be.

I got up to use the bathroom and thought I would go look for my scattered belongings. Maybe I could find a scrap of leftover dignity while you rested. I inquired to the conductor who directed me to the bartender in the bar car. He hadn't changed a bit, somehow untouched and unaffected by last nights antics that had effected me so dramatically.  Same black suspenders and white pressed shirt with impeccably slicked hair. I asked him what happened and if I had an open tab. While slowly polishing a rocks glass he looked up and made eye contact for a split second before looking away.
He said:  "Oh the bar car takes its toll. In the end we all end up paying one way or another". I still don't know what he meant by that or if he knew.
      I asked him if he found my hat and he said he would check the camera. We walked in to a small back room, while he was reviewing the tape, over his shoulder I noticed a tragedy.

We were drunk. I was going on to a group of new friends on one side of the bar, they were hanging on my words and I was eagerly explaining whatever nonsense they were drooling over. You were in the corner wearing that red dress I love, with your hair up in a tight bun. A few curls had escaped and brushed your high cheekbones, a thin line of pearls dancing delicately across your perfectly symmetrical collar. You were stunning and inebriated, swaying with each bump and motion of the train. A man wearing my hat put his hand on your side to keep you from swaying over and then he left it there.
I took a sharp breath.

It looked like you put your hand on his hand to move it but then it stayed and you both swayed together. As the air left my lungs and the blood drained out of my face I watched your lips touch the strangers. A small piece of my soul slipped away forever. I couldn't watch any further. When I asked the bartender how long it went on he fidgeted for a moment and uncomfortably muttered "quite some time". I never found my hat or the other part of me that left that day.  

The train slowed. I walked to the back, as far away from you as I could get, in utter disbelief. How could you? I thought to myself.
I mourned the loss of the you as I knew you yesterday, quietly and to myself. A tear  escaped my eye and rolled down my now fully formed stubble as I fell in to a random seat in mild shock. There were a few passengers back there so I had to pull together relatively quickly. After gaining some composure I knew it was time to get off. I knew we could never get back to yesterday morning though I would have said or done anything to do so.

The train had stopped. I went back to my seat and you were sleeping. I took my coat and gathered my things. The conductor looked at me confused as to why I would leave something so magnificent, I assume he had no idea what had transpired.   

I walked to the rear of the car and slid the door open slower than required. I stepped to the stairs and put one foot down on the step and the other on the ground. I stopped, rooted with my hand on the railing, lingering between two very different paths.
     I knew that it was time to get off, I knew this was the sensible thing to do, that I couldn't get past this offense regardless of how I had felt earlier the day before. The whistle screamed from the locomotive. The conductor looked at me and shook his head, I'm not sure if he was trying to tell me to stay or go but a decision had to be made.

The train lurched forward and I watched as the station slip away slowly. I sat in between the cars for a while and watched the ocean and birds. With a heavy heart and shoes I walked back to my seat. You were waiting. Crying. You knew. The bartender had told you. You didn't mean do do it, didn't realize what you were doing and thought it was me. He was wearing my hat and the whole world was blurry and dark.

I believed you. Self anguish mixed with alcohol was dripping from your pores. I knew you didn't mean it and were drunk, but could I ever forgive you or trust you again?

I loved you still.

I caught a glimpse of my reflection, a weaker version of myself looked back. As if an invisible chip in my teeth had developed and my shoulders lowered. The charming, confident man from the bar car the day before had been replaced. Something was off but not enough for anyone else to notice, just enough to know a change has happened.
       The train started to pick up speed again as we distanced ourselves from the station.  I second guessed my decision to stay but I didn't look back.

I found the man with my hat and punished him with a few blows in the dark. He knew he ****** up, apologized and took the beating like a man. I never got the hat back.

The engineer announced that we would be going through a tunnel soon and to turn on our lights and keep our hands in the windows.

It would be dark.  

We stayed away from the bar car for a while but the draw was irresistible. After a few hours we were there again but you never left my side.  Then you did. I was looking for you but you would disappear and not answer me when I called you name. The tunnel went deeper and darker and I didn't know where you were and I suspected you liked it that way. The train began to slow down again as we exited the tunnel.

I finally found you back at our seat, you had moved one row away from me. I asked you to come back, tried to hold your hands but you pulled away with vehemence. When I came back from the bathroom you had moved another row farther.
I knew I was losing you.
I begged you to return but you told me calmly that it was time for you to get off. At some point in the tunnel you had decided that you didn't want to go anymore . Your mind was made. You were going to catch another train at the next station.

When the train stopped I thought for sure you would reconsider but you didn't. Didn't even give it a thought. You just grabbed your coat and hat with one big bag under your arm. You kissed me on the cheek like a french stranger and were off. Going somewhere else on a different train. Just like that.

I rode the rails for quite some time by myself , many people getting on and getting off, passing me by. Every once in a while I would think I saw you at a station or in a **** though the window of another train. I often thought I could smell you but when I breathed deeper it was always gone. A ghost dancing on the edge of my senses.

A young girl in a headband got on the train. She was listening to headphones and dancing to herself as she bobbed along. She sat down in the seat next to me flashing a smile. She had a wedding ring on and I dismissed her immediately.  She didn't move from the seat or stop glancing my way. Eventually she confessed that she wanted to talk. I told her I wasn't interested but she persisted.  I hadn't talked to anyone on the train for quite some time and after some more mild persistence, I gave in.

We had a lot in common. We were both riding alone, desperately wanted attention and were thrilled to receive some.  After a few laughs she slid her hand in to mine and interlaced her fingers. I left it there. It was warm, comforting and wrong. She was married but I had been riding alone so long it felt good to have some company. She stayed and we talked. She was broken and I had a knack for fixing things. After a few hours of dramatic conversation I fell asleep with her head on my shoulder.

When I woke up  the train was flying up the track on the side of a mountain. Trees and rocks were a blur of green and grey. The engineer must be trying to make up for lost time I thought to myself.

The girl was asleep with her head on my lap. I looked down at her hand and the rings were gone. I woke her briefly to ask where they went. She said she didn't need them anymore and had thrown  them out the window.  She could of sold them, I said, but she said she just wanted them gone so she could be mine and fell back to sleep.  All of a sudden I couldn't breath. This train was roaring down the tracks, the once gentle click clack had become a loud hum. Suddenly too loud. This girl in my lap who had just gotten on the train wanted to stay. I considered her for a while as she looked up at me with big blue eyes, shining and wet, like a puppy in the shelter, terrified of rejection and desperate to be adopted.

At the peak of the mountain, just when the train began to even out, you waltzed back in to the car with a champagne flute in one hand and your bag in the other.

I don't know when or where you got back on, must have been a few stations ago when I stopped looking for you. Maybe you were wearing a disguise, who knows what you had been up to while you were gone. I'm not sure how long you were away but it was quite some time. That you had been through something was obvious, a new wrinkle had formed on your brow and you're once confident stride had changed to a cautious stroll. What actually happened out there I don't know.  I never asked and I don't want answers.

You looked at me and smiled. It was good to see that smile, like sun on my face on a brisk day.  You took a step toward me and then I looked down in my lap at the girl at the same time you did. I looked up. You and your smile were gone.

Everything I had begun to feel for this broken, head banded girl in my lap dried up like a puddle in  the dessert.  I quietly and gently nudged her awake and told her I had to use the bathroom. She put her head down on my coat and fell back into what ever trance she had been in, eyelids gently fluttering, eyes searching beneath them for what I would never give her.

I dashed up the isle and threw open the door, almost shattering the glass. The conductor glared at me and rolled his eyes as I barged past to the space between the cars.

There you were. Standing on the stairs with your head out the opening. The wind was blowing your perfectly formed curls around your head like a blonde explosion of familiarity. I yelled your name and you dove in to me. My senses erupted, my mind went numb as the train was nearing another station and I inhaled your essence greedily.

We moved to another car. I abandoned my coat with the married girl and never looked back. I hope she found what she was looking for. I  never could have been the answer she was so desperately seeking but I know I  helped steer her towards it.

You told me you had encountered some other people out there on the rails and they had reminded you of what we had when we first left the station. I never forgot.  

The train started to rock and get going again. We were back in the bar car and starting to brown out. We had to get off of this train right ******* now. In a desperate moment we looked at each other and put our hands, together, on the emergency brake cord. I looked in your eyes with your hand on top of mine. You kissed me while yanking down on the cord. Time slowed, the breaks squealed and everything exploded throwing luggage, people and the entire contents of the bar car in to a nondiscriminatory chaos . We got up off the ground, ran to the end of the car, dove off the side in to a soft patch of grass and rolled down a small incline. We watched as the conductor sifted through  the mess and interrogated the passengers, trying to ferret out the party responsible for pulling the brake. He spotted us off the side of the tracks and shook his fist while shouting every conceivable obscenity combination.

We laughed, held each other in the grass and kissed deeply.

We watched the train pick up speed and disappear in to the hills as relief spread over me.

You interlaced your fingers in to mine and we both looked out to where the tracks disappeared into the horizon, wondering how far of a walk it was to the next station.
Mateuš Conrad May 2020
. h'america is as much an ideology as is... islam... this... the best... pig-farmed english you could somehow... not teach... not have mustered from a slav... a pseudo-russian... inconvenience ego... contender? satellite pawn: your... *****-slave yugoslav bourbon... excavations of: the lost flood of mongolian: tribe-folk... the pakistani with the surname: khan... your peoples... prior... no-guilt... island strapped... peruvian conquistadors... or... better strapped... less the cerveza folk... more... the belittled sort of: sorting folk... blah blah...

it's honestly hard to write anything -
when one is still... shell-shocked...
fromwhat could be cited as a devil's decade:
13 years...
                 from the age of 21
through to: aged 34...
            one of those relationship remainders...
we both got into smoking...
well... she was well ahead of me
in the cigarette domain...

       no... however i will attire the event...
whatever verbiage...
it doesn't allow a "justice" to trickle down...
it just so happens that i want
to listen to some depeche mode...
and not some tool / porcupine tree...

13 years of smoking... from the nadir of
40 a day... locotomotive breath...
iron on the tongue... phelgm pancakes
harked in the morning from
a tobacco "hangover"...

                  oscilating around 20 per day...
for some time...
and all it took was a week... 10 days...
and i'm still in possession of 3 cigarettes...
and those two i reserve for the end
of the day ritual...
    smoking the first is like:
finding oneself with a belly-full of
a child of gravity...
otherwise: gravity... unless falling...
to look up at the stars and the moon
and the sea: it's something you don't
exactly feel with two feet strapped
to the orb... no movement of
the tectonic plates...
sometimes with *******...
index and middle... of the left hand...
pushed under the right arm-pit...
to feel the pulse of the arteries...

i hardly think this is a call for celebration...
13 years can disappear like...
nothing even took place...
to substitute the habbit with...
reading... playing video games?
nibbling on carrots... nuts...
or just... waiting for the tide to recede...
and for a sea of patience to come
with tomorrow's tide...

all that... and none of it...
at the end of the day... the two cigarettes
are like a metaphor fo crack *******
or syringe strapping imitation
leech...
        clear thinking: or therefore none...
no spaghetti muddles...
at best: imitation of biting into ice...
or... stretching a rubber-band until...
well: you can't feel it about to snap...
since it snaps...

                 a second gravity...
                all concentrated in the stomach...
and esp. when the legs have not been
"properly" used up...
but remain tight-and-fidgety with goosebumps
when the ****** of tobacco lines the nerves...

i don't know why i can't celebrate this...
it's such a private event... such an exslusivity...
after all... in linear fashion:
to experience speed... a concentrated
exploration of space... within a hyper-dictum
of time...
        in a linear way...
but a second gravity: without falling?
but otherwise whirling in the stomach?

a devil's decade: 13 years...
              3 more... otherwise a dozen...
which is only 1 more...
the devil's dozen...
          simon peter, andrew, james, john, philip,
bartholomew, matthew, thomas,
james son of alphaeus, simon the zealot,
judas son of james and judas iscariot...
count hey-zeus out of the equation...
                                               there's paul...

and that's what eminem does...
when rapping... on white h'america?
changes the subject - a personal tirade over...
somehow i too link certain aspects...
13 years of...

this... oh so mediocre...
           because: clearly... i don't know what
to make of it...
                 thank god i retained those
two cigarettes at the end of the day...
than have been hooked on nicorette chewing
gum / patches...
                or the usual "a.a." support...
support: "support":
         help yourself: by every single
and no dead or alive guru...
            
                i really don't have anything
to write...
                 i'm walking away from
a 13 years of tobacco addiction...
   and what i'm really thinking about...
the first thirsts of cold-turkey are long gone...
it's been under a week...
over a week... whatever...

             what i'm really thinking about...
well...
   how would it feel like...
to farm animals...
                  how does it feel to... pet animals...
a completely different dynamic...
after all... a farmer would own...
petting-worth animals...
like a cat... for... catching mice...
or a dog... to... warden... sphynx...
cerberus... watch-over the property...
how some would make the dogs
so ferocious... that a chain would
sometimes not be withstanding
to the ferocity of the barking...

           eh... it's slightly off-putting...
to pet animals...
when you're being given a factory
edit of the original moo!
  or snorkling in knee-deep-**** and mud
and rotten potatoes of pork...
i don't mind... the end product
is what interests me...
the **** is silk? tapeworm ****?!
or there-abouts...
       but... it's so much different...
when you... farm animals...
     lucky for me... my... somewhat...
immediate family still owned a farm...
and chickens in the yard...
oh yeah... catching a chicken is one thing...
amnesia of the chicken shack...
catch one... sure thing...
then with axe onto the stump...
head sticks to the stump...
last traces of life while the eyes roll back
and the tongue protrudes from the beak...
while... all the other chickens gather...
and start drinking the blood...

a bit like the two tiers of people...
some people must feel inclined to become
these... sociopathic farmers...
there are the humans you herd...
there are the humans you pet...
the ones you pet will probably find about
you herding them...
and rebel... since... you're not...
some gargantuan: ****** obvious...
miracle of a god descent... crown, pomp...
circumstance... all that was borrowed
from god... in splendour... heavens!
lo! behold... versailles was built!

the future charles III of england...
started 8pm today... on classic.fm with his own show...
i tuned in for a minute or two to hear
his voice...
      i do hope that when ol' lizzie is dead...
he doesn't cower... he dons! he dons the title:
charles the third!
  i ****** well hope... he doesn't become...
no... he can't become: george VII...
formerly known as charles: the prince of wales!
he has to be! charles the third!
he has waited this long!
he has to retain his name!

but that's the beauty of the monarchy...
it's so ******* pompous and omnipresent...
it doesn't hide... in... secular... grey-matter
of deep-state... there are just too many tiers
of power... even though... there's only symbolism...
but a reverence for it: nonetheless!
grey-matter of shadow-people in grey suits!
blinking: for god's sake! blinking black-holes
of hush hush: what was once...
the aristocracy... that's too replaced with...
the burden of crazed-loon bureaucracy!

i've quit smoking... well... "quit"...
2 cigarettes from 20 a day... circa...
  is much better than a nicorette patch...
         or some: pepperspray tasting chewing gum...
it's not a cigar... if you were asking...

but the original idea...
    farming animals...
             petting animals...
                    dogs... the ideal pets...
i'm sorry... i can't put on a leash or a muzzle...
a chihuahua can bite like a piranha...
i don't see the excuses needed to comfort
people afraid of big dogs... alsatians...
dobermans... that's the freedom allowed with cats...
if you get a chance to build their characters...
they will tend to take a dump in your
neighbour's garden...
yes... me... following sherlock feline...
with a black plastic bag and *****...
permission to... be allowed entry into your garden?
or are you... going to trebuchet that ****
back onto my lawn?

dogs or "petting" tarantulas? serpents?
the idea of petting went out of the window...
when... people started to fathom the...
what adjective?! to pet a ******* tarantula...
yes... me... running to the shop that sells
tarantulas... with caption: free tow-twos...
how about you keep that freak-****
in the jungle with all those gimp-suit sexed-up
antics... and i... get to...
farm a chicken... i get to... farm a pig?

no... of course no... although...
who couldn't be teased with latex jill and her
spider annex: library of "misdeeds"
for the library of: hard-ons...

now that you mentioned it... sure... i have a...
pressing concern... how to not...
over-cook pork...
see... pork is a bit like pasta...
you can serve it undercooked like beef...
but... it's also like chicken...
and beef... combined... you don't want
to serve it... overcooked...
only barbarians are fond of well-done beef...
probably arab...
    they only stomach well-done steaks
or minced beef...
they have no palette for tartare steaks...
too much inbreeding with stinking lamb
does the trick...
whatever they might say of pork...
the aesthetic meat... leather too... shoes and belts...
lamb? for the slaughter?
eh... stinking puritanical meat worthy
of teacher 'ebrew and righteous son:
mecca ibn sudan.

because... ha ha... it's one thing being racist...
you know... detailing the physiognomy
differences between blacks and whites...
choccies and porky pies...
and the cinnamon people in between...
that's one thing...
it's like everyone was asleep...
the whites were racist...
the only people... ever...
but that's one thing...
   i find it harder to digest...
there's no name for it...
  kosher-ism... halal-ism?
         to be... more racist than racist...
almost a vegan / vegetarian taming...
   someone is being critical... of what you eat...
i imagine... malcom x being given a free
pass as a black totem in mecca...
shot dead... when converted... because...
still shuffled pork on the sly...

beside skin deep: please leavde your leather
shoes and belts... lace
beside the concept / concern for the mosque...
racism: morphed into an ideological
manifest...
for a while... let us leave thse
turban and tent dwelling folk
with their newly acquired riches
to the ***** of:
if i am to prepare lamb meat...
i treat it liky chilly...
the meat... stinks of something beside...
death... innocence prescribed...

           you are told... wrong...
when ingesting the fruit of eden... somewhat...
these nomads of quasi-sikh turbans
for the women: the niqab girdle-grooms...
their wetted-appetites:
unable to satiate gyrocentrism leftovers...
and... pass from the living...
toward the theatre of the would be alive...
less the circumcised mess: misantrophes...

it's one thing to be chockie...
another to be porky-pink'ish...
     but what you eat?
that's... somehow... off-putting?
    puritan with some crab-meat
in this numbed jaw?
no one the persians rebelled against
the camel-jockey prescription of:
words only... no images...
pasta squiggles of phonetic encoding...
arabic... tironian a posteriori notations...
then again: one could argue:
tironian a priori notations...

shrimp-**** and eyes that would
resemble... at best... squinting from too much
sun... and at worst... ******* on a lemon...
12" of **** and the twelve-pounder
juicing worth of ***...
her ***...
                for me to comment
on the mongol horde esque libido of
the fellow woman of my race...
no... the islamic idea of a heavenly harem...
mind you: it would satisfy her:
if she was to be crowned the juggling act
of three: at least one to compete with
the da vinci sodomites...

to be told you can't eat something...
i'm already a bad joke as:
"bweetish" as it comes...
tucked away with the afro-saxon...
the anglo-slav...
                 you just have those lips
that look like full-bloom best:
imitation: floral patterns of a ******...
best equipped for *******...
i swim: you sink...
you run... i start an arithmetic of catching
my breath...
the cinnamon people are...
if they are equipped with a polytheism
of the raj... and are saved with
culinary ambitions...
"we'd" call them the blue indians...
and that's also: to mind...
their elder: sanskrit...
              पअरउत
र - or how the englishman lost the trill:
rattle-snake R: for rolling...
when he... became: the nuanced... keeper...
vanguard... of the Raj...
perhaps... the anthropomorphic genesis
in africa: givenz zee apulus... apex: gorrilolulz...
but... the sribbles and *******?
india the basin... akapit: paragraph:
the tear of sri lanka...

i.e. so much for me succumbing to the anglican:
we'z all wo'z allz: ex afri-ka'ka'kazia...

oh sure... sure... we... the sensible:
secular post-christians of the protestant wealth
of the west...
happy to afford the dumbed-down
congregations of the newly conscripted...
believers of africa and south h'america...
carrot dangling: run donkey! run!
one of your own: a pope! a cardinal!
poland is still running on that...
remark of... the passing of power...
the first pope to be given status of... saint...
john paul II the saint of:
kissing airport tarmac...

             and then of course...
the hyped intricacy of the orthodox branch
of the bureau of hierogylphics and
synonymous litanies...
          the events of the baltic sea:
would never be...
the sort of ****-show...
that... the events of the mediterranean sea...
hell... the events of the black sea...
christianity isn't merely dumb...
it's just... over-hyped...
               the pork the pork... the pork!
who would require...
a criticism of pork and pig and ms. porky
to suit... alliance...
no matter... i'm on the cusp of quitting
smoking...

we can caricature our physiognomy...
but... how do you... caricature...
what you eat... your... sustenance?
you, black... have a pillow for a nose...
me, white... have a death's lack of...
           i don't have a nose...
i have... a death's clench sucker...
       i have a pinch nose...
        so much for over-inflated lips...
and... my missing... elongated...
myth elves: the protruding ears...
like: no body...

                 current / the currency of
the now h'america... and the immediacy
of nostalgia: as a history: moving forward /
anywhere but back...
nietzsche opened up a nostalgia for ancient
greece...
  h'americans... opening up... a nostalgia...
for 1950s h'america...
how can you write a future history...
from a stand-point / stand-off...
of nostalgia...
this... immediacy of nostalgia...
who's who and who isn't citing...
a richard brautigan... or... a frank o'hara?!
because: there's the sucker and no punch
for the next verse of...
****'s sake... walt whitman?!
o captain! my... john keating...
                 no... it's not about glorifying
the original intent... mr. president...
the english teacher...
mr.! thomas! bunce!

               how can any history be written...
when there's... a nostalgia: impediment...
the hsitory of an immediacy
lacklutered by a past...
the past: however framed...
before... the dead are allowed to
turn and grovel in their graves...
i have 'ere... my gobble-whick of...
pretending: no shadows will
ever exist... at noon...
scrathing... timidy bed-fellows...
loitering squat...

we are to grovel for the cousin
imps and apes of: first born:
english born... navajo...
     tortilla...
the old fling of england...
and the spanish...
             the conquistadors...
loose nouns dog **** flinging applause:
i fall asleep in a bed:
i welcome the new day...
most... egregious (archaic)...

  these western lands...
mmm... they're not very much akin
to our flavour...
that they dictate... refurbishment...
unless it's para-english...
alter- proto- welsh...
  kashubian... masovian...
silesian...
                    kres...
                    
ei hhynnal coch.. and it:
pronouns neutral: does... ****-wit...
gender-fluid-retardo: perfecto...

and i too wish i had...
themes of crusader songs...
but... i have none...
these that i marked...
teutonic knights of no order...
       barbarossa being pickled...
livonians... prussians...
lithuanians...
                    i'm sorry...
that i'm too far away from
you to return to europe
from your: hubris...
             in crafting... the...
                conscripts: shikhs...
ask the russians! ask the rush-******-whips!
agony of a tongue: beside their own!
the post-colonial powers
return!
the post-colonial powers! make a return!
so much for those of us...
not having... a colonial past!
are we to pay for... such...
benevolent gracing
of gratitude from the people
"made"... under... colonial... rule?!
from the perspective of the strong...
why... am i... expected to treat
these care-bears with...
the right: equipped
manchester shovel?

          you spike my drink
or am i... to... simply...
take the right, godly ****...
into all the urns...
the rest of you are to drink from?

i see my forehead glee: akin to my elbow...
and i call that phenomenon:
something benevolent of *****....
yep... not s'unni... but... shyte...
****.. persian: rebellion of camel-jockey...
****'ite... macron i...
dot's the worthy due: guillotine...
echo of the baltic sea...
we somehow: managed...
to lessen the romance...
unlike the english...
the romans conquered:
romanced the ******...
the vikings conquered...
romanced the ******...
the mongols never made it...
nor the huns..
so much for "brexit":
with your lineage of currency...
and your status as an island...

glory! vistory! ******* and all!
because: best felt!
in... places... akin to... devon!
a londoner will abhor someone...
with origins in the vicinity of bristol...
like... because...
there's no other?

n'ah... this night is pretty much worth
all the other nights...
it's worth sleeping...
it's not worth... whatever: leftover...
"worth" of...
this... this "apparent"...
yep... leftover... be...
something for the worth of yale
h'american... or...
dignitary president...
              officiated cul de sac executive orders...
it's... such an anglo-saxon fetish for...
*** beside the boudoir...
    dodo, lilac... gimp... latex...
      dickens...
                  liberty at:
i feign to allow myself to have... lapsed...
in what? good question...
even i... do not... attempt to baron
myself: over;
pithy... not pity... me...
you god-sucker...
******* ******* son's of eire...
me good-son...
    term me: years! under...
the tsarina! *******...
new yawn-ker...
       big mouth... no new bullseye...
the same old manchester...
the same ol'...
porky pies...
the same ol' chimneys and:
love's all... at cul de sac:
southend... porky pie munch:
luvvie: ol' guv.

yem: yup... ol' groove.. zzz-tizzle...
smart bruiser:
geezer with a sneeze pops up
at random places and jokes...
retards... lobotomy cruiser...
rhymes like... a cockey...
prior... to... tourettes... the lost...
the last... and what's:
the remains of...
the always... last...
and the worst... told... chalk of joke.
se relationship remainders...
we both got into smoking...
well... she was well ahead of me
in the cigarette domain...

       no... however i will attire the event...
whatever verbiage...
it doesn't allow a "justice" to trickle down...
it just so happens that i want
to listen to some depeche mode...
and not some tool / porcupine tree...

13 years of smoking... from the nadir of
40 a day... locotomotive breath...
iron on the tongue... phelgm pancakes
harked in the morning from
a tobacco "hangover"...

                  oscilating around 20 per day...
for some time...
and all it took was a week... 10 days...
and i'm still in possession of 3 cigarettes...
and those two i reserve for the end
of the day ritual...
    smoking the first is like:
finding oneself with a belly-full of
a child of gravity...
otherwise: gravity... unless falling...
to look up at the stars and the moon
and the sea: it's something you don't
exactly feel with two feet strapped
to the orb... no movement of
the tectonic plates...
sometimes with *******...
index and middle... of the left hand...
pushed under the right arm-pit...
to feel the pulse of the arteries...

i hardly think this is a call for celebration...
13 years can disappear like...
nothing even took place...
to substitute the habbit with...
reading... playing video games?
nibbling on carrots... nuts...
or just... waiting for the tide to recede...
and for a sea of patience to come
with tomorrow's tide...

all that... and none of it...
at the end of the day... the two cigarettes
are like a metaphor fo crack *******
or syringe strapping imitation
leech...
        clear thinking: or therefore none...
no spaghetti muddles...
at best: imitation of biting into ice...
or... stretching a rubber-band until...
well: you can't feel it about to snap...
since it snaps...

                 a second gravity...
                all concentrated in the stomach...
and esp. when the legs have not been
"properly" used up...
but remain tight-and-fidgety with goosebumps
when the ****** of tobacco lines the nerves...

i don't know why i can't celebrate this...
it's such a private event... such an exslusivity...
after all... in linear fashion:
to experience speed... a concentrated
exploration of space... within a hyper-dictum
of time...
        in a linear way...
but a second gravity: without falling?
but otherwise whirling in the stomach?

a devil's decade: 13 years...
              3 more... otherwise a dozen...
which is only 1 more...
the devil's dozen...
          simon peter, andrew, james, john, philip,
bartholomew, matthew, thomas,
james son of alphaeus, simon the zealot,
judas son of james and judas iscariot...
count hey-zeus out of the equation...
                                               there's paul...

and that's what eminem does...
when rapping... on white h'america?
changes the subject - a personal tirade over...
somehow i too link certain aspects...
13 years of...

this... oh so mediocre...
           because: clearly... i don't know what
to make of it...
                 thank god i retained those
two cigarettes at the end of the day...
than have been hooked on nicorette chewing
gum / patches...
                or the usual "a.a." support...
support: "support":
         help yourself: by every single
and no dead or alive guru...
            
                i really don't have anything
to write...
                 i'm walking away from
a 13 years of tobacco addiction...
   and what i'm really thinking about...
the first thirsts of cold-turkey are long gone...
it's been under a week...
over a week... whatever...

             what i'm really thinking about...
well...
   how would it feel like...
to farm animals...
                  how does it feel to... pet animals...
a completely different dynamic...
after all... a farmer would own...
petting-worth animals...
like a cat... for... catching mice...
or a dog... to... warden... sphynx...
cerberus... watch-over the property...
how some would make the dogs
so ferocious... that a chain would
sometimes not be withstanding
to the ferocity of the barking...

           eh... it's slightly off-putting...
to pet animals...
when you're being given a factory
edit of the original moo!
  or snorkling in knee-deep-**** and mud
and rotten potatoes of pork...
i don't mind... the end product
is what interests me...
the **** is silk? tapeworm ****?!
or there-abouts...
       but... it's so much different...
when you... farm animals...
     lucky for me... my... somewhat...
immediate family still owned a farm...
and chickens in the yard...
oh yeah... catching a chicken is one thing...
amnesia of the chicken shack...
catch one... sure thing...
then with axe onto the stump...
head sticks to the stump...
last traces of life while the eyes roll back
and the tongue protrudes from the beak...
while... all the other chickens gather...
and start drinking the blood...

a bit like the two tiers of people...
some people must feel inclined to become
these... sociopathic farmers...
there are the humans you herd...
there are the humans you pet...
the ones you pet will probably find about
you herding them...
and rebel... since... you're not...
some gargantuan: ****** obvious...
miracle of a god descent... crown, pomp...
circumstance... all that was borrowed
from god... in splendour... heavens!
lo! behold... versailles was built!

the future charles III of england...
started 8pm today... on classic.fm with his own show...
i tuned in for a minute or two to hear
his voice...
      i do hope that when ol' lizzie is dead...
he doesn't cower... he dons! he dons the title:
charles the third!
  i ****** well hope... he doesn't become...
no... he can't become: george VII...
formerly known as charles: the prince of wales!
he has to be! charles the third!
he has waited this long!
he has to retain his name!

but that's the beauty of the monarchy...
it's so ******* pompous and omnipresent...
it doesn't hide... in... secular... grey-matter
of deep-state... there are just too many tiers
of power... even though... there's only symbolism...
but a reverence for it: nonetheless!
grey-matter of shadow-people in grey suits!
blinking: for god's sake! blinking black-holes
of hush hush: what was once...
the aristocracy... that's too replaced with...
the burden of crazed-loon bureaucracy!

i've quit smoking... well... "quit"...
2 cigarettes from 20 a day... circa...
  is much better than a nicorette patch...
         or some: pepperspray tasting chewing gum...
it's not a cigar... if you were asking...

but the original idea...
    farming animals...
             petting animals...
                    dogs... the ideal pets...
i'm sorry... i can't put on a leash or a muzzle...
a chihuahua can bite like a piranha...
i don't see the excuses needed to comfort
people afraid of big dogs... alsatians...
dobermans... that's the freedom allowed with cats...
if you get a chance to build their characters...
they will tend to take a dump in your
neighbour's garden...
yes... me... following sherlock feline...
with a black plastic bag and *****...
permission to... be allowed entry into your garden?
or are you... going to trebuchet that ****
back onto my lawn?

dogs or "petting" tarantulas? serpents?
the idea of petting went out of the window...
when... people started to fathom the...
what adjective?! to pet a ******* tarantula...
yes... me... running to the shop that sells
tarantulas... with caption: free tow-twos...
how about you keep that freak-****
in the jungle with all those gimp-suit sexed-up
antics... and i... get to...
farm a chicken... i get to... farm a pig?

no... of course no... although...
who couldn't be teased with latex jill and her
spider annex: library of "misdeeds"
for the library of: hard-ons...

now that you mentioned it... sure... i have a...
pressing concern... how to not...
over-cook pork...
see... pork is a bit like pasta...
you can serve it undercooked like beef...
but... it's also like chicken...
and beef... combined... you don't want
to serve it... overcooked...
only barbarians are fond of well-done beef...
probably arab...
    they only stomach well-done steaks
or minced beef...
they have no palette for tartare steaks...
too much inbreeding with stinking lamb
does the trick...
whatever they might say of pork...
the aesthetic meat... leather too... shoes and belts...
lamb? for the slaughter?
eh... stinking puritanical meat worthy
of teacher 'ebrew and righteous son:
mecca ibn sudan.

because... ha ha... it's one thing being racist...
you know... detailing the physiognomy
differences between blacks and whites...
choccies and porky pies...
and the cinnamon people in between...
that's one thing...
it's like everyone was asleep...
the whites were racist...
the only people... ever...
but that's one thing...
   i find it harder to digest...
there's no name for it...
  kosher-ism... halal-ism?
         to be... more racist than racist...
almost a vegan / vegetarian taming...
   someone is being critical... of what you eat...
i imagine... malcom x being given a free
pass as a black totem in mecca...
shot dead... when converted... because...
still shuffled pork on the sly...

beside skin deep: please leavde your leather
shoes and belts... lace
beside the concept / concern for the mosque...
racism: morphed into an ideological
manifest...
for a while... let us leave thse
turban and tent dwelling folk
with their newly acquired riches
to the ***** of:
if i am to prepare lamb meat...
i treat it liky chilly...
the meat... stinks of something beside...
death... innocence prescribed...

           you are told... wrong...
when ingesting the fruit of eden... somewhat...
these nomads of quasi-sikh turbans
for the women: the niqab girdle-grooms...
their wetted-appetites:
unable to satiate gyrocentrism leftovers...
and... pass from the living...
toward the theatre of the would be alive...
less the circumcised mess: misantrophes...

it's one thing to be chockie...
another to be porky-pink'ish...
     but what you eat?
that's... somehow... off-putting?
    puritan with some crab-meat
in this numbed jaw?
no one the persians rebelled against
the camel-jockey prescription of:
words only... no images...
pasta squiggles of phonetic encoding...
arabic... tironian a posteriori notations...
then again: one could argue:
tironian a priori notations...

shrimp-**** and eyes that would
resemble... at best... squinting from too much
sun... and at worst... ******* on a lemon...
12" of **** and the twelve-pounder
juicing worth of ***...
her ***...
                for me to comment
on the mongol horde esque libido of
the fellow woman of my race...
no... the islamic idea of a heavenly harem...
mind you: it would satisfy her:
if she was to be crowned the juggling act
of three: at least one to compete with
the da vinci sodomites...

to be told you can't eat something...
i'm already a bad joke as:
"bweetish" as it comes...
tucked away with the afro-saxon...
the anglo-slav...
                 you just have those lips
that look like full-bloom best:
imitation: floral patterns of a ******...
best equipped for *******...
i swim: you sink...
you run... i start an arithmetic of catching
my breath...
the cinnamon people are...
if they are equipped with a polytheism
of the raj... and are saved with
culinary ambitions...
"we'd" call them the blue indians...
and that's also: to mind...
their elder: sanskrit...
              पअरउत
र - or how the englishman lost the trill:
rattle-snake R: for rolling...
when he... became: the nuanced... keeper...
vanguard... of the Raj...
perhaps... the anthropomorphic genesis
in africa: givenz zee apulus... apex: gorrilolulz...
but... the sribbles and *******?
india the basin... akapit: paragraph:
the tear of sri lanka...

i.e. so much for me succumbing to the anglican:
we'z all wo'z allz: ex afri-ka'ka'kazia...

oh sure... sure... we... the sensible:
secular post-christians of the protestant wealth
of the west...
happy to afford the dumbed-down
congregations of the newly conscripted...
believers of africa and south h'america...
carrot dangling: run donkey! run!
one of your own: a pope! a cardinal!
poland is still running on that...
remark of... the passing of power...
the first pope to be given status of... saint...
john paul II the saint of:
kissing airport tarmac...

             and then of course...
the hyped intricacy of the orthodox branch
of the bureau of hierogylphics and
synonymous litanies...
          the events of the baltic sea:
would never be...
the sort of ****-show...
that... the events of the mediterranean sea...
hell... the events of the black sea...
christianity isn't merely dumb...
it's just... over-hyped...
               the pork the pork... the pork!
who would require...
a criticism of pork and pig and ms. porky
to suit... alliance...
no matter... i'm on the cusp of quitting
smoking...

we can caricature our physiognomy...
but... how do you... caricature...
what you eat... your... sustenance?
you, black... have a pillow for a nose...
me, white... have a death's lack of...
           i don't have a nose...
i have... a death's clench sucker...
       i have a pinch nose...
        so much for over-inflated lips...
and... my missing... elongated...
myth elves: the protruding ears...
like: no body...

                 current / the currency of
the now h'america... and the immediacy
of nostalgia: as a history: moving forward /
anywhere but back...
nietzsche opened up a nostalgia for ancient
greece...
  h'americans... opening up... a nostalgia...
for 1950s h'america...
how can you write a future history...
from a stand-point / stand-off...
of nostalgia...
this... immediacy of nostalgia...
who's who and who isn't citing...
a richard brautigan... or... a frank o'hara?!
because: there's the sucker and no punch
for the next verse of...
****'s sake... walt whitman?!
o captain! my... john keating...
                 no... it's not about glorifying
the original intent... mr. president...
the english teacher...
mr.! thomas! bunce!

               how can any history be written...
when there's... a nostalgia: impediment...
the hsitory of an immediacy
lacklutered by a past...
the past: however framed...
before... the dead are allowed to
turn and grovel in their graves...
i have 'ere... my gobble-whick of...
pretending: no shadows will
ever exist... at noon...
scrathing... timidy bed-fellows...
loitering squat...

we are to grovel for the cousin
imps and apes of: first born:
english born... navajo...
     tortilla...
the old fling of england...
and the spanish...
             the conquistadors...
loose nouns dog **** flinging applause:
i fall asleep in a bed:
i welcome the new day...
most... egregious (archaic)...

  these western lands...
mmm... they're not very much akin
to our flavour...
that they dictate... refurbishment...
unless it's para-english...
alter- proto- welsh...
  kashubian... masovian...
silesian...
                    kres...
             ­       
ei hhynnal coch.. and it:
pronouns neutral: does... ****-wit...
gender-fluid-retardo: perfecto...

and i too wish i had...
themes of crusader songs...
but... i have none...
these that i marked...
teutonic knights of no order...
       barbarossa being pickled...
livonians... prussians...
lithuanians...
                    i'm sorry...
that i'm too far away from
you to return to europe
from your: hubris...
             in crafting... the...
                conscripts: shikhs...
ask the russians! ask the rush-******-whips!
agony of a tongue: beside their own!
the post-colonial powers
return!
the post-colonial powers! make a return!
so much for those of us...
not having... a colonial past!
are we to pay for... such...
benevolent gracing
of gratitude from the people
"made"... under... colonial... rule?!
from the perspective of the strong...
why... am i... expected to treat
these care-bears with...
the right: equipped
manchester shovel?

          you spike my drink
or am i... to... simply...
take the right, godly ****...
into all the urns...
the rest of you are to drink from?

i see my forehead glee: akin to my elbow...
and i call that phenomenon:
something benevolent of *****....
yep... not s'unni... but... shyte...
****.. persian: rebellion of camel-jockey...
****'ite... macron i...
dot's the worthy due: guillotine...
echo of the baltic sea...
we somehow: managed...
to lessen the romance...
unlike the english...
the romans conquered:
romanced the ******...
the vikings conquered...
romanced the ******...
the mongols never made it...
nor the huns..
so much for "brexit":
with your lineage of currency...
and your status as an island...

glory! vistory! ******* and all!
because: best felt!
in... places... akin to... devon!
a londoner will abhor someone...
with origins in the vicinity of bristol...
like... because...
there's no other?

n'ah... this night is pretty much worth
all the other nights...
it's worth sleeping...
it's not worth... whatever: leftover...
"worth" of...
this... this "apparent"...
yep... leftover... be...
something for the worth of yale
h'american... or...
dignitary president...
              officiated cul de sac executive orders...
it's... such an anglo-saxon fetish for...
*** beside the boudoir...
    dodo, lilac... gimp... latex...
      dickens...
                  liberty at:
i feign to allow myself to have... lapsed...
in what? good question...
even i... do not... attempt to baron
myself: over.
AEL Apr 2011
We fall through each other
and when we fall we catch each other
but more often I find I am catching myself.
I catch moments and memories
of falling,
and of waking up to the phone ringing and of
your voice catching me through the wires on the other line.
And I always hope
that you are happy and you are safe,
and that I will see you soon,
because that is what you want.
and I always hope you will not ask me what I want.
We fall through each other,
and when we fall we catch each other,
and sometimes I feel like I am falling alone.
But when I wake up,
when I open my eyes,
I have not moved, and you are still there,
waiting to catch me if I fall.
Tuesday Pixie Nov 2014
He glared
Anger and frustration and sorrow
                                                       Brow creased
Against the poverty, the greed, the lust, the manipulation, the absolute fakeness of it all
                                                        Brow­ creased
As if to ward it all away
But it doesn't help
                                                        Brow­ creased
So he lashes out.
                                                    
Blames me, blames her, him, anything, shoves his pain forwards

I catch it. I curl up. Let it escape in tears and sorrow.
                                                        But you can't stand it long.
And I catch it.
                                                        You can't fend it off
And I can't keep catching
                                                        ­You slip
I can't catch you
                                                        You fall
I can't catch you
                                                        You'­re gone.
                                                      
                                                        You're gone

I am left with stale feelings
In this moment set a blaze
How can one make peace with a world so harsh?
Today I feel a kinship
A deep connection
- Understanding, as I so often have since your sudden departure, the dark resentment you held against this world.
Happy remember Luke day. See you next November.
Bunhead17 Nov 2013
[Verse 1: GREEKDAGOD]
You rocking with killers
Rocking with the realist
Rolling around gorillas
So how you going to get us
Yeah they call me greek
Yeah they call me greek
Riding around with hottest
I don't own no jeeps
Catch me up in that c05
Catch me up in that ride
Bad ***** on my side
Yall ****** wonder why
Man i rolling, man im rolling
Money man, im throwing
Dont catch me up in that stop
Yall ****** better know im on it
It don't need no intro
Make shawty go get low
Been real since 89
That shawty already know so
Started from the bottom
Now catch me up on that spot
Riding around with drizzy
We buying out those lots

[Hook: Drake]
Got everything, I got everything
I cannot complain, I cannot
I don't even know how much I really made, I forgot, it's a lot
**** that, never mind what I got, ***** don't watch that cause I
Came up, that's all me, stay true, that's all me
No help, that's all me, all me for real
Came up, that's all me, stay true, that's all me
No help, that's all me, all me for real

[Verse 1: 2 Chainz]
Money on my mind, you should think the same
J's on, pinky ring
******* these hoes, I need quarantine
In the same league, but we don't ball the same
(Ah) She want all the fame, I hear that **** all the time
She said she love me, I said, "Baby girl, fall in line"
Okay, made a million, off of denim, ****, watch me switch it up
Walked in, "Ill ***** alert! Ill ***** alert!"
You need that work, I got that work, got ******* in my condo
Just bought a shirt that cost a Mercedes-Benz car note
From the A to Toronto, we let the metal go off
And my **** so hard it make the metal detector go off
This that sauce, this that dressing, Givenchy, ***** God bless you
If having a bad ***** was a crime, I'd be arrested (True)

[Hook]

[Verse 2: Drake]
I touched down in '86
Knew I was a man by the age of 6
I even ****** the girl that used to babysit
But that was years later on some crazy ****
I heard your new ****, ***** hated it
Damon Wayans, homie don't play that ****
I get paid a lot, you get paid a bit
And my latest **** is like a greatest hits
*******, ain't no wishing over on this side
Y'all don't **** with us, then we don't **** with y'all
It's no different over on this side
*******, should I listen to everybody or myself?
Cause myself just told myself
"You're the ******* man, you don't need no help"
Cashing checks and I’m bigging up my chest
Y'all keep talking ‘bout who next
But I’m about as big as it gets
I swear y'all just wasting y'all breath
I’m the light skinned Keith Sweat
I'mma make it last forever
It’s not your turn ‘cause I ain't done yet
Look, just understand that I’m on a roll like Cottonelle
I was made for all of this ****
And I’m on the road box office sales
I’m getting paid for all of this ****
Ask you to please excuse my table manners
I was making room for the table dancers
‘Cause if we judging off your advances
I just got paid like eight advances
*******!

[Hook]

[Verse 3: Big Sean]
**, shut the **** up!
I got way too much on my mental, I learn from what I've been through
I'm finna do what I didn't do and still waking up like the rent's due
Not complicated, it's simple, I got **** ladies, a whole Benz-full
And to them hoes I'm everything -- everything but gentle
But I still take my time, man, I guess I'm just old fashioned
Wearing retro ****, that's old fashioned
*****, see what I'm saying, no closed caption
I paint pics, see the ****, good ***, need to hit
Keep a broad on the floor year 'round like season tickets
I plead the fifth, drink a fifth
Load the nine, leave you split, in the half, smoke a half, need a zip
My new girl is on Glee and ****, probably making more money than me and ****
I swear to God I got 99 problems but a ***** ain't one
I got 99 problems, getting rich ain't one
Like I got trust issues, I'm sorry for the people I've pushed out
I'm the type to have a bullet-proof ****** and still gotta pull out
But that's just me, and I ain't perfect, I ain't a saint but I am worth it
If it's one thing, I am worth it, ****** still hating but it ain't working
Lil' *****...

[Verse 4: Drake]
Oh me, oh me, oh my
I think I done ****** too many women from the 305
Before the end of this year, I'll do King of Diamonds three more times
Smoking on that kush all in our section like it's legalized
Girl, you can't always have your way, sometimes it be like that
They dont really **** with you like that, they ain't never did me like that
I just took my time, you got your shine, I let you eat like that
I've been taught to never loan somebody what you need right back
And I need that **** right back? (no more free Randy)
I’m blessed than a *******
****** been stressed than a *******
****** getting nervous, clutching they chests like a *******
**** that’s a *******
Tell the truth, I don’t listen to you
‘Cause I don’t like being lied to
And that ship won’t sail
And that wind won’t guide you
Daddy was in jail we was talking through the window like a ******* drive-thru
That was back then man, now my ****** rich enough to do whatever I do
I love this song..."All Me" by Drake ft. 2 Chainz ft. Big Sean ft. GREEKDAGOD...lol, i love Big Sean's part! :D
Megan H Aug 2015
You went on your fishing trip
Caught a big one this time,
You said.
This one's a bit heavy,
Weighed down.

With a sharp tug on the pole,
You finally retrieved your catch.
Well, what is it?,
You asked.
You held something in your hand
Pulsing and black.
Whatever it is,
It's not worth it.

You threw it back into the water,
Back into the dark depths.
Let's keep on fishing.
I wanna catch a big bass.


They say there's plenty of fish in the sea
But you didn't even notice,
When you caught my heart.
Sure,
It was beaten
Almost unrecognizable.
But it only took you a second,
To judge my darkness
As impairment,
And toss me back to a personal hell
You reeled in my heart,
And you didn't even know.

I'm sorry I can't be
**The catch of the day.
Melody Jun 2014
My name is Darkness.
I have a contract with light,
so I can be seen in corners and alleys.
I follow you because you follow the plight
and I will let you carry me, as long I can catch you.

My name is Evil,
I have a contract with good,
to add balance to your soul and
let you see my horns and many thorns.
I stalk you because you are one person, not a people.
I will let you hold my hand, as long as I can run ahead.

My name is Moon,
I have a contract with Sun,
because I need to ignite the night
and show you that I can shine just as bright.
I wake up because I like to watch you respite.
I will let you sleep as long as I can turn out your lights.

My name is not Darkness.
My name is not Evil.
My name is not Moon.

My name is Shadow.
I have a contract with light,
so I can be in corners and alleys.
I'm glued to one person, not a people.
I may have horns and I can have thorns.
I will hold your hand, and even let you run ahead.
I won't watch you fall, but I cannot catch you.
I will let you sleep as long as you keep on the light.

My name is not Darkness.
My name is not Evil.
My name is not Moon.
My name is Shadow.
I was born a stalker.
Please tell me what you think.

© 2014 Melody
Star BG May 2017
Catch the magic.
Catch the dream.
Catch the heartbeat,
that radiates within
and dance, dance, dance.
Inspired by Ryn
Amanda Kay Burke Aug 2018
I watch our love go up in flames
Feel my soul catch fire too
Summer reminds of happier days
The face I once knew

Distance is dangerous wind
Fanning flames, vacant of your smile each day
Your heart so numb you cannot feel the burn
Hear it beat even miles away

Patience the quality I lack
Forget to give my feelings time
So these hasty decisions catch up
When it's too late to change my mind

In forgotten days when your heart was better
Pleasant, simple, and unaware
Friendship quietly develops rust
Photographs more than eyes can bear

Broken glass, shattered hearts
It has all lead to this dead end
Perfectly synced self-destruction
Beautifully orchestrated lies descend

Peeking through darkness, cartwheeling midair
No stars left in our sky
The night alive with melancholy
Sorrowful birdsong in gusts low and high

My heart suspended in tragic beauty
Soul dies a little more every day
Waiting for eyelids to finally open to the light
Radiating from the glow of flames guiding the way
I swear I'd burn the city down to show you the light
Jeff Gaines Mar 2018
OK Reader, I'm going to tell you a tale … with great trepidation. You see, this tale, well, it's kind of like telling someone that you've seen a UFO. They want to believe you, but … it's never really been proven scientifically. Not to mention the fact that most folks who believe in such things are often the tin-hat wearing types, written off as … lets be nice and call them “odd”. And, of course, the more you swear to it, the crazier you appear. It's an epic tale, spanning 30 years of my crazy life.

  But, It's a story I want to tell, because it happened to me. I can barely understand it myself, let alone explain it. So … I'm just going to launch into it and you take it any way you wish.

*  *  
Where Can You Be?

Where can you be?
Where can you be, my love?
Oh, can't you see?
You're not with me!

I'll search with gazes and I'll search with cars,
I'll search the cities and I'll search the stars, well …
I'm gonna find you, oh, wherever you are,
I'm gonna find you baby …  near or far, but …

Where can you be?
Where can you be, my love?
Oh, can't you see?
You're not with me!

I thought I'd found ya, but she wasn't you,
that girl she left alone and blue, well …
I know that's something that you'd never do,
your love has always been strong and true, but …

Where can you be?
Where can you be, my love?
Oh, can't you see?
You're not with me!

If you must settle for some other man
and deviate from our immortal plan, well …
I hope you realize I will understand
and I'll try and do the best that I can, but …

Where will I be?
Where will I be, my love?
Hoping the next life sees …
our destiny!


Where can you be?
Where can you be, my love?
Oh, can't you see?
You're not with me!

~Wednesday, April 1st, 1987
10:30 P.M.



  I was singing in a band back in those days and, as it happened, this was the last song I'd ever write for it. Just after this, as it does, it all came crashing down and the band was finished. But in those last days, they pondered this song, with great puzzlement. You see, it was unlike anything I'd brought them before. It wasn't rock … It wasn't a ballad … it wasn't even structured like a “normal” 80's rock song.
  
  No bridge, no solo, no loud grinding guitars, etc. It even had bits where I hummed, yes hummed, the melody, like a lullaby. As they read the lyrics and I described how it went, they all looked at me like I had three heads and asked where this had come from. It was nothing like anything I'd written before. I could only tell them when and where I'd written it, but had no explanation of what inspired it. It had just came to me, so I wrote it down. They didn't know what to make of it, or even what to do with it.

  One of them said it sounded like a late 70's or early 80's adult contemporary song or even in the vein of The Eagles. Another asked if it was about reincarnation … And I honestly, until that moment, hadn't thought of it that way, I didn't think like that at 24 … but then, one of them said it was “Haunting” …

  “Haunting”?

  “Wow”, I thought, I'd never had anything I'd written described as that before. When I asked him what he meant by that, he told me that it was haunting to think that this poor guy is desperately seeking a girl, that may or may not even know that he exists … in a world with billions of people in it. To top that off, he fears that she may off and marry someone else if he doesn't find her in time.

  This, along with the suggestion of it being about reincarnation made me rethink and rewrite the song. Well, a few lines in the last verse and chorus anyways. It actually made the song flow better and seem more complete. In a way, it actually made the song make more sense … to me and them. Sadly, we never did anything with it. There wouldn't be time. Ha … Time … how ironic. Over 10 years later, came this …


For Someone I've Never Met

Please save a place for me,
deep inside your heart.
Always know that I think of you,
as we both practice our arts.

Our worlds are full of temptations,
so very hard to resist …
and the good Lord knows
we're both far from,
sixteen and never been kissed.

Wealthy men with jaws divine …
Temptresses with looks so fine …
Paths that lead our hearts away …
Paths that surely lead astray …

They'll lead us there every time.
They'll leave us there … so  unkind.
Our hearts must shine,
night and day.
Through any darkness … they'll light our way.

If you never touch my face …
If I never look into your eyes …
We'll always have the comfort of sharing
the same
big, blue sky.

If I never smell your hair …
If you never kiss my lips …
Always know the search for your smile
has launched a thousand ships.

So, I hope you save a place for me
in your heart so sweet and kind.
Please, save a place for me …
Heaven knows you've one in mine.

~Thursday, September 9th, 1999
9 A.M.



“For Someone I've Never Met ” poured out of me in the midst of another breakup from the second, and last, girl that I wanted to marry. That emotion, never found me again. I looked at it on my computer screen and smiled, seeing “Where Can You Be”, in my mind, on my tattered old note pad that I called my “Song Book”. The memory of me writing it while sitting in my Z-28, looking out over the Gulf of Mexico as a beautiful heat lighting storm sent bolts across the sky, came flooding back; as did the debate of reincarnation I'd had with my pals in the rehearsal room all those years before. Here I was, again, writing about “someone” that I sensed, for lack of a better term, was out there … somewhere.

  Well Reader, do you believe in reincarnation? I was never really certain, but, as you can see, I had twice written pieces to someone I wasn't completely sure existed. I had always “sensed” someone out there beginning with the period after I wrote “Where Can You Be?” and thereafter. So, there they were, each written after losing someone I was deeply in love with. Each came out of nowhere, as they usually do. By the time I was in my 40's, I began to think I was either imagining it all (a side effect of being a hopeless romantic) or that I had just somehow missed this person and our “moment”.

  And then …



Epiphany

There was a place.
There was a time …
There, I stood … still unknowing
and everything seemed fine.

But there in that place …
at that moment in time …
the moment I saw the eyes,
I'd never believed I'd find.

Well, what could I say?
What could I do?
In a world filled with billions …
and there … was a you.

I'd always known you were out there …
even written of something amiss.
I never, ever stopped looking for you …
because my heart always said you exist.

My breezy Fall became harshest Winter.
My crazy life left my health running out.
I'd resigned myself that our moment had passed …
but this moment … it removed all doubt.

Well, what could I say?
Tell me, what could I do?
There we stood, staring … alone … in a city of millions …
yes, there … there was a you.

Oh, that mistress fate, she is just so cruel.
Frustration, a curse to be mine.
   I'd searched for you my entire life …
but now … my clock … knows a limit of time.

You see, I would never venture a love with you,
while knowing I'd have to leave you … hurt and alone.
I could only admire from afar … stoic and aloof …
while turning my heart into stone.

Nothing I could ever say and nothing I could ever do …
But now, at long last … at least I finally knew.

There, you stood … green seas, gazing up … into skies of blue.
My long-awaited revelation … become sorrow-laced realization.
There really is … a you.

~August 12th, 2009
  

  Typical of my life-long Charlie Brown syndrome … After being told in 2005 that I had “the lungs of an eighty-year-old man” and that I had “Six to Ten years” to live, I made a conscious decision in that Doctor's parking lot that I could never have another girlfriend and that I must face this alone. I don't see woman as objects. They are glorious creatures that are here to be our partners and friends and to make our lives amazing. I could never, ever knowingly let a woman fall in love with me, all the while knowing I was going to die and leave her. It's not in me to do such a thing, lonely or not.

  Yes, I'm still alive, I'm stubborn like that. But, some days are better than others and my new doctors say that they don't give people “time limits” anymore … because of people like me. I can't afford the lung transplant. So, as Bono so aptly put in one of his songs: “The rich stay healthy, while the sick stay poor”. It is what it is … and like the energizer bunny, I'm still going. Good for me.

  In the moment that I met her, the morning that followed, and the amazing speed of our nexus over the next several months combined with a string of synchronicities (Coincidences? Did I mention that she too, was a poet and writer?) that not only came after I met her on the sidewalk in front of the publisher we shared, but in those pieces I had written before and in several after; I was pretty much convinced I had actually found her. I have NEVER experienced anything like this, or her, in my entire life.

  So, after all this time, here she was … and there wasn't a **** thing that I could do about it. Besides, she was much younger than I and it probably would never have worked anyways. ****, the universe is rotten sometimes, huh? Maybe, if I'm lucky, things will balance out better in the next life. I can only hope. But I'm reminded, worryingly so, of the **** The Alarm song: “Collide”:

“All of these thoughts pounding in my head …
with the words I've wrote, in the letters I've never sent.
The distance in our lives may change …
Times that you can never erase …
But will our worlds collide?
Will our worlds collide, the next time?”



  Only time will tell.



  “Colors”, and a few others, were written about/for her. But, I could never show them to her. I would never endanger my friendship with her. I just wanted to keep her in my life. That, and that alone, was the only motive I'd ever had with her. I looked forward to seeing her marry, hearing her stories of her three kid's adventures; Hubby, all greasy, working on the car in the driveway, rabbits in her garden at night, eating her precious organic veggies or even about her new curtains. Just to know that she was alive, happy and doing well. I found a solace in her voice I could never describe and I was completely content to just have her in my life and watch hers unfold. Only I could end up in this odd position.

  I feared that she might get weird-ed out because I'd never displayed any romantic inklings toward her, so, to suddenly read these might make her feel a bit, lets say: uncomfortable. Actually, I didn't write them with any romantic intentions, per se; I just did what I always do … write what comes out. Still, there's no denying that they come across romantic. Again, so, so Charlie Brown. (long sigh)
  
  It is what it is. I also have to ponder the fact that maybe all those Charlie Brown moments in my life were preparing me for this one big, painful one. That does makes sense … ******' Universe.


Colors

Well when you're Green, I'll be your Brown.
Like the earth that loves the flowers,
I'll will be your solid ground.

And I'll be your Azure, when you are Verdigris.
We'll be thee most beautiful ocean
that eyes have ever seen.

And when you're Black, I'll be your White.
Mixing all of the colors … I'll make everything alright.

Now when you're Blue, I'll be you're Red.
If something should make you wanna cry,
I will feel your pain instead.

And I'll be your Orange, whenever you are Pink.
We'll be thee most amazing sunset,
that the sky could ever ink.

And when you're Black, I'll be your White.
I'll mix all of your colors … and make everything alright.

Should you be Violet, I will be your Beige.
Like a sleepy moonlit desert,
pasteled in dunes and sage.

And when you're Grey, I will be your Rainbow.
We'll be thee most soothing rainstorm
the world has ever known.

And when you're Black, I'll be your White.
I'll mix all of your colors … yes, I'll make everything alright.

With love on my palette, painting a glorious sunrise …
I'll color all your mornings with a smile and brighten up your skies.
If you should find yourself in sorrow from someones hate or lies …
I'll take the stars down from the heavens … and paint them in your eyes.

So whenever you are Black, I will always be your White.
I'll mix all your colors with a promise … everything will be alright.

Yes, I'll mix all of your colors with a promise … Everything's gonna be alright.

~  Winter 2012



  I wrote this after she had rang me up one afternoon lamenting about her life at the moment, troubled that her latest novel hadn't done as well as she'd hoped and now she had to be waitressing to make ends meet. I tried my best to cheer her up and assured her that she was strong enough to handle anything and that she must keep chasing her dreams. I wrote it as a poem, but I can't help but notice it looks like a song, though I've never heard music for it. Those repeated verses look just like choruses to me.

  Earlier in the day, I had been looking at a booklet of paint swatches. I guess, up there on my roof looking at the Manhattan skyline, her sadness and me looking at all those colors melted together somehow and, as happens, out came this piece. Even this, became another synchronicity as she would name her next novel “Show Me All Your Colors”. I remember seeing it in the bookstore and looking straight up … shaking my head at the sky. Was this the universe telling me to show and tell her all this?

  Well, if it was, I stuck with my gut and kept it to myself. My God, if you only knew how many of these synchronicities there were between her and I. It simply boggles my mind. I wanted to call them “coincidences”, but there were just so **** many of them … Each so unique, they just couldn't be called that. I don't want to tell them all here, because like I said, the more you swear to it, the crazier you sound. And I'm sure your questioning my sanity by now, aren't you? (Smirk)


  OK, OK … this one is definitely romantic. I wrote it one night, drunk to the bejeezus. I'd done what we called “The Crosstown Crawl” with my pal Tristan and a gaggle of assorted waitresses we knew. This involved starting at Brass Monkey on the west side highway in the Gansevoort District and ending at my favorite hookah bar, Karma, on the Lower East Side … Drinking in, and often being “asked to leave” (Read: Kicked out of) every bar that took our interest as we walked (Read: staggered) west to east, staying below 14th St.

  On my way home from the city on the J train, I thought about all the phone conversations we'd had while I was on this train crossing the Williamsburg Bridge. Being drunk, I guess, I caught a bout of sadness that I'd never get to tell her any of this or even how I felt about it all. Before I hit my elevator, this piece was swimming in my head. It's about as mushy a piece as I've ever written … if not thee most! Not the norm for me, but this is, after all, a lot to keep pent up inside you. I wouldn't wish this predicament on anyone.


For My Little Red-Haired Girl …


You …

My Love.
My Queen.
This Shining Light in my eyes.

My Laughs.
My Dreams.
My Soft, Contented Sighs.

My *****.
My Lavender.
My Dew Covered Rose.

My Smile.
My Cinnamon.
The Joy in my heart … ever inspiring my prose.

My Best Friend.
My Co-Star.
My Fearless Partner in Crime.

My Breath.
My Cohort.
My Side-kick throughout time.

My Snow-capped Mountain.
The Wind caressing my face.
My Vast Green Field.

The Ivy Covered Wall
that harbors my soul … ever refusing to yield.

In a different time ...

You … would have been my Life.

You … would have been my World.

You … would have been my Everything

and I will always love you for my own special reasons.

It is just a shame … and I'm so, so sorry … that you … must never, ever know.

Maybe next time.


~Charlie Brown




   When I came-to in the morning and read what I had wrote, I had to laugh a bit. It is borderline corny, very beautiful, very telling and very sad … all at once. I shook my head, laughing and told myself :

  “*******, Sam … yer losin' it. Get your **** together, will ya?”

  I guess in my stupor, I was imagining what it would have been like to write something for her. I don't know … There it was and I was stuck with it. I almost deleted it, but, my finger wouldn't press the key. As I told you before … I'd NEVER show this to her. She'd probably never speak to me again.

   As a sadder epilogue, that eventually happened. I still don't know why, but we haven't spoken in years. Maybe she sensed this emotion in me and ran away. Or maybe, just maybe … she thought I'd pushed her away somehow … but for whatever reason, we drifted apart. I guess I'll never know.  As you can see by reading this, that was never my intention. But, like I keep reiterating … It is what it is.

  One day, I called her number to catch up and shoot the breeze. I hadn't spoken to her in a few months as she'd been busy promoting her new novel and I didn't want to pester her. But … it was disconnected … I checked my emails … nothing. I'd never been so confused, she just closed me out. I didn't want to bother her. I was sure she had her reasons and if she wanted to reach out to me again, she would. She had my email and my phone number. But, for now … she was gone … and that was that.

  So, what do you think, Reader? Do I get the Tin hat … or a Badge of courage? Am I bat-**** crazy … or just eccentric? I'll leave it up to you to decide, because as I said, this all happened to me and there isn't a thing I can do about any of it. I just had to get it off of my chest. Thanks for letting me vent.

  Wherever she is … she will always mean the world to me. I can see her green eyes if I close my mine and look for them. Sometimes, on occasion, her face haunts my sleep. Still, I like to picture her, kids playing in a sprinkler behind her, digging in her garden, wearing gloves too big for her hands and a smudge of fresh dirt on her cheek … it makes me smile.


-Sam Webster
Brooklyn, New York
2013
OK, you can stop scratching your head. I'm sorry if you feel like I tricked you or was playing a prank … That was not my intention. This piece is experimental writing, of sorts. If you are wondering, it's titled “Somewhere … Out There”. But I didn't want to put a title at the head of the page, as that might have clued you in too early.

I also confess that “Sam” the narrator is, on no uncertain terms, based loosely on myself. But hey, what better way to string you along? Besides, as Stephen King said, you “Write what you know”. As far as I 'm aware, using poetry within a short story like this, or in this manner, has never been done before. Welcome to the future!

It really belongs in my “From Thee Edge” Collection with the rest of my Twilight-Zone-esque short stories. (You can now read some of these fiction short stories here, posted in my "NoPo@HePo" posts, along with some non-fiction essays. I hope you enjoy them.) But, because I pieced together several of my poems to not only tell the story, but as a vehicle to carry it along as part of it; I wanted to put it here on Hello Poetry just to see if I could convince you long enough to get you through the story … while having you believe it was me speaking to you and that it was all very real to me. Thus, making it feel real to you as you read it.

Was I having you along right up until it was signed by someone else? Or, at least until the narrator addressed himself as “Sam”?

If so, then I accomplished my mission. I'd love to hear your comments on it. If you've been reading any of my other posts, I'm sure you've figured out that I like to run wildly outside of the box sometimes. This was just, as I said, an experiment in a different way to tell a story … fiction or otherwise. As always, I hope that I took you on a journey and, more importantly, that you enjoyed it.

~Jeff Gaines
L.A.
(Lower Alabama)
2015
Michal Shilor Feb 2014
I  stroke a brand new page
and wonder if rage or
plight or a flight out of this age will
overtake these white spaces between
blue lines,
wonder if I’ve anything meaningful to tell, like
what I think about politics
or **** hips or chapped lips in this winter’s wrath.
I’m on this path, you see, to try
and gain a different perspective,
to learn a different language,
to try and send a message
instead of doing the usual clichés about love and death and
cleaning up an alcoholic mess and
everyone we know has aids but
we like *** and
we hate each other’s different colors and
pretend to be emotional,
you’ve heard this line before:
cry or bleed tears or blood through words or ink onto pages or..
what.ever.
I’m guilty, too, of course, it’s true:
the one who points it out is guilty most,
but now I’m tired of being boring,
tired of not telling a story,
let’s… try… this:
my name is: michal.
I am:
white
twenty one
female
bisexual
jewish
a traveller
open parentheses : a stranger (close parentheses)
I am:
Sitting in a room full of black Africans
in Africa
a stranger, young and white and
interested, and suddenly, it strikes me:
c o m f o r t a b l e .
sitting in a room full of bl-
no.
we are human beings being taught to see in colors and in genders
being taught to judge a person
by the accent by the nation by the actions of the past five minutes by the plan for the next three by the chemicals or plants he puts into his body but what about
personality?
I am:
sitting in a room full of:
POETS.
or people who want to hear poetry,
and though on the outside I’m so…
white – no, different, on the inside I’m so…
warm, feels right, so not
distant. for instance:
you get what it is to let words string themselves on your necklace
and choke you till you’re
breathless
and make you beg for more, you’re masochistic
like me, like that, you
get what it is to close your eyes
and let each others’ words overtake you
like going under a wave in the Indian Ocean
like being swept into the eye of a tornado
like hiding under three blankets in the dead of winter
like turning the engine off but keeping the battery on and parking with dad in the front to let Pink Floyd finish playing Wish You Were Here before we move to open the car door,
you get what it’s like
to open a blank page and let the pen use your fingers in ways you never knew
lingered through the smoke of the incense in your brain,
the drops of the tap of the thoughts
your mind thought it turned off,
those last few breaths you never knew existed,
exist in your head,
exhausted,
I am:
walking out of this segregated room and into the next part
of this interesting test where I find
brainwashed white folks brainwashing my mind and instantly
I’m watching every black guy that walks by
‘cause this is the most dangerous city in the world
and those coloreds and those blacks
commit all the crimes so lock the door and close the windows and
watch your back and clutch your bag tight even in the
daytime and do a double take a triple take and never
talk to strangers you never know who’s a neighbour or
who’s checkin’ out his next
victim ‘cause he’s been
evicted out of society’s boundaries,
out of the space God made for good people,
fair people, people like us who know how to watch out.
Wait! something smells
funny, not really funny:
sad. we must be mad
to buy into this it’s making us
crazy and angry and when was the last time you
smiled?
I am:
smiling, thinking about that last time,
I was in a room full of poets and there was
magic happening and we were
black and we were
white and we were
re(a)d all over, we were
blue with ink stains on our fingers, we were
pink with our vision of life, we were
yellow ‘cause the sun was paintin’ us bright, permanently
green from the grass on our
denim, brown from the earth that rooted our spirits back to our cores,
orange from the flames of our words,
purple like the royalty that shined
from our souls, we were:
rainbows,
black and white are just multitudes of rainbows, after all,
simply shades like the ones we use to cover our windows
out of fear of the next break-in, just
shades, just
shadows, remnants of painful pasts
that we must avoid in our bright & colourful futures –
if we let them be so.
let me catch my breath, I haven’t
been so out of it since that
lunar eclipse that lit up the galaxies,
let me catch
my
breath,
my
death,
my breath, my goodness catch
me now before I trip on your
hiccups before I slip on your
scattered makeup before I slip on your
shallow skirts and dresses,
catch me before I choke on your
grey flavourless cooking before i
regress to the levels of stress
that lead to all our health
deterioration our self-poisoning
medication catch me so I die with a pen in my hand,
righteous and trying to deliver
an emotional message of
love, of coexistence,
I forgot to mention I am:
Israeli,
plagued by hatred in another story,
by violence unnecessary like
painting over to hide the rotten parts,
like pain in modern art,
let’s just lie here together
add a little cliché, underneath the stars,
close your eyes,
feel the dark,
hear our breaths move the air
and start a steady chain reaction,
a journey towards a butterfly effect
(how powerful the breath is!)
let’s call this art.
Ivy Haegan Mar 2014
Love me til I'm blue
Catch my every tear
Love me til I'm blue

Swallow me up in blue
Help me touch the clouds
As I breathe in what's true
Save me from my doubts

Swallow me up in blue
Drown me in the sea
The words will come on cue
If you'll let them be

Love me til I'm blue
Cause words are so unclear
Every part of you

Swallow me up in blue
Let me smell the flowers
Forgive all that they do
You've merely got hours

Swallow me up in blue
The earth, sea, and sky
For there are very few
Who have wondered why

Love me til I'm blue
Call my every fear
Love me like you do

Swallow me up in blue
Before my life will end
I've only one to choose
But I can still pretend

Love me til I'm blue
Catch my every tear
Love me til I'm blue
Maria Gambino Mar 2021
i need a moment
a chance to catch my breath
give me some air
chasing these men is just not fair
to the girl who wants romance
that will put her in a trance
of the sun peeking in through the window
on the the face of the person she loves
alongside her pillow

i need a moment
a chance to catch my breath
why do i feen for those who look past me
instead of getting loved unconditionally
i should push forward not away
but yet no one comes my way

i need a moment
a chance to catch my breath
anxiety floods through my body
like the water would in a basement
after a bad storm
deteriorating the cement
pushing me down further and further
until you can’t hear me holler

i need a moment
a chance to catch my breath
i don’t understand
we are supposed to be like a band
together forever
year of memories down the drain
we miss you, even when you complain
you’ll never leave my brain

i need a moment
a chance to catch my breath
the echoes of screaming rings in my ear
why am i still here
i want to disappear

i need a moment
a chance to catch my breath
seeing the tears fall down my mothers face
when my dad wouldn’t give her space
seeing the holes put into the walls of my childhood home
over countless disagreements that i was too young to roam

i need a moment
a chance to catch my breath
for everyone that i have left behind
i’m sorry it wasn’t intentional
it’s because you’re two dimensional
and you’ve hurt me too many times

i need a moment
a chance to catch my breath
we all want what we can’t have
the crush that lingers through the air
countless opportunities lost in action
friendships that last forever
happy parents
anxiety free world
that special someone who knows you just right
yet we all forget what we do have


take advantage of every moment you have with something or someone
because you never know when things are going to slip right off of your finger tips
appreciate everything you have
say thank you more often
and remember
everyone needs a moment to catch their breath
Darby Rose Apr 2014
Are you sought after, my dear?
Are you one to catch the eye of all those around you?
You're mysterious, yet vulnerable.
You are intimate, yet appropriately distant.
You're the perfect mate,
A catch worth catching.

Enthralling as you may be,
I'm left wondering...

Just when will it be my time to be the catch,
instead of the lonesome fisherman.
Serenus Raymone Dec 2012
I’m too fast

I’m too swift

You never seem to catch my drift



I came prepared

Unwilling to share

…Victory is my scent



You can try

As I **** by

To breathe deep and catch a whiff  



I don’t sweat

As quiet as it’s kept

…I ooze pure bliss



I gotta love me

Because I know you hate me

…I’m truly hit or miss



You can’t beat me

So just join me

In my world-

Defeat does not exist


I cause collateral damage

Whenever I’m challenged

Unafraid to give Death a kiss



So get your head out of the sand

And catch me if you can

So I can X your name off of my list



It’s time to face the torment

I hope someone records this

It’s the first time in history

A hare eats the dust of a tortoise!

— The End —