Though the first carried more miles, the second day of the hike was totally and unapologetically uphill. 
When you ascend, hiking becomes the zen of endurance.



First, you are stripped of all the pleasures of hiking. Your excitement is boiled into lactic acid. Your love for the trail is baked, hardened and dehydrated into thoughts of laying down in the sun until the heat shrivels you into an unconscious raisin.



Try as you may to put on your “isn’t hiking just a slice of heaven?” face, strangers passing you on the downhill stride can only see your “PLEASE GOD, HELP ME OR ******* **** ME” face.

As much as hiking really is a small slice of heaven, there is no denying the living-death of taking 10 straight miles to the knees under the chaffing hell of a 50 pound sack in the relentless sun. 


But when you’re back in an office, sitting on your cushy little ergonomic chair, you long for the sweat and the torture that forces your mind to the ankle deathtraps of mountain terrain. To the deep valley behind and below you, and the crystal basin at the foot of the granite Giants.



The worst thing you can do is ignore the pain—that makes it relentless. Instead you focus on the pain until you become it. The only thing left is the moment between each step, when you remember why you are here and what it is worth. Every time your foot touches dirt, it leaves twice the footprint. One on the mountain and another in your memory where you will safeguard the misery of your ascent and hold on for dear life. One day, when your knees are too weak and your body can no longer table your pack, all the pleasures and joys of the trail that you once thought dissipated in the steam of uphill toil will come rushing back with the magnified strength of every year between you and the present you once knew and respected enough to actually live.

And if you didn’t, if you let it only be pain to get through and not to focus or dwell on, then that is what it is and will always be. A dull memory of pain, dark and somber and incomplete.

O Sovereign power of love! O grief! O balm!
All records, saving thine, come cool, and calm,
And shadowy, through the mist of passed years:
For others, good or bad, hatred and tears
Have become indolent; but touching thine,
One sigh doth echo, one poor sob doth pine,
One kiss brings honey-dew from buried days.
The woes of Troy, towers smothering o'er their blaze,
Stiff-holden shields, far-piercing spears, keen blades,
Struggling, and blood, and shrieks--all dimly fades
Into some backward corner of the brain;
Yet, in our very souls, we feel amain
The close of Troilus and Cressid sweet.
Hence, pageant history! hence, gilded cheat!
Swart planet in the universe of deeds!
Wide sea, that one continuous murmur breeds
Along the pebbled shore of memory!
Many old rotten-timber'd boats there be
Upon thy vaporous *****, magnified
To goodly vessels; many a sail of pride,
And golden keel'd, is left unlaunch'd and dry.
But wherefore this? What care, though owl did fly
About the great Athenian admiral's mast?
What care, though striding Alexander past
The Indus with his Macedonian numbers?
Though old Ulysses tortured from his slumbers
The glutted Cyclops, what care?--Juliet leaning
Amid her window-flowers,--sighing,--weaning
Tenderly her fancy from its maiden snow,
Doth more avail than these: the silver flow
Of Hero's tears, the swoon of Imogen,
Fair Pastorella in the bandit's den,
Are things to brood on with more ardency
Than the death-day of empires. Fearfully
Must such conviction come upon his head,
Who, thus far, discontent, has dared to tread,
Without one muse's smile, or kind behest,
The path of love and poesy. But rest,
In chaffing restlessness, is yet more drear
Than to be crush'd, in striving to uprear
Love's standard on the battlements of song.
So once more days and nights aid me along,
Like legion'd soldiers.

                        Brain-sick shepherd-prince,
What promise hast thou faithful guarded since
The day of sacrifice? Or, have new sorrows
Come with the constant dawn upon thy morrows?
Alas! 'tis his old grief. For many days,
Has he been wandering in uncertain ways:
Through wilderness, and woods of mossed oaks;
Counting his woe-worn minutes, by the strokes
Of the lone woodcutter; and listening still,
Hour after hour, to each lush-leav'd rill.
Now he is sitting by a shady spring,
And elbow-deep with feverous *******
Stems the upbursting cold: a wild rose tree
Pavilions him in bloom, and he doth see
A bud which snares his fancy: lo! but now
He plucks it, dips its stalk in the water: how!
It swells, it buds, it flowers beneath his sight;
And, in the middle, there is softly pight
A golden butterfly; upon whose wings
There must be surely character'd strange things,
For with wide eye he wonders, and smiles oft.

  Lightly this little herald flew aloft,
Follow'd by glad Endymion's clasped hands:
Onward it flies. From languor's sullen bands
His limbs are loos'd, and eager, on he hies
Dazzled to trace it in the sunny skies.
It seem'd he flew, the way so easy was;
And like a new-born spirit did he pass
Through the green evening quiet in the sun,
O'er many a heath, through many a woodland dun,
Through buried paths, where sleepy twilight dreams
The summer time away. One track unseams
A wooded cleft, and, far away, the blue
Of ocean fades upon him; then, anew,
He sinks adown a solitary glen,
Where there was never sound of mortal men,
Saving, perhaps, some snow-light cadences
Melting to silence, when upon the breeze
Some holy bark let forth an anthem sweet,
To cheer itself to Delphi. Still his feet
Went swift beneath the merry-winged guide,
Until it reached a splashing fountain's side
That, near a cavern's mouth, for ever pour'd
Unto the temperate air: then high it soar'd,
And, downward, suddenly began to dip,
As if, athirst with so much toil, 'twould sip
The crystal spout-head: so it did, with touch
Most delicate, as though afraid to smutch
Even with mealy gold the waters clear.
But, at that very touch, to disappear
So fairy-quick, was strange! Bewildered,
Endymion sought around, and shook each bed
Of covert flowers in vain; and then he flung
Himself along the grass. What gentle tongue,
What whisperer disturb'd his gloomy rest?
It was a nymph uprisen to the breast
In the fountain's pebbly margin, and she stood
'**** lilies, like the youngest of the brood.
To him her dripping hand she softly kist,
And anxiously began to plait and twist
Her ringlets round her fingers, saying: "Youth!
Too long, alas, hast thou starv'd on the ruth,
The bitterness of love: too long indeed,
Seeing thou art so gentle. Could I ****
Thy soul of care, by heavens, I would offer
All the bright riches of my crystal coffer
To Amphitrite; all my clear-eyed fish,
Golden, or rainbow-sided, or purplish,
Vermilion-tail'd, or finn'd with silvery gauze;
Yea, or my veined pebble-floor, that draws
A ****** light to the deep; my grotto-sands
Tawny and gold, ooz'd slowly from far lands
By my diligent springs; my level lilies, shells,
My charming rod, my potent river spells;
Yes, every thing, even to the pearly cup
Meander gave me,--for I bubbled up
To fainting creatures in a desert wild.
But woe is me, I am but as a child
To gladden thee; and all I dare to say,
Is, that I pity thee; that on this day
I've been thy guide; that thou must wander far
In other regions, past the scanty bar
To mortal steps, before thou cans't be ta'en
From every wasting sigh, from every pain,
Into the gentle ***** of thy love.
Why it is thus, one knows in heaven above:
But, a poor Naiad, I guess not. Farewel!
I have a ditty for my hollow cell."

  Hereat, she vanished from Endymion's gaze,
Who brooded o'er the water in amaze:
The dashing fount pour'd on, and where its pool
Lay, half asleep, in grass and rushes cool,
Quick waterflies and gnats were sporting still,
And fish were dimpling, as if good nor ill
Had fallen out that hour. The wanderer,
Holding his forehead, to keep off the burr
Of smothering fancies, patiently sat down;
And, while beneath the evening's sleepy frown
Glow-worms began to trim their starry lamps,
Thus breath'd he to himself: "Whoso encamps
To take a fancied city of delight,
O what a wretch is he! and when 'tis his,
After long toil and travelling, to miss
The kernel of his hopes, how more than vile:
Yet, for him there's refreshment even in toil;
Another city doth he set about,
Free from the smallest pebble-bead of doubt
That he will seize on trickling honey-combs:
Alas, he finds them dry; and then he foams,
And onward to another city speeds.
But this is human life: the war, the deeds,
The disappointment, the anxiety,
Imagination's struggles, far and nigh,
All human; bearing in themselves this good,
That they are sill the air, the subtle food,
To make us feel existence, and to shew
How quiet death is. Where soil is men grow,
Whether to weeds or flowers; but for me,
There is no depth to strike in: I can see
Nought earthly worth my compassing; so stand
Upon a misty, jutting head of land--
Alone? No, no; and by the Orphean lute,
When mad Eurydice is listening to 't;
I'd rather stand upon this misty peak,
With not a thing to sigh for, or to seek,
But the soft shadow of my thrice-seen love,
Than be--I care not what. O meekest dove
Of heaven! O Cynthia, ten-times bright and fair!
From thy blue throne, now filling all the air,
Glance but one little beam of temper'd light
Into my *****, that the dreadful might
And tyranny of love be somewhat scar'd!
Yet do not so, sweet queen; one torment spar'd,
Would give a pang to jealous misery,
Worse than the torment's self: but rather tie
Large wings upon my shoulders, and point out
My love's far dwelling. Though the playful rout
Of Cupids shun thee, too divine art thou,
Too keen in beauty, for thy silver prow
Not to have dipp'd in love's most gentle stream.
O be propitious, nor severely deem
My madness impious; for, by all the stars
That tend thy bidding, I do think the bars
That kept my spirit in are burst--that I
Am sailing with thee through the dizzy sky!
How beautiful thou art! The world how deep!
How tremulous-dazzlingly the wheels sweep
Around their axle! Then these gleaming reins,
How lithe! When this thy chariot attains
Is airy goal, haply some bower veils
Those twilight eyes? Those eyes!--my spirit fails--
Dear goddess, help! or the wide-gaping air
Will gulph me--help!"--At this with madden'd stare,
And lifted hands, and trembling lips he stood;
Like old Deucalion mountain'd o'er the flood,
Or blind Orion hungry for the morn.
And, but from the deep cavern there was borne
A voice, he had been froze to senseless stone;
Nor sigh of his, nor plaint, nor passion'd moan
Had more been heard. Thus swell'd it forth: "Descend,
Young mountaineer! descend where alleys bend
Into the sparry hollows of the world!
Oft hast thou seen bolts of the thunder hurl'd
As from thy threshold, day by day hast been
A little lower than the chilly sheen
Of icy pinnacles, and dipp'dst thine arms
Into the deadening ether that still charms
Their marble being: now, as deep profound
As those are high, descend! He ne'er is crown'd
With immortality, who fears to follow
Where airy voices lead: so through the hollow,
The silent mysteries of earth, descend!"

  He heard but the last words, nor could contend
One moment in reflection: for he fled
Into the fearful deep, to hide his head
From the clear moon, the trees, and coming madness.

  'Twas far too strange, and wonderful for sadness;
Sharpening, by degrees, his appetite
To dive into the deepest. Dark, nor light,
The region; nor bright, nor sombre wholly,
But mingled up; a gleaming melancholy;
A dusky empire and its diadems;
One faint eternal eventide of gems.
Aye, millions sparkled on a vein of gold,
Along whose track the prince quick footsteps told,
With all its lines abrupt and angular:
Out-shooting sometimes, like a meteor-star,
Through a vast antre; then the metal woof,
Like Vulcan's rainbow, with some monstrous roof
Curves hugely: now, far in the deep abyss,
It seems an angry lightning, and doth hiss
Fancy into belief: anon it leads
Through winding passages, where sameness breeds
Vexing conceptions of some sudden change;
Whether to silver grots, or giant range
Of sapphire columns, or fantastic bridge
Athwart a flood of crystal. On a ridge
Now fareth he, that o'er the vast beneath
Towers like an ocean-cliff, and whence he seeth
A hundred waterfalls, whose voices come
But as the murmuring surge. Chilly and numb
His ***** grew, when first he, far away,
Descried an orbed diamond, set to fray
Old darkness from his throne: 'twas like the sun
Uprisen o'er chaos: and with such a stun
Came the amazement, that, absorb'd in it,
He saw not fiercer wonders--past the wit
Of any spirit to tell, but one of those
Who, when this planet's sphering time doth close,
Will be its high remembrancers: who they?
The mighty ones who have made eternal day
For Greece and England. While astonishment
With deep-drawn sighs was quieting, he went
Into a marble gallery, passing through
A mimic temple, so complete and true
In sacred custom, that he well nigh fear'd
To search it inwards, whence far off appear'd,
Through a long pillar'd vista, a fair shrine,
And, just beyond, on light tiptoe divine,
A quiver'd Dian. Stepping awfully,
The youth approach'd; oft turning his veil'd eye
Down sidelong aisles, and into niches old.
And when, more near against the marble cold
He had touch'd his forehead, he began to thread
All courts and passages, where silence dead
Rous'd by his whispering footsteps murmured faint:
And long he travers'd to and fro, to acquaint
Himself with every mystery, and awe;
Till, weary, he sat down before the maw
Of a wide outlet, fathomless and dim
To wild uncertainty and shadows grim.
There, when new wonders ceas'd to float before,
And thoughts of self came on, how crude and sore
The journey homeward to habitual self!
A mad-pursuing of the fog-born elf,
Whose flitting lantern, through rude nettle-briar,
Cheats us into a swamp, into a fire,
Into the ***** of a hated thing.

  What misery most drowningly doth sing
In lone Endymion's ear, now he has caught
The goal of consciousness? Ah, 'tis the thought,
The deadly feel of solitude: for lo!
He cannot see the heavens, nor the flow
Of rivers, nor hill-flowers running wild
In pink and purple chequer, nor, up-pil'd,
The cloudy rack slow journeying in the west,
Like herded elephants; nor felt, nor prest
Cool grass, nor tasted the fresh slumberous air;
But far from such companionship to wear
An unknown time, surcharg'd with grief, away,
Was now his lot. And must he patient stay,
Tracing fantastic figures with his spear?
"No!" exclaimed he, "why should I tarry here?"
No! loudly echoed times innumerable.
At which he straightway started, and 'gan tell
His paces back into the temple's chief;
Warming and glowing strong in the belief
Of help from Dian: so that when again
He caught her airy form, thus did he plain,
Moving more near the while. "O Haunter chaste
Of river sides, and woods, and heathy waste,
Where with thy silver bow and arrows keen
Art thou now forested? O woodland Queen,
What smoothest air thy smoother forehead woos?
Where dost thou listen to the wide halloos
Of thy disparted nymphs? Through what dark tree
Glimmers thy crescent? Wheresoe'er it be,
'Tis in the breath of heaven: thou dost taste
Freedom as none can taste it, nor dost waste
Thy loveliness in dismal elements;
But, finding in our green earth sweet contents,
There livest blissfully. Ah, if to thee
It feels Elysian, how rich to me,
An exil'd mortal, sounds its pleasant name!
Within my breast there lives a choking flame--
O let me cool it among the zephyr-boughs!
A homeward fever parches up my tongue--
O let me slake it at the running springs!
Upon my ear a noisy nothing rings--
O let me once more hear the linnet's note!
Before mine eyes thick films and shadows float--
O let me 'noint them with the heaven's light!
Dost thou now lave thy feet and ankles white?
O think how sweet to me the freshening sluice!
Dost thou now please thy thirst with berry-juice?
O think how this dry palate would rejoice!
If in soft slumber thou dost hear my voice,
Oh think how I should love a bed of flowers!--
Young goddess! let me see my native bowers!
Deliver me from this rapacious deep!"

  Thus ending loudly, as he would o'erleap
His destiny, alert he stood: but when
Obstinate silence came heavily again,
Feeling about for its old couch of space
And airy cradle, lowly bow'd his face
Desponding, o'er the marble floor's cold thrill.
But 'twas not long; for, sweeter than the rill
To its old channel, or a swollen tide
To margin sallows, were the leaves he spied,
And flowers, and wreaths, and ready myrtle crowns
Up heaping through the slab: refreshment drowns
Itself, and strives its own delights to hide--
Nor in one spot alone; the floral pride
In a long whispering birth enchanted grew
Before his footsteps; as when heav'd anew
Old ocean rolls a lengthened wave to the shore,
Down whose green back the short-liv'd foam, all ****,
Bursts gradual, with a wayward indolence.

  Increasing still in heart, and pleasant sense,
Upon his fairy journey on he hastes;
So anxious for the end, he scarcely wastes
One moment with his hand among the sweets:
Onward he goes--he stops--his ***** beats
As plainly in his ear, as the faint charm
Of which the throbs were born. This still alarm,
This sleepy music, forc'd him walk tiptoe:
For it came more softly than the east could blow
Arion's magic to the Atlantic isles;
Or than the west, made jealous by the smiles
Of thron'd Apollo, could breathe back the lyre
To seas Ionian and Tyrian.

  O did he ever live, that lonely man,
Who lov'd--and music slew not? 'Tis the pest
Of love, that fairest joys give most unrest;
That things of delicate and tenderest worth
Are swallow'd all, and made a seared dearth,
By one consuming flame: it doth immerse
And suffocate true blessings in a curse.
Half-happy, by comparison of bliss,
Is miserable. 'Twas even so with this
Dew-dropping melody, in the Carian's ear;
First heaven, then hell, and then forgotten clear,
Vanish'd in elemental passion.

  And down some swart abysm he had gone,
Had not a heavenly guide benignant led
To where thick myrt

There's an awkward thrill I feel
like wicked-wet rabies –
Oh. Ah. Oh.
To gaze over photos of the woman I created.
With my warped perception,
saturating and cropping everything into delicious
oblivion.
I am the knife as well as the ingredients
that sauteed her together in a camera flash.
She sits hot like heaven.
And I want to
stare at her picture all day until she comes to life.

The woman I created, I hang up like perfected rotisserie
and fall in love with her accidentally every day.
Looking into those precisely underlined
tiger-*** eyes of startling navy. Knowing their true dullness.
Hissing at the free-swinging curls
and the hours behind them. Loving the lie.
The flowy top and sleek trousers gliding down lovely as Niagara
over chaffing chub; all hidden. And thighs; unshaven.
And that topical smile everyone likes to see, waiting to plummet
into suicide like a kite hanging in one tight second.
Her image is my greatest
False accomplishment.

I hang my portrait up on a wall of the internet
for people of the world to migrate to
the photo exhibit, my little show-off room.
They make offers and toss compliments
with their “I like this. I like this." nonsense.


They don't know that the girl in the portrait, she
isn't organic. They seem not to notice
that she is something of a chemical flower.
Her face is my face, only with whiteout poison-paste
smoothed over twice.
And they want to
stare at her picture all day until she comes to life.

Gazing upon her believed-to-be beauty, as I hang my paintbrush,
she bites her body still as a painting,
bruised and needled
into perfect frame. She cries
like Jesus Christ, as she is stared at, but not seen.
I am the artist as well as the object.
And the woman in the portrait is
nothing,
but dot after dot of manipulated color.
And we want to
stare at her picture all day until she comes to life.

The Lehigh is chaffing
at the shoulders of her banks
Swollen
with mood of mud
brown and flat and far too fast

She tore those young girls
from their rafts
Decorated the trees
of a midstream island with them
hanging on like the leaves and silt
once did

Their cries swallowed
as she roared past
harvesting souls with clinging hands

Chosen
to be victim
Chosen
for a reason
to be spared

Neither girl nor male… So what am I? Am I the so-called perv aiming to invade the wrong bathroom? Am I a heretic aiming to impose my wickedness onto the world? Am I the clocking stares they give me? How about the result of a broken home or a broken heart? Does my mere existence force you to reevaluate your identity? When all I'm trying to do is figure out mine. Neither girl nor male… So you tell me where I am to relieve my bowels. Or am I to stitch them shut for your comfort? While I'm at it, shall I stitch my eyes shut as to not burden you with running mascara; which further assaults my "feminine façade"? I'm sorry to burden you with my fake *****, of which a second of labor (turning your head) would relieve you of your distress. I'm sorry you'd rather slave away starring and clocking them. Clocking me. I am sorry that I was born male yet refuse to live up to such expectations. I am sorry that despite my best efforts I cannot pass for how I feel. Believe me—for the life of me—I am trying. As punishment for lack of natural *******, I stretch my skin to form a pleasing cleavage. As punishment for having the wrong body type, I wear a cage around my abdomen two sizes too small that cuts into my rib cage dare I seek the comforts of sitting down. As punishment for being born with a male anatomy, I crunch my disheveled sack of nerve endings between my chaffing thighs. Dare my body have the audacity to ***** itself for any reason I bend the muscle, in such a way never intended, between my legs just to have one less aesthetic reminder as to what I am not. Your clocking stares painfully remind me that I may never be seen as how I see myself. But ****** do I try. Until I do, I am condemned to be neither male nor… female.

My dissatisfaction does not come from you,
It is not a reaction to your moods or your sometimes bleak outlook,
Nor your terrible self-imaging.

I remember laughing late into the night.
I recall with clarity falling in love with a woman who loved the world we found ourselves in and we laughed till we cried drunk on life and each other.

I sometimes wonder where that woman went.

At times I believe you when you say you whither within a relationship.
At times I believe that is part of my curse.

I do not choose a woman who is content to bake cookies and clean the house,
Though you do those things,
I chose you in your glory with all your lust and love and life.

Yours is a heart meant for freedom and no matter how loosely connected we are I am still the tether to which you are leashed,
And you are chaffing.

I do not want to let you go,
Nor have you asked to,
Yet what are we to do when the life you once celebrated is now oppressed from the summer heat?
I cannot offer shade cool enough to calm the fire smouldering inside of your breast.

Thus my dissatisfaction does not come from you,
Rather my bleak understanding of our future,
One I hope you know that I will do everything I can to discard.

I would have you happy and content.
I would have me the same.

Chains on my heart, squeezing
Chains on my legs, chaffing
Chains on my mind, breaking
Chains on my soul, crushing

Babylon is my prison
Shared with my reggae crew
The keepers all bald
My visitor: you

My poems bring freedom and fat reggae beats
A ***** island boy, I walk these streets
On my street, I see baldheads: curse those neats!
They can pay big rent, mines late 2 weeks

I get home and water my tall herb bush
Its heavenly branches provide me with kush
I pack up the bowl, sip smoke from the chalice
I feel close to  JAH  he erases my malice

My chains are broken, dust in the breeze
The only way to stay free, smoke more trees
My liberated spirit rises up as I cry
United with JAH we Touch the Sky

I don’t understand can’t comprehend
Just feeling alone,
disconnected again
Stuck with tears in all but my third eye
Chaffing these feelings up against this pen,
Can’t seem to move or bend without the break
I don’t understand a pain that doesn’t ache
To heal is to reopen and pass thru with love
Our wound aren’t the only evidence of abuse
Physical proof often separates the elders from our youth
Stuck between choosing alcohol or self abuse
Go in search of a sweeter way to rot your tooth
Chase away the fear, and the anger
I can't handle this section of your chapter
Where you just want to avoid all the love, and the laughter

It's getting darker,
malice, resentment,
jealousy,
a fruit salad Of youth misfits
from hacker
to packer,
smuggler to rapper,
but what happen was after
Was The economy became a *******

with no fathers to guide it,
cause they already tried this
Now our kids like us could lose an earlier retirement

And I'm tired of it
causing a chain of half *** generation backlash,
so more get thier back thrashed
by their own family while a fat cat

Brings bad luck like a black cat
Filthy rich while some live out of a backpack
And this is me claiming my
two cents so u can tell
The government to tax that

Cuz they Always got us to laugh at
while they get their back scratched
But he gets a happy ending so it's
not just his back scratched

No wonder hes chaffing
and'll probably be chasing penicillin
Cuz itchy And scratchy has nothing to do with cartoons to this vilan

Now the employees the boss
And the boss like ur salads tossed
But we all have to bare a cross
Now my Stomachs all in knots

Cuz Everything's, rush rush
Kiss *** kiss *** blush blush
U wanna move on  up up?
Then find a **** And **** ****

While cancers at us like duck duck
And the goose is getting more then a goose egg
when their goose is cooked

and mother goose told us about 3 political parties not just one
she said
"Three blind mice see how they run"

So while George tells the idiot a story
about the rabbits
The greedy let money make them a savage
while We die slowly from our habits,

Why do we have it,
And To call us mankind is silly
Cuz what mans kind these days really? The one thinking with his wily

to free *****, feelin up a  womans manipulations and call it biology
By staying abreast psychologically
Which is a sociopaths  ideology

now im off of my own topic
Like i provided it just to rob it
Like I went to my bank and boosted the same cash I jus deposited

No wonder Im rich with annoyance
i must have won a lottery
thats how all these things bother me
my community missing comradery

Instead we steal with robbery
slaughterin wuts left of the economy
Like ur ****** coming back again
only this time for ******

Cuz things arnt the way dey outta be. Everything's about novelty
When we need less walk in clinics for addictions, and bad doctoring

Until narcotics flood the street
Someone tell those officering
dealers r those with Scripts 4 oxys
But nice that they're offering

Wut happen to philosophy
Where are all the neo saucrates?
Shooting for monopoly but that cant save u being a ******* obviously  

oh this horror is such comedy
Lately I think i need a lobotomy
good and evil battle within me opposed Im like a walking dichotomy

Now procreations odd to me
flawed To be a double standard like belief of having no right To play god and take life yet its ok to us to play god and make life

It's contradiction is guess
depends on position I guess
2balls to help my two cents express
so this is a requisition I guess

Far from living true freedom but its
Been gone so long who needs em
People say u cant find a trusting person these days..so Y dont u B one

But no, we always need some
Reward or valid reason,
When we already got the biggest...
sharing a home in all seasons

But lately were greatly
crazy, Like oh baby
maybe lately, we fried Our brains chasin the American Dream unsafely

No wonder I sadly dislike myself
And everyone else lately
this is how the world has made me
So u can love me or hate me

But from now, I refuse to allow
Another power to make or break me
I won't follow rules or lemming like fools, I will no longer live safely

Or by a risk management thought
Cause one day well all finally stop
And See that the only real thing
Given to us is each other and not

Valuing it Is like our words and being and heard, Feeling emotion to cry
But still were sick enuf to look in a lovers eye to say I love u as a lie

So don't let them , sell u a high
sell u a dream or sell u heaven
Cuz The ones selling treatment is
usually the same ones producing the weapons

And I tried to spare u this rant
But it just can't be kept in
Something smells badly and sadly
i think its the **** I just stepped in.....

Untethered. Somehow,
once I become untethered
to the prison of this life,
I can see to focus more intently
on what is most important
if I pay attention to this inside,
what I am, instead of focusing on
the tether or what it’s tied to.

What would happen if
every single last one of us,
all the billions of souls,
human ones, alive,
all untethered
at the same time?
And what if we let our
untethered hearts
lead us to the destiny
we didn’t see
from all the chaffing from
the too tight tethering?

The vision I see is
something like a healthy,
humming, honey-bee hive
on our larger human scale.
Isn’t every working part
so individually, blissfully alive?

I suppose, if the goo is honey,
it's so much better than if it’s ****
or congealing blood.
That is, if we have to have goo, which
here on earth, yeah, I’m certain
it’s a universal law,
we really do need goo.

I questioned the Devi
and she only giggled.
I had to admit, she’s right.
Then, I accepted a goblet of
her sweet honey wine;
and it didn’t hurt all that much at all
growing the rest of my little wings.
Buzz, buzz, buzzing about
our wonderful beehive,
blissfully drunk on Mother’s
Divine Honey Wine.

Turn me out into the night
a rainy night.
Turn me out into the schlap of asphalt.
Let me spin my wheels.

Sometimes I kiss my own hand
to feel alive--
Other times I turn out
That chaffing concrete runway
They call a heart.

I run in the rain.

The ground shook yesterday,
And the limb I perched upon
Bowed and threatened to break.
The sky above darkened with clouds
As moisture gathered in the air.
My fingers loosened from their firm grasp
Round the branches to which I clung.
And as the sky lit up with nature's fireworks
Of crisscrossing patchwork lightning
I stood up and spread my arms.
The wind picked up and beat icy droplets
Into my chest and cheeks.
And in the moment before I fell,
I yelled.
As the breath escaped my lungs
In a violent echoing release,
I closed my eyes and steadied myself
And then stepped off and flew.
Oh what a flight it was!
And the ground caught me
Like a frypan catches the tossed up pancake.
And all life was beaten from my body
And all my demons exorcised.

And then my eyes peeled open
To see the white ceiling above
And i felt the starched sheets
Chaffing my sweat-soaked skin
And I realized I have to live the day
All over again.

BUCKLEY BOY


Caressing half-sounds
Stumbling your stories
Under star-snake glories
Round the flickered embers


Did silence shake you
And tear you apart
As desperate loss
Tracked endless plains?


Dying in your dreams
When the cord tightens
Did your execution
Proceed as seemed it must?


How many atrocities
Were buried in the sand
And laid aside
Then brought to hand?


Years without kindred
Did you lose control
Find communion dead
And cease expression


Traversing the empty spaces
In dark companion?
Did you long for traces
Of what was told?



In the waste and fever
Did regret ride high
Chaffing the leaver
Chiding the loser why


So many roads were tried
Through trackless wastes
Where stream beds lied
And haste led back?


Walking on the edge
Of no escape
Left on hillsides
By your last mistake


When the dark broke in
Was an icy flaw
The token endpoint
Holding a wider line?

don't bother to hold me hair.
and ****** why do I feel the need to lock you out,
I don't want to have to share.
I don't.

I have carried you on my back,
trying to help you,

and now I am empty and I can't focus on your pain
like you want me to,
I'm empty and I feel the harsh brush of bitterness climbing up my throat,
to form the acid on my tongue,
and I bite it back,
but my insides rage war,

And I love you.
we've been through,
death,
divorce,
****,
***,
Sarah,
but I'm...
barely breathing,
and I'm not sure you're seeing me anymore,
this breath is waning and I can't focus on you,
any more
or maybe it's so hard to past the news feeds of your life,
I resent that I have to ask you, to care about me,
I thought you know me,
but maybe you know the "me",
I used to be.

and can I just say whats on my heart,
I wish I didn't have to teach you how to love me,
you get me on so many many levels,
but jump back to the basics,
I dont want to be the supply and demand of my own needs,

You say you've never felt more closer but I'm not sure if you know I breathe.
I want more from you then this, how many times have a put your needs before mine,

And I can't do it this time,
and find love,
in life's leeches,
thinking I'd be the cure,

and have sat and rage war beside you,
but my insides hide,

you're hurting me cuffing my wrist chaffing this heart
and I'd burn this if it didn't help the bleeding of  my heart

i'm sorry all I want is for you to be
happy but all i see is the water now that surrounds me,
I jumped in to save you,
but I have,
and I didn't save a vest for me.

were just drowning together no one better off then before,
but i no longer want to commiserate together, though I'm in love with the storm.

Oh dear oh dear
I'm laughing
My life away I fear
So much I'm chaffing
From the lungs
I can see my abs
Forming rungs
I chase chocolate labs
Because I want to taste
For myself, in my haste
I try to skip
But the trip
Is short
Like a skort
Beneath a shirt
As I flirt
With death
Out of breath,
Cause the tears
Are too real
From my laughter
As the sad clown nears
And I hand him a happy meal
Hope he likes ranch on his happily ever after...

Is this friendship or something more
Feeling this way is like breaking a law
When the words you speak go straight to my core
oh how I adore

The things you say I just can't bare
For how could my loves, love compare
To do this to him would be much to unfair

My feelings for you are unsure
Heart trapped and needing to soar
Chaffing against the chain leaving me raw
And ever so sore

I feel so guilty but who could have foresaw
That I could have ever wanted something more  
Should I, would I, could I ever show him the door?

Where is the sound
            That once gave meaning
To my name.
It seems lost in the echoes
                    The sound of a
Crying shame.

                     I try to pinpoint the time
Channels I was
Passing through
                    When I could interpret pre-echo
When each syllable
Rang true

                   When my offspring was purer
Relative to
Innate impurities.
                    Girl, boy vastly interrupted.
So much for blood
As a surety.

Belly fire lessens with years.
                     Caution blows back
In the wind.
Flirting with status quo delusions.
                    Slogans & logos
Slowly rescind.

                 Pure thought tainted with church &  state.
Leftist & Right Wing views
Scientifically spliced.
                  This new world creation seldom takes sides.
Calculates the outcome & always
Dresses nice.

I’m halfway there, queasy still
                    Rhetorical views beginning to
Make sense.
Cautious malaise on either side.
                       Starch chaffing neck  
Outcome offense.

                       I occasionally hear my voice
That blew with caution
In the wind.
                    Volcano dormant still pushes the crust.
Delusions sicken me back
To the fringe.


--Daniel Irwin Tucker

Indecisive* excusing behaviors and believing  against hope

prayers or wishes

Didn't know
couldn't fathom

I'd be rejected then imprisoned

Cofused misleading

implications await this bitter bed

Black roses & blistering thorns

crowned the conquered queen

*Mangled chains tearing chaffing  swollen  wrists

Ankles held fast on this tainted flea infested bed  

An ***** haze clouds all around  no sounds forth coming  

drugged induced
intoxicating lazy lulled senses

Heart's slowing down
No one can help
caught trap and stuck

"Love's" captured me again
but little does he know

I'll  be dead before
       the sun's first glow**
     Copyright ©
Ayeshah K.C.L.N
1977-Present  
All right reserved

Keep your keeping where i can see it.
i will let you know i've had enough charlatan
when my eyes break from trying you.
I retreat and advance.
but that is the pattern of unspoken people.
the web of your truth is the ladder
that ascends to the bottom
of all glorious
null.

but me.

I am the duke of dead blocks.
i live here, chaffing windmills and knots.
i slum the cheerful. go where the going
is more gone....
If nothing happens, I can't be here.
but if you do
i must love
you.

I plot my course
through -
like a whale with no song.
just a hunting party
dismissed for the weather
and the wrong
wrong.

Counting hopeless dreams stripped from the sandman’s grasp
Kept waiting, left chaffing  
The restraining corset equipped on daddy’s farm breaks a clasp
Worth stating, more berating

Left in transit as thoughts collide, drifting off on that one once relied
Envision ghosts, stagnant at posts, awaiting the toast, at Greg Giraldo’s roast
A passing cloud, it’s well endowed, the screaming’s loud, daddy’s proud
Broken bones, the girl moans, the old man groans, salacious tones

Nursery bound departure of a beloved mother, swept off by a younger lover
Father time awaits the clock, chairs rock, nurturing his flock, displayed ****
In speechless rage, on a well lit stage, chalked up to age, comes an averted cage
Nothing’s going to change my world. Nothing’s going to change my world.

I stand on naked promises that follow
vague feelings,
Half considered, half poured over.

Irritation that rubs raw, chaffing against who you are.
Your fingers are pinned down.
Imprinting on the mattress. It screams out to others: this is where it happened.
Where sour dreams poured down your neck,
caressing the skin,
it said “I love you, please don’t ever leave, look how close we are”,
half dreaming in my closet nightmare.

I pick open my skin years later and find the stubble of your hands all over me.
Pricking up through skin, I pluck them out. Pull up the root and rid myself forever.

I feel your breath grunt with each one.

I graduated from a depression I lingered in
the euphoria of throwing my hat of coloured
textures down what ever was close to me.

Tears echo in my skull, each saying
another word, Weak, worthless, nothing
is worth spending in my dying feelings.

Reflections cuss at me my own self not
felling self worth as I listen, repetitive
self degrading syllables from my own mouth.

My fingers are tired, woozy of the moment
I realized that I'm chaffing on observations ,
my skin is the sea and waves bleed in regrets.

I graduated this morning from depression,
standing up from the bed. I step off to nothingness.
My bed was the roof and I graduated my mistake.

When four hundred winds wrestle with a seeker of light
end up hiding in a cave
the dwelling of tired bears, grumpy of chaffing.

                                                      ­                            dreamingofyou

Tomorrow is just a young child on the verge of learning
how to jump the rope and teasing gales into
your sphere.

I become a blue triangle. You've tripped on my atoms
inside. Let me out.
The engineer stands, baffled.
Malfunction in the algo. Sorry, it may take a while.

Let me out.
Or in.

I gotta give him up
Or I'll wager staying stuck
He decoded me with every touch
Pierced a hole and left it gaping
Cold wind chaffing my insides
God I want just one more ****
But that'll never be enough

Autumn hit us like a truck
Our 90 degree race was promptly followed by days of 40 degree practice
Our elbows chaffing against our shirts, nevertheless grateful for the rest,
The shelter from the humidity
I don't think I was actually breathing as I crossed the threshold of the second lap of our three mile loop
In some odd twist of fate, I'll be running in the varsity semifinals next week
As my lungs tried to tear themselves from my chest, I tried to remind myself that this wasn't my first run
I've had six months of slamming my heels into the ground, just like every other ******* this trail
I heave every time someone passes me
I think, "Just one more deep breath and I will cross that line,"
I think that my height is betraying me and my joints are grinding to a painful halt
I think that I am still moving.

no one tells you
being an immigrant
is being a stallion
front hooves tied knotted
course rope
chaffing at your ankles
holed up in a greener pasture
gnawing at tender leaves
while watching
acres away
those you love
wild and free, wind
whistling against their cheeks,
a throbbing ache to be with them
but knowing you cannot.

"Wurr be gwain, mah lov'rr?"     - Ah,
no soft refrain,
this sentence sweetly rural, in
a country lane.

No country maiden pauses in
her morning walk
with country boy, and, planning for
a lover's talk,

Answers: "Over yuerr, mah lov'rr."
No, still sweeter,
these kind words were spoken not
in love to greet her,

But her father, old and smiling,
close behind her
in the parlor of a pub
by mugs of cider.

It was her brother asked the question,
gently laughing.
"Bain" gwun no-wurr," said the old man.
They were not chaffing,

For in Devon is the world
a natural lover,
both in word as well as feeling;
custom wove her,

Blessed Devon, in a tidy
weave complex.
So daun 'ee vex 'erself mah lov'rr!
Daun 'ee vex!

When the skylarks would warble hover and sing
at about a hundred feet, high on the wing, and we…
on a heat clicking Sunday between Salt End and the sea,
well we knew - just from the ozone, on the breeze
that we’d be off …a shimmering heat haze convoy of old crocks,
Bud, Margaret, Brian and me to Tunstall,
a diminishing, mystical land of sun, sand, sea - and tumbling rocks.

But it wasn’t just us…it was a cavalcade - motors galore.
Uncles,  Aunties, Cousins, Grans, Grandads and more
in Austins, Morris’s, Vauxhalls and Fords,
And a big old Rover wi’them wide running boards,
a motor bike’n’sidecar with Maurice, Denise & our Val
to wring the best from the day a’la Plage de Tunstall’…

The beach crackled in the heat…
if you walked too slow it’d burn your feet.
and our Dads, our ‘civil engineers’, built a brick oven and in a
giggling gaggle… Mums cooked a real Sunday dinner.
Kids’d run back & forth to the sea and back
buckets & spades, hacking big holes and shots in goal,
cricket with fallen rocks for a wicket and,
after pudding, burying drunken dads in the sand.

Heavy, wet woolen cozzies, sand in groins,
...changing in turn, under a soaking wet, gritty towel.

“Don’t dry me with that, Ow! Buddy hell - watch my sunburn.”
Then, all back in the cars, for our return
into the sunset and driving away.

Chaffing sore shoulders.

Chuffing good day! - yeah…Parfait!!

"I'm sorry"
I say
As if I ever chose this
As if I ever wanted this to happen
I know it's hard for you
It's hard for all of us
But out of all the people who cried that night
I probably cried the least

You don't understand what it's like
To sit up in the middle of the night and look
At your own reflection
In the fourth floor window of a hospital room
And think
"I've lost my mind"
Because that is the worst it ever gets
And I got there

And my thighs were stained
Red for so many days
From the chaffing of the hospital scrubs
As I am carried  away
In a car with a locked glass division
A bag of all my things and
The only thing I'm sorry for
Is the fact that this didn't happen sooner

People say that death is so bad
That death is a horrible monster that
Comes in the middle of the night
And steals away their children
So what if those children were meant to be stolen?
So what if that is the only way to truly move on?
So please
Continue to villainize my only escape
And I will be sorry
That you can't understand

I know that I am different
Say that that's good
That things needed to change
But truth be told I can't recognize myself anymore
That girl in the mirror isn't me
Because part of me did die that night
How can I be expected to come back
And look at you all as my friends
When I can't even look at myself?

I guess I am sorry
I'm sorry that I made you look at me
In that way that broke anything close to the trust
That we never had
I'm sorry for all the cuts and the scars and
I'm sorry that they are all there for a reason
I'm sorry that I am never going to be the same
I'm sorry that I am never going to be okay and
I can't change that

I'm sorry that all those nights that I couldn't sleep because
I knew that I had lost everything
Cannot be changed
You say those nights were wasted
My mind is wasted
But is it really a waste
When we are all going to the same place
Six feet underground
Then
Maybe
My mind will be wasted

I'm sorry that I'm angry
And bitter
And that I don't back down even if I should
And if I'm not right, I hurt people
If I am right, I hurt myself
I know that it seems
Like I am doing this on purpose but
It all comes back to killing the thing
That says it is me
But is not

I'm sorry that I looked at him
When I should've looked away
I'm sorry that an hour in the backyard
Of all the broken and forgotten people
Is the closest I've ever come to happiness
And I'm sorry that if getting better means
Leaving them
And coming back home to here
I don't want to get better at all

I'm sorry that I couldn't stop shaking
I'm sorry that the wheelchair rattled and
Nurses asked if I wanted a blanket
As I sat in that waiting room
With all the people and their broken bodies
It was me alone
With a broken mind
Did I embarrass you then?

So I'm sorry that
You have a perfect sob story
You can write your poems and
Tell your friends all about
How a perfectly good girl met such
A tragic fate
I'm sorry that this had to happen to you
Sorry that I happened to you

"I'm sorry"
Are you happy now?