WOMAN BUTCHERED



Ayad Gharbawi


Child that gathered knowledge
Knowledge frightening to human nature
Girl-child was awakened
Herself she awakened
Saw the glow of eyes buttery
Glow of hatred molten
Glow of **** howling
Child, pretended innocence pretty
Child smiled all along the paths unknown
Yet, her body recognized colours unimaginable in their serenity sublime
Figures in her sleep strange, yet beautiful
Songs of sweet sleep, yet alerting in their soothing abilities
Little girl, who are you?
Why won’t you let us
Define you?
Little girl
Honourable lady woman
Did you grow up at all?
Or did you just die in your infancy?
As so many before you have
Did you come
To feel and understand
Your sensitive dimensions?
We would have made sure that you would be mature
If you were submissive enough for us!
Child girl, laughs uneasily and seriously
Child girl, sees lofty, exalted visions possessive
Visions of history’s episodes are expressed pointedly in your compulsive embraces
The foolish martyred are reading holy sermons for their self remembrance
Soldier unknown unmasking his face mangled to the surprised horror and utter disgust
Of his family, friends and other serious clowns
Singing an anthem of Fate’s real truth and nature and essence
Heroine unnumbered, chained to deformity
And becoming a mirror of what they did chain you to
Child girl scarred and petrified by disturbed scenes committed lovingly and lavishly by Man
Child girl curls, yet anticipates
Listen! The foot-steps frighten you once more
The shrieking manic clown has arrived again, red eyed and even more
Laughing dreary, spitting words jumbled and aloud
Figure of shame stands in front of you
Intents pre-arranged by his late father
Little girl!
Are you a woman yet?
Hearing swirls of delirious, sickening
Madness, uncontrollable panic and deathly angst
Hearing painter’s brush strokes that scream their gasps of breathlessness out
Loudly and chaotically
Hears the anguish of colours’ contrasts and contradict each other to the point of
Serious suicide
Little child! Sees the begging deaf pleading for choirs heavenly to sing seriously
Sees the miserable, emaciated crumbles crumbling,
Yet foolishly searching for a non-existent tenderness in darkness painted by drunken Satans
With the foulest, blackest oil colours in their leprous fingers
They try to paint you; define you
Analyze you; dissect you
Categorize you; classify you
Little girl; woman; ******?
Alone and sincerely and deceptively guided by complicated, intertwining hatreds
That severely despised the existence of each other’s truths and falsities
Feeling sovereignty abused by casual, bored
Unconcerned sub-humans in powerful positions on earth
Pierced in pain
My sweet girl, you are now
Pierced in deathly, unforgiving
Pains and hatreds never forgotten
Sweet Humanity
Sweet Man
Sweet human beings
How sweet you all truly are!

Ripples riddle the mirror,
Below, faint shapes shift
Elegant forms float here and there,
Little legs thunder, leaving a gentle wake
in lieu of turmoil.

The air is thick, the sun falling,
Already lost behind billowing storm clouds
Etched chaotically on the horizon.
Invisible but for the ubiquitous light.

It is the dragonflies time,
A darting zip and an effortless flutter.
From surfacing **** to towering Reed,
Searching for something we can only pretend to know.

Determined housewives, faces set,
Arms pumping and hips swaying
Their Anatidean waddle so fitting
Their quacks, a wall of stereo.

A lone rusted sign warns of gators,
but of signs, there is that one alone.
No rogue bubbles or beady eyes,
no ticking of swallowed clocks,
no suspicious splashes.
nothing.

My battery is now as low as the sun,
and my pen is as empty.
A not so subtle poke in the ribs
from a universe in protest of the
bad poetry being inked.

c'est la vie
or as we say in English
**** it

There is

the bitter taste of the last cigarette

on the roof of my mouth,

a sourness on my tongue

and i try to remember the last time i felt like this.

or rather…

the last time I DIDN’T.

seems like as time goes on, every day becomes a struggle,

and some days more than others.

I want everyone to be my friend,

but i wonder where this inferiority complex comes from?

it paralyzes me and i do not want to speak.

meeting people, seeing my ideas put into words

by other lips and others’ gestures,

and yes I agree,

but ******* you make me so tired.

no, i do not need your hugs,

and no i do not need your validation.

and hell no i do not need your apathetic agreement

because like hell you would understand,

like hell you would know that

you can’t bleach this brown skin of

all the slurs and all the stigma,

that you can’t flat iron out the

ethnic tangles of my afro-something hair,

that you can’t even guess,

cause even i don’t know,

even we don’t know,

if i’m black or native or forcibly half white,

if i’m 10% this or 50% that,

like I have to be broken down

into numbers and percentages

cause I just can’t be whole again,

cause we just can’t be whole again.



They took everything,

they came and took everything

*******,

and yes God ****** us,

your ****** God ****** us,

you came and you traded

our generosity, our good faith, our sustenance,

you took all of that

and gave us biblical ******* about a God,

some overbearing, vengeful Lord

that didn’t even love you,

oh God, and we were the savages?

You came and you stripped us naked,

took off layer after layer of dignity and prosperity,

we gave you firm hugs of solidarity,

and you groped our ******* like they were worthless,

we gave you kisses of peace,

and you rammed your tongues down our throats,

demanding we choked into silence,

and we were supposed to thank you.

You came and you ***** our land,

our mothers, sisters, and daughters

and we were supposed to be compliant.

we were supposed to be quiet,

and we were supposed to be content,

happy to fill our wombs

with children who would later struggle

with the realization that the reason the color of their skin

was neither yours nor mine,

that it was neither milky white nor toasted earth,

was because my people had been ****** by yours,

figuratively, literally but most significantly, forcibly

generation after generation,

subjugation after subjugation

for 400 ******* years.



And here I am.

400 years later and I don’t know who I am.

They say I could be Chicana,

or Mexicana,

I could be Mexico Americana,

I could be Latina,

or even, god-forbid,

Hispana.

I could be but what does that even mean?

what does Mexican mean?

a land where the majority of the people

descend from the great people of indigenous America,

or the great people of Africana roots,

or these chaotically beautiful blends

that result in the sweetest of dark coffee- soft caramel of spectrums,

still say “indio" like an insult,

still say “*****" like an insult,

still say “prieto" like an insult.

still say, “baby girl, get out the sun,

what you tryin to get darker for?"

still say, “hell no we ain’t african!"

like that would be a bad thing.



and ******* it i am ******* tired.

back and forth the
pendulum swings like those
playground kids
at midnight

me and him
dark moons and orangey
streetlights
his shirt

my frozen frame
he pushes me
and i swing
back and forth

like his drug habits
back and forth and i am thrown
into time
headfirst then backwards

and i see him, all of him
his childhood, his happiness
his trauma
all coming together to create

one chaotically beautiful human being

and as i swing i mention
my childhood, my happiness
my trauma
and he calls it fascinating

calls me a beautiful tragedy
and back and forth we swing.

It was 3 PM on a Tuesday
in the summer, just before
my first semester of college.
I went out on a whim and
bought a cheetah print lava
lamp for forty six dollars
at some stand in the mall,
despite you persistently
advising me not to
waste money on
"insignificant ****"

The next day it rained
from 7 AM until 5 PM
and I forced you to lie
in bed with me all day,
with the curtains drawn
& the lights out.
I wanted us to observe
the weird, red
shapes forming
inside my new cheetah
print lava lamp...
Something about it
captivated me.
I never had one as a kid,
And you just sat there
holding my hand for
fifty eight minutes before
I whispered, "did you see
how pretty that one was?"

You laughed gently
and shifted your eyes
toward my dresser,
at which point
I realized
that was the very first time
you looked away from me
since we had laid down
And
with that thought,
the butterflies
woke so chaotically,
I thought I'd never
catch my breath

We are each our own moon.
Charismatic souls reflecting sunlight,
As if to illuminate a room,
We glow against black, void; an endless night.
Like a caterpillar to a butterfly, emerging from a tight knit cocoon,
Spreading each wing, confidently slicing the evening air…taking flight.
Or even a flower freshly bloomed on a midsummer’s afternoon.
The moon: a flower, silently smiling despite the plight.

Aside from what each day shuffles in; each night simmers out
No matter how often we feel we have lost ourselves…
Or leave way to fill our heads with doubt.
With recurring assumptions of a worldwide redemption:omnipotent stealth.
Needn't some take longer than others to sprout?
Staring blankly into a mirror, or a moonless night sky: hungry for answers, yet facing an empty shelf.
However, that doesn't infer we embark on a divergent route.
Simply due to lack of clarity, lack of reasoning behind each card dealt.

With that in mind,
Just as the moon,true colors may dwindle…they may fade, yet in essence are always there.
Even on a cloudy day, or when the sunshine is at its peak…and just as well for the blind.
Full moon, half moon, new moon…waxing, waning: dynamic phases the night sky shares.
Moon phases;moody faces…natures way of emphasizing personality defined.
Notwithstanding the dark side, each moon may wear.
Like a guilty pleasure manifesting in a secret shrine,
We all suppress a certain side; to pompous to face reality genuinely bare.

Fragments of our faces may always be hidden,
But there’s one thing that will never absorb into the eclipse: emotion.
Some figure each phase, each wave of vibes … simply fate already written.
Devils advocate begs to differ… let your mind emit all distraction and harmonize with the ocean.
Effervescent rays,warm barrels in which emotions, old and new, have ridden.
Chaotically contradicting thoughts, pulling and pushing, creating the paradox of serene commotion.
A world of words from each moon face: a beautiful encryption.
We are each our own moon, written in the waves, compelled by life’s devotion.

four arms, two legs
supporting one head, with three eyes
wearing five serpents as ornaments
slithering around us
hissing their wisdom into our ears
as we rested atop the skin
of a tiger, desire

I could see him, in us
extending out his six limbs
two on the ground
two on her
and two on I
and we were within one mind
six, six, six
one mind, with three eyes
the third, sought to destroy
Kama, desire

to right her body
into the form which she deserved
as ashes
of which we wore on our skin

she spoke of the hunting
of skinwalkers
extending out so gracefully
towards me

we were within one mind
with three eyes
and a crescent moon
lain upon our forehead
eternal in the midst of Chaos
in the midst of evolution

destruction,
for the cause of transformation

my claws extended out
as light is pulled
by a black hole
of which was her
and my lips loosened
exposing my sharp teeth

and we worshiped one another
in our destruction
becoming exposed
and feral

so I let out a yell
in the middle of the street
in front of a mother
and her children

as we were covered
in the ashes of Kama
the end
of all material existence

rest our garlands of skulls
over our necks
bowed
and said goodbye

now Shakti swims in my blood
and dances with my Soul

for I am still in
that black hole

headed out, in
to the other side

truly, Chaotically
enjoying the ride

dynamism in in me
as I live, Truly

A very firm intention
To tell it as it is
Has the audience attention
On its toes and all afizz,
Though channelled to the circumspect,
With a patterned thought awry
It chaotically cascades
Across the prism of the eye.

It chaotically discharges
In a scattergun array
Of verbal innuendoes
Through a thin, saliva spray,
And all the passion spent in telling,
All the effort of the tale,
Sends a barrage of confusion
To occipital portrayal.

Where the tiny bones of balance
All atremble with the sound
Have discharged interpretation
Through a penny to a pound.
There’s a lost extrapolation,
There’s a blank look on the face
Where the balance of exchange
Has frittered nimbly from this place.

A calmness in both parties
As a sad pretence prevails,
Where communication nexus
Is ignored to save the whales.

Marshalg
Incommunicado
30 May 2012

© 2012 Marshal Gebbie

A marvel millions of years in the making.
Where the womb of Earth chaotically meets the surface.
Under a clear blue sky, an expanse of bliss -
But beneath gray rolling clouds, an endless enigma.
The easiest world to get lost in
is one where everything can be found.

One can only build a sand castle where the sand is wet.
But where the sand is wet, the tide comes.
Will it gently lick at your foundations until you give in?
Or will a sudden wave send you crashing down in the blink of an eye?
Either way the outcome is the same.
Yet we still build sand castles.

I stand where the foam wraps around my ankles.
Where my toes squish into the sand.
The salty air is therapeutic.
The breeze is gentle, yet powerful.
I sink my toes into the ultimate boundary line, tempted by the foamy tendrils.
Turn back, and I abandon my peace to erode at the shore.
Drift forward, and I return to Earth forevermore.

For once in my life I am speaking out
Not just in the form of a violent excuse of a poem
But to the faces of those who make me pout
For once in my life I'm saying what I mean
It takes courage to be honest to even myself
Courage I never ******* had it seems
Chaotically formed and tumbling from my spout
If speaking my mind makes me a *****
Then let me be the biggest ***** and hear me shout
Because you've had me on and stuck like an itch
I've had about enough so hear me out
Such friends you all are excluding me
From your games and fun and goss and parties
While I sit and watch and try to believe
That every nasty thing you say is not about me
I get it, you're right, I talk about things
That you can't relate to
As love to you is all about rings
I've gone through more than any of you
Would care to hear about from my ramblings
I've outgrown you all before you gave me a chance to prove
My worth is not worn out by nasty old things
Like you and her and the rest of your gang
So let your jaws drop at my sudden burst of honesty
Because you're heads are in your own *****
And you don't deserve to be eaten by me

I feel a presence nagging at me,
like a dull, constant ache,
only more.
Its almost as if there is a scared little child,
deep down, begging to escape the dark.
While this passenger tugs at my heartstrings,
everything blurs out of focus.
Struggling with keeping order,
my thoughts jumble chaotically.
Every once and awhile, though,
I find moments of clarity,
and those are the most precious moments of all.

Brown-gray whiskers
chaotically twirling
wreath his face.
A testament to hardship
and wisdom accumulated.
His eyes are an ocean
deep and unknowable.
Monsters swim in its deep,
Indescribable.
His face is cracked and wrinkled
but the skin is taut
too tight and jawline stretched.
Mist-like hair meets shoulders,
greasily tangling.
In front of him a rust spotted buggy,
creaking
groaning
holds his world.
Trash bag continents slide against each other
making new mountains,
transforming
shopping cart geography.
I meet his eyes on the sidewalk
but quickly look away.
I always look away.

.1. Grey which shines
like the light
of a thousand stars.

The stress of schoolwork
spreads through my veins
like a rollercoaster,
the classroom a carnival.

A ceramic dog resting
atop the microwave.

Say hello.
His name is Gerald.
He watches over us.

A minor god the only thing
getting us through our majors.

2. 256 unmade rocket ships.
A castle made of bare bears.
A tower only reached
by the dwindling of time.

3. Bones held together
in a garland, our guards,
warding off the evil spirits,
our fortress safe
from goblins and ghouls.

4. Memories marinated,
pretty polaroids posted peculiarly.
Traded the white squares
for red packets.

Ketchup displayed,
hoping for plates of fries;
enough to feed an army.

5. You bite them,
and they’ll bite back.

Tropical tastiness tattooed
just under 800 times.

On pillows and placards,
lamps and lights,
dressers and drawstrings.

6. A secular resistance,
screaming with pride
and holiday cheer,
specific holiday undecided.

The forest in which the bunny
came and laid his eggs upon;
plastic snowballs among them.

The star a sign from God:
a backwards babe dangling,
marron and gold streaming down,
hands holding us up,
willing us to awake another day,
to add another holiday to the tree,
to get to June, the *** of gold
at the end of the rainbow.

7. Twinking in another time.
Multicolored lights
souring every which way.

As bright as us,
sometimes more.

8. Peppa Pig and her porky pals.
Resting on the windowsill
outside their houses and
play structures.

Perfectly posed as we
ponder profusely.

9. Spheres of fine fur,
floating and sinking
like waves to the tide.

Alive yet not quite sentient.
Bubbles popping
as they reach the surface.

Richard: the plant hastily named.

Third, the one which longs
for elsewhere, its potential
breaking as it reaches the ground.

10. Seven seats. A pair of twins,
studious rocking at their desks,
tucked in, patting their head
as I scratch mine.

The lost triplet, tucked away
near the door, perpetual time-out
for a deed never dedicated.

A hidden fourth,
lost and forgotten,
unneeded and unnamed.

The fifth, the blue moon,
the favorite, the one
never picked last.

A sixth, the found friend.
A grandmother who wheels around,
baking. Bertha is beautiful.

The last, a grey futon.
Permanently perched
is a student, laptop chugging,
these words written
as they’re read to you.

Uncertainty.
I cannot be sure of anything,
Except uncertainty.
Uncertainty, certainly.

Eternity.
The thing that lasts forever,
But only seems to exist in the future.
Semi-Eternity.
Living internally.

Serenity.
You can only
Know it truly
If you have lived chaotically,
This price-tagged serenity.

Uncertainty.
When does eternity start?
Have I paid in full for my serenity?
Uncertainty.

Must I live this eternity
With uncertainty in my heart,
Always chasing the serenity
That my chaotic life has bought?
              -CM

My heart lives dangerously.
It spirals out of control
from time to time.
There is no safety net.

My brain lives chaotically.
It goes off the deep end
from time to time.
There is no organization.

I live with you in my mind.
I can't stop thinking about you
from time to time.
There is nothing but love.

I love her.

With every inch of me, since day one.
When her hair is messy.
Uncombed and curly,
Pulled back into a sloppy ponytail
That falls so chaotically across her shoulders.
With several strands pulled out, framing her face.
A cigarette delicately tucked, safely behind her ear.

I love her.
After she wakes up.
Eyes blackened from her obsessive and excessive use of makeup.
With awful breath and resting ***** face,
She is Beautiful.

I love her.
When we stand outside.
And rays of sunshine illuminate her brown eyes,
Turning them into endless vats of amber,
Untouched by man.
Glistening until the end of time.

I love her.
When she is curled into me.
Sleeping deeply and soundly,
Snoring louder than my thoughts,
Shaking and Twitching from whatever goes on in her beautiful subconscious.

I love her.
With no expectations of reciprocation.
I understand I do not fit the criteria due to inevitable reasons.
One day I will, and it will be beautiful.

I love her.
And because of that I will change.
I will become what she needs because if I have her my body does not matter.
She is the one of my dreams.
The one I think about at midday and midnight.
The one my most lovely of poems are of.
The one I have only truly loved.
She does not find me attractive in the way I do her.

But that is okay.
Because I love her.
And one day,
She Will Love Me

Bittersweet Seventeen,
Ophelia drove me absent of fear,
And chaotically -
Led me to bridges most unclear.

Embittered Eighteen,
She exposed her lethal shrine,
And recklessly –
I sunk in her deathly design.

By and by,
I now exist with one dead eye.

Rance is eating in a restaurant when he sees a girl ,obviously hitchhiking, get out of the car, carrying a guitar case and then coming to the restaurant. As he's leaving he tells the waitress to buy her  a hamburger because all she asked for was water . Then he goes out to his van
            ---------      ++ -------- ++     ----------    
The guy with the large helium balloon floating over his head was saying something as he closed the distance between us on this crowded bustling Street. The people, for some reason, kept raising their faces to stare at me with lonely ,beseeching  eyes as they scurried by ,then instantly dropping their gaze back to the ground as they quickly continued on.
    " State of my..... state of my ....state of my head....".said the balloon man as he drew near me and I couldn't help wondering why the words weren't appearing in the balloon that bounded along ,dancing chaotically, in lock-step to the dance-like movement of his pace "state of my head ."  
    Unlike the other people who passed by, he never looked at me -in fact- he didn't seem to notice anything except the zone right in front of his next step .  
       "You're legs on fire!"
     "I could still hear the echo of his chant as it, and him, bebopped into the obscurity of the distance, suddenly becoming aware of the barren and empty street , and the fire that was burning my right thigh.
    "Your leg's on fire"  now these words did appear in symbolic cartoon measure across the face of the balloon. "Hey!"I  cried out and then heard the echo of the words as they came sailing back.
   "Hey!"
    "Finally waking up I see" continued the echo as it became a soft laughter-filled sound to my ears.
     Slowly I was  becoming aware that my vision was filling in with the world outside the windshield of my van. The last stanza of Shinedowns state of my head was just fading from the radio as.....
    "Thanks for the burger"
My leg WAS on fire. Okay , it wasnt really,but it was burning above the knee of my right leg from the sunlight streaming through the windshield.      
  I was busy patting out the fire and rubbing the sleep from my eyes when I heard the voice again "Hello?"
     Now though, it was a real voice ,as it came sailing through the window of my van. A female voice.
     A bit slow maybe, but I was finally beginning to catch up, so I knew before I even looked, that it was the girl with the guitar case.
    It was. As I peered over the door frame I saw that she was sitting three feet from the van, on a patch of grass and leaning back against the big oak that grew at the edge of the parking lot and had provided a nice shade for storm ....okay and for my nap.        
     Surely the crooked -and haltingly, embarrassment driven - smile that I managed to conjure up ,as I looked out the window and down at her, was totally inadequate.  I was attempting to move past it , so with great confidence ,and sua da vi I heard my words as I said.
   "Huh? "  oh god !My brain said to my inner voice "really smooth" --- my inner voice took the fifth.  
     "That's a heck of a watch dog you've  got " she said.  Somehow breaking the ice  and allowing me space and time to regroup. " He told me he was there , aware and in charge as I approached your window,but he did it by just raising his eyes and the slightest rumbling growl. It was obvious he was serious but he was so cool about it"      
   I reached ,almost ,unconsciously, to stroke Storms muzzle and the furrow between his ears. "Yeah, " I said " He's got style alright." as more than a bit of pride tinged my words.
    Her laughter was sudden and as free as a wild bird being released from the confines of a cage as it rose up into the air.It was one of those beautiful,,natural
voices of those rare people who are not embarrassed by their own spontaneity.
   "Style " she managed to exclaim among the peals of joy " I love that"
     " Hi" I told her " I'm Rance and my stylin friend is Stormy"
      Her movements were quick, agile and graceful as she bounded to her feet , quickly wiping any perceived dust from her right palm across the hip area of her jeans before reaching out to shake hands.  "I'm Penelope Woods , but everyone back home just called me Piney"
     Now it was my time to laugh. A slight chuckle accompanied my hand as  I reached out to collect hers . " Piney Woods ...now that funny. "
    " Why ,thank you kind sir " she exclaimed with the exaggerated imitation of southern gentellity " I've always thought so"  then that freebird laughter , again came rising up ,to float over and then slide all the way down into the hollow,unused places of my heart . Settling there as though it were home......Maybe it was.

I can sense the vanguard of your breath
colliding along the rarely prepared front lines
parading across the nape of my neck.

Hovering above the black moon tattoo I got
when my eyes were filled with factory smoke
from times a grandfather only knows
and my mind had been chaotically mute for centuries.

Lovers in the young West
stalked by dust bowl witnesses
and men who have their own idea
of the Law.

Scatter ourselves upon the prairies
dandelion perfume among the wind
and pray our mothers never know.

The monumental image of this memory depicts
half of a man.

What makes this image monumental
is the unspoken truth
behind strong, naked feet
dancing and
kicking up dust
on top of a soap box.

Unshakeable emotions
warp this memory's
crowd of many
nameless faces,
pinching cheeks into malice
for a few,
long hours.

These malicious expressions may
be the result of the dust storm
filling in the blanks
for lots of people
collectively trying to ignore something.

Authorities have concluded that time
cannot heal a wound
if the hourglass has cracked,
so,
the memory goes on,
amassing
confusion, chaotically
like this television screen
showcasing half of a man
dancing
on top of a soapbox.

Sometimes all the love you give
Is returned with a resounding deceit
Believing all the while, you are the cynosure
Yet, the centripetal force keeps you moving
Apparently, in sync with the lovers heart
When you realize, the asynchronous beats
But words are betraying the innermost deceit
Cracks appear, yet we turn a blind eye
Until it’s too late, when we stare at a wide chasm
All you want is to plunge into the darkness
Emotions run chaotically around the heart
Ripping away the veneer of love
Falsifying all beliefs, redeeming hurt
Eroding away the base of the relationship
It’s all there, in the saga of pseudo love

burning strangled fleece we bump chaotically
soft arrogance in morally languid pronation
leg burping fossas femoral twain (in which i'm
giddy a mustache of bristles coarse fuzz and grumbling
prickles hugely onyx( graciously bundled
to what about the huddled pulsing of EXPLODING GRIT!
in every flush molecule of bashful prim ) we girt
or flay the frightened silence scrambling gently on our scalding merriment.:',). . . .   .   .     .             .                                                                 .

I have absolutely the dirtiest
Most naughty thoughts
I've ever had
And they're all about you
I honestly think about your pleasure
Twenty four hours a day
Seven days a week
I die just thinking about the way we'd kiss
Slow and soft at first
Then they'd grow in passion
I imagine your tongue
The way it would easily slide into my mouth
Our lips chaotically battling each other
While my hands touch and caress your body
Neck kisses would make you weak
Just like the small moans you allow to escape your body
Are my weakness
They're lovely triggers
Forcing me to lower myself down your body
And stake claim over what used to be mine
I wouldn't just devour you
I'd worship you

“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven..”― John Milton, Paradise Lost
___________________­_______

Consider the mind
in whose deep caverns find
scatterings of memories
prismatically displaced.

Red recollections
that still incur wrath and venom,
arguments long forgotten.

Green recollections
emanate warmth that kindles
innocent times recalled.

Blue recollections
mauling at this bogus tranquillity,
scratching and tearing,
leaving oozing welts that fester
into melancholy.

Now hold this mirror shard
to these memories’ light:
watch the beams discordant
ricochet, obtuse, acute,
chaotically flaring into momentary awareness.

Consider the mind ...

how sensible it all seems, how crew-cut and with enough
anaesthetic to k.o. an elephant - outside the laboratories
the populists in whatever guise march on - as with any
congregation, atheists also muster up enough social muscle:
they too have their bouncers and other
gob-smackers with knuckle dusters -
as long as science is popularised it pushes
the boundaries of insensible chasms elsewhere -
                             but with so futile popularisation:
shortages in respective sectors: mandatory,
or as suggested: no longer rich bachelors and
         private laboratories - a science of regurgitation -
once they burned heretics, now the subtle
        championing of mingy sedatives - and since
Joan of Arc's heart no longer aspires to passion
and its all consuming fire, it turns into a wet
piece of coal - reining in the crowds of pop culture
zombies - said before, said again - but how
dislodged the feelings not ranging into absurdity
or at least nibbling on the zest of Dionysus;
but how things changed from that year, 2006,
everyone is asking, the poncy pope with glamorous
attire, the stiff-necked scientists - the pendulum
of guilt swinging in both directions - half of
the 20th century prescribed a fear magnanimously:
oddly enough - as implying: we forgive your
puny religious swooning and answering with
the easiest answers possible... here's a bomb -
so who are the sacred ones? they too are human -
the magazine dissected into:
a. what is reality? (can we be sure that the world
  we experience is not just a figment of our
    imagination) by roger penrose
     b. do we have free will? (the more we find
out about the brain works, the less room there
  seems to be for personal choice or responsibility)
     by patricia churchland
c. what is life? (if we encounter alien life,
chances are we wouldn't recognise it - not even
if it was here on earth) by robert hazen
d. is the universe deterministic?
   (however you look at it, the answer seems to be "maybe")
       by vlatko vedral
   e. what is consciousness? ("my soul is a hidden
    orchestra... all i hear is the music" - fernando pessoa)
            by paul brooks
f. will we ever have a theory of everything?
    (2000 years of rational inquiry may be approaching
  their crowning glory. just one more push could
   be enough...)
                            by michio kaku
   g. what happens after you die? (we have all
  wondered if there is an afterlife, but only a few are brave -
or foolish - enough to try and find out)
                                by mary roach
  h. what comes after **** sapiens?
  (all species are fated either to die out or to evolve
  into something else. all except humans, that is)
                   by james hughes -
so there we have it - the respective pillars of science,
whereby science replaces core beliefs into
core questions - to not hold firm, but to constantly
sway - the 8 founding questions - no more,
  no less - but how many people can perpetually sway?
   the supposed 8 universals, i.e. that every human
  being might, might not, will or will not ask -
     and for these 8 universals, exponential functions
of particulars: because that's how it's supposed
to be: chaotically democratic -
thus everyone knows the objectivity standard:
at its core is awe, outside the core pathology and
apathy - or let us say: passions and indifference -
then subdivisions of (+) and (-), and in general:
   however it is you feel: compensated or left starving.
in 2006, they congregated at a round table and
spoke god-this, god-that - no minority report,
  cold evidence never went down with women (or
so i'm told), three questions, question 1:
                 should science do away with religion?
oddly enough R. Dawkins said:
               "no doubt there are many people who do need
religion, and far be it from me to pull the rug from
under their feet." - we know that the bestseller
              the god delusion came out shortly after.
a physicist (S. Weinberg) similarly (c me la ri lee):
   "science can't provide a sense of magic about the world,
or a community of fellow-believers. there's a
religious mentality that yearns for that."
  L. Krauss: the success of science does not encompass
the entirety of human intellectual experience.
on and on this goes - i guess they have to debate for
the sake of debate - as i am sure everyone is aware:
   a debate can overpower the point of prayer -
confessions? i treat it more like poetry - but in saying
that... where is the medical profession in all of this?
we have astronomers, ecologists, biologists,
physicists, astrophysicists, planetary scientists,
cosmologists, philosophers... what's the odd one out?
it's a bit suspicious that this magazine does not
cite any chemists... and that's ****** obvious...
they're the ones making pacts with the devil -
whether Goethe's or Marlowe's Faust -
then at least to the more obscure rendition
of Pan Twardowski (Herr Tvardovsky) -
         but how odd it already is that chemists haven't
joined ranks with other scientists in their little
Friday night debating club meetings - seriously?
are those boffins serious about all of this?
            or as one said it:
i came from learning to write CO for carbon monoxide,
   and FeO for ferric oxide - or drawing electron migration
  diagrams when two compounds interact (a nice
playground of symbols) and went my way into
   some form of linguistics - primarily working on
          the tetragrammaton - i have no major interest
beyond this definition: would i debate the most
difficult metaphysical assumption of the omni-variations
in terms of ascribing the variations to a being?
i'd stumble in the metaphysical world on omnipresence,
meaning i would be a pantheist - meaning god
    would be anything and everything from the moon,
a mouse, an ant colony, my **** and what not -
            the all-in-one: for one thing, that's already much
too hellish to comprehend, let alone make comedy from.
but they haven't told you about the painkilling
saliva that beats morphine - catherine rougeo:
proceedings of the national academy of sciences,
vol. 103, p. 17979) - the compound's name? opiorphin,
or the scourge of Afghanistan. they also didn't
tell you about Saracen sabres - their scimitars contained
carbon nanotubes - forged from Indian steel
called wootz - 17th century examples studied by
P. Paufler (Dresden) found the carbon nanotubes
and even nanowires (nature, vol. 444, p. 286) -
or is this becoming to look very much like traffic
on London's M25 during rush-hour? it certainly is,
as was intended -
                   1950s: age of optimism -
influenza wave from the east, the indestructible transistor,
   television without wires, baby computer the size of
  a piano, rubber windshields, genetic chemistry,
atomic aircraft, the neutrino, sputnik 1, strontium-90
(radioactive ash)  used by manufacturers of woven
and knitted fabrics to overcome fog markings,
the coleopter, polypropylene (the remnants of German
word-compounding revealed in chemistry, and
only in chemistry, elsewhere compounding is
replaced by hyphenation, i.e. hyphenating),
                  and so on and so forth until present day -
passing through Sir, Julian, Huxley, who reinvented
****** with "positive" eugenics - oh sure, it was still
alive and kicking - quark hunters draw a blank -
             i could reference all else that was involved
in making the last 60 years - beyond that people are
call it ancient history - or are Virgil and as Horace,
and as Ovid did - turned their back to the world,
         into their poplar groves and jasmine filled gardens,
and said: ta'oh!           ta'oh!                 Tao!
  but not until then, before embarking i'm already
dreading to embark with something to add, to even
voice this -                                     but i guess i might:
  as ever, the freedom of speech is never as grand a
                                      luxury as the freedom to think.

Love and depression are such similar existences. Both are something more powerful, too powerful, to fit under a list of just emotions or feelings.
Both are equally dangerous, and both are the most misunderstood.

But love is a little funnier.
Love can bring us together but as much as it may do so, it's better at splitting us apart.

See there are two types of people in this world; those who crave to feel love, but never will, and those who cannot un-feel love, and wish they were among the others because emptiness and loneliness may be just a little better than worthlessness.
But in the middle of these two chaotically different, demon-filled hells... is balance.
It's where only a few people are blessed with someone who loves them just as much as they do.
And these people live totally different lives than those of us in limbo.

I'm among those in that limbo-state. That state where you already feel dead, where the loneliness makes you feel like you're in some unknown dimension scientists won't discover for the next one hundred years.
Some people break free from this place, some remain floating like a weightless piece of plastic in the ocean, going wherever the waves take them, but never seeing anything more than vastness- always being reminded of how lost they are in the middle of nowhere.

And others... drown.
They die twice; once to join into limbo, join into the ocean.
And the second time they fall deep beneath the waves. And below this surface exists the loudest silence, the most brutal currents, the deadliest scavengers- all among those who won't wait until you've died to pick and tear at your bones.

You are the moon that is moored in the sky
And the moonshine that shimmers against Atlantis' cloak
So vivid, yet so pale
And I begin to wonder if you're alright
Up there, all alone atop the world.

Is it better to be carefully propped on a celestial pedestal for all men to indulge,
Or to be chaotically plunged
Into a sea of solitude and peace?

You are much wiser and older, my dear;
Is it true that
Beauty lies
In the eye
Of the beholder?

It was dark and snowing when we met,
flakes gone gold in the street lamps,
laying themselves to rest in your ebony hair.
The whole earth pausing in anticipation
for icy winter to give way to spring.
So now,
in the magic of packed earth,
in the things that dare come out of it;
you.
Surrounded by Irises
that are hauntingly dark.
Your hips,
draped chaotically in a white sheet
looking like a greek god.
Impossibly regal.
The trees sing your name when I pass;
even when you are not here,
you never leave me.
I am always thinking about you.
Many things are lost on me,
but not this;
the worn leather of your broken watch,
your piano hands,
the ink smudges on your skin.
How we forgive winter for destroying what's beautiful,
because we see a little bit of it in ourselves.

With our own hands
Destiny is sculpted
The passion of youth
Molding a masterpiece

Time is unyeilding
Chipping away the details
The marble soaks in the pain
Cracks trickle chaotically
Death bombards innocence
Worn and weathered

Building dreams of clay
The beauty in life fades
Some find solice in destruction

we really have created a new equivalent of a phone-book (remember, the english language utilises hyphenation for compounding two words as an antidote to its Saxon origins, whereby all German compound words: noun interchanging with verbs, and more nouns is not accustomed to the utility of the hyphen... but then again the english tongue is shrapnel off german, all these conjunctions and prepositions of limited spelling: and those two Dajjal eyes, the one protruding (the definite article), and the other, an emptied cranium socket (a-, the indefinite article, or, as expressed with a missing eye - thus treating the indefinite article by making it a prefix with a hyphen is what's revelatory). i wonder though, of the finite and infinite articles in language... could the possessive article ('s) tell us more? re-categorise these scraps and you get two very different vectors: the definite is plotted within algebraic form a straight line incrementation, y = x... the indefinite article, mathematically speaking? razor-blade (0, 0) coordinate fizzing chaotically about to explode in a direction no one knows exactly which one.

Antisθeνes and his prodigy Δioγeνes (yes,
yet another optometry appointment),
the former beat the latter with a stick when asking
for wisdom, both under the rubric of cynics and
sceptics, Antisθeνes: i rather be mad than delighted,
or awed.
               give the English atheists, botanists and
biologists all the delight and awe they can muster and
digest... the City State is on a comeback,
speak the words London, Paris... you're mentioning
city states... but you'll hardly hear of a 101 year old
in some obscure village drinking extra ****** olive oil
in the vicinity of the Tuscany region...
Diogenes who's faeces were featured on the coinage
of Frank Sinatra's pennies from heaven,
'better the faeces than some mugshot of a king on
this base metal!' Nietzsche: trans-valuation of all
bases: form the coin and you ask a blacksmith for a sword,
ask for a banknote and all books turn into toilet paper.
Cynic, derived from *canine, Diogenes was such,
Greek buddha without a statue, instead, a burial urn...
thank god we can write about philosophers:
my fear of losing the luxuries i accumulated are due
to me shutting the window at 5 a.m. detested by
birdsong... and my lack of interest in brick-walls,
the luxury of having a book to ease the strain
of a summer sun... Arabian more or less, black fudge
burning and my scraps of what's hardly predictable thinking.

She walks through the congested room,
small smile on her immaculate face.
Battenberg pink lips in a place packed chaotically
with men in dark shirts, skin coated in shiny sweat.

But our girl is dressed in a see-through white,
clutching a toffee bag, she moves further into the pit.
Her eyelids flicker enigmatic ebony,
waves of bronze hair roll down past the shoulders.

We’ve never met, we may never meet at all
but my days she is dazzling, a rush of fresh air.
In a different place in a different time,
who knows? Would I be pricked by such profound beauty?

I don’t know how I came across your name,
found your photos and was taken aback.
Nevertheless glad my eyes have seen your brilliance,
but let’s get back to real life now shall we?

During the day,
it was a beautiful place.
Birds sang as they flew
through the sky that met the ocean
in the same shade of blue,
so equally blended that the naked eye
couldn't tell exactly where they met.

The fresh grass,
stained in a light layer of mildew,
perfumed the air with it's sent.
The rays of sunlight brought feelings
of joy, warmth and happiness to every living thing.

The waterfall sent gentle,
rippling kisses of waves
to the rocky shore.

The paradise was a different place at night.

The lovely song birds left their jobs
to the old owls who "whoooo"-ed
with an emptiness
that left a hollow feeling in your bones.

The magnificent blues of the sky and sea were replaced
by an endless black
that seemed to have no beginning and no end.

The grass was nothing more
than a blanket beneath your feet,
and the once fresh scent was substituted
by something less welcoming,
that smothered your nostrils.

Rays of sunlight had disappeared
as the cold wind blew them slowly away
and the sun had gone with them.

The waterfall crashed down,
splashing chaotically,
sending the water that waited below
into the dangerous stone edge.