my mother always said
"don't fall in love with a poet"
they pretend to love you
but what they really love
is writing about loving you
you are mere words to them
feelings cheapened by a page,
dusty grey typewriters,
and many unfinished drafts
of lovers both old and new,
you are the question mark,
but not the answer,
they are searching for ?
person unidentified: mystery
the page wanderer,
each poem a missing
person poster to cover their
bedroom walls.
they cannot love something
that is in their head
poets are the loneliest of
all people, my mother said.
they write to immortalize
what has long passed.
to live within their words,
but not reality,
lost souls writing suicide notes
and proclaiming it art.

I was a little squirt
The nerd, on mission street, long hair
Seemed ungroomed, cleaned pants, guitar
Posters in my room.
The dead, the doors, the who, the stones.
Concert tickets to make me remember
What it was like high and gone.
So many years, to remember what I've gone through
Now nothing's old no more.
Societies cheapened down to the new.

The Phoenix
(To Love and Lose Part 2)
by Ryan Kinney

It started with a broken heart. Through the crack seeped liquid fire. It engulfed me, burning away all that I was. The flames shall purify me. Boil me down to my base components, and then rebuild me. From the ashes will rise a new entity.

Who am I?

Following my divorce I began an identity quest dubbed The Phoenix. It is my own personal trial by fire. Fire is the essence of life itself. As it destroys it also creates. I will create a new life from the remnants of my former, a persona not defined by another.

Chapter 1-The Quest

Depression and Suicide
“…my life before you was very chaotic and unstable. You were the stability I needed and the foundation on which I built my life.  I never doubted that you would always be there for me. You were my rock. Of all the people that had disappointed me you never let me down. Yet you did, You pulled the rug out from under me without warning and the foundation upon which I built my entire life crumbled…” –email correspondence to Lisa; Nov. 21, 2008

It took four months to undo ten years of my life. A debilitating depression overwhelmed me. I never saw anything in my life, but Lisa. What did I have left without her? What would I do? Darkness clouded my heart.

A rusty blade in my hand. A message in blood written on the broken mirror.
I lay in the tub, leaking crimson life. In my haze I barely make out the words.
What does my final message to the world say? I cannot remember why it hurt so much.
In a few minutes it won’t matter anymore. What the hell did I write?
I can only think of one thing that torments me enough to drive me to this darkness.
Trailing down in letters, clotting on the wall…
“I loved you.”

This revolving drama played on a loop in my mind. I was lost, a walking corpse. All I felt was cold hollowness.
“All that is left is emptiness, an empty house, an empty soul.”-journal excerpt; Oct. 6, 2008
I so badly just wanted the hurt to stop. In my tunnel vision existence I was oblivious to those whose hearts bled for mine. All my substance and passion was gone. Lisa took my heart with her and left nothing inside. Without her my existence seemed meaningless. The cloaked figure smiled, offering me the almost irresistible temptation of sweet release.
“Do I give in to the darkness? Let it consume me”-journal excerpt
Ultimately, though, there came a day when I awoke from the fog. I was living outside myself watching this unknown drone on a worthless trek. One phrase finally broke through the shell.
“What a waste!”
The Phoenix was born in that moment. The match was struck to light the way on the difficult road to recovery.
“The pieces of my soul are on the floor for everyone to trample on.”-journal excerpt; Oct. 6, 2008
I was in over my head. I needed help. A therapist helped at first, but the relationship quickly cheapened because I was essentially paying for a friendship. Antidepressants proved to work too well. I have a manic level of natural intensity. Lexapro ignited fireworks inside my brain. Both, however, gave me the nudge I needed to help myself. Eventually, I grew beyond the need for crutches. A previously unrecognized army of supporters each lent their kindling to the fires. One day at a time I battled my inner demons until I was ready to accept happiness again.
“You will be amazed on how much of the original Ryan is back. Why? Because I'm over my depression about change because something I feared more came to fruition.  I lost you.  I'm doing my best to survive from that, but my past fears now seems trivial and meaningless in comparison.”-email correspondence to Lisa; Sept. 8, 2009

Denial and Desperation
“Run, Run away Ryan. Open another book, turn on the TV, surf the Net. Delve into your fantasies and escape reality. It’s how you survived your childhood…”-journal excerpt; Oct. 2, 2008
The cracks in my facade were beginning to show. I shielded myself in delusions. I lied to myself to soften the full scope of Lisa’s betrayal. I more than lied. I was absolutely sure. I trusted her with my life. I trusted a lie. I was living a lie. I betrayed myself more than she ever did. The realizations came in shards, each piece punching holes in my heart.
I wallowed in self-pity and desolation.
I yearned so badly to feel some warmth, anybody’s warmth.

The New Girls
Upon Lisa’s departure I sought to quench my loneliness in the convenient woman around me. For a moment’s time, they took pity on me.
Rebound-I immediately sought solace in the arms of a good friend. She’s always shown me nothing but love and idolization. I was ashamed for disrespecting her and our friendship. I knew full well that our brief encounters were all that would ever be between us.
Crazy Chick-She was a brute of a woman, yet conversely, very maternal and comforting. She had a unique talent for forcefully ripping out my raw emotions, breaking through the masks. As she said, though, “I’m not Lisa.” Pathetically, that’s exactly what I wanted.
One Night Stand-ups-Several brief encounters fed my addiction for attention. Like a ****** with a needle, my appetite grew. Desperation was becoming my scarlet letter.
“…but it did seem that the thing we are most proud of and the thing we are most ashamed of are but the front and the back of the same coin. They torture and thrill all at once.”-Grotesque; Natsuo Kirino
I felt guilty and *****, yet loved for but an instant. These experiences were very cathartic. I had completely lost the ability to cry, feel pain, rage, or joy. They were the prefect drug, just so that I may feel again. Without these women to reopen the wounds, the numbness would have consumed me.
“Every angel has a little devil inside them.”-Manda; 2009
What attracted me to these women was mock chivalry. Each had their own “hard luck” story. So ingrained in me is the comic book ideal of heroism that I constantly seek to rescue the damsel in distress. Women will always be my kryptonite. However, as Crazy Chick put it, “ When is it time for you to be rescued?” The divine irony is, it was they who saved me.
It too, was not to last. A long period of isolation followed, as the women grew tired of babysitting me. Another lie to myself, a band-aid on a wound desperately needing stitches.

The Crush
Hers was the first light I allowed to pierce the darkness. She did more to heal me than any who said, “Yes.” Her secret, she said, “No.”
It has always been my curse to be eternally misunderstood and underestimated. I could see her scars bled the same as mine, although hers had begun to clot long ago. I am attracted to those who have a depth chiseled by adversity.
I identified with her. Her intelligence far exceeded my own, an Einstein in a circus. My eyes saw straight to her soul, seeing only the gorgeous woman she was on the inside. My friends would point out my eyes would sparkle whenever I spoke of her.
Yes, I loved her, but only in transition. We came from different worlds, but met as wounded soldiers on the battlefield. She was the catalyst to open my eyes. A sweet smile for my shredded soul.
“A worn beaten heart trapped in by bars.” From “Painless” by Tracy Reed
She held the key to my self-imposed imprisonment. My growing frustration with her opened the door for my transformation. For all her grace, all her amazing potential, she was wasting away in the same feeding trough as me.
“You can do better.”
Then it hit me…
“I can do better!”
I began to rebuild my empire. My never-queen rejected me…
I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

The Emotional Spectrum
“Stuck in a prison of abstract ideas and overpowering emotions.”-Zach; mypsace blog
Shock
1) ‘I don’t love you anymore.”
2) Letter…”I can’t wait until my divorce is over!”
3) Ryan-“So I guess this means we’re getting a divorce.”
Lisa-“Well, yeah. You knew that.”
4) “Ryan, they’re together, and have been.”
5) “I’m moving out.”
6) “By the State of Ohio, I hereby grant this dissolution.”-Judge; Dec. 30, 2008

Six bullets to my heart, six separate, devastating phrases that brought about Armageddon. I gave her a decade of my meager existence, nearly half my life. She threw me away like garbage, and couldn’t have been happier.

Fear
As the gun smoke drifted, I clutched my breast. I was frozen in horror that I’d lose myself along with her. Fear, you see, was the beginning of the end for our marriage.
I never dealt well with change. When we bought our house, the combat that ensued left me crippled. I ultimately built myself into a comfort zone again. “I don’t know what I want to do” was always an excuse for me. I lay stagnant and complacent with no true purpose or direction.
It was Lisa that first took action. She sought to elevate us from the ranks of lower middle class into which we were born. I fought her, determined to lay docked in the doldrums. “Leave me alone in my bubble.” I made attempts, but with each failure became depressed. She became frustrated and took matters into her own hands. It is obvious she loved me then. She worked effortlessly to give us a better life.
I was blind to the truth and in time Lisa lost sight of her motives. She plodded on, mechanically, no longer sure of why. She drove herself to extreme exhaustion, afraid, that if she stopped, for even a moment, she’d realize it was all for naught. She lost faith in our combined, bright vision.
So, she did the only thing she knew how. She ran away, straight to another as miserable as her. She kept running, further and further, taking greater risks. All just to not have to feel her own hollowness.
She left and my phobia ended there. What followed was a newfound fear. “I don’t know what I want to do” became “What the hell do I do?” I was afraid I was doomed to be alone the rest of my life.

Sadness
“Are you ok?”
“We’re worried about you.”
“How are you, Ryan?”…

“MISERABLE!”-Ryan

I always speak the truth. I’ve never felt so surrounded and alone in all my life.

Anger
“Like koi in a ***** pond, you can see your rage barely hiding below the surface.”-Erin Kompik
The most intense rage fueled The Phoenix. I lashed out at everything. Everyone was burned. I was ******* and the world would pay. The spectacle burned so bright it threatened to eradicate all that I was.
“I can feel bitterness and anger coming. I am fighting for control over the anger”-journal excerpt; Oct. 1, 2008
“The seams in my heart leak nothing, but hostility.”-journal excerpt; Oct. 6, 2008
“I’ve become a monster. I once loved someone so hard I would die for her. Now all I can feel is scorn and hate. My heart is twisted and black. I fear I will become the bitter man my father is. I hate myself for being so.”-journal excerpt; Sept. 30, 2008
Who was I so angry with? For all the hurt I felt from Lisa, I was most angry at myself. How could I let this happen? How could I have been so blind? My blood boiled as I berated myself. The loss I suffered left my heart festering with hatred, as nothing but fire and volatility overtook it.
“The red light of rage is violent action without consideration of consequence. It is uncontrollable. So I will unleash it.”-Final Crisis, Rage of the Red Lanterns
Then, the root of another anger broke through the fury.
“I know that you may not see it now, but time really will heal these wounds.”-Michelle Kinney
She was right. I had absolved myself of my original rage. I had forgiven her. I could forgive myself. I couldn’t be held responsible for another’s irresponsibility. The anger dissipated into the smoke. It left behind a few flickers, but I’ll not extinguish them yet. I still have a use for that rage.
“Do not be afraid to expose the darkness. Only by bringing it to the light can it ever truly be resolved.”-audio journal excerpt; Aug. 16, 2009

Love and Happiness
During my marriage, hers was the only love I let myself feel. Then, she took it with her when she left. I felt scorned and unwanted, a refuse of human waste.
I was wrong. I am a man that seeks love as an end all for my existence. Lisa unlocked my caged heart. Over the next decade I cultivated relationships with countless individuals. There was more love in my life than I ever realized. They were there when she wasn’t. My parents sacrificed everything to give me a life and family they never had. Lisa’s family had become my permanent family. She divorced me. I did not divorce them. All my friends gave all they could. Even my harsh enemies stepped off the battlefield, for they understood the casualties of this war. All of them, a shining sea of compassion, poured their hearts into mine. Their light overcame the darkness. When I finally crawled out of the pit, they got me to my feet.
“For them, I must continue.”-Naoko Takeuchi
I had to be strong. I owed it to them to survive. They gave me their love to fill in my missing pieces. For all I had been given, I could never give up or give in.
“I am meant for greatness. I am meant for happiness, for joy, for me.”-Zach; myspace blog

Chapter 2-Evolution

Picking up the Pieces
“I need to be out there.
Living.
Looking for my own life…
I need to open my mouth.
I need to be heard.
I need to live.
You’re gone…
I’m not.”
-Goth Girl Rising; Barry Lyga.
It was time to rebuild that which had been broken. My life was fragmented chaos. I needed an order to the chaos, or more to my tastes, organized chaos; anarchy with purpose. I learned to become a master strategist. The civil war I waged on myself demanded a general.
STEP 1-Stabalize finances.
My pact with the devil to keep my beloved home required emptying the coffers completely. How delicious the irony that I wound up working the same long weeks as Lisa.  Hard work and sacrifice were absolute necessities if I was ever to afford to live again. It was Lisa that taught me that. The only difference, I must never lose sight of why. Money is not the reason for existence. I simply needed enough to achieve my goals.
“Money is nothing.  It is an imaginary concept.  Its only value is what we put into it.  While often a necessary evil to survive, it is not important.  The only possession of true value is time.”- The Most Valuable Possession; 2009
STEP 2-Tear down the Mausoleum.
My home had become a testament to a dead marriage. Lisa’s five day moving notice threw a grenade into my living space. It was disheveled and disorganized. It was no longer Ryan and Lisa’s. I had to reclaim it as my own. Out of respect for our past, I kept a few pieces of Lisa as a constant reminder. I will never forget where I’ve been.
“Your spirit helped build this place and it still flows through its walls.”-email correspondence to Lisa; Nov. 21, 2008
Physically putting my environment in order likewise put my mind into an order. As I rebuilt my home, it became the new foundation for my life. The Phoenix had a place to perch.
STEP 3-Know Happiness again.
“I seem to find that my great periods of change, evolution, and growth precede an ultimate betrayal from someone I’ve let close to my heart. Is survival mode the only way I can fuel my passion? Where do I find the love that ignites my will, yet does not drive me to complacency?”-audio journal; Aug 13, 2009
The answer, I needed to love myself again. I could not rely on someone else to complete me. I had to become independent, to be ok with being alone. I deserved to be happy, to be loved, above all, by myself.
This was going to be hard.

Breaking Codependency
Not having another physical body in the house left a void. Without another heartbeat close to mine, I stopped sleeping at night. My appetite was lost and I started shedding pounds. With my depression receding, I awoke to find I was living in a desolate wasteland. What would I do in this solitary confinement?
Utilizing survival skills my mother taught me, I used it. Ever the artist, I took the pieces and created an existence. Then I improved it, again and again. Loneliness is a disease that attacks only if you let it. I had to learn to accept myself, before I could expect anyone else to. I used the loneliness to redefine and rediscover myself. I would not rely on anyone to do for me. My honor and respect for my loved ones demanded I do for myself. The stifling quiet, the sleepless nights taught independence. The silence used to frustrate and anger me. Now, I use it for peaceful reflection and meditation. Th

How horrible the plot
the hem, the haw
of the incessantly violent
torture ****
   How sad the politic
the row, the scorn
the media howl, the noise
the storm
           We are drifting in a sea
         of bobble head puppets
         backstabbing, mass murdering
         mask-faced tyrants
         and we are loosing the battle
         before it's even begun
            So go ahead now
         and trade in your votes
         sell off your rights
         buy a backfiring gun
            Because nothing is worse
         than trying to reverse evolution
         and you can't crawl back
         into the womb of your Mother
         once you've destroyed
         the primordial ooze
         of creation's lubrication
         for a dollar and a cheapened dream's
         inflation

Who counted hours out of the sky
And clipped the ends off?
Who quantified
Existence?
Who cheapened the flights of the sun and the moon
And put limits on time
Trapping limitless eyes?

Each day
Is one thousand days and each hour
Is one thousand hours, and
Years pass in seconds
While seconds last lifetimes
Sometimes

But my calendar

Has no capacity for this.

A moment
Lasts as long
As the glow lingers
When it's gone

And all the while
The clocks tick on,

I maintain whoever measured
The day
Was wrong.

My heart cost less than I expected.
You spent every cent of it.
You borrowed against its little value,
ruined my ability
to ever lend it again.

where's the rain-man? where's the rain-man? where's the rain-man (comparison)? oh wait, in the interpretation of art by feminism: successful artist... house, wife, children... no... chauvinism's interpretation: desolation, desolation, car-boot sale for the rich at sotheby's - or nietzsche the inspiring thought in benito mussolini's mouth.

after edging to provide legal guidance
for the turkish shop by exposing the
legal balance worth a public bench
enclosed in the turk's caravan,
i became known as mathias del rado
(turkçe parçaladı), deltore, de amore (amoré)
bull's charging eye amore... olé! amoré!
que sera, sera... c'est la vie... well,
i do enjoy drinking and pretending to have
my shadow partner in ping-pong
always win... but why would i need to
feed a common consensus of drinking /
****** who masturbated prior having
the scalpel into the soft kangaroo hand-replica
when society eagerly sells and taxes the stimulant?
they criminalise the escapees of reality
ranging from classification A, B to C...
alcoholics aren't even categorised as D... we're
the troupe labelled Z... yet we're the most
economic addicts, we don't deal with shady
warlord economy, just dull political economy...
the two disparage when one shoots you
in the head and the other talks about an opinion
being free from dialectics... an opinion
free from dialectics (akin to shelling,
bullets whizzing past) is what entrenched
the germans and the english in belgium.
loved the film Ida (2013) though, an oscar contender,
not really black narcissus (but that's not the point),
english language movies can't ever capture
the purest existentialism of loneliness,
the way Ida was shot, black & white...
the poverty of the landscape, the Hopper like
moments after serious moments, honing
on the stasis of the the world and movement of
beings... the way one went back to the nunnery
with the truth of being spared by her family's
killer who purposively dug the grave and gave
back the remains of his butchery...
her aunt's suicide that was almost a secondary
comedy of the everyday shattered vase
in dialogue: i'm sorry, i broke the vase,
but did anything happen to you? no...
then there's nothing broken! the way she did her
final routine the last time,
shagged drunk, woke up and forgot it wasn't
her father, took a bath, turned on music,
got dressed in a jacket, but nothing beneath the waist,
and just jumped out of the window...
the music continued playing, the camera froze
on the scene as an infinite number of things
could have happened... then the nun Ida
embodied her nun, took to wearing heels,
a dress, showing her hair, drinking *****
spiralling in a window-curtain, smoking,
embodying her last remnant connection to a past
of jewry, imaging whether she could live out
the temptations suggested by her aunt...
she ****** the saxophone player and while
in bed she asked with dogmatic undertones
of useful regime instilled in her from early on:
and then? and then?
'a dog, children... and after that life's problems,'
he answered her.
she woke early and donned her nun outfit
and with a sense of courage retreated into
the convent. i mean, a great film...
but then mr. turner came up:
painting used to be so expensive,
all the necessary chemists to give aquamarine pigments,
poetry used to be expensive too,
write a poem, send a 100 men into a godforsaken war...
now technology has enabled painting
to be cheap, so cheap that graffiti tagging with spray
does the trick on a concrete grey slab of canvas...
and so poetry has become cheap too,
emotions have cheapened, people do not really
have ennobling emotions that might quake
100 men to go to war... perhaps 10 down the pub,
but war? not really... but it still leaves me detached,
admiring vintage cars from the 20th century on the driveways,
the way the familial cars dwarf trade cars (white mini van, e.g.),
for example the *mercury 1956 montclair 4-door hardtop,
or the ford zephyr zodiac mark ii "lowline" saloon,
back in the day when people didn't make their life
compact, when girls modelling where the day
of modern day pornstars rather than shaped like coat-hangers,
and when people didn't make their life compact
and holiday resorts from mexico to kenya to australia
also compact in terms of their generics of cloning.

Sunny day's may be sunny
Yet inside always so dark.
Cars all parked
Like rows to chapels lonesome way's!!!

Deleterious,
Nothing hilarious,
For thy eyes turn unfazed!!!

A deluge of no accomplishments
All walls stand to fail,
All ceiling's to crumble
No more derogatory jails!!!!!

Despondency roaming the brick street of the old
No desposters
No more voters to trade papers
For young and who they mold....


Thine denizen of thy own class
Doth thou passeth the bill of health?

Art thou truly alive?
Canst thou  SAVETH thyself?

Think not that thou art free,
Thou eateth
Thineself meets thine own selfish needs!!!!

Thyself shoots bullets of steel
And steal cheapened goods
Whilst small holes in thee hit and bleedeth!!!!

Thy idols no longer stand
Clothes bought by daddy
From his first of the month paycheck
Colored in crayon!!!!

Thou followeth not even thy own commands.....

Is thy love didadic?
Of archaic to history's lesson's?

Art thou to short on preaching?
Thy words begin to lessen.... .

After some time,
You know that
They don't
They can't
Understand  
That scars like these...
They don't go away
They don't fade
They come knocking
At midnight to tell you
About how they've
Festered for so long
Even after, you talk them out
Resolve them, lay them to sleep
They revisit you, dragging you back
To memories best forgotten
Touches burnt on your skin
Half-remembered words,
Hateful, disgusted expressions
Cheapened expressions
That make your soul unclean

Ordinary, everyday people
Could never understand  
Why you need to look away
Fidget so much, the hidden
Violence with which you **** back
When someone touches
Upon such sensitive issues
Maybe you talk it over with them
Once, perhaps, and then they think
That it is gone, it is laid to rest
But what they fail to realise
Is that it comes back, creeping
Crawling, taking you over again
They'll turn away, disgusted
Because they don't know the
Impacts of long-term exposure
To slow poisoning of heart, veins, lungs

And they'll turn away
Repulsed, disinterested
When you come crying
Begging for some help
Some solitude
Because you can never
Make them feel  
The pent-up emotions
Over a decade
The unseen scars
These little things
Have left you with
They will not see
The confusing mixed
Messages being sent
By those other people
They will not understand
That you're not looking
For something you've
Lost, right there,
Sitting on the ground,
Almost helplessly,
On your knees

In fact, you're looking
For something
That was never yours
To have in the first place
(peace, solitude,
no more loneliness,
no more emptiness)

Something
you have
(never had)
Permanently
Lost

A screaming pierces the serenity of the river valley.
Overturned wreck of a car and splattered, shattered, scattered glass.
A fresh-cut gouge in the dirt embankment where he clipped it
and in retaliation it flipped him on his roof. 
He staggers from the chaos
moaning not from pain, but from the Jaeger, Keystone, and regret
of totaling his mother's car. 
He flees the scene with his homies, his fellow drunken cronies
and the witnesses are left behind, scratching heads and raising brows. 
I among them contemplate the carnage
and I try remembering a different time, ten years ago or so...

This place used to be so beautiful
before the partiers and potheads and Varrio Locos took it over. 
Shallow waters filled with algae drifts and interspersed with boulder bridges. 
Sandy beaches, nature trails, wild grapes, and fishing holes. 
The last free-flowing, undammed, undamned river in the state...
Now it's bloated with beer and blood and bad decisions. 
Not a bare rock face remains, each one caked up in graffiti makeup. 
And the air, once frequented by the heady scent of sycamore
is far too thick with marijuana anymore.
Santa Margarita, choking on smoke and dope and disrespect,
once my heart and home and refuge, now and forever a cheapened wasteland.

The wheat yellowed, the wind chipped and chipped
until the wheat lay cheapened in broken mass;
I steered my tanned corpse through the scattered wheat.
I came to the well.
Instead of dropping a coin,
I tore a stitch and threw it into the blackness.
Instead of making a wish,
I cleared my flattering secrets from my throat and yelled.
The yell echoed downward,
bouncing off grandmother stones,
until it richocheted upward
only to have the wind carry it away like a swarm of lies.
I watched my secrets yellow like an ancient photograph,
I felt nostalgia chip and chip away,
clearing the spillway for fresh pain.
I spread my arms, a self-crucifixion,
a savior of no use.
When cruel regret and cruel change
finished with me,
I stared at the bluebird flying overhead,
just beyond him a cloudless sky.
Joy is for the living,
myself I'm kidding,
I close my eyes,
and
I'm carried away.

Consider poetry
& all of its complicated forms.
Then strip it
of all rules and restrictions.

Now, consider the subject matter.

Free verse
would not be free enough
for the words I would choose
to describe
what I would like to do to you.

Maybe these types of instincts
weren't meant to be cheapened
with velvety phrasing
& sumptuous language.

You see,
I have this hypothesis
that poetry
would be just as effective
translated into raw action.

(They really should have
shipped me off
to the nunnery
when they had the chance.)

But they sent me to college instead—
where I learned
how to properly test
my hypotheses.

**Hot ****, do I love research.

I hear they hoard Picasso’s like diamonds.

Excess is common—
escargot at a diner, Parisian no more,
cheapened slime beneath
industrial grade lighting.

Women
drawn and quartered, all cut up,
chaos-con-cube

hung from the wall of some
split-level apartment
where I hear a man
hanged himself
(and his children might, too*)

Their bitterness
licks at the paint
in ordinary strokes
driving down the value of,
what once was,
a masterpiece.

We had this bulletin board with candid photographs that our teachers used to take of us

I guess to commemorate the school year when it got to its end.

There are only two pictures of you

You do not ****** yourself in limelight.

They are strictly taken without your knowledge

The first is one with you working in a group project

Carefully fixing a model of some sort

Quietly working with others

Agreeable, patient, very careful

I was going to take this one, but I came across another.

This one is charmingly black and white

With you alone-sketching something –again probably for a classroom assignment

The only thing I wish of this picture is that you were sketching what you wanted

That it was you, how I remembered it

Putting a heart, a light, a dedication, a sweat, and a story

Something that danced before my eyes

Something that would materialize and be, just be in its own creation and life

I would remember in this your pencil strokes and the way you would look up and kind of smirk at me

And I would wonder if I was hidden away from you while you drew, or if my presence irritated you in some way. I would self consciously observe- not sure to speak, not sure to keep silent. I favored silence.

This picture, your face in it: concentration. A loving concentration, zoned out that you possibly couldn’t see the lucky individual with the camera. I make out the shape of your eyes and a side profile of your face and I wonder, I wonder what is this peace, patience, loneliness, vast adoration that I feel that I deny myself over and over again.

I know this picture is old and it makes me smile still- its what I missed

It reminds me of a song you let me hear

About not being home, my weird sensation of being truly ****** up

And how sweet you were about the whole thing

So on one of the last days of school, when it is excruciatingly possible to never see you, never truly see you again.

I went into the box of pictures and stole away this picture of you when no one was looking

I didn’t want it cheapened by questions

I didn’t have answers, but I had reasons

I imagined it sitting on my desk

A guy, any guy comes over

“Who’s that?”

I would smile and blush and not have an answer

I would only know and not have an answer

There was something careful about you, I guess that reigned me in.

I can’t tell you how badly I needed a friend who understood on that level, how badly I needed you in some strange quiet way

I didn’t want to struggle with a knowledge that could hurt you

“You know the bottom line was
I couldn't change your mind
Honey, could I?”  

Confuse you, anger you

I can’t, I can’t

And I can lie and say I don’t know why but I can’t

So selfishly I tried to keep it in simplicity and it only grew more complex

And so now you have given back to you meaning in a picture

The closest thing to a sketch I could, for you to see what’s inside of me

And with a lasting strangeness, like a scar

I miss you.

Falling with shoe laces undone,
Only whispers, the quietness amidst grandiosity, majesty life beyond me
The tragedy is, I am melancholy, the family
Who don't know quiet, they judge often, they
Need control over each other, competition is so powerful
No silence, so love cannot grow, it is cheapened by talk, talking, exhchange,  The children crave approval
The parents crave limitless pride,
Everyone is disappointed, the gift merits more control
The mountain is not of character, rather it is God, only understood
Amidst the silence

I can feel the poem in my forehead

Stop editing, pull it out of you

Ermine dire Sanctus, Jesus burning in cackling solidarity tainted , save me, I surrender, take it, tear off the sarcasm, show me your light, your beauty
Too intense for the public, only known in silence, the majesty of great nature, the objective world, the spirit of chaos, ******* and spitting, unwrapping, giggling, *******, *******, sizing, ughhh putrid ugly hierarchical idiocy act, urching and lurching felt so secretly, brutality, eating its way out of the stocking, crispy toffee, Buddhist books that will never be read, shaving kids, raging!  Hurting, false gratitude, let it out!  Romping, stomping, groping for lustrous pious godless lurch, ****** through my pallet, based on experience, wreaking, cleansing

These words cannot escape
live in me
what I need, quite simply
is for words to flee
escape via pen, mouth
second best only to physical
more disconnect added with each middle man
gray keys
cyber space
words become code
which others cannot decode
decode my words
these words
thoughts reduced to slashes, arrows, numbers
marks on a screen telling what to do
cheapened to
lines
ink on a page
words in the mouth
a hand in mine
no words for such bliss but words assigned nonetheless
no right or wrong words
no words at all
yet somehow we need them
like something can't exist
if no words exist
Failure to say truth
failure to reality
words fail.

All that could warn fell flat.
I heard your story, saw your eyes.
Taken back by it’s depths.
The long tunnel eyes, I thought,
could see me back.

I can't find my red flags!

Now I’m shaken with embarrassment.
Sick with silliness I don’t even believe in.
An evil, baffled laugh: your detachment.

How did I get this far?
Your broken rib cage split open.
I saw heart!
Caught.
A snow covered bear trap.

I don’t know why I’m here, or why I’m maimed.
The ghost dances again, and again.
Who are these people you’re pinning me up against?
Does it give you solace?

And you wouldn’t release me?
Articulate it, please, why shouldn’t I go?
This cage still carries the remains of the last doe!
She prances around - but
In your head
And in mine.

Imagine another time, and another,
it’ll be their dime, not yours, remember?
Here, Instead, how about we craft them together?
I’ll be yours, and you’ll be mine.
Projecting fantasy.
No persons, just loud symbols,
and a lot of real time.

How could you be so broken up about your own false dillusion?
How could you be so hurt that a human was, after all, a human.

Alas, after even this, I couldn't find them.

The sick joke is as sick as it can get.
Let’s just admit it.
This time, not hers, or yours, but my wings be split.
The individual who has been there through all of it.

Fashion together
Passing checklists of bias
it, not she, is close enough!
And I’ll be there to make sure you’ve got it.

Justification comes like a plague
I’ll forever hold my peace.
You would too.
You know you would, too.

You will see it, your creation, and it will be good.
No Holy Other could tell you otherwise.
No difference between yours and His! Right?

They have to be the one this time!
Take them in their prime.

And so I see through this glass dimly lit:
An individual to cup my lonely *******?
Just take me. This whimsical gem.
“I trust you, oh man on the farm, I trust you!”

You saw my fruit,
saw that it was good. Good to eat.
Soil that was warm an inviting.

And for years now you’ve been safe.
Safe and well fed.
You’ve traipsed the land.
But never owned it.
My early labor hidden.

There was nothing to stop it.

"What good land! Better than ever seen!"
“But what other field am I missing?”

A treasure revealed that was not ripen.
Seed dew moist with shaking burden,
A violent exposition.
You wonder why this fruit is so bitter?

I thought I could trust the hands, and what’s seen.
But they pealed open the rose bud and destroyed the flower.
Now my eyes will see as far as my roots go.

My new myopic.

The ***** will ****, and they will, too.
With devices that stick like sand-spurs.
Crafty.
We move but we don’t know why or where to.
So crafty.

In my naiveté I trusted the prudent deceit
and we both walked in an illusory state.
In my naiveté I trusted the naive!
And saw more then I’d ever seen!

You don’t know where you’re going,
So why resent me?

I am a stranger seen through a window dimly lit.
I welcomed you into this garden:
You scrambled and fit.

Madness unbridled.
“No, this isn’t it!”

******! I can’t find my red flags!
Just a needle and some thread.

Why am I here?
Come what mend?!

You came, ripped up what I knew of myself,
An inkling, with no defense.

Oh that my Master would come back
to His field and see what has been maimed:
The man on the farm and the flower!

I’m grape vine rose bush.
You take hold and smear me!
Disappointed that your 28 years wouldn’t grow me.
To be wine, or sweet perfume.

Skipping across time lines and opportunities-
further detachment from the reality created.
World within worlds all based on lies, fear, and hurt.

I’m not what I am in a farmer’s hands!

Oh but one day you'll finally bow
to a lonely and thirsty plant.
Whose only hope is now eastering.

After the longest precession of my life:
an ending so abrupt.

Please just look back.
Purge the cage of bones, pedals, and raisins.
Find land, and love it.
Because what made this land so good
is the millions of little deaths
that fermented on the top of her skin
and given: a shaking burden.
Worth that can't be cheapened.

Just take care of her this time.

I’ll have closure then.
The bear trap, clean.
And the doe’s ghost, prancing.
I’ll know that what I’ve seen in your tiger eyes
wasn’t just me looking.

The young grape vine rose bush, pruned.
My red flags,
pushed them back into the soil,
and let go the thread and needle.

I'm spending some time in the forest, sleeping in the dirt
I'd call it soul searching but I treasure the ambiguous
It's more of all inclusive whateverthefuck
I felt like getting in touch with my primitive side
The concept is a gnawing rat behind my drywall brain
Something inside repressed by social structure
Everything was going pretty well
I found a squirrel, slow clap, am I right?
Cut the cute little ******* open
and fed myself with the grace of a sick dog
Shortly after I felt better about my masculinity
it's been cheapened so many times before
In that moment, I went for a little stroll
I stumbled upon that tree we carved our names in
the symbol of our love held up nicely
Unlike the practice and actuality
In this moment, I wonder what lime disease tastes like
Then, casually, I remove my matchbook from my pocket
along with the kerosene from my bag
I circle the tree, covering it as far as I can reach
Distributing it in the way a child tosses autumn leaves
on the last day of fall
I smile, watching the flames meet the sky
Sharing mutual agony with the tree
I am cynical
I am heartbroken
I am on fire

Nihilated from naivety, only you
could prove despair isn’t the only truth,
and remedy everything that cheapened me.

Every empty fill of vacuous desire
ebbed away sentimentality
until idealism was an affliction,
a coerced condition.

Stripped of venom as armour
reposed in your words,
romanticism is no longer an abject territory.

You’re the memory
I silently ached to make;
the expectation too unrealistic to hold
until your arms became the sanctuary
I could deconstruct my defences for.

The elixir of life
Chased down my throat
With cheapened words
For your understanding

Chased down my throat
Like some bottom shelf burbon
I know I'll be recycling soon.

Yet-
Still I drink it
Still I say it
Knowing it's all coming back on me.
(One way or another )

I suppose in life, this is how I learn
But-
Do we ever learn?
(Don't think so my friend, just don't think so)

So I'll sit here
Drink my drink
Say my words
Saying
That we'll never learn

Cheers
to never learning again
Cheers
to never hearing your thoughts again

As I choke down these words
Chase them with spirits
Suffocate with the real hopes
Filled with lies
Of cheapened words
Just to satisfy your ego.

I would much rather lurk in the shadows than dance in the light. You are cheapened with each set of eyes that judge, envy, admire. Enough light will merely turn you into a pyre of broken dreams and desperate wishes. No. This is not for me.
I will be cultivated by the cold dark upon my skin, sustained by that which shrouds me all the more. And when I go into the light… there will be none left. You won’t see me, but you will feel when I close in around you. Just too mesmerized by the dancer in the light to save your soul.

I have cheapened myself with profanity for far too long
it's time to call time out and slow down
my heart is very much broken
I don't feel good inside
I get upset real easily
when one is cruel to me

I am sorry for my dark mood
the pain inside just won't go
I am horrified I am so angry
I going to right now take it slow
been crying myself to sleep
I am a wreck on a **** heap

Don't let someone upset you this much
that's what they keep saying
yet it's ringing in my head
and I wish that I was dead
tic tic tic
bang

By Christos Andreas Kourtis aka NeonSolaris

They say that when something is broken,
And put together again,
It is more beautiful than before.

That somehow,
Amongst all of those cracks,
Crevices,
And flaws that once weren't there,
There is some appeal.
That somehow,
In the broken reflection
Of a shattered mirror,
There is a fineness unattainable
In original perfection.

If that is true, I should be
Far more beautiful
Than it seems I really am,
Far more valuable
Than I could ever hope to be,
And far sturdier,
Having been broken before,
Than I was in my mint condition.

Alas, this isn't how things tend to work.

Life has a way of rearranging the compounds
Of our minds,
Twisting and bending and breaking them
So that we suddenly think, fear, and hope
In the exact ways it wants us to,
Instead of the ways that we want to.

Suddenly there is an alteration that cannot be undone,
A seam that cannot be ripped,
A stain that cannot be removed,
Though we attempt to both free
And punish ourselves
With every kind of bleach
We can reach for.
And still to no avail.

I feel as though I am a sad,
Sad piece of merchandise,
Sitting in the corner at the flea market,
Where no one sees me,
And no one wants me.
Why should I blame them?
By nature, we are always looking
For the next best thing,
Shinier, newer, something we
Can be proud to possess
And show off to the world.
This can hardly be said
Of a tarnished good,
One that cannot be fixed by
Any amount of glue,
Polish,
Or gloss.

It is difficult to hide one's scars
Underneath a sheen that's sure to fade,
Eventually revealing what a fraud you are
To all who admired you.

This is the heartbreaking truth
When it comes to what is broken.
What is shattered,
Dented,
Marred and scarred,
Secondhand and second-best,
Cheapened by its battered use,
And prized only by those
Who don't know any better
Than to add it to their pile of junk.

"Maybe it'll come in handy one day..."


Or maybe....


...just maybe...


...it could be handy now.


Maybe with the proper TLC,
A gentle hand and a gentle heart,
Willing to work with what others
Overlooked as worthless and a waste of time,
That something could become a real treasure,
Something valuable and beautiful to behold,
Maybe even more so than it was
Before someone ever dropped it,
And left it, trashed.


I believe a little love goes a long way,
But that a lot of love can change anything.
And that we would be surprised
At what that which we deem broken
Is really capable of doing for us.

To be put back together... I will smile.
To be loved despite my cracks and dents... I will laugh.
To be seen as beautiful, valuable, and desirable as that which is new, I will rejoice.
To be given the chance to be everything you ever needed... you will never want for anything.


The more often that something is damaged,
The less it has to offer.


I have very little I can give,
But for what little spirit I have left,
My heart,
And the love I have saved up in both,
That I am more than eager to share.


And although I fear being broken again,
Left to be another repair project for a forgiving soul,
I can't help but think it is better to be held and dropped,
Than never picked up at all.

... that is not important.

You’ve spent your time
– so much of our time -
on something that is not important.
And what’s more, you already knew that.
And still you went on
in the hope that it might redeem itself.

We both know what’s important
and what’s not.
We know what is worth our time,
our attention, our tears,
our sleepless nights.
We know what is worth our pain
and what is not.

And yet,
you have near exhausted your time
and, by extension, our time
on something that will never reimburse us.
Something that has cheapened you – us -
and has reduced us to this.

I need to know -
will you fight for something that is important?
And are we important to you?

a thin black silence settles over my head
not even the sound of falling snowflakes
in the semi-darkness of mid-winters night
my eyes capitulate trying not to see
the cheapened nickle plated christmas cheer
the road stretched out in into the pine forest
so near to perfection of decorative seasonal lights and toys
so rudely packed tightly into the open mouth
of wailing babes

her pale face painted
with expressions fleeting
joy flickers past sorrow
intense thoughts like shadows cross her eyes
but her words blunder along
crept up against stone wall and without effort
she makes her way past
to center herself in my heart

singular thought comes to me
as the sun's shadow creeps across my eyes
written there in obscure language
christmas wishes and dandelions in summer sun
all the very best of our world wrapped up in one

I take it that a spray of Sun occults your face,
like watching in a squalid cinema, something a slapstick would
conjure a stylistically dumb image, or the prattle of
bunkum hubbub drowning loudspeakers in plazas.
You know there is a part of you that goes missing
  every time you hear me pass carefully under the care
  of toppled light, and there is a part of me that engages
the dark in this straining mutiny. This is such a troubled time
on the hardline; a martinet on the other cheapened end
of a totaled horizon hollering at gentrified space, eyes sternly
fixed on the mattress, conspicuous in urbane manner, something
shadows bade with hands, lifts up all the ragamuffin days:
   to capture you in such moment, such oneness, of no complication,
like a clean Yamazaki on the house, or a metropolitan district
   augured with rubicund crisscrosses, streets sidereal in measures,
an aggressive ******* at the end of the curb, the spanked curve
   of the mordant asphalt, and the rise of body heat from yesterday’s swelter;
  something only I could have thought of in white thighs of little ladies
    and peering birds for collarbones: look at this, maddened, retaining
    nothing but age.

You had been pure, little boy, but I dropped you in the mud.
You kneeled, dropped your head, and shone my shoes.

You can no longer be buried
in a pure white coffin, like a child. If you died

I would not buy you lilies. I would not clean your face
anymore. You're tainted, tarnished, poisonous infected.

I cannot lay by you, now I know what I took from you.
It should have been more innocent

More special. But you have been cheapened.
I took everything from you

And still I want more. I, the biblical *****
that stripped you, bit you, broke you.

Li po in his prime
reclined
in silken robe
on brocade couch

Surrounded by jasmine
perfumed dancing girls

Singing out verses
immersed in wine

Gentle river yielding
delicate fish.

Compare and contrast
dingy corner of cheapened pub
with a last pint of black stuff
in a faded seaside town.

Sense of a crumbling life
barmaid checks her teeth
in the shining mirror of
a bald pate.

So to pier end
no sense to leap
only cockles and mud
mud and cockles

And the effluent of
one million surplus souls