Find the lighter, use it as a lighthouse on a walk below the wall you watch along the wave-formations. Who Wants a Cold One? a Coors Light ad corrects.. When it comes to your home, the little things matter.. an insurance ad blares.. my computer is infected with 3rd party applications unremovable to my meagre tech-ability.. there is a hero as Joseph Campbell once theorized.. in myself like a sick bastardly virus waiting for moments to prove to me "I AM THE SAVIOR, I AM THE CHRIST, I AM THE WARLORD, MICE, MAN, AND VICE".. the windows of opportunity close, I am left waiting the door

& the elevator.

Thirty-thousand years ago, there was nothing but a breeze.. a viscous breeze across chill-spined pterodactyls.. warm-under-the-jungle-brush tyrannosaurus rex, and to think one day I will be just a legend in bone..
Charlotte said she thinks of death and so did Jen. They sat next to the all-you-can-eat and discussed the inevitable. I was sour and playful with no-will-to-understand, just reminding my hair of breezy summer days of 10, thinking of strangeness, of place I was in.

When it's quiet sometimes, I think of old dreams.. dreams I sunk below drown-level as a child in bed and belief. Both mommy and daddy were arguing in the kitchen, this was 7 or 8.. they argued so often one could hear mom begin to cry sometimes, and dad I could see in minds-eye with a grimace so closed and so creased he was hurt and yet honest.. I did not understand so I hid under-stood-silhouettes, oh adulthood..

once in dream I was in pulsing green graveyard like crayon realism strobe lights, tombstones all-round and faint-buzz of outside and one of those strange balded henchmen of badguy Jafar from Disney's Aladdin came peaking outta nowhere with curled eyebrow and baggy one-thousand-one Arabian nightlives parachute pants, curled toes brown-beige moccasins to.. he let out conniving 'HEUHEE!' and slapped me right-side cheek and I JOLTED up bedwise in real time to feel actual physical sting for a few lingered seconds then the sobs of poor mother outside.. I never remembered a dream so clearly again.. they all come, Pro-Found, and dizzy away after hour or two for rest of eternity or perhaps to Place I Can Visit at Death to Review Every Vision and I wonder... when your life flashes before your eyes and the light is encroaching, scenes of mother, brother, father, son, daughter, best-friend, party, break-up, heartbreak, slip-fall, first-sip, first-drag, last-leg, first-kiss, first-hit, first-game, fear, love,  HATE, wait.. do the Dreams come to? Are they all flesh-ed before your eyes as you pass into Light? Are they brought to direct remembrance as you cross the border with Passport of Gods and a Goddess (and which Picture appears on the Page)..?

I remember the old eczema taking bits of skin to carpets round-town and round-lower-mainland to disgust of friends old and new-- this was era where confidence ate itself in mirrors, the sober reality of ugly-ness chiseling away at my Goodness Attempts.. All That Pointless Pain was no Exception nor a Rule, it just **** Happens every once-and-again to the sound of life farting. I used to miss school for feet so impossible to walk on, pussing and bleeding and staining the sheets, shoe soles, carpets, and soul.. limp thru the hallways of Brooks Secondary feeling like bad flavor additive to multicultural Planet Earth-- sleeping 'til the bell rang drinking coffee singing songs I said '**** the ******* educational system and **** me I'm so flatlined..' someday I felt things would really get better and lucky young me I was right.

A half-decade later, I am 21 and hoping, floating, free in the breeze as the wings I have grown keep on wishing the subsistence down. The girl, whoever-she-might-as-well-be, sits immediately vertical chatting frantically to boy with a bit of a cowlick slouching on-up over a bundle of colored paperwork. It seems late in the season for homework, and assume they may have some affiliation with a crazy-hep computer design group in the tradition of Nouevau Silicon Valley.... I sit at my laptop, inching a word a million cubic millimeters closer to God or Divinity or Crescendo or A Bunch More ******* You'll End Up Ignoring---

It's a sunny day, the rain having slathered-off into obscurity somewhere with the Monsoons when the Sun gave the Moon a Soft Slap and the poor purity white-kid went off whimpering, bleeding nose-- I sat, the other night, playing another Grand Strategy game as Tom divided his time between a vaulted and damaged lover, his labor, and his life (friends, food, video-games, vice)... Chai, old Chai the Thai Guy mentioned past his nose in previous iterations of Depictions sat and described his pins-and-needles upset at his bosses at one his three many jobs.. desperately firing text-messages into receiving-space-panel and reflect and back unto Tom's smartphone dash asking him to order a six-pack from a local delivery service cuz his adrenal was giving him heartpain with hurt, and Tom being Busy as All-Ways Tom Is wasn't able to decipher the scramble in-time to make contact before closure of the liquor stores.. poor not-so-poor Chai at first felt castrated at realization he would miss the 11 PM dot-time, but didn't mind as he rendezvoused with Tom and I at Willows Beach where Tom reminded him of a whiskey he'd bought sitting counter-wise at his place.. we kissed a few Mary Janes rightsideup, dragging our butts in the sand to discuss what was wrong (each of us had a problem that night, save for perhaps a less-vocal Tom, I describing my annoyance that a lazy consensus had erupted in my sorry-hometown between my sorta-friends and friends-of-friends that my writing and sharing my writing was arrogant and I an arrogant *** for sharing and I just confounded that they would find my passions so trivial-- perhaps jealousy, perhaps complacency and judgement-for-lack-of-anything-better-to-do and ah **** em all if they think like that, I'll write and be the arrogant me they think I am and share 'til I'm blue in the face and dead perhaps for outspoken intellectualism in their autocratic pointless-waste worldviews.. sad that I dislike them only on the basis they disliked me first..)

I had planned to stay late and leave early-morn (5 or 6 AM) to catch a first-off morning bus back home and sleep, hoping for most part to avoid the shattered-***-mess of a home I was living in.
About 2 days ago, give or take, a water-line for the laundry machine had erupted to soak our entirely-carpeted basement suite, forcing the poor new landlord (a sweetheart of a man named Ron having just taken possession of the house from previous owner on May 1st and, it seems, left 'holding the bag' as they'd call it in day-trading-investment-lingo) to tear out the entirely-soaked carpet and replace it with sensible laminate flooring and rendering the entire suite virtually unlivable for indefinite-few-days and so for me work and friends and especially writing become a welcome reprieve to I, a first world Refu-Jeez.. us, so terribly-off I sip a latte near sunny panorama windows-so-clear-they're-not-there overlooking the crosses of Yates and Blanshard with European church of Gothic architectural style poking heedlessly into empty-open blue.. ironically and strangely there is a liquor store quite literally right next door, and's one I shop at often for its decent prices (God is Dead or Just Drinking to Cope with Sartre and Kierkegaard's Ultimate Thesis) (Kierkegaard especially '*** Kierkegaard seems a good and long friend of God the Almighty) (...I talk with such Judaeo-Christian Catholic rhetoric it never ceases to amaze myself as it bleeds to page..) (stranger thing is, tho, there is no beginning, no middle, no end.. you read or you are bored and either/or is just fine..)

There is some hypothesized crescendo-bliss Tech Singularity on the way in the try-dition of Ray Kurzweil and William Burroughs.. Oscar Wilde to.. (see The Soul of Man Under Socialism in essay-collect book De Profundis).. one day we will all be eternal happiness expressed in song and dance and LED erected-projections of Imperfect Universe (Our Imperfect Earth) with lives stuck on infinite repeat.. our idea of Paradise.. and for those with ability to remain rushed to cortisol (stress-the-best hormone) it will be Hell on Earth, so DRAB and THE SAME all the TIME and it's READ and it's WRITE and it's RIGHT.. the world runs faster with every passing day so desperate to discover the Globe is Flat so we can Hop Off the Other Side into what one might assume to be The Better Place.. elusively picking-up speed thinking 'closer now definitely closer now' unaware (or, secretly aware and unwilling to admit for what will one do when one cannot run?) they are Running in Circles Over and Over and Over and Over and Over Again... cannot take the hint in the fact the Pacific (same Pacific) has been crossed a hugeillion times, nor the same McDonald's in the Azores of Atlantic Portugal is the Same ******* McDonald's stopped-thru on the then-trillionth time last year... and all whilst the International Space Station remains muted up-above crossing 'round and 'round 'til the Jehovah'n Day of Judgement (Chris Hadfield now below with advice for how to run a little faster even blinded in one eye..) then there are the dying Prophets Predicting Industrial Collapse who preach upon the Mount of Internet Sinai Eternal and state "the world is now unsalvageable and we are all about to die.. if ever you wished to find Buddhistic Nirvanic Peace, now is the time so start meditating and imagine Death as New Life and Geopolitics as Game".. forever and ever and ever and ever.

It is only natural to find existence to be 'weird..' layered with Who's That's and giant What The ***** everywhichway you turn.. did it start in a Big Bang, will it end in a Big Crunch, Big Freeze, Big Bang.. ? all questions once ignored for certain ignorance and resurrected as questions concerning the Nature of the What The ***** (also known as 'Science').. and if it did start in a Big Bang, did I start in a Big Bang..? and if it does end in a Big Crunch, will I end in a Big Crunch..? am I a sudden flash of REAL in a Universe that isn't me..? or am I an entire Universe.. perhaps even more than that...? the questions pulse in youth like bad words or bullets. I once stayed up all-night thinking of infinity with my head soaring space-wise forever and ever and ever and I stopped in sudden panic thinking: I could lie here up all night and all day 'til the towered age of 37 (I was 14 at the time) and still be no further on the Universal Map than from thumb-tip-middle to thumb-nail so I wrapped up the attempt with a mix of fear and incredulity, went to school next-day exhausted and tried to explain it all to friends.. they got it, I suppose, but we were all 14 and played basketball instead (I imagined infinite-spinning-basketball on thumb of Michael Jordan).

It's always best describing life in form of Disembodied Poetics.. sure some Philistines won't understand '*** their minds are made of Clockwork, Digits, and Blockthought.. but the general psychic underly implied in all with human faculty will ring-a-ding-ding! and remember all such ancient thoughts and feels as forgotten as a child, locked away until the Spirit rose-up from a rosey thorn prickle to flower straight-up into a Rose! or so I hope as a one-of-many writers-- all of which will write so-as to speak on your behalf.. all floaty and marking a purpose.

Dear Readers, President Theodore Roosevelt wanted
to save this marvelous Natural Wonder for posterity! So
the Grand Canyon National Park was set up in 1919. In
1979 it was declared as World Heritage Site! With the
portion “Sun rises and sets over the Grand Canyon”, -
I have concluded this poem. Kindly take your time to read,
no need to comment in a hurry please ! Thanks, -Raj

CONCLUDING THE GRAND CANYON
STORY IN VERSE – RAJ NANDY

INTRODUCTION
Literature about great natural features include
two personal types of writing;
Description of things observed, and impressions
of what is known and seen!
The story of the Grand Canyon takes us back
to the Pre-Cambrian Age,
When violent forces were unleashed from within
the Earth, during its formative stage;
When mighty forces of erosion began to sculpture
her undulating landscapes!
Therefore, I begin with a quote about Erosion,
From the great poet Alfred Lord Tennyson; -
“The hills are shadows and they flow,
From form to form, and nothing stands.
They pass like clouds, the solid lands.
Like clouds they shape themselves and go!”

TO RECAPITULATE PART ONE:
In Part One we have seen, how movement of
earth’s tectonic plates unleashed violent forces
from within!
It formed mountains and lakes, shaping our
landscapes, which now appear so peaceful,
grand, and serene!
Over millions of years the forces of erosion in
the form of wind, rain, sun and snow,
Sculptured earth’s evolving features creating
majestic, panoramic vistas as we know!
Geologists now opine, that the Grand Canyon
was carved out by the Colorado River, -
cutting through ‘layers of Geological time’!

THE COLORADO RIVER CARVED THE CANYON:
In the state of Colorado, from the high country,
Where snow and ice lasts well beyond the dawning
days of Spring;
There the majestic peaks of the Rockies form the
perennial fountain head from which springs, -
One of the great rivers of the world the Colorado;
Which travels 1400 miles through seven States
reaching the Californian Gulf west of Mexico!
Now during prehistoric days, the pristine Colorado
had flowed almost along the same path as today!
But after the magical rise of the Colorado Plateau
some five million years ago, (Refer Part One)
It had blocked the river’s path making it flow
south-east into the Gulf of Mexico!
Few Geologists now opine, that this diverted river
had formed the pre-historic Lake Bidahochi,
Which later drained out to form the Little Colorado
River, which today we get see!
But the cut-off western portion of the river (named
Hualapai Drainage) continued to eat away through
the Plateau’s southern portion,
Through a gradual process known as ’Headwater
Erosion’!
For the river flowing at a steeper gradient along
the ‘Grand Staircase’ of the Plateau, carried
stones, rocks and debris,
Which formed the cutting tools, deepening the
Canyon over countless centuries!
When the softer sedimentary layers of the Plateau
below the top rocky layers gave away, - it resulted
in several rock falls!
While flash floods and erosion continued to breach
the sides of the canyon walls!
Thus over millions of years the width of the Canyon
gradually increased;
While the gushing and untamed Colorado River
chiseled through the depths of those Cyclopean walls, -
running deep!
Now the ancient Lake Bidahochi which had breached its
banks, had captured our pristine Colorado;
And their combined power increased the volume of
water and river’s chiseling power, with its rapid flow!

ENDANGERED COLORADO RIVER :
It is unfortunate that today, the Colorado no longer
reach the mighty Pacific as in the olden days!
With the progress of civilization and the spawning
of big cities,
Like Denver, Las Vegas, Phoenix and Los Angeles;
And to cater for the agricultural farmlands and the
Industries,
Many dams got built to divert its water and to
generate electricity!
Thus over a century of overuse and abuse of this
precious natural resource,
Gradually choked up the great Colorado, as it
became a mere trickle at the end of its course!
Ecologists now debate, while USA has launched
‘Save the Colorado River Project’!
Let us now cheer up by getting back to our
Grand Canyon’s scenic beauty,
Before concluding this wondrous Canyon Story!

SUN RISES AND SETS OVER GRAND CANYON!
To see the sunrise from Mather, Yaki, or the
Hopi Point, - located on the Southern Rim,
Becomes a life time experience, better than any
surreal dream!
First a glimmer then a glow, when a faint blue-white
sheen begins to show!
As the sun gradually sprinkles its light, streaks of
crimson red spreads across the eastern sky!
Soon orange and yellow shafts of light, light up the
Canyon walls up high!
Squirrels scurry out of sight, and birds twitter in
the sky!
The Hummingbird hovers like a helicopter, and
Big Horn sheep are also seen;
The Hummingbird which can even fly backwards,
enlivens this early morning scene!
The sun now rising in its resplendent glory,
showers the canyon with its kaleidoscopic beams;
With streaks of yellow, gold and red, it chases out
lurking shadows from within!
Like a curtain lifting before their eyes, the tourists
view this panoramic sight!
As the Grand Canyon awakens to greet the day,
With cameras madly clicking away!
The great ancestors of the Hopi tribe, Hopi
meaning both peaceful and wise;
Had inhabited these areas some eight thousand
years hence!
Their scooped out granaries and tools found inside
Canyon walls, - have an ancient story to tell !
The Spaniards were the first Europeans to reach,
in search for gold which they never found!
But for the Hopis the Canyon remains, as their
sacred Holy ground!
When those Spaniards saw the Colorado way
down below, from the Canyon’s upper rim’s side;
They said that this thin blue streaked River, was
barely five feet wide! (In mid-16th century)
The average width of the Canyon is around 10 miles;
While the River at its narrowest point is 600 yards
wide!
The Condor the largest American bird, catching an
upward draft circles up high;
Like an uncrowned monarch he surveys his kingdom
below, nothing escapes his watchful eyes!
Temperature at the Canyon’s floor is 20 degrees
higher, when compared to its outer rim;
Supports an ecosystem of plants and animals,
With the river as chief nourisher of all things!
Evergreen pines and furs grow along the cooler
areas of the Canyon’s outer rim;
While cactus species are found on its arid floor,
Their exotic flowers bloom during Summer and Spring!
The Northern Rim a thousand feet higher, offers many
spectacular sites!
But the Southern Rim remains open throughout the
year, while the Northern closes during Winter time.
From the Hopi Point west of the Canyon, the visitors
enjoy the beauty of the silent, sinking sun;
When the sky gets diffused with vermillion red, as
darkening shadows engulf those Canyon walls!
The mighty Canyon with its Cyclopean walls,
perhaps the playground of the Titans from eons past;
Shaped by some mythical Vulcan, shall remain till
this World continues to last!

CONCLUDING THE GRAND CANYON STORY:
I conclude my Grand Canyon Story by quoting a
poem I had once read;
Written by an Anonymous author, whose name
I had failed to get!
“BUILT WITH PATIENCE OF ENDLESS TIME,
YEARS ERODE AND SHAPES DEFINE.
LAYERS YIELD THEIR COUNTLESS AGE,
EYES CAN SEE BUT CANNOT GAUGE!
STAND AGAPE WITH AWE INSPIRED,
IMAGE READS OF LIFE TRANSPIRED.
CLIFFS REACH OUT TO TOUCH THE SKY,
PATHS LEAD DOWN WHERE RIVER LYE.
COLORS, SHAPES AND SHADOWS MELD,
HERE, A PLACE FOREVER HELD.
WALK AWAY YET NEVER PART,
BODY LEAVES BUT NOT THE HEART!”
- Anonymous
……………………………………………………………
ALL COPYRIGHTS WITH THE AUTHOR RAJ NANDY
OF NEW DELHI, E-MAIL: rajnandy21@yahoo.in

civilisation abhors thought that it cannot vocalise,
and therefore monitise - it abhors it! it vilifies such
thinking as a form of mental  illness, or something akin
to such a statement; talk to any psychiatrist
and he'll tell you that psychiatry is, quiete frankly:
a variation of demonology - shadow people -
the "retards" everyone is quickly to defend
but easily strap into death-rollercoster rides
and the famous bon voyage adieu salute!
civilisation stamps it down, as i already said, abhors it,
whenever cancer is involved is a hellraising
fundraiser moment... come the sickness of the mind?
or the abstracted brain: we have parasite,
tapeworm people.
     and all because of our own cause in having created
the skivvy like residuals to brush under the
carpet of what's otherwise glitter:
   people who are without narrative:
                    without the marathon fundraiser public:
a macho personification of how to abuse
state authority but never wishing to do so:
but nonetheless being punished for it.

the central figure? fiction isn't written these days,
take a break, come back later.
        if you can't be honest now: you will never
be honest in a hundred years: forget it!
but you know what i find? sniffer dog that i am:
i find people like *Faustino Barrientos
a.k.a. not Pablo Neruda - and god i'm jealous,
there's this pristine exemplified variant of Adam
and i'm petrified with jealousy at
his 45 years of solitude in Chile -
               i'm mad by it,
why? because the so-called civilised world has
literally cut off all my limbs to embody such
a life: my grandfather and my father lived
under the laws of conscription auto-suggested
by the rubric of social preliminary bulletpoints:
i'm jealous of them too!
              i'm an Auschwitz shaven bearded
"thinker", no good to society that needs rigour
of appearing nice and selling bull's *******:
i wish i was (most of the time),
       i got a chemistry degree and was told to
work in a supermarket... there goes my love for
learning:
                i am, evidently, a pseudo-hermit,
self-imposed isolation but still seeing people:
or as i like to call them: ghosts - in close
proximity; now, if ever anti-social behaviour went
on unpunished, i'd be a gladdened example
of such feralness.
                    oddly enough, atheists are cultured
creatures,
                 but, not oddly enough: they have
nothing enabling them with self-preservation;
the argument goes along the lines of self- (hyphen
opening necessary)... as a prescribed form of
automation... in a variety of guises:
         this hermit from Chile has nothing of this
sort, he simply has a godly competence of
the environment, someone like Christopher Hitchens
can walk into a crowded space and give you
theological nausea -
              because could you find enough whiskey
metabolism while shearing sheep and
milking cows? no! atheism is a placebo of what
is otherwise an individualistic stance of
being an individual within a herd -
and what an almighty cold turkey experience we've
been given after Nietzsche killed god:
we're going cold turkey -
               we're theologically cold turkey -
we are still living in rehab, bad move to do it
so quickly: history on amphetamines sort of speak...
             a dichotomy of priestly attire
and politicians all suited tied and booted as
the grey matter: where are the ******* rainbows?
hence the persistence to relapse into hippy,
while adolescence succumbs to nothing more than
a medical circus frenzy: of nature's own:
                          getting rid of the weakest like
one might throw out an out-of-date yoghurt.
  all good and well with that montage of atheism
being the zeitgeist fashion statement -
    but there is no atheism outside of the civilised world:
there's the purity of the self-        automation:
or adaptability to the environment -
only once congregated there was the imposed:
the non-existence of.
                      because it was trendy to speak like that,
we established a cohabitating necessity as
a species and then tried to fake that necessity by
differentiating with enough intellectual sweat to
distance ourselves with a counter-argument:
i.e. not self-   as in automation because of the ever
changing weather and organic octopus auxiliary attachments
for the worth of grit:
                     but a self-    (unit of automation)
   to fill the world with an almost inaccessible
perpetuation of the narrative - but this civilised self-
                 as variant of automation
toward self-sufficiency and independence is completely
lacking in the civilised world!
     we treat people like ****! waiter! cashiers!
                     bus drivers!
         i endear you to think that in the collective of
what's known as the civilised world: the hermit does not,
exist! there is no self- to speak of,
               try milking a cow or lumbering along with Jack:
it ain't there! we're a bankruptcy in terms of limbs!
        well sure: i write, and immediately i'm
in a mess because i like to study -
     which means poetry or poetry aspiring to
philosophy is inherently useless... so is civilisation!
   tribalism has no need for money: because it
has community: cannibalistic or not... is still has
a collective need to survive - unless of course you
remember the civilised world and all those
experimental fetishes to get you starcast with a moovie.
so this Chilean guy, 40 years a hermit,
     and then this article in the Sunday Times
news review section: driven to distraction -
             and my notes as graffiti after reading it:
we are a second behind goldfish online (8 seconds
with cat videos) - goldfish are 9 seconds into
watching bubbles, and then creative dementia
     doing the plateau incremental snap: re re re.
the god does not exist argument is founded on
a banking system: it's the most viable way to make
an argument that provides wages -
          no other reason for it,
or: as according to the Chilean nomad Faustino
Barrientos, begin with the self- unit
                of self-determination and sustenance:
otherwise don't bother arguing that sort of argument
without undermining the collective Disney index
of the people: who are incompetent at ruling themselves
then they congregate to give birth to a Picasso,
end of!
              so just because i studied the sciences i can't
be persuaded to an ulterior version of humanism:
i swear, Kant said that there was nothing nobler than
to concern yourself with god... or an argument for
such a being... maybe i'm misreading things:
after all... it's not all that fashionable to say such things:
because never was sane sensibility akin to Jane Austen
for ******* despicable as to read Jane Eyre.
              well sure, i have my "furthering" notes,
from the trenches of the devil's sulphuring *******...
         again: that statement "god is dead"?
is effectively going cold turkey... shutting off all
the superstitious metabolism of the past: oh, 20 centuries.
   sure, the Anglo Renaissance came, Elvis too,
       but the repercussions of what we "experienced"
at the height of the latter part of the 20th century?
unreplicable, gone, dust, sniff the actual grey dust
death of ash... it's not coming back: here my pessimism
and valour in the name of comedy - realism
and the very mortal hand of the extinguished flame:
it's gone! done!
                and it ain't, coming back with a backlash of
infuriated rigour to keep afloat: or return to / replenish.
  it's gone!  mind you, Heath could also be
included in this ode that celebrates necessary
obscurity of the Chilean to my jealous fancy as having
perfected survival skills.
             but this cold turkey debacle over the death
of god penetrates former colonial, hence post-colonial
societies: it affects the youth.
                  it suggests a quickened pretense of
diminished responsibility within a framework of
the lack of all things "karmic":
sure, so history is without a continuum to ensure
there's transgression for every transcendence
and we all live in an Utopian scenario of
immovable mountains: maybe that's why we're
no longer writing history but historiography:
and there is a distinction:
the former is actually angling and fishing -
the other is counting the number of skiving salmon
dreaming of wings rather than gills out
of the river.
                     among the other observations?
or apathy without origin in blissful thinking,
statement A.
     can you imagine anything more apprehensively
digested that reaching the conclusion:
a- + -pathos (without pathology)
                                 can be interpreted negatively?
negative thinking prior to reaching the consolidation
that apathy is, well: most people treat that as
an abnormality.
                     (if i ever wrote a self-help book,
i'd write one like this).
              you go past bulimia, past self-harm,
past all the negative bull and reach a state of apathy,
a non-disconcerted attunement toward feeling:
but you have been chiseling with your thought
at all the unpardonable negativism of your
identifiable physiognomy from genealogical nuance:
you seem to want to replicate an ancestry -
your heart will not tell you to **** yourself:
but find enough automaton curriculum in your
thinking: and your own mind will slothfully entice
you with a thinking sidewinder that aims at the
guillotine, or the gallows.
                   and after all that negative thinking,
you reach apathy, or being without a pathology?
and you feel an emptiness?
             don't expect to be Nepalese -
your ancestry forbids it...
                        you didn't reach a Buddhist apathy,
you didn't start from a zenith: but from a nadir,
tattooed with so many pathologies:
to reach apathy you had to transcend them:
       this is the bit were i say, concerning your heart:
it's a bit like a Cartesian cogito ergo sum moment.
talking about going beyond:
ever think that foundation of ontology is grammatically
based, if not biased?
        i limit this question toward grammatical
categorisation of words...
      primarily? the usual questions:
why are we here?
                       how? (well, that's outdated
'cos we have all the answers and that leverages our
greatest dissatisfaction, even in terms of writing
a new version of Don Quixote, which we can't).
                i devalue grammatical categorisation
altogether, i don't believe in it,
            for example why is categorised as
both adverb and conjunction... to me synonyms
don't exist in grammar, why is therefore only
an adverb...
              how? also an adverb... (ad- + -verb
         toward an action) - thus toward the municipality
of professions: but that's not a moral question.
       why is also an int. (interjection) and n. (noun) -
all it takes is a missing h to completely it as a noun
(unless of course the Oxford dictionary is wrong,
and i'm not Shylock Holmes)...
             what i am focusing on is the word
is, which is grammatically categorised as a conjunction,
and so it is, and so that is, and so this is:
       that's a canvas for me: mirror mirror, on the wall:
who will the the fairest of them all once i stop
asking the question with rose petals in mind being
plucked in that fateful lottery?
                         i don't care why, i already have
a good enough estimate as to how...
                          i base my ontology (nature of being)
upon the is...
                        where there was jungle, there too is
another jungle made of concrete -
and i don't trust the Quran: it makes grammar too
inaccessible, too holy even,
             you tell me the naked truth of the grammar,
i'll put on a ******* Hijab and prance to the tune
of le trio joubran's song masar down a street:
the weeping man of Amsterdam, two German chefs
tripping out on mushrooms while watching
American Dad in a darkened hostel room,
   and an Egyptian architectural student i spent
the afternoon with; otherwise? don't bother.
      and it really is great how is can't be an adverb
and merely a conjunction (well, "merely"),
      there is nothing that requires is to be a limitation,
or a necessary morphing into: toward doing / being
something... everything just, is;
and if it wasn't for Shia Islam you'd get **** all Sufi...
maybe a Falafel kebab, but **** all apart from that.
                    of course i'd side with the ****** Iranians
on this matter...
                                i can't live without music,
for fare game to Faustino Barrientos, but i can't live
without music, and Wahabbism doesn't recognise
music:      never was hearing a camel hart or a
merchant burp or a woman ****** seem so appealing,
and worthy to fight for! (italics for the sarcasm).
do you think that if i clap my hands for a year
i'll hear a minute's worth of Wagner?
                                         (snigger): probably not.

but have you noticed, have you noticed how  all mental health problems
stem form a seemingly aether virus that attacks the pronoun category;
i mean with proper justifiable schizoids you will not hear of the nouns
being ransacked for an equation that equates itself to misnomers;
it's all categorised negation of ease within the framework of pronouns.
it's strange that philosophers stress the pronouns so much these days
and those countless prior, but why do mental health diseases
attack the pronouns and not the nouns? they attack the verbs
thoroughly, but prior to the verbs exposing an illness
the pronouns are attacked, so that many considering the singularity
of expressing thought are ill because of being forced into a plural expression
of thought: "voices." i find it hard to understand, but it's the reality,
the aether virus attacks the pronoun
on the backdrop of a king's casual expression / use
of pronouns, when a king casually says
of himself as omni or multi with one and we respectively;
so why are pronouns so weak and nouns so strong
that a tree cannot be a misnomer attaché of timber
and rock not a pillar, or mountain as the verb: mountaineering?
the pronoun category is weak from day one,
because it suggests photographic duck animation on the lip pursed
into a quack quack, but if we constructed thought
without knowledge prior, eating the fruit of knowledge
rather than the fruit of thought, using the starting point
of the genesis metaphor, it's sometimes a no brainer
to have weak thinking and strength in knowing,
for if there was strength in thinking and weakness in knowing,
i'd be the one chiseling these words in the ice age on a cavern wall.
so, given, that diseases such as the famed premature dementia
attack the pronouns but not the nouns the schizoid one
will convene life with: pizza is pizza and sunshine ray down the drain
clock the millionth dead parting of grasshoppers in decimals -
while man unto man lusts one man's parting in decimals,
but should dire said, part man with integers, and insects with decimals!
but still, in the terminology of a cartesian understanding of illness,
in that segregational aspect of things "sorted,"
why are mental illnesses tattooed in a weak pronoun usage
compared to a strength in other grammatical categories?
why are not mental illnesses ******* the life out of the nouns?
the nouns are intact, the pronouns attacked,
and the verbs chess piece the pawn from the casually speaking clown king
into a beast imprisoned, for while the pronouns are attacked
and the nouns left intact, the attack on pronouns expresses itself
fully in verbs of the never existent tact: with such magic
as to claim knock knock on plank is the same as knock knock on veneer.

I lick the ice from my skin;

for it has remained there

since the moment you left,

and I know I must defrost my

indifference and ambivalence

before you return to my arms.

-

a cold, hard shell

encapsulates my heart

(which once throbbed with

love unquenchable)

and icily creeps steadily

up the walls

& down the corridors

only to stop

& melt

at the site of

my own

selfish,                       steaming,

lamenting,                  seeping,

cave of a dwelling.

-

*Yet still I wait

at the door,

to see who

will arrive with the pick.

Dear Poet Friends, the Sphinx remains shrouded in myth, legend, and History. Modern research by archaeologists and Egyptologists have revealed some of its hidden mysteries. My research has resulted in providing you with a short & a balanced view about the Sphinx, keeping in mind the short attention span of my readers. Unfortunately, I am not able to post the Illustrative photographs here which accompanies my Sphinx story. Hope you like this story, thanks, - Raj Nandy, New Delhi.
            
         THE MYSTERY OF THE EGYPTIAN SPHINX

INTRODUCTION
Towering over the Giza plateau facing the rising sun over the
River Nile,
The Sphinx stands defiant for over four millennia, braving the
vagaries of weather and marauding time!
With a lion’s body and a human head the Sphinx remains
shrouded in part myth, part legend, and ancient History.
While the date of its construction, and identity of its face
have intrigued scholars for many centuries.
Today I shall tell you about this monumental and magnificent
structure,
Which stands as an iconic symbol of Egyptian architecture!
Man fears Time since he forever remains as it’s bonded
prisoner in captivity.
However, only few hours of freedom are granted to him during
his earthly sojourn, to live and love life with impunity!
But Time fears the Pyramid and the Sphinx, as they stand
defiant with their raised head;
As miniature symbols of eternity which even Time dreads!

MYTHS AND LEGEND ABOUT THE SPHINX
Many controversies and theories abound as to the identity
of its builders during ancient times.
Some say it was built by the people who came from Plato’s
lost ‘Continent of Atlantis’, prior to the Egyptians, way back
in time!
Others say it was the ancient Zulus who had inhabited the
wet and rainy Giza region with its great lake.
Around 8000 BC, during the close of the Great Ice Age!
But with changing weather pattern the Giza region later became
a desolate and a deserted area.
Yet no records or hieroglyphs survive, to make things clear.
The name ‘Sphinx’ is said to have been given 2000 years later  
by the enterprising Greeks.
Since in Greek Mythology there is a Sphinx, but with a woman’s
face, a lion’s body and with eagle’s wings;
Which guarded the entrance to the ancient Greek City of Thebes.
To the Greeks we owe the ‘Riddle of the Sphinx’ which asked all
passing travelers the following question:
“What is it that has one voice, and walks with four legs in the
morning, with two during the day, and with three in the evening
time?”  - about which those travelers had no notion!
The Sphinx devoured all those who had failed to answer, till the
Greek Oedipus confronted the Sphinx and replied,
That the riddle had described the three stages of a Man’s life.  
Since he crawled on all four as a child, grew up to walk on two
legs.
But during old age used a stick which became his third leg.
Hearing the correct answer the Sphinx is said to have jumped
into an abyss killing itself!

THE  SPHINX PROPER  
Modern Egyptologists generally agree, that the Sphinx had been
carved out from a single mass of limestone mound, -
Which dominated the Giza plateau before 2540 BC.
Built by Pharaoh Kufu’s son Khafre of the Fourth Dynasty.
Khafre was the builder of the second largest pyramid standing
next to his father’s Great Pyramid of Giza.  
While the Sphinx stands on the eastern most boundary of the
Desert Sahara;
Six miles west of Cairo, on the edge of Giza plateau.
It is 240 feet in length and almost 70 feet in height, aligned to
the Pyramid of Khafre behind.
The Sphinx lies on its hunches guarding the vast ‘City of the Dead’.
Where pharaohs mummified bodies lie deep within the pyramids;
To facilitate journey of their soul to gain eternal life and be
resurrected,
To join the Happy Fields of Osiris the Egyptian God of after-life
and death.

Great conquerors like Alexander and Napoleon had stood
dwarfed before the mighty Sphinx.
But to Napoleon we remain grateful for our knowledge of
Egyptian civilisation among other things.
For it was his soldiers who had discovered the Rosetta Stone
in Egypt in 1799, with its  bilingual inscription.
Written in Egyptian hieroglyphs and Coptic Greek, resulting in
the decipherment of the Ancient Egyptian pictorial inscriptions!

EXCAVATIONS AND RESEARCH WORK
The Sphinx had been buried by the shifting sands of the desert
many a time during past centuries.
While periodic restoration work continues to preserve it for
posterity.
American archeologist Mark Lehner and his team during the 1970s,
had analysed the bedrock under the mighty Sphinx.
They found natural cracks and fissures, and also narrow passage
ways dug by early treasure seekers!
His team climbed all over the Sphinx like Lilliputians over Gulliver, -  while mapping its structure entire.
It was found the Sphinx had been subjected to five major restoration efforts since 1400 BC .
While Mark’s dedicated efforts earned him a Doctorate in Egyptology at the Yale University.

Mark’s research also concluded that the visage of the Sphinx was
once painted in red.
While traces of blue and golden yellow decorated the ‘nemes’, the
Pharaoh’s brightly stripped head dress.
Controversies rage even to this date, as to whose features the
Sphinx’s Negroid face did actually represent.
While the disfigured nose of the Sphinx has given rise to many
speculations.
Was it the Muslim Arab conquerors, or a fanatical Sufi Turk who had tried to destroyed it as a pagan symbol!
Today I recall that the mighty 1700 years’ old statue of the Bamiyan
Buddha in Central Afghanistan.
Which was destroyed during March 2001 as a pagan statue by the
fanatical Taliban!
  
Mark feels that in all likelihood the Sphinx’s face was that of Khafre, with whose pyramid the Sphinx stands aligned.
While those ancient architects had arranged the location of the three pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx in conformity with solar events, - while choosing their construction site.
A settlement bigger than 10 football fields at this site was excavated,
Where the Sphinx formed an integral part of Pharaoh Khafre’s building complex!
This ‘Lost City’ of Mark Lehner had barracks, workmen’s quarters and kitchenette.
While remnants of diets found suggested workers were perhaps
rendering national service, and were not slaves.
No iron or bronze tools were found, only crude stone hammers and
copper chisels lay buried beneath the ground.
These copper chisels had to be sharpened at the charcoal furnace
frequently, for executing chiseling  work with artistry.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE GIZA COMPLEX AREA
Mark Lehner and other Egyptologists felt that the pyramids, Sphinx, and the Temples Complex of Khafre was thoughtfully arranged,
For linking solar events and harnessing the power of the Sun God  
to resurrect the soul of the Pharaohs after their death!
This transformation not only guaranteed eternal life for their dead king,
But also sustained the universal national order, passing of seasons, the annual flooding of the Nile, and their people’s well being.
During sunset at March or September equinoxes when the sun appears to sink into the shoulder of the Sphinx, -
“At the very same moment the shadows of the Sphinx and the pyramids
both symbol of the king becomes merged silhouettes.
Sphinx representing Khafre as Horus the revered falcon god, offers with
his two paws to his father Khufu incarnated as Ra the sun god, who rises
and sets in that temple,” – as the ancient Egyptian’s thought.
Unfortunately  Kafre’s dream was not realised, since the Sphinx Temple remained unfinished as now we get to see,
As the Old Kingdom of Egypt finally broke apart around 2130 BC.
The desert sand began to gradually swallow up the Sphinx, till almost a thousand years later,
Thutmosis IV cleared the area, and introduced cult of Sphinx worship during the New Kingdom Era!
Rest is history, which has been already covered by me.

     CONCLUDING THE SPHINX STORY
The ancient Sphinx as Egypt’s iconic art,
Has captured the onlookers mind and heart.
Buried deep within its shifting sand,
Lies many a secret still unknown to man!
The Sphinx still beckons out to me,
Perhaps one day I shall get to see.
Today the Sphinx stares out at a fast food restaurant.
As it now faces a full frontal urban assault!
The rising water level of the Nile, tourism, traffic, and
air pollution, along with many urban constructions;
Make the authorities to worry about its preservation!
The Sphinx beckons out to man from eons past,
What is that secret it wants to share with us?
Perhaps it is about Environmental Degradation;
And the urgent need for Global Preservation!
                                                   ­        -Raj Nandy
ALL COPYRIGHTS WITH THE AUTHOR ONLY

I.

I wake up, wake up, as if
hearing the solitary leaves fall
in the breeze
in this late night:

Is that you? My pulse,
freezes for a moment.
Or just
a face in the crowd?

Did you not die?
or did I
wish you out of my life?
Is this, a nightmare?
Or just
my fragmented plane?

II.

Come, friend, let me inspect your wounds:
ah, have they healed well!
You have always been
a sort of miracle-worker.

What was the need for all that pain then?

Oh those carefree
days bygone of Nazareth!
Where we learned
to chisel our destiny.
And ran after severed kites floating away
in the dust winds.

What was
his name who we learned
Aleph from?

III.

Oh this pain:
of life, growing out,
growing out
like a sapling out of
a crack crumbling
out of an ancient wall:

do the skies weep out
in commiseration now at our fate?

I hugged an ideal;
and now I am outcasted.
And I am outcasted.

IV.

Do you hang on your
Tesseract
my friend, broadcasting
your assumed pain about
in the four dimensions?

I know them four well.
Three of space
and the fourth, of pain:
pain, concealed, hidden
in our
cursed world of normal dimensions

V.

Who do we change?
Do we change?
Isn't all change death?
Die, die, I die:
Die, friend! Die, Relation!
And now
in the darkness I am awake
counting
the shadows of falling leaves.
Why am I alone
in this deep night? Where kin
mine own? Is that you,
that face, the
face I saw in the crowd?

Did you not die? I heard of it.
Never gathered the courage
to come, see for myself.

VI.

What was
his name who we learned of
Eli and Abraham from?

Time is the eternal sculptor
Chiseling away through centuries
To create innovative masterpieces
Where many facets of life emerge
Bridging the past, present and future
Shaping the moments we dwell in
Where events are scheduled
To display the varied installations
Which cannot be replicated
Recorded in the chronicles of time
When our world will fade away
But time will be there till eternity
Relentlessly sculpting for the future
For, time brings change
And everything changes, except time itself

My auspicious and audacious assault augments the annoyance of aged accomplices.

My bodacious broadside of boffolas berates and buffaloes bros beneficently.

A classy crusade Clownishly chiseling and criticizing childishness.

A devilish ******* of dillydallying dullards; devoutly denying dimwits the dulcet dream of defiance.

Excessive, exuberant edification, ebulliently eliminating education-evictees.

A fair-weather frolic in flippancy with furious fools floundering in flawed foppishness.

Gregariously grating glum guys gleefully, growing grander garnishes of gripping gallantry gaily.

Heckling hooligans highlights my heavenly humor.

Irreverently irking irritable, iniquitous idiots in inestimably infuriating and incredible instances.

A jolly, jocular **** joking with jerks.

A kreiger kicking kleptomaniacs in the karyotype. (Cut me some slack, this is 'k', after all.)

A ludicrous, laughing lambaste of lollygagging lunatics, loftily loosing luscious lunacy on lucky losers.

A magnificent masterpiece of malfeasance, a monstrous, malevolent mission of massive misfortune for the minor minors missing no malicious missive.

A noxious, narcissistic niggling of nitwits, niftily nixing the noisome naivete of niggardly nobs.

An offhand, off-color outburst of outlandish observations to outclass the obnoxious overtures of obsequious offal.

A pragmatic prediction of possible platitudes or platypi, a placid parley of pyrotechnic pleasantries provoking Pyrrhic protections by prurient prats.

A quixotic quibble quarreling with a queer quarry.

Ribald ribbing, ruining the robust reality of the repreachful, repugnant, and rapacious with risque ridiculousness.

A silly, slighting slander of sluglike slavishness, succinctly sinking sloppy simpletons sourly.

Tracing the titillating talent of towing tyranny to towering terrors to tactless, togless, terrapins of the times.

We spend our whole life hoping
that when life gives you lemons
you can make lemonade from them
you spend your whole life learning
how to mix the sugar in
just the way you like
you spend year after year
making up recipes
hoping
praying
that other people will like it
But when you get older
all that learning
and training
and chiseling
to learn how to make
the worlds perfect lemonade
life hands you
an avocado

Dear Sasha,
A war is coming,
I am aware of its gravity and I don’t know if I am ready,
To answer your question in your last letter,
Why do I cut so deep?
It’s because I know how words can cut deeper than any sword,
Don’t give me the ******* that,
“sticks and stones can brake bones and words can never hurt you”
Sticks can snap your bones,
But words can snap your spirit and mind,
And these times are ******* my spirit,

“Time heals all”
but these wounds will take longer
So don’t tell me words don’t affect my life
If someone sits there in your face saying,
Your stupid and irresponsible long enough,
Torturing you constantly with their literary daggers,
You start to believe it,
You start to feel,

As much as I want to shrugged it off,
It weighs me down,
This curse called empathy,
A curse of a pacifist,

I take every word to heart,
And it ****** me off,

I know I am not what they say,
But this name tag on my uniform is all I have left of my identity,
I’m not sure if It’s true,
But I can’t help believe it anyway,

Don’t tell me to shrug it off,
Cause you can’t remove these battle wounds,
If you keep chiseling at this stone pillar it will crumble,
Letting loose my dogs of war,

I cut deep,
Cause I know the strength of words
I follow the golden rule,
So don’t make me use these literary daggers,
to leave lasting marks on your psyche,
Cause trust me I have,
And I can rip apart your world and all of its glory,
Cause I was trained to do so,

Make you doubt your identity,
cause mine was taken,
Cause it’s easy to make my pain…. yours,
But that would be too easy.
I will turn these daggers upon myself,
Because “If you have nothing nice to say don’t say anything at all”
If you are struck down,
You want to strike back,

These words and thoughts don’t just disappear,
These arrows are sharp and drawn,
I have to let them go somewhere,
Ill cut and stab myself before I hurt another,
I’ll take your pain for you,
No matter how much you don’t like me and try to tear me down,
I will not lash out,
I will not strike back,
Because that would make me no better than you,
I will cut myself before I cut you,

I cut myself so deep,
Cause I get over the pain,
The scares stay but the pain doesn’t,
As I finish this letter the anger has already left,

“you’re only as happy as you make yourself out to be”
So I will take the full force of their swords,
because I won’t dwell in the pain,
So I am going to move on from the hate,

So why do I cut myself so deep?,
because I know now I am strong enough to take it,​


Yours truly,
The empathetic warrior

This terribleness. The blur of traffic lights and puddles paints Los Angeles on my face at night. It's so hard to know who will doze in my blind spots. Sunflower seeds and ******* lining the carpet. I sat on the front porch for five hours gutting the wolves from my appendices. Usually the headaches go away with the squashing of the lights. Fluorescents are the worst, halogens second, and 60-watt 120-volt light bulb the bane of my existence. I look at my phone but I cannot summon a quirky 120 character quip. I need excedrin but all I have to grape flavored children's aspirin. I should have asked for the water. How many unfinished glasses of water have I left around this world?
     Maybe Bruce and I will squash after work. I can hear his weekly catalog of two night stands with those married transient women who drive from Santa B. I hate golf, I could have made carried a career in this resentment. Maybe rolling down the window will alleviate some of this pressure. Maybe it's barometric pressure, The Baby is here in time to drag the houses out to sea. It feels like Michelangelo is carving The David in my head and it's the chiseling I've never wanted. It's Tuesday and the drugs were horrible. They killed five of them today. We wrapped their heads in blankets from the Thrifty, and had to have the interns find clothes that would fit for the Christian caskets. Two days until Giving Thanks Day.
     I am wrapped in copper and stuck in amber. I am acquitted by nonsense and stipulation, sick with nausea and pushing my forehead into the steering wheel. This is all terrible. The lying I've never told myself. The people that don't even know it's lying. Her and I always seem to escape with our happiness and pleasure in tow. The odds are slim, but our clothes have never fit too tightly.

I cringe at what I see,
reflected cleanly, though
******, battered and useless.
The breath wasted on
such a life form is quite
simply astronomical;
astounding how pathetic
impressions turn out to be.

Hearts keep aching and
faking, just praying someone
will take heed, take the
lead on the excavation
of that diamond in the rough
that I so clearly see
hovering over the bathroom sink.

If the chiseling and the
scraping doesn't dissolve
the diamond altogether;
if the diamond exists
at all.

And if it doesn't
no great loss, merely
a few chipped tools
and a burdened mirror;
always left to survey
and report upon the
damage of a plummeting
self image reflection.

I've never wanted a rock
to weigh me down, anyway.

Backsliding, broken off the tree
How does one repair an ancient prophecy
Judgment begins with the good
As the wicked wait in scents of wood
And crooked generations cut all hearts
Chiseling salvation is an art
Fiery trial lit by lamps, powered by the sweat of soul
Smile, He only tempts until you lose all control
Sunshine days are over, all that remains is light-
The quest that’s worth a million murdered brides
The holy one is stuck in traffic
As future spawn make a racket
He can’t come back until no one
Mourns his death under the sun
Only then will skies depart-
Bronze mountains, horses stark
Then all the fiends will fall out of the clouds
Like mother’s water breaking on a shroud

stepping back into the west
chills reverberate up and down my spine
chiseling open obsolescent padlocks
dangling with dust
on ancient treasure chests

pallid colors in the attic release
a blossoming familiarity
faint hints of retrospections float on faded paper
granting me access to roads
where no map is needed

as i peruse the streets
my heart flows coalescing with the vicinity
caressing each detail i transform to fluid
and fuse with the past
through fresh strokes of watercolored memories

recollections flash before my eyes
revealing antiquated stories
though thought forgotten
an etched history endeavors to define me
renewing itself as i turn each corner

i shudder at some remembrances while encompassing others
through synchronicity realization hits
that I am all of it
yet none of it
at the same time

familiar faces paint meaning onto me
no longer do they know me
yet they airbrush vestiges of yesteryear
and coat me with connotations
i allow them to think i am whatever they imagine

i morph into their canvas temporarily
then break free in multi-dimensionality
they don't hear me with a new listening
no longer invested in their projections
once sharp triggers now appear in soft focus

an auspicious mist lies around the edges
of my former life
it is as if i never left
yet traces of the east lie sandpapered in me
a maturation commingles with my former self

flushing out on my skin
tethering newfound emotions
a gentle gratitude for home territory
nestles softly
inward

i listen to the clicks
of my scuffed cowboy boots
on acquainted yet somehow distant sidewalks
the echoes layering multiple impressions
glimmering with the utter beauty of this terrain

as I wander through the majestic rocky mountains
drinking in the quaking aspen's crimson edges
interfacing the evergreens
hushed whispers of autumn loftily rest
juxtaposed neatly against futures waiting to unfurl in the wind

an amalgamation of intimate sights and scents
dance in open wounds
dazzling
homesickness cured
a wholeness returned

as winter's crystal dawn blooms
i realize the depth of my growth
for in leaving here and returning
i cherish the west
my home

©2016 janetaylor

If life were a wes Anderson movie
My wallpaper would be faded 70's vintage.
I would live a hard life and love an impossible woman
Who would shower me with misguided affection.

If life were a wes Anderson movie
I would have the knowledge to complete
Completely useless tasks
That would somehow be useful in any given situation,
Like chiseling a canoe out of a solid oak tree
Or weaving a hexagonal basket.
My eyes would constantly be filtered
With a color so vibrant my skin would glow chartreuse yellow.

If life were a Wes Anderson movie
My happiness would exalt and spread to those around me.
My stories would fill pictures and paintings,
My walls covered in obscure posters and murals
that no one really knows the purpose of.

If life were a Wes Anderson movie
Bill Murray would be my father,
Best friend,
And lover.

If life were a Wes Anderson movie
Nobody would understand my purpose
But everyone would love my presence just the same.

If life were a Wes Anderson movie
I would be king and crown those around me my subjects.
My crown would be encrusted with the Latin phrase,
sic transit gloria.
I would be king and grace my subjects with timeless tales of ages past,
of tear soaked laughter.

If life were a Wes Anderson movie
I would be king.

POLAND, France, Judea ran in her veins,
Singing to Paris for bread, singing to Gotham in a fizz at the pop of a bottle's cork.
  
"Won't you come and play wiz me" she sang ... and "I just can't make my eyes behave."
"Higgeldy-Piggeldy," "Papa's Wife," "Follow Me" were plays.
  
Did she wash her feet in a tub of milk? Was a strand of pearls sneaked from her trunk? The newspapers asked.
Cigarettes, tulips, pacing horses, took her name.
  
Twenty years old ... thirty ... forty ...
Forty-five and the doctors fathom nothing, the doctors quarrel, the doctors use silver tubes feeding twenty-four quarts of blood into the veins, the respects of a prize-fighter, a cab driver.
And a little mouth moans: It is easy to die when they are dying so many grand deaths in France.
  
A voice, a shape, gone.
A baby bundle from Warsaw ... legs, torso, head ... on a hotel bed at The Savoy.
The white chiselings of flesh that flung themselves in somersaults, straddles, for packed houses:
A memory, a stage and footlights out, an electric sign on Broadway dark.
  
She belonged to somebody, nobody.
No one man owned her, no ten nor a thousand.
She belonged to many thousand men, lovers of the white chiseling of arms and shoulders, the ivory of a laugh, the bells of song.
  
Railroad brakemen taking trains across Nebraska prairies, lumbermen jaunting in pine and tamarack of the Northwest, stock ranchers in the middle west, mayors of southern cities
Say to their pals and wives now: I see by the papers Anna Held is dead.

reality abruptly removed the veil
  realization mercifully provided the light
a binary being seeking his own level
  attempting to rise to the surface of himself

if peaceful existence is based on choice
  then personal dogma tablets need chiseling
if afterlife is fashioned from belief systems
  then intimate mysteries need conceiving

dialogue of a dress rehearsal for an actual life
  faithlessly hidden within lines of complexity
alliterated ambiguously, expressed equivocally
  setting the stage for reincarnation's passion play

I want to hear you lie to me.
I want to see the sweet syrup of deceit
fall slow and seductive from your quivering lips.
I want to pile these little white lies up on pancakes;
like powdered sugar for a freshly flipped soul.
I want to see your eyes hold firm in deception
chiseling the cold ice of your gaze into cubes
for chilling the sweet drink of my victory.
I love the instant look of
guilt and anticipation;
the bitten bottom lip;
the chest puffed out,
with a breathe of indignation,
for my knowing;
the tear filmed eyes;
the legs rubbing together nervously;
hands run back golden ribbons of hair over perfect ears,
and scratch at angel shoulders
where those wings we lost should still be.
Your adorable when you lie.
Lie.
**Lie me a river.

Splash out a moist printing impression,

Chiseling an angry replica god of clay.

Electric rhythm masticates waste in two.

Captured decay inspired death of poison desire.

Feel morass young essence that makes a masterpiece.

Dazzling black illusions above nefarious comedy,

Evoke dead wood to open an abstract symbol.

Those surreal senses draw a brazen icon to life.

THE STATUE

'Dying is fun! ' you say
'...once you get the hang of it...'

'...& as long as
the pain stays away! '

Your face says ouch
without saying 'Ouch! '

'It adds an extra spice to life
knowing how many minutes there are left! '

'I calculated it  with my solar power
pocket calculator! '

'It seems like you live it twice
as fast...twice as intense

seeing everything
so precise

seeing even
what's.. not...there! '

The pain laughs at your puny efforts
to control it.

'Doc...says a year(at the most)  
maybe a matter of months...weeks! '

'It depends on what the cancer thinks! '
you laugh.

'And to think I'm a Cancerian! '
The pain has not got your sense of humour.

Already I can see it is bored by you
tries to wipe that grin off your face.

It almost...succeeds.

'Seems like I'm nothing now
but this cancer! '

'It's all that anybody can see! '

'Like it's been rubber stamped
on my forehead or something! '

'Well, Mrs. Cancer...'
I swore I heard the doctor say.

'And, all that my friends can see is...my death! '
'They annoy me with their crying! '

'Hello...hell.. o! I'm not dead yet! '
'This ****** cancer has taken on a life

of it's own

tells me what I can or can't do! '
'It's the boss! '

'Now...that there's a limit to it
Time...is precious
can't bear...to waste a minute.. of it! '

'It feels as if the cancer
is a famous sculptor

& labours to create
the shape of my death

bit
by
bit! '

'Seems like it's one of those
ugly modern abstract statues

you know

meaning nothing
with a hole in the middle! '

'And everyday the cancer
chiseling away at it

striving for perfection! '

'I tell the cancer
Oh...get on with it! '

'Get it over with! '

'See...I'm becoming quite the philosopher! '

'Now...get out of here! '

'Stop talking to a dying woman
get out in the sun don't waste
a min-
-ute
of
it! '

I laugh.

You're still so.. you!

You ask me for a favour
before I go.

I scratch your ***
(you can't reach it no more) .

You tell me
'That's the best scratch in all the world! '

I smile tell you
you always had the best *** in the world.

You laugh.
(It...hurts) .

I go

Close the door behind me
on your dying.

Step into brash sunlight
that feels like it's lying.

Two months later your death greets me
disguised as an airmail letter.

I missed your dying by a week ...it seems
I'm in a different country...crying.

A weak sun
shivers in the land

of the living.

From beyond
Death

you write me
a private letter

with handwriting
I wouldn't recognise as yours.

It just says:

'Donall Donall! '
on the envelope.

Inside
(a card)  

a wood engraving
by Eric Gill

the one with Mary Magdalene
covering a crucified Christ with her body

her hair like a river
covering them both.

The handwriting almost broken
only kept alive by your iron will.

'Guess the statue's done
&
Death is no Michelangelo

could have done better myself
but I wasn’t up to it! '

My tears
dissolving your words.

Just when I feel everything seems to be coming together, I take a step back. What do I really funking want? The college idea sounds promising, and I'd be going to learn more about music and advance in that respect. Great. I've been paying on debts for a long time now. I don't mind having little money, but I've literally been working just to pay off school. I've been chiseling away at it, and if I jump to this new school, that amount I owe increases exponentially. Yet, after that 3-year contract, I will have a degree. That degree will help me make money to pay off said debts and then maybe let me live a comfortable life, but right now I don't even know if I am comfortable with the idea. I look at all that I could do in this world (that doesn't require pieces of paper {money/degrees} to assure someone that I am worth something) and I almost feel it'd be more satisfying. I am here on this Earth, to help people. I know this. I would be happy being a nomad, (as I pretty much have been) poor, bringing light into peoples' lives that money can't buy. I moved away to better myself, and I'm growing everyday, but I feel maybe I could be taking myself away from my purpose. I have far too much on my mind to be content with surviving within the confines that we are set to live in to be "successful." The American dream sounds wonderful, but it only exists when we find true happiness. I'm not certain that any one institution or career will give me the peace that I get from the help that I try to provide. I want to be a part of so many movements, I want what's right for the entirety of the planet, but I'm not sure that I would be accomplishing that. I want to grow spiritually, first and foremost, and help others heal and grow too. It makes me uncomfortable to be pushed into such heavy obligation decision making processes if I don't even know if it will make me happy. Of course, this stems from me being unhappy in the present moment, but there has to be a reason for all this.

I think part of this is, I am not simply here, to help myself. I have so much care invested into the universe and all living things that I can't simply focus on myself. I have to be out there, here, India, anywhere, helping. Helping people helps me. Before I really wanted to be a musician, at a young age I wanted to be the person that talks to others as they lay on a couch so I can help them get through emotional and spiritual barriers, to beat their demons and grow to infinity and beyond. But I always feel like there is far more that I could be doing. I've never really felt anything I've done was ever enough, so maybe this is my way of protecting myself and others from let downs. I gleamed with excitement, just hours ago. Only to realize that, I don't know. The only promise I feel we have and can make, is that we're here now. Maybe sometimes we aren't though, because part of what some of us live in is a self-induced fantasy. I'm blessed for all I've been through, and all I have...yet I seem to have, grown weary of a path that has presented itself. When I know what's right, I will go full speed ahead putting all of me into it. There's this thing we made up called time though, it's those measurements that hurt, and can create panic. I live for moments, but in this moment I am at a loss.

A wonderful person very recently asked me, what my biggest fear is, and I couldn't give a definitive answer for her, but ultimately I guess it's not leaving my mark enough. Ego aside, I am here to make this place better for all of humanity, and I don't know if these choices will aid in that, especially since we can't even guarantee tomorrow. Maybe not knowing is the beauty of it all, but maybe this is exactly what I needed right now.

In this moment I will call it a midlife crisis. I can say that too, because no one knows how much "time" we have.

I'm out of here though, spending time and money. I hope whatever course you take, that you're happy...truly. I care about all of you, and will be there when you need me, in this existence or the next. I have much excitement for what's beyond the world we know...but this current one, currently is tearing me in multiple directions, as it has before. I know I will be okay and find my way. My mind was just too heavy, to keep to myself this time.

You're breaking my heart—
chiseling it away with your tongue.
If only it could've been my tongue
cause i'm tired of the taste
of false hope and love.

so many wise sayings of the philosophers, so many maxims noted, and none, none, making it to a tombstone engraving chiseled missing curves of the ten epitaphs of sinai. so you know why the chinese were left budding atheistic, no pictorial with the chisel, but that's why the comic book district emerged there for a mango baton perfect slouch or slurry *****: ****** that *** and ***** in, i went to the classical gallery for the monkey, came out and wondered by the zoological a theology, it was all very strangely slow motion. but imagine chiseling some chinese pictorial into a grave, no wonder the chinese were not ousted with that diabolical proof of failure exposing a people to so many varying non-pictorial representations of the lip tongue and teeth – but as the title suggests… if nietzsche’s motto ‘god is dead’ is really true, then those ten commandments are really just ten epitaphs, and i don’t know who really died on the cross.*

being me, i'm no o'toole, or a richard harris,
my hell-raising stems from
the silence of bookworms gnashing on ink folds,
it's silent, it's "deadly," it's the sort of hell-raising
that accepts the nervous temple tension
of knocking with full blossom of the cracking knuckle;
and when i tell them i put a schizoid
element into my acquisition of the english language
they call my spiritual experience psychosis,
and when i tell them i was almost murdered
they tell me i'm depressed... and then?
o czym ty mówisz, ty głąbie kapusty?
because back "home" my prophetic honour is curbed
by my palette for beer being dębowe prior,
that's at 7%, and not a carlsberg: probably the
best ***** **** in the world;
unlike jesus enjoying all the fun in egypt and not
in babylon from where the magi came,
with old "rabbi" joseph telling him: go back to judea
and mingle with your people, remember what
the egyptians did to us, you dishonourable ******.
and so jesus went back, and the greeks wrote a translation,
while the romans bowed seeing some weather shamanism;
only yesterday it was raining buckets of rippling toads,
i concerned myself with wet clothes in the attempt to
***** up, said it would stop, turned an hour into a minute
and the rains stopped, notorious b.i.g. that isn't an acronym,
only notoriously f.a.t. (remember, the meaning
is in the subconscious, in consciousness the meaning
is scrambled egg & morse & braille).
by way of conclusion - exploring the man masquerading
before his mother, is in no way an assurance
of an abundant biography to testify with saliva juices
of conversation - unless the delusional irony is that
even though i'm not trying to get myself noticed,
i'm also not deluded to the point of not having existed;
but the chinese are safe though, complex pictorial phoneticism,
the latin alphabet took to strain, people went mad,
really wanted to see shaved baboon heads through
the googgles of emptied space after c. columbus
architected the jamaican slum boulevard; or maybe haiti suburbia,
whichever, the world grew smaller, and the universe expanded
disproportionately... on the telly!

I walk aimless, but alert, down moon washed streets
In the twilight, I strain to tell patron from vagrant
A coalescing of something at once ageless, but fading
Like the stone of this courthouse; pillars of justice
Cracked quietly by the steady chiseling of time
On forgotten foundations

In the air rests a stench of contempt, or neglect
Like an oil stain, thickening turquoise waves
To a sickening ooze, of endless, crashing degradation
A nation of people, betrothed to suitors unknown
The power of a dollar hedged against the weight of your soul
Where pockets are plump, and virtue is sold

So i have this some kind of past..
I spend most days crawling away from.
Most days, shoving the sound back
Down below my rusting throat,
Past my blackened lungs,
Behind my rotting ribcage.
Here lies its den.
Back into the deepest reaches of a
Cavern somewhere below my belly button.
Here lies its den.
Here resides the demon.
Born of dark corners asleep on the floor,
**** mouthed mothers, fathers,
Shaking words through their jagged teeth,
A mile a minute,
Too much speed for this babygirl mind.
Born of dark couches
The only light some type of grey-cloud
Frenzy on playback from the television.
And some girl is crying for mommy to come home.
Some days this little girl face is so distorted,
I forget that little girl is me.
Born of dark streets with concrete arms
To hold me.
As I am sending my tuck me in prayers
To the God who has let me become this...
Homeless.
And I am hiding all of this
Behind rotting ribcages
A darkness, chiseling its way out
I can't I won't
I can't can't let them see.
Every new face I am pushing this down
Farther
Harder
And it is SCREAMING louder.
Please!
SHUT THE **** UP.
.. I cannot let you out.
Here lies its den.
Some days it swells so swift
I feel it brimming at the specks of my eyes,
Pushing black ink from my pupils,
And I fear they might see it, pulsing.
This ugliness born of dark bedrooms,
Where the only sound, an opening door,
A sliding lock
faster than the closest gunshot,
It scrapes up your cowering spine.
Never have the hands of a sixty-year old man
Left so many fingered scars across my
Six year old body.
Some days this face seems so distorted
And then I remember
Some foreign, horrid tasting word,
Leaving desert sandstorms in my mouth..
Grandfather.
Here lies its den.
Heavy is the thick of its mane
Rought with iron roots,
Haunting with eyes of mercury,
Spurring an oncoming
Hurricane season,
I shall be torn from the inside out,
The darkness seeping out thicker
Than the rush of blood.
Exposed to the ***** eyes like ***** hands,
Stained by the unclean places we have become.
Disintegrating more tragedy than
The carved stone walls of Greece itself.
Give me sanctuary,
Yet when Evil holds its nest from within you,
No pearly white gates
Bask open arms
To hold you.
So here I've got sin,
Or sin's got me,
Planting seeds behind my rotting ribcage
From even the first of days I can remember.
So here I stand
With this some kind of past
Bursting from me,
From my torn apart seems.
And Now,
Now the ugly eyes of the world have seen..
Here lies its den.

I am a silent monstrosity in the heavy and deep belly of the earth
I sit, carving my teeth out with
Nail clippers, chiseling bone like soap
I melt through my tongue with acetone
Like wax
Like wax, I am, like wax
Still and dripping, falling faces and hiding places in the darkest parts of museum floorboards

Leave me out in the dark
I'm not your playground of destruction
that you run to during your recess.

chiseling the grass,
sharp as sickles.
thrashing your leather whip
on the dusty ground
with an unerasable frown.

Strangling it around
the rusty bridles
of my broken swingset,
ripping it out from root down
at the twitch of your wrist.
Straddling my worn out see-saw
imbalanced by the wreckage of time
prance around until it
shatters into a million steel slivers,
While your hair brushes the clouds
while you have the first taste of rain
and feel the chill of snowflakes against your skin.

But this playground,
this zealous monument,
was built for
a higher purpose.
It's a place where
streams overflow,
wildflowers grow,
solace to the fireflies afterglow
& poetry readings during
seasons of snow.

If it does not stand for it's purpose,
my trembling hands will flick
a matchstick on the the wick of the trial
to arsonate it's submissiveness
and eat it's dispossessed soul.
It's flames will touch the
cradle of the crescent moon.
And from the ashes

I will rise,
*the Undying Light,
the Untouchable Night.

He once asked me
Was I just merely chiseling stone?
Or building a cathedral?
And to this day
I’ve seen life
In its most elevated grandeur
Because that’s what it is.
I just never looked up
At what I was creating.

I haven’t looked down since.

Just Days Before XMAS

I’m up on a Sunday morning so early that only the church goers are out on Spruce St. But I do not believe. I’m not singing along with my favorite songs. I don’t know that they are still my favorites.

I’m ******* onto faces that aren’t there. Don’t remember throwing that desk through that wall. Don’t remember being that strong. Ever. I do remember wanting to see you **** her last night. I’m sorry.

I see people chiseling off the glaze of morning-ice from their shiny, leathery luxuries. Mine’s from my ***** hair I napped too long outside. I ask them if they would like my help. “Excuse me sir, my mind’s not right (I’m in a bad place [right now]).”

I get home to sleep in a fortification that I don’t know. Surrounded by people that I’m even less familiar with. And I wonder why I didn’t crash my car going 400mph. into the back of that electric trolley that looked more like a nostalgic toy than something to ride upon. Look at me: I drive a V6.

I sleep until I am ***** again. Not hungry, *****. I **** myself with  a grip that borderline feels like yours

I wake up so late on a Sunday afternoon that I couldn’t possibly call myself a football fan. I love the Dolphins.

To those who may ask, how are you? My answer is none to simple. Like an ocean I may say. For I too am filled with currents. Waves flow freely upon my surface. Underneath I have icy depths and the warm inviting shallows. I too am ruled by tides. The pull me back and forth between extremes. Dragging me to the whim of the earth and fate. Flashing between sadness and depression. Loneliness. Anger, to the other end, gods euphoria. Joy, happiness and optimism. And as any ocean does, it too carves out parts of me. Chiseling away at my edges. Wearing me down. Only to bring new sands to my shore and once again rebuild. That is how I am.

Absence does something to the heart,
and while you were gone,
I balanced its workings
against my forgetfulness,
lest the soft drumming memories
in my burdened chest be drilled
away as angry metal to concrete,
replete with the chiseling
of your exit.

Absence does something to the heart,
and while you were gone,
its hold would conjure the best
days against the soft rays
of sparkling hindsight,
melting away the stony corridor
lining the path between
yesterday’s reminiscent smile
and today’s familiar hurt.

Absence fondled my aching heart
while you were gone,
making a home in its chambers,
settling, cleaning, applying time
to bandage the tissue
needing healing,
and the something it did for me,
made me fonder of the freedom
you threw at my feet
once you were gone.

he runs not for the finish line
for he knows the setting sun is
only a melting chat between dark and light
between dreamy sleep and wakeful flight

his eyes tell a tale not of what he has seen
but of what lives in the space between
what can be and what cannot
and what can be sensed, but not taught

when we speak to him of earthly ways
and our conscious counting of finite days
his eyes can only partially conceal
what dreams we are about to steal

our chiseling chatter is meant to teach
but his drifting dreams are beyond our reach
and one day soon he will slowly awake
to the sorrowful sound we are forced to make
when we cunningly convince him his race must end
and that all his dreamy glory was just pretend