I hear voices in my head that guide my actions. I'm not crazy, I just like knowing somebody agrees with me.
Around the age of 10, these voices came to me in an attempt to make me forget about all my struggles. They were there through the thin of my lips to the thick of my Gluteus and stayed ever-present through the first feelings the spark of love.
And once that spark was extinguished and I began to shame my body, my voices calmed me and quelled the rising need to escape the gloom. They told jokes. And I laughed heartily, kissing my palm and placing it to my forehead as an offer of complete infatuation with the voices.
But it didn't remain that way. We began to argue in my mind, shifting my action into chaos as I began to realize that my brain had become a cave harboring a snake like a zoo. So I stopped listening.
I didn't want to hear them anymore, I wanted them to shut up.
But they never did.
At times, they would get very quiet just to yell at a rate to leave ringing in my ears, and I would cry at their pains.
By mid-puberty, I had grown accustomed to these shouts. I had even learned to ignore them. And most of the loud voices began to disappear.
But One remained, a single cage to my canary. A bite to my jugular and a constant reminder of the sickness I claimed in my mind.
He only came around when I was upset, and he’d always etch me into actions so regrettable that he didn’t realize affected him as well.
He wanted me to die.
For years I combatted him, cursing him into a withdrawal but then speaking up a weakness that would inspire his powerful words and presence again. Oh how mighty his power over me was.
His very voice sent chills through my spine and blood rushing through my veins. His tone turned my blackened skinned the color of used, sopping wet coffee grinds. The bite present in every consonant he uttered made my ears pop with unease as if the pressure grew under my eyelids.
He was my demon.
After my second attempt at love had fizzled he had been the one to tell me to slash that tire. He was the reason I bit Jamea’s lip and drew the taste of rich blood to my tongue hungrily as if vampiric. He was the reason I spent so many nights up crying in fear as I would chant “What’s happening” or “what am I doing”… or “why am I still here”
His counsel became sadistically acceptable, nearly sexually desired to me as the depth of his voice boomed with close proximity to my heart. I could feel the warmth of my body grip the chill of the air and I’d chuckle like a school girl.
This became my reality, a bubble of sadism sautéed with fear and drenched in disgust. He would addict me to the taste of blood, the color of death. He would introduce me to the feeling of pain and the emotion of anguish.
And I began to love it. I would press pen tips to my skin and draw the sweet nectar of my essence.

Of course, no one understands me. They say I need help.
Maybe they’re right
But every time my mind becomes aware of the hold from him, he soothes me with box cutters and cuddles in the warmth of my skin’s openings.
I’m in love with his deception and his truth. I love the life he has given me and never again will I complain when I hear
the voices

Why do you write?
Who makes the rules?
Epileptic spoon bite
Hand fed by fools

What is the Meaning?
Looking forward to more?
Another movie screening
Brief Escape from the war

The straits are quite dire
combatted with a laugh
Pearly Gates we aspire
Who's running the staff

Inevitable tears shall escape your orbitals with either joy or sadness
Look out your soul windows and decide amidst the stormy madness

The grey
Weeping hill breathes heavy for
A winter cloud

Inside heated houses
Your hair rests just behind your shoulders,
Tucked around the ear for safe measure while
The cold hill looks for its instrument

Every garden has been paved for gasoline structures
The mighty rose has
Collapsed

I and you
Clean the kitchen metal repeatedly

Where is the song to
Be hymned from
Your desolate crow eyed hill

It finds the instrument beneath frozen soil
Where a pure oak grows for
April perils

We recite lullabies to Angels already woken
& write pollen poems for the white and trepid wood

Rats feel holy in New York where a carnival of stone encircles their tufts

******* glimpsed in the crack of
Yellow blinds
a versed blonde will recount across the street
Somethin' out of "Rear Window"
Minus the broken leg

"Romanticism is the emphasized or passionately overblown image or feeling in art or as emotional expression. Romantic art emphasizes reality and attempts at imitating the divine. We have idealized love as being more than it is as a means to cope with the reality in which love isnt as special as we have blown it up to be-

-this unreachable expectation we place on the human experience is combatted by the romantic which broadens our distance between the reality of our perceptions and experiences VS the romantic ideal. It draws attention to its own lacking"
-
This is the palace for naked ghosts.

   A time of enticement has passed
   To make room for Dadaism
       & a lackluser sensibility for medicine instructions
       I have become haunted and naive
       With frequent prophetic snapshot dreams
       Detailing crimson hotels where the hardwood floor is sinking with rot
       & past loves appear and try to
       Converse with me as my legs shake
      
       The kaleidoscopic halls sweat with
       An earthly pressure
      
"I wanted to apologize for hurting you"

"I appreciate that dear but we are sinking
We need to go"

"No no listen to me!"

(Here come the saxophones
And rhapsodic lights tearing this noctuary down)

She has left
     We are causing the silence
    
(tragedy is the divine and enamoured image)

Another flash of color underside of
The stairwell in my hotel

(DREAM #2)

A neighborhood follows itself quietly
With garage sales & sleeping cupids,
A man drives down the sky
With his dog on his lap smiling, carrier in the backseat

& piano is reintroduced just in time for the post office to go on strike

..And I took to violet rooms with perplexing
Polka dotted floors & black and white &
worn-down coffee table & I have a headache & someone smells like karaoke sounds/

The sunset company thru the window is
A nice arrangement despite this,
Frank O'Hara is reading Ode to Joy in my head.

.............

-as being sensual, orgiastic and purely relating to the destruction of the self as means to experience a complete lack of individuation. A loss of reality and a more cosmic and expansive transcendentalism, experienced without the desire to have more than itself. Its a state of being which exists outside of the longing for something better
(relating to "The Birth of Tragedy")

...........

(DREAM #3)

Exotic spaces
With several
simultaneous heart attacks

The ambulance is late

A harp is one floor below us

It doesn't matter now

Do not worry for the director of
This scene has also died

      A valley of copious harmonials
      Waits for us
      
      The feeling is easy


...........

Suddenly
I am sprouting from the icy hilltop
Instrument in hand
We can stop with our obsession for cleanliness

I am unsure whether I am still asleep

"Share the complete pleasure in mere appearance and in seeing, yet at the same time he negates this pleasure and finds a still higher satisfaction in the destruction of the visible world of mere appearance"

The philosopher's essays continue !

Day's intensity
thrills the valley to living
Without wine or prayer

I can swallow a raindrop & laugh
Having never desired the silence
Of dust
                      Here we dance in Dionysian
                      Ecstasy
                      Jewelled with feathers
                      Untouched


It's okay to be afraid of snow
And thank you/
We are all elusive at heart

But how can I see if there's too much smoke?* she pleaded, latching onto my arms with thorny tenacity.
How can you complain when you create that smoke yourself? I combatted question with question, ******* snow into the grey nosy wisps.
It's your fault. Liquid roses dripped to the snow.
Steam kissed the smoke.
**I know.

Combatted weaknesses persist as
Weary souls claim to be forever bright,
Yet the omnipresent setting sun
Claims a forthcoming night.
The inescapable cycle of the sky
From color unto ingenious fright,
Prove that with the sun's endless rays
There does not always come light.

No distance too far
No journey too dark
Love can not be separated
It's a quest I must embark
A women's heart is a precious gem.
One whose value is unknown.
Worth more than one can offer
No amount of care can be successfully shown
Women are the best gift to the earth
Masterpieces of nature, divinely crafted.
Blessings to all mankind.
Their beauty can not be combatted.

These days, sleep feels like a dream. The reality of you keeps me awake.

I'm combatted by the ultimatum between the love of life and life filled with love. The more I live, I learn you can't have both or enough.
"I constantly have to share the world with you." You murmur through drunk lips, tears in your eyes, cheek bones begging for a smile, "I love you because of this and I'll lose you for it." It wasn't long before you let me go. Why did you let me go?

I hope one day someone like you will fight for me like I fight for the world. I hope one day someone like you will step aside while I chase the sun, and know that when the light turns black my instinct is to turn around and look back. I hope someday someone won't leave before all has begun to lack.

The future is empty as space. I believe this only because I don't know any different. We chase for what is unknown so we can fill it. That void. All the while forgetting the past is what kept us full, what made us whole.

Life is bottomless and I'm just trying to find somewhere to land.
My desire was the sky, my ego knows, and my comfort is your soft grounded hand I fell into to take its blows.

These days, sleep feels like a dream. The reality of this keeps me awake.

4.
Your love reaches me.
I know you feel how I feel.
Splayed o’er me, trapping me, pulling my arms above my head.
Holding me exactly where you want me to be, I feel safe.
It excites me beyond belief to feel as if it really is possible.
Your sporadic kisses became more frequent, closer to my mouth.
I keep expecting to be surprised.
I know you wouldn’t [kiss me] without asking, but I know you’d never ask.
I readjust and your innate fear of my leaving must be combatted.
Your body weight keeps me where I am, keeps me in your arms.
I wanted so badly for you to be mine.
I hadn’t considered what it meant to be yours.
I no longer want to have for me, I want to be for you.

For you the person that gave me life
I trust in you to keep me safe by your side
Did I truly know you
I was a simple child with fears
You dreamt of more than I realised
You pushed me away into others arms
You never truly believed in me
I tried I really tried
Combatted my insecurities making it to the top
Leaving those friends so important to me
I clutched to everything meaning worthwhile
But now the news is bad
And I don’t have any feelings
No pity or words of worth can be said
The pain that has swirled for many years
Bad words of anger and disgust
All to them this common distract
Cold feelings of inadequacies this pain no more
Trailing in my minds force
Tumbling around leaving me suffer
For how long will it last
You become frail and aged
You hang onto every word wondering what could be
But now your hate can disappear for you to keep going
You travel this tunnel of exploration
Starting to live a life more worthy
Looking into this crystal glass I see your eyes
Casting this spell on your loved ones
The ones that long for your love and support
This battle has been won time to give up.

The idea of Friendship Day originated
in the United States in 1919,
proposed by Joyce Hall,
the founder of Hallmark cards.

It gained official recognition
when the U.S. Congress
proclaimed the first Sunday
of August as National Friendship Day in 1935.

Unlike this papa akin
to being racked, raided,
and raked with hot coals
during his adolescence devoid of
a social network and academic goals
if possible to magnify
psyche, one would see
mostly a torn (Turin) shred of holes.

Thy youngest (of deux) daughters
afflicted with developmental delay
did not overtly agitate
as much as myself, asper being
emotionally isolated, a miserable fate,
she participated with
supportive services how grate
full (this once psychologically dead papa),
progeny of his did not experience
chronic severe hate
Shana (Punim) blessed by fate

while a Lower Merion
High School student did great
fully experienced positive
munificent interpersonal bounty,
she didst illustrate
with smiles all around her countenance,
which sophomore socialization better late
than never, which friendlessness
(that didst plague this papa),
thee progeny didst obviate
thus, this poem

(to no one in particular),
expresses how I appreciate
the plethora of supportive
services, to ameliorate
bugaboo sans inferiority complex,
(ran rampant within self)
where mine imaginary
pals did commiserate
nevertheless, aye envy thine
woefully begotten Harris heiresses,
whose self esteem positively

of mine bolstered,
when as little girls
their needs and wants gave me purpose
ensure ring a confidential boost,
and now doth demonstrate
how remedial, and extracurricular activities
during and after class respectively,
combatted cognitive delay,
warding off bullies,
who did grate, humiliate
and interrogate, this middle aged
(he's a jolly good) fellow,

Johnny come late
lee to the "NON FAKE"
thrown into game of life
changing strengthened soul asylum
primary, secondary, and tertiary grades
where whipsawed,
pejoratively emasculated, jackknifed,
oppressed, traumatized, and yoked  
hoary golem, unstintingly
bruiting, browbeating
and bamboozling gremlins
wrought zealous destruction.