musings of a kook surfer
(kook: 1. Dork. 2. A new or inexperienced surfer. 3. Someone who says they surf but they can't.(waxboy)

Logic and Perspective  (a poem)

Quantum Imagination Rules.
What-Ifs equal What-Is
in this, a shared creation.

If         we are surrounded by what we can see,
            what we see is what we are;
Then   matter is perception of resistance,
            time is the persistence of opposites,
And    space is an Electric Universe;
            not lonely nuclear fires,
            but Twin Ribbons of infinite energy
            traveling through plasma that unites all.

The Earth
        a wonder of positive and negative,
        not solid,
        is the infinite slowed into harmony.
The Sun
        a focus of resistance,
        not burning out,
        Burns In.

No small coincidence that
equals means is
You Are and
You See so
I am and
                  
You are, you see, the I Am
...


No Chance for Chance  (a poem)

What is Serendipity?
Seen miraculous,
Some thing done there,
Something done.

What isn't Serendipity?
The unseen miraculous.
What miracles undone,
in time
in time,
as it never happened.

Everything?
Nothing?

It cannot be a good thing-
Fortunate for you is
lost fortune for who...
Self-fulfilling for Jungian prophecy
or prophecy fulfilled for Schrodinger's Cat.

It cannot be a bad thing-
In agreement
with yes...
Self-fulfilling for Jungian prophecy
or prophecy fulfilled for Schrodinger's Cat.

I think,
so I think I am caught between
a wave and a particle.

….

Between Worlds

Never turn your back on the ocean – the mantra of the surfer in my thoughts as I continuously scan the horizon.  There is just enough time to position for a wave; decide to paddle left or right or quickly further out to avoid the random pummel of a looming larger wave.  Between sets, the water gently bobs me floating half submerged.  Staring introspectively at the water, I am learning to interpret ribbons of upward-turning sparkles in the distance.

Dawn is an hour away; visibility is dim but gradually lifting.  Morning’s light is so flat and the water’s glassy surface so smooth that anticipating incoming waves becomes almost a matter of intuition.  The illusion of separateness from creation is breaking down.  The water is almost chilly, but still comforting. I forgo a rash-guard; the subsequent chest irritation from surfboard wax is a small exchange to feel immersed in the ocean.  The bay feels intimate yet expansive with only two other meditative surfers in the distance. Turtles swirl the water, heads straining up for a peek and a breath.  Sometimes they turn their shells so their fins feel the air; they keep three of us wanna-be-ocean-dwellers company.

Yesterday a southern Kona wind brings volcanic-smog from Kīlauea.   Vog is high in CO2 and fumes, giving sensitive people muddle-headedness, lethargy, and sore throat-  a reminder this is Pele's paradise.  This muting velvet feels almost smothering to the horizon.  Is it fog?  Yet a glance behind verifies the ***** of Mt. Haleakala is visible, from the shore to the cloud blanketing the world above the 10,000' peak.   Hale means "house" and the rest can mean either "of the sun", or "of a special raspberry-like flower". Either way the mountain was pulled from the ocean by Maui while he was roping the sun from the sky.  Usually, from this place in the sea, sunrise begins with a torch-like beacon of illuminated mist right over the peak, flaming brighter in the turquoise sky just as the sun coronas into a brilliant gold spotlight over the bay.  Yet this morning waiting for dawn, islands, water, and sky are all various shades of hushed mainland gray.

Half submerged and floating quietly, my back is to the mountain and I face the close but unusually shrouded island Kaho'olawe. It was callously blasted to a streaked surface of wind-blown dust by a military just for "training".  Recently reclaimed for pono, it represents the hope of nurturing a senselessly abused, irrevocably lost paradise. To my right is far-off Lana'i; to my left is Molokini, the sharp half rim of an ancient crater barely rising above the water's surface.

The world suddenly wakes, shedding gray. The sky's far reaching dome overhead intensifies, glowing in layers of rose, red, fuschia. The atmosphere I’m breathing becomes thickly permeated with color, as if one could breath lavendar-orange.

What planet am I on?

It feels so foreign, time stops.  The two other surfers are still as well, dwarfed by distance, and I am alone. Tiny in this red expanse, I become quietly centered.   I turn to see Haleakala where the sun is yet to rise, awed to distraction, forgetting incoming swells.  A bright sun smoked crimson is hidden behind the peak, shining horizontally through what I imagine to be some opening at the horizon.  Illuminated ridged undersides of the high clouds are streaked neon red to half the sky.  The atmosphere is hushed over the still water, the tangible copper light presses down, infuses everything.  It feels disarming yet comforting and surreal, floating surrendered to this other-world light; sky to water, horizon to vast horizon, the calm apocalypse the turtles and Kaho'olawe have been praying for.

It's that hour again,
guilt sets in
because I am
awake.

Insomnia seems to be my only ally
lately,
comforting me with her consistency
like an old lover.

I feel safe here in my lonely cocoon,
here in my head
here in my heart,
again.

This unexpected world is
of my own making,
that's a hard pill to
swallow.

Spent from wrestling demons
and
waiting for a silver lining,
endless hope
dying.

If someone knows the code
or can cut my cord,
would you please indulge me
kindly?

To:  A Flaming Heart
            Of the Hedonistic School

From:  A Slow-Burn Refugee
                Of the Broken-Back-Pack-Mule

                        ¤¤¤

I've had dreams by day
That brought the nightmares back.
?In the daylights exposure it was dark  
When the negative light was bright.

In the sea of people
I was the floating remains
Of a Great White's meal. 
On the lonely roads of thought

My mind was in gridlock.
Comforting memories were suspended
Over a psychic black hole
By jagged and rusted

Medieval-type surgical tools.
My remaining senses
Were nailed to a cross-section
Of psychically atrophied grey matter

Along neural pathways
Guarded by gladiator-type tormentors
Left with nothing
But the stinging desire to be freed

From a curse that had to be cured
And the hell of searching for a cure
When I was convinced there wasn’t one.
The powers that be come with force

To quell primal lusts & desires
Forbidding you of them
As they seductively
Dangle them before your eyes
  
Until you are so frustrated and unfulfilled
That you no longer
Care for your world.  
This cracked glass remains empty

Even though it is constantly being filled
Then spilled or leaked on the floor
Until you learn to lap it up
Like the lapdog that you have become

For their amusement.
You remain with a love for freedom  
But your cage is so large 
That you think you are free

Lost in societal fantasy.
You think for a while
That these fantasies are real   
Until you come to your senses that aren’t

As you join other fools
In comfort that you're not the only
Broken-back pack-mule. 
But in spite of it all

And in the face of them all
Don't let these birds of prey                                                          
An­d powers that be
Deprive you of what they can't see

In that hidden corner
Of what is still untouched--
The real you
Uninfected by the world.  

Take care of your spiritual affairs.
Don't let the global beast
And your primal hissing forces
Make you be your own pallbearer.

--Daniel Irwin Tucker

Loneliness.
What is it?
It is a concept we so rarely describe in detail.
We've made up a specific word for it-
Three little syllables-
Just so that we can say it and be done with it,
And escape the contemplation.
But I know my own loneliness cannot be captured,
Cannot be encompassed,
By merely the word.
What is loneliness?
It comes in all shapes and sizes,
A space,
A lack,
That can be big or small,
Sudden or excruciatingly slow,
Sharp or fuzzy at the edges.
Hell,
It can even be comforting.
What is it about loneliness that is so insidious?
Harder to rid yourself of than fear
Or anger
Or even such tricky, barbed things as doubt
Or hope,
That stick.
Loneliness doesn't stick.
It seeps.
Steeps.
You stew in it.
It is beginning to occur to me that I don't believe,
Once one realizes loneliness for the first time,
That one is ever truly rid of it again,
Even for a second.
I think it is a permanence that we as a race refuse to acknowledge most of the time.
Some forms of lonely are fairly benign-
The little tingle on the edges of you, when you are home alone and the house is silent,
And for no apparent reason at all-
No sadness, no fear, no thought that is particularly unpleasant that you must drown out-
You nonetheless feel the compulsion to switch on the television
Even if you won't watch,
Just to break the stillness with a human voice besides your own.
Then there are the darker types, the truly ensnaring ones,
The lonelinesses born of the memory of times when,
Perhaps, you were less lonely,
Or even thought that you had flushed the feeling from your soul entirely.
Loneliness is an otherness,
An alien thing that lives in your heart,
That makes you question whether there is anyone out there who would have you
If they knew
What was on the inside.
There is the type of loneliness that creeps up on you and follows nipping at your heels like a shadow on the pavement as you move through your day,
Reminding you, whispering in your ear that here you felt less alone, and there, and that those places are full now,
Of emptiness,
Because those times have passed and not had the courtesy to clean up their cobwebs-
Memories linger in certain little spots, and collect like dust little pockets of loneliness that grab you all of a sudden,
The way forgotten spiderwebs stick in your hair as you move through an old house.
This type is jarring, disturbing, and
Afterwards I always feel the desperate need to wash away the feeling,
Scrub myself down.
There is the breed of loneliness that is a bit more genteel,
And curls cold at your feet like a well trained dog,
Formal and subtle, but constant,
Watching.
This is the sort that makes you feel just somewhat hunted,
When you try to sit in silence by a fire at night in your living room
And find that you must read a book to drive the stillness from your head.
There is the truly hollow kind,
The kind that has no courtesy whatsoever,
And actually slithers into you, inhabiting your heart and stomach and bones
As you try to fall asleep
With ice.
It is this kind that, if it is strong enough
(and you are weak enough)
For it to remain until morning
Forbids even the smallest human touch-
Every gesture of tenderness from another person
Makes this loneliness increase,
Every embrace, every handshake, every accidental contact of skin
Becomes unbearable,
And the afflicted shies away,
Perpetuating a cycle of vicious disconnection.
They all leave a little something cold, even when they recede,
In the core of you, that won't be dislodged no matter what you try.
Loneliness,
Like a cancer,
Can only be considered in remission,
And never truly cured.
For when given room to prosper even for the space of a second it expands and swallows up your thoughts
Until they whither with frostbite.
I suppose I shouldn't be shocked-
As humans we live side by side, arms linked with
Most of the things that will eventually **** us,
What's one more, cozying up inside our skulls,
Inside our hearts?
We have a partnership-
An entirely human concept-
With all that destroys us.
And so we live with out loneliness, like a second shadow.
What is loneliness?
I am still unsure.
I can only describe what loneliness does,
Not what it is.
*I think that maybe to understand it
Would be to die of it.

Hands are for healing,
Alleviating, soothing,
Balms for calming,
Gently restoring,
Curative hands,
From many lands,
To salve and ease,
Free remedies,
Hands for comforting,
Hands are for healing.

A thousand peaks: no more birds in flight.
Ten thousand paths: all trace of people gone.

In a lone boat, rain cloak and hat of reeds.
An old man’s fishing the cold river snow.

I am alone in this mountain fastness, on a steep downward path in the deepest shadow. I play with the twelve characters of Lui Tsung-yaun’s poem. How few poems tell of the desolation of winter. The coming of Spring, the passing of Autumn? Yes. But the onset of Winter? Even my sharp memory only recalls a meagre handful of poems to this season: the time of the first snows. Against all good sense I set out from Stone Village too late in the year: now I search for comforting word images to accompany me on this journey. Just below the snowline I pass through a stunted forest of ancient walnut trees almost leafless; the unrelenting wind has dispatched them crinkled brown into the valley below. I see there a winding river. I see its distant lake. I think of this poem known since my teenage years, puzzled over that one could see in one sweep of the horizon a thousand peaks. Here are that thousand and more if the ranks of limestone pillars in these mountains can be counted as peaks. I count them as peaks. And those thousand paths? At every turn there is some fresh way falling into the valley, or a faint trail rising to the heights. But this path I tread asserts itself on the traveller. Its stones are worn and the excrement of passing pack animals sticks to my boots.

Last night a cave, tonight I will reach the village of Psnumako. My former guide provided its name with a disdain he could not hide. When questioned he warned me not to enter without a stout staff against the mastiffs that guard each house, supposedly ******* during the day but apt to break their bonds at the smell of a stranger.

The steep and ever steeper descent brings pain to my knees. At this hour of the day my body would prefer to climb to the heights, but descend I must. The cold, the damp cold begins to stiffen weary limbs. I am tired from a day’s travel, tired from three hard climbs, two descents and this, my third, to complete before nightfall. I enter a narrow gorge loud with clamour of running water, cascade upon cascade flowing from the heights, falling fast to the river soon to interrupt my path. I shall have to force a crossing. What passed for a bridge were two fallen pines lashed together.  Now they lie akimbo a little distant, thrown apart like sticks by the spring flood as the deep snows melt. I must divest myself of boots and lower garments and wade across, stumbling on stones up to my waist in swift waters, terrified under the weight of my pack that I will fall and be swept under and along. To travel alone at such moments is foolhardy, but on this cold afternoon I have no choice.

I am so intent on preparing for this crossing it is only when I reach the end of the path that I notice snow is falling, its flakes sharp and white against the dark-water flow. The whirl and turn of the water mesmerises. Fatigue, fatigue embraces me, a day’s fatigue holds me fast on the river’s stony side. I close my eyes and hear the water rush and place myself into the protection of a mountain charm learnt from a passing traveller. Dwarfed by the size of his burden I see him negotiate a narrow path high above a chasm; he walked trance-like to the intoning of this charm.

It is soon done, the cold crossing, and with a lighter step I walk the remaining leagues to the lake-side and sight of the village. There are the faintest sparks of light amongst the silhouettes of houses. Animals are being brought in from the home fields against the night. A sudden shout, the barking of dogs, and now the snow falls thick and fast.

The guttural dialect here is barely discernable as speech. We are from different worlds this shepherd and I who meet at the stupa guarding the village entrance. This is not a Buddhist shrine but an acknowledgement of some mountain giant of terrifying aspect. The shepherd sees my official insignia and nods, knowing I will require shelter. He utters what may be a welcome, but could be a warning, and leads me forth. The mastiffs leap and bay as I pass between the primitive two-storey houses, animals below, humankind above. He disappears. I stop and wait. He returns with a woman who beckons me to climb the ladder to what may be her home. A widow perhaps? She is alone unless the rank darkness hides a man or child. But there is none. I hear animals move and grunt under the floor, a mat of dirt and straw. There is a sleeping loft, a cooking corner. I can see little else. But I am out of the snow, the biting wind, the cold. She pulls at my cloak, wet and caked with ice. There is a bowl placed in my hands; a rough tea. I speak a greeting, but there is no reply just a rustle of straw as she moves across the room.

The stupor of a journey’s pause is upon me. After three days on the trail to the heights I am numb with fatigue. I need food and sleep. I need rest before a final trek into the wilderness. Beyond Psnumako Lake known paths end. Except for the tracks used by shepherds to move their flocks to different seasonal pastures, there is wilderness. I hope for guidance, for the whereabouts of the sages who, in the winter months I am told, leave their reed huts on the heights for caves in the lower valleys. I shall be patient, remain here a little while. I am now immune to the discomfort and dirt of travel. That is how it is. That is how is must be. I miss only the mental absorption of writing, the caress of the brush on a scroll. In my home in Louyang I keep brush and paper close to hand; wherever I may be I can write, even in, especially in, the privy. If a line comes to me I can write it down. Here there is only the comfort of memory.

To think that in the past I wrote of this mountain wilderness out of my imagination and the descriptions of others. I once thought of these remote places as havens of spiritual liberation.

In the hills there is the sound of zither.
White clouds stay over shaded peaks,
Red flowers shine in the sunlit woods
Rocks are washed in the stream like jade;

How very different is the reality of it all; in this emerging winter world of mist, where the sun rarely visits and most living things have departed, where wind colours silence and one’s footfall becomes consolation. The sound of stone rubbing stone on the path is the eternal present. There have been days when only a distant crow moves in the landscape. Lammergeyers are known in these parts, but I have yet to see one. If there are wild beasts, they shun me.

As this bowl of tea cools in my hands but warms my frozen fingers I form pictures of the past day on its dark surface. Before dawn from the mouth of a river cave I sensed changes in the qualities of darkness that have hidden the heights above me. Then a perceptible line appeared and divided the mountain from the sky. That line became variegated; there were trees bristling on the highest rocks. It appears that at this hour the prevalent mist settles in the valleys leaving the sky clear.

The woman comes to me. She kneels to untie my boots. She looks with a curious innocence at my strangeness, the distortion of my face, the cleft palette, the deformed upper lip, the squint of my left eye. She is kindly as I give her my best smile though my face seems frozen still. There is a whisper, a prayer of welcome possibly. Then she bows her head, unravels a long scarf to reveal a mane of oiled hair, and sets about removing my boots. I see only the top of her head, a severe parting, hair held tightly in wooden combs. I close my eyes to bring to mind the image of Xaoli, so slight in comparison, her butterfly hands flittering into and around my sleeves, her seeing touch mapping out the extent of me, each piece of clothing, only later my face.

My reverie is broken by the entrance of two men. They squat behind the woman and, after taking in my ugliness and my hairpins of office, patiently wait for her to finish and retire. We stand and bow, then sit again amongst the straw.

‘Honoured Lord, I am Yun. You have travelled from Stone Village? And beyond?’

I pass him the Emperor’s seal he cannot read, but remain silent.

‘You are seeking those who live in the heights? The village only sees their servants, young boys sent for a goat or flasks of barley spirit. They bring herbs our women favour. Some have seen their huts when seeking lost animals. Now it is said they are gathered in the caves like animals waiting for the spring moon.’

‘When was the village last visited by their kind?’

‘ Hanlu, my Lord, the time of cold dew, two boys appeared with a pony. There was trading. They brought Chrysanthemum flowers and herbs for two geese and wine. They left scrolls for passage to Stone Village. Now the snows fall we may not see them until the Spring’

‘How far are your summer pastures? Have you any who would guide me there ?’

‘We do not seek these places after the first snows. The sages haunt the region beyond Chang Mountain. Before the 11th moon you might pass into the valley of Lidong where it is believed their caves lie, but to return before the Spring will not be possible.’

‘How many days there?’

‘Allow four. A difficult way, unmarked, rarely trodden, much climbing. There is one here who we could send with you – part of the way, and at a price, My Lord. Dahan travelled two seasons since as groom to a party of six with ponies, but then in late Spring.’

‘I will stay three days.’

‘Just so My Lord. Xiu Li will see to your wishes.’

And they depart, Yun’s companion has remained silent throughout, though searched my face continually. By the door he places his hand against the stout bag that carries my lute. ‘Guqin’, he says tenderly.

This instrument is my pass to the community of the reclusive. I am renown for my songs and their singing. My third-best guqin has not left its bag since Stone Village and I fear damage despite all my care on the path.

Later, as the village mastiffs gradually cease their baying as the quarter moon rises I take this instrument and place it across my lap. Its seven silk strings I wipe with a cloth and gently tune with its tasselled pegs. I then prepare myself through meditation to avoid the intrusion of distracting thoughts. With my eyes closed I allow my hands to seek out and name each part of guqin: from the Forehead of the Top Board, to the String Eyes, the Dew Collector, The Mountain, Shoulder and Phoenix Wings, past the Waist, the Hat Lines and the Dragon’s Beard, to the Dragon’s Gums and thence to the Inner Top Board. I can feel the Pillar of Heaven – the sound post – has moved a little in my recent travels. So too the Pillar of Earth – but with care I move both to their rightful positions. And so on naming the inner and outer parts of each of the two boards that make up the guqin. I begin to regulate my breathing and allow the fingers of my left hand to stroke and touch, to press and oscillate in the manner of vibrato. Zhoa Wenji describes twenty-three kinds of vibrato. I feel in turn each of the hui, the thirteen gold studs that mark the harmonic nodes and allow me to play the guqin by touch alone. In these moments of preparation I hear the words of my teacher: a good player makes sounds that are plentiful but not confused. As the moon reflecting on water, so the sounds are together but not combined. Like wind in the pines, they are combined but also spread out. Such sounds are valued for their lightness. Avoid the addition of inappropriate  "guest" sounds. This is the refined theory of the guqin. To be knowledgeable about music, one must seek this, then one can realize its beauty.

I have tuned to the Huangzhong mode. The song *Amidst Mountains Thinking of an Old Friend I have brought to mind. I recall the words of The Slender Hermit who says of this piece that its interest lies in holding cherished thoughts, but having no way to tell these to anyone. There are emotions about the present time, longings and laments for the past, but there is no way to express any of this. And so this piece.

In this poor reed hut the room is filled with mist and haze,
how far away are the things I love;
the old plum tree seems exhausted, its flowers about to die,
the mountains are lonely and I am nostalgic for past times.
The moon shines brightly on this lovely evening,
from this distance I think of my old friend and wonder where he is.
The green of the mountains never fades,
but before I know it my hair will turn white;
the moon is waning and flowers wither,
Old friend, I dream constantly of meeting you.
How hard it is to recall the joy of our last meeting!
With the many mountain ranges,
and its hidden tigers and coiled dragons,
I am unable return to you in Chang An.
The road is distant, the tall trees make the road dark,
and the world is vast.

I mourn Aquila and Lyra
separated by the Milky Way like the cowherd and weaving girl,
on the ground we are separated by 1,000 li
in the sky we are each in a separate place,
though our passions remain strong
There has been no warm correspondence,
there is restraint to the bright harmony,
and the flowing streams are swallowed by the setting sun.

The thought of this song of mid autumn touches me before its words have issued from my lips. I play the last two lines in harmonics and sing.

When its emerald eye glimmers in the shadow of the dusty shelf above
I pause,
I sense a presense.

It is not unlike me to attribute human characteristics to inanimate objects.
Give them names and nicknames and quirky character traits based on how their forms bend.

In the flickering lights of a broke wicken sanctuary though, I do not do it out of habit.

I feel it and stare it back down and see my own reflection in the cracked gems that once were a soul.

A gaudy skull.

The kind you see in home video Indiana Jones tributes,
with hats stolen from someone’s parents,
and jackets stolen from someone else’s elder siblings,
and ketchup for blood.

The kind your quirky local manic pixie dream girl uses to hold incense.

The kind I’m about to waste my money on because I’m an adult now and I can use my millennial minimum wage however I want.

I do not become aware of the possessed nature of my new buddy until I take it back home and hear it snicker in the middle of the night.

I know it is the skull, for my roommate is not one to snicker.

(He chuckles when he’s hiding an opinion and has a villainous laugh when it’s coming from a place of sincerity, but that’s beside the point)

I know it’s laughing at me.
I know this for a fact.

It takes me three more nights to call it out on it because I’ve never been confronted with the issue of standing up to a haunted antique I took home from a secondhand shop, possibly owned by satan’s offspring.
But I’m twenty-one years old and still experiencing some firsts, I suppose.

The gaudy skull is exceptionally snarky.
In a way none of my named plants ever were.
Not even Gerard.

He comes for me for the garbage on the floor and the dust on the windowsill on which he’s propped up, and then later for my poor taste in chore-doing music.

I never ask for its name because I know for a fact he’ll make a game out of it
and I am not in the mood for entertaining ghosts.

I come to realise it all on my own a couple of weeks later.
Once the snark starts to wear off,
and domesticity settles in,
and shared quiet becomes comforting,
despite the circumstances.

It is Judas.

I know this for a fact.

You do not understand the extent to which I am certain that it is Judas.
I have never been so aware of someone’s origins in my entire life.
I bought this creepy item and it is now in my room and I’m developing a weird attachment to it and maybe occasionally use it as a paper-weight and it is Judas.

I feel it in my heart and know it inside of my skull that might be standing on someone else’s touchscreen windowsill
two thousand years in the future,
jade stones for eyes even though I specifically requested amber,
but you get ****** over by bureaucracy even after death.

How do I know it is Judas?

Because I feel him stare at me like he wants to kiss me late at night and sense him plotting my betrayal early morning.

I know it is that, for a fact, because I’ve felt this exact sensation before.

My **** edgy room decor is Judas.

I try to get him to admit it himself by talking of past lovers and reading aloud the surprising number of Jesus metaphor poems I have in my room.
I hate Jesus metaphors, but I do it for that sweet sensation of seeing someone trying to dodge the inevitable once it’s coming at them like a mule through Rome piloted by the son of god.

I know he’ll cave eventually and tell me
and I know it’ll be the same caliber of glorious news as Jesus coming out of his own cave of burial,
resurrected and preaching winning.
I know I’ll win.

And I think to myself that maybe I am in the mood to entertain and just haven’t found the right outlet yet.
Maybe history’s most infamous apostle is It.
The original sinner and the original rebel.

(I’m aware it’s technically Cain, the jealousy-ridden son of Adam and Eve, but I only ever count the gays)

Judas and I have bonded.

And I can tell he’s on the verge of telling me his dark and twisted backstory. Again, I have felt this sensation before.

And when it happens, we can talk
about what it’s like being demonised by the one you love
and being the odd one out in your devotee friend group, even though you eat bread and drink wine and worship metaphor just like them.
And how patriarchal institutions distort history to pedal the same tired spiel of everything having a place and everything being there for a reason.

But we both know that isn’t true
because neither of us feel like part of god’s plan or created in anyone’s image.

And we can listen to sad music about wanting to kiss the wrong people together.

And that’s all I ever wanted from a friendship.

A Meditative Attempt At Comforting

You are my synapses,
My consciousness,
My chemistry  
And everyone’s.
I have no ‘my’,
I have no say.
We are combined and mixed as one.
We are a kind of moon and sun.
That being so,
One has to rest and be at ease
In seeming ****** catastrophes:
Ageing’s ills and strains unbidden.
Youth’s robustness to bed-ridden
Impotence that needs to ask for each and every  
Life’s dependency.
This, for a friend ‘who sees an end,
And for another with the bother
Of a herniated rupture.
This, a meditative scripture
On attempts to see things are they are;
As they really, really are,
Have been and will be ever.

A Meditative Attempt At Comforting 9.4.2018 God Book II; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

I've only been camping a handful of times and this is the first we've been in about a year and its very nice and the outdoors is very comforting.  The stars in the sky shine so bright tonight, they remind me of my lovers smile. The bugs chirp and make so many noises it keeps me up, at late hours. The weather is hot and its humid so my hair sticks to my face and I sweat. I have to *** so bad but everyone is asleep and the bathrooms are unbearably disgusting. It took us almost an hour to set the tent up and we had hamburgers and hotdogs for dinner. The bonfire was warm. I can't wait to get out and go swimming in the lake later. Camping is alright.

" write a compassionate poem to describe him "
What word could deserve your definition?
Perfection is unworthy
Gracious, is it truly?

Rough hands so carelessly comforting
Eyes deeply embedded in a trance
A laugh so warm, to mimic the flames
But you are my fire
My every desire

How I describe myself.

Back fat.
Muffin top.
Flabby arms.
Thunder thighs.
Double chin.
Ugly.
Four rolls.
Worthless.
Jelly belly.
Gross.
FAT.

How others describe me.*

Funny.
Outgoing.
Warm.
Comforting.
FUN.

The list isn't nearly as long, now is it?

You'll notice him in the busy streets of Peru, dodging vendors and laughing like the sun.
You'll notice her at a small diner past 2 a.m, lost in thought, melancholy notes on their smile.
You'll notice him on a street corner wearing bold colours and singing about the lives he's lived and the fools he's loved.
You'll notice her on mountain peaks, soaking in the wind with twigs in her hair.
You'll notice him weaving flower crowns and writing in his journals, squinting into the hot sky with dew on his lips.
You'll notice her kneeled on the side of the road, comforting a small animal with the voice of sweet honey.
You'll notice them, dancing at sunset, colours streaking across their face.
You'll notice them running through meadow fields in the early hours of the morning.
You'll notice them laughing like the wind, smiling like velvet, with whispfill sparks in their eyes as they sit by the waves at dawn.
They are the sun and the moon
The sky and the sea
Fire and the ice
They're not likely to tell you who's who,
In fact they're not likely to tell you who they are at all.
But even without the spoken reveal
Even without the clarity of meaning,
When you see them.
You'll notice

As he walked through the maze of streets from the tube station he wondered just how long it had been since he had last visited this tall red-bricked house. For so many years it had been for him a pied à terre. Those years when the care of infant children dominated his days, when coming up to London for 48 hours seemed such a relief, an escape from the daily round that small people demand. Since his first visits twenty years ago the area bristled with new enterprise. An abandoned Victorian hospital had been turned into expensive apartments; small enterprising businesses had taken over what had been residential property of the pre-war years. Looking up he was conscious of imaginative conversions of roof and loft spaces. What had seemed a wide-ranging community of ages and incomes appeared to have disappeared. Only the Middle Eastern corner shops and restaurants gave back to the area something of its former character: a place where people worked and lived.

It was a tall thin house on four floors. Two rooms at most of each floor, but of a good-size. The ground floor was her London workshop, but as always the blinds were down. In fact, he realised, he’d never been invited into her working space. Over the years she’d come to the door a few times, but like many artists and craftspeople he knew, she fiercely guarded her working space. The door to her studio was never left open as he passed through the hallway to climb the three flights of stairs to her husband’s domain. There was never a chance of the barest peek inside.

Today, she was in New York, and from outside the front door he could hear her husband descend from his fourth floor eyrie. The door was flung open and they greeted each other with the fervour of a long absence of friends. It had been a long time, really too long. Their lives had changed inexplicably. One, living almost permanently in that Italian marvel of waterways and sea-reflected light, the other, still in the drab West Yorkshire city from where their first acquaintance had begun from an email correspondence.

They had far too much to say to one another - on a hundred subjects. Of course the current project dominated, but as coffee (and a bowl of figs and mandarin oranges) was arranged, and they had moved almost immediately he arrived in the attic studio to the minimalist kitchen two floors below, questions were thrown out about partners and children, his activities, and sadly, his recent illness (the stairs had seemed much steeper than he remembered and he was a little breathless when he reached the top). As a guest he answered with a brevity that surprised him. Usually he found such questions needed roundabout answers to feel satisfactory - but he was learning to answer more directly, and being brief, suddenly thought of her and her always-direct questions. She wanted to know something, get something straight, so she asked  - straight - with no ‘going about things’ first. He wanted to get on with the business at hand, the business that preoccupied him, almost to the exclusion of everything else, for the last two days.

When they were settled in what was J’s working space ten years ago now he was immediately conscious that although the custom-made furniture had remained the Yamaha MIDI grand piano and the rack of samplers were elsewhere, along with most of the scores and books. The vast collection of CDs was still there, and so too the pictures and photographs. But there was one painting that was new to this attic room, a Cézanne. He was taken aback for a moment because it looked so like the real thing he’d seen in a museum just weeks before. He thought of the film Notting Hill when William Thacker questions the provenance of the Chagall ‘violin-playing goat’. The size of this Cézanne seemed accurate and it was placed in a similar rather ornate frame to what he knew had framed the museum original. It was placed on right-hand wall as he had entered the room, but some way from the pair of windows that ran almost the length of this studio. The view across the rooftops took in the Tower of London, a mile or so distant. If he turned the office chair in which he was sitting just slightly he could see it easily whilst still paying attention to J. The painting’s play of colours and composition compelled him to stare, as if he had never seen the painting before. But he had, and he remembered that his first sight of it had marked his memory.

He had been alone. He had arrived at the gallery just 15 minutes before it was due to close for the day.  He’d been told about this wonderful must-see octagonal room where around the walls you could view a particularly fine and comprehensive collection of Impressionist paintings. All the great artists were represented. One of Van Gogh’s many Olive Trees, two studies of domestic interiors by Vuillard, some dancing Degas, two magnificent Gaugins, a Seurat field of flowers, a Singer-Sergeant portrait, two Monets - one of a pair of haystacks in a blaze of high-summer light. He had been able to stay in that room just 10 minutes before he was politely asked to leave by an overweight attendant, but afterwards it was as if he knew the contents intimately. But of all these treasures it was Les Grands Arbres by Cézanne that had captured his imagination. He was to find it later and inevitably on the Internet and had it printed and pinned to his notice board. He consulted his own book of Cézanne’s letters and discovered it was a late work and one of several of the same scene. This version, it was said, was unfinished. He disagreed. Those unpainted patches he’d interpreted as pools of dappled light, and no expert was going to convince him otherwise! And here it was again. In an attic studio J. only frequented occasionally when necessity brought him to London.

When the coffee and fruit had been consumed it was time to eat more substantially, for he knew they would work late into the night, despite a whole day tomorrow to be given over to their discussions. J. was full of nervous energy and during the walk to a nearby Iraqi restaurant didn’t waver in his flow of conversation about the project. It was as though he knew he must eat, but no longer had the patience to take the kind of necessary break having a meal offered. His guest, his old friend, his now-being-consulted expert and former associate, was beginning to reel from the overload of ‘difficulties’ that were being put before him. In fact, he was already close to suggesting that it would be in J’s interest if, when they returned to the attic studio, they agreed to draw up an agenda for tomorrow so there could be some semblance of order to their discussions. He found himself wishing for her presence at the meal, her calm lovely smile he knew would charm J. out of his focused self and lighten the rush and tension that infused their current dialogue. But she was elsewhere, at home with her children and her own and many preoccupations, though it was easy to imagine how much, at least for a little while, she might enjoy meeting someone new, someone she’d heard much about, someone really rather exotic and (it must be said) commanding and handsome. He would probably charm her as much as he knew she would charm J.

J. was all and more beyond his guest’s thought-description. He had an intensity and a confidence that came from being in company with intense, confident and, it had to be said, very wealthy individuals. His origins, his beginnings his guest and old friend could only guess at, because they’d never discussed it. The time was probably past for such questions. But his guest had his own ideas, he surmised from a chanced remark that his roots were not amongst the affluent. He had been a free-jazz musician from Poland who’d made waves in the German jazz scene and married the daughter of an arts journalist who happened to be the wife of the CEO of a seriously significant media empire. This happy association enabled him to get off the road and devote himself to educating himself as a composer of avant-garde art music - which he desired and which he had achieved. His guest remembered J’s passion for the music of Luigi Nono (curiously, a former resident of the city in which J. now lived) and Helmut Lachenmann, then hardly known in the UK. J. was already composing, and with an infinite slowness and care that his guest marvelled at. He was painstakingly creating intricate and timbrally experimental string quartets as well as devising music for theatre and experimental film. But over the past fifteen years J. had become increasingly more obsessed with devising software from which his musical ideas might emanate. And it had been to his guest that, all that time ago, J. had turned to find a generous guide into this world of algorithms and complex mathematics, a composer himself who had already been seduced by the promise of new musical fields of possibility that desktop computer technology offered.

In so many ways, when it came to the hard edge of devising solutions to the digital generation of music, J. was now leagues ahead of his former tutor, whose skills in this area were once in the ascendant but had declined in inverse proportion to J’s, as he wished to spend more time composing and less time investigating the means through which he might compose. So the guest was acting now as a kind of Devil’s Advocate, able to ask those awkward disarming questions creative people don’t wish to hear too loudly and too often.

And so it turned out during the next few hours as J. got out some expensive cigars and brandy, which his guest, inhabiting a different body seemingly, now declined in favour of bottled water and dry biscuits. His guest, who had been up since 5.0am, finally suggested that, if he was to be any use on the morrow, bed was necessary. But when he got in amongst the Egyptian cotton sheets and the goose down duvet, sleep was impossible. He tried thinking of her, their last walk together by the sea, breakfast à deux before he left, other things that seemed beautiful and tender by turn . . . But it was no good. He wouldn’t sleep.

The house could have been as silent as the excellent double-glazing allowed. Only the windows of the attic studio next door to his bedroom were open to the night, to clear the room of the smoke of several cigars. He was conscious of that continuous flow of traffic and machine noise that he knew would only subside for a brief hour or so around 4.0am. So he went into the studio and pulled up a chair in front of the painting by Cézanne, in front of this painting of a woodland scene. There were two intertwining arboreal forms, trees of course, but their trunks and branches appeared to suggest the kind of cubist shapes he recognized from Braque. These two forms pulled the viewer towards a single slim and more distant tree backlit by sunlight of a late afternoon. There was a suggestion, in the further distance, of the shapes of the hills and mountains that had so preoccupied the artist. But in the foreground, there on the floor of this woodland glade, were all the colours of autumn set against the still greens of summer. It seemed wholly wrong, yet wholly right. It was as comforting and restful a painting as he could ever remember viewing. Even if he shut his eyes he could wander about the picture in sheer delight. And now he focused on the play of brush strokes of this painting in oils, the way the edge and border of one colour touched against another. Surprisingly, imagined sounds of this woodland scene entered his reverie - a late afternoon in a late summer not yet autumn. He was Olivier Messiaen en vacances with his perpetual notebook recording the magical birdsong in this luminous place. Here, even in this reproduction, lay the joy of entering into a painting. Jeanette Winterson’s plea to look at length at paintings, and then look again passed through his thoughts. How right that seemed. How very difficult to achieve. But that night he sat comfortably in J’s attic and let Cézanne deliver the artist’s promise of a world beyond nature, a world that is not about constant change and tension, but rests in a stillness all its own.

To finish anything in entirety requires a full circle- and goodbye is a picky eater. Good is the pieces of pie fully enjoyed already- don't forget the fingertips good. The ones licked crisp and clean from the plasticware every time. While bye remains the uneaten slices spoiling silence in the kitchen. Crumbs too stubborn to move along, to move anywhere at all. Notice these slices never once greeted each other on a dinner plate- and there is no place for distance during dessert.

2. Goodbye is invisible ink scribbled too quickly for certainty. Proper sendoffs deserve the type of visibility that billboards form. So if you have the audacity to send seven letters my way disguised as our final embrace- I will unwrap your formality, like 5am Christmas morning, and pretend I'm on the naughty list. Hidden messages lack a sense of transparency that leaves only second guessing and farewells should need no crystal *****.
Goodbyes are as good as guesswork- and we are not fortune tellers.

3. Goodbye implies loss or rejection, but well wishes are meant for times
when loss is undeniably absent. Wishing wells bathe separation with good intentions- each copper coin anointed an underwater masterpiece.
While goodbye addresses detachment with partial reflections, splitting waves too strict for clarity. So all I see are the ripples of me spread too thin, the pieces of me scattered in every direction. Goodbye wishes no one well.

4. Goodbye is simply one word. Goodbye is not naturally destructive. Goodbye is no vocal cord villain.
Words are neither inherently good nor bad because we ascribe their significance, but evidence suggests a one word farewell serves innocent ears unjust death sentences.

5. The moment you allow I love you to skydive from your tongue, the word goodbye steals the parachutes mid-launch causing fatal free fall to artificial grass your hands never actually planted. This land is lunar rock rare- desolate when day breaks.
Goodbye is not fertilizer for greener pastures- rather an open invitation for wildfire to reduce the cosmos to ashes.

6. Endings are inevitable and sometimes quite necessary. And I'm not suggesting we prolong foregone conclusions. But our parting words need not necessarily be regrettable. Goodbyes are often stressed in tragic spectacles only designed for Broadway stages and sometimes all that's needed
is a genuine platform to stand on to say something like-- I'll miss you or I'm not ready for this or I can't do this anymore.


7. Goodbye is not a last resort.
Last resorts lead to final destinations you never come home from and you were never home, you were never home for me, you were always goodbye. Goodbye was your one way ticket to paradise, the kingdom your words worshiped and call me a traitor if you must, but the paradox you fundamentally found comfort in is tyranny trapped in one breath.
And that's never been comforting enough for me to believe in, never been real enough for me to hold.
Goodbye is sweet sorrow- one hollow word that makes your smile hurt.
It's solid rain on sunny days, stolen hearts on lay away. It's two syllables that were forced to hold hands that were never ever friends to begin with.
Goodbye is an oxymoron- and it will never justify your warm hello.

I realized I liked you when
our eyes met then I immediately
looked away as if it was the first time
I laid my eyes on you.

I realized I liked you when
I made a list of things we could
talk about but ended up blanking out
when I started talking to you.

I realized I’ve fallen for you when
we were in a concert and you
accompanied me throughout the night.
I knew my heart was pounding not from
the loud speakers but from you
being so close to me.

I realized I’ve fallen for you when
I got nervous and you held my hand,
comforting me with no words said;
contented with how our fingers
interlaced with one another.

I realized I loved you when
I started writing about you and
our happy moments that now have
turned into memories.

I realized I loved you when
I turned you into poetry.

Every day my heart grows colder
A victim of the dreaded black ice
The less I move, the more I try
The more I struggle, the more I frost

I lie in this place of snowy despair
My mind slowly slipping breath, by passing breath

I drown without with out you
How I loved you so
I guess we just killed each other
And didn't know

Until I'm reunited with your elegant soul
I suffer, and ice over more than you'll ever know

You plagued my heart
And tore it to shreds
But I still think of you
Without regret

I fear the only cure
Is your comforting warmth
Your arms wrapped around me...
More fondly than before
You caressed my soul in total bliss,

Your company...I still dearly miss.
I hope some day we reunite
To avoid this inevitable..,deadly frost bite.

I can not sleep,
for you are not beside me,
I toss and turn,
bury my head in my covers,
wishing I could bury my head in your chest instead,
my silent tears dissolve into the darkness
that surrounds me,
as I lay there
imagining your arms holding me,
holding me tight whilst I watch you slumber,
you look so beautiful, peaceful and it's comforting,
I feel safe.

but in reality,
I lay here cold and longing,
for you, my love,
I can not sleep.

Camel crush cigarettes
Put them in a fancy box
No, I’m too poor to buy them
But if you pass’em
Then I won’t say no.

People say that it’s unclean
That you’re unclean
That they’re unclean
You smell like a hotel room
And it’s comforting.

Camel crush cigarettes
Your hugs speak of the habit
No, take your precious smoke break
**** it clean to dust
Barreling into death.

People say that it’s unwise
That you’re unwise
That they’re unwise
You smell like drunken Saturdays
And it’s delicious.

Camel crush cigarettes
I’ve never felt addiction
No, I don’t think that I could
It’s a scarlet dreamland
With one-way tickets.

People say that it’s unkind
to lungs and mind
They’re right, I find.
But you look like abandon
And it’s inviting.

Camel crush cigarettes
I’ve never loved a smoker
No, I’d always been too proper
But if you tasted like that
I wouldn’t mind a bite.

People say that you’re catering
To your un-ease
With a disease.
You feel like contradiction,
And I’m depraved.

Nearly twice as tall,
And just as thin,
You hold me in your arms,
And the whole thing begins.

"Today was just awful!" I cried into your shoulder,
You kept me sane the entire time,
My eternal holder ,
You helped me through my darkest days.

You move me to the couch,
And pull me farther in,
I tried to resist your help,
But I knew you'd always win.

You wrapped your knee around me,
Locking me in place,
I never wanted to be free,
From your loving embrace.

Kissing the top of my head,
You whispered comforting words in my ear,
Saying they weren't worth getting this worked up over,
Killing my fear.

I wrapped my arms around your shoulders,
Burying my face into your chest,
I never knew a guy that would be any bolder,
Then to hold me close and make the whole world disappear.

A soft kiss on my lips,
Wiping the stray tears from my cheeks,
The warmth from the fire spreading over us,
I hadn't felt this safe in weeks.

Until you took me into those arms I felt as if I was hanging by a thread,
But I know from your soft kisses and deep embraces this will never end.

I don't need to be held
Or hug
Kissed or touched
Comforting is something to much
Trusting in people makes me sick
My face turns blue
Like the blood is being ****** out of me from a tick
Tried before
Highly disappointed
Only loved once
Epic fail
No longer will I wallow and wail
Feeling sorry that I messed it up
I've accept my demons
More like embraced them freely
Comforting is just something I don't need really
To long on my own
I've embraced solitude
And lived in seclusion
Made her my wife
And had a few children
Cold on the inside
Drink loneliness from a well
And all the coins in the world
Will not wish this well

there is no value in a poem that reads
_____
_____
____­
M M l i f e s u c k s x x x n o p o e m i g o t

just

nerve; crap bs, a denial of craft

seek the intelligent intelligible,
kiss the sensational thrill that
emotion harvests with resonating tenses
that beg our brains to differ, sense

this claims,
there is no value in no words is
a hoax cloaked as art by the weak,
make thy metaphors metastasize,
my every cell, a preposition,
preposterous and precious and
comforting in their
privations and provocations

speak to us in alpha and
line our eyes wide,
with pictures at an exhibition
of a faun immobile and beauteous

let me hang on every word of yours and
let it be the raft that sees me happily
unsafe home

take your bs line poem  
shove it down your silent voice

this is not avant garde; this is insulting

p.s.  write me a smile and all will be_____.

library books;
     the musty smell floods me with
     thoughts of its past readers
     did a girl like me
     run her finger across this line
     as i have?
     will our lines like vines
     ever intertwine?

rainy nights;
     while the tip-tap and dribble of
     droplets hit my windowsill,
     i imagine gusts of wind
     dancing with one another:
     carless and free
     and without destination

light touches;
     the accidental bump of elbows,
     the awkward entanglement
     of fumbling phalanges,
     a gentle squeeze of the hand,
     a comforting gesture that says
     “i am here.”

now reverie this:
     you and i,
     the spines of our books broken,
          our shoulders barely brushing,
               the sound of soft and subtle raindrops
          all things i adore in one simple
      and seemingly endless moment

books, rain, touches, and you

“every time i feel my stomach convulse it’s a new wave of tears
take vitamins, she says
you should just eat, she says
you got skinnier, another says
“eat! eat! haven’t you been eating!? and this bandaid! quit cutting yourself, kalena”
and for a moment i think it’s truth
i think it’s honest
i shout “i do eat! they’re just cat scratches”
and if she would have lifted up that bandaid
she would have learned it was honest
it was truth
but it was melted away flesh that she would have found, not torn
but melted
and in the highlight of this moment i see all of my dreams come true
finally, someone notices!
finally, someone cares!
but yet she’s willing to stop eating. to make sure that i do.
my little thing. an entire 98 pounds, not by choice.
so unhealthy, so sick. all the time. so **** tired.
she would stop eating for me.
and though it doesn’t help, the thought is comforting. it should be disturbing.
it is. in the way that if she stopped eating…
she would lose weight.
and then i would fight harder and harder until my rib bones were sticking out so far they were larger than my chest.
emaciated.
bony fingers that boys don’t want to hold and girls don’t want to kiss.
hair that slides out with the slightest tug.
no one wants that.
except me, of course.
i want that.
i want to weigh 85 pounds.
i want to die.
i want to be so high on the emptiness that i die.
i faint. and they cannot wake me up.
eternal sleep. forever peace. and the best part of all?
I would be horrifically tiny in even the smallest coffin. “

“It’s three in the morning. Are you drunk?” Larry asked me. “No, I just had to talk to someone and couldn’t think of anyone else,” I replied with desperation. “Can’t this wait until the morning, dude?” Larry asked, “I have to get up in six hours for work.” He sounded angry, but mostly tired so I pressed on. “No, this can’t wait, seriously. I’m sorry, but this is urgent.”

“Okay, what’s wrong that you had to wake me up?” Larry asked, and I was ready to talk. I was ready to talk until I couldn’t utter another word. I was distraught and scared. Larry was my best friend, and I knew he’d listen. I wasn’t sure if he could give me the right advice, but I knew he’d listen.

“I don’t know where to start.”

“Try the beginning. Come on, man. It’s too late for this.”

“Alright, but have a little bit of patience.”

“Yeah, just start talking before I hang up.”

“Okay, I ****** up,” I replied and paused for a response, but Larry didn’t respond so I pressed on.

“I got off work at ten and had to close the store. My manager was in a tight spot and left me with the keys,” I said, took a breath, and continued,”I was kind of ******* when he asked me to do it, but he said he had no other choice. He even offered to give me an extra day off with pay.”

“So what’s the problem?” Larry asked.

“The problem is what I did before I left.”

“And that is?”

“Well, I was getting the store all shut up. I let most of the employees go, and I left one cashier with me so I didn’t have to run around like a maniac. There weren’t any problems, so I locked up and got ready to count down the last till so I could get the hell out of there.”

“Can you speed this up, man? I’m falling asleep,” Larry said impatiently.

“Sorry, so I count down the last till and leave it by the register. I let the last cashier go for the night and locked the door. I go back to the register and grab the till so I could put it in the office and start the deposit. My manager left me instructions for the closing procedures and the combo to the safe. I counted everything and wrapped the deposit so it could be taken to the bank in the morning. I followed the instructions perfectly.”

“So what’s the problem then?”

I couldn’t get the words out of my mouth. I was having trouble finishing my story, and even though I paused I knew Larry wouldn’t hang up. He wasn’t the kind of guy that would let a story go unfinished. The only problem was that I didn’t know how to get to the next part of the story. I was like a comedian without a punchline. It was hard enough to make the phone call to Larry, let alone get this far into the story. But I did wake him up, so the least I could do was finish my story.

“Are you there?” Larry asked.

“Yeah, sorry. I’m just having trouble explaining this.”

“Take a breath. Just breathe and try to start again,” Larry said with a comforting tone.

“I left with it,” I said. I was being vague on purpose so Larry would ask me what I meant instead of me telling him. And that’s exactly what he did. “You left with what?” He said sounding confused.

“I left with the deposit and everything else in the safe,” I said in a hurried tone.

“You did what?” Larry said sounding confused as if he heard me wrong.

“I left with everything. I took all the money and locked up.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I robbed my store and left. It was an impulse. I don’t know why I did it, but I did. I ****** up.”

“I hope you’re joking,” Larry said.

“I’m not joking. I just up and left with everything,” I said.

“What the **** were you thinking? How much did you take?”

“I wasn’t thinking, man. I took everything, which was a little over ten grand.”

“This isn’t good. What the ****, dude. This is bad, really really bad.”

“I know, but I don’t know what to do. That’s why I called you,” I said, sounding more desperate than when Larry had first picked up the phone.

“What do you want me to say? You just called me at three in the morning to tell me you robbed your store for a **** load of money. This is beyond a **** up, man. Where are you?”

“I’m out front of your place.”

“What? How long have you been here?” Larry asked. He sounded like he was shocked to hear me say that, but deep down I knew he understood. I didn’t know what else to do, and he was the only person I could turn to. He might not of agreed with what I did, but he would help me through anything. Whether that be good or bad; he would be there for support.

“I’ve been here since I called you. I didn’t know what to do. I’m freaking out. Like beyond freaking out. I’m so ******, man. I am absolutely ******.”

“Alright, first off get the hell inside. I’m unlocking the door now,” Larry said and hung up. I closed my phone and shut the engine to my car. I still sat in my car with my head on the steering wheel. I was emotionally drained and knew the night wasn’t over. My night was only going to get worse, and facing Larry was going to drain me. Larry knew how to give that look of disappointment only a parent could give. He wouldn’t belittle me, but the look in his eyes would be enough to make me feel small. It was already past the point of no return with Larry. I had to face him now, and he was waiting for me. I lifted my head up and rubbed my eyes. The light on his front porch was on when I lifted my head. So I got out of my car, locked it, and made my way up to his house. The door was open a crack and I stepped inside and locked it behind me. Larry’s foyer led to the kitchen, and the light was on. He was in the kitchen waiting for me.

“Is that you?” Larry yelled from the kitchen.

“Yeah.”

“In the kitchen. I just put on a *** of coffee.”

The ten second walk to the kitchen felt infinite. My legs were shaky, along with the rest of my body. I was more nervous about seeing Larry than I was about the consequences that were to follow my recklessness. I turned the corner into the kitchen to find Larry sitting at his kitchen table, staring at the coffee ***.

“Hey,” I said, being at a loss for words.

“Sit down. The coffee is almost done.”

“Okay, I think I might need a cup.”

“You and me both, bud.”

Larry and I both stared at the coffee ***. He was waiting for the coffee to finish. I was hypnotized by the drip. In a weird way it was calming and gave me time to think. I’m not sure if Larry ever took the time to glance at me, as I was only fixated on the drip. I didn’t want it to end for a few reasons. Not only was it calming, but it also prolonged the inevitable: Our conversation.

“What do you want?” Larry asked.

“What?”

“What do you want in your coffee?”

“Oh, just a little cream and a little sugar.”

Larry fixed two cups of coffee and placed a cup in front of me. He took his seat and sipped his coffee. He didn’t say anything, and I wasn’t sure if he was waiting for me to speak. Before I could he cleared his throat.

“What the **** were you thinking?” He asked, as only a friend could when you make a mistake.

“I wasn’t thinking.”

“Yeah, you said that, but what could possibly make you do something like that. Really, what the **** were you thinking?”

“I don’t know. I just did it, and it didn’t cross my mind until I left and set the alarm. At that time I couldn’t do anything. I already took the money and left. I couldn’t go back in the store without sounding the alarm.”

“You set the alarm. You couldn’t just go back in and shut it off?” Larry pressed.

“No, I couldn’t. There are two different codes for closing and opening. I told you it was last minute, and my manager only gave me the code to close up.” I said in all honesty.

“You couldn’t of just put the money back and let the alarm go off? I’m sure they wouldn’t of been ****** about the alarm going off. It wasn’t your responsibility in the first place to be closing the store.” Larry said, making a valid point.

“I didn’t think about that, and I told you I was freaking. I thought I was already ****** so I left. I just got in my car and got out of there. I didn’t know where to go so I drove around for a few hours, and I didn’t want to go home so I called you.”

“Yeah, well thanks for that,” Larry said sarcastically.

“I didn’t know what to do. I’m sorry, really I am.”

“No you’re not. If you were sorry you would of turned yourself in.”

“Are you serious? The last place I want to be is in jail.”

“Well you should of thought about that before you committed grand larceny.”

“What do I do then? What can I do?” I asked

“For right now just enjoy your coffee. Go pour another cup and relax. I’m going to call my work and call out. There is no way I’m going to make it in after all of this ******* you brought me.”

“I’m sorry, Larry. Really, I am truly sorry.”

“Just relax, there’s nothing you can do now.” Larry said. He got up and left the room. I also got up and poured another cup of coffee. He was right, I needed to relax and just stay calm. There was nothing else I could do, and freaking out was not going to help. I sat back down, took a sip of my coffee, and rested my head in my hands. It was the most at ease I’ve been the whole night. This is why I turned to Larry. He knew how to calm me down and was my only true friend. He always had my best interest at hand, and I loved him for that.

Ten minutes later Larry returned and sat back down. He took a sip of his coffee and spit it back in the cup. “I hate cold coffee,” Larry said and got up to pour another cup. “What are you thinking about?” He asked. I didn’t respond. I couldn’t respond. Although I was calmer my mind was still racing. It felt like my head was going to explode. Thankfully it didn’t, but it sure felt like it.

“What do you think you’re going to do? Larry asked

“I’m not sure yet. I think I might just take off. What else can I do? I can’t go to jail.” I replied through my strained throat. Larry didn’t say anything. His back was faced to me as he poured another cup of coffee. “I can’t.”

“You can’t what?” He asked.

“I can’t go to jail.”

“Okay, so then what? You’re just going to flee? Just get up and go?”

“Yeah, that is the only thing that seems plausible right now.”

“You don’t expect me to go with you, do you?”

“No, not at all. This is my mess.”

“You’re **** right it is,” Larry said sounding angry for the first time.

“I know, I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologizing to me. You have no reason to say sorry to me.”

“You’re right. I think I should just go,” I said

“Where are you going to go?”

“I don’t know, but I can’t wait around. I have to do something. And I should leave before anyone gets to the store to see the safe empty. What time is it?”

“It’s quarter after six.”

“Okay, the store opens in almost two hours. I should get going soon if I’m going to be out of the state before someone gets there.”

“Okay, if that’s what you think you got to do. Have another cup and calm down before you leave.” Larry suggested.

“Okay,” I said, accepting his offer.

I got up and walked to the coffee *** to make my last cup of coffee before I left. I knew I had to get going, but I wanted to make this last cup of coffee last. This would be the last time I would see Larry. And after all, he was my best friend. I would have many regrets when I was gone, so I tried to make this last encounter last as long as I could.

As I was pouring my last cup Larry’s doorbell rang. I looked back in a hurry and Larry put his hand on my shoulder. “Relax, it’s my neighbor. He comes over early on Tuesdays. He’s an older guy that comes over for coffee. He’s lonely and his wife passed recently. It’s the least I can do.” Larry said, and made his way to his front door. I sat back down and put my head in my hands again. The two cups of coffee I drank had me jittery. I sat and waited for Larry to return with his neighbor. When he came back in I would leave and be on my way. I had no choice, and I had to be leaving as soon as possible anyway. I didn’t need to intrude while he had company. I just rested my head, and I heard footsteps. Larry was on his way back in the kitchen, and I’d be on my way out.

A hand rested on my shoulder. I still kept my head in my hands.

“Mr. Kofta?”

I looked up and nearly fell off my chair.

“I’m Officer Shandie, and I’m going to need you to come with us.”

There were three police officers in Larry’s kitchen, and Larry was standing right beside them. He looked at me in disappointment, like only a parent can look at their child. Officer Shandie pulled me up and put my hands behind my back. He cuffed me and led me to the front of the house. All of the police officers followed, along with Larry. I was being put into the back of the police cruiser when Larry stopped them and spoke up.

“I can’t keep bailing you out. You’re not running from this mistake.”

Larry stepped aside as I was put in the back of the car. The door was shut, and my fate was sealed. Officer Shandie got in the cruiser and backed out of Larry’s driveway.

The only similarity Larry and I had that night was when I leaving to be taken to the police station. We both had our heads down.

There’s no other choice but to wear them,
The drawer offered nothing but these.
An odd pair of socks might be quirky,
Odd sizes don’t normally please.

The one at my ankle was spotted,
The other was striped to the knee
The latter two sizes the smaller,
The former quite large by degree.

This mismatch I thought to keep secret
And cover the dissonant pair.
I chose from the wardrobe some trousers
And shoes, with considerable care.

My ruse would conceal the divergence
From prescribed social standards of dress
And none would be any the wiser
My discomfort I’d have to suppress.

Now, it’s harder to mask discomposure
When physical pain has attacked.
The small sock had cramped my toes tightly
That blood didn’t flow, was a fact.

My colleagues regarded me strangely
For they could see nothing amiss
But I could feel cold perspiration,
Anxiety I couldn’t dismiss.

It was then that I felt a strange itching,
The striped sock began to descend
And round my right ankle it wrinkled
And bulged at the trouser leg end.

Dismayed at my great consternation
But clueless to what was awry
My friends made comforting gestures
Need of which I could only deny.

The moral of this story’s transparent
Socks are always best worn as a pair
Their nature is in the relationship
Which provides a well-balanced air.

And take the trouble to remember
Be congruent in all that you do
For disparity will often bring discord
And that path, you’ll certainly rue.

Fukiko had woken before her accustomed time. She was alone and would have prefered to sleep, and sleep on until Narumi had lit the brazier in her room and brought tea. But she had woken, and was aware that outside the world had changed. The world, her world of Yukiguni, where the mulberry fibres for paper-making were laid out in the snow-bleached fields. Her world where men from the cities sought the kind of woman she was, a woman uncultured in the ways of geisha, but possessing a freedom no city-bred geisha could possess. She had been schooled by an aunt, was accomplished as a performer on the samisen and though her voice was thin, it held a quality of understanding, it had a fine texture, though thin. And yes, this morning a change had come over the world outside her small house that looked over Hikachi Lake, that looked towards the southern flank of the Central Mountains where during the previous day and night the snows from across the seas had fallen on the landscape. She imagined the roofs of the monastery across the lake were heavily white, and as she sought the image in her mind’s eye so the large brass bell of the temple sounded, no, it throbbed across what she knew would now be hard-frozen water.

I am floating she thought, like the snowflakes I glimpsed in the reflected lamplight when last night I opened the shutters for a moment before bed, before sleep and descent into my dreams. For days now she had been dreaming like never before. She seemed to enter a dreamstate; she would then wake purposefully; she would then fall instantly into quite a different world; over and over this seemed to happen until she found herself wondering if she was dreaming within a dream; she would become aroused, her skin glowing with the ministrations of hidden hands and fingers; she would feel that presence on her upper thighs, a kind of perspiration born of that ****** sensation that, when awake, would sometimes steel upon her.

The coming of the deep snows before spring was always a delight, an excitement carried her from childhood. The way its coming turned daily life upside down. She would enjoy choosing her very warmest garments, the bringing together of layers, her rabbit-skin mantle perhaps, a bright warm scarf over her hair, which she would not today ‘put up’ but allow to flow comfortably next to and down her back, then the hood only if the snow and the wind persisted. She could tell from the warmth of her bed that this was not so, that outside there was a stillness. Even the birds were subdued. Only the brass bell broke the stillness born of this deep snow of spring.

She heard Narumi rise, heard her **** in her chamber ***, heard her roll her bedding away, heard her bring the stove into life and fill her mistress’ brazier with the few precious coals brought across the mountains. There would be tea soon, and this young girl, appointed by her aunt to her charge, would appear to kneel beside Fukiko and give the morning blessing her mother had given Narumi since infancy. Then, she would say, ‘Madam, the snow is deep this morning. We are bound in snow today. Our path has disappeared.’ Still a child’s voice, and still a child at thirteen winters, such a slight girl. And she would retire to the warmth of the kitchen and Fukiko’s cat who was not allowed into her mistress’ presence unless requested.

Fukiko could feel the warmth from the brazier. It was as comforting as the thought of the silent snowscape outside. Gathering her cloak around her, kneeling on the covers of her bed, she held the bowl of tea in her hands, letting its warmth caress her fingers. Standing up, she stroked herself as though to bring her body awake - her flanks, the front of her thighs, her stomach, her slight *******, the long curve of her bottom and then the back of her thighs, her right hand stroking her left arm, her left arm stroking her right arm from shoulder to fingers. She was awake, and placing her feet on the cold matting found her night cloak of deepest blue with the ornamental sash of red and white. She would open the shutter and gaze out into this fresh world of snow and light.

It seemed quite miraculous that a covering of snow could so change this view across the lake to the monastery and its attendant village and then to the mountains beyond. She had once seen a woodcut of this scene, in snow, and had been mesmerised by what it revealed. Despite her status, her profession, such as it was, any ambition she might have harboured to dwell in a city, evaporated at this vista, this snow country scene. It was as though she was living in a story book where she could imagine herself as a concubine of some favoured lord, even better, a princess groomed for a fine marriage, a marriage she knew she would be unlikely to experience. There was one, a land-owner beyond Huchin whose business brought him past her domain, who, widowed and childless, had been advised to seek her presence. And she had been charmed by his shyness, his lack of experience with such as the woman she was, or thought she had to be. And it was often that she would find herself thinking of his presence, and imagining her body melting to his careful touch.

Suddenly, out on the lake figures moved. Was the hard frost of the last week really able to sustain figures on the ice? The brothers from the monastery were tentatively moving too and fro, they were suketo, skating. She would summon Narumi. Her girl should see this sight. The brothers in their crimson robes moving to and fro across the ice, their robes flowing. ‘Narumi’, Fukiko said, ‘a sight so rare. Come and look, the monks are skating.’

So Fukiko and Narumi opened wide the shutters and let in the whole landscape, the lake, the monastery, the snow-roofed village, the mountains beyond into the room. The snowlight dazzled, the hard cold air rushed into the warm room filling its very corners with an enervating freshness. Narumi knelt beside the brazier in her best purple cloak, her hair already pinned for the day, her eyes wide at the sight of these figures dancing with movement on the ice. Although cold, Fukiko would not pull herself away from this play of forms, this wholly pleasurable sight. Just below her window her camellia bushes were in bud, almost budding, their dark redness, bloodlike, enhanced by the vivid snow white. And then the bamboo, snow on the bamboo, as though carefully layered on the fragile stems and branches. This morning no wind and a period of snow falling that had laid flake upon flake upon flake giving the bamboo a wholly different form and weight and body. Its stems bent as though in supplication, as though in prayer to bless the landscape of this snow country.

One must bend
In the floating world -
Snow on bamboo

Kaga no Chivo (1701-55)

i’m beginning to realize
that i go into a situation
thinking things
are going to go
a certain way,
and i get my hopes up
and i pray that everything
will go according to plan,
but then later on
it’s brought to my attention
that God didn’t put me
in that place
to be blessed,
but to bless
someone else

and i guess it can get
a little disappointing,
because i start to feel
a little empty-handed,
but it’s also comforting
knowing that God is using me
because He knows
i’m strong enough
to do His work

Little acorns, fallen by the tree
anchored into soil.
You had just begun to grow,
when mother wilted.

The comforting shade of her branches, gone.

The support of her vital roots, gone.

Yet you remained.

Little sapling, snatched at by a predator, tooth and claw. You held tight to the soil, setting shallow roots,
clinging to the earth,
rich with remnant memories,
ghosts.
You set your branches up, grew quickly, reached out with earnest energy,
to shade the acorn below you.

Gnashing teeth, fangs of a predator. Violence, a flash of red lust into your branches, pulling, ripping.

Yet, for your acorn, adopted, your remained.

Through the jealous filter of grief, you remained.

Through the threat to your own body, you remained.

And even though Mother is gone,
you have taken her place.
Your roots winding deep into fertile soil, finding your way through paths
she first dug,
you find your strength
as protector,
anchor,
life-giver,
to the little acorn beneath you.

The comforting shade of your branches, remain for her.

The support of your vital roots, remain for her.

It was almost February and winter still hadn’t hit. I was beginning to
think that it wouldn’t arrive, and that spring was here. One evening as I was walking down the streets of the city I looked up to see a single snowflake falling down to meet my face. It was tiny and looked lonely, but a few moments later, it was followed by several more snowflakes. Sooner than later, the ground was covered in a white sheet of snow. and I was stuffing my hands in my coat pockets and pulling my hood on to brace myself against the bone-chilling wind. I made my way into a small coffee shop that was still open and was greeted by a short stocky man in his mid thirties with a dark, curly mustache and sleeves of faded tattoos.
“Hello” he said, his voice sounding deep and smooth. I pulled out my headphones that were burning in my ears, pressed pause on my phone and shoved them carelessly in my messenger bag.
“Hello”, I replied back with a slight smile, pulling my hands out of my
pockets and making my way to the counter.
The shop was small, but it had a staircase leading upstairs with more room for seating. The man who stood behind the counter continued to unpack small plastic covered packages, putting them away in cupboards and freezers. I pulled out my wallet from my bag and plopped it on the counter, feebly attempting to pull out my card with my hands shaking violently from the cold.
“What a night”, the man said, his eyes still focused on his duties.
“Hmm.” I said, nodding. “Can I get a 12oz mocha, please?” The man looked up from his package, and giggled coyly.
“Sure you can, sweetheart." He put the package that he was holding down below him, and began making the drink I had just ordered. My credit card held tightly in my hand, still shaking. There was awkward silence between us and I got the feeling the man understood I didn’t feel like talking. He finished my order, filling a small, white ceramic mug, and pushed it across the counter towards me.
“Anything else?”
I shook my head, implying no and handed him the cold card. He swiped it and handed it back to me, along with a receipt and a pen to sign. I signed the receipt, grabbed my coffee and headed up the stairs to my right. Upstairs, there was a large room with a dining room looking table and several chairs, and to the left, and a small hole in the wall with several cushions. I smiled at the welcoming spot, and took a seat. Pulling a small table up next to me, I set my coffee down, and rested my bag on the floor below me. The upstairs was completely empty. In fact; the entire shop was empty besides the man working downstairs. I took a deep breath in and let my head rest on some of the cushions behind me. Closing my eyes, I let out my breath and felt the warmth and the vast history of the shop run envelop me. I grabbed at the cup beside me and sipped at my coffee. It was still too hot to drink comfortably, so I set it down. Out of my bag, I pulled out my phone with the headphones still attached and scrunched into a tight tangled ball.
Untangling them, I placed each bud in my ear, and pressed play, continuing the song I had stopped when I had entered the coffee shop. I felt my eyelids grow heavy and I sunk deeper and deeper into the pillows around me, the smell of old books seeping into my skin. Finally, I closed my eyes, and after a few moments, was sound asleep.
When I opened my eyes, the first thing I saw was a man’s face, unfamiliar but comforting.
“Excuse me…” he said, with a wide grin.
I jumped with embarrassment; ripping my headphones out of my ears, although they were no longer playing anything. How long had I been asleep? And who was this young man? An employee of the shop? A customer?
“Sorry!” I yelped.
The man chuckled as I swung my feet around to the floor and pulled out my phone to check the time. Realizing it was dead, I scanned the room for a clock and with no success I asked the stranger “What time is it?”
He rolled up his sleep, and checked what to be a rather expensive watch. The man was dressed nicely, but nothing too formal. A clean pair of black jeans, a plaid shirt and a sweater over it. His hair, a dark brown looked thick and slightly curled. He ran his fingers through it as he responded. “It’s quarter past.”
“Past what?”
He blinked at me. “Eight…” he paused at my confused look. “A.M”
I gasped at the time. It was just past nine at night when I had dozed off.
Why did the short stalky man not wake me? Did he forget I was upstairs?
Maybe he assumed I had left, and just missed me doing so.
“I…I…” I stumbled upon my words. I wasn’t quite sure what to say, still
unsure who this man was.
“My boss told me you’d be up here.” He lifted my cup of cold coffee and
handed it to me. “I can get you a warm cup if you’d like. We don’t open for another half hour.”
I nodded, and with the cup in hand, the man turned and headed down the stairs. I gathered my things, smoothed out my shirt, tossed my hair to one side and followed the man down the stairs.
“My names Elliot” he shouted from behind the counter and the noises of the coffee machine.
“Ellie.” I shouted back.
A door swung open and in Elliot’s hand was a new cup of coffee.
“That’s a coincidence.”
I smiled nervously and took the cup from the man.
“Sit.” he said, nodded to a table.
I followed his instructions and set my cup down and pulled out a chair.
He stared at me for a moment as I stared at my coffee. After a long moment of silence, I started.
“I am so sorr-”
He stopped me and reached out, resting his hand on top of mine.
“It’s alright Ellie…really.”
I had a few questions but didn’t know where to start. So I let the silence
continue.
“My boss figured you needed a place to stay.”
I wasn’t homeless. Did I look homeless?
“Do you...have somewhere to go…?”
I nodded. “I’m not homeless…” I proclaimed. I couldn’t help but stare at
his hands. There was something different about them from the rest of the
man.
“I figured. You’re too well dressed to be homeless.” He smiled, and his
hands moved up and through his hair again.
“So, if you’re not homeless then what’s your story?”
My story? I didn’t have a story. I was a young single girl. Lonely. Living
on her own in the city. On her way home when a snow storm hit. I just stopped into the coffee shop to get warm, not to spend the night like some refugee.
“My story?”
“Yeah, your story.” he continued to grin at me.
I paused to think of an answer.
“I was just on my way home. Stopped in for a cup of coffee. Guess I didn’t
drink enough of it.”
He laughed at the comment, showing a set of pearly white teeth.
“Maybe it wasn’t a very good cup of coffee.” He glanced at the cup in front of me. I lifted it and took a sip.
“This cup’s better.” We both laughed softly, then found each other staring
for long while at one another.
“I’ll make sure not to tell my boss you said that.”
I took another sip. “I should probably go…” I said, standing up.
“Go where?”
“Home.”
He shook his head chuckling slightly. “Hang out. I’ll open late.”
“I don’t want to be more of an inconvenience than I already have been.”
Elliot reached out and took my hand in his, squeezing it softly.
“Ellie.”
My eyes grew wide, and I felt my heart beat quickly within my chest.
“Let’s not play games with one another. Stay.”
I pulled my hand away, and bit my lip.
“I can’t. I’m sorry Elliot.” I grabbed my bag from under the table, and thew
it across my shoulder. “Thank you…” I said, thinking of his hands but
staring at the blue in his eyes. I turned around, and pushed the door open.


---------------------------------------------------------­--------------------------------

It was Valentine’s Day (or as I like to call it “Singles Awareness Day” ) and my friend had dragged me out to this terrible bar in the suburbs  titled “Distraction” My friend, who was newly single and “ready to mingle” laughed when she saw the big blue sign with the name.
“That’s an ironic name” she said, snickering.
I nodded my head and groaned as we headed inside. She was right. What was this bar distracting me from? If anything, it was drawing more attention to the things I was supposed to be distracted from by just existing with such a name. My friend walked up to the bar, leaned against a stool and ordered something sweet. She asked me if I wanted anything, but I shook my head no. After a few minutes of small talking with her, and watching her sip at her watered down drink, I noticed a young man walking towards us. The bar was dimly lit, and I couldn’t quite make him out but I sighed and turned towards the bartender.
“*** and coke” I hollered out to the man. “Pour heavy!”
I stayed facing the shelves of drinks, the different bottles organized by color and type. Whiskey, Tequila, *****. Suddenly, I felt someone tap me on the shoulder and with a deep inhale, I turned; expecting some man with sleeked back hair and a bad tan to be facing me.
Instead, it was Elliot. Staring at me, standing inches from my face. I took a step back into a bar stool, and fell into a seat.
“Ellie” he said, smiling.
I couldn’t help but smile for a moment too, but then I quickly wiped it away as the bartender slid my drink to the right of me. Before I could do anything, Elliot placed a few dollars on the counter.
“You don’t have to -“
“It’s fine”  He continued to smile widely.
I looked around the room for my friend, she was across the room playing darts with some broad shouldered man. I took my glass, placed the straw on the counter and gulped down about half of it in one drink.  
“Happy Valentines Day” he said, almost sarcastically following the statement with a slight laugh.
I felt myself smiling again and took another gulp. The bartender definitely poured heavy. The liquid burned as it slid down my throat, and I clenched my teeth. I could tell Elliot was trying hard not to laugh.
“Would you like to dan-“
I bursted out laughing.
“Dance? Oh god, please. Don’t do this Elliot.”
He stared at me widely for a moment. “What are you so afraid of Ellie?”
I scoffed, and shook my head, taking another drink I responded
“I’m not afraid of anything”
He blinked at me, then ran through his fingers through his hair and breathed out loudly.
“Is it me?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer this, or what he was really even asking. I stumbled on my words, stuttering. I finished my drink, and set the glass down on the counter.
“Another?” he asked.
“No...” I paused. “Thank you”
He stared at me for a moment, his brows furrowed. He reached out to touch me, and I pulled away.
“Ellie...Let me-“
I interrupted him and shouted out “space!”
He looked puzzled, then chuckled.
“What?”
“I’m afraid of space”
“Space....? Please elaborate.”
“Like the sky, and the planets and the stars and ****”
He laughed softly. “And ****...”
“Think about it. We have no idea what’s out there. We have no idea what’s coming for us. We are so small, comparatively.”
“So you believe in aliens?”
“I believe in possibility”
“Anything could happen.”
“Exactly! Right now, as we speak, the sun could explode.”
“Or, aliens could invade!”
“You’re really stuck on the alien thing.”
“It’s a possibility”
We both sat in silence for a moment, his eyes felt heavy on me. I stood up from my stool, our bodies were almost touching.
“I’ve got to go see if my friends OK.” I said, glancing over at her. She was still playing darts with the broad shoulder man. He had his arms wrapped around her, ‘showing’ her how to hold the dart now.
“She looks like she’s doing ok to me” Elliot said with a snicker.
I didn’t argue.
“What’s your last name?” he asked.
I shook my head violently. “Look, Elliot. You seem-“ I stopped and thought of how I wanted to finish my sentence, but before I could, Elliot grabbed my hand and held it tightly.
“Ellie. I’m just a man. I’m not some comet coming down or some alien race a million light years away. You don’t need to be afraid of me.”
I took a few shallow breaths, my heart was pounding. I tried pulling away, but Elliot just pulled himself closer to me.
“You said you believe in possibility. You can’t deny the possibility of you and me.”
“I...”
He reached up, and tucked a hair that was falling down my face behind my ear then stepped back, letting go of my hand.
“I have an idea.”
“What’s that?”
“I want to help you conquer your fear”
“Oh?”
He grabbed my hand again and pulled me towards the door, I looked over to my friend, but didn’t fight him.
“She’ll be okay.” he said, still tugging me.
I followed him out the door and down the street. We stopped and hailed a cab, as one pulled up, he opened the door for me.
“Get in.”
“I don’t even know you. You could be taking me to some wear house to **** and ****** me!”
“Ellie. Don’t be so dramatic. Get in”
“Where are we going?”
“To the moon.”
“And back again?”
“We’ll see. Maybe once you get there, you’ll never want to leave.”
“It’s a possibility”
I stepped inside the cab, and so did he.

------------------------------------------------------------­--------------------------------


Once we were in the cab, the rush of excitement I was feeling in the bar and in the street had faded. Elliot handed the man his phone, which had an address written on it. The cabbie put the address into his GPS and started the meter as he drove on.
“So are we taking the cab to the moon? Or are we just taking the cab to NASA and then a spaceship to the moon?” I said sarcastically, my voice breaking from nervousness. Elliot put his hand on my leg, and sat back into his seat without saying anything.
“Who’s paying for the cab Elliot?”
He continued to be silent. I turned at stared out the window, I noticed the cab was taking us out of the city and I began to get a little worried.
“Can you please tell me where we’re going?” I asked quickly. I looked back at Elliot, he was sweating.
“Elliot? Is everything OK?” His eyes were shut and his breathing was heavy.
“I’m afraid of things in motion.” he muttered softly.
“Isn’t everything in motion?” he opened his eyes, raised his brows and then smiled at me.
“I mean, the world is always turning and we’re walking, or breathing. So we’re moving, no matter what-“
“Can you be quiet please?”
I looked back out the window again for what felt like a long while. Finally, the cab stopped in front a large abandoned dome like building in a town I had never been in. Elliot was quick to exit the cab, and circle the car to open my door. I stepped out, Elliot paid the driver and the cab drove away.
“So you ARE going to **** and ****** me?”
Elliot looked at me, and took my hand.
“I’m sorry about in the car. What mean by things in motion is like, cars and trains and planes and...” he paused, “and ****...”
We both laughed.
“I knew what you meant. I’m sorry if I was being difficult.”
He gave me a look and I nodded at him. He took me by the hand and led me closer to the building. We reached a door that had been boarded up.
“This doesn’t look like the moon...Or NASA...”
“Ellie. Do you trust me?”
“I...I don’t really even know you so-“
Elliot pried back at the board, slipping into the building through a small space and pulled me inside with him. The room we stepped into was a circle, and in the center; a large telescope.
“Does that even work?”
He squeezed my hand, then let go. Approaching the telescope, he stepped up a small set of stairs to a control panel. He pushed a few buttons and a few moments later, I heard a whirring and a low rattle followed by a deep sound. I felt a slight vibration and suddenly the roof was opening above me, exposing the night sky. On this night, the stars were bright, and the moon was full.
“Come here” Elliot called out from near the telescope.
I started to shake only slightly at the sight of the sky above me, I felt frozen and tense, as if I couldn’t move. Elliot made his way down the stairs and towards me.
“It’s okay Ellie.” he said, reaching for my hand and guiding me towards the telescope. We stepped up the stairs, and he stood next to me, still holding my hand as he adjusted a few things, looking in the telescope, then at me, then back through the telescope. He turned towards me, nudging me.
“Go ahead.”
I looked at the giant metal telescope, and shook my head.
“I really appreciate what you’re trying to do here but-“
He put his hand on my lower back, and pushed me towards the telescope.
“Just look.”
I put my face close to the telescope, an

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

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

Who am I?

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

Chapter 1-The Quest

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“MISERABLE!”-Ryan

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

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

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

Chapter 2-Evolution

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

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

I lay spread out on 
My local shingle beach
Letting the pebbles 
Sift through my fingers
I consider the myriad
Shapes and forms they take.
The varying rust
Charcoal grey and mustard shades

I set myself a mission
In the multitudes
That the sea brings to my feet
I will find amongst the 
Copious cobbles
The ultimate pebble
Perfect and pleasingly
Quirky or smooth.

I become so absorbed by 
This sifting sorting 
Comforting process 
A simple quest
I forget myself
And my proximity to the waves 
Until i am splashed 
And soaked and 
Have to vow to take up
This valiant quest 
Another day.

Until then I have taken 
Home a few shortlisted
Candidates
And made a promise to stand up when
The winner is found
And make a little trumpet
Fanfare sound
And hold the stone aloft!

You’re a Monday child, born on the first day of the week--
the weakest link--
You’re like the moon.
You’ve got nothing to give--
the sharp darkness of your crescent is someone else’s shadow,
and your light is nothing but the reflection of something bigger
and brighter than you.
You’re a disappointment child,
potential building like the Tower of Babel,
everyone telling you that if you had just tried hard enough,
then you could have touched God.
But you’re just a Monday child,
an extrovert who runs up the electricity bill by leaving on
all the lights when you’re home alone,
how even with your earbuds in you leave the TV on.
Pretending to be near people who are alive makes you feel a little less like you
already died a long time ago.
Darkness doesn’t take days off and
neither do your thoughts, so
wrap yourself in stars.
You want to find light in the constellations but
it’s hard to trace lines between dots behind fog.
Mondays are longer on Mars.
You were born with stress in your veins, heaping projects with no real due date,
in a constant state of waiting for Friday,
but weekends are for the weary,
and the taut line of your spine implies that you
don’t deserve a break.
The thing about Mondays is that they’re crushing,
filled with longing,
the way that you only feel homesick when you look up at the moon and her fraud light.
You wrap yourself in nebulae and galaxies to try to
keep the homesickness at bay while you sleep.
Nothing will ever be good enough.
You will never be good enough.
You are a Monday child, a bitter aftertaste of someone else’s loss,
like you’ve smiled too brightly at a stranger leaving a funeral home.
You dug your own grave a long time ago.
Your eyes are clouded with looking too far forward, stretching yourself backwards,
hanging onto the aftertaste of the weekend while living for the next.
You hang like laundry,
brittle in cold wind,
the step between that no one likes to linger on.
You were born on a Monday.
But your eighteenth birthday fell on a Wednesday,
your sixteenth on a Sunday,
and you are more than a desperate reach for empty space.
The Tower of Babel did not touch God.
You are not here for someone else to tell you to touch God.
You are not here for someone else.
You may be a disappointment child,
with your Monday fog eyes and shaking hands,
but sometimes you have to choose your own joy over someone else’s expectations--
because I was born on a Monday,
and poetry comes easier than physics but nothing
calms me down quite like solving differential equations.
I was born on a Monday,
and I’m used to looking at other people’s faces and seeing disappointment
because I don’t think I'm quite what any of us wanted me to be.
I cling to the past the way that Monday clings to Sunday,
but daydream about the future like it’s Saturday.
The problem is Tuesday through Friday, because
nothing quite makes me want to die like the concept of
planning out the rest of my life.
I think I’ll be alright, though,
because on Monday nights I look at the stars and think that
I might be figuring out how to feel alive,
like maybe home is in the constellations that I still don’t quite know.
Maybe home is in the Mondays,
or maybe it’s in the weary camaraderie of humanity’s ability to cling to weekdays.
Most days, I have to remind myself that this is just the beginning,
simultaneously relieving and daunting,
because I’m scared of the future and I’m scared of being disappointing.
I’m a Monday child, born under a full moon that feels like home
whether I’m looking at it from Jamaica or Germany or Kansas City.
Chaos comes with the start of the week,
and losing myself has always felt comforting:
that’s the only time when I have no one else to be.