Ilion gray
poet extraordinary
is away
learning the codes hidden in raindrops

no reason for surprise;

for the mountains of Brooklyn, the Manhattan caverns of Sunhenge^, corridors of narrow focus for trapping the declining sun rays,

neither high enough, narrow blinding,
to keep a good man from doing good things that life provides as opportunities
to do the right thing

he muses that it took five years for the other poets to understand our
poem-dreams;
avant-garde he says,
but I laugh,
never felt more misunderstood
and reply take care, be
en garde!

no matter for he is learning a new language,
the codes hidden in raindrops in a land of wheat
once called Indian Territory and eager
await his return so we may
walk along the Brooklyn shoreline,
beginning from under the Brooklyn Bridge
where Washington’s men escaped a British trap

and he can decode for me the whispery thunderous noises of
NY
showers that come up so sudden,  so roughened, but right now,
the seductive sun blinks in Manhattan windowed towers reflecting back on to our East River as golden blinks of nature

We will walk lost in the absorption of our
different commonalities, holding the hands of
his young son, and my Wendy,
both of them equal in possession of round saucer eyes
that give us poems

He calls me me friend,
I call him brother, teacher, master, better than the best,
well recalling a late night message that bred
a five year conversation ongoing

not everything need be coded
what you read here
it is not coded,
for the raindrops come clear and clean
and the poems land on our tongues
bounce on the foreheads and eyes of the babes, all stored and saved for the future blessings spoken in a single tongue

7/18/18



^https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattanhenge

She said, ‘You are funny, the way you set yourself up the moment we arrive. You look into every room to see if it’s suitable as a place to work. Is there a table? Where are the plugs? Is there a good chair at the right height? If there isn’t, are there cushions to make it so? You are funny.’
 
He countered this, but his excuse didn’t sound very convincing. He knew exactly what she meant, but it hurt him a little that she should think it ‘funny’. There’s nothing funny about trying to compose music, he thought. It’s not ‘radio in the head’ you know – this was a favourite expression he’d once heard an American composer use. You don’t just turn a switch and the music’s playing, waiting for you to write it down. You have to find it – though he believed it was usually there, somewhere, waiting to be found. But it’s elusive. You have to work hard to detect what might be there, there in the silence of your imagination.
 
Later over their first meal in this large cottage she said, ‘How do you stop hearing all those settings of the Mass that you must have heard or sung since childhood?’ She’d been rehearsing Verdi’s Requiem recently and was full of snippets of this stirring piece. He was a) writing a Mass to celebrate a cathedral’s reordering after a year as a building site, and b) he’d been a boy chorister and the form and order of the Mass was deeply engrained in his aural memory. He only had to hear the plainsong introduction Gloria in Excelsis Deo to be back in the Queen’s chapel singing Palestrina, or Byrd or Poulenc.
 
His ‘found’ corner was in the living room. The table wasn’t a table but a long cabinet she’d kindly covered with a tablecloth. You couldn’t get your feet under the thing, but with his little portable drawing board there was space to sit properly because the board jutted out beyond the cabinet’s top. It was the right length and its depth was OK, enough space for the board and, next to it, his laptop computer. On the floor beside his chair he placed a few of his reference scores and a box of necessary ‘bits’.
 
The room had two large sofas, an equally large television, some unexplainable and instantly dismissible items of decoration, a standard lamp, and a wood burning stove. The stove was wonderful, and on their second evening in the cottage, when clear skies and a stiff breeze promised a cold night, she’d lit it and, as the evening progressed, they basked in its warmth, she filling envelopes with her cards, he struggling with sleep over a book.
 
Despite and because this was a new, though temporary, location he had got up at 5.0am. This is a usual time for composers who need their daily fix of absolute quiet. And here, in this cottage set amidst autumn fields, within sight of a river estuary, under vast, panoramic uninterrupted skies, there was the distinct possibility of silence – all day. The double-glazing made doubly sure of that.
 
He had sat with a mug of tea at 5.10 and contemplated the silence, or rather what infiltrated the stillness of the cottage as sound. In the kitchen the clock ticked, the refrigerator seemed to need a period of machine noise once its door had been opened. At 6.0am the central heating fired up for a while. Outside, the small fruit trees in the garden moved vigorously in the wind, but he couldn’t hear either the wind or a rustle of leaves.  A car droned past on the nearby road. The clear sky began to lighten promising a fine day. This would certainly do for silence.
 
His thoughts returned to her question of the previous evening, and his answer. He was about to face up to his explanation. ‘I empty myself of all musical sound’, he’d said, ‘I imagine an empty space into which I might bring a single note, a long held drone of a note, a ‘d’ above middle ‘c’ on a chamber ***** (seeing it’s a Mass I’m writing).  Harrison Birtwistle always starts on an ‘e’. A ‘d’ to me seems older and kinder. An ‘e’ is too modern and progressive, slightly brash and noisy.’
 
He can see she is quizzical with this anecdotal stuff. Is he having me on? But no, he is not having her on. Such choices are important. Without them progress would be difficult when the thinking and planning has to stop and the composing has to begin. His notebook, sitting on his drawing board with some first sketches, plays testament to that. In this book glimpses of music appear in rhythmic abstracts, though rarely any pitches, and there are pages of written description. He likes to imagine what a new work is, and what it is not. This he writes down. Composer Paul Hindemith reckoned you had first to address the ‘conditions of performance’. That meant thinking about the performers, the location, above all the context. A Mass can be, for a composer, so many things. There were certainly requirements and constraints. The commission had to fulfil a number of criteria, some imposed by circumstance, some self-imposed by desire. All this goes into the melting ***, or rather the notebook. And after the notebook, he takes a large piece of A3 paper and clarifies this thinking and planning onto (if possible) a single sheet.
 
And so, to the task in hand. His objective, he had decided, is to focus on the whole rather than the particular. Don’t think about the Kyrie on its own, but consider how it lies with the Gloria. And so with the Sanctus & Benedictus. How do they connect to the Agnus Dei. He begins on the A3 sheet of plain paper ‘making a map of connections’. Kyrie to Gloria, Gloria to Credo and so on. Then what about Agnus Dei and the Gloria? Is there going to be any commonality – in rhythm, pace and tempo (we’ll leave melody and harmony for now)? Steady, he finds himself saying, aren’t we going back over old ground? His notebook has pages of attempts at rhythmizing the text. There are just so many ways to do this. Each rhythmic solution begets a different slant of meaning.
 
This is to be a congregational Mass, but one that has a role for a 4-part choir and ***** and a ‘jazz instrument’. Impatient to see notes on paper, he composes a new introduction to a Kyrie as a rhythmic sketch, then, experimentally, adds pitches. He scores it fully, just 10 bars or so, but it is barely finished before his critical inner voice says, ‘What’s this for? Do you all need this? This is showing off.’ So the filled-out sketch drops to the floor and he examines this element of ‘beginning’ the incipit.
 
He remembers how a meditation on that word inhabits the opening chapter of George Steiner’s great book Grammars of Creation. He sees in his mind’s eye the complex, colourful and ornate letter that begins the Lindesfarne Gospels. His beginnings for each movement, he decides, might be two chords, one overlaying the other: two ‘simple’ diatonic chords when sounded separately, but complex and with a measure of mystery when played together. The Mass is often described as a mystery. It is that ritual of a meal undertaken by a community of people who in the breaking of bread and wine wish to bring God’s presence amongst them. So it is a mystery. And so, he tells himself, his music will aim to hold something of mystery. It should not be a comment on that mystery, but be a mystery itself. It should not be homely and comfortable; it should be as minimal and sparing of musical commentary as possible.
 
When, as a teenager, he first began to set words to music he quickly experienced the need (it seemed) to fashion accompaniments that were commentaries on the text the voice was singing. These accompaniments did not underpin the words so much as add a commentary upon them. What lay beneath the words was his reaction, indeed imaginative extension of the words. He eschewed then both melisma and repetition. He sought an extreme independence between word and music, even though the word became the scenario of the music. Any musical setting was derived from the composition of the vocal line.  It was all about finding the ‘key’ to a song, what unlocked the door to the room of life it occupied. The music was the room where the poem’s utterance lived.
 
With a Mass you were in trouble for the outset. There was a poetry of sorts, but poetry that, in the countless versions of the vernacular, had lost (perhaps had never had) the resonance of the Latin. He thought suddenly of the supposed words of William Byrd, ‘He who sings prays twice’. Yes, such commonplace words are intercessional, but when sung become more than they are. But he knew he had to be careful here.
 
Why do we sing the words of the Mass he asks himself? Do we need to sing these words of the Mass? Are they the words that Christ spoke as he broke bread and poured wine to his friends and disciples at his last supper? The answer is no. Certainly these words of the Mass we usually sing surround the most intimate words of that final meal, words only the priest in Christ’s name may articulate.
 
Write out the words of the Mass that represent its collective worship and what do you have? Rather non-descript poetry? A kind of formula for collective incantation during worship? Can we read these words and not hear a surrounding music? He thinks for a moment of being asked to put new music to words of The Beatles. All you need is love. Yesterday all my troubles seemed so far away. Oh bla dee oh bla da life goes on. Now, now this is silliness, his Critical Voice complains. And yet it’s not. When you compose a popular song the gap between some words scribbled on the back of an envelope and the hook of chords and melody developed in an accidental moment (that becomes a way of clothing such words) is often minimal. Apart, words and music seem like orphans in a storm. Together they are home and dry.
 
He realises, and not for the first time, that he is seeking a total musical solution to the whole of the setting of those words collectively given voice to by those participating in the Mass.
 
And so: to the task in hand. His objective: to focus on the whole rather than the particular.  Where had he heard that thought before? - when he had sat down at his drawing board an hour and half previously. He’d gone in a circle of thought, and with his sketch on the floor at his feet, nothing to show for all that effort.
 
Meanwhile the sun had risen. He could hear her moving about in the bathroom. He went to the kitchen and laid out what they would need to breakfast together. As he poured milk into a jug, primed the toaster, filled the kettle, the business of what might constitute a whole solution to this setting of the Mass followed him around the kitchen and breakfast room like a demanding child. He knew all about demanding children. How often had he come home from his studio to prepare breakfast and see small people to school? - more often than he cared to remember. And when he remembered he became sad that it was no more.  His children had so often provided a welcome buffer from sessions of intense thought and activity. He loved the walk to school, the first quarter of a mile through the park, a long avenue of chestnut trees. It was always the end of April and pink and white blossoms were appearing, or it was September and there were conkers everywhere. It was under these trees his daughter would skip and even his sons would hold hands with him; he would feel their warmth, their livingness.
 
But now, preparing breakfast, his Critical Voice was that demanding child and he realised when she appeared in the kitchen he spoke to her with a voice of an artist in conversation with his critics, not the voice of the man who had the previous night lost himself to joy in her dear embrace. And he was ashamed it was so.
 
How he loved her gentle manner as she negotiated his ‘coming too’ after those two hours of concentration and inner dialogue. Gradually, by the second cup of coffee he felt a right person, and the hours ahead did not seem too impossible.
 
When she’d gone off to her work, silence reasserted itself. He played his viola for half an hour, just scales and exercises and a few folk songs he was learning by heart. This gathering habit was, he would say if asked, to reassert his musicianship, the link between his body and making sound musically. That the viola seemed to resonate throughout his whole body gave him pleasure. He liked the ****** movement required to produce a flowing sequence of bow strokes. The trick at the end of this daily practice was to put the instrument in its case and move immediately to his desk. No pause to check email – that blight on a morning’s work. No pause to look at today’s list. Back to the work in hand: the Mass.
 
But instead his mind and intention seemed to slip sideways and almost unconsciously he found himself sketching (on the few remaining staves of a vocal experiment) what appeared to be a piano piece. The rhythmic flow of it seemed to dance across the page to be halted only when the few empty staves were filled. He knew this was one of those pieces that addressed the pianist, not the listener. He sat back in his chair and imagined a scenario of a pianist opening this music and after a few minutes’ reflection and reading through allowing her hands to move very slowly and silently a few millimetres over the keys.  Such imagining led him to hear possible harmonic simultaneities, dynamics and articulations, though he knew such things would probably be lost or reinvented on a second imagined ‘performance’. No matter. Now his make-believe pianist sounded the first bar out. It had a depth and a richness that surprised him – it was a fine piano. He was touched by its affect. He felt the possibilities of extending what he’d written. So he did. And for the next half an hour lived in the pastures of good continuation, those rich luxuriant meadows reached by a rickerty rackerty bridge and guarded by a troll who today was nowhere to be seen.
 
It was a curious piece. It came to a halt on an enigmatic, go-nowhere / go-anywhere chord after what seemed a short declamatory coda (he later added the marking deliberamente). Then, after a few minutes reflection he wrote a rising arpeggio, a broken chord in which the consonant elements gradually acquired a rising sequence of dissonance pitches until halted by a repetition. As he wrote this ending he realised that the repeated note, an ‘a’ flat, was a kind of fulcrum around which the whole of the music moved. It held an enigmatic presence in the harmony, being sometimes a g# sometimes an ‘a’ flat, and its function often different. It made the music take on a wistful quality.
 
At that point he thought of her little artists’ book series she had titled Tide Marks. Many of these were made of a concertina of folded pages revealing - as your eyes moved through its pages - something akin to the tide’s longitudinal mark. This centred on the page and spread away both upwards and downwards, just like those mirror images of coloured glass seen in a child’s kaleidoscope. No moment of view was ever quite the same, but there were commonalities born of the conditions of a certain day and time.  His ‘Tide Mark’ was just like that. He’d followed a mark made in his imagination from one point to another point a little distant. The musical working out also had a reflection mechanism: what started in one hand became mirrored in the other. He had unexpectedly supplied an ending, this arpegiated gesture of finality that wasn’t properly final but faded away. When he thought further about the role of the ending, he added a few more notes to the arpeggio, but notes that were not be sounded but ghosted, the player miming a press of the keys.
 
He looked at the clock. Nearly five o’clock. The afternoon had all but disappeared. Time had retreated into glorious silence . There had been three whole hours of it. How wonderful that was after months of battling with the incessant and draining turbulence of sound that was ever present in his city life. To be here in this quiet cottage he could now get thoroughly lost – in silence. Even when she was here he could be a few rooms apart, and find silence.
 
A week more of this, a fortnight even . . . but he knew he might only manage a few days before visitors arrived and his long day would be squeezed into the early morning hours and occasional uncertain periods when people were out and about.
 
When she returned, very soon now, she would make tea and cut cake, and they’d sit (like old people they wer

The wood is stacked for winter.
One way out of the mind's limitations
is through other minds' contemplations.
The books are stacked for winter.

Yet even that cannot satisfy.
Failing to hold still for meditation
my teacher smiles, makes this observation:
The purpose of sitting's not to be satisfied

or satiated. Remain hungry,
cold, uncomfortable and counting enemies.
These, and fear, are our commonalities,
and the discipline of not hitting whenever angry.

You'll appreciate dying
quietly at home. Whichever season has been randomly selected will be
      beautiful as ever
as a molecule of water is to all matter.
"In my life there were always too many things."

If there is no time, only change
the linear becomes circular.
Do not say north or south. You're
within the winter range

of chickadee, hawk, owl and heron.
River grapes, rose hips, the cedar waxwings'
repast. Their talk is my reminding
there is change and endurance.

Near, near are my lucid dreams.
Sultry sleep, augmenting realty
Today, nothing will be as it seems.

Flashes of translucent, magnified beams,
Lighting lingers in treacherous tonality
Near, near are my lucid dreams.

The water flows in upside-down streams,
Rivers rage in confused commonalities
Today, nothing will be as it seems.

The mechanic roar of howling screams,
Shrapnel shrieking in utter infinities.
Near, near are my lucid dreams.

Pulleys construct convoluted schemes
While pollution parades in notorious normality
Today, nothing will be as it seems.

Awake. I go forth, my mind again seamed.
Awake. I go back, into a world of formality.
Near, near are my lucid dreams
Today, nothing will be as it seems.

moment to moment
we are the sum total of
our chemicals

we think of ourselves
we think of others
as an average of our
time and spacial synergy
an anatomical amalgam
a biological brine

frankensteins with
personalities, commonalities and
unique agendas
sprinkled with neuroses that
range from microscopic to
catastrophic, whether
chemical reaction or
hyperbolic extraction

you can choose to
canonize or demonize
as long as you can
recognize
the flesh and the blood
versus the fantasized

The rain beat the pavement as the man ran to a nearby bus shelter holding a newspaper over his ragged hair. The rain hitting the glass was nearly deafening, but there was comfort in the sound. A public transit bus comes and goes, recognizing the bleak figure immediately. This was, after all, his commonplace - the closest thing he had to a home in the past two years.
"Get a job", people would say, as if it were ever really that easy.
He had been diagnosed with depression after his wife’s passing nearly four years ago and suffered alone as he mourned and pushed through what most people see as a normal life. On the outside, it was unapparent how miserable he had become, unable to share the world with another as he had now for so many years. He came to his cubical on time each day, he worked until the late afternoon had came and went, and he left without a word. He was the unnoticed face in a crowd.
All at once, he lost his drive to live his life. He stopped showing up to work, he did not pay his bills, he didn’t answer the door or the phone. The clear print reading “EVICTION NOTICE” had meant nothing to him. He took only the essential things with him as he left behind an empty house behind. The last thing he put into his bag was a copy of the Odyssey, worn now after so many years of attentive reading.
The tattered copy sat open on his crossed legs, the moment passing by. The walls of the shelter sheild him from the wind and welcome him into their embrace. the adequecy of lighting was questionable as the sun descends and the world loses its colour. A streetlamp flickers to life and casts an ominous glow onto the street beneath it. He continues to read about the long journey of a man trying to find his way home, not unlike himself. What’s happening on the page is disconnected from thepart of the world that he is trapped on; he watches his secret world become a vivid painting beneath his hands and turns the page.
"Hello," said a man waiting for another bus to take him to a far off place.
He didn’t respond.
"I take it you like the book, judging by the condition…" The man tried again to grasp his attention. His dark figure loomed on the other side of the glass.
"I do", he said.
"What’s your name, son?"
He paused, turning to fully look at the man. “Its Tristan,” he said, contemplating the man as he stepped into the light. The man shuffled into the shelther gingerly, leaving behind the loud clack of his cane. His clothes chaffed against the skin on his legs, and he carried his fedora in his hand. He creased his face in pain as he sat beside Tristen.
"My name is Connor Wright", he breathed heavily, struggling to continue. "I have a spare copy of that book myself, laying around at home. No use to myself. Would you want to have it? I can bring it to you the same time next week"
"How do you know I will return it?"
"Perhaps I don’t want it back"
The silence stretched. “I would like that very much, sir” replied Tristan.
A dark blue bus pulled up to the stop without warning and stirred the stillness in the air. The headlights shone in their eyes and caught the edge of the mans thick-framed glasses. “I will see you next week then”
Each week came and passed as Mr. Wright began to bring Tristan books frequently, exchanging each new book for the last. “Why do you treat me with such kindness when I have nothing to give?” Tristan would ask him each week, never recieving an answer.
A year passed by in the presence of the silent agreement. Mr. Wright would often bring Tristan a warm container filled with soup, or a sandwhich left over from lunch to accompany his reading for the night.
On a cold night in april, Tristan waited at the bus stop for the greying man. He spotted him across the street as he waved to him. Tristan, flashing his increasingly more common smile, returned his vivid wave in the direction of Mr. Wright.
"Hello Tristan", he began as always with a bright smile. His distinct aroma filled the hollow bus shelter - a mix of burnt wood, but also new paper and musk, and apparent paradox. After a brief conversation, Tristan took the book out of Mr. Wright’s frail hands.
The bus arrived shortly thereafter and Mr. Wright borded the exhausted vehical, taking his time going up the short stoop of stairs.
This book was rather unlike the other books that Mr. Wright had given him in the past months. His books had usually been full of journeys abundant with creatures, or filled to the brim with a quaint scenery, embodying an allegory in a far off place. The book he held in his hands was called “Darkness Visible”. It was a self-help book for those in the winter of their lives, much as Tristan was, though he hated to admit it.
He opened the page of the book and the spine cracked as the smell of fresh ink and paper filled his senses. This book was new.
He read with curiousity at first, which later turned to deep interest, and later still, turned into inspiration. The following week, Tristan returned this book to Mr. Wright as he told him that he would not be returning to the bus stop with any more new books. “I wish to see you again in the future”, he said, handing Tristan a slip of paper with his name and phone number on it.
Many years passed by and the two men kept regular contact, discussing the endevours of Tristan and his success in his new life.
"Doctor Spense, you have a visitor" his secretary informed him in her usual airy tone.
"Send them in, please"
A man with strong lines creased into his face turned the door handle and entered his office at Kingston University. Commonalities were exchanged and the man fought back a solemn look as he took a seat across from Tristan. The armchair engulphed him.
"Doctor Spense, I’m sorry to inform you that Mr. Connor Wright passed away this morning as he succumed to his long fight against cancer", he spoke as though he had said these words in practise. "I am here because you were included in his will and we need to speak about legalities".
Mr. Wright had left him his entire collection of books, including that first copy of the Odyssey that Tristan had cherised so many years earlier when he had had nothing else. As he opened the familliar book, an envelope fell to the ground.
He stooped to the ground to pick up the white sheet and put it in the pile of other loose pages when he saw in handwriting, “To Dr. Tristan Spense”.
He read the words and tears filled his eyes, prickling at the corners and pooling in the clear canvas of skin before his jaw.

"The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty…" - Mother Teresa
I treated you kindly holding the knowledge that you would have nothing to give in return because I saw something I once saw within myself during the darker days of my time. I helped you because I knew your soul would rot and perish in a sickly way should you go unnoticed. I helped you because I hate faith in you and knew you had the kind of illness that could be taken away with the love of a friend. I hope that I have been able to give you the medicide loneliness, desparity and hopelessness and that your cabinets are stocked full. Remember where you have come from, and remember that it is always darkest before dawn.
Your friend always,
Connor Wright

“He doesn’t even care to keep the knowledge of her possessions a secret, not the least worried about it being stolen”
“What’s worse, is that everyone knows his treasure exists. It’s common knowledge in town”
“How long will it take to get stolen?”
“It’s a matter of days, if you ask me.

He was, however, smiling in the corner. He coerced the enemy into being his friend.  This is why he doesn’t actually disclose himself to anyone, because she might be misunderstood, like what was unravelling right before his eyes. This time however, the misunderstanding just helped him protect his real treasure, something he thought no one could possess because……………

What if you need to think a certain way to know something; and you can’t think that way without feeling or experiencing something else. If that’s true, so much of this world remains hidden in sight, and we don’t even know its hidden.

You can, to an extent, disguise what arises from material belongings immaterially. That’s what makes the key to your locked doors. The keys to your secrets and trust. Our experiences may dictate the way we feel. Look closer however, and there will always be these cracks on the edges of interpretation, these nuances in feelings, small differences that stem out into larger and larger branches until you have at your disposal- uniqueness.

So, here is a complex network of questions and possible answers deconstructed to portray different perspectives of personality, trust and secrets.

Let’s start with trust. It should ideally start with mutual respect and admiration.   Most things fade away, so in reality you are not trusting the other person, you trust yourself to be hopeful enough to believe trust will not wither through time, which is why it may seem like it’s your fault or centered towards you when you are betrayed of trust.

Even the reasons for choosing why we trust others is vastly different for each person. It goes to show how ephemeral our mind is at the microscopic level., almost like no one can truly know us. The reaction of others and their understanding of you may be an external input. But after that the interpretation is yours. And interpretation is slowly built over cycles of overlapping feelings and subtle thoughts.
Can we use this as a “key” to explore parts of ourselves whilst keeping them invisible to others? Can we recover old feelings or find out what means a lot to us, but we remain ignorant to?

Many things that matter deep inside, tend to have a personal lock, like an unspoken connection, or a bittersweet memory we like to visit. The most interesting part about these is that the key for some of these is unpredictable! Any future incident could somehow serve as an access to it, which is what makes personal locks so magical. No one can possess it because of no one, sometimes not even yourself, knows it's meaning to you. Such a key is truly unique, two people may go through the same thing, but for one person alone, that experience could serve as a key.  Here, an experience from the outside world can awaken memories, thoughts that we inadvertently treasured. It can, in a sense, almost transport us to a different timeline.

The phenomenon of getting goosebumps from listening to a piece of music (called frisson), and experiencing a surge of sensory feeling could be a doorway to some great things and could be a sign of higher levels of creativity. When you re-listen to a song you hadn’t listened to in many years, you can relive the time you originally heard it to startling detail. You may notice newer things about memories, be aware of nuanced feelings. Essentially, it becomes something that’s only yours, because you can’t predict how you yourself will be. The only key for such a secret is a unique reaction to an external input.

When you listen to this song, even ambiguously (not attaching it to any particular person or experience), even then when you later hear it, it will be infused with meaning. Why? Because the environment around you at that time possessed some emotional meaning, even if you didn’t know it. It became like recovering a part of you. Like recovering your own perspective on what’s in front of everybody.

Suppose instead of attaching significance, you simply create scenarios in your mind. You just imagine instances and do this repeatedly. Over time, the song’s original meaning will tarnish away. Such imagination gives temporary satisfaction, and even though one can imagine a variety of different scenes and emotions; imagination itself, feels the same. It does not carry any value by itself. It would seem that listening to a song a couple of times and then years later seems to be the world’s best time machine, but when we overplay it, and tamper it using imagination, neural networks get diluted and may not be serve as a very effective train of reminiscence anymore. *^


Mulling things over in our mind in loops can change almost everything about it- it may change a happy sentence into a sad one, a normal experience into a special one, and now these emotions that have been created by you, are like small filters that complicate further experiences.
Consider that two people go through the same experiences from birth. They may not feel each experience to the same degree. The second point is that subtler feelings are experienced by each of them. One may react more heavily, and the other may have auxiliary feeling in more magnitude than the other. Though these differences may be minimal at the start, these subtle thoughts become triggers, just like the initial experience.
Look at what’s happened. Now the seed of subsequent thoughts and emotion is no longer EXTERNAL. Its internalized. As they grow, though material interactions give rise to initial waves of thoughts, our lives are culminated by infinite intertwined feelings and emotions- so for each material interaction, a hundred immaterial ones are processed subconsciously. A symphony can’t be broken down to violins, piano, and drums separately. The feeling that arises when they are played in unison is simply “different” though its just a conglomeration of its parts. This is similar to our mind, and the concept of “The whole is greater than its parts”. What’s more is that the thoughts occurs in different order, and a different order creates a different story.
The concept of “personality” is viewed as abstract sometimes”.  Like character is something that describes the mind, rather than the experience. But this is contradictory, as “Personality” is immaterial, while the experience, the derivative, is material. So, there is a possibility that during this invisible conversion process, our internal reactions and what we make of things in our mind may gradually shape our personality more than the experience itself.


In a strange way, that makes us original. Perhaps not completely original, but it’s possible that no two people are the same, even if they have gone through the same things.
But since the development of originality is subconscious, let us look at conscious examples to put it into application:

Often, there is a part of a song that appeals to us, a favorite part.  When we ask ourselves why that particular melody appeals to us, it may be hard to pinpoint the source of what produced your liking in that part.  Sure, it may mean something like “freedom” or “joy” of remind you of a memory. But why does it mean a specific emotion to you? This is an example of how something that has no direct connection with a memory could possibly trigger a feeling. This is a magical occurrence. It’s extraordinary that a melody can awaken in you a unique emotion, that others may not react to in the same way. It goes to portray how subtly different our minds are. Furthermore, when we create things out of that feeling we derive from the music- make a story based on the feeling, write a new song, or even play it on an instrument- now you have made something that is unique from the depths of your mind. Your own subconscious interpretation.  
Frequency of frisson was positively correlated with overall Openness to Experience, as well as five of its six sub facets: Fantasy, Aesthetics, Feelings, Ideas, and Values. *This may also mean that extensive feeling, or sensing is related to creativity.

Sensory influx, the visual imagery, nostalgia, all point towards creativity, and many renown creative geniuses draw on their sensitivity to fuel creative processes.

Highly sensitive people tend to be more creative, as the depth of feeling offers scope for exploration. The interpretation and emotion felt greatly corresponds to the creation of ideas, and is similar to how interpretation even creates association between senses, or synesthesia.
Infact, drawing on nostalgia can increase imaginative processes

You might have heard of the term “synesthesia”, where sensory experiences get interconnected. A person with grapheme synesthesia, for example, associates letters and numbers with colors. A person with musical synesthesia sees colors effuse out of musical notes. Some synesthetes taste words, smell numbers, etc. It is also a fact* that Synesthetes don’t necessarily share the same sensory experience-though there are commonalities ( ex: most synesthetes associate either black or white with zero), the difference in perception is linked to the environment of growth, childhood*, and if its occurrence is natural, then synesthesia is developed in childhood or at birth.

A Symptom of synesthesia is also reading sentences that seem personified, as though a stranger with different personalities are narrating them. It is interesting to relate this to how there might be different personas in our own head, and sometimes constantly make commentary on our life! It’s like seeing yourself through different perspectives, except these perspectives have defined forms, which makes it easier to assign little quirks to them. If this helps us sense and perceive the world better, and makes us see through multi-colored glasses, it can be very creatively satisfying to have internal conversations, in a positive and uplifting way. We can be a stranger to our own experience, and wouldn’t a change of view be enlightening?

Synesthesia also, may be linked to creativity and metaphors, * and is in a way a example of consciously coming up with original sensory interconnections, a creative process that becomes part of character.  It's connecting something unrelated and different, and an original combination of connection.

So the rearrangement of feelings, and extent to which people sense and feel can contribute to original creations. It is no surprise that many artists and musicians have synesthesia.

Such experiences, with music, nostalgia and conditions like synesthesia are examples of a how we interpret and sense can consciously contribute to originality.


The bottom line is that synesthesia obtains its roots from childhood, but morphs into something complex enough to blur lines of emotion. The proportion of how things are mixed is unique. That proportion is the starting line for all character, and the proportion can be random and unique.
Thoughts feel so diverse and interwoven, that experiencing different facets of it itself can seem synesthetic. Seeing a neon sky, for instance, may not just bring happiness or excitement, but very specific sentience, and a connection to memory, even if it has never been a part of your life at any point of time. The neon sky could mean regret and eccentricity, and flashes of senses may correspond to it. You may feel the aesthetic of a place to strange degrees, and sometimes a simple scenery can seem “wrong” or “sinister”.


  “Why does the neon sky seem eccentric?” “why are roses connected to a past memory that had nothing to do with roses?”

These questions have some intangible meaning behind them. So, it’s not just that people perceive things differently, it’s that their reality itself, a culmination of perceptions is unique, and so are thoughts. And don’t thoughts and ideals shape character in some way? Don't these interpretations become a part of you? A filter for how you perceive the world?


Some song forms a golden thread link with some intense feeling which is connected to a memory you never knew you possessed (this memory may be fictional even) which is linked to a whole little city in your world.  Everything means differently. And as we think and think, these meanings become fine-tuned, and create emotions, thoughts and perspectives that shape our individuality. The essence is that your character may have obtained its roots from the world, but your proceedings, both on the inside and outside, are truly yours. And gradually, proceedings reflect character. More than the roots. It’s a many layered mind that could seem impossible to strip down.

Memories can be similar, but the sequence of memories and thoughts, will likely not be the same.


Here we gently skim the daunting surface of the philosophical idea of “Fictional realism”. A main idea here is to try and question what the definition of something has to be to be considered real. We say “It was a dream, not reality” But did it not feel real? When we read a book, or a movie, and voraciously delve into fictional landscapes, does it not truly feel like we are integrated into it, or rather, it is integrated into us? In that case, since we are real and it is now a part of us, can it be real too? Or can it be real, simply because it exists in our minds? Love and loathing also exist in our minds, but we regard them as a real thing, pulsating with its repercussions. Do we regard something as real only if it has a scope for action? Or if it’s something we can touch or see? In that case, the world will be limited, and there would be a loss of explanation for what gives rise to those actions. It would be like saying “imagination seeds reality”.

Memories and thoughts can be similar, but the sequences of them, even if  slightly  different can grow to be hugely dissimilar. If we can consciously create things when exposed to sensory information, why can't we consider the possibility of subconscious creation of individual character?

we are pushed out of our mothers' wombs into this cruel world
where we..
all ****
sleep
love
think
exist
*****
control only us
control only our hearts
breathe
breathe
breathe
feel
feel nothing
feel everything
create
destroy
die

Ice blue-gray eyes，
that laugh, especially with
a semi-crooked smile.

A kind sort of smile, the semi-
crooked one, and a kind
sort of laughing.
Makes you feel like you’ve done
something pretty ****
great to deserve it.
(just pretend.)

And like you want to do it again,
so that maybe your eyes will laugh
with his.
Just maybe.
And if not, hopefully he likes you
anyways.
A millionth as much as you
like him.
Or a trillionth as much as
you sometimes, barely, dare
to wish.
(upon many a shooting
airplane, birthday candle, and
wish bracelet knot.)

Strong tennis-player muscles
of implied lines, not bulk.
At the same time, arms that
look comforting, make you long
to be held.
Doesn’t matter what catastrophe
strikes, bet it’s worth it.
Not from experience, but here’s to
hoping.

Accompanied by a mild yet male
scent. Unique with its inevitable,
accompanying trace of extra polar ice.
(be sure to buy some.)
Chewed in a surprisingly
acceptable way.
And a piece shared, with a kind
sort of smile,
always.

A laugh for real.
That always laughs with you, never
at you, at whatever is deemed
worthy, not just when others laugh,
even if it’s dorky, or lame,
or whatever.
Infused with honesty.

A personality to match that genuine
laugh.
The person you just want to talk to
because you just know
he’ll understand.
And if he thinks it’s stupid, it’s
ok, because
it probably is.
(definitely is.)
And why be unhappy when talking to
him?

Besides, he's not judging
anyways. Just
gets it. Maybe because you
have so much in common.
Though it's more than that.
More than those "commonalities."
Or whatever.

Assumes the best,
though that phrase is still
just not right.
(like all of them.
nothing's right.)
Though you think you're nothing,
he treats you like you're...
someone. Special.
(but maybe not quite someone special.)
Dont know how that
happened.
But it's nice.

Nice that he's always there.
(until when you expect it.)
Dependable and trustworthy.
Can't believe he's more stranger
than the best friend he feels like.
The best friend he
should be.
He's always there,
and now he's the one you always
want with you, more
than anything.
More than everything.
Who'd ever need anything else?
Who'd ever want everything else?
(maybe it's just me.)

That one in particular.
Who gives you that feeling you
thought only existed in romance
novels.
Who looks at you and something just
happens.
Who’s just different than everyone
else.
For who knows what reason.
But you just know.
Since forever.
As in love at first sight.
And all those other clichés which you
now know are apparently true.

Who, if they leave, take you away
with them, a part of yourself never
to be recovered. Once you give
yourself away, you don’t get any
back.

Leaving you in pieces, shambles, a
wreck , a disaster, broken,
confused, angry,
alone.

And all the songs make sense now.
About love and heartache. (both of
the above.)

Wish you’d receive the matching
piece of him, so that if you left, he’d
feel the songs too.

Who makes you feel like an idiot for
letting this happen. (because
obviously you are one.)
Who could never possibly like you
back, because no way
you deserve it.

The reason you’re up at two
AM on a Wednesday night/Thursday
morning, writing about
you know who. (as in not Voldemort.)
Who’s reduced you to an idiotic and
hopeless romantic, crying over lost
love and sappy movies.
The one everyone makes fun of.
Stupid pragmas.
(you think I chose this?)

Who’s also made you so much more,
so much better.
(to use yet another cliché.)

Who you can’t help but hoping,
wishing, dreaming for.
No matter what. Because it’s
all you know.
And all you can do.

(please come back.)

I'm still caught up
In the faucets
Ive been brought up
My losses thought up
In loss-less
Fossils
soldering
The slaughter
Atop
An my inner adulterer
In the fodder
Of a ****
I am the will
Of my weakest link
Give me a shrink
To **** away at the sheets
Of freedom
Drink away the stink
Of freedom
You cant free them
Cant believe them
Cant be them
Just retrieve them
From this life
Deceive them
To the knife
Bleed them
From the heights
Of ego
Let em flow
To never
In the blight
Of severed stems
With sedatives
And seduction
Isolate the malfunctions
Of my internal combustion's
Busting in
Annihilation
Of the problem
Manifestation
Of the solemn
In columns of regret
Inscribed across my chest
Blessed with contempt
For the clause
Unmindful of the laws
And stalled
I will stand
Where you fall
And call
To myself
From the stealth
Of broken homes
And hungry dogs
I am the fog
Of arson
The discontent
Of the larceny
Of the peasants
I'm blessed in the curses
Of burnt
Churches
But in worse ways
Im versed
In aversive
Silence
Dispersed
In cursive slices
I realise this
Is
The decisive
Moment
In which i wake
For the sake
Of procreation
Infection
Of a system
Convection
Of a prison
Citizen
Of a religion
Under taxation
To live in it
I'm illiterate to the
Commonalities
I cant depict
the squiggled lines
Its a tragic comedy
Giggling to the rhyme
I think it is
Perfection
At its peak
Pulp for the weak
Its neat!
I cant tell
If i am half awake
Or half asleep
But text is cheap
So i bleed
On screens
But dont mean
A thing
In dreamless
States

I

Behind his eyes of Laser Blue
I have a history as brief as titsi-flies

Behind a furrow or a dormant smile's bloom
I am indentured
by his manipulations,
                                lessened by his education
and I am supposedly the one he loves...?

So, there in the bear-hug of his lies
I am mute in delirium
copulation cranked to carnival speeds

Because he has power in the unspoken
as vaporous as white smoke
incantations & sorcery
                          fish hooks my love into my doom

I understand that gaze
I commit to its kaleidoscope
variegated faces
for every season and holiday
each hour etched is an emotion
pretend and pretense

Splayed

Muscle, toned,
limbs limned in liquids
arms of a giant squid
the transparent center:
a cluster of homosexuals suckling...

He is Captain Nemo, submariner
mad haired scientist,
testing each concoctions' mixed diversions
and perversions / replete to repeat
                               how we all un-burden ourselves
to him, patience
is an old man with an oil burner...

I am transfixed
a lobotomy experiment of chopsticks
and peppermint schnapps

who's time has misplaced it's tick.


II

I am aerodynamic...

Because the laws of attractions
commonalities not flesh on flesh
or polysyllabic meals of kisses
none are removed from him

He weaves his wizard's wand
fantasia music to magic  ***
to a whistle's whim,
while I chimp out puzzles complex
just to gain praise and admiration.

(As he vanishes to rendez vous
another grinder, another victim,
another name game)

For behind his hood
and hat of tormenting's tricks
I have glimpsed his true nature

like Midus whose touch once harsh straw,
rumpled in his still-skins
complete with fanatical flaws
I witness an aging ram
horned, silver haired satyr...

I am a deer in headlights
every time I am shocked by my own
naievette
like sheep to a herder
steering a flock,
a troop, a school, a ******

unguided paths that shape themselves
by the traffic of every foot.

I have grown blank
no mirth or self-contrition
this rat retreats into moist dark spaces
to converse with paranoid shadows...

Behind his eyes
even when he mistakes his conjuring
excuses tangled among false & fallacies
but stupidity is
the only spell he never casts
upon my helicopter spinning mind


III

He has transformed me not to a toad
with a swollen desire
to croak / a burp

but turned me
into a boomerang...

Flung high with speed
inaccurately to flee blind
uncertain as wind-shears in Chicago
but still returns to suffer

A beaten Benji,
and still an Ole' Yeller defender of truth
I remain

knicked, knocked, chipped
licked - not yet
but seemingly to his soul's spotlight
dead.

Thrown out
to welcoming skies so blue

still there's an anger behind his eyes
I understand / it will be the end of me

I am unable to discern
our story - where dying heroes lay
when they realize
tragedies end unluckily...

But a boomerang
knows not reasoning to leave
and be victim
to its own nature's treason,
it does not question why
nor weep helplessly

yet it also does not sing
celebrating when in its master's hand
yet comes home
unhappily half alive
I suffer like the boomerang
still my own company
without
compass or wayward destination
give in to it's predestined
abilities
in high flight always returning,

whistles to the joy of living

you see, a yo-yo can not fly

I have become acquainted with heaven's sky
kingdom of light
familiar to it's shine
delight in my unforeseen
demise

(my magic kiss kiss
imagination bang bang!)*

I am a divine toy of life,

be it

a boomerang.

Gliding in my thoughts
Drawing lines of no belief
Stamps of words on me
Life does not seem so linear at all

Void in my thoughts
Vehemence of the violent voices
Rolling over my softness
Sharpness in a round room of life

Silence in my thoughts
Evaporated lines of tissue and devotion
Fragmented injury allot
An isolated point in the middle of life

An edge in my thoughts
Laying out the same unvaried harshness
Crying not in my name
Non-echoing affinity bouncing off my life

Pause in my thoughts
Shadows in frequencies of low and strong
Sing in parity with
Charm and wonder in disjointed arms of life

.
Crystal sparkles—
From within, with ores,
Mineral, quartz, precious
Commonalities from earths
Core.  Wind has attempted
To make shy marks— falling
Sorrowfully short and water
Has edged and smoothed
By centuries too of trying.
This then was their show,
A kind of immortal love,
Everlasting by its trials,
As even the sun knows,
For a ley line, etched so fey,
Runs each wild orbs circumference,
Separates moss from clean stone,
Tracing the path of a star.

Who are you?                                                             ­                                                                Who are you?
i think i know you                                                              ­                                             i think i’ve met you
That i’ve seen you before                                                           ­                         and known you inside out
and been with you                                                              ­               touched your dreams, felt your scars
spent some meaningful times                                                          sh­own you mine too, under the stars
shared some laughs and shared some sorrows              we’ve discussed commonalities and discords

                                                       ­                            i know you
                                                             ­                    you know me
                                                              ­                and yet it seems
                                                           ­                  we’ve never met
                                                             ­            and odd as it may seem
                                                            ­              i don’t recognize you

                                                            ­               it makes me want to
                                                              ­                pick your brain
                                                           ­                     pych you out
                                                             ­          sift through your secrets
                                                         ­          need to figure you out to know
                                                            ­           where we’ve met before

                                                         ­         i want to dissect your heart
                                                           ­           and find my place in it
                                                              ­  i know i’ve been there before

-Vijayalakshmi Harish
  01.10.2012

Copyright © Vijayalakshmi Harish

We're probably very different,
You and I
But maybe I don't want to feel disconnected
When our viewpoints don't match
When I become separated from you

There's more to life, you see
Than focusing on our differences,
What separates us

When we disagree, we disconnect
From each other
I can feel it
You can feel it too
Don't tell me you can't
I've heard those words
Enough to know they aren't true

So please, when I say
Let's not discuss politics,
It means
I only want to remain close with you
I don't want to be pushed away

So now, rather than re-hashing old news
Like politics, or rather,
What separates us,
Let's explore what unites us,
What brings us closer to each other
Within the beauty of where
Our commonalities lie

Because as I said,
I just want to feel close to you

I never really wanted to die-

I dabbled in suicidal thoughts, though not the perse usual rummaging through the brain of, "If I died, what would happen?"

I thought that too. For nearly 5 years.

Suicide is a common thought. Planning, excessive thinking, executing is statistically common too, though not as pedestrian as contemplating,
"If I died, what would happen?"

Yes, I contemplated. I planned. I excessively thought. I thought I wanted to die and I really didn't. I never really wanted to die, hence why I am still here.

I did not attempt. I made half assed attempts, if even. I literally and metaphorically scraped the surface, specifically the insides of wrists. Bandages and "the dog scratched me" sufficed as cover up.

Do not mistake these "attempts" as false sense of despair and hurt though. I hurt like hell. Cutting myself hurt less, and I think that's why we do it. The despair tore holes in my vision that somehow blurred the light into darkness and convinced me I might have been blind.

I was blind as a bat and at the time, that is why I thought I wanted to die at my own hands, on my own terms. 5 years of contemplating and planning and cutting and bandaging and wondering how many **** times the dog can scratch in the same place. 5 years of bouncing back and forth between seeing the light and having it blurred every time I felt myself wanting to die.

I promise I never really wanted to die though. I would have done it if I had.

I didn't want to die; I wanted a reason to live. Cliché? Maybe. But for 5 years that was my reality and my immature brain couldn't make sense of it. My little brain had no way of knowing that my reasons to live were immense and vast, like the horizon and sea meeting at that thin line across the way when you watch a sunset.

I wanted a reason to live. Living through my personal hell of trying to drag myself out without too many scars from my own hands and the world around me gave me a reason. I fought. I didn't even know what I was fighting but I fought. I threw punches and elbows until I found a way out of the pit where I fell and lost sight of the lights that gleamed like stars and took my breath away.

Fighting was a reason, and that was the start. Fighting to stay at a better place was a reason. Progress. The next day hopefully being better, another reason to put down the little jagged edge of a broken statue I used to cut myself when I felt I needed physical pain to bear truth to the waves I was drowning in within my rib cage.

I never really wanted to die and I wanted a reason to live. Every day I made it, I found that a reason would not suffice because rather there are so many reasons.

First, others empathize. They have seen their own hells. Hell looks different to us all, but feels just the same; like it is going to burn us to the ground if we don't start running the other direction. And it will. It could burn you like liquor down the throat, like overdosing or cheating or killing yourself or a multitude of other things that would signify hell burning you to the ground.

Second, others sometimes ponder dying too. We all do. Look at that, another commonality. Third, we are all human and if you give people a chance, you find they are similar to you in ways you cannot imagine, in ways you could not comprehend until you find out that your coworker also struggled with depression and your neighbor also has parents with a shaky marriage and your grandmother just wants someone to want her the same way you want someone to want you.

Fourth, others will look into your hell and if they run scared, they haven't seen many hells. If they stay and watch the glow, they will stay and hopefully help guide you out. So long you're willing to keep stepping forward, they may be on the opposite side waiting with a pitcher of water and a pat on the back for doing your best.

Fifth, people care. They do. They care and I promise the most random people will care if you died. Death is the only thing promised to us, as the pessimists say. I beg to differ; the notion that people will care is also confirmed in my mental book of, "Things I Know To Be True." Will it be 1 or 100 or millions, I cannot say. I can tell you someone will care though, and that someone is me.

I never wanted to die and that's a reason enough not to do it, right? To write about it and tell others? To tell strangers that I care if they die or not? That there is a reason to life even if I can't tell you exactly what?

Entirely. Strangers read my words every day and the most beautiful thing is the commonalities I have with these strangers, with people I can't put names or faces to because we may never meet.

I never wanted to die because I knew in my fickle, unsure yet unwavering heart that someday I may write about it all, and it may save a life. I read a lot in the 5 years I thought I wanted to die and the most remarkable was this-

A man jumped 9 stories and survived. He recalled not wanting to die as soon as he jumped. I didn't want to be that man in that he had to jump to know he wanted to live, but rather brave enough to speak about it so people like me could read and rethink the notion of wanting to die.

I did rethink it. It took me time and effort and sweat and tears and sadly some dripping blood but eventually I realized I never really wanted to die. I wanted a reason to live, and a stranger who wrote an article on another stranger gave me a reason to just that. Live.

Living has scared me shitless, unlike the way possibly dying at my will has. Dying is the period; definitive, dark, completion. Living are the semicolons and commas, the dashes and run on sentences. I want to keep running, I want to keep writing and loving and hurting and waking up knowing I can do it all again one more day, if I am so lucky to be afforded one more day.

I spent 5 years contemplating what would happen if I died, and who would care, and what would happen 5 years after my death. I never really wanted to die though, so I hung those thoughts up to dry. They recur sometimes and I do what I can to keep them out. I spent 5 years "living" on the brink of a death that wasn't even coming unless I said it was, and you know what? The anxiety of it all was worse than possibly dying itself. The anxiety of not knowing if killing myself was worth it killed me the most, left me petrified like a deer in headlights wondering the same **** thing I had for 5 years-

Am I going to die?

Yes. Someday. I am going to die someday.

Not at my own hands though. My hands have held others and felt the ocean at midnight. My hands have placed vinyl into a record player and my hands have made killer banana bread. My hands have petted more dogs than I can count and have gotten me sick because I touched the railings at school during flu season. My hands have held so much more and they hold my life; I do not intend to grip my life so hard and worriedly that I strangle the last breath out if it.

For the last ******* time I DID NOT REALLY WANT TO DIE and I bet none of you do either, even the ones that succeeded in the saddest succession known to man- beating nature at it's own game and taking life that wasn't meant to be taken. I did not really want to die, and you do not either. So where is the light at the end of the tunnel? The notion to hold on one more time?

It is the words I have written, the sun streaming through your windows each day, the hands you have held and the hands that hope to hold yours. It is in the tip you give to the man playing the guitar on the corner of your street, it is the lemonade stand that reminds you of sweet childhood.

Yes, death is promised to is all. Life is not. I can solely promise that your life is worth it though, and that fighting for it leaves you with a story to tell 5 years later when you realized that you never really wanted to die.

The hunter runs after his prey, and then
It leaps forth into the stary night, which
Swallows it up to be part of it when
The hunter finds their chase to be unhitched
Around the entire globe, we find
That we all have some commonalities
We all have something in the human mind
That reflects our common realities
We chased our prey, only to find that it
Had taken off for the celestial
With our knack for storytelling and wit
We had made star pictures and festivals
It oddly speaks to our human nature
That our stories can become much greater

Hound-dog swallowing poly-coated pills, filling up, bloated, falling off stage, and into a more permanent and lasting Graceland, to be surrounded by another’s verse.

I only enjoy what comes from my own head, a modern Samuel Johnson, no matter what happenstance brought about to be said, a cage free Bronson. Hearing false verse through a syllable count, hoisted onto adverbs easy to mount. Congratulate a lesser mind, reaching commonalities most could find. Ease in creation, opens floodgate doors, distributing specs of grace through misworded spores. Life, love, and the pursuit of vanity, leaves simplified lumps of prosperous thought riddled with anonymity. The invention of despair overwhelms those ungifted, and leaves them erecting stale forgeries they grifted.

In the wee small hours of escaping light, a crooner steadies his hands as he falsifies his originality, reading off the music from another’s sheet.

A change in topic is something to hold as worthy, though in a modern context of prosaic prose, such good fortune can be exceptionally elusive. Broken hearted symptoms shared through a hash-tag, rerouted and worded, to fit an illiterate youth’s lesser diction, reposted to approach validity, only to be called forth as an original soul, one to revere, and hold as an entitled fraction of logic.

The piano man knocks out a tune, hit in stride with vocal conduct, inspired and laid in pen by a lesser man propelled by better wording, given up for another’s career.

Market’s over-saturated with teenage sonnets, weeping over cut wrists, ended (Victorian inspired) trysts, refreshed and brought back around until sentimentality vomits. Themes used to run rampant with fresh ingenuity, made extinct, occurred in a blink; now every poem has some congruency.

The grapevine got entangled, getting involved with a troublemaker, providing the soundtrack, using another’s words.

And this,
Is of all and anything...

Little girls wear too much makeup
Pre-teens, children
Everyone shaves or waxes their genitals
**** and **** "jobs"
Are commonalities
The fridge repair man came today
Cash, or *******?
I'm not sure,
***** stamped,
on makeup
My five year old worries about her hair,
Style and colour
She asks questions
I can't answer
My therapist
Charges too much,
Feeling too much
Six figure income,
And paying only less,
Than five dollars a day,
In child support
Husbands, locking up wives
And getting by,
Mothers, stripping
To make ends meet
No judgement here
Not that I could,
Nor, that I ever would
Thinking about,
In trash cans
Where real souls dwell
Infections of the uninsured,
All's well
I swear.....
This is
Of ALL and EVERYTHING.

We all saw you on TV. See
we all felt you, on TV.
We effectually react/ or change the channel.

Seeing with, you and I, we seeing
we share science, we know bits
of many common childhood mystery
religion moralizing stories, animating
representative good and evil having beings,

eaters of roots and seeds;
eaters of blood, raw flesh;
eaters of the processed meat, made
from what clams eat, while making pearls
worth the merchant's speculation, see,
look, if this pearl were thine to own, yours
alone. If this pearl were thine, to form
using layering lightflex laminate fluid to form,
smooth curve force to mollify vitious spikes
as one creature soothes the pain caused,
when a certain signal calls for pearling,
biometric symbiotic gnosisnot using
a natural pattern found in viscous,
snottish fluids flowing just above
the bottom line reality, priced per
one man estimated ethos, may
haps, taken and called granted, per
happenstance, standing, there take it,
weigh the worth, at least, it cost you
this much attention, and left
an edge to look over…
take this thought,
taste test, notice salt, hmmm.
-- such taste, sweet
-- such taste sharp, and bitter…
Notice sticky hook to any attention paid
-- remember, re
member reading for all the roles…
This Is Your Life,
unforgiveable forethought odd after effect.
-- taste and see, we all are good, our lies are evil.

Novels in genres, are stories in familiar
feeling places. The realmmmm re-creational
master of monstors degrees, stages, steps,
tic to last held thought, ties to all held thoughts,
- who buys horror and shame hero stories?
- who buys cops are Platonic Guardians stories?
- who buys we, that people, are stories?
Vicarious as the pope,
we feel the ef
in efforting to display the glory of knowing.

- ceasing to effect the art's official form of love,
- sincere affection, effectively applied plasterwise.

Nothing new, sort of classless, drivel, driving assumptives
sorted on commonalities, professional confession,
yes, we guessed you exist, so we said
I do this for money, or
no,
I do this to make pearls, when something in me
is grinding at my gut, make, make, make me,
a pearl none shall ever see,
make me, think.

On earth, as in my own peace of mind, let it be.
Awen. Amen, and all the other translations of make it so.

-

i took no pleasantries in that adjustment
from the top shelf of Pastry Perfection
to the wicker-wire dust bunnies at the
"sole" level of humanity

after i mistakenly thought —you—  took
some element of freeverse i had posted a
couple of years ago at one of the more-read
poetry sites on the internet-

then i realized something, Poet..

that for all those sleepless hours you
spent cramming for the SAT—

i posited on how many welding rods
could be burned down during a two
hour period of trade school

and with respect to those thousands of
words diligently packed into your
undergrad dissertation—

(including that humorous description of a
knitted strap you used to keep the pencil
from rolling off the table)

i wrote a brief essay of commonalities
on how much Gerald R. Ford and
Elwyn Brooks White
actually disliked
football,

and to those thoughtfully crafted lectures
in front of scores of distinguished
scholars and senior staff—

i was projecting shadow puppets onto a
screen during a slideshow while the
teacher excused herself to the restroom.

basically this;  

as to the volumes of books
you have published
over the decades—

i have a few thousand words of
amateur poetry posted online
inside of a few years.


That Said,

for those carefully-placed words
(of mine)
you incorporated into your
latest masterpiece,

realizing poets will not always
happen upon the same instant
at any given intersection,

i recognized that most familiar sensation
we Both get when having correctly
delivered the punchline to the funniest
joke of the evening.

we —in fact— have only the readings
of fellow writers to blame for each
other's blending of creative impulses,

that during these miraculous,
yet humble birthings of verse—

i have it now on good authority,
that we all could possibly exist
within this capacity

                                      as mere equals...



"The Lanyard of Amateur Poetry"
© 2020 by Seranaea Jones
all rights reserved


.

Set me on fire


Insanity is what ran through me
Intensity plunging into me
Breathing is not wheezing but coming easily
Tingling reawakening
Space vacating me
I’m a vortex of for ever waiting
Playing on words, hoping to be heard
Spinning on this earth that is worth…
Nothing? Something? Maybe
Say to me the words that send guilt
Through sensations I have yet to word
Liking is a fighting, loving is despising
Wanting to be curious, how could I not with the words of his
Blister me with sincerity
Sending burning regret through every vain
Every way, in each new light
I fight and twist new perspective
To yell at me, to say to me everything is all right
And believe its true.
That me and you collided for some kind of real
Reeling going wild
My heart beats with the laughter of a child
Happiness is your contagious energy
I take it in and let it live in me
Your sweet scenic imagery
Watercolor paintings reflecting back at me
Beauty is something new and founding
Whirl pool of commonalities
Blasphemies of morals and value
But I cant help how my happiness swells
How you a smile into me
Chilling water not nearly as refreshing
Retesting, rethinking my boundaries
Seeing new towers, higher mountains and walls
Longer tunnels and halls
To walk, climb and crawl
How far the journey to a wanting place
To a unsure space in any case I hope your happy
That my presence is half as enchanting
Because your words they leave me panting
How can I not, with no words forgot?
Blister me with guilt’s hot iron
Set me on fire.
Or should we not?
I forgot the binding power of
A forever real friend ship
Set my ship on fire
And drown all hopes and desires

make yourself glowingly present
and bow down to
higher consciousness

feel the bewildering
burning
yearning
churning sensation of
your third eye
struggling for
freedom of sight
with all of its might
it should be easier
it will soon come
naturally
if you just
follow my lead

greed is futile
let all your tangibles free
feel the sweet relief of the weight
off your shoulders
you owe yourself
that sigh of completion

the freedom of
hedonism within reason
commence the ******* of the
purest sensation of truth
you have it in you
just wake up

the apple of your eye
is ripe and ****
your vibrant brain is
a ravishing work of art
frolicking down
mysterious spiral staircases
through moments of
intensely intellectual
visionary illumination
and bioluminescence

the essence of joy
intertwined with pain
juxtaposed with
sublimity in vain

wander yonder
into the somber beyond
no magic wand
nor wizard tongue
transfigure and transcend
ascend into
the winding bend of forever

shudder with delight as
shimmering reality breaks through
with vivacious sound
color and light

conscious convergences
delicate reserves of infinite truth
the youth is not wasted
by the young
breathe deeper
your life has only begun

arrival and departure
candle lit picnics in
graveyards of forgotten dreams
the cobwebs are ephemeral
and easily defeated

repeated incomplete ideas
eventually materialize into
concrete visions
the prison gates
were never secure
the allure to venture abroad
was never ruled out
tumble forth and
discover
uncover
recover

nourishment in its purest form
reach as high as your vision spans
wanderlust for the
bright side of the moon
the stark luster of
the multifaceted sunset

tender are the
wilting worries of yesterday
the glimmering welcomes
of desire lines
halcyon days precede
wondrous adventures
transcending darkness
lanterns are unneeded
the neurons are aglow

promises of
playful rendezvous with
all species
all personalities
commonalities made apparent immediately

your mind wastes no time
reality proves
the clock is irrelevant regardless

keep your guard down
you'll be delighted to find
that you're already home
you're already found

Crystal sparkles—
From within, with ores,
Mineral, quartz, precious
Commonalities from earths
Core.  Wind has attempted
To make shy marks— falling
Sorrowfully short and water
Has edged and smoothed
By centuries too of trying.
This then was their show,
A kind of immortal love,
Everlasting by its trials,
As even the sun knows,
For a ley line, etched so fey,
Runs each wild orbs circumference,
Separates moss from clean stone,
Tracing the path of a star.

Share many commonalities.....
1. Love of a finely tailored suit
2. Ferocious brutality at the
    hands of mafiosos.
3. The finest gold, silver and
    gaudy jewelry
4. Love of finely created
    masterpieces for the head...
    i.e. a ****** pelt fedora
5. Control of a worldwide drug  
    trade and global politics
6.  Magical realism as normal life
7.  And my favorite.... phrases
     like..."I make him an offer, he  
     don't refuse" and the
     Colombian equivalent... "Plata
     o plomo"

In Ulzana's Raid,
the Native- and European-American concepts of property
      ownership and rights
are incompatible and irresolvable. McIntosh
had no illusions about that. He said hating Apaches for killing
      whites
is like hating the desert for having no water.
I suspect the movie's not a good source of anthropological
      data
and overlooks the commonalities among human communities
to focus on just a few bold characters
as all art must.

I consider McIntosh fortunate
to have died commensurate with the way he lived his life,
rolling a final cigarette, nothing between him and the desert,
and no gravediggers waiting, jesting, defecating. Also,
he is lucky to have had one last, dispassionate friend
to whom there is nothing left to say, the Chiracahua tracher
Kah-ti-nay.

Last night's performance of Beauty and the Beast
may have been the most victorious, ecstatic, cohesive
moment in our little school's history. Emily was Beauty, a
      filament of energy
who doesn't like to be touched and has been known to punch
boys hard. She had memorized her lines until she was hardly
Emily but only Beauty in a blue dress unselfconsciously
hiking up her tights between the Beast's advances.
Is this done in every American town and the world
over so there's no need to feel lost or lonely
ever?

There is no context for a man
outside the platoon or raiding party, home or shop.
When violence comes to the neighborhood,
the hierarchy of communicants will hold or fold
it is then the peace work proves relevant. I noticed McIntosh,
grizzled as he was, accepted the given hierarchy, a raw
      lieutenant's orders,
as he did the desert and Apaches, with a shrug and
      foreknowledge
of the outcome. If there's anywhere with no Emily or Beauty
we should bring them such blessings at the point of a
gun. But there is no place without Emily, not
the least-known prison in deepest space as long
as we do not hate or hurt or shun
the Beast.

I've been drinking all the time,
I've been poisoning my wine,
take a pill to send me off to sleep.

And I've been spinning you a line,
whilst bawling out my eyes,
the grain is fast becoming
a desert-island heap.

There's a mantra in the ground,
lay your ear to the quick-sand crowd,

to hear all commonalities
expressed in forms of symmetry,

expressed in half-formal letters,
in aboriginal dance,
in the fated glance of
a bus-stop stranger;
a romance of happenstance.

Through a discourse with my loss,
I feel that finally I have won:
I just want to feel happiness for once.